Talk:Tunguska event

Sodom claims associated with Tunguska like airburst retracted

According to Retraction Watch (updated on April 24, 2025), “Sodom comet paper to be retracted two years after editor’s note acknowledging concerns”.

https://retractionwatch.com/2025/04/23/sodom-comet-paper-to-be-retracted-two-years-after-editors-note-acknowledging-concerns/

The paper was titled, “A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea”. The authors and media had repeatedly claimed that this was about the Biblical city of Sodom.

https://retractionwatch.com/2021/10/01/criticism-engulfs-paper-claiming-an-asteroid-destroyed-biblical-sodom-and-gomorrah/ 216.147.123.76 (talk) 13:29, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

As Ymblanter said, who cares if it was retracted? We have a whole section about the retracted claim in the Tall el-Hammam article, where it is actually relevant. I would suggest to shift any effort/discussion of it over there. The connection to Tunguska is just too tenuous. Renerpho (talk) 22:49, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

The connection to Tunguska was central. Tunguska was in the title of the paper, which was arguably the most downloaded paper ever written about Tunguska. See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-sodom-and-gomorrah-story-shows-scientific-facts-arent-settled-by-public/ Proxy data (talk) 19:17, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

"Tunguska-sized" or "Tunguska-like" doesn't make it relevant, or even about, Tunguska. That news story you've shared doesn't mention Tunguska even once, except for that size comparison. You could argue that it could have been relevant to Sodom and Gomorrah if it hadn't been retracted, and to Tall el-Hammam of course, but not to Tunguska.

It's about as relevant to Tunguska as is to Empire State Building. Renerpho (talk) 23:12, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

Please have a look at the retracted article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97778-3. The word "Tunguska" appears 64 times. It appears in the title, the abstract, and the conclusions. This is more times than the words "Tall el-Hammam" and "Sodom" combined. It has been accessed 687,000 times and has an altmetric score of 5348 and is arguably the most widely circulated paper ever written about Tunguska. A Google search of "Tunguska" & "Tall el-Hammam" turns up 9,500 results. "Empire State Building" & "Tall el-Hammam" gets 57 results. Two figures depict the Tunguska event, and two sections are devoted to discussing it. Proxy data (talk) 01:02, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

@Proxy data: We don't need to count words in a retracted article. It's been retracted, it's not good as a reliable source for anything! Google hits can be a good proxy for notability, but in this case, the numbers are difficult to assess due to the retraction. How many of those Google hits are unrelated to the retracted article? We can count those. Renerpho (talk) 01:19, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

I think we may be at a stale mate here, having very different ideas about both the reliability and notability of that retracted Nature paper. How about a WP:RfC asking the wider community about how to handle this? In the mean time, I would suggest that we take the article back to its state before this was added. Renerpho (talk) 01:23, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

That's fine by me. I did not intend for the paper itself to be the cited source for the statement about it that I added to the WP page. It was the subject of that statement. A lot has been written about this paper that can be cited as reliable sources about it and its relationship to the Tunguska event. Proxy data (talk) 01:33, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

@Proxy data: I've listed this at Wikipedia:Third opinion#Active disagreements, asking for input. While informal and without authority, I think an outside third opinion may help. The option to list this at RfC remains, but that takes up considerably more user time, and maybe that's not necessary. In any case, the third opinion may help us even if we need to move to RfC. I hope you agree with that course of action. Renerpho (talk) 03:25, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

3O Response: I would agree that the retracted paper does not bear mention in the article. Except in rare cases where the retraction is essentially notable in its own right (e.g. the now-infamous "vaccines cause autism" paper by Andrew Wakefield), if it's retracted, it no longer matters anyway. I'm sure there is plenty to write about Tunguska from papers that haven't been retracted. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 08:10, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

Beyond whether or not the paper was retracted, it just doesn't have much relevance to this article. The paper is simply using Tunguska for comparison. If a paper talked about a Yellowstone-sized eruption, we wouldn't necessarily cite it on the Yellowstone Caldera page. –CWenger (^ • @) 18:52, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

I agree that simply comparing an event to Tunguska doesn't merit inclusion in the Tunguska article. Geogene (talk) 19:03, 10 July 2025 (UTC)