Talk:Bogdanov affair/Archive 1

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I have just created an account « Igor Bogdanoff » on this site. I do not wish to maintain the least discussion, within the framework of Wikipédia, with Mr. Messager whose opinion about us is well known by all those who could read his articles on internet. I will thus remove all his interventions about us which obviously, do not proceed of constructive intention. It is not a question of « vandalism », but such an action is a simple defense of our moral integrity. Consequently, I make a point of preventing that a sterile dispute does develop in the context of an encyclopaedia which must respect a chart (even not formal) of objectivity.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Bogdanov (talk • contribs) 20:46, 3 August 2005

It is vandalism since you removed most part of the origigal article as well as the whole discussion.

The basic (even not formal) objectivity implies that someone directly concerned with an article would not rewrite it.--YBM 00:41, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

The solar system volume issue

Quote from main page, "full of egregious nonsense (such as "The volume of the solar system has grown twice since the beginning of Earth's history")". This is very opinionated and also not necessarily an erroneous statement (it depends on interpretation of cosmological expansion).

You also have to be more specific. If they are assuming that the volume of the solar system doubles, but the volume of the Sun does not, then this is meaningless. However...

Assuming a flat space time, looking out to a distance when the universe was the age of the infant earth, the redshift is around 0.259. This implies that the universe has expanded by a factor of 1.259 since the earth has existed (rounded down to 4 Gyrs), which implies an increase in volume of 2 (exactly twice when cubed). You can do the math; t=to(1+z)^-(3/2), where t = 9.7 Gyrs, to = 13.7 Gyrs. I suggest the main article is cleaned up and made a little more objective. I can take a crack at it, but I'm not too familiar with the Bogdanovs' work. --Nodem 19:20, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

In "Science & Method" Henri Poincaré discusses the idea of the size of things changing and the inability to measure this change, therefore any non-relative change is meaninless (from an epistemological point of view at least). So what would happen if the volume of the solar system expanded by a fact of two? Well according to Poincaré, nothing. How would you measure it? Remember, space is relative to the system used to measure it. We can't observe the solar system from 4 Gyrs ago, so from a relative point of view, the idea is meaningless.

However, you can consider this change in scale by observing a distant (hence older) region of the universe. But even then, how do you know that the difference is because the photons used to determine the nature of that difference were effected by the expansion of space (if space were somehow absolute and could behave as such), or the relative difference in physical parameters? The answer is you can not. If you could, then space (and time) become absolute and GR fails. Which is the significant aspect of the field equations - space-time is relative to mass-energy. Pin out down, and change the other, but don't assume that one side has a structure independent of the other.

Einstein discusses this issue in the appendix of (the second edition) The Meaning of Relativity. He arrives at a the (incorrect) statement that atoms are not related by similarity, but by congruence. Another words, the size of an atom must be absolute, ergo so must be the space between the nucleus and the electron orbits. Does this mean we now have absolute space between at the atomic level, but not the cosmological level? An interesting, but overlooked feature of GR is that you can take space to be static (in that it does not expand) and change mass-energy. The redshift becomes due to a lower energy in the past and the photon represents that relative difference (between emission and absorbsion). Mathematically, this is equivalent to a smaller universe. Which is right, well it doesn't matter... they are mathematically equivalent... which is the whole point of a mathematical description like GR. If you solve it by fixing some feature of the equations, then that doesn't make that feature in nature absolute! --Nodem 21:34, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

1. The Bogdnanovs pretented in a discussion later to never, never have neither written nor pretended that (I have a .avi recording of the part of their show prooving they lied)

2. The Bogdanovs pretented this in a popular show science, as if it was the standard scientific statement on this issue

3. This is false (quite trivialy if you consider Earth geology and biology during these last millions years), this can be proven wrong in the standard model : see The influence of the cosmological expansion on local systems or (from the sci.physics FAQ) If the universe is expanding, does that mean atoms are getting bigger? Is the Solar System expanding?. --YBM 19:48, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Depends how you define "false". Yes, according to the sci.physics FAQ, but not according to the observations. Take a look at The "Pioneer effect" as a manifestation of the cosmic expansion in the solar system

If you consider that atoms do not "expand", then you could construct a rigid rod (out of atoms) and connect one end to a star and measure the Hubble flow against the other end. If this were the case, then regardless of the relative velocity between the fixed rod and the moving stars in the Hubble flow, they would have to be in the same inertial frame. In fact, if the rod was long enough, it could be moving close to the speed of light, but with no time dilation. This makes no sense.

There's basically two ways to look at it; atoms do not expand, but space does (causing redshift), or space is static, and atoms expand (larger atoms emit longer wavelengths = redshift). This is just another issue of relativity, you can not talk about absolute space in its own right, unless it is relative to something else used to measure it. Choosing to pin one thing down doesn't represent an absolute feature of reality, you could equally keep space as a completely static and flat structure and vary the relative mass energy content instead. GR will not tell you otherwise.

Just because this is a minority position does not make it wrong. The only reason why the Pioneer Anomaly is an "Anomaly" is because current interpretations of GR do not match the observations. What do you think is right, your current theoretical interpretation, or the actual observations of physical reality?

Ah, Igor is back. Even if it was a minority position, it shouldn't be presented as the "standard model" view, BUT, this is not a minority position : even the article you quoted states clearly that this effect could not have any sensible effect on orbits of planets, but would be only sensible in the radial direction. Anyway, if you want other "egregious nonsense" to be quoted in the article, I can give you dozens of them..--YBM 08:29, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

No, as Igor mentions below, I am someone else. I guess I'll leave you guys to it... but so far it looks like two (me & Igor) to one (YBM) --Nodem 19:20, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Do you suggest that a dispute on a scientific statement could be settled by a vote ? BTW, neither you nor Igor addressed my objection that even the very very speculative local effect that have been proposed once to explain the very very small so-called "Pionneer effect" does not imply (hopefully ! this is clearly written in the arXiv paper) that the solar system volume would have sensibly grown since the creation of Earth. I would suggest to ask a third party scientist, like the cosmologist Alain Riazuelo, to give his opinion on this issue. --YBM 11:42, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Since you completed and clarified your point of view by pasting here what you wrote on another forum (fair enough), I'm pasting as well my response here for the sake of clarity:

Poincaré's argument is very well known, as a matter of fact I even tried once to explain it to Igor, without much success.

In the Bogdanov statement, the real one, not the kind of fancy hypothetical hypothesis or subtle consideration on relativity of space, you are talking about, the cosmological expansion has very sensible effect at a galactic scale and at a stellar system scale but neither at a planet, nor even star scale :

"Now we are four billion years before now. […] Everything has changed in the Universe of these times since it is twice smaller than now. Nothing surprising that the Sun looks like so huge and bright in the sky, that one would perfectly see some stars (like Sirius or Polaris). The night, the show is even more impressive Mars is almost here, […] just as Saturn" (B&B. Before The Big Bang)

This is the same "image" you can see on a sample of their TV show : http://ybmessager.free.fr/docs//audio/expansion.avi

What the Bogdanov are ubdoubtfully saying is that there is a local effect of expansion, which is very important and perceivable (so Poincaré case is irrelevant, especially in defense of B&B) (let's call this A) and that this is a clearly stated fact and a part of the standard model (let's call this B).

You did agree with me that B is false. Now you've just given some strong arguments for A to be false as well.--YBM 22:58, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

"Ah, Igor is back!". Sorry but if I indeed write this present mall, I am NOT the author of the preceding text in which, plugged by your obsession, you believed to "recognize" me (in fact this text is right). Anyway, the problem is that you persist in giving opinions on topics that you do not understand. The "local" expansion of space time represents one of these problems to which neither your formation nor your (supposed) goodwill may give you access to a possible interpretation of a phenomenon of which all the theorists who work in space ( NASA, ESA) know the existence. To have spoken in depth about "the Pionner effect" with specialists of Esa, after having read (and understood) many papers on the subject, I can assure you that it acts of a question whose solution appears only if one calls upon a "local" expansion of space time.

Igor Bogdanoff

Before speaking about my 'obsession' you'd better ask yourself how many times you pretended to identify me under dozens of distincts identities. (BTW 'Igor is back' was about your editing again of the page). We all know very well you've been talking with Napoleon himself about Trafalgar and with Gepetto about Pinocchio. The point is that the stupidity you claimed have never never wrote nor said is clearly pronounced in your tv show. Anyway, I'm not here to debate with a fraudster, a lier and a nut (especially not about science where you've been proven completely incompetent). I'm here to advert people of the dishonesty and hypocrisy of your conduct on Wikipedia. The english-speaking world is very very well aware of the "Bogdanov affair" to take care of the content.--YBM 22:28, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, Mr Messager, I am glad you offer me the occasion to show everyone here that your version of facts is far (not say more) from being objective. Because it is sufficient to read the literal version of the facts of which I make the account, with evidence and links, to note that the version that you try to impose is partial and false. And with regard to your qualifications to judge our work, I do not believe that a technician in data processing is really qualified to speak about cosmology.

Igor Bogdanoff

Don't be a parody of yourself Igor (anyway you couldn't get worse). We all know very well what "literal version of the facts" means in the fancy Bogdanov's world.--YBM 23:12, 5 August 2005 (UTC) (BTW my version of the fact is not the point here, it's your since you vandalized the page tens of times since last week against other people version).

Let me tell you 2 things :

1) A Wikipedia article is supposed to be objective. Obsiously, it is not the case when you re write your own version of this affair. 2) I do not react against "other people version" : I do react against YOUR version.

And beleive it or not, the version that I published (and try to defend against your attacks) here is a simple and objective description of the reality. Nothing more.

Igor Bogdanoff

Did you notice that every change on the page is logged on Wikipedia and that everyone can easily check that what you told is a lie ? Here is your first editing log (when you removed almost everything from the page replacing it by the fancy story you are talking about, without much success, on tv) :
- 16:23, 16 July 2005 82.123.175.128
Here is my first editing (simply reverting to the former version, when a friend of mine wrote me about your falsifications) :
- 23:36, 1 August 2005 82.57.3.20
Meanwhile you edited anonymously the article three times and several times later when I've been continuing to preseve the former (almost ok) version. Is 16 of July after 1 of August in your fancy pre-aristotelician physics ? Are you about to explain that you react to a reverting to the original version two weeks before it takes place ? I really wonder how could Igor & Grichka Bogdanov consider that public obvious lies are a decent defence...--YBM 23:36, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

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OK. I will try to analyze the blocked article phrase by phrase. The various deformations induced by Mr Messager should clearly appear.

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"During 1999-2002, popular French TV presenters Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff managed to get two theses (one in mathematics, one in theoretical physics) from the University of Bourgogne and got six papers published in physics and mathematics journals (in particular "Annals of Physics" and "Classical and Quantum Gravity"). "

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OK. This is correct.

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"Consequently, these papers... were at first sight considered ..."

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Wrong. Niedermaier aimed at the thesis and not the papers. The phrase should be written :

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"The thesis were at first sight considered by a French physicist, Max Niedermaier, as an incoherent stream of buzzwords of modern physics (similar to the Sokal Affair), that is pseudoscience under a layer of dense technical jargon."

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Here we meet an important phase in the process. Because the whole "affair" blew up on the basis of the mail sent, on october 22, by Niedermaier to hunddreds of his colleagues and journalists. If Niedermaier had not done this, there would have been no "affair". Consequently, this phrase should be written :

"M.Niedermaier sent an email in this effect on October 22 to many physicists and journalists, including John Baez who decided to create a discussion on Usenet (Science Physics Research) under the name "Has physics been bitten by a Reverse Sokal Hoax?". This question immediately attracted worlwide attention. Max Niedermaier retracted publicly on october 24 and the brothers have since defended their theories (which claim to deal with the area of topological field theory). "

This is the exact "sequence of events" that happened during october 2002 and later. Missing this sequence is altering the truth.

____________

" The incident has been termed a "reverse Sokal Affair", though, unlike Sokal, the Bogdanoff brothers do not admit to hoax, but claim that their papers are of genuinely scientific merit. On the basis of the disputed content of these theses, they received doctorate degrees in theoretical physics from from the University of Bourgogne, France."

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This is not true. Why repeating wrongly an information that is already mentionned in the opening of the article ("During 1999-2002, popular French TV presenters Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff managed to get two theses (one in mathematics, one in theoretical physics)"? Because we did not receive "doctorate degrees in theoretical physics" (only one thesis is in th.physics) on the basis of the disputed content of these theses. In 1999, when Grichka passed his thesis in mathematics, there was no dispute. In October 2001, when the first papers were published in "Classical and Quantum Gravity" ("Topological field Theory of the Initial Singularity of Spacetime," Vol.18 4341-4372) and in Annals of Physics ( "Spacetime Metric and the KMS Condition at the Planck Scale" Vol. 296 90-97) there was no dispute. In July 2002, when I passed my thesis in theoretical physics, there was no dispute. It was only in October 2002, AFTER Niedermaier sent his mails to the whole physics community that the "dispute" blew up. This has to be taken in account.

