NPOV and credibility (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Original research)

Wed Dec 8 23:47:32 UTC 2004

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> Oh, I think it is a lot easier to evaluate the credibility of sources
> than the credibility of theories.  If you offer me your personal
> theory of "Liquidity, Efficiency, and Bank Bailouts" then it's going
> to be quite hard for me to judge whether you are an economics crank or
> someone with an interesting theory.  But if you point me to an essay
> of that title in _American Economic Review_, I can feel comfortable
> that it is at least credible.

But your comparison there is hardly fair: you've picked a (potentially) 
hard theory to judge but an easy source to judge. There are plenty of 
other sources that aren't clear cut, there are plenty of theories that 
are clear cut. The issue of judging source credibility is a real problem 
that has been discussed at length on [[Wikipedia:Forum for Encyclopedic 
Standards]], as well as various other places.

If judging the credibility of a source is so easy, why are there still 
millions of people who think FOX News really is "fair and balanced"? ;)

> I think you're misreading it, then.
> 
> Here's a line I use in public talks which always gets a laugh.  "NPOV
> does not mean that we have to say 'some say the moon is made of rocks,
> some say cheese'."  We absolutely do care that a theory is credible,
> as it's essential to a neutral presentation of any topic.

Well, I'm reading what's there on the page. There's only one mention of 
"credible", and it's in a context that we should report on views even if 
they aren't credible:

How are we to write articles about pseudoscientific topics, about which 
majority scientific opinion is that the pseudoscientific opinion is not 
credible and doesn't even really deserve serious mention?

If we're going to represent the sum total of "human knowledge"--of what 
we believe we know, essentially--then we must concede that we will be 
describing views repugnant to us without asserting that they are false. 
Things are not, however, as bad as that sounds. The task before us is 
not to describe disputes fairly, on some bogus view of fairness that 
would have us describe pseudoscience as if were on a par with science; 
rather, the task is to represent the majority (scientific) view as the 
majority view and the minority (sometimes pseudoscientific) view as the 
minority view, and, moreover, to explain how scientists have received 
pseudoscientific theories. This is all in the purview of the task of 
describing a dispute fairly.

It seems to me from this single mention that credibility doesn't matter. 
If it's not credible, we report on others saying so and leave it at 
that, we don't make the judgement ourselves. The idea of whether those 
people are credible is not even mentioned and is hence a non-issue by 
the NPOV policy. Instead of credibility, we're asked to judge popularity 
instead (minority/majority views). That may not have been your intention 
when developing the NPOV policy, but that's how it stands now. I urge 
you to clarify it if it's not how it should be.

> Sometimes we exclude views, but more commonly we move them to where
> they belong -- in an article about theories that are not widely
> accepted.

Which is still biasing towards "credibility", and hence not compatible 
with the NPOV as written. I quote: "The neutral point of view policy 
states that one should write articles without bias, representing ALL 
views fairly" (my emphasis on the ALL). I fail to see how shunting some 
views to seperate articles and not others counts as "fair".

Maybe since you developed the NPOV policy, it has an implicit meaning to 
you that I'm not seeing because I'm only reading the words explicitly 
written on [[WP:NPOV]]?

Shane.