Talk:John C. Taschner

Email source falsely claimed unreliable

This edit claims that WP:RS and WP:V don't consider "email posts" to be reliable sources, but in fact the word "email" never appears in either of those policies. The email in question is signed:

Gordon Riel [gordon dot riel at navy dot mil]
(301) 261-7735, FAX 2252
NSWCCD 6301 [Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division]
Bethesda, MD 20817-5700

Thus it is certainly a verifiable message, and the author, Gordon Riel, is certainly an expert in the field. The mailing list RADSAFE is a moderated internet forum populated mostly by experts in the field, none of whom disputed the cited message. I respectfully request that the deleted passage ("In the 1980s, Taschner received an award from the US Navy for convincing them to use tungsten instead of depleted uranium munitions in the Phalanx CIWS ship defense system.") and its source be replaced back in the article. James S. 12:58, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not convinced, but I'm open to submitting the issue for RFC. James, do you want to put a request together? Thanks, TheronJ 14:26, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

What are the reasons you doubt the authenticity of the report? James S. 18:37, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Gordon Riel on John Taschner

Would you please tell me why you believe that Riel might not be a reliable source on Taschner's award from the US Navy? James S. 23:07, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Please? You said you had doubts days ago. What are they? 75.18.210.218 15:41, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I've been busy, but promise I haven't been blowing you off. Here goes:

1. It's a factual assertion about another person based on a mail-serv post. It doesn't provide enough detail to evaluate the statement, and I have no idea who Riel is. Technically, I suppose, you could make an argument that any person is an "expert" about people of their acquaintance, and with sufficient corroborating detail, I might personally be open to including something of that nature, but a random fact in a random e-mail message from several years ago does not have sufficient indicia of reliability, IMHO, to qualify as a reliable source. See generally WP:ATT#Wikipedia_articles_must_be_based_on_reliable_sources.
2. In addition, the self published source exception is for professional researchers, writing within their field. Riel is not a scientific historian, nor is he writing in that capacity. He may have some personal knowledge of people in his acquiantance, but the fact that he has a Ph.D. doesn't mean that his e-mails are any more reliable than a post from Taschner's mother would be.
3. On the gripping hand, the relevant section of the Attribution policy explicity forbids this use, writing that: "Self-published sources, such as personal websites and blogs, must never be used as third-party sources about living persons, even if the author is a well-known professional researcher or writer; see WP:BLP."

As I said, I would be happy to submit the issue to request for comment, or to post a question on the Attribution talk page asking for outside opinions. Would that be helpful? Thanks, TheronJ 15:52, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks.

• Regarding 1, please see this link.
• Regarding 2, Riel is a professional researcher, writing in his field. His field is not as much the history of science as it is the protection from airborne radioactive hazards in the Navy, which is well within the context of the cited fact.
• Regarding 3, RADSAFE is a moderated mailing list so the "self-published" condition does not apply. (Why did you link to "gripping hand" -- some fictional anatomy?)

Please do an RFC only if you still don't want undeletion or merge. James S. 21:35, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Comments, because this will come up again in the future. In my opinion

1. Reliability of a moderated mailing list (or similar blog--the two can be equivalent and are now often run in parallel)depends on the reputation of the list and the moderator, who needs to be a known person with appropriate credentials, and to take responsibility for the contents. The reputation of the list should furthermore be shown from other sources.
2. The reliability of a signed posting on such a list depends on the author, as for any other work. It has to be a known author with a demonstrable reputation. this does not mean necessarily an historian, or necessarily an academic. A posting from someone of known very high reputation writing about someone else carries weight. The author stakes his prestige on its accuracy, and posts where those who think otherwise will be certain to contradict.
3. An interesting example is that the moderator of the most reliable source for information in my subject is a member of the WP Foundation. Academically, he's a full professor at a research university. There are published references to his mailing list/blog as the reference source for documentation in the subject. DGG 00:20, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Copyright

As noted, the stub as it had been edited is in the public domain. James S. 19:24, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