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"In 2004 they published a book ("Before the Big Bang") and made a TV show from it where they presented their theory as the bleeding edge of modern physics and cosmology."

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This is non sense. Ho` Mr Messager (and only Mr Messager's) interpretation. It is not true. Everyone who has read the book should know that we presented our model with lots of prudence and circonspection. This is ridiculous to make it appear, as Mr Messager pretends, "as the bleeding edge of modern physics and cosmology". Moreover, the TV show was not "made out of it" but conceived independently as a TV production for a very large audience. Only someone (like Mr Messager) who is totally ignorant of the constraints and the methods of creation in TV industry could write such inappropriate comments.

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"Both have content, considered by the wider physics community, to be full of egregious nonsense (such as "The volume of the solar system has grown twice since the beginning of Earth's history").

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This phrase is not correct. Who pretends that "the content of the TV program and the book considered by the wider physics community, to be full of egregious nonsense?" Only Mr Messager (who by the way is not a physicist, but a technician in data process). Why does he say that? Not on the basis of any objective reading of the book. Not on the basis of any objective viewing of the show. Only on the basis of his personal vindication against us. Somebody who can write word for word that we are "bastards" on a public forum is not worthy of confidence and objectivity.

We NEVER wrote in the book that "the volume of the solar system has grown twice since the the biggining of Earth's." This phrase is a pure invention of Mr Messager. As I wrote here above, I think that spacetime expansion is not only global but should also be taken in account at "local" scales (ie solar system scale). This is what we wrote in our book. Not the stupid nonsense invented by Mr Messager. Can he quote the page where such a phrase is supposed to be written? No. Because this phrase does NOT exist in the book. And if it has been mentionned by the commentator in the TV show it was only with an aim of insisting métaphorically on the reality of this phenomenon. Let us not forget that we are spaking about a TV show, not about a scientific paper. Mr Messager's presentation (egregeous nonsense) is neither fair nor honest.

In conclusion, here is the way the article should be written :

____________

" During 1999-2002, popular French TV presenters Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff managed to get two thesis (one in mathématics, one in theoretical physics) from the University of Bourgogne and got six papers published in physics and mathematics journals (in particular "Annals of Physics" and "Classical and Quantum Gravity"). Nevertheless, these papers were at first sight considered by a French physicist, Max Niedermaier, as an incoherent stream of buzzwords of modern physics, ie. a hoax similar (to Sokal) pseudoscience under a layer of dense technical jargon. On October 22, M.Niedermaier sent an email in this effect to various physicists and journalists, including John Baez who decided to open a discussion on Usenet (Science Physics Research) under the name "Physics bitten by Reverse Alan Sokal Hoax". This question immediately attracted worlwide attention. Max Niedermaier retracted publicly on october 24 and the brothers have since defended their theories (which claim to deal with the area of topological field theory). After long debates and discussions the majority of the physicists seems to regard Bogdanoff work as incomprehensible and meaningless though the veracity of their work seems to have recently gained new supporters among certain researchers in theoretical physics : http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/06/bogdanoff-papers.html.

In 2004 they published a book ("Before the Big Bang") and made a TV show t where they presented their theory amongst other models of modern physics and cosmology."

This reflects the exact "state of reality". If you are not convinced of what I write, please go to the sources :

1. It is undeniable that we passed our thesis in 1999 and 2002 without any dispute

2. It is undeniable that we published all our papers between 2001 and 2002 without any dispute

3. Is undeniable that on October 22 2002, Niedermaier decided to send an email to thousands of his colleagues and pretended that our thesis were a "hoax".

4. It is undeniable that on October 22, after having received this email, John Baez opened a discussion on SPR on this topic and created a page "The Bogdanoff Affair"on his website.

5. It is undeniable that John Baez page plus the thread of discussion on SPR attracted worldwide attention on our case.

6. Is undeniable that on October 26 Niedermaier retracted and issued a disclaimer where he apologized (but it was too late : the "affair" had already blown up).

7. It is undeniable that after long debates and discussions the majority of the physicists seems to regard Bogdanoff work as incomprehensible and meaningless

8. It is undeniable that the veracity of our work has recently gained new supporters among certain researchers in theoretical physics (http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/06/bogdanoff-papers.html.). We had a personnal correspondance with the physicist Lubos Motl and I can assure you that he published his supportive opinion about our work totally independently from us (we were not aware of it untill he attracted our attention by email) and only because he sincerely beleives that it might contain new ideas or at least relevant and interesting questions.

9. It is undeniable that we never wrote in our book "The volume of the solar system has grown twice since the beginning of Earth's history" (which is Mr Messager's invention).

10. It is undeniable that the aim of a book and a TV show is only to popularize science. Neither of these medias should be considered as "scientific publications". Therefore one should not criticize as a scientific research the inevitable approximations and metaphores that appears in a popularizing work of large audience communication. If we had been as bad as Mr Messager pretends I do not beleive that our shows would still be on the air 25 years after their creation.

Igor Bogdanoff

for anyone able to understand french, here are audio and video abstract of Bogdanov's infamous TV show : «Depuis la création de la terre, il y a cinq milliards d’années, notre système solaire a doublé de volume.» For the rest, comparing Igor fancy version with Baez page is enough to refute it. I'm not about to discuss science with a fraudster who've been proven completely ignorant, though ridiculously arrogant, on basic algebra, topology, and analysis. --YBM 13:40, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

This "infamous TV show" as you qualify it has just won an award (I will certainely not tell you what award because you would immediately go to the source and launch your diffamatory actions against us as you did it with our directors in France 2 (french public television).

"Comparing Igor fancy version with Baez page is enough to refute it" : I did not write any element in the presentation of the "affair" which is not the exact reality. Everyone can verify the veracity of what I wrote in this page. Contrarely to you who is not capable to refute what I wrote on the basis of proofs, references and tangible elements.

"I'm not about to discuss science with a fraudster who've been proven completely ignorant, though ridiculously arrogant, on basic algebra, topology, and analysis. "

What makes you even think that we want to "discuss science" with you? I already wrote many times that the problem is that your formation and your background in data processing do not allow you to speak seriously about theoretical physics. Contrarely to you, we spent many years in the mathematical laboratory of the University of Bourgogne to study maths and theoretical physics. You did not. We passed our PHD's in mathematics and theoretical physics. You did not. We intestigate a possible model of what one should expect under Planck scale, you did not. We pubished many papers on the subject in the best peer reviewed mathematical and theoretical physics journals, you did not.

In fat, you are simply ignorant of all these topics and none of your prententions would never change this reality. You see, ignorance and arrogance goes together. We would accept to talk serious "sciences" with you only after...you pass successfully your thesis in mathematics (or in theoretical physics). But I bet it will never happen. So for the moment, all that we would accept from you would be your flat apologize for your insulting attitude, your diffaming actions and your lies (but that will never happen neither).

Igor Bogdanoff

Let's see the details

>1. It is undeniable that we passed our thesis in 1999 and 2002 without any dispute

This is false, Grichka didn't pass "without any dispute", the examination board considered "he didn't address correctly most of the questions asked, especially none of them about physics" and got the Ph. D. (after ten years !) under the condition to rewrite the thesis. Igor has been advice he'd better "go to another domain, such as epistemology (!)" and had to wait three years in order to be allowed to support. Both Ph.D. have been passed with the lower grade, meaning that any further involvement in the academic research is impossible.

>2. It is undeniable that we published all our papers between 2001 and 2002 without any dispute

This is false : (from Baez site) : "What did the journals say about it all? The Chronicle writes:

Mr. Wilczek is editor in chief of Annals of Physics, which published one of the Bogdanoff brothers' papers in February. But he and all of the current members of the journal's editorial board had recently joined and did not handle papers in that issue. He says that standards at the journal had slipped in recent years because of the illness and death of a previous editor in chief.

Although he will not comment on the Bogdanoff paper, Mr. Wilczek says he intends to raise the journal's standards. As part of that drive, members of the editorial board now do most of the reviewing. "I'm trying to get much tighter control, just because of things like this," he says, referring to the Bogdanoff case.

Hermann Nicolai, editor of Classical and Quantum Gravity, told Die Zeit that if the Bogdanoffs' paper had reached his desk, he would have immediately sent it back: "The article is a potpourri of the buzzwords of modern physics, that is completely incoherent."

Sometime around November 1st, the editorial board of Classical and Quantum Gravity issued the following statement, which I obtained through Greg Kuperberg:

Classical and Quantum Gravity and the paper "Topological theory of the initial singularity of spacetime" by G Bogdanoff and I Bogdanoff, Class.

Quant. Grav. 18 4341-4372 (2001)

A number of our readers have contacted us regarding the above paper and in response we have decided to issue the following statement.

Classical and Quantum Gravity endeavours to publish original research of the highest calibre on gravitational physics. It is not possible for the Editorial Board to consider every article submitted and so, in common with many journals, we consult among a worldwide pool of over 1000 referees asking two independent experts to review each paper. Regrettably, despite the best efforts, the refereeing process cannot be 100% effective.

Thus the paper "Topological theory of the initial singularity of spacetime" by G Bogdanoff and I Bogdanoff, Classical and Quantum Gravity 18 4341-4372 (2001) made it through the review process even though, in retrospect, it does not meet the standards expected of articles in this journal.

The journal's Editorial Board became aware of this situation already in April 2002. The paper was discussed extensively at the annual Editorial Board meeting in September 2002, and there was general agreement that it should not have been published. Since then several steps have been taken to further improve the peer review process in order to improve the quality assessment on articles submitted to the journal and reduce the likelihood that this could happen again. However, there are at this time no plans to withdraw the article. Rather, the journal publishes refereed Comments and Replies by readers and authors as a means to comment on and correct mistakes in published material.

We are also grateful to our readers, contributors and reviewers for their vigilance and assistance both before and after publication.

Dr Andrew Wray

Senior Publisher

Classical and Quantum Gravity

Institute of Physics Publishing

Professor Hermann Nicolai

Honorary Editor

Classical and Quantum Gravity

Albert Einstein Institute

"

>3. Is undeniable that on October 22 2002, Niedermaier decided to send an email to thousands of his colleagues and pretended that our thesis were a "hoax".

True.

>4. It is undeniable that on October 22, after having received this email, John Baez opened a discussion on SPR on this topic and created a page "The Bogdanoff Affair"on his website.

True.

>5. It is undeniable that John Baez page plus the thread of discussion on SPR attracted worldwide attention on our case.

True.

>6. Is undeniable that on October 26 Niedermaier retracted and issued a disclaimer where he apologized (but it was too late : the "affair" had already blown up).

Perhaps true. This should be verified by a independ source or confirmed by Niedermeier.

>7. It is undeniable that after long debates and discussions the majority of the physicists seems to regard Bogdanoff work as incomprehensible and meaningless

True.

>8. It is undeniable that the veracity of our work has recently gained new supporters among certain researchers in theoretical physics (http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/06/bogdanoff-papers.html.). We had a personnal correspondance with the physicist Lubos Motl and I can assure you that he published his supportive opinion about our work totally independently from us (we were not aware of it untill he attracted our attention by email) and only because he sincerely beleives that it might contain new ideas or at least relevant and interesting questions.

Not true. As usual you are mistranslating Motl actual words. IMHO. This is not a good idea from Motl to support cons in order to address his own legitimate recriminations against some people in the theorical physics field who could deserve it.

>9. It is undeniable that we never wrote in our book "The volume of the solar system has grown twice since the beginning of Earth's history" (which is Mr Messager's invention).

You suggest it in your book "Now we are four billion years before now. […] Everything has changed in the Universe of these times since it is twice smaller than now. Nothing surprising that the Sun looks like so huge and bright in the sky, that one would perfectly see some stars (like Sirius or Polaris). The night, the show is even more impressive Mars is almost here, […] just as Saturn" and the sentence "The volume of the solar system has grown twice since the beginning of Earth's history" is a direct transcript of your TV show.

>10. It is undeniable that the aim of a book and a TV show is only to popularize science. Neither of these medias should be considered as "scientific publications". Therefore one should not criticize as a scientific research the inevitable approximations and metaphores that appears in a popularizing work of large audience communication. If we had been as bad as Mr Messager pretends I do not beleive that our shows would still be on the air 25 years after their creation.

