Talk:Albrecht Fölsing

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Is this more Biocruft? Unpleasant early fallout from Stachnikov hoax

To judge from information at Amazon, the Einstein biography ~~may be~~ is legitimate, but who is this Stachnikov? I can find no information whatever. ~~Is this author really notable?~~ Can anyone verify that the listed books even exist?---CH (talk) 02:54, 1 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I have verified that the Einstein bio does exist. But Stachnikov appears to be entirely unknown to physics, and the terms biflexian, triflexian do not appear in searches of the literature. Thus, the claims made by User:Lionosmom about the alleged scientific notability of Stachnikov appear to be entirely inaccurate and misleading. Not to put too fine a point on it, if this person event existed at all (and I can't verify that the alleged bio of Stachnikov exists, much less that Stachnikov did) he seems to have been a very obscure crank.---CH (talk) 03:29, 1 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Published penguin author anyone? Fösling exists and wrote a decent biography of Einstein

Sorry but this dispute is absolute nonesense, Albrecht Fosling wrote these books, I believe orginally in the German language, and is published by Penguin. If you find reason to dispute such outright fact then there is something wrong with you! there is a fact page on Penguin's website about this very man - didn't you even google him before raising your point?

http://www.penguin.ca/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,0_1000004172,00.html

That doesn't say anything to support your claims about the particular books which we suspect might not exist.---CH (talk) 15:24, 1 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to the editors who dug up some genuine books by Fölsing and removed the apparently fictitious one. The consensus seems to be that someone invented a biography of Stachnikov and attributed it to a real author in order to 'support' apparent hoax articles Stachnikov and Stachnikov's triflexian quantum multiplex theorem.---CH (talk) 15:47, 2 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Nasty Consequences of the Stachnikov hoax

Poor Fölsing. After considerable trouble I have obtained his biography of Einstein, and after a first read pronounce that this book is in fact a readable mainstream biography. Indeed, I would now recommend it as a good introduction to the scientific biography by Pais.

Fölsing's thesis is unobjectionable (and agrees with Pais): from a historical perspective, Einstein's achievements can only be understood in context. Fölsing does devote more ink to topics like alleged marital improprieties than do most earlier biographies, but this is probably unavoidable in view of the recent appearance of scurrilious, defamatory, cranky, and decidedly non-mainstream books making new charges against Einstein.

My point? Well, as it happens I first encountered Fölsing's name in the context of the Stachnikov hoax. I then failed to immediately find his biography in my book search, which initially caused me to doubt his very existence :-/ Then the hoaxer's further edits in this and other talk pages made me fear that the book (which at first I believed was unavailable in the U.S.) was some kind of racist diatribe. Fortunately, this turns not to be the case at all. But this episode demonstrates the serious consequences of hoaxes and mispresentation in the WP: unknowing third parties are liable to be injured. IMO, hoaxes and flagrant misprentations should never be tolerated as "innocent mischief" in any encyclopedia. ---CH 01:47, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]