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

Mon Dec 13 18:00:51 UTC 2004

This would be fine except that often the claim is that
the 'credible' scientific sources are involved in some
kind of conspiricy, or are systematically unable to
appreciate the field for some reason.

I see where you're going with this, and I agree with
you on a personal level, but we are picking and
choosing which sources are 'credible' based on what we
believe to be right.

Mark

--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> Mark Richards wrote:
> > I think we may be at cross purposes. I think the
> > difficulty is in identifying who the credible
> sources
> > are, and with whom they are credible when you are
> > dealing with things that some people think are
> > pseudoscience and others think are suppressed
> truth.
> 
> Why is it difficult in this case?  Are there
> articles in journals
> which meet standard practices of peer-reviewed
> academic research?
> Credible.  Are there articles in the National
> Enquirer?  Not credible.
> 
> Are there books published by respectable acacemic
> presses?  Credible.
> Are there books published by "New Age" publishers
> who appear to
> publish anything which will sell?  Not credible.
> 
> With ESP, the question is often framed in terms of
> statistical
> probabilities that thus-and-such could have been the
> result of chance
> or not.  While we may not be qualified to directly
> assess the
> statistical evidence itself, we are qualified to
> look at such
> questions of: what is the training of the author? 
> Does this person
> have a PhD in statistics from a reputable
> University?  Does this
> person publish work in peer-reviewed journals?
> 
> I don't see any difficulty at all here, as long as
> we abandon the idea
> that neutrality requires epistemological nihilism.
> 
> In most cases, it is sufficient to simple state the
> unconversial facts
> in a reasonably complete manner.  "A study conducted
> by Professor
> Smith at Harvard University and published in _Review
> of Statistical
> Psychology_ found thus-and-such.  While this
> reflects the broad
> consensus of the scientific community, it is also
> true that a vast
> popular literature continues to promote..."
> 
> --Jimbo
> 
> -- 
> "La nèfle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th
> article on fr.wikipedia.org
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> 

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