Falsifying texts (see : Urs Screiber, John Giorgis and Peter Woit), presenting you non-sense in a popular science show, accumulating mistakes at a college level on TV and in your book is not a point of "approximations and metaphores", it is dishonesty and hijacking.--YBM 14:16, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Poor arrogant and amnesic Igor... Did you remember that I graduated in math with the higher possible grade and (this is the important point) wrote a detailled technical critic of your book you were unable to address, as well as you were unable to address Riazuelo's detailled critic on your thesis ? Someone like you, unable to understand what is "floating point arithmetic" (as you've shown on a french forum) shouldn't take the risk to talk about "data processing". Your show-business "awards" and (no so good) audience levels are of no value, there are even worse TV shows than yours which last on TV for a longer time. --YBM 14:27, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Now let's see the real details

>1. We wrote : " It is undeniable that we passed our thesis in 1999 and 2002 without any dispute"

And you answered :

"This is false, Grichka didn't pass "without any dispute", the examination board considered "he didn't address correctly most of the questions asked, especially none of them about physics" and got the Ph. D. (after ten years !) under the condition to rewrite the thesis.

This is wrong. Where did you find such a phrase? Contrarely to you, I have a copy of the report on the thesis and what you write is a total lie! It was never written in the report that "Grichka did not address correctly most of the questions asked, especially none of them in physics". You are inventing this phrase just to satisfy your agenda. Now if I ask you to produce some proofs, you could NOT do it. It is easy to diffame poeple. It is less easy to back up lies with tangible proofs.

Yoy continue to write :

"Igor has been advice he'd better "go to another domain, such as epistemology (!)" and had to wait three years in order to be allowed to support. Both Ph.D. have been passed with the lower grade, meaning that any further involvement in the academic research is impossible."

False again. The only truth is that I was expected to defend my thesis only after having had 2 papers accepted in peer review journals (mathematics and theoretical physics). These conditions were extremely severe precisely because the jury assembled by the University of Bourgogne wanted to avoid any disputes based on the fact that we could have obtained our thesis because of our so called "fame".

We wrote :

>2." It is undeniable that we published all our papers between 2001 and 2002 without any dispute..."

And you answered :

" This is false : (from Baez site) : "What did the journals say about it all? The Chronicle writes:"

You are once more prensenting a compilations of deformations and lies. Because as I wrote, all this fuss happened only AFTER Niedermaier's mail. It was on the basis of this mail and after publication of it on John Baez site that the "affair" blue up : totally desoriented by the magnitude of the discussion the editorial board of Classical and Quantum Gravity issued a text in order to calm the debate. All I said is that if Niedermaier had not sent his criminal mail, none of this would have never occured.

Since your accepted points 3 to 7, let's go to point 9.

We write :

8." It is undeniable that the veracity of our work has recently gained new supporters among certain researchers in theoretical physics (http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/06/bogdanoff-papers.html.). We had a personnal correspondance with the physicist Lubos Motl and I can assure you that he published his supportive opinion about our work totally independently from us (we were not aware of it untill he attracted our attention by email) and only because he sincerely beleives that it might contain new ideas or at least relevant and interesting questions."

You answered :

"Not true. As usual you are mistranslating Motl actual words. IMHO. This is not a good idea from Motl to support cons in order to address his own legitimate recriminations against some people in the theorical physics field who could deserve it. "

How can you write that we are "mistranslating Motl actual words"? Here is exactly what is written on his website about our papers  :

"Let me finally present my summary of the paper.

They want to resolve the initial singularity of the Universe - a very difficult question

They open a good question whether the signature of spacetime is allowed to fluctuate

They conclude that it can

Near the origin of time, they know that they are in the Planckian regime

They propose a new relation between this Planckian regime and the "zero scale" regime

The zero scale regime is described by a topological field theory

They even define what the right observables should be - and in my opinion, this is one of the punch lines that shows that they're either pretty smart or someone helped them: the observables are replaced by homology cycles on the moduli space of gravitational instantons; are you sure that this won't be the ingenious final explanation of the origin time in the geometric language that we will understand in 2030? I am not sure - it could well be an extension of the ideas of quantum foam from topological string theory

They show a lot of formulae - many of them apparently being correct basic formulae copied from elsewhere - involving quantum groups, Lagrangians of N=2 supergravity, Donaldson theory, KMS states, topological field theory, various index-like invariants etc.

They thank the right people, including C. Kounnas and S. Majid (a co-father of quantum groups). One of the acknowledgements that could have determined the fate of the paper was thanking to Edward Witten for "some determinant conversations" and it appears in the last sentence; otherwise the paper can't be classified as a string theory paper

Once again, the links between the ideas and formulae do not make sense to me, but it would be much harder for me to show that (and why) this paper is nonsense as opposed to many other papers, including some papers that are also published. (I think that it would be harder for them to write a paper about string theory without knowing anything properly if they wanted to hide that it is nonsense; string theory has much more strict rules.)

Moreover, I really think that they ask many important questions and propose intriguing possible answers. Although they were apparently considered to be weak students, their quality of choosing rather important questions and attach conceivably relevant jargon and formulae could be compared with the quality of some papers written by pretty well-known physicists. Therefore it does not surprise me much that Roman Jackiw said that the paper satisfied everything he expects from an acceptable paper - the knowledge of the jargon and some degree of original ideas. (And be sure that Jackiw, Kounnas, and Majid were not the only ones with this kind of a conclusion.)

I agree with this description although my policy would always be not to accept paper unless I can check that all essential things are more or less correct or at least not stupid in such a way that many people could immediately tell and that the paper will be useful to some people I know. In this particular case, I would probably decline to review their paper as being "not my field of expertise".

These questions about the Planckian quantum cosmology are very attractive and we know too little so that it is inevitable that a paper about them must be fuzzy to some extent. Moreover, such mostly speculative papers always existed somewhere and therefore the situation is not just a result of a postmodern society. The postmodern character of this "acceptable" paper only reflects the fact that we have made very little progress in understanding of the very beginning of the Universe.

Do you think that the signature of spacetime may fluctuate? In what sense can the geometries with different signature (or complex geometries) contribute to the path integral? Is the supershort regime of quantum gravity inherently topological so that the continuous degrees of freedom disappear? I think that these are important questions that may eventually become meaningful, and I also think that such an observation about a paper is usually enough for most of us to justify a paper with some proposed answers to these questions.

Once again, quantum cosmology and the science about the very young, Planckian universe is a rather speculative subject, and in this context, I would expect that the words will come before the formulae. If someone claims to have solved the problem of the origin of time, she or he should explain whether the initial state has to be specified, or whether it is unique. She or he should say what is the full class of the final states into which the initial state(s) can evolve, and how the probabilities (or whatever replaces them) should be calculated. Is the unitarity preserved in one way or another, or is it completely sacrificed? Neither of these questions has an obvious answer and they're more important than some formulae as the Bogdanoffs' paper shows, I would say. Of course that a convincing piece of evidence for one conclusion or another will eventually arise from some formulae but it does not diminish the importance of the qualitative answers.

Some papers seem to pretend that the solution of the difficult questions - such as Bogdanoffs' initial singularity - is a purely technical generalization of the known machinery in physics. I beg to disagree. There is a lot of conceptual ignorance we have about these questions, and the difficult task is not just about removing the apparent infinities of the singularity but also about the right questions that may be asked in this context. This is inevitably a lot of "philosophy" and it must be so.

Technically, their paper connects too many things. It would be too good if all these ideas and (correct) formulae were necessary for a justification of a working solution to the initial singularity problem. But if one accepts that the papers about these difficult questions don't have to be just a well-defined science but maybe also a bit of inspiring art, the brothers have done a pretty good job, I think. And I want to know the answers to many questions that are opened in their paper."

As you see, I am NOT mistranslating Lubos Motl's words. Any honest person would realize immidiatly that this theoretical physicist finds our papers at least "intriguing". Are you honest enough to admit this? To accept what is written on his website for what it is? without twisting it?

Igor Bogdanoff

My conclusion

I rest my case (Igor has no real objection, as usual he tries to obfuscate the issue and wrongly accuse people of quotes forgery - an activity where he's proven to be a real specialist). He shouldn't invoque 'honesty', something he has no experience in.--YBM 18:15, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

My (somehow different) conclusion

Your conclusion makes me think more to a rendering than a faithfull synthesis of all that was written here above. Since you obviously lack of certain basic qualities (for instance reading correctly a text) it is not up to you to judge the range of my objections against what you wrote. After all, it is up to all the readers to return their opinion on this page and to determine wether the few arguments that I submitted here are valid or not.

Igor Bogdanoff

"After all, it is up to all the readers to return their opinion on this page and to determine wether the few arguments that I submitted here are valid or not."

Very glad to see you've changed your mind. After all you are the one who've spent two weeks removing texts, facts, arguments from this page and from the article.--YBM 21:58, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, if you track back the different versions of the article, you will notice that I was mainly involved in a battle against your interpretation of facts that we beleive to know better than you do. Again, it's time to leave the readers the liberty to make up their own mind about all this.

Igor Bogdanoff

Do you mean that you were involved in the reverting of the article to its original form I've done two weeks after you began to vandalize this site (seek for the logs sooner on this page) ? Did you invent a time machine ?

You failed to fool people here, the article is back to its (mainly correct) original version, with only one more link to a list of translations to some of your delightfull blunders.--YBM 22:14, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

I doubt that the article will remain under the present form. Mainly because it is not right as I have proved it (see my above explainations). Contrarely to what you feel free to write on your website, Wikipedia cannot allow itself to publish facts which are not proven and not confirmed.

Igor Bogdanoff

I consider myself a dispassionate observer in this whole affair. I, like most people I know, came across this affair in the popular press, and I started reading as much as I could on the topic, in French and English. I have never before (and, God willing, will never again) made my opinion public on the topic. While my PhD is in electrical engineering (which is certainly not theoretical physics), I know enough of mathematical physics to be able to judge a physics hypothesis from its scientific merits. In this regard, I have been consistently disappointed by the Bogdanovs to answer, in no uncertain terms, fundamental questions about their work. (The discussions on sci.physics.research and Univ of Strasbourg are particularly troubling.) Critics have routinely pointed out elementary errors in statements attributed to the Bogdanovs. The Bogdanovs have consistently responded to these critiques with obfuscation and redirection. I have yet to read a clear, crisp, and unequivical answer to these troubling questions. For these reasons, over the years, I have come to believe that the Bogdanovs are either unable or unwilling to elucidate their ideas, despite having ample opportunity to do so. For these reasons, I think the present Wiki article should be considered beyond dispute. And, please, stop the personal attacks on each other.

THE WORKABLE CONFIGURATION

Dear anonymous PhD in electrical engineering,

The Bogdanoffs affair is nothing but personnal attacks.

As for the unanswered questions, try to think about time and places where you had to explain a complex topic, who was quiet difficult to grab even for people of the same scientific knowledge than you, and in the same field, to technicians. Did it all went smoothly, or do you remember having problems at getting everybody along? Thats the same here. Technicians and engineeer do work in the same field, but do not always agree, nor understand each other, far from that.

Where Engineer will take the theoretical approach to the problem at hand, technicians will use their own experience and will know what will not work and why, thought they will be most embarassed to explain it to an engineer, as they are not using the same tools so to speek. Take a concreete exemple: the geography og an electronic circuit. There is many ways to dispose the different components and parts in the circuit, but only a very small handfull of configurations will work satisfactorly, and only one configuration will work with the upmost efficiency. What is this configuration? Nobody knows it nor can calculate it. In fact the best calculations, also concerning the charge of some of the components will be all together wrong, if calculated by super engineer, using only theoretical data and mathematical skills. A technician will know intuitively what will be best. But there is less intuition in that than there is plain practical experience of the matter. They know it work best that way, and that this theoretically perfect geographic configuration will never work. They also know that a little more or less charge is asked for this and this component to can function now, and under other conditions. Thats' not magic, but that ain't exact science either! And we are only talking here about any given electrical circuit. And about rules that thought uncalculable, are much the same for each identical type of circuit.

Now take cosmology, physic, theoretic physic, and quantum Mechanic, mix it together and tell me: How big is the probality that all the people with more or less knowledge in any of the given fields, will understand the same, will discuss about the same, and will agree about the same? We are here talking about the same kind of situation as above: a beforehand known field of interest and/or profession, confronted with an unheard theory, who doesn't make much sense, and doesn't find echo in the scholastic well known ground, but who nevertheless work. All that teached or told by people, (before the technicians/ here the Bogdanoff) who should know less than the specialists in that matter (engineer/Physicists) but who anyway come up with a workable configuration who wasn't calculated before, and who take other parameters into account than those applied until now. And thats it. You don't have an unknown object, you don't have a fancy jonction of components, you have a workable theory. Like for the circuits geography, it can be bettered, tested, rethought, but it still remain the main thought and plan of the workable concept. When this one work all others are put aside, as the understanding of the workable circuit explain why it has to be that way. Which mean studying it longer. Learning to know it does not imply to reject it and fight about its rejection or acceptation, but on the opposit, on making a consensus about founding out in what way it operate, and what make it work better than the previously assumption.

