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Abu Bakr al-Razi article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
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![]() | Abu Bakr al-Razi is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed. | ||||||||||||
![]() | This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on June 12, 2004. | ||||||||||||
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Current status: Former featured article |
![]() | On 7 March 2022, it was proposed that this article be moved from Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi to Al-Razi. The result of the discussion was moved. |
There is a recurring issue of good faith editors adding to this article that al-Razi discovered ethanol, as well as sulfuric acid, citing sources that do not themselves refer to any other source (in particular, these sources fail to tell us in which primary sources the claims are based). This means that none of the sources making these claims are properly secondary sources, but per WP:PSTS secondary sources rely on primary sources for their material, making analytic or evaluative claims about them and articles may make an analytic, evaluative, interpretive, or synthetic claim only if it has been published by a reliable secondary source.
Now if no proper secondary source exists, why do all these sources repeat these claims? For two reasons.
He discovered and purified alcohol (ethanol) and pioneered its use in medicine. Also, he is credited with the discovery of sulfuric acid, the “work horse” of modern chemistry and chemical engineeringvs Wikipedia 2006
As an alchemist, Razi is credited with the discovery of sulfuric acid, the "work horse" of modern chemistry and chemical engineering. He also discovered ethanol and its refinement and use in medicine). One other source ( Amr & Tbakhi 2007) uses very similar wording
he is credited with the discovery of sulfuric acid and ethanol, and Schlosser 2011 actually just cites our Wikipedia article.
Of course, while it's interesting to try to uncover just why all these sources are repeating the same unfounded claims, the most salient point for our purposes is simply that there is no proper modern secondary source, as policy requires. In this context, it should be noted that this source refers for the alcohol claim to al-Hassan & Hill 1986, and someone should check what al-Hassan & Hill 1986 are basing the claim on (I don't have access to this source). If they are referring to a primary source we may want to include a paragraph on them in our article. At the same time it should be noted that the main author of al-Hassan & Hill 1986 ( Ahmad Y. al-Hassan) later wrote a dedicated article on the history of alcohol in Arabic texts (first as a chapter in al-Hassan 2001 pp. 65–69 and then as a 2009 paper republished online called Alcohol and the Distillation of Wine in Arabic Sources From the Eighth Century Onwards), in which he does not even mention al-Razi. This needs some looking into.
For now, please do not add the claims to the article unless you've found a properly secondary source that bases the claims on an analysis of primary sources. Since we as Wikipedia may in part be responsible for the wide circulation of these claims, having featured them prominently for 17 years, it's also our responsibility to get it right now. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 17:26, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
Many sources attest 854–932 as when he lived, thus these should be included in the footnote as other possible dates.
See:
BhamBoi ( talk) 21:46, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
@ H20346 I observed that you reintroduced content that @ Apaugasma had previously removed. As a new user, I aim to seek clarification. Regarding WP:NPOV, my understanding is that statements need to be framed from an third-party perspective. Could you please clarify what message or point the author intended to convey by including those two quotes? Some context would be helpful in understanding their significance. Unfortunately, I don't have access to the book. LeónGonsalvesofGoa ( talk) 17:25, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
from Razi's pen). This is thoroughly contradicted by actual Razi experts such as Stroumsa 1999, Rashed 2008, Adamson 2021, and others. When non-experts like Starr 2015 contradict experts such as the scholars mentioned, they too become unreliable in context.Only an author who explicity declares which work precisely any Razi 'quote' was taken from (Abu Hatim, al-Biruni, etc.) and who provides a discussion, however brief, of whether the statement is really likely to go back to al-Razi himself, would be reliable in this context. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 13:53, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
When writing about a topic, basing content on the best respected and most authoritative reliable sources helps to prevent bias, undue weight, and other NPOV disagreements.If every source that is nominally 'reliable' (e.g., because it is published by a university press) would be equally valid as any other nominally 'reliable' source, any editor could just hunt online for a 'reliable' source that supports their own personal views and demand that it be included in the article (there are actually a lot of inexperienced editors who do just this). To prevent this from happening, as well as the endless debates about neutrality that would ensue, Wikipedia editors should always be looking for the most authoritative sources on any subject, and let article content be determined by what they are saying. This is what we call 'due weight'.Sadly, knowing how to find authoritative sources is a skill that only very few people actually possess, to the point that 9 out of 10 Wikipedia editors are not even aware that there is such a thing as 'most authoritative sources' (I guess this is something most people only learn from being themselves involved in academic research, and for some reason most academics are scared to death even by the idea of editing Wikipedia). And so this often is quite a hellish place, where people are constantly adding 'stuff they found' without any regard for its academic status in the relevant field. A lot of articles consist entirely of such random 'stuff' (actually this one is also largely built from that type of editing), and the job of experienced editors is often to 'weed out' the most egregious mistakes from articles that, taken as a whole, are and will remain a total mess.In that sense, the large majority of Wikipedia's articles are just temporary write-ups that, while offering some basic encyclopedic information as long as they are there, are really waiting for an expert to come around and rewrite them from scratch into something that actually represents the existing knowledge about the subject. Abu Bakr al-Razi is very much one of these articles. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 01:42, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 January 2024 and 7 May 2024. Further details are available
on the course page. Student editor(s):
Loujienkh (
article contribs).
