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

Fri Dec 10 19:41:53 UTC 2004

On 12/10/04 4:38 AM, "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> 
>> Mark Richards wrote:
>>  
>> 
>>> This becomes more and more difficult in controversial subjects, like
>>> water floridization (sp?) for example, or ESP. Who are the 'experts'
>>> on the subject?
>>> 
> It's "fluoridation".
> 
>> I don't really see what the difficulty is.  I'm not trying to be dense
>> here, but to me this is quite simple.
>> 
>> Our current article on Extra-Sensory Perception, for example, is quite
>> bad.  And the reason is precisely the lack of _credible_ sources.
>> These exist, but the current article appears to be written by people
>> who would prefer for these not to be named.
>> 
> I agree that that article is dreadful.  To begin with it is sprinkled
> throughout with with words like "supposed" or "alleged" which if
> repeated tend to bias the commentary, and certainly detract from the
> flow of the text.  Expressions  like "ESP's critics, a group that
> includes most mainstream scientists," is a gratuitous reference to the
> authority of scientists.  I think that it would be closer to the truth
> to say that most scientists have never paid any serious attention to
> ESP, so that the basis which that majority criticizes ESP is its own
> lack of knowledge.  That to me is not very reassuring.

Actually, no. Most scientists believed in some form of ESP in the 1950s as
initial studies (I believe some of the most prominent coming out of
Berkeley) indicated evidence for it.[1]

 All such studies were found to be unrepeatable, investigatorial bias and
subconscious coaching were found to be causing the results, and the myth of
ESP was laid to rest.

[1] See A.M. Turing's "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", Mind, October
1950 (aka the Turing Test paper):

 "I assume that the reader is familiar with the idea of extra-sensory
perception, and the meaning of the four items of it, viz. telepathy,
clairvoyance, precognition and psycho-kinesis. These disturbing phenomena
seem to deny all our usual scientific ideas. How we should like to discredit
them! Unfortunately the statistical evidence, at least for telepathy, is
overwhelming. It is very difficult to rearrange one's ideas so as to fit
these new facts in. Once one has accepted them it does not seem a very big
step to believe in ghosts and bogies. The idea that our bodies move simply
according to the known laws of physics, together with some others not yet
discovered but somewhat similar, would be one of the first to go.

 This argument is to my mind quite a strong one. One can say in reply that
many scientific theories seem to remain workable in practice, in spite of
clashing with E.S.P.; that in fact one can get along very nicely if one
forgets about it. This is rather cold comfort, and one fears that thinking
is just the kind of phenomenon where E.S.P. may be especially  relevant."