At the moment many says: it cannot work because we didn't thought it, calculate it, and made it that way. Dito: it can never work.

Other says: we thougth it, calculate it, and made it that way, and it works.

Who are you most appealed to listen to? those who have a workable thought discussed configuration, or those who have a theoretically working but accepted configuration?

Try the bike first, argue about its skills later. Not all can actually do that, but we can all get used to the idear that this is a breakthrough in physical science, and try to grab as much we can from it, until a more "satisfactory-for-all" explaination is brewed.

I don't think that a meticulous step by step work like the one Igor and Grishka have done during 10 years, has much chance to contain any major mistakes or falls. If that is what some are hoping for. I myself am not hoping for anything, for they have allready granted us our wish, so that case is closed.

--213.237.21.6 06:44, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Nonsense or questionable ideas ?

I believe this discussion is respecting whether the Wiki article about the Bogdanov Affair is objective. In my eyes, the only contentious point is the statement "Both [Avant le Big Bang and their TV show] have content, considered by the wider physics community, to be full of egregious nonsense." I think that statement is unnecessarily provocative. I would prefer seeing that statement read "Both have content, considered by the wider physics community, to contain many scientifically questionable ideas."

Anonymous EE guy

"egregious nonsense" is perhaps too offensive, but "questinable ideas" is wrong. Most of what this is about are elementary (i.e. pre-graduate math and physics) blunders :

p. 22 If you compute the ratio between two successives numbers of this sequence [The Fibonacci sequence], you’ll get a transcendental number (which, as well as pi has no end) called the “golden number” by XVII century mathematicians

p. 82. Whatever, there is also non-real numbers with a negative square. The elements of this new set, called i, satisfy therefore to the strange property i^2=-1

p. 84. As a matter of fact, every “point” of this geometry [Minkowski space] represent what is called in Relativity an event. The set of all these events can easily be represented as a four dimensionnal reel cone : the famous light cone of special relativity.

p. 122 Any light-cone defines three part of space-time : the interior (where we live, and where are all event linked by a causality link, the envelope […] and the exterior (where points are no more linked by any causality link). This last region, where we cannot go, has been called by Einstein by a mysterious name : the Elsewhere. Perhaps because, has he admitted later, he had a uncomfortable feeling about this “outside of the Universe", he understood badly.

p. 131 why does the Universe have four dimension (and not three or five) ? […] The digit “4″ seems to have a special place in nature. There is 4, and only 4, physical forces […] there is only 4 fields and 4 stable particles in the atomic world. Moreover the famous ADN is also a four-dimensional space. It looks intriguing to us that, on a strict arithmetical point of view, there is only 4 sets of numbers in nature : integers […], rationals […], irrationals […]. Reunited this three sets form the more complete one, what is called real numbers. There is a last family, completely different from the three other ones: the imaginary numbert. In mathematical terms, the imaginary numbers represent the algebraic closure of the set of real numbers. All the simplicity of the world’s dimensions is that we measure space with the three families of real numbers and with the family of imaginary numbers, we have time (Poincaré shew that that we can measure time only by using imaginary numbers.

p. 197 Now we are four billion years before now. […] Everything has changed in the Universe of these times since it is twice smaller than now. Nothing surprising that the Sun looks like so huge and bright in the sky, that one would perfectly see some stars (like Sirius or Polaris). The night, the show is even more impressive Mars is almost here, […] just as Saturn

p. 256. The time is imaginary. What does it mean ? Simply, that the evolution of the system will no more be real, as in our world, but imaginary, as in the information world

p. 267 If we admit that in the Universe the entropy (or disorder) is increasing, how to understand the end of the Universe when, as predicted by equations, the entropy will become infinite

p 292. The size of rational numbers is zero. They fill no place on the real line. Why ? Simply because one can always find, near a number as small as wanted, another number even smaller. And when one sums all these numbers, the sequence as constructed give us zero. What is the limit of a unlimited sequence of numbers becoming smaller and smaller ? It is zero. In a mathematical language, one could say that the rational numbers are what is called a “dense set”.

This last one being my favorite. --YBM 17:00, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

The problem is that the author of the above "translation" is YBM himself. He managed to post a purposly twisted version of what is written in our book.

First question : Who is YBM?

1. His educational background : ill define and erratic. One of his "internet biographies" pretends that he might have a "degree" (but what degree?) in applied mathematics, an other one says that he could have a diploma in "data processing", another one says that he failed a PHD in linguistics, etc.

The conclusion is that YBM has probably none of the diplomas he claims to have. He has never given any proof in this sense. And the level of his "critics" makes me beleive that the magnitude of his scientific culture does not go beyond magazines and newspapers.

2. His "objectivity" : a total failure. YBM suffers from a destructive obsessional syndrom against us. He often wrote on his favorite forums that we were "bastards" "swindlers", "charlatans", etc. Consequently I do not think his "statement" is of any value.

3. His "honesty" : an illusion. YBM tried many times to defame us directly by emails addressed to our employers (France 2) or to most of the scientists that are in contact with us (the last example of these diffaming operations being the mail that he has just sent to the physicist Jean Pierre Petit with the only aim of disqualifying our work).

In conclusion : I do not beleive that someone who failed to get a PHD in linguistics or pretend to have a "ghost diploma" in data processing (or whatever) is qualified to discuss the content of our thesis on scientific basis. As I do not beleive that someone who has proven so many times that he was a convicted "Bogdanoff hunter" whose "demonstrations" were only inspired by his irrepressible desire to destroy us once for good should be considered as a credible referee in this discussion.

Igor Bogdanoff

Again, please stop the personal attacks. The alleged purpose of this forum is to determine the objectivity of the underlying article. Igor, do you have a specific rebut to anything in the English version of the Wiki article? That is the only question worth answering. I am interested in facts, not invectives.

      -- Anonymous EE Guy

The problem is that the author of the above "translation" is YBM himself. He managed to post a purposly twisted version of what is written in our book. Really ? So why are you unable to point out any of this "twists" in my translation ? (I won't respond to the rest of your post, it is only defaming, lies, ridiculous arguments of authority and unrelated issues, I'm not about to consider seriously such arrogance from people able to write twice in a science book that "the golden number is transcendental !) You are quite pathetic both as so-called "scientists" and as showmen) --YBM 16:32, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

OK. Here are some facts :

1. One of many examples where Mr Messagers wrote that we are "bastards" (salauds) :

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=igor+grichka+salauds&hl=fr&lr=&scoring=d&selm=415d634f%240%2424920%24636a15ce%40news.free.fr&rnum=3

2. The mail adressed to Mr Messager by the Director of Programs of France 2 (Public Television) in reaction to his diffaming campain against us  :

"Monsieur,

La pseudo querelle que vous entretenez par le biais de nos boîtes mails commence à être pénible. Je vous remercierais donc de régler vos différends ou de chercher réponses à vos questions ailleurs que dans cet échange virtuel et pour notre part, vain. Les scientifiques auxquels vous faîtes référence ne se sont pas adressés à France 2 pour se plaindre de quoi que ce soit ni en amont de la diffusion du programme de cet été, ni en aval, et encore moins ces derniers temps. Par ailleurs, nous continuons à travailler sur Rayons X avec la communauté scientifique, ce qui tendrait à prouver qu'il n'y a aucune "affaire Bogdanov" comme vous essayez de le faire croire dans vos déclarations. Si toutefois vous souhaitiez continuer votre démarche diffamatoire par voie publique ou similaire, nous nous verrions obligés de transmettre vos écrits à notre service juridique pour lui donner les suites qui s'imposent. Recevez, Monsieur, mes salutations. Claire Dabrowski Directrice des magazines"

3. The twisted version of a comment of the astrophysicist JL Heudier he published in one diffaming article (Acrimed) : JL Heudier had to issue an official disclaimer where he clearly stated that Mr Messager had distorted his words :

De: Jean-Louis Heudier <jean-louis.HEUDIER@obs-nice.fr> Date: 2 décembre 2004 17:41:37 GMT+01:00 À: igor.bogdanov@phys-maths.edu.lv Objet: Diffamation Messager/bogdanoff

" Igor et Grichka Bogdanoff ont attiré mon attention sur le fait qu'une interview de ma part avait été insérée par Mr Messager dans un article à caractère diffamatoire contre les Bogdanoff et leur émission diffusée le 5 Août 2004 sur France 2, émission à laquelle j'ai participé en tant que scientifique invité.

Dans le souci de clarifier cette situation et afin de mettre un terme à toute interprétation abusive, je transmets ci après ma position qui est la suivante :

1. Je ne suis absolument pas solidaire des propos tenus par Mr Messager dans son article de "libre opinion" publié par le site Acrimed ainsi que des reproductions de ce texte qu'il a fait parvenir à la direction de France 2 en abusant du sens initial de mon intervention. Celle-ci a été largement influencée par la présentation très négative qui m'avait été faite par Mr Messager concernant le traitement de l'émission et la probité de ses présentateurs.

2. Je suis bien conscient qu'il est nécessaire de faire des coupes dans le montage d'une émission grand public et, au delà des frustrations inévitables, je n'ai, comme mes collègues égalemente invités, aucune critique à formuler contre l'émission du 5 août et la teneur de mes interventions au sein de cette émission que je tiens pour un magazine scientifique de qualité. Je rectifie donc le terme malheureux de "manipulations".

En conséquences, je demande que mon texte soit supprimé du site d'Acrimed ainsi que de toute reproduction qui pourrait en être faite par ailleurs.

Jean-Louis HEUDIER

Observatoire de Nice

This text is a mainly a fake and partly a extorsion. Moreover even the original version is prevented to be published by its author. I did prove it here. --YBM 16:32, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

No. This text is neither an "extorsion" nor a "fake". Mr Messager is so used to these methods that he applies the same to the present situation. The truth is simple :

1. I have the "original" of the above disclaimer signed by Mr Heudier 2. The only "proof" that sould be taken in consideration is the original itself which I am willing to submit to anyone

In conclusion, Mr Messager should stop his invective right here under penalty of losing the remainder of his dignity.

Igor Bogdanoff

Again, you are escaping the issue. BTW you cannot say people what "should be taken in consideration", you cannot obliterate facts (I know how sad it makes you feel). For the rest : I'm not about to consider seriously such arrogance from people able to write twice in a science book that "the golden number is transcendental. --YBM 17:33, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Good grief. On the slim chance that my question was inadvertantly missed, I'll repeat it here: "Igor, do you have a specific rebut to anything in the English version of the Wiki article?"

-- Anonymous EE Guy

" A specific rebut...?" Well, Anonymus EE Guy, everything in the english version of this text is badly translated. Here is an example. In the "translation" kindly offered by YBM, one can read  :

p. 256. The time is imaginary. What does it mean ? Simply, that the evolution of the system will no more be real, as in our world, but imaginary, as in the information world

This is a typical example of a deformation : Obviously, Mr Messager does not know the meaning of imaginary time. The way he presents this "example" out of context in his "quotations of our mistakes" makes it appear as the krankiest conclusion. The reading of all the fragments of phrases as presented by Messager has the same effect.

Igor Bogdanoff

What part of the context could be missing ? That the "imaginary numbers are the algebraic closure of R" (so much for your knowledge in imaginary numbers, not to say about 'imaginary time'), perhaps ? Or that "the golden number is transcendental" (so much for you knowledge of numbers) ? --YBM 22:45, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

My question was not for a specific rebut about anything YBM has written. It was "do you have a specific rebut to anything in the English version of the Wiki article?" For example, in my second post, I wrote, "I think that statement ['... egregious nonsense'] is unnecessarily provocative." And then I suggested a change.

I'll repeat the question again: "do you have a specific rebut to anything in the English version of the Wiki article?"

-- Anonymous EE Guy

Dear Anonymus EE Guy,

You question was : "Do you have a specific rebut to anything in the English version of the Wiki article?

My anwer is : Yes. And here are my comments. Let's considere the english version phrase by phrase :

1. "During 1999-2002, popular French TV presenters Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff managed to get two theses (one in mathematics, one in theoretical physics) from the University of Bourgogne and got six papers published in physics and mathematics journals (in particular "Annals of Physics" and "Classical and Quantum Gravity").

