Talk:Fred A. Leuchter

Biased and Incomplete

This article can be expanded. There's a video of Leuchter in YouTube which was uploaded about five years ago in which he talks about his life, his work and the many troubles he faced in Europe for his research regarding the Holocaust and the Gas Chambers and his claim of later being watched by the government and the Mosad. I believe we can expand and refine this article by the pieces of information that we can find out there and by keeping Wikipedia professional and to the date. This article does not have a neutral tone and approach and has a criticizing writing which causes the reader not to have a clear judgment. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.248.40.90 (talk) 06:19, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

We can't use a YouTube video, we need sources that are reliably published. Doug Weller talk 12:07, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Also, even if it is a legitimate video of Leuchter, it's a primary source. The article is not biased, it's completely neutral in that it presents the consensus of historians and other scholars about Leuchter and his "research". Beyond My Ken (talk) 12:40, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

"This article does not have a neutral tone and approach and has a criticizing writing". Can you find a serious chemist, historian or engineer that gives any credit to Leuchter's 'research' at Auschwitz? If you can it will be included. Leuchter doesn't even have basic qualifications in any relevant field of expertise (toxicology?) and doesn't speak or read German, so was unable to read the original plans/orders from Nazi officials which made the purpose of the gas chambers explicit. Pincrete (talk) 18:46, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

This is a terrible article, and does not come close to Wikipedia standards. It is nothing but an extended smear attack against Mr Leuchter. It is true that he is the author of the so-called Leuchter Report. It is also true that the Leuchter report does not prove what it claimed to prove; it is seriously flawed. But it is possible to criticize the Leuchter report without smearing Mr Leuchter. Very strong arguments have been made that the Leuchter investigation was a botched job. The Leuchter report is fair game. But Mr Leuchter himself seems to have been an honest man, with no known opinion one way or the other before he did his investigation; he was asked to investigate because he was one of the very few people with experience in methods of execution. All of us have made mistakes at some point in our careers. All of us hold some opinions that are unjustified - or even wrong. Too many people seem to think that when a person has expressed an incorrect opinion, that person's livelihood must be destroyed. Insulation2 (talk) 10:10, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Quite so. As that saying goes: "Show me a man who never makes a mistake and I'll show you a man who never does anything." 70.178.140.205 (talk) 06:10, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Leuchter continued not only to defend his report, but to appear at denialist forums to do so, long after his 'report' was wholly discredited on every scientific and historical basis. I think the man was a naive fool in many ways - but his 'mistakes' were not entirely innocent, nor honest. Pincrete (talk) 07:45, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

"long after his 'report' was wholly discredited on every scientific and historical basis. ". Please direct us to the evidence of this. WithGLEE (talk) 07:31, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

WithGLEE, try reading the 'Report' article. Leuchter lacked any training in chemistry, but didn't bother to do basic research to validate his assumptions and conclusions (such as lice are actually much harder to kill than humans using Zyclon B). Didn't bother to do basic reaearch about the buildings he 'investigated', didn't speak German or consult with anyone who did in order to examine historical records describing the purpose of buildings. A total amateur producing bad pseudo-scientific, pseudo-historical twaddle. I actually feel sorry for the guy as he was IMO more naive than evil. But on WP, as in the real world, it is up to people to persuade the scientific and history world that claims are serious and valid, not up to us to spend time dealing with rejected ones. No serious scientist or historian credits Leuchter with having found anything new and/or valid. Pincrete (talk) 09:04, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Can't read sources

We can't use nizkor.org as a source given it's infected with malware according to Google and Chrome. Mrehayden (talk) 21:26, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

I got the same warning, so I removed the source from the article. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:56, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't know if it is a false positive, or if they really have been hacked and infected, but I see a very similar warning in FireFox.

As I am fully patched and running Linux, I thought it safe to continue past the warning and see if I could see anything wrong on the site. From the front page it looks like a pretty old-school HTML site with nothing more than a simple and innocuous bit of Javascript that redirects you out of any HTML frame you might have been in. Of course, I can't say for sure that it is safe for everybody. If it was compromised then it could be set up only to serve malware to certain browsers or OSes, but my first and simplest thought is that it has been falsely flagged as infected by people with a grudge against the site as a lazy form of DoS attack.

Do you know how long it has been like this? If it is recent then we can probably assume that it will be sorted out out fairly quickly. If it is a longer term problem then maybe we can convert the links to archive.org equivalents?

I'm going to put the link back into the article but commented out. That way it can't hurt anybody but it is still available for for us to reinstate once the problem is sorted out. --DanielRigal (talk) 22:12, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

Good idea. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:14, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

You can find the entire report here, translated into English: https://www.ihr.org/jhr/v11/v11p207_Staff.html 97.104.181.98 (talk) 02:26, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Charges of practicing without a license

The lengthy quote from mass.gov in this section does not actually refute any of Leuchter's claims in the prior quote - while it confirms the state *has* licensure programs for many branches of Engineering, it says nothing to whether a license is a prerequisite to practice. I’m finding it oddly difficult to find an authoritative source which does speak to that; I think this may have something to do with contemporary prevalence of the 'Software Engineer' title, which challenges the historic statutory power of the professional societies over the 'Engineer' title? If someone has relevant knowledge on this domain a better source would be much appreciated as I'd prefer not to simply remove this quote without a substitute. 198.52.95.10 (talk) 02:04, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

The above comment is from me, I don't know why it wasn't properly signed aa I am logged in to the app.. Walkersam (talk) 02:07, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

The article quite clearly notes that Leuchter was charged with practicing without a license, which certainly implies that a law or statute was violated, and the sources say that the charge was upheld, so I cannot see what the problem is. I see no relationship to any dispute about software engineering. The sources given are very reliable, so it would be improper of you to remove such sourced information without a consensus from editors on this page to do so. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:14, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Fairly technical distinction, but the article says that Leuchter avoided prosecution by issuing a statement admitting that he was not a (registered) engineer, but had been presenting himself as one for the purposes of selling his equipment (and in his report). AFAIK he had no technical expertise whatsoever for any of the various execution methods he built and/or sold equipment for - beyond what he had 'picked up', working for his dad and by himself. With my limited knowledge of such matters - I would have expected a whole range of skills to have been needed to (effectively, safely and humanely) execute people by electric chair/lethal gas chamber/lethal injection - many of which would not be covered by a general engineering qualification anyhow! Even more to attempt to 'revise' history with no knowledge of history/German/chemistry/human and insect pathology etc. Pincrete (talk) 09:17, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Charges of practicing without a license again

An ip recently removed text ostensibly 'disproving' Leuchter's claim that no other unlicensed engineers were ever prosecuted and that he was prosecuted because of his report. Our text is WP:OR of a primary source (the website of the Mass board of engineers), and it doesn't actually disprove any claim by Leuchter. Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not seeking to in any sense defend Leuchter but it is very plausible that the law used against Leuchter is one that was very thinly implemented as he says and only used against him because of the attention he drew to himself.

The content is not weaker by omission of this quote - he was charged, which he interpreted as a "a spurious criminal complaint" since "Although the state's licensing law has been in effect since 1940, there has been no record of any prosecution for this offense." Our text doesn't contradict that claim, out text merely states that the board of engineers licenses all sorts of engineers. If Leuchter is to be 'disproved' it should be done better than this from a secondary or tertiary source. Pincrete (talk) 04:56, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm going to remove the text, since it is blatant misuse of a primary source for WP:OR. Pincrete (talk) 04:58, 13 May 2023 (UTC)