[Foundation-l] Misplaced Reliance, was Re: Paid editing, was Re: Ban and...

Mon Nov 1 09:04:52 UTC 2010

On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 08:54, ???? <wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Quite right, the articles in other subjects are polluted with irrelevant
> details so why not pollute this class of article too?
>
> Mention it if it is a major factor in some controversy. For example if a
> number of research results are saying that X is useless for Y, and one
> report by the manufacturer says X helps in 90% of cases of Y. Otherwise
> as others have said who funds the research is noise. You might as well
> add in the funding for any research in the Computer Science articles, in
> the history articles, in the social science articles, etc, etc.
>
> Frankly if manufacturer research isn't providing correct data, for
> policy makers, and other scientist to work from that is a major problem,
> and probably illegal in some places too.

It is hard to say that irrelevant details exist. It is just a matter
of time when once irrelevant, details would become relevant enough for
some article. I witnessed a number of times that one detail [inside of
a Wikipedia article] was irrelevant at one point of time, while fully
relevant a year or two later.

It is more about well or badly worded articles. And POV pushers have
developed badly worded articles into the state of art, by pushing
inside of, let's say, introduction the information which doesn't
belong there.

Connection between scientific studies and their sponsors is very
relevant. It goes up to the point that it is important to know who is
a mentor of some PhD student. Forcing students to build foundations
for fringe theories of their mentors is a common practice. The only
difference between the present and past practice is in the complexity
of mathematics and amount of data behind the fringe science.

The fact that there are no independent researches behind some drug
means exclusively that. Encyclopedia doesn't describe controversies
exclusively, it gives useful information about described matter. And
sponsors belong to the set of relevant information.

Let's say, it is historically very important to detect Leonardo da
Vinci's sponsors; or the fact that Tales of Milet was independently
wealthy; or the fact that not just funds were important in Copernicus'
decision to become quiet.

There are much more scientists and inventions today than in past, but
it is equally important to detect context around them.

It is sad to see that Wikipedians are showing the same kind of fear
toward more information, as classical encyclopedists was showing in
relation to Wikipedia. Again, there are no irrelevant information (or
the most of information treated as so are not irrelevant), there are
just well and badly worded articles.