My comment : It is correct

2. "Consequently, these papers were at first sight considered by a French physicist, Max Niedermaier, as an incoherent stream of buzzwords of modern physics (similar to the Sokal Affair), that is pseudoscience under a layer of dense technical jargon."

My comment : this is wrong. Niedermaier never wrote anything about the papers. He based his "hoax theory" on the abstracts of the thesis and only on these elements. Therefore, it is not correct to write "consequently these papers..." etc. as if Niedermaier had seriously read our papers and thesis.

3. "The incident has been termed a "reverse Sokal Affair"

My comment : Incomplete. Everyone knows that this mail has been termed "Reverse Sokal Affair" by John Baez on Usenet (Science Physics Research, 22 oct 2002).

4. " ...though, unlike Sokal, the Bogdanoff brothers do not admit to hoax, but claim that their papers are of genuinely scientific merit.

My comment : correct. Although we are not alone to claim that our "papers are of genuinely scientific merit". The 15 referees of our thesis and of the papers shared this opinion. And recently (june 2005) the physicist Lubos Motl (Harvard University) wrote an article on his blog to qualify our papers as "raising the good questions".

5. "On the basis of the disputed content of these theses, they received doctorate degrees in theoretical physics from from the University of Bourgogne, France."

My comment : Wrong. This phrase comes from an old version imposed by Mr Messager. It should be suppressed : Is it necessary to repeat for a second time an information that was given in the opening of the article? It is already written : "During 1999-2002, popular French TV presenters Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff managed to get two theses (one in mathematics, one in theoretical physics) from the University of Bourgogne..."

6. "In 2004 they published a book ("Before the Big Bang") and made a TV show from it..."

My comment : Wrong. We never "made a TV show out of our book". Because of the production constraints, the TV program (90 minutes) was decided long before the book was out.

7. "...where they presented their theory as the bleeding edge of modern physics and cosmology. "

My comment : Wrong. We never presented our theory as the "bleeding edge of modern physics and cosmomogy". We only presented our model amongst other models as a possible interpretation of the unexplored problem of "physics before the big bang".

8. "Both have content, considered by the wider physics community, to be full of egregious nonsense (such as "The volume of the solar system has grown twice since the beginning of Earth's history").

My comment : Wrong. This so called "non sense" was artificially pointed by Mr Messager as the bleeding example of our book and our program. First I maintain that this phrase "the volume of the solar system has grown twice..." was never written in our book. Second, I maintain that expansion of spacetime should apply on "local scales". This is what we wrote in our book and said in our TV program. Here is the comment send by

In a general way, I cannot accept that an article whose aim is objectivity would be written on the only basis of Mr Messager's interpretation. Mr Messager has an agenda. This is why he cannot be considered as a neutral referee in this article.

When Mr Messager writes in the english version of the article : " Both have content, considered by the wider physics community, to be full of egregious nonsense..." he only tries to impose his twisted and personal view on our book and our TV program. Here is a very good example of his manipulations. After we made the TV program, Mr Messager sent a diffaming mail about us to every scientist who participated to our program. In spite of his manipulations, here is the text that was sent to the TV directors by the Astrophysicist Alain Blanchard about our program :

" De : ablancha@ast.obs-mip.fr Objet : A propos du texte de J.-P. Messager sur le site d'acrimed Date : 30 novembre 2004 18:15:10 HNEC À : j.rosset.cailler@francetv.fr, CDKI@france2.fr, FGR@france2.fr Cc : igor.bogdanov@wanadoo.fr, lolo@xdprod.com

Bonjour,

Igor et Grichka Bogdanoff ont attiré mon attention sur le texte de J.-P. Messager sur le site d'acrimed et m'ont fait parvenir une copie du message que vous avez recu de ce dernier.

Je tiens a vous faire savoir que je ne souhaite pas du tout etre associe a la polemique que J.-P. Messager developpe a propos de l'emission du 5 août 2004. En tant qu'intervenant (puis telespectateur) je n'ai pas l'ombre d'une reserve à exprimer. Au contraire, d'une part, le large balayage de l'astronomie moderne qui y a été fait m'a paru particulièrement bien adapté à un large public, d'autre part, le sens de mes propos a été parfaitement respectés et a permis au public d'entendre différents points de vue, le débat étant au coeur de la démarche scientifique. Bien entendu, il y aurait certainement des propositions qui pourraient en ameliorer la preparation et le contenu, mais cette émission fut d'abord une bonne émission scientifique comme j'espere en voir de nouvelles!

Bien cordialement,

Alain Blanchard"

Here is the translation of this text :

"Hello,

Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff drew my attention to the text of J.-P. Messenger on the site of acrimed and forwarded to me a copy of the message that you received from this last.

"I insist to let you know that I do not wish at all to be associate to the discussion that J.-P. Messager developps in connection with the TV program of August 5, 2004. As a participant (then telespectator) I do not have the least reserve to formulate. On the contrary, on one hand, the broad range of the modern astronomy which was made there appeared to me particularly well adapted to a large audience, on the other hand, the meaning of my comments was respected perfectly and allowed the audience to discover various points of view, the debate being in the heart of the scientific attitude."

"Of course, there would be certainly proposals which could improve its preparation and its contents, but this program was initially a good scientific program that I hope to see again".

Alain Blanchard is a highly respected astrophysicist. He wrote this mail after having discovered that he was manipulated by Mr Messager to disqualify us as scientists and TV presentators. So contrarely to what Mr Messager writes in his article, it is not true that " Both (book and program) have content, considered by the wider physics community, to be full of egregious nonsense..." The truth is that this program was widely considered as an good scientific program. I have at least 100 mails, coming from the most reputed scientists, that insist on the quality of the book and the program. So why should Mr Messager impose his personal view against the majority?

In conclusion, here is a version that is more faithfull to the reality as it should appear in the article :

"_During 1999-2002, popular French TV presenters Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff managed to get two thesis (one in mathématics, one in theoretical physics) from the University of Bourgogne and got six papers published in physics and mathematics journals (in particular "Annals of Physics" and "Classical and Quantum Gravity"). Nevertheless, after having read the abstracts of the two thesis, a french physicist, Max Niedermaier, considered them as an incoherent stream of buzzwords of modern physics, ie. a hoax similar (to Sokal) pseudoscience under a layer of dense technical jargon. M.Niedermaier sent an email in this sense on October 22 2005 to various physicists and journalists, including John Baez who decided to create a discussion on Usenet (Science Physics Research) under the name "Has physics been bitten by a Reverse Sokal Hoax?". This question immediately attracted worlwide attention. Max Niedermaier retracted publicly on october 24 and the brothers have since defended their theories (which claim to deal with the quantum groups, KMS theory and topological field theory). After debates and discussions on internet, many physicists seem to regard Bogdanoff work as difficult to understand though the veracity of their model regarding what one should expect "before the big bang" seems to have recently gained new supporters among certain researchers in theoretical physics : http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/06/bogdanoff-papers.html.

During summer 2004 they published a book ("Before the Big Bang") based on their research and made a TV show where they presented their own approach amongst other cosmological models (in particular string theory model)."

Igor Bogdanoff

(N.B. I won't respond here to difamous attack who have been settled elsewhere for quite a long time and are based on fallacious claims based on private letters extorqued by threats and partly rewritten, moreover both 'letters' have been expressely forbidden to publication) This is offtopic regarding of the article. --YBM 14:29, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

This new version of the first paragraph is better, they are still problems though :

(in particular "Annals of Physics" and "Classical and Quantum Gravity") : both journals apologized later about this articles.

who decided to create a discussion on Usenet (Science Physics Research) : who posted an article about this on Usenet (sci.physics.research)

many physicists seem to regard Bogdanoff work as difficult to understand : many physicists seem to regard Boganoff work as nonsense

Motl's view is far different to what Igor wrote : here are some part of it : "Some of the papers of the Bogdanoff brothers are really painful and clearly silly - for example those that discuss the origin of inertia and/or combine the pendulum with the hyperspace. But the most famous paper about the solution of the initial singularity is a bit different; it is more sophisticated." and "Once again, the links between the ideas and formulae do not make sense to me, but it would be much harder for me to show that (and why) this paper is nonsense as opposed to many other papers, including some papers that are also published.". A paper with such quotes cannot be presented as "hough the veracity of their model regarding what one should expect "before the big bang" seems to have recently gained new supporters among certain researchers in theoretical physics".

For the last paragraph, refer to next section. --YBM 14:29, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Statement from A. Blanchard, astrophysicist

I have recently discovered that a copy of a mail I have writen to the direction of the french TV have been posted here, in the above paragraph. I wish to say that this has been done without my agreement and I found unacceptable that a private mail has been posted on a particular forum like this one!

Furthermore, I have to said that this mail was written for the unique reason that I have no problem with the TV emission: although there are some approximations in its content, it remains to me a valuable emission, allowing science to reach a wide public. But in no case was I defending the Bogdanoff on their scientific merit: the work presented in the thesis by Grichka Bogdanoff, presented as a thesis in physics, doesn't reach the standard of a thesis to my opinion. Would have I been in the jury, I would have not accepted the defense. I have the same comment for several of the publications (even if some have gone throught the refeering process, whichis not 100% safe). I have expressed this point of view publically through the Acrimed site and maintain it. I have never considered myself has being "manipulated" by J.P.Messager. I do not think however this is a reason to be agressive and polemist and I hope I will not have to come back to this dispute...

Alain Blanchard Professor at Paul Sabatier university Toulouse

end of A. Blanchard's statement

In the former paragraph Igor wrongly give me the authorship of "5. On the basis of the disputed content of these theses, they received doctorate degrees in theoretical physics from from the University of Bourgogne, France.". This come from the original definition. So I have nothing to do with it, I only restablished it when Igor anonymously blanked it (as the sentence is quite correct).

We have the same problem here, as we have on the french page. There is a way, I think, to address it : stick to the facts, don't try to give all of them, and let the Bogdanov express their counterclaims.

Igor should understant that he won't succeed in making this article (which is about the affair) and the one on the "polémique" in french, a part of their personal advertising. Noone can accept that such an article (which is well-founded because there are a real issues with the serious of their work, their thesis and their book/show, and real questions about the legitimicy of some practice of quoting in their book) would be hijacked by the Bogdanov themselve in order to spread their own personal and discable views of their own work.

What I propose here is a basis for a replacement of the paragraph "In 2004 ...", he express the critic point of view on purpose, for I propose to let Igor modify it so that their point of view could be expressed. What I couldn't accept (in order to consider this conflict settled) is the removal of its content. Of course a native english speaker should proofread it ;

In 2004 they published, quite successfully, a popular science book ("Before the Big Bang") where they present their views on cosmology and theoretical physics as well as a simplified version of their thesis on the state of the universe "between the planck scale and the singular origin". A TV show on the same subjects has been broadcasted on august of 2004. The book and the show have been critized for their scientific inaccuracies such as that "The golden number is transcendental" or that "The solar system volume is twice bigger now than it was at the origin of Earth". The book gave several cut or mistranslated quotes of scientists where they appear to support the authors' work even when they actually don't (Urs Schreiber, Peter Woit, John Giorgis). Given the poor support of their theories in the scientific community, one could ask if they would ever have been presented in any popular science TV show but the authors' one.

Links :

- J. Baez's site
- Urs Schreiber] and Peter Woit 1, 2, 3 blogs entries
- J. Giorgis article
- A list of some 'blunders'
- French Wikipedia entries: Iget et Grichka Bogdanov and Polémique autour des travaux des frères Bogdanov
- The author's personal 'scientific' sites (Mathematical Center of Riemannian Cosmosology, International Institute of Mathematical Physics) (both without any kind of academic support even if they faked the DNS records once)
- Arkadiusz Jadczyk's pages on the 'affair'
- A physicist account of the affair on the Internet

--YBM 13:15, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Igor, thank you! Your reply was exactly what I was hoping for. This is an excellent post to settle the factual issues associated with the Wiki article. I haven't had the chance to read it in detail... I'll do that this evening.

-- Anonymous EE Guy

Who are you thanking for what ? --YBM 13:15, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Call to proposal

In the former paragraph Igor wrongly give me the authorship of "5. On the basis of the disputed content of these theses, they received doctorate degrees in theoretical physics from from the University of Bourgogne, France.". This come from the original definition. So I have nothing to do with it, I only restablished it when Igor anonymously blanked it (as the sentence is quite correct).

We have the same problem here, as we have on the french page. There is a way, I think, to address it : stick to the facts, don't try to give all of them, and let the Bogdanov express their counterclaims.

