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I have deleted two references given in a footnote. Reasons:
The quotation given in the first citation -- "this remarkable compendium of pseudoscience" -- refers not to FA but to another book by M. Cremo (Human Devolution, 2003). Doubtless the author cited would equally condemn FA, but she doesn't refer to it.
The second -- a letter to the editor -- doesn't directly condemn the book as "pseudoscience."Though again I have little doubt that "pseudoscience" would be the author's view, he doesn't directly say so. And compared to Murray and Groves (also cited in the footnote), the source is weak, and the author's brief comments add scant value.
Cordially, O Govinda ( talk) 02:30, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
Our lede says that FA "has been widely criticised by the scientific community" and supports this with a footnote saying "For example:" and listing several works.
From that list, I have deleted two works -- an article by Brown and one by Nanda -- because they don't support what they're cited for.
The Brown article mentions FA only in one sentence, and that sentence offers no criticism and says nothing about criticism by the scientific community.
The Nanda article, too, says nothing about criticism by the scientific community, it mentions FA only once, in passing, and offers no specific criticism of FA.
Another work in the list -- Numbers 2006 -- is problematic. The ISBN led me to an edition in which the cited page numbers don't exist. I'd rather not just delete the reference. Could someone here find the relevant text and fix the reference?
The citation to The Counter-Creationism Handbook is also problematic. The cited reference also says nothing about criticism by the scientific community. Nothing I could find about the author, Marc Isaak, indicates that he is a scientist. And this is the entire content of the book's criticism of FA:
"1. Cremo and Thompson supported their claim with Vedic scripture. They claimed scientific support for it, but the science they cited was old and discredited.
"2. More seriously, Cremo and Thompson were selective in what they cited. The vast majority of evidence shows that hominids have developed more or less gradually over the past 6 or more million years and that modern humans are much younger (Tattersall 1995.)."
This reads to me more like "talking points for anti-creationists" than evidence of serious "criticism by the scientific community." And (1) has the disadvantage of being untrue. The book is so very silent about Vedic scripture that Colin Graves, in his negative review of FA, complains that C & T "avoid talking about the religious content of their perspective." Graves's review also acknowledges that not all the material is old. Nor discredited.
Does anyone wish to stand up for keeping the citation to The Counter-Creationism Handbook?
Cordially, O Govinda ( talk) 15:08, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
IRWolfie-: Perhaps before making such a large-scale deletion of material another editor has worked hard on, you might consider the more collegial and less abrasive approach of first putting the matter up for discussion.
It's not clear to me why a chapter contributed by an eminent scholar to a volume edited by another reputable scholar should be dismissed as "unreliable." Could you explain? And would you regard such a judgment -- "unreliable" -- as "uncontroversial" and unworthy of prior discussion?
It's also not clear to me why the label "creationist" (is that meant to be tantamount to "intellectual leper"?) should be enough to automatically disqualify the writings of a professor emeritus of philosophy with a CV as long as my arm. Do you believe that anyone to whom you can attach that label is automatically an unreliable source?
That apart: In context, what Dr. Bakar's views might be about the creation of the universe strikes me as irrelevant. Nothing in the material you've deleted expresses Dr. Bakar's personal opinions about that matter (or any other). Rather, the material gives a neutral summary -- no value judgments expressed -- of one of Thompson's arguments. Do you suppose that this professor of philosophy's theological persuasions render him unfit to objectively summarize such an argument?
Finally, do you feel that in an article about a mathematician with views influenced by a religious perspective, we best serve the reader by obliterating from the article any neutral expression of what his views might be?
Thanks for the tip about the Wikipedia convention on the use of "Dr."
Cordially, O Govinda ( talk) 17:07, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
- The article you are quoting from is part of a creationist piece. It is not a reliable source WP:RS, and this is undue weight WP:WEIGHT, IRWolfie- ( talk) 20:20, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Billions is suggested in fact, although only once. [1]. And you can't dismiss what Cremo says about a book he co-authored, eg "presence going That far back in time. In our book 'Forbidden Archeology,' my coauthor Rchard L Thompson (Sadaputa Dasa) and I documented extensive evidence. In the form of human skeletons, human footprints and human artifacts, showng that humans Hke ourselves have inhabited the earth for hundreds of mllions of years, just as the Puranas tell us. This evidence is not very well known because of a process of knowledge filtration that operates in the scientific world. Evidence that contradicts the Darwinian theory of human evolution is set aside, ignored, and eventually forgotten." [2]. Dougweller ( talk) 13:12, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- For a comprehensive discussion of this issue, please review the Wikipedia article talk page for Forbidden Archeology at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Forbidden_Archeology. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.131.70.204 ( talk) 18:34, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
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| This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Richard L. Thompson article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
| Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
|
Archives:
1,
2,
3Auto-archiving period: 3 months
|
| Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
|
| This article was nominated for deletion on 3 May 2014. The result of the discussion was keep. |
|
| This article was nominated for deletion on 23 July 2011 (UTC). The result of the discussion was no-consensus. |
|
| This article was nominated for deletion on 14 October 2011 (UTC). The result of the discussion was keep. |
|
| This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| The
contentious topics procedure applies to this page. This page is related to
pseudoscience and
fringe science, which has been
designated as a contentious topic. Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator. Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page. |
| Arbitration Ruling on the Treatment of Pseudoscience In December of 2006 the Arbitration Committee ruled on guidelines for the presentation of topics as pseudoscience in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience. The final decision was as follows:
|
I have deleted two references given in a footnote. Reasons:
The quotation given in the first citation -- "this remarkable compendium of pseudoscience" -- refers not to FA but to another book by M. Cremo (Human Devolution, 2003). Doubtless the author cited would equally condemn FA, but she doesn't refer to it.
