[Foundation-l] Wikiversity

Tue Aug 15 14:23:03 UTC 2006

On 15-Aug-06, at 1:14 AM, Cormac Lawler wrote:

> I very much agree with what I think Elian was saying, in that I think
> NPOV is a useless concept when applied to research. If we stick to the
> concept of NPOV (in all its ambiguity and complexity) we get nowhere
> in actually allowing someone to test and apply their learning about
> the world in an academic context. NPOV works for an encyclopedia - it
> will not work (or, at least, not the same way) for a place of
> learning.
>
> I don't know what kind of NPOV in research you were referring to,
> Amgine - there is a whole range of complexity on doing and writing
> research - and all academic research should be structured in a way
> that does not compromise ethics, with a methodology that can be
> justified, and be grounded in the appropriate literature (hopefully to
> make some contribution to that literature). That's good research
> practice - not NPOV. But yes, what we need to do, over the coming
> months, is to create a framework and guidelines for good practice in
> research, including ethical and methodological guidelines. That will
> determine what kind of research will be hosted and what we are to do
> with/about it.

A research proposal or report will address the current state of the  
literature, presenting all relevant views on a given topic as well as  
the current scientific consensus. It will present its hypothesis or  
problem statement in a neutral manner, and justify the research. This  
includes research survey articles.

After that it will explain how the research will be/was conducted,  
justifying the methodology. If it is a report it will then present  
the primary findings of the research, both predicted and unexpected,  
and in observational research it will discuss additional findings not  
part of the original hypothesis that were found while conducting the  
research.

The conclusions drawn from the research in reports are carefully  
presented with arguments to justify them.

In all of these elements of research NPOV is clearly an element of  
good research. It may not be explicit as it is in en.Wikipedia, but  
non-neutral research does not generally survive peer review at  
journals which is, after all, very much like a wiki.

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