Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Deborah Chung's "apparent negative resistance"

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Sandstein 19:40, 16 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Deborah Chung's "apparent negative resistance"

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Does not appear to meet WP:N. Certainly not under the presented name. T R 07:20, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Strong keep. With over 700 hits in gbooks and dozens of press articles there can be little doubt of the subjects notability. It is, of course, completely wrong-headed to equate this result with "room temperature superconductors" or "free energy", but neither Chung nor our article do so. Its announcement seems to have caused quite a stir in the popular scientific press (and the internet generally) with many making exactly those errors. Doubtless the article can be improved, but that and the question of the article's title are not best resolved at AfD. Spinning Spark 08:26, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Of those 700 hits, how many are actually about the subject in question. My limited sampling, indicates only a handful which are mostly just yearly abstract collections. That, and the momentary press attention, seem to indicate a classical case of WP:NOTNEWS.T R 12:29, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Granted, there is a large amount of google noise that needs filtering out, but on the first page of results I am seeing non-trivial articles in The Science Teacher, New Scientist, and Journal of Scientific and Industrial Research, at least one of which (and possibly all three) has misinterpreted Chung, or discussed her misinterpretation, in just the way described in the article. Spinning Spark 14:28, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Somewhat telling is the fact that neither of Chung's later books on composite materials reference the paper or mention the result.T R 06:39, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
~~Keep~~ - there is indeed something odd about the title of the article, but the attested events certainly occurred~~, were well documented, and should be reported here~~. The claims made about the physics varied from Chung's sober remarks to quite wild suggestions in the press, so the article will need to take great care (probably more than now) to state what was observed and to explain the various theories about what happened. The sources currently cited in the article itself are not, to a non-physicist's eye, sufficient, but this can be remedied with better use of the many existing RS on the web. I would suggest a section in the article on the background (the laws of thermodynamics, etc), the experiment, the meaning of the results, the critical reaction. But deletion is the wrong option. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:39, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and rename to Apparently Negative Resistance with Deborah Chung credited in the lead paragraph perhaps? Unless that is the accepted nomenclature for the findings themselves, in which case make this a Keep outright. BaSH PR0MPT (talk) 09:29, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Merge to negative resistance given the extent of coverage. If it is to be retained as a separate article, GHits suggest rename to Chung's negative resistance as the most succinct commonly used name for the phenomenon. Mangoe (talk) 13:48, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I would oppose a merge on the grounds of WP:UNDUE and the fact that this effect really is not negative resistance as described in that article (WP:SCOPE), and is the reason for Chung affixing "apparent" to the description. Spinning Spark 14:24, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It is within our power to explain that the effect in this case is only apparent. Mangoe (talk) 14:28, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, having read Negative resistance, it is clear that isn't the same phenomenon at all. ~~The Chung article needs editing, but merging isn't the answer.~~ Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:52, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and rename to Chung's negative resistance based on above discussion. Mangoe (talk) 15:16, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Having "Chung's" in the article name is inappropriate, given that Chung is not the primary author of the paper. -- 202.124.75.135 (talk) 11:40, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:45, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: The article should at least be renamed "Apparent negative electrical resistance in carbon fiber composites" as there is another author involved apart from Chung. The article seems to me to be a media beat-up. The physical situation is very complicated because of the variation of electrical properties over the interface between the fiber braids and there is no reason to conclude that anything fundamental has been measured. It is not impossible to imagine variations in the electrical properties of the interface that would have the effect of reversing the voltage leads and so give the apparent negative resistance. ~~Has the work been published in a reputable peer-refereed journal?~~ Have the results been reproduced by others? The author of the article knows little about the subject when he says "A real electrical resistance requires both the current and voltage to be measured at the same points." That is quite untrue as the gold standard for measurement of electrical resistivity has always been the four-terminal method which measures current and voltage at different places: see any text on experimental condensed matter physics. I am also disturbed that the references in the article seem to be mainly to crank "free-energy" websites. Until the work has been ~~published in the mainstream literature after peer review and~~ reproduced by other workers I am inclined to write it off as junk science. Of course, I am always prepared to change my views on the presentation of sufficient evidence. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:37, 6 March 2012 (UTC). (There is a great deal of discussion of experimental matters that would lead to the spurious result on the article talk page. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:43, 16 March 2012 (UTC).)[reply]

Delete. There are not 700 hits in gbooks (searching for the phrases "Deborah Chung" and "negative resistance" rather than for four individual words) but just a handful of hits, mostly very brief and negative. Likewise there are only two news sources (the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and physicsworld.com). The paper (for which Chung is not first author, by the way) is published in an Elsevier journal and has 23 citations. That doesn't seem to satisfy WP:N (there are millions of papers with that many citations). The original inaccurate press release doesn't seem to make for notability either. If kept, however, Chung's name should be removed from the article title. -- 202.124.75.109 (talk) 23:37, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Chung's findings were replicated by JL Naudin (http://jlnlabs.online.fr/cnr/cnrexp1.htm) in 2001. It looks like a fringe laboratory (http://www.jlnlabs.org/). The findings are either a) a replicated hoax or b) unexplained. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:12, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your careful research in finding the "reproduction" of Chung's experiment. As you say, it comes from a fringe "free energy" lab and I find it unconvincing. I do not believe Chung's original experiment was a hoax, just a mistake coming from working in an unfamiliar field. There were many similar ones after the discovery of high temperature superconductivity; all of them could be explained away (except to cranks) by faulty experimental methods. However, there is something odd going on in this matter. If you look at the page on Deborah Chung you will find claims, among other things, that she believes that the Dalai Lama engaged in Satanic worship on her campus, with his priests releasing hundreds of demons into the university. The claim is unsourced and probably should be removed. (I see that user:Guettarda has anticipated me on that) It seems to me that Wikipedia is being used to attack Chung and that this present AfD is a snide attack page as it concentrates on one mistake she made (albeit a serious mistake because she chose to invoke public relations outside the scientific mainstream) in the course of an otherwise respectable career. Another reason for deletion. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:32, 7 March 2012 (UTC).[reply]

Comment - I'm a little concerned about the bios of both of the people behind this idea - Deborah Chung and Shoukai Wang. Both were created by the same editor, who has no other edits. Chung's bio had some strange, unsourced info that I have removed out of BLP concerns. Guettarda (talk) 22:09, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is smelling more and more of a Fringe takeover. I watched Chung's video, and agree with Xxanthippe that Chung herself was simply mistaken at the time of the original experiment; since then, the fringe (perpetual motion, free energy) have taken it up as supporting their cause. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:15, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - fails WP:GNG as far as I can tell - the sources are weak, most of them press release-type things, a few are sourced to the primary literature, and the rest come from a personal website of a somewhat out of the mainstream sort of guy. Guettarda (talk) 22:23, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.