The second -- a letter to the editor -- doesn't directly condemn the book as "pseudoscience."Though again I have little doubt that "pseudoscience" would be the author's view, he doesn't directly say so. And compared to Murray and Groves (also cited in the footnote), the source is weak, and the author's brief comments add scant value.
Cordially, O Govinda ( talk) 02:30, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
Our lede says that FA "has been widely criticised by the scientific community" and supports this with a footnote saying "For example:" and listing several works.
From that list, I have deleted two works -- an article by Brown and one by Nanda -- because they don't support what they're cited for.
The Brown article mentions FA only in one sentence, and that sentence offers no criticism and says nothing about criticism by the scientific community.
The Nanda article, too, says nothing about criticism by the scientific community, it mentions FA only once, in passing, and offers no specific criticism of FA.
Another work in the list -- Numbers 2006 -- is problematic. The ISBN led me to an edition in which the cited page numbers don't exist. I'd rather not just delete the reference. Could someone here find the relevant text and fix the reference?
The citation to The Counter-Creationism Handbook is also problematic. The cited reference also says nothing about criticism by the scientific community. Nothing I could find about the author, Marc Isaak, indicates that he is a scientist. And this is the entire content of the book's criticism of FA:
"1. Cremo and Thompson supported their claim with Vedic scripture. They claimed scientific support for it, but the science they cited was old and discredited.
"2. More seriously, Cremo and Thompson were selective in what they cited. The vast majority of evidence shows that hominids have developed more or less gradually over the past 6 or more million years and that modern humans are much younger (Tattersall 1995.)."
This reads to me more like "talking points for anti-creationists" than evidence of serious "criticism by the scientific community." And (1) has the disadvantage of being untrue. The book is so very silent about Vedic scripture that Colin Graves, in his negative review of FA, complains that C & T "avoid talking about the religious content of their perspective." Graves's review also acknowledges that not all the material is old. Nor discredited.
Does anyone wish to stand up for keeping the citation to The Counter-Creationism Handbook?
Cordially, O Govinda ( talk) 15:08, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
IRWolfie-: Perhaps before making such a large-scale deletion of material another editor has worked hard on, you might consider the more collegial and less abrasive approach of first putting the matter up for discussion.
It's not clear to me why a chapter contributed by an eminent scholar to a volume edited by another reputable scholar should be dismissed as "unreliable." Could you explain? And would you regard such a judgment -- "unreliable" -- as "uncontroversial" and unworthy of prior discussion?
It's also not clear to me why the label "creationist" (is that meant to be tantamount to "intellectual leper"?) should be enough to automatically disqualify the writings of a professor emeritus of philosophy with a CV as long as my arm. Do you believe that anyone to whom you can attach that label is automatically an unreliable source?
That apart: In context, what Dr. Bakar's views might be about the creation of the universe strikes me as irrelevant. Nothing in the material you've deleted expresses Dr. Bakar's personal opinions about that matter (or any other). Rather, the material gives a neutral summary -- no value judgments expressed -- of one of Thompson's arguments. Do you suppose that this professor of philosophy's theological persuasions render him unfit to objectively summarize such an argument?
Finally, do you feel that in an article about a mathematician with views influenced by a religious perspective, we best serve the reader by obliterating from the article any neutral expression of what his views might be?
Thanks for the tip about the Wikipedia convention on the use of "Dr."
Cordially, O Govinda ( talk) 17:07, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
- The article you are quoting from is part of a creationist piece. It is not a reliable source WP:RS, and this is undue weight WP:WEIGHT, IRWolfie- ( talk) 20:20, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Billions is suggested in fact, although only once. [1]. And you can't dismiss what Cremo says about a book he co-authored, eg "presence going That far back in time. In our book 'Forbidden Archeology,' my coauthor Rchard L Thompson (Sadaputa Dasa) and I documented extensive evidence. In the form of human skeletons, human footprints and human artifacts, showng that humans Hke ourselves have inhabited the earth for hundreds of mllions of years, just as the Puranas tell us. This evidence is not very well known because of a process of knowledge filtration that operates in the scientific world. Evidence that contradicts the Darwinian theory of human evolution is set aside, ignored, and eventually forgotten." [2]. Dougweller ( talk) 13:12, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- For a comprehensive discussion of this issue, please review the Wikipedia article talk page for Forbidden Archeology at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Forbidden_Archeology. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.131.70.204 ( talk) 18:34, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
- Start-Class biography articles
- Start-Class biography (science and academia) articles
- Unknown-importance biography (science and academia) articles
- Science and academia work group articles
- WikiProject Biography articles
- Start-Class Creationism articles
- Low-importance Creationism articles
- WikiProject Creationism articles
- Start-Class Hinduism articles
- Low-importance Hinduism articles
- Start-Class Krishnaism articles
- Low-importance Krishnaism articles
- Pseudoscience articles under contentious topics procedure