Igor should understant that he won't succeed in making this article (which is about the affair) and the one on the "polémique" in french, a part of their personal advertising. Noone can accept that such an article (which is well-founded because there are a real issues with the serious of their work, their thesis and their book/show, and real questions about the legitimicy of some practice of quoting in their book) would be hijacked by the Bogdanov themselve in order to spread their own personal and discable views of their own work.

What I propose here is a basis for a replacement of the paragraph "In 2004 ...", he express the critic point of view on purpose, for I propose to let Igor modify it so that their point of view could be expressed. What I couldn't accept (in order to consider this conflict settled) is the removal of its content. Of course a native english speaker should proofread it ;

In 2004 they published, quite successfully, a popular science book ("Before the Big Bang") where they present their views on cosmology and theoretical physics as well as a simplified version of their thesis on the state of the universe "between the planck scale and the singular origin". A TV show on the same subjects has been broadcasted on august of 2004. The book and the show have been critized for their scientific inaccuracies such as that "The golden number is transcendental" or that "The solar system volume is twice bigger now than it was at the origin of Earth". The book gave several cut or mistranslated quotes of scientists where they appear to support the authors' work even when they actually don't (Urs Schreiber, Peter Woit, John Giorgis). Given the poor support of their theories in the scientific community, one could ask if they would ever have been presented in any popular science TV show but the authors' one.

Links :

- J. Baez's site
- Urs Schreiber] and Peter Woit 1, 2, 3 blogs entries
- J. Giorgis article
- A list of some 'blunders'
- French Wikipedia entries: Iget et Grichka Bogdanov and Polémique autour des travaux des frères Bogdanov
- The author's personal 'scientific' sites (Mathematical Center of Riemannian Cosmosology, International Institute of Mathematical Physics) (both without any kind of academic support even if they faked the DNS records once)
- Arkadiusz Jadczyk's pages on the 'affair'
- A physicist account of the affair on the Internet

--YBM 13:15, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Mes Deux Centimes

Here is my attempt at reconciling the versions in a way that attempts to capture the essence of both sides of the "affair." Though I am a native English speaker, I'm sure there are still some usage errors in here.

During 1999-2002, popular French TV presenters Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff managed to get two theses (one in mathematics, one in theoretical physics) from the University of Bourgogne. From this work, they published six papers in physics and mathematics journals, including the prestigious journals "Annals of Physics" and "Classical and Quantum Gravity." After reading the abstracts of the two theses, the French Physicist Max Niedermaier considered them to be an incoherent stream of physics buzzwords, masquerading as pseudoscience under a layer of dense technical jargon, similar to the Sokal Affair. M. Niedermaier subsequently sent an email to this effect on 22 October 2002 to various physicists. An eventual recipient of this email, the American Physicist John Baez, created a discussion on Usenet (Science Physics Research) entitled, "Has physics been bitten by a Reverse Sokal Hoax?" This question immediately attracted worldwide attention, both in the physics community as well as the international popular press. Upon learning that the Bogdanoffs disputed that their work was a hoax, M. Niedermaier issued a private and public apology to the Bogdanoffs on 24 October and the brothers have continued to defend their theories (which claim to deal with the quantum groups, KMS theory, and topological field theory). After passionate debates and discussions on the Internet, there is no clear consensus about the technical merits of the Bogdanoffs' work. Some claim it to be a hoax, others claim it to be sloppy work simply plagued by errors, while some theoretical-physics researchers think highly of their theories.

It should be emphasized that the Bogdanoffs adamantly defend their work as genuine. The general topic of "before the Big Bang" is a complicated field and their work purports to present forward-looking theories.

In 2004 they published a highly successful popular-science French-language book "Avant Le Big-Bang" ("Before the Big Bang"), based on a simplified version of their theses, where they presented their own approach amongst other cosmological models, in particular the string-theory model. A related television program, created by the Bogdanoffs, was broadcast on French Canal 2 in August of 2004 also on the same topics. Both the book and television show have been criticized for elementary scientific inaccuracies, while others admire the ability of the Bogdanoffs for bringing the subjects of cosmology and relativity to a wider audience.

-- Anonymous EE Guy

I think we reached a concensus, and that the intervention of Igor and the article of Motl gave a better light on the matter. It seems that all questions have been answered, and that the present topic is now cleared out. SophieXAL --213.237.21.6 03:49, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Fantastic. It is also necessary to include external links in the article. I suggest those offered by both YBM and the Bogdanoffs:

- J. Baez's site
- Urs Schreiber] and Peter Woit 1, 2, 3 blogs entries
- J. Giorgis article
- A list of some 'blunders'
- French Wikipedia entries: Iget et Grichka Bogdanov and Polémique autour des travaux des frères Bogdanov
- The author's personal 'scientific' sites (Mathematical Center of Riemannian Cosmosology, International Institute of Mathematical Physics) (both without any kind of academic support even if they faked the DNS records once)
- Arkadiusz Jadczyk's pages on the 'affair'
- A physicist account of the affair on the Internet

- Motl's site

Are there any more links that should be included?

-- Anonymous EE Guy

I would like to submit the following link to your consideration as it is an easy access to both theses, as well as published articles and reports :

Documents related to the Bogdanov's theses

And while I'm here, I would like to draw your attention on the fact that the current proposal, convincingly neutral as it is, is rather misleading when it comes to the TV show. Any reader unfamiliar with it (most, I presume) will assume it was a one-off show aiming at promoting the Bogdanov's theory. It wasn't. For one, it was a longer offspring of a weekly programme dedicated to science that had been running for two years already, the first of a series that now counts 4 similar long shows. More importantly, most of this 90-minute programme, entitled "La Creation du Monde", literally the Creation of the World, was dedicated to the complete story of the origin of the Universe. The controversial bit (introduced with due caution as a hypothesis) merely accounts for a few minutes. I add that the Bogdanov's book was never mentioned during the show, nor was there any direct reference to the authors' work. As far as self-promotion goes, this was a poor shot. CatherineV 17:38, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Fact 1 : the part about the history of cosmology was full of mistakes (most can be found in the book as well) and of very poor value

Fact 2 : the part presenting the personal Bogdanov's theory was about 15 mn long

Fact 3 : any Bogdanov show is targeted as self-promotion, just have a look at one (it can be found easily on some file sharing networks). --YBM 17:42, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

I'll take your word for it when it comes to Fact 2 (later edit: actually I checked: it takes 11 minutes). I'll let other people be the judges of Fact 1. But as far as Fact 3 goes... can you seriously talk about self-promotion in a tv show when the twins appear as 3-D clones, not themselves, and the only way to learn their family name is to watch the opening credits ? I watched that programme, way back then, and only heard about the Bogdanov brothers two months later on the Internet. It hadn't even occurred to me that there could be real persons behind the clones. I repeat: very poor self-promotion job. CatherineV 18:02, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Ok, lets take your word : consider every popular science TV show on earth since 2002 from Australia to Bielorussia. Point out one but the Bogdanov's one which have told even one minute about 'Bogdanov pre-Big Bang theory', not to say about 15. --YBM 23:46, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Request to ban a "user"

All sane people who have written something here will agree that we should ask for a blocking of 213.237.*.* editing of this page.--YBM 13:00, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

a comment about Sophie's vandalism

We shouldn't consider opinion as relevant. She's a psychopath who is yelling at my feet for some weeks for some obscure reason. She is an extreme representant of a puzzling phenomenon around the brothers : the fanatism of uneducated hysteric morons. (BTW, how could someone who confuses Wilhelm Reich with the Third German Reich say anything meaningfull ?).

This statment is a lie: I ONLY REMOVED YOUR INSULTING STATEMENTS, WHERE YOU AMONG OTHER THINGS, ACCUSED ME VANDALISING YOUR TEXTS AND GET ME BANISHED WHEN YOU HAD JUST REMOVED MY WRITTINGS, AND I HAD DONE NOTHING OF THE SORT! THEN, AFTER YOU HAD CHANGED THE PLACE OF MY ARTICLES, REMOVED MY ENTIRE POST AND BLOG, AND AFTER YOU HAD PUT THE TITLE "GARBAGE" TO MY ARTICLES, AND AFTER YOU HAD HINDER ME 8 TIMES TO REESTABLISH IT.

- ONLY THEN I TOOK DECISIV ACTIONS - BUT IN THE TIME IN BETWEEN, YOU HAD ACCUSED ME OF VANDALISING YOUR TEXT AND THE SITE WHEN IN FACT IT WAS YOU WHO WERE DOING SO TO MINE. XAL --213.237.21.6 02:50, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Regarding your allegated accusation that I could be mistaking W.Reich and your nazistic flirtation, I wonder if you actually believe it or if you are flying extreeme wright unconciously. Only then you could consult W. Reich and drag him in that discussion. Otherwise, you will be fooling noone but yourself. You could in a near future, use your lost of identity and confusion of your own with Reich and Voyer, as an excuse to get an entrance ticket to the asylium instead of jail, when you will be accused of identity theft. When end communism and begin nazism? Only an outsider can even think to ask that. And both names cover the symptoms of so many mental illnesses that it can be tricky to differentiate them all from one another. They all communicate through tyrannie, another name for fear and coercion, censorship and illusion. You, you believe in the illusion you had once created by trying to recreate what communications dynamism abolished.

All in all you are just uninvited. We are all very sorry to hear that.

--213.237.21.6 04:30, 28 August 2005 (UTC) --213.237.21.6 04:38, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

You're Right...IT WAS ALL A BIG LIE!

We were doing such a good job of staying on topic. I would like to repeat the request for more links, if anybody has them.

When YBM writes, "I'm firmly insisting on including the few facts I've named in my proposal. I'm insisting as well on including the Bogdanov's interpretation of theses facts, and noone should address these interpretations better than themselves." There will be a link to YBM's Web "potpourri" site when the consensus article reads "criticized for elementary scientific inaccuracies." Is that sufficient?

-- Anonymous EE Guy

There are other facts than the ones you could read on the "potpourri", especially the problem of misquoting/mistranslating scientists on purpose. Moreover, it is not much to recall the (in)famous quote « the golden ratio is transcendental » because it gives a good idea of the book's level and it can be checked by everyone (since both transcendental and Golden ratio are in Wikipedia), the same applies for the solar system's volume as a cosmological blunder. Again : I think we should wait for Igor/Grichka B. comments/proposal on this isssues. --YBM 13:38, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

It seems like you (YBM) are looking for some type of "mea culpa" from the Bogdanovs. While that might put all this to rest, if the Bogdanovs were so inclined, it would have happened when this whole affair exploded, not three years hence. What I mean is that you're looking for something you just ain't gonna find. The purpose of this discussion isn't to browbeat anybody... it's to reach a consensus that recounts the events and captures the context of the affair in a mutually agreeable manner.

YBM writes that including the error (inter alia) "the golden ratio is transcendental" is crucial. While I'm sure that error is deeply offensive to mathematicians far and wide, that statement can be fixed by replacing two closely related mathematical terms. To me, that hardly seems like the smoking gun... it's more of a footnote.

Funny you should say that. It is actually a footnote in the book. CatherineV 07:58, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

In my humble opinion, the most troubling parts of the Bogdanovs work cannot be captured by single sentences or sound bytes. There are conceptual gaps in their work that have been hashed, rehashed, and re-rehashed, .... They are described in excruciating detail in the linked articles.

I think the article I put forward is as close as us mere mortals will get to a fair recounting of the affair (CatherineV's objections notwithstanding).

I think so too. If readers so wish they may delve into exquisite details by following the links. But again, the Bogdanov need to comment on it and at least everyone seems to agree on that. CatherineV 07:58, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

That's true. We could agree as well on throwing away Sophie's hysterical statements and editing, she removed most of my yesterday comments, I only managed to restablish some. --YBM 12:16, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

This statment is a lie: I ONLY REMOVED YOUR INSULTING STATEMENTS, WHERE YOU AMONG OTHER THINGS, ACCUSED ME VANDALISING YOUR TEXTS AND GET ME BANISHED WHEN YOU HAD JUST REMOVED MY WRITTEN AND I HAD DONE NOTHING OF THE SORT! THEN, AFTER YOU HAD CHANGED THE PLACE OF MY ARTICLES, REMOVED MY ENTIRE POST AND BLOG, AND AFTER YOU HAD PUT THE TITLE "GARBAGE" TO MY ARTICLES, AND AFTER YOU HAD HINDER ME 8 TIMES TO REESTABLISH IT.