(Temporary?) undeletion requested

I have asked for a content review version of this page, as necessary for the requested RFC. James S. 17:29, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I have asked JzG James S. 06:58, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Deleted versions have been restored to the page history. Rossami (talk) 00:28, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Regarding your prod comment, he is still alive and was at the HPS Baltimore-Washington chapter meeting last month, although he just moved from Sparks, Nevada to Albuquerque, New Mexico. James S. 02:34, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Amarillo Globe News article

I'm putting this here because recently became unavailable but is still in Google's cache. It has his age (69 in 1999 is about 77 now)

Web posted Saturday, September 25, 1999 -- http://www.amarillo.com/stories/092599/new_meet.shtml

Nuclear weapons pioneers meet up at museum

ALBUQUERQUE (AP) - John Taschner has spent more than 40 years around nuclear weapons - first as a young Air Force officer at the Nevada Test site during an early detonation, then later as part of a team that once helped clean up after a plane crash scattered plutonium across a Greenland glacier.

The stories he's so familiar with are coming to life at the National Atomic Museum, where yellowing typewritten pages and grainy photos take viewers back to the early days of nuclear secrets.

Until the end of the Cold War a decade ago, the U.S. government kept much of the information about the nation's nuclear history secret.

Since then, the Nuclear Weapons Historic Film Project has obtained deteriorating films and has restored the images. Much of the information has been declassified and some went on display at the museum here as part of its Nuclear Pioneers Days 1999.

"It's good to see these images saved so the kids can see what it was like for us working on these projects," said David Foster, a retired nuclear weapons safety engineer.

About a dozen of the people who designed, tested and built the nation's nuclear arsenal were acknowledged during the event this week for their unsung efforts.

Taschner, 69, who now works at Los Alamos National Laboratory and is still a member of the federal government's elite Accident Response Group, was among the nuclear veterans gathered at the museum. The response group, called ARG, scheduled a rare public demonstration of the techniques used to respond to nuclear weapons accidents.

ARG members are on call every day of the year to respond to accidents, known in nuclear weapons circles as "broken arrows."

They go through regular exercises, even though the government says there hasn't been a broken arrow since 1980.

New Mexico is home to a large number of ARG members, and it's also the only place where two broken arrows have occurred: in 1950 and 1957.

A B-29 taking off from Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque in 1950 crashed into the Manzano Mountains, killing its crew of 13 and destroying the nuclear weapon on board. Seven years later, a B-36 crew accidentally dropped a hydrogen bomb just south of the Albuquerque airport. The non-nuclear explosives detonated, but there was no radioactive contamination.

Fragments from the 1957 accident were put on public display at the museum for the first time this week.

Bill Crimson, 69, spent 34 years working in the U.S. nuclear program, including nuclear weapons accident recovery. He believes declassification is good as long as everything sensitive remains out of the public's eye.

Crimson also believes accidents in which no one was injured or endangered should not be made public because disclosing the circumstances also discloses information that could be useful to countries trying to develop nuclear weapons.

But, he said, "Any situation that leaves a question mark in the public's mind, it's best to take it from black to white, make it public."

More at http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/pa/News/092399.html James S. 23:54, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

RFC status

Gordon Riel has agreed to help me find the documentation of Taschner's Navy award, and, classification status permitting, the report(s) upon which the award was based. When those are available, I intend to ask for an RFC between the versions with and without mention of the award, but I ask patience in the mean time; please do not nominate for deletion until after the planned RFC. (Please note that I am not the one who requested the RFC in the first place.) James S. 02:39, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

• We may not need an RFC -- James is doing a great job tracking down some reliable sources, so we may be able to resolve this issue. I agree that if anyone is considering deleting this article as non-notable, that would be premature. James is working hard to get more sources, which should clarify notability (or lack thereof). TheronJ 14:27, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Request for inclusion

I have asked to include the facts about Taschner's Navy award for using tungsten in the Phalanx CIWS. James S. 06:41, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I spoke with Taschner yesterday, and while he did not deny receiving an award for limiting the amount of ionizing radiation which might have occurred with DU Phalanx CWIS rounds which needed to be stored near berthing areas, he credited his superiors for the decision based on his report. I will inquire further by email. James S. 00:08, 17 March 2007 (UTC)