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About "Content that interprets or summarizes scriptural passages or narratives should generally be cited to appropriate scholarly sources". Several related articles like David or The Exodus mostly don't follow this approach in the "narrative" section, which seems to work fairly well. The Exodus takes a mostly MOS:PLOT approach, While David has a lot of cites, mostly primary outside "tricky" stuff.
So I suggest we soften the "summarizes" somewhat, something like "though a MOS:PLOTSOURCE approach can work well regarding some scriptural stories." Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 11:55, 24 May 2020 (UTC) I've linked this discussion at Wikiprojects Christianity, Judaism, and Classical Greece and Rome.-- Ermenrich ( talk) 23:29, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
I seem to recall that Wikipedia is a secular encyclopediais exactly the reason WP:RSPSCRIPTURE exists. The majority of scripture is considered fiction by the majority of people and can therefore never be a reliable source, even for its own content. There is ample reason to treat the Bible exactly the same as other scripture. GPinkerton ( talk) 23:47, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Why should editors not remove large amounts of material from the project if it doesn't meet policy? What's the value of keeping it? GPinkerton ( talk) 14:50, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
The Exodus sage in the Bible incorporates events in Egypt after the death of Joseph through the Israelite departure, the wilderness wanderings, and the Sinai revelations, up to be not including the conquest of Canaan. The account, largely in narrative form, spreads over four books of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible.-- Ermenrich ( talk) 23:14, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
- The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (2000)The Jewish liberation from slavery in Egypt. The story of the Exodus is contained in a series of narratives in the book of Exodus. It became the epitome of God's power to rescue his people.
- The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt (2001)The biblical traditions concerning the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt are mostly preserved in the second book of the Hebrew scriptures.
- The Oxford Companion to the Bible (1993)The Exodus, the escape of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt under the leadership of Moses, is the central event of the Hebrew Bible.
- Oxford Dictionary of the Bible (2 ed.) (2010)Israel's departure from Egypt.
GPinkerton, I think it's worse than that. PLOTSOURCE is a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS allowing the cliques of genre fans to engage in what amounts to critical review, using Wikipedia as a publishing venue. It gives carte blanche to film fans to, for example, include intricate trivial plot details and showcase their diligent fandom. I am sure that the intentions are generally pure, but the result is great swathes of content that relies solely on individual Wikipedians' observations of primary material - often visual, not based on text that you can check - and that is not how Wikipedia is supposed to work. OK, it's a rather fundamentalist view, but I have seen too many blatantly interpretive "plot summaries" to be at all sanguine about this. Guy ( help!) 18:59, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Personally I do not think plotsource can be used when there is not only more than 3 but more then 100 versions. It seems just a recipe for edit wars over whether or not witches should live or silly text like "according to the NIJV Hop is the greatest, but according to the RNIV its Hope, whilst the ININV says "and hope if the glowiest". Slatersteven ( talk) 12:43, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Guy's point is excellent, the Bible is the most examines commented on and analysed book in human history. I doubt there is one word that has not been mulled over in countless RS. Why do we need to even use it, what is the text that is being argued over here? Slatersteven ( talk) 16:04, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Sometimes a work will be summarized by secondary sources, which can be used for sourcing. Otherwise, using brief quotation citations from the primary work can be helpful to source key or complex plot points.Obviously that "sometimes" applies here and the "otherwise" does not, which means PLOTSOURCE does not apply to scripture; but if there's confusion, perhaps PLOTSOURCE should be rewritten to more clearly state that if secondary sourcing exists we are required to use it and not primary sourcing. -- Aquillion ( talk) 14:31, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
Scriptural texts, like the Bible and the Quran, are primary sources only suitable for attributed, relevant quotes and in compliance with other Wikipedia content policies and guidelines. Content that interprets or summarizes scriptural passages or narratives should generally be cited to appropriate scholarly sources (for example, in the academic field of religious studies) and attributed when appropriate.I guess some edits take this to mean that a summary of the content of say The Exodus from the Bible is in violation of this guideline. I haven't really understood most of the arguments put forth in favor of limiting summaries of biblical narratives in this way, which mostly hinge on (honestly, extremely detail-oriented) differences in different translation and the fact that various groups hold only their translation to be correct. It could indeed be that there's some degree of talking past each other here.-- Ermenrich ( talk) 21:49, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
Added this discussion at WP:RFCLOSE. Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 09:41, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
Newslinger, pinging you since I assume this means that link #5 at WP:RSPSCRIPTURE needs tweaking at some point. Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 16:04, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
Hello, I think there is a bit of an argument going on to what constitutes a one-hit wonder in the UK chart, with some editors making their own rules up rather than just reflecting what is posted on the Official Charts Company site...so I want to know if we to take the OCC's word to who is credited with a hit single and how many singles that act have or not... [1] but first some background info...
Originally in 2008, Cexycy updated the list and put this in the comments page...
and the reply years later was...
Now a few days ago I added "Party Rock Anthem" by LMFAO/ Lauren Bennett/ GoonRock as it was missing from the list...which is how is is listed on the OCC site [2]. At this point that the one hit wonders list was full of secondary/featured artists and so added it to the article and put the following info in the comments section...
"Info about GoonRock (see below) added under 'Collaborations classified as one-hit wonders' though you might want to move him to the main section. I only have the Virgin book to hand, not the Guