[WikiEN-l] Re: Example vs. Original research

Tue Jul 26 18:47:27 UTC 2005

Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Haukur Þorgeirsson wrote:
>
>>> The difference is that some people actively argue that the earth is
>>> not a sphere, whereas those who argue that Paris is not the capital of
>>> France so far have kept their activities secret.
>>>
>>> If a fact is contentious, then it should be backed up with a cite.
>>>   
>>
>> How many religious fundamentalists does it take to
>> make a fact contentious? How actively do they have
>> to argue? Where are you going to draw the line? And
>> why should we privilege the points of view that
>> happen to be held by people alive today?
>>
>> Wikipedia would be a parody of an encyclopedia if it
>> held that the approximately spherical shape of the
>> Earth is contentious. People expect an encyclopedia
>> to be written from a scientific point of view - and,
>> for the most part, that's how Wikipedia is written.
>>  
>>
> It's not a matter of the number of religious fundamentalists, or how 
> persistently anyone argues, or lines being drawn.  I certainly don't 
> believe that today's points of view should hold sway over historical 
> ones.
>
> When we put forth these intuitive truths as examples of the need for 
> citations we put up a straw man that is there to be knocked down.  
> There is a presumption that any statement is true unless and until it 
> is challenged.  Of course the more ridiculous and outrageous 
> statements will be challenged very quickly.  Statements about the 
> near-spherical shape of the earth may not be challenged at all.
>
> The "scientific point of view" would be fine if it meant rigorous 
> adherence to the principles of scientific method; it is not fine if it 
> means support for the prevailing prejudices of mainstream scientists.
>
> Some people may very well expect an encyclopedia to be written from 
> that mythical "scientific point of view"; others may expect it to be 
> from a "religious point of view" of some sort.  We still need to stick 
> to a neutral point of view.  Implicit to the neutral point of view is 
> the dynamic of questioning everything.
>
> Ec
>
My big problem with this is that very frequently, especially in fields 
like science and philosophy, commonly held beliefs might be very 
different from the "correct" beliefs, or the consensus among learned 
experts. But because of the format of Wikipedia, some extremely wrong 
beliefs are inserted into articles because they are commonly held, even 
if they wildly contradict the research that professionals in the field 
are doing -- and I mean this is just as bad as saying the Earth is flat. 
The only difference is that the roundness of the Earth is common 
knowledge, but there are some things in science that are just as obvious 
to professionals but completely unknown to the general public.

The [[Race and intelligence]] article is a perfect example of this 
phenomenon. People who know nothing about the research done in this 
field have many times gone into that article and edited it mercilessly 
in the name of NPOV because the established scientific opinion presented 
(and extensively referenced) in the article is very contradictory to the 
"politically correct" opinion. In my view, Wikipedians need to have more 
respect for references and experts to prevent this kind of thing from 
happening. The usual Wiki philosophy usually works in other cases, but 
in such an emotional subject as [[Race and intelligence]], people tend 
to go way overboard, and the NPOV and "everyone's equal" policies only 
make them more convictional about their right to push their POV over 
that of the academic consensus.

In these cases, I don't think that any amount of voiciferous objecting 
and arguing should be considered relevant. I think that even if the 
consensus of Wikipedians editing the article disagrees with it, that 
consensus should lose, unless they can find some evidence that the 
article is wrong. This obsession with consensus has a real possibility 
of going terribly wrong. I think the emphasis should be on having 
Wikipedia advance _correct_ beliefs, not popular ones.

Ryan