Geoff Burling wrote:
On Mon, 8 Dec 2003, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
In light of the Cunctator's keen observations....
I wonder what people mean when they say "most scientists believe X".
This has a bearing on how we write about non-mainstream ideas such as
alternative medicine.
It's a fallacious argument. It ascribes omniscience to all scientists.
"Most scientists" keep busy in their own little corner of science, and
have no background or experience in controversial topics unrelated to
their little corner.
>1. What is a majority view?
>If indeed 51% of scientists (or doctors
holding a Western
>M.D. degree, or moviegoers, or Linux enthusiasts) BELIEVE A CERTAIN
>THING, then the article should simply report that the indicated
>proportion of the group in question adheres to that POV.
>If the majority is larger than 51% - say,
95% - we can
>safely call that an "overwhelming majority". If it is 99.8%
>we can say "virtually all". (Note that some published
>writers might considered 2/3 to be "overwhelming", but that
>is just THEIR POV! If as many as 1/3 of a group disagree
>with something, our readers are better served by telling
>them that 2/3 of the group believe it, and that 1/3 of the group
>disbelieve it).
>
It's still playing a numbers game.
Despite my own populist & leftist sympathies, I
can't help but be
suspicious of any argument that attempts to determine what is "truth"
by a vote. And I can't help finding any such statement worthless.
And dangerous.
First, let me define one point here. When talking about
any issue, I
think it is fair to say that the viewpoints expressed will come from
one of three groups:
*Professionals -- by this I mean scientists, scholars, medical doctors,
priests or pastors, accountants, &c. These are the people whose lives
revolve around researching, formulating & expressing opinions on issues.
So does their income.
*Informed non-professionals, or amateurs -- these are
the folks who
don't make their living from researching, formulating & expressing opinions,
but do so on their own dime. The professional groups sneer at their
opinions, & condescendingly call them "amateurs" -- forgetting that the
original meaning of the word comes from describing people whose work is
a labor of love. Much like all of us on Wikipedia.
*Uninformed non-professionals. These are the people who aren't informed
about a given issue, & tend to repeat what they hear without any significant
understanding. This is the realm of Urban Legends, Superstition, Crackpot
Theories, & similar ilk -- but it is also fair to say all of us in one
topic or another fit into this group. Can we be sure that, at any given
moment, we could defend our views on every conceivable topic? About
Abortion? About the existence of God? Concerning Israel? Whether or not
Democracy is the best form of government? If Tolstoy is a better author
than Mickey Spillone?
There is no single process to distinguish original from crackpot
thinking. A fair review of an original thought requires a serious
amount of thought for which few of us have the time. If the particular
thought threatens long held prejudices, we are also unwilling to spend
that time when we already have an easy response.
I think it is fair to say that ideas from this last
group face the
hardest time from those of us who care about Wikipedia: unless it can
be shown that one of these ideas are held belongs to a significant group
or a tradition, it will get removed rather promptly from Wikipedia.
The consensus is that the ramblings of Joe Blow you might meet in a bar
is not as interesting as the opinions of Ayn Rand, Noam Chomsky or
Plato (to pick at random some examples), & labelled "quackery" & gets
voted off Wikipedia.
Rand's supporters often tend to label Chomsky's ideas as quackery, and
vice versa.
Too often on Wikipedia, it appears that we are looking
for some kind
of ex cathedra decision of what the professionals think about
an issue. We want the professionals to say, "This is truth." Except
for those who want to be able to say, "The professionals think A, but
they are wrong & it is clear that the truth is B." But as I reflect
on how knowledge is achieved, this kind of paradigm rarely occurs.
Even more relevant to this point is the way some Wikipedians anticipate
that the mailing list or Jimbo will issue the definitive edict that will
prove them right. This is also reflected in the wider society, when
proponents of "democracy" are apathetic to such a simple task as voting.
Explaining the views of the professionals on an issue,
I feel sometimes
that I am confronting a situation best explained by the decisions of
the US Supreme Court: sometimes they issue decisions unanimously, in
a single opinion; sometimes they make a decision where the vote is
8-1, 7-1, 6-3, or 5-4, & there are two opinions; sometimes the vote is
equally split, but where almost every justice issues her or his own
opinon about the case argued before them. In the latter case, for
Wikipedia to report that "55% percent of the professionals believe A"
grossly misrepresents the various POVs.
