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

The result was Delete. There is a consensus below that sufficient reliable sources to support an article do not exist. Eluchil404 (talk) 20:02, 1 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Alexander Ivanovich Popov

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(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Prod declined for "respectable cites", which consist of two scans of personal documents, a dissertation that makes no mention of him, and two PDFs whose host site is a dubious looking site that has nothing else on it but a DOS kernel.

According to this forum post, references to Popov did not exist until the creation of this article. I get zero hits for the Russian name in this article, and no hits on Google Books for the English name, further suggesting to me that this is a hoax. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 06:14, 24 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete The article was created in 2009 as a fork for Moon landing conspiracy theories, where this person is mentioned prominently. In the Russian version of this article, created at the same time by the same user, Popov's self-published Russian-language book "Americans on the moon?" is discussed. Neither that book, nor the criticisms of it, are available in English. Scanned copies of doctorates are not WP:RS. Apart from his mentions on websites as a doubter of the American moon landing, I could find nothing. Mathsci (talk) 07:02, 24 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment If this is a hoax it is very elaborate. For example, there is an ISBN registered for the book mentioned on the Russian language site. I think it is likely that a "Alexander Ivanovich Popov" exists. The relevant question here is whether he is notable (and if this can be supported by reliable sources). A superficial search of google scholar for "AI Popov"suggests he may have an H-index of 38, which is fairly high. However, their is more than one "AI Popov" as at least some of the GS results for AI Popov are authored by Anatoli Popov. Also, unless he started publishing at the age of 15 there is more than one "Alexander I Popov" [1]. I have yet to find any scholarly publications that can be attributed to the Alexander Ivanovich Popov mentioned here.T R 12:06, 24 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I am the author of the English article, which I wrote when I was "infected" by his ideas :) No, it's not a hoax, the scanned documents are real, but the links don't work when clicked from the article, only when copied from it and pasted to the URL field of the browser. So the truthfulness of the article cannot be questioned. I agree that the real question is whether he is notable. There were thousands of physicists like him in the former USSR, but Alexander Ivanovich has gained glory not by being a former scientist but with his "moon hoax" ideas. Alas, most (if not all) of them he copied from others. So, to conclude, I wouldn't mind the deletion of the article, if the rest of the participants in this discussion come to this decision. But I would not agree if the reason for deletion would be that it is allegedly a "hoax". The reason must be no other than insufficient notability. --Лъчезар☭共产主义万岁★ 13:01, 24 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. — Frankie (talk) 21:03, 26 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Russia-related deletion discussions. — Frankie (talk) 21:03, 26 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. — Frankie (talk) 21:03, 26 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as non-notable. High Beam search turned up nothing on this Alexander Popov. Questia search turned up no books or articles on this Alexander Popov. 113 newspaper articles on Alexander Popov but all of the early ones were on the Olympic swimmer. Google also turns up a lot about the swimmer, a general, another scientist and an early twentieth century scientist of this name - but not this person. I think a scientist who is known only for his adherence to a conspiracy theory and his advocacy of it and who seems to have no significant coverage anywhere should not have a wikipedia article. If someone can turn up something more notable on him with reliable and verifiable sources, that would be different. If the results of my searches are all that can be found, I doubt that would be possible at this time. Donner60 (talk) 10:08, 31 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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