Talk:Judy Wilyman

PHD in science

This article hasn't mentioned her PHD in science — Preceding unsigned comment added by 175.34.62.236 (talk) 10:46, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm not ware that she has a PhD in science. Perhapps you are referring to her Master of Science (Population Health)? - Bilby (talk) 10:51, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

She doesn't have one. We mention that in some detail. Guy (help! - typo?) 18:05, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Brull's article

His 2016 article pretty much reads like an opinion piece, and as this is a BLP such an article should be referenced sparingly and only for verifiable facts. Thus I have removed opinions offered by this writer and law student, and perhaps additional references to this source are also due for removal. CatCafe (talk) 14:12, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Brull provides a small amount of critical balance, which is valuable in the article,. Now Martin's claim that the thesis is solely in the realm of social policy and thus shouldn't need to be evaluated for scientific rigour remains largely unchallenged. Martin's point is a resonable one and is worth making if it was valid - having a counter argument is helpful. BTW, Michael Brull is not a "law student" - he is a qualified lawyer with multiple degrees, currently working with the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, so I'm inlined to give his opinons some credibility. - Bilby (talk) 14:44, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

No-one suggested leaving Martin's opinions out, you're misrepresenting what I said. Brull's opinions in his opinion piece should be left out as is standard in a BLP. And where he currently works, four years or so after graduation, add no weight to his 2016 article. CatCafe (talk) 14:58, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Brull was admitted to the Supreme Court of NSW before this article was written, so he was not a "law student", hence my comment, and subsequently has shown himself to be an expert in policy (which is what Martin was claiming the thesis was about). However, my point is that Brull provided a counter to Martin's claims. As you have now removed Brull's counter, Martin's claim is without a response to balance it. - Bilby (talk) 15:04, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

We don't need to provide a counter to Martin's claims - it's an article about Wilyman, not Martin. But as a solution I wouldn't be against also removing Martin's opinions contained in this opinion piece. No-one else seems to have supported Brull's opinions in the proceeding five years, so his opinions are a minority view, and still not appropriate for BLP. CatCafe (talk) 15:31, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Martin's claims are valid - if this was a thesis just on policy, then it would make sense that it would be evaluated on policy. But Brull (who is qualified to speak about policy) countered by pointing out that the thesis was as much about science and therefore the science should have been evaluated along with the policy. I see value in having Martin's point, but I also see value in having Brull's response. - Bilby (talk) 15:41, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Well that's your opinion. And opinions taken from opinion pieces have no place in BLPs. So you and I disagree. CatCafe (talk) 15:49, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Bilby, Martin's claims are not valid because an independent review of the PhD thesis shows that it does not meet even minimal standards of academic rigour.

Martin has a dog in the fight. He was burned when he went AIDS denialist, and now he argues in print that any criticism of medicine is presumptively valid, even when it's plainly in bad faith as Wilyman's work is. Five of the eleven cites on Google Scholar, are Martin arguing that Wilyman is being suppressed because her PhD was rightly called out as policy-based evidence making, and he's being suppressed for enabling it. Guy (help! - typo?) 19:47, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

In this entire article, there were a grand total of four statements defending the aawarding of the thesis. You have reduced this to three. What you are doing is not making an NPOV article, but a hit piece. For the sake of balance, we can and should have some coverage of statements published in reliable secondary sources which provide an alternative view. As you say, Martin is the leading defender of Wilyman - yes, that would be because he is her suprvisor, but to ignore this is not how we create an NPOV article. - Bilby (talk) 22:25, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Adding Brull's opinions is attempting to create false-balance. As it now stands NPOV is satisfied. CatCafe (talk) 22:53, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

There may be a small misunderstanding. My issue with JzG's edits is that he removed Martin's defence of the examination process for the thesis, even though it was published in a reliable secondary source. My issue more generally is that now we've removed almost everything that wasn't entirely negative about Wilyman. This doesn't avoid a false balance - it creates a virtual hit piece, where it is almost exclusivly negative. Per NPOV, we need to be more balanced, but the recent edits have removed what little balance that the article has had maintained over many years, based on a nothing more than personal opinions. I guess the only things we can do is follow your advice and remove all personal opinion from the article, which would see us remove Gorski and Petousis-Harris as a starting point, or alternativly try and return some less-negative voices to the article to make it slightly more NPOV again. I'd rather the latter. - Bilby (talk) 08:06, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