There's also a need to keep in mind the story of "Twelve Angry Men".
If you follow me so far, then you see how vital it is
to explain the
reasons why there are different POVs in an article. Sometimes this
divergence is due to yet insufficient evidence; other times it is due
to other reasons (e.g., professional A vehemently argues for his POV
because that is the same POV of his employer; professional B argues
for her POV because it is the opposite of the POV of her ruling party).
And in certain subjects both claim to be objective scientists.
So what I try to do is state what is the _consensus_
concerning a
given issue. The scientific consensus is that the Earth is round --
a fact even the Flat-Earthers will admit. The consensus of historians
is that Columbus made a voyage in 1492, & reported to the rest of Europe
the existence of a continent, which was later known to be the Americas,
& was widely known -- a fact even those who claim that the Vikings, the
Phoenicians, the Iberians or the aboriginal hunter-gathers who crossed
over the Bering Sea into those continents some 50 millenia before will
admit.
Before a consensus can be expressed we need to know what the subject is.
The proponents need room to define what they're talking about before
the opponents jump in to discredit it.
Every argument needs a starting point; no topic should
be treated as a
game of Calvinball where the score is 23 to Q.
What's Calviball?
My POV on this matter is that we need to report the
arguments of the
various POVs concerning an issue in understandable detail, rather than
count noses & report the result.
And to do it in an orderly manner.
And further, we should not restrict
ourselves to the consensus of the professionals; too often their consensus
is based on non-rational opinions. To quote the example of Lysenko on
the study of genetics in the Soviet Union is an extreme case, & too
many people are likely to say that it would never happen in a free
environment; more apt, & suggestive of just how wrong the consensus
on an issue could be is the case of deciphering Mayan inscriptions.
Due to the fiercely-held opinion of the pre-eminent (yet very learned)
Mayanologist Sir Eric Thompson, the understanding of these Native American
inscriptions made no headway until _after_ his death! Progess on this
problem could only be made outside of the professional establishment,
in this case, amongst scholars & professionals in the Soviet Union
who were isolated from the mainstream.
Or there was the complex of games that led to an unconscionable in the
publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls, based partly on turf wars or even
fears that without "proper" professional guidance the public might use
the information to question established interpretations of the Bible.
I remember a saying from the early 20th-century
physicists: "The only
way to get a new theory accepted is to wait for all of the opponents
to die."
It was Max Planck:
An important scientific innovation rarely makes
its way by
gradually winning over and converting its opponents.... Its
opponents gradually die out and the growing generation is familiar
with the idea from the beginning.
This is not to say that we must give more weight to
evey anti-establishment
viewpoint than to that held by the establishment. Frankly, I feel it is
important to set forth what might be called the "convential thinking"
about a subject, just because it what any reader of Wikipedia expects
to find.
Certainly, but it needs to be made clear that it is conventional
thinking, and that there are often other ways of lookin at the matter.
Right now I'm attempting to set forth the consensus
of Biblical
scholars on the actual dates when the various books of the New Testament
were written; & yet I feel the articles are not as strong as they could
be because I don't know (& frankly don't care to do the research to find
out) what the traditional views on authorship are. I don't feel it is
useful to have an article about the _Epistle to the Hebrews_ that states
that many religious writers since Origen doubted St Paul ever wrote that
work, without explaining why millions of Christians believed for centuries
that he had; it unfairly makes anyone who argues the later viewpoint
look stupid & ill-informed.
An old established lie is tougher to dispel than a recent one. Few
contemporary Christians have ever heard of Origen, and you need to begin
by disambiguating him from "origin" Establishing the cannon was a
political process. I don't see anything unfair about making centuries
full of theologians appear ill-informed when in fact they were. It goes
with the territory of being a professional. At the same time I can
appreciate the position that Doestoevsky's grand inquisitor finds
himself in when, having realized that he is faced with a reincarnated
Christ, he concludes that he must do the same as was done to the
original Christ.
I could continue on, but I've already spent a
couple hours writing the
text above. Is this a worthwhile extension of the concept of NPOV to
be worth discussion, or is this merely my peculiar historigraphic
approach to the subject, without much interest to anyone except myself?
Response on or off the list is welcome.
If we're going to elevate the discussion it has to be on-line. :-)
Ec