User:Linas/Science controversy

Wikipedia hs become a magnet for anyone with any intellectual life. This includes not only balanced personalities wih legitimate interests, but also promoters, cranks, kooks, snake-oil salesmen, and those with an inflated ego and sense of self-importance. Some of these attentions end up distorting the content of Wikipedia, and tend to embroil Wikipedians in controversy and argument. This is a real problem, and it saps the energies and emotions of the particpants. Good editors can be and sometimes are driven away by bad editors. There is concern that the cranks, kooks and self-promoters will someday outnumber the good editors.

Chris Hillman examines this in far greater depth, in the essay User:Hillman/Digging, focusing in particular on the issue of uncovering the identity of those who make bad-faith edits.

Academics in trouble!

Professional academics are coming to Wikipedia! And some of them are getting into trouble. It seems that some very bright people lack the social skills required to collaborate on Wikipedia (What a surprise! Who would have thought?). Scandalous stories! and wild gossip! need not be limited to supermarket tabloids! and TV actors! Sensation can be found where-ever people interact! Here, at WP, we have!

• B. Roy Frieden, a Professor Emeritus of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona has discovered deep and over-arching relationships between everything in every way. Here's a particularly remarkable edit!

• Carl Hewitt, an eminent retired computer science professor who refuses to engage in meaningful dialog over highly disputed/controversial edits on topics he's not expert in: See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Carl Hewitt.

• Eric Lerner, a plasma cosmologist who's gone a bit too far in trying to debunk the Big Bang theory: See Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Elerner.

• Bertrand Meyer, a computer science professor and inventor of the Eiffel programming language, who ran into trouble when he started editing that article

Some other wild WP disputes in physics include!

• The Bogdanov affair, where the real world dispute has spilled onto WP.
• The usual suspects over at Category:Pseudoscience, e.g. dubious edits and sock-puppetry of Bernard Haisch; controversy over on Hal Puthoff's page. etc.

Science controversy

A list of WP contrversies I've participated in, some almost vicariously, some casually (too casually, maybe), some righteously (too righteously, perhaps).

• The Carl Hewitt affair, which spanned many many pages and an arbitration or two.
• Bell's theorem, and quantum measurement in general. User:CSTAR is the primary defender against the cranks.
• The User:Reddi perpetual motion machine affair.
• Pseudoscience claims in vacuum energy, free energy, zero-point energy, Casimir effect topics in which I am expert (viz my PhD thesis)
• Depleted uranium, where I pissed off some otherwise reliable WP editors.
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bios theory, a pseudo-scientific uber-theory of something, pushed by User:Lakinekaki, eventually deleted. Discussion spilled to Talk:Chaos theory.
• Emergy and User:Sholto Maud, for making misguided pseudo-physics claims about energy, entropy and the like.
• The Certainty principle, and the declaration of war by User:Hryun, User:Rcq. The science content is recaped at User:Linas/Arbatsky's principle unmasked.
• Orthomolecular medicine. Outright misrepresentation and lying. User:Cri du canard, User:Jefffire and User:Fyslee. The most vicious debate of all.

Evidence room

Hints of the depth and breadth of the trouble that editors at WP have with truth and honesty.

User:Fyslee

User:Fyslee is the sitemaster for quackfiles.com[1]. His WP user page currently states the following: [2]

One should:

• Not tell the truth (subjective & personal) about the subject, (selling)
• But tell the facts (objective & documented) about the viewpoint. (presenting)

I believe in truth, I believe that truth is objective, and I do not believe that truth is "personal" and "subjective". I believe that anyone who thinks that truth is personal and subjective will end up deceiving themselves and others. It is a shame that an anti-quack chooses to be as offensive and as crooked as a quack. Two wrongs do not make a right.

Linas, I am definitely not "the sitemaster for quackwatch.com," although that would be a great honor. As for my comments you quote (about "truth" and "facts"), as long as you fail to understand the NPOV policy, you will continue to misunderstand what I write there. You just don't get it. -- Fyslee 22:45, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for correcting the website name. I'm sure it was an innocent mistake. Easy to do....;-) -- Fyslee 16:40, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I have now expanded and clarified what I wrote. -- Fyslee 12:18, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

It is known by psychologists, public-relations consultants, marketing directors, political spin-doctors and propagandists that a collection of "objective and documented" facts can be sculpted and molded to support just about any conclusion at all. In our society, such sculpting is pervasive. I hold Wikipedia to a higher standard, that of attempting to tell the truth. There may be special cases where the truth is so hard to come by that one must resort to documenting points-of-view; but this should be the exception, not the norm. Please note that the WP policy WP:V is the setting of a bar for inclusion, and not a guideline for general article structure.

I see we basically agree, except for the part about general article structure. I too expect Wikipedia to tell the truth, but unfortunately(?) (or not....others with greater wisdom have seen fit to make the rules) the NPOV policy requires that all significant POV be presented, which automatically means that what one person considers to be the truth will be presented, and what that same person believes to be error, will also be presented. Naturally the other side sees it exactly the same way, but from their POV. This policy insures that a subject is covered from all angles, and that readers not only hear "the truth,", but also learn about dissenting viewpoints. That's what makes this an encyclopedia, rather than a sales brochure. As you may have noted, I still think it's fine to write from one POV outside of Wikipedia. There is certainly a place for that. -- Fyslee 16:40, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I think we should agree to disagree. I don't beleive that there is ever more than one version of the "truth". I don't think your interpretatin of the NPOV policy is correct. linas 00:52, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

User:Linas

User:Linas is the keeper of this very page. So its only fair that he be held to the standards of 'truth' he sets for others. Over on the Process Physics discussion he's said, of Reg Cahill's work :

Gack. Were it not for the university reference, I'd call this pure, unadulterated pseudophysics. Hell, even with the university :reference, its still unadulterated pseudoscience. My patented smell-o-meter finds the following problems:

Unfortunately for Linas, there's no record of his 'patented smell-o-meter' having had a patent issued. So he must be being facetious. That aside, its obviously unscientific to rely on smell when evaluating another person's theories, unless those are the theories of Luca Turin. Let's cut to the chase and examine the substance of Linas' complaints though.

Uses the words quantum foam

Looks like as pseudo-scientific a complaint as they come. He doesn't go on to tell us what the problem with such words is. As such this is an argument from authority. Next up, we have:

Explains everything, everywhere (rather than focusing on single, verifiable claims)

Another argument from authority, and authority which is contradicted by Cahill himself. Cahill does say there's still work to be done in generating more explanations, so the 'everything, everywhere' claim here is mere pseudo-scientific hyperbole. Moving on, there's:

Must be correct because it explains dark matter

Ooops, this time a logical flaw in Linas' reasoning, and a false premise to boot. Cahill does state that under his understanding of reality, there's no need for such a thing as 'Dark Matter'. Maybe that's what Linas is construing as an explanation - Cahill sees that 'Dark Matter' is just an epicycle to patch up an ailing theory. However, Linas goes further in asserting that somehow, the correctness of Cahill's theory hinges on not requiring such an epicycle. He's got it the wrong way round, and plainly doesn't understand the concept of falsifiability. If Cahill's theory required epicycles, it would be to its demerit. So in Linas' view, it seems Cahill's damned both ways; he can't win.

These observations are interesting given what we see elsewhere on this page about Linas' attitude towards truth on WP. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abraxalito (talk • contribs) on 04:05, 11 August 2007