I never said such. It's only the opinions offered by Brull in his own primary source opinion piece that are in question. The reason why Brull's opinion is not reproduced in a secondary source is because no author has seen fit to give it any value. Gorski and Petousis-Harris are experts in the field, Brull is not. Seems you've got nothing else to contribute, so let's leave the article as is. Your cooperation in advance is appreciated. CatCafe (talk) 10:18, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm aware of what you said. I'm saying that JzG removed Martin's statement. In combination with your removal, we have a problem, but right now I'm commenting on the removal of Martin. There are currently two removals being discussed. - Bilby (talk) 10:48, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Bilby, the source was Brull's interview with Martin, a primary source. Martin has a highly idiosyncratic POV on this. Similar to his POV on AIDs. He's in a tiny minority, and his defence is not of the process, but of himself, because he was the process. He found a substitute reviewer when one recommended not awarding, for example. His position is fringe on this. Guy (help! - typo?) 10:26, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure you are aware of how thesis reviews are conducted in Australia. iI two reviewers provide different results - such as one accepts the thesis and one does not, or one offers a 1st and the other a 3rd - it is put to a third reviewer to break the deadlock. I've been a third reviewer for a thesis in the past. This is not a case of "he found a substitute reviewer when one recommended not awarding, for example", but standard practice in evaluating PhDs.

The fundamental problem, I think, is that you treat this as about "Martin, the AIDS denier", or "Wyliman, the anti-vaxxer". I'm certainly opposed to Wyliman's views, and if it is really the case that Martin is an AIDS denier (he says not) then I'm opposed to that. But in a BLP their views are irrelevant - it is about creating an NPOV article. We don't do that by saying that one view can't be repesented because we disagree with the person's stance, or feel that they are involved. By dint of being involved their view carries a certain amount of weight. Indeed, if you want to say that this is fundamentally about Martin, then we need to include his responce, even if it is (as was the case) to then argue that it is incorrect. - Bilby (talk) 10:55, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

CatCafe, We can do without it. We have proper sources that give a more objective overview, and much of this is philosophical debate about why it's technically OK to award a social studies PhD to an antivaxer who then represents it as a science doctorate and charges money to give misleading evidence about vaccines in court. Guy (help! - typo?) 19:45, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Unrelaible source

I've removed the reference to [1] because the original source is a self-published blog, [2]. Given that the author is wrtiing anonymously under a psuedonym, and the the origainl source of the article is a self-published blog post, (which in turn was republished to Debrief Daily, which was connected with MamaMia- hence the currentl location of the republished post), it would normally be considered to fail BLP requirements. In this case we have an easy solution, however, as we have a much better, fully-BLP compliant source for the same claim, so we don't need to remove the claim about Wilyman - just restict it to sources which meet BLP. - Bilby (talk) 06:08, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Sourcing of doctoral claims

First off, just to be clear given this edit summary, this has absolutly nothing to do with antivax POVs, positive or negative. According to WP:BLPSPS we cannot use a self-published source for claims about a living person, unless the living person is the author. Claiming what Willyman argued in her thesis is a claim about Wilyman - therefore we cannot use the self published sources at [3] to reference it. Which is fine, because we don't have to - we have a perfectly viable non-self-published source [4] (now strangely removed by CatCafe, but still referenced in text) which is, in fact, the actual source of the description we used, given that we write "Brull reports that according to supervisor Brian Martin, Wilyman's thesis makes four major points".

So CatCafe, can you explain why we should use a source that violates BLP in preference to one which does not, when there is absolutely no change in the text required? - Bilby (talk) 06:17, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

It has been a couple of days with no further comment. Given that the source violates WP:BLPSPS as it is being used, and that replacing it with the source originally used would require no change in content nor the removal of the source from the article (it will still be used elsewhere), I think it is best if we follow BLP and replace it. - Bilby (talk) 02:04, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 9 December 2024

Add last paragraph in Section "University Response"

The Australian Skeptic Magazine reported in the December 2024 issue that a complaint of academic misconduct was submitted to the University of Wollongong in August 2024. The article showed that Wilyman’s thesis contains many flaws, and linked to a list of 58 examples of errors, omissions, non-sequiturs, misrepresentations and falsehoods. The response from the University in October 2024 was ‘Your concerns have been noted however the University will not be taking action in relation to this matter.’

Reference :‘The Skeptic’ Vol 44, no 4. December 2024 page 10 Turlinjah-97 (talk) 22:00, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, but I am not seeing anything notworthy to add. Previous requests to re-examine the thesis were turned down, so a new request 8 years later also being turned down doesn't seem surprising. - Bilby (talk) 04:50, 11 December 2024 (UTC)