Talk:Dean Radin

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Not a biography

I wanted to gain an impression of Dean Radin's life and work to date but, as it now is, this bio appears to be little more than a chance to put forward criticism of Radin and his career.

Criticism has its place but this page does seem to be unable to state anything positive at all and is therefore rendered one-sided, inadequate and, regrettably, unworthy of publication by Wikipedia.

BarryNL1 (talk) 13:23, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the article is unbalanced in the negative direction. NPOV? ---Dagme (talk) 20:55, 18 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia has to use the reliable sources that exist. If they are uniformly critical, what do you suggest we should do? Sweep the criticism under the carpet? Use unreliable sources praising him? Invent fake sources praising him?

Your understanding of NPOV is faulty. --Hob Gadling (talk) 15:52, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Quackwatch link

[1]

"Removed quackwatch ref in the first paragraph. Biased. Quackwatch itself is questionable." That is really bad reasoning. Quackwatch is not questionable, so of course I reverted that without even looking.
"Removed again biased observation regarding IONS. Time to stop the skeptic guerrilla in wikipedia" That is simple ad hominem. Also bad reason. Reverted without looking again.
"Not consistent policy; Edgar Mitchell's article has no added explanations of the sort." Also a bad reason because of WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS.

But at least it made me look it up, and it turns out the link does not belong in the Dean Radin article because it does not mention Dean Radin. It does not even mention Mitchell.

So, removing it was right, but the edit summaries were shit. Learn how to write better edit summaries, IP. Even better: learn how to think like a serious Wikipedia editor instead of like a PROFRINGE POV warrior. --Hob Gadling (talk) 09:03, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Even had it mentioned the subject, any material by Barrett on Quackwatch is a self-published source, and thus banned from here per WP:BLPSPS. See \:RSNP for confirmation on this. I have once again deleted the material. --Nat Gertler (talk) 13:53, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

More biographical information needed

I agree with the above comment that says this article is not a biography, and think more biographical information would do more justice to this man. The article available in the online parapsychology encyclopedia of the Society for Psychical Research, available at:

  https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/dean-radin

is quite strong on the life of Dean Radin. If one reads this article, one will see that he trained as a classical violinist. The article also tells us the university from which he got his Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering - the University of Massachusetts. Rollo August (talk) 21:10, 8 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Rollo August, Wikipedia works from reliable independent secondary sources. Most of them ignore Radin. That's not our problem to fix, sadly. a "psi encyclopaedia" is canonically unreliable if it is user-editable or proceeds from the assumption that psi is real. Guy (help! - typo?) 23:08, 8 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Psi Encyclopedia is not "user-editable", it is written by members of the Society for Psychical Research. Rollo August (talk) 07:07, 10 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like a polemical blog to me: [2] - LuckyLouie (talk) 13:58, 10 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Right. A site spouting the usual fringe believers' disapproval of Wikipedia's refusal to accept every random piece of bullshit. --Hob Gadling (talk) 14:50, 10 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Rollo August, Ah, members of the SPR. Wikipedia prefers reality-based sources, though. Guy (help! - typo?) 16:05, 10 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Impartiality Of This Page is Extremely Questionable

It is like this page has been written by some angry "skeptics", to undermine scientific facts. Another hopeless attempt to bury the truth. Welcome to old world. Take a look at it. It won't last. People are creating organizations and helping the law enforcements by using psychic abilities even though so called skeptics (they are more like cynics) ignore. Wikipedia allows angry and radical editors occupy this website. The history will be a witness that Wikipedia has been vandalized by cynics who made an oath to bury the truth. I wish them good luck. They will be the ones who'll be forgetten. 159.146.121.8 (talk) 12:38, 26 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed so. Just look at the way these people have been blocking links to the valuable information source Psi Encyclopedia. Brian Josephson (talk) 14:25, 26 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:TRUTH. Wikipedia is supposed to write what you consider true, but to echo reliable sources. Usually, reliable sources do not believe in magic, so Wikipedia embraces that position too. --Hob Gadling (talk) 11:05, 27 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia at it again

This article exemplifies how dogmatic Wikipedia is about dismissing all contributions from scientists who have provided experimental evidence for the paranormal. This man has done experimental research suggesting that there is such a thing as presentiment - i.e. having feelings about what's going to happen in the future. He has done experiments where participants have their arousal assessed, through measurements of electrodermal responses, before presentation of pictures selected at random by a computer. The data he obtained do suggest that their arousal is greater before presentation of arousing pictures then relaxing ones, even by as long as fifteen seconds. I did not see any record of these data in the article. YTKJ (talk) 21:11, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Have those results been received positively outside the psi-believer subculture? --Hob Gadling (talk) 15:01, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This needs a separate "Controversy/Criticism" section

The section entitled "Parapsychology" barely describes or cites any of Radin's actual work or his many studies. The majority of the section consists of a long list of poorly summarized criticism of Radin and his work without reference to what the source is specifically criticizing. His work needs to be included in one section, and responses to his work need to be separated into a section entitled either "Controversies" or "Criticism." In its current state, this page is too similar to Radin's page on RationalWiki. JimiR2 (talk) 00:02, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WP:CRITS would be bad. Bon courage (talk) 02:03, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This subject is controversial per se, and "Criticism" sections are discouraged because they make the content seem biased. But this article is already too far gone in that regard and it essentially already has two "Criticism" sections. His work and ideas are not represented almost at all.

Nine of the 12 sentences in the "Parapsychology" section (which should be renamed "Career") are critical quotes from detractors. The "Books" section lists two works: the subsection about the first book includes criticism only - the book is not even summarized. The subsection about the second book is 20 sentences long, 16 of which discuss one critic's negative response to the book at length. The book itself is summarized in one sentence. JimiR2 (talk) 04:56, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Would normally summarise fringe books, except as done so by good sources. Bon courage (talk) 05:28, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you think this article shouldn't exist vis a vis Wikipedia:Fringe theories then just say that, rather than make bad faith arguments about stylistic rules as if this poorly-written article doesn't already even have punctuation errors. JimiR2 (talk) 06:11, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WP:BIGMISTAKE. This article should exist, I think as there are sufficient sources to ensure its WP:FRINGESUBJECTS are dealt with appropriately. Are there good sources yet to be used? Anyway given your impertinent interaction, forgive me if I now ignore you. Bon courage (talk) 06:15, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fine, but please just take a look at this article. Ideology aside, it needs heavy editing in all regards. It has very little information and is very difficult to read. That is all. JimiR2 (talk) 06:50, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]