Jimmy:
Nor to me. But this is one of the problems. Most of
us aren't
interested in pedophilia. Pedophiles are. Let's hold a vote on what
the pedophilia articles should so, a vote on which references are valid,
and see what happens.
Instead what we should do is use serious judgment to determine how to
find out which references are valid, and rely on those judgments. We
can consult with psychologists and sociologists and get an idea of
whether or not a particular user is acting in good faith or just citing
crackpot sources to push a POV.
Thanks for giving me such a nice example to work with. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rind_et_al.
This is perhaps the only scientific study (a meta-analysis of existing
studies) that was condemned by the US House of Representatives. It
concluded that, contrary to mainstrean opinion, child sexual abuse does
not necessarily cause pervasive harm in later life.
Many "experts" would characterize Rind et al. as a "crackpot source".
Now, there has been, over the last 25 years, a gigantic amount of
hysteria about child sexual abuse in the United States. Thousands of
innocent individuals have been accused of abuse in a wave of
allegations, mostly based on the pseudoscientific theory that memories
of abuse are "repressed" and have to be recovered by "trained
therapists" in special "repressed memory therapy" which involves
suggestive questioning, hypnosis, "scenario exploration", and drugs.
Respected anti-pseudoscience organizations such as CSICOP have tried to
alert people to this problem.
Good starting points:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_Ritual_Abuse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder
An excellent book on the topic is "Making Monsters: False Memories,
Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria" by Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Booksources&isbn=0520…
Also highly recommended: "Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting
Children from Sex" by Judith Levine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Booksources&isbn=0816…
(With a foreword by Jocelyn Elders, the former US Surgeon General who
was fired by Bill Clinton because she said about masturbation that "it
is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught.")
Suffice it to say that there was and, to some extent, continues to be an
entire "therapy industry" that profited massively from creating "child
sexual abuse" claims (including the most bizarre allegations of murder
and torture you can imagine). Some of these "trained experts" have now
moved on to "therapize" victims of abductions by extraterrestrials.
What does this have to do with Rind et al.? Many of the same people who
work in that industry have massively attacked the Rind study. There were
methodological problems with it (particularly from a European point of
view, where "child abuse" typically refers to acts with children under
14, while in the US, it often refers to persons under 18), but many of
the criticisms were simply very vile personal attacks against the
authors of the study.
Of course, pedophiles near and far have trumpeted Rind et al. as
evidence that child abuse is not harmful. To some extent, they are
correct: The ridiculous assumption that a 16-year-old cannot decide to
have sex and will be instantly traumatized when they do so deserves to
be questioned. The age of consent is something that needs to be
carefully examined on the basis of scientific evidence. To exclude
individual scientists who challenge the emotional mainstream as
"crackpots" is not a good way to do this.
I am absolutely confident that if a pedophilia or child abuse related
article was brought before the ArbCom, and they consulted with an
"expert" on child sexual abuse, the chances are pretty good that said
expert falls into the group of questionable psychologists described
above, and that they would strongly recommend to entirely ban any
mention of Rind et al. from child abuse related articles.
A villified user would be positioned against a trusted and respected
expert. They wouldn't stand a chance.
Such a decision would be highly POV and absolutely incorrect.
It is questionable whether a democratic process would lead to a better
result, but at least someone quoting Rind et al. would not be treated as
a crackpot by some committee which decides the dispute. At least they
would have a chance to submit their arguments to the whole community on
equal footing with everyone else, and the community would have a chance
to read all arguments and *judge for themselves* which ones are plausible.
Hence, the child sexual abuse / pedophilia example is an *excellent*
reason not to delegate any kind of authority to credentialed experts.
Credentialed experts are largely responsible for creating the hysteria
around this topic, and many of them made a lot of money by doing so.
*Especially* in cases where a topic is highly emotionalized, making
decisions based on "expert opinion" is the wrong thing to do, because
the expert is very likely to be biased one way or another.
And I absolutely challenge the notion that, if a decision were made in a
democratic process, nobody would be interested. In fact, I believe that
an emotional topic like pedophilia, if properly announced, would attract
a very large number of commenters and voters.
Yes, there are pedophiles on Wikipedia. That doesn't mean that
everything they say is wrong by default, and that we need some expert to
tell us so. We can deal with these people on our own.
As some have pointed out, this is a choice between credentialism and
open community processes. If we choose credentialism, then we implicitly
assume that experts can be trusted to do the right thing. But history
shows that this is a very, very dangerous assumption to make. Open
processes are the only way that we can reliably challenge experts when
they happen to be wrong.
Erik