User talk:McAcademic

Hi,

I don't think it is a good idea to move all mention of existing criticism out of the leads and into separate "Criticism" sections, as you did in Washoe and Kanzi. In this way, the "pro-" point of view is promoted as the valid one by being kept in the lead, and the "anti-" point of view is marginalized. The lead should contain the most significant info, which in such cases includes the criticism. Compare the leads on other controversial topics such as intelligent design, Ariel Sharon etc.

Best, --91.148.159.4 14:57, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Where the controversy is the story I agree with you that it deserves to be in the lead; however, I don't believe that is the case here. Just because a small group of linguists don't agree with these experiments, does not transform them into a case like intelligent design. Browsing through a few articles on projects to teach animals language it seemed ridiculous that someone had added to the first paragraph of each one that Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker don't believe animals can learn language. If there is actually much more criticism of these experiments (particularly from scientists criticizing methodology rather than linguists making blanket denials) I might change my mind, but it would require a rewrite of the criticism, not simply a reference that Chomsky disagrees.

Look at how criticism of B.F. Skinner is handled for a better example than intelligent design. Intelligent design is a huge political issue, whereas B.F. Skinner is a scientist who other scientists disagree with. This is clearly more akin to the later than the former.

Regards, McAcademic

The controversy doesn't need to be the story. When you summarize the article with the statement "The Washoe project proved this" (rather than "it aimed to prove this") and then expel all mention opposing opinion out of the lead, it's obvious that you're endorsing a POV, and that is prohibited by the NPOV policy of Wikipedia. So how can your position be justified/translated in terms of Wikipedian policies? As far as I understand, you think Pinker and Chomsky are very isolated in their opinions, so their criticism is a tiny minority view which doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the lead, while the other viewpoint (the one stating that the projects in question did prove what they aimed to prove) is totally predominant. (You also seem to assume that linguists are not scientists, and that Pinker is a linguist rather than a psychologist and a cognitive scientist, but let's ignore this for a moment; you also assume that Pinker is not criticizing the concrete methodology of the concrete projects, which is wrong, AFAIK). But in fact, it's pretty well-known that Pinker and Chomsky are not alone, and that there has been a lot of criticism and debate regarding ape language acquisition projects, and it has concerned concrete methodology. Here is an example of a more or less balanced summary of criticism (as well as criticism of criticism). I hope this proves to you that the results of the projects are sufficiently controversial to deserve a balanced lead. And as for the Washoe project in particular, even Savage-Rumbaugh who claims her own ape language acquisition project to have been successful agrees with the criticism levelled against it [1].

Now, I don't normally edit in this field, and I wasn't the one who added the Pinker citation. I also don't have time for lengthy disputes or edit wars on Wikipedia. I will contact the editor who did add it, and I hope he has more time to discuss this. Regards, --91.148.159.4 14:25, 30 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like an argument for rewriting the definitive statement in less positivist terms, which I would not have a problem with -- I do object to the idea that anyone who disagrees with something automatically gets elevated to a prominent position just for the sake of balance.

Maybe this could be solved by making the article more in depth on both what the experiment claimed to have shown and what Chomsky's position is? Part of my objection is that the criticism really took the form of: Chomsky says "Na-uh!" at the end of the first paragraph.

-- McAcademic