- ONLY THEN I TOOK DECISIV ACTIONS - BUT IN THE TIME IN BETWEEN, YOU HAD ACCUSED ME OF VANDALISING YOUR TEXT AND THE SITE WHEN IN FACT IT WAS YOU WHO WERE DOING SO TO MINE. --213.237.21.6 02:50, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

-- Anonymous EE Guy

I could put down my request on this 'transcendental' point, If (and only if) I'd hear from Igor/Grichka how they would like to react to the quote of if they would prefer another one (there's many). BTW, what is your position about my other point : the misquotes/mistranslations ? I recall that my paragraphs will only be proposals when amended fairly by the authors themselves. --YBM 00:27, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I feel that a troubling pattern emerged involving with mistranslations, allegorical surrogates, and so forth. However, a paragraph is not sufficient to capture the context of these non sequiturs (much less a single sentence) and, in any case, I don't think I can objectively present the issues surrounding those mistranslations (e.g., Prof. Woit) and mythical supporters (e.g., "Prof. Yang"). Somehow I suspect that there just isn't any middle ground on the issue. My preference, then, would be to point a future Wiki reader to external sites such as yours, Baez's, the Bogdanovs', &c., and let them make up their own mind.

That's the crux of my point of view: let a Wiki reader make up her own mind. You and I have, Sophie has, as have most of the physics community. I don't think we need to be a source of bias.

-- Anonymous EE Guy

What you are describing is basically the original article before Igor/Grichka tried to hijack it. Like it or hate it, their are now here, the original article, even if quite accurate, cannot be restored. --YBM 04:07, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Second Statement

As YBM deleeted all my interventions made on this subject, and gave it the title garbage, and without my autorisation deleeted some of the contained and disposed of my opinion as pleased, I will do the same and dispose of all comming interventions made by him. Concerning reich and Reich, I do not care about your false pretenses as the superior race together with passages of Nietsche say enough in that regard. You are a racistic pig and your alone reason to put fuel on the Bogdanov affair is narcissic compulsiv behaviour, as you did it with other writers before then, together with your MENTOR. The fact remain that you are the member of a sect who guide you to do what you are doing, when not writng the words for you, and that you have no interest what so ever in the theories of the Bogdanov nor in any scientific subject. Your attacks are all an act in a cynical game and your goalS was never to uncover the truth but to falsificate one and artificially create a conflict with no roots in reality. You are a fraude, and people knowing you personnally can, and have, confirmed that.

Your interventions have been noticed by the administrator of this site. 213.237.21.6

I would have more sympathy if the posts were even remotely related to the present discussion. I, for one, would appreciate constructive feedback on the topic of the proposed English version of the Wiki article.

-- EE Guy

HOW ON EARTH CAN YOU KNOW THAT, WHEN HE REMOVED MY POSTS BETWEEN 3 AND 5AM? YOU NEVER SAW WHAT I HAD WRITTEN, YOU ASKED IN YOUR "MES DEUX CENTIMES" IF ANYONE HAD AN EXTRA LINK TO AD AT YOUR LIST, AND I RESPONDED THAT I HAD 2 WHO COULD BE TAKEN IN CONSIDERATION EXPLAINING WHY. THE WHOLE CONTAIN OF THE TEXT WAS REMOVED. DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE THAT IT WAS BECAUSE MY ARTICLE WAS IRRELEVANT, OR BECAUSE IT EXACTLY REVEALED A VERY HIDDEN AND IMPORTANT ASPECT OF THE MATTER? DON'T FOOL YOURSELF, THIS AFFAIR IS NOT ABOUT SCIENTIFIC ERRORS OR DISCUSSION, IT EVOLVE ESSENTIALLY AROUND THOSE WORDS: DIFFAMATION, CENSORSHIP, FALSIFICATION, FORDGERY, MANIPULATIONS, AND LIES. WE ALL KNOW I AM TALKING ABOUT THE GROUP OF YBM, AND THAT ALL HE EVER SAY CONFIRM THIS.

--213.237.21.6 02:33, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I suggest that all the sane people who've taken part of this discussion (meaning every one but "Sophie") to support my request of blocking her on the administrators noticeboard

There is a strong wikipedia policy against Sophie's behaviour : Wikipedia:No personal attacks, we have the official right to remove personal attacks.

WHY AM I SO DISTURBING TO YOU? BECAUSE I DONT PLAY SCIENTIFIC BUT AM ONE, OR BECAUSE I SAY THE TRUTH ABOUT YOU AND ABOUT ALL THIS AFFAIR?

--213.237.21.6 02:33, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Do you remember what you wrote just above ? "We shouldn't consider Sophie Petterka's opinion as relevant. She's a psychopath"... Isn't it a personal attack ???

I find you are very sensitive about this problem, for a guy who commits harassment against the Bogdanov brothers for such a long time... When you make fun even about their physical appearance, on the forum you created specially (and exclusively) to tear them to pieces, isn't it a personal attack ? Oh no, sorry, I had forgotten : it's just for the love of Science, of course...

So, please stop crying because Sophie "is yelling at [your] feet for some weeks" : it's a very short time, and it's nothing by comparison with what you subject to the Bogdanov...

Laurence

I won't comment Laurence's lack of text understanding but will just point out that this story of "fun about physical appearance" is a lie (even a stupid one, since everyone could check). --YBM 21:14, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

LACK OF TEXT UNDERSTANDING IS WHAT IGOR MADE YOU AWARE OF FOR LESS THAN A WEEK AGO. YOU LEARNED THE WORDS, IT IS NOW TIME FOR YOU TO LEARN THE LESSON AND UNDERSTAND THAT THE JOKE WAS ON YOU, NOT SOMEBODY ELSE.

--213.237.21.6 02:33, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Everyone who can read in french can check that you created a forum which contains almost exclusively insults against the Bogdanov Brothers, and against the ones who stand up for them - including myself, Sophie, and some others.

So, even if you didn't do exactly the same in Wikipedia, don't pretend to be shocked by "personal attacks", which is your speciality.

Laurence

So you admit to have nothing in support of your defaming claim on what I would have said on this forum. Good point. Something to say about the article's contents par hasard ? --YBM 00:35, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

AS YOU REPEATED IT JUST BEFORE, YOUR LACK OF TEXT UNDERSTANDING. YOU HAVE INSULTED IGOR FROM THE BEGINNING AS CAN BE SEEN RIGHT UNDER THE INTRODUCTION TEXT OF THIS BLOG, AND INSULTED ALL AND EVERYBODY IN ALL FORUMS, INCLUDED THIS ONE. YOU SAYED THAT I WAS HYSTERICAL AND CREASY. AND THAT IS DIFFAMATION. --213.237.21.6 02:33, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

If it is not enough, we should open a dispute resolution process

(BTW, the same apply to most of Igor's contributions here !)YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE HERE, BE IN YOUR OWN FORUMS.

--YBM 14:06, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Sure... Indeed, it would be enven better if everybody could be forbidden on this page, except yourself, of course ! So you could write everything you want against the Bogdanovs, and the article would become sooo sane and objective !

Laurence

Anyone, even you, as stated on Wikipedia's policy pages, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The point is that neither Sophie nor you wrote anything here related to the article. Igor did once after having vandalized anonymously the page, but then fell again in personal attacks (even a real french astrophysicist had to intervene here because of that). Catherine is contributing, EE is, Igor is sometime, you are not, Sophie is not. If you insist in being put in the same bag as Sophie, what I didn't even try to suggest, you're welcome. --YBM 00:28, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Á PROPOS VANDALISING ANONYMOUSLY A PAGE, WHAT DID YOU DO FROM THE 24 TO THE 26 OF AUGUST 2005 EVERY NIGHT BETWEEN 4 AND 6 AM BUT VANDALISED THIS SITE AND DELEETE MY COLUMN? YOU HAVE DELEETED MY TEXTS 17 TIMES IN LESS THAN 32 HOURS. AND YOU HAVE ATTEMPT TO HACKED YOURSELF INTO WIKI SYSTEM LAST NIGHT. YOU HAVE SUGGEST TO THE OTHER USERS TO USE ILLEGAL MEAN IN ORDER TO "IGNORE MY ARTICLE" BY DELEETING THEM FROM THE SITE. YOU ARE VANDALISING ALL WHO ISN'T YOUR OWN MEANING AND TOO CLOSE TO THE TRUTH. --213.237.21.6 02:33, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

As a workaround we could convene to bypass all of her crap by always begin editions of this page from the immediate version preceeding any of her editing, it is less tiring than restablishing again and again our comments, Catherine would agree, I guess. --YBM 14:28, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

She's been blocked for 24 hours, and will be then definitely banished if she vandalizes the page again. --YBM 02:31, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

For the love of God, stop the personal attacks. And, yes, that was directed at Sophie, YBM, and Laurence. They do nothing to advance your point of view... in fact, they tend to have the opposite effect. If you want others to respect your thoughts, try to stick to the issue at hand.

-- EE Guy

YOU ARE VERY SUBJECTIV EE A, HOW COULD YOU WRITE SUCH A TEXT WHEN I WASN'T AT ALL IN ALL THE DISPUTE ABOVE, AND WHEN YOU COULD OBVIOUSLY SEE THAT A TEXT OF MINE WAS MISSING AND THAT YBM HAD GIVE IT THE TITLE GARBAGE, FOR WHO WILL CALL HIS OWN TEXT GARBAGE, BUT YBM....?

--213.237.21.6 02:33, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Revised article proposal

Here's the last proposal (by Anonymous EE Guy - see above under Mes Deux Centimes) slightly amended in an attempt to enhance its neutral content:

During 1999-2002, popular French TV presenters Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff obtained two theses (one in mathematics, one in theoretical physics) from the University of Bourgogne. From this work, they published six papers in physics and mathematics journals, including "Annals of Physics" and "Classical and Quantum Gravity." After reading the abstracts of both theses, French physicist Max Niedermaier considered them to be an incoherent stream of physics buzzwords, masquerading as pseudoscience under a layer of dense technical jargon, similar to the Sokal Affair. On 22 October 2002, Mr Niedermaier subsequently sent an email to this effect to various physicists. An eventual recipient of this email, the American physicist John Baez, created a discussion on Usenet (Science Physics Research) entitled, "Has physics been bitten by a Reverse Sokal Hoax?" This question immediately attracted worldwide attention, both in the physics community as well as the international popular press. Upon learning that the Bogdanoffs disputed that their work was a hoax, Mr Niedermaier issued a private and public apology to the Bogdanoffs on 24 October and the brothers have continued to defend their theories (which deal with quantum groups, KMS theory, and topological field theory). After passionate debates and discussions on the Internet, there is no clear consensus about the technical merits of the Bogdanoffs' work. Some claim it to be a hoax, others claim it to be sloppy work simply plagued by errors, while some theoretical-physics researchers think highly of their theories.

It should be emphasized that the Bogdanoffs adamantly defend their work as genuine. The general topic of "before the Big Bang" is a complicated field and their work purports to present forward-looking theories.

In 2004 they published a highly successful popular-science French-language book "Avant Le Big-Bang" ("Before the Big Bang"), based on a simplified version of their theses, where they presented their own approach amongst other cosmological models. In the framework of a short weekly television program, created by the Bogdanoffs in 2002, a 90-minute cosmology special broadcast went on the air on French channel France 2 in August 2004. Both the book and television show have been criticized for scientific inaccuracies, while others admire the Bogdanoffs' ability to bring the subjects of cosmology and relativity to a wider audience.

+ links

CatherineV 08:05, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree entirely with Catherine's proposal.

Laurence

I do not consider this proposal as neutral at all.

BTW, I suggest adding two new links :

A story of quotation marks, "transcendental" rational numbers and Photoshop (en)

Une histoire de guillemets, de nombres rationnels « transcendants » et de Photoshop (fr)

Anyone interested in the case should read it.

--YBM 19:03, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

These articles are on a blog, so you can write a comment, but only if this comment is favourable to the author. If it isn't, you will be censured, as I am.

Laurence

THE VERY DISTURBING STATEMENT 1

-- DEAR Anonymous EE Guy,

Well, I don't know if you really mean to give a full picture of the case, but we could include this one:

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/leuven/reich1.htm

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/leuven/

Who are the web site of Jean-Pierre Voyer, a kind of model person for mister Messager/YBM, and who spred a quiet special form for ideologie, which goal is to play with words and how to defend and argue about things who do not exist, how to play with words and "fuck others" as phrased on his web site, and essentialy, how to display a superior attitude in order to effectively use the communication on internet to their full interest, by using the circumstances frame of the dialogues. This include displaying lies as being facts with such a forcefullness as to convince others. It is called: postsituationnisme, ideologie who is followed by YBM, together with a sympathie to the 3rd reich, and a, by some, called pseudo-Hégelianism. YBM run his forum where he defend the man and his positions, with as much furore as he dispells those of Igor and Grichka Bogdanov. You will found in it concepts as the Superior Race, versus the inferior race, and different creativs ways to talk the technics and language of publicity into a way of "mass communication" and a weapon to convince anyone of anything.

I am sure that this angle will bring a certain shade of light where it was upmost needed, and will constitute the missing piece of the puzzle.

I hope you will excuse my very late assertion or révélation about this subject, but I was myself only made aware of it for a very short time ago, together with the fact that this Voyer and YBM have harrassed people before, writers too, for books who had nothing to do with science, but nevertheless constituted those 2 mens lifes mening for 2 years. Actually they stopped with their first victims at the end of 2002, beginning of 2003, to consacrate their cherish technics of manipulating the masses, and ideologies of diffamation on 2 other subjects, Igor and Grichka Bogdanov.

No need to say that the 2 former victims are still paying for the vices of Voyer and Messager, and that their lifes and career have been destroyed.

Why so much hate against people they didn't knew and had never met? They were only practicing, like serial killers start somewhere, in the shadow, and are only known for much more exposed actions.

Here are some other links who do compleete the picture: The first attacks of Voyer and YBM against XAVIER, the writer: http://aeamh.free.fr/x/agent.html http://aeamh.free.fr/blockhaus/ http://aeamh.free/bk/index.html

YBM Web site:

http://aeamh.free.fr Site Voyer: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/leuven/reich1.htm http://perso.wanadoo.fr/leuven/

I consider this information for being central in the matter at hand, as all accusations will have fallen and nothing much will have come from the original and following J. Baez paper on the subject if it hadn't been for Messager and Voyers' questionnable work in the name of very questionnable motives, all accomplished to serve a completely useless ideology. I think that this will teach us all a lesson regarding objectivity and our hability to evaluate a given problem properly, and to be able to use our sense of sceptisisme ans sound judgement. On a more general way and even more central here, our power to distinguish between agreeing to a given opinion based on facts, and being manipulate in doing so for all the wrong reasons.

This information compleete the picture and gave it its true mening, even if it is by showing how meningsless a huge part of this affair was.

Sophie XAL --213.237.21.6 02:56, 27 August 2005 (UTC)POSTED FOR THE FIRST TIME ON WIKI THE 24/08-2005 AT 8:20 AM. DELEETED 24 TIMES BY YBM. Redeleeted yesterday, reinserted this morning at 4:19AM 28/08-05 And again at 6:34 same day, after YBM deleeted ALL my interventions on this blog.

He censors everything which disagrees with him : your texts, my comments on his blog (this night), even Anonymous EE Guy's text in which he agreed with Catherine's proposal has disappeard...

YBM, do you want to make believe that everybody thinks like you do ? That all people who stand by the Bogdanov brothers are crazy, or "vandals", etc. ? It's easy for you, especially on Wikipedia : it's a good pretext for you to revert, erase, censor...

Laurence

I couldn't agree more, and see how much he take his ideologie supporting censorship very seriously. I wasn't able to warn anybody of his doing because he deleeted everything a few minutes after I had put an article, or as I was writing int, and I couldn't save it. I tried to tell Catherine, that he encourage to deleete my texts, that in fact my article was originaly placed before hers, just under the "Mes Deux Centimes" from EE-Anonymus, and that YBM knew it when he wrote that to her as he was the one who had deleeted my article 30 minutes after I had insert it, and who had deplaced it to different places in the blog, and complain to the site of my vandalism! This one is now put under "rampant vandalism". He can no longer pretend not even to new recrue, that he his doing all that for science and truth, or that he is mainly interested on "relevant matter to the subject" only, or that my declarations were without contribution to the subject, as all can see why and see that his actions and huge efforts to hinder those informations to come to you all come in handy to confirm how central they are. I think that he is bannished right now, or this will also have disepeared. But even now, this website isn't compleete. he deleeeted too much of it. Thank you for being the alone one to see him through, and to react adequatly to his attempts at fooling all users.

SOPHIE XAL --213.237.21.6 10:01, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I tried to tell Catherine, that he encourage to deleete my texts, that in fact my article was originaly placed before hers Sorry, I didn't know that... CatherineV 20:19, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

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Notes from Bishonen about talk page etiquette

YBM, I advise you to stop deleting Sophie's posts. It looks to me like the battle between you two on this page has degenerated into a meaningless deletion/putting back of the same posts over and over again, and that her chief complaint by now is that posts she considers convincing keep getting deleted, so she reinserts them. There's a simple way you can stop that see-saw: leave them on the page. For one thing, there's no policy that says you may remove personal attacks—there's only a strongly disputed guideline that says in certain circumstances you may, but if you do you may find yourself having to justify why you did: please see Wikipedia:Remove personal attacks. And for another, if you want to impress admins and others with a sense of how off-topic and disruptive Sophie's editing is, why not leave it there for them to see? It's not as if she was editing the article itself, it's only a talk page. Also, as irrelevant and angry as most of her rants are, I would argue that the ones she's now putting back don't consist of personal attacks. She yells, yes, but she hasn't reinserted the two outrageous posts that I linked to in my first comment on WP:AN, and that were the direct reason I blocked her. Anyway, if you insist on deleting, you need to do it much more selectively and conservatively, in a way that preserves the other person's actual argument and information, please see Wikipedia:Remove personal attacks. Note also the discussion of who should remove personal attacks (preferably not the person being attacked) and when:"Many users consider it a good idea to refactor later - wait until the hot blood has died down a bit, and then get rid of the junk. If you refactor as you go, that can inflame the discussion". It looks like it is inflaming the discussion here. Oh, and I know they're in all caps, but please be the bigger man about that. As I see you suggesting above, there are surely ways for other contributors to work around them.

Sophie, please don't make wild accusations unsupported by evidence. Where's your evidence that YBM stole your identity and/or hacked an admin account? If he did that, he will certainly be permanently banned. It's a very serious charge, so either give real, concrete evidence for it or remove it yourself from this page. Apart from that, I'm going to leave anything you reinsert on the page, of course on condition that it isn't an insulting taunt like this, and that you don't put it where it makes the page harder to follow. Once your explanatory posts have been reinserted and people are leaving them there, please follow normal talk page etiquette in anything new that you post. This means:

1. No more posting in all capitals
2. A civil tone
3. Give examples and links as evidence of your argument.
4. No more rants about what YBM or others have done outside Wikipedia. It's simply not relevant. Stick to the matter in hand: improving the article.

Finally, please everybody read the three revert rule: no more than 3 reverts in 24 hours. From now on, anybody who violates it will be blocked for 24 hours, which is policy. Note that the rule doesn't mean it's "all right" to revert three times a day, either. It isn't. Please consider not reverting other contributors at all. Bishonen | talk 10:59, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Endorsed. Geogre 12:04, 28 August 2005 (UTC) Also, folks, remember: these are just bytes. No one likes to see untruth stand, but take a long view. When people are filled with passions, they'll war over content that, later, will be amended anyway by later users. No one owns his or her words on Wikipedia, and no one owns the content of an article. If any of you believe that the content of this article is at such a severe state as to be irremediable without intervention, consider a Request for Comment listing at wp:rfc. You can solicit third party mediators and gauge community consensus there. If the issue is talk pages, Bishonen is entirely correct. This isn't the article, and it is infinitely better to have an uninvolved party assess and remove personal attacks and irrelevancies than for people to war with each other in such a manner. Geogre 12:04, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I added an entry on wp:rfc.

I will not edit this page, even the 'sane' parts, until further notice. --YBM 16:45, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Bishonen, i would like to make one note regarding what would normally be an uncontroversal suggestion of yours: Stick to the matter in hand: improving the article.

it is simply not the case that the Bogdanoff brothers, nor their "supporters" (i think they're likely sock puppets of one or both of the Bogdanoff brothers) want an improved article. they want an article that praises or justifies or vindcates (to the uninformed reader) their credentials that were obtained partly by fraud or hoax and certainly by way of some lazy or weary faculty and reviewers that allowed their non-physics to slip by the review process. only after the PhDs were awarded did the larger physics community become aware of the existence of the brothers and of their work, and there is no dispute (in the wider physics community), what they have published, in a couple of journals, their book, and in their disseration is nonsense. it is sorta like Intelligent Design to the practicing researchers in biology and paleontology, they can claim that these one or two supporters recognize their "work" as having value, but the wider physics community staunchly refutes that. This is absolutely clear from the record at sci.physics.research .

it has been documented that someone in France has posed as supporting sock puppets ("Prof. Yang") defending their "work", indeed, it is clear in this article and talk page that one or both of the brothers have been sneakily posting defenses in the guise of someone else. in fact, if you look at the history of the article, it appears it was first created by one or both of the brothers as a praise or vindication and that was caught by YBM who would not let that stand unchallenged. this what these guys do, it's like W.C. Fields. since they have no substance (in their physics), it's all image.

i see no resolution to this other than deleling the article completely and not allowing its re-creation nor the creation of a variant (i.e. "Bogdanoff Affair"). if you allow the brothers to create such a self-praise article and let them define the content, then we should all make own own vanity articles to show the world how important we are because we have an article about us in Wikipedia. there cannot be a mutally "nuetral" POV without there being some clear fraud and that can only damage the value and reputation of Wikipedia (despite what the E. B. says about it). r b-j 18:53, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

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After having read the above "analysis" about the disputed article, I think this kind of comment should be left aside for 3 reasons :

1. The author (hidden behind a pseudo) is only diffaming without any element of proof : speaking of "clear fraud" about our thesis and work is a pure diffamation. 2. The motivations of the author are unclear and certainly not driven by a honest attitude. 3. The author invents "informations" that are not exact : In spite of what this (courageous) anonymus person claims, I did not create any article about us on Wikipedia. It was created independently from us.

Igor Bogdanoff

a single mouse-click reveals my identity, including full name, valid e-mail, and even the town of residence (and my User page is shown to be unmodified since nearly the day i first came to Wikipedia). is it perhaps that i left off my telephone number, street address, and social security number that my identity appears hidden from you? maybe i should also include my credit card numbers.

starting first with the discussion at sci.physics.research (in which at least one of the Bogdanoff's participated in their defense), one can begin to see what the real physics community is saying about the quality or veracity of their publication. there are multiple web sites (that the article has referred to, until the Bogdanoff's stripped off the links, other than YBM's (e.g. John Baez's page, which is quite damning and Baez is a real physicist of indisputable creditials and reputation). i will not defend the charges against the Bogdanoff's as i am "merely" an electrical engineer (and i am not "Anonymous EE Guy"). i will leave it to the experts just as i leave it to the biologists and paleontologists to debunk Intelligent Design or Creationism.

Nobody ever debuncked the web pages you are referring to. They are all there on this blog, just a few articles above, there is plenty of super exhaustiv lists of it to be founded, nonetheless those given by Igor himself.

For your knowledge John Baez is not an undisputed scientist in the area of concern: astrophysic and cosmologie, and 2) he has damped his statements since the story begin. Only YBM keep digging the archives up to fuel his unexistent argumentation. If any of the scientist who started the story are still keeping their statements, I would like to hear from them now, and to know if they are more or less than ONE.

Thank you.

SOPHIE XAL

--213.237.21.6 01:24, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Igor, i would suggest reading the children's story The Emperor's New Clothes. can you guess which role you and your brother play? your PhD should be stripped from you. perhaps someday it will be. r b-j 21:03, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Did you read their books, or are you barely guessing?

Why don't you keep building your class D amplifiers, and play echo, concentrate on its carroussel, and talk sound synthesis instead of trying to synthesize a cosmologic question that you have no knowledge about what so ever?

SOPHIE XAL--213.237.21.6 08:21, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

sometimes it takes a child to point out that the Emperor is naked. r b-j 16:10, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Food for thought there, rbj. The version protected right now is no vanity page, though. I'd be interested to have a list of the IP's you believe to be sock puppets, maybe I'll be able to persuade a developer to check for connections. Use e-mail, please, to avoid offending possibly innocent contributors. (Include that credit card number while you're about it.) Igor, I have no opinion on the matter of fact here—I hadn't heard of the Bogdanov Affair before—but please note that you won't endear yourself to any Wikipedian by sneering about anonymous contributors. You choose to use your real name, and Rbj has his on his page; fine; most contributors don't, for many good reasons. If you want to contribute here, you'll find yourself speaking to pseudonyms, you might as well get used to it. Bishonen | talk 22:38, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

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Irrelevant posts removed to User Talk

<A couple of sections here containing dialogue between me and Sophie have been moved to her Talk page, as being strictly irrelevant to Bogdanov Affair. Bishonen | talk 19:00, 30 August 2005 (UTC)>