— Assignment last updated by Kberberian ( talk) 15:31, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Abu Bakr al-Razi article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find medical sources: Source guidelines · PubMed · Cochrane · DOAJ · Gale · OpenMD · ScienceDirect · Springer · Trip · Wiley · TWL |
Archives:
1Auto-archiving period: 150 days
![]() |
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | Abu Bakr al-Razi is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed. | ||||||||||||
![]() | This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on June 12, 2004. | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Current status: Former featured article |
![]() | On 7 March 2022, it was proposed that this article be moved from Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi to Al-Razi. The result of the discussion was moved. |
There is a recurring issue of good faith editors adding to this article that al-Razi discovered ethanol, as well as sulfuric acid, citing sources that do not themselves refer to any other source (in particular, these sources fail to tell us in which primary sources the claims are based). This means that none of the sources making these claims are properly secondary sources, but per WP:PSTS secondary sources rely on primary sources for their material, making analytic or evaluative claims about them and articles may make an analytic, evaluative, interpretive, or synthetic claim only if it has been published by a reliable secondary source.
Now if no proper secondary source exists, why do all these sources repeat these claims? For two reasons.
He discovered and purified alcohol (ethanol) and pioneered its use in medicine. Also, he is credited with the discovery of sulfuric acid, the “work horse” of modern chemistry and chemical engineeringvs Wikipedia 2006
As an alchemist, Razi is credited with the discovery of sulfuric acid, the "work horse" of modern chemistry and chemical engineering. He also discovered ethanol and its refinement and use in medicine). One other source ( Amr & Tbakhi 2007) uses very similar wording
he is credited with the discovery of sulfuric acid and ethanol, and Schlosser 2011 actually just cites our Wikipedia article.
Of course, while it's interesting to try to uncover just why all these sources are repeating the same unfounded claims, the most salient point for our purposes is simply that there is no proper modern secondary source, as policy requires. In this context, it should be noted that this source refers for the alcohol claim to al-Hassan & Hill 1986, and someone should check what al-Hassan & Hill 1986 are basing the claim on (I don't have access to this source). If they are referring to a primary source we may want to include a paragraph on them in our article. At the same time it should be noted that the main author of al-Hassan & Hill 1986 ( Ahmad Y. al-Hassan) later wrote a dedicated article on the history of alcohol in Arabic texts (first as a chapter in al-Hassan 2001 pp. 65–69 and then as a 2009 paper republished online called Alcohol and the Distillation of Wine in Arabic Sources From the Eighth Century Onwards), in which he does not even mention al-Razi. This needs some looking into.
For now, please do not add the claims to the article unless you've found a properly secondary source that bases the claims on an analysis of primary sources. Since we as Wikipedia may in part be responsible for the wide circulation of these claims, having featured them prominently for 17 years, it's also our responsibility to get it right now. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 17:26, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
Many sources attest 854–932 as when he lived, thus these should be included in the footnote as other possible dates.
See:
BhamBoi ( talk) 21:46, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
@ H20346 I observed that you reintroduced content that @ Apaugasma had previously removed. As a new user, I aim to seek clarification. Regarding WP:NPOV, my understanding is that statements need to be framed from an third-party perspective. Could you please clarify what message or point the author intended to convey by including those two quotes? Some context would be helpful in understanding their significance. Unfortunately, I don't have access to the book. LeónGonsalvesofGoa ( talk) 17:25, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
from Razi's pen). This is thoroughly contradicted by actual Razi experts such as Stroumsa 1999, Rashed 2008, Adamson 2021, and others. When non-experts like Starr 2015 contradict experts such as the scholars mentioned, they too become unreliable in context.Only an author who explicity declares which work precisely any Razi 'quote' was taken from (Abu Hatim, al-Biruni, etc.) and who provides a discussion, however brief, of whether the statement is really likely to go back to al-Razi himself, would be reliable in this context. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 13:53, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
When writing about a topic, basing content on the best respected and most authoritative reliable sources helps to prevent bias, undue weight, and other NPOV disagreements.If every source that is nominally 'reliable' (e.g., because it is published by a university press) would be equally valid as any other nominally 'reliable' source, any editor could just hunt online for a 'reliable' source that supports their own personal views and demand that it be included in the article (there are actually a lot of inexperienced editors who do just this). To prevent this from happening, as well as the endless debates about neutrality that would ensue, Wikipedia editors should always be looking for the most authoritative sources on any subject, and let article content be determined by what they are saying. This is what we call 'due weight'.Sadly, knowing how to find authoritative sources is a skill that only very few people actually possess, to the point that 9 out of 10 Wikipedia editors are not even aware that there is such a thing as 'most authoritative sources' (I guess this is something most people only learn from being themselves involved in academic research, and for some reason most academics are scared to death even by the idea of editing Wikipedia). And so this often is quite a hellish place, where people are constantly adding 'stuff they found' without any regard for its academic status in the relevant field. A lot of articles consist entirely of such random 'stuff' (actually this one is also largely built from that type of editing), and the job of experienced editors is often to 'weed out' the most egregious mistakes from articles that, taken as a whole, are and will remain a total mess.In that sense, the large majority of Wikipedia's articles are just temporary write-ups that, while offering some basic encyclopedic information as long as they are there, are really waiting for an expert to come around and rewrite them from scratch into something that actually represents the existing knowledge about the subject. Abu Bakr al-Razi is very much one of these articles. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 01:42, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 January 2024 and 7 May 2024. Further details are available
on the course page. Student editor(s):
Loujienkh (
article contribs).
— Assignment last updated by Kberberian ( talk) 15:31, 16 February 2024 (UTC)