Talk:American Physical Society

Userbox

APSThis user is a member of the APS.

I have created a userbox for Wikipedians who are members of the APS:
Just put {{User:UBX/APS}} on your user page. RSRScrooge 00:57, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

So what's the largest?

The intro states that the APS is the second largest organization. So what's the largest? Maury (talk) 20:53, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Fixed, the original linkage was diabolical. Maury (talk) 20:55, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

This seems to have 10000 more members: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physikalische_Gesellschaft — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.246.2.62 (talk) 15:57, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Right, fixed that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.133.8.114 (talk) 13:10, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

There is at least one bigger physical society: https://www.dpg-physik.de/dpg/profil/struktur.html?lang=en — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.133.8.114 (talk) 08:40, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Possible biased and fraudulantly incomplete

The site below states:

"Because this technology challenges the currently popular theories of physics, this lobby [APS] has unjustly branded it as being fraudulent."

http://www.theorionproject.org/en/documents/EPWoutofboxBrief.pdf

DISCUSSION:

It is possible that this article is naive, biased and fraudulently incomplete, by omitting reports that APS has undertaken aggressive strategic smear campaigns to undermine the careers or reputations of patent officials that grant patents for inventions that have been independently verified by other scientific labs to validly work.

The controversy might be grounded in the fact that scientific discoveries can at almost any time out-pace existing human theories (in their current state), because the act of discovery generally precedes the creation of theories to explain them.

The website above gives the impression that APS has attacked inventions and their patent eligibility, if their theory is not yet understood (by those APS defines as the current mainstream).

This might be intellectually retrograde in that truly novel inventions can never be magically grasped by ALL others scientists, particularly those giving dated theoretical (not empirical) objections.

This is why independent confirmation of experimental results is the method through which findings are deemed valid.

Scientific discoveries are not determined by a vote. Agbdf (talk) 07:31, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Please read the relevant Wikipedia policies on Reliable sources, suppression of the one true way, and encyclopedic treatment of fringe opinions. - Eldereft (cont.) 20:40, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

DCOMP

I think it should be a separate entry and not merged with the APS page, so that it comes up in a search for DCOMP. On the DCOMP page APS is then linked. Presumably that should be similar for all other APS Divisions and they should then be references in the APS entry too, but it is quite some work to write an entry for each Division.

Undue weight to include just one APS statement in full.

The APS has published many statements, http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/index.cfm ,across a wide variety of topics. It seems like an undue weigh to only include one (and copypasta it in) as if this was the most significant statement ever without explaining why. We include two scientists who resigned but in their resignation letters the objections is not to the statement in full but specific sections and the surrounding logic and politics. With Giaever he said... “Thank you for your letter inquiring about my membership. I did not renew it because I cannot live with the (APS) statement below (on global warming): APS: ‘The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.’ (bolding original AFAIKS). Giaever also highlighted that "The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period." yada yada yada... With the letter of Lewis, Lewis highlighted the same word in his resignation letter where he said... "One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one." and in which Lewis then went on to describe the APS commentary that was added to the statement as "pompous and asinine advice to all world governments". The APS responded to Lewis refuting what he claimed about them here. This whole section needs rewording to highlight why they resigned. Fromthehill (talk) 06:51, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree. The fact that this is the only APS statement presented here, raises suspicion that the intent is not to provide information, but to influence opinion. There really is no reason to cite the entire statement, but provide a highlight of the controversy. Kbrose (talk) 22:22, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

I think it's undue coverage in this page, although I'd find it useful in a page about climate change. Digging a little deeper, I found a footnote (Global warming#cite_ref-13) listing the APS and many other organizations. Looking at the pages of such organizations (only the American ones, for brevity), I found similar sections: American Geophysical Union#Science_and_policy, American Meteorological Society#Statement_on_Climate_Change, National Research Council (United States)#Report_on_climate_change. For consistency, if we abridge it for APS, it should be summarized in these other pages, too. What I'm thinking, instead, is in setting up a page only for such statements -- bad idea? Just thinking out loud here... Fgnievinski (talk) 01:02, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

It's very notable that a scientific organization took an absolutist belief on something that is infact quite difficult to measure like the global trend in temperature and furthermore an opinion that warming on earth is a negative thing which needs to be changed and even further still how to change it. Many people resigned in protest. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:100A:B10B:544D:F05F:2DB7:6C1D:32F3 (talk) 03:28, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I propose that the articles DAMOP, DBIO, and DCOMP be merged into this article. They are unlikely ever to be notable subjects - even the main page on APS is noticeably lacking in third-party sources. In place of the list of divisions, a short statement could be made on each division. RockMagnetist(talk) 05:14, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree. However, if they are to remain, they should be renamed to, for example, Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics (American Physical Society) or some full variant of this. Bduke (Discussion) 06:34, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree too, and performed a merge and redirect. The APS article has too many lists, and this perhaps might provide some trigger for others to describe the divisions. Kbrose (talk) 12:50, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

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Largest Physics Society

Surely the number of members is the only sensible measure of size. The German Society has more members. APS has less. Is this not clear, if they are properly supported by citations? The only other measure I can think of a financial one. --Bduke (talk) 04:40, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Agree members is the only sensible way to talk about organization size. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:43, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

OK, the respective articles for the two societies give the German Physical Society 60,547 members and American Physical Society only 50,000, yet claims it is the largest. I will make edits to alter this.--Bduke (talk) 07:11, 13 January 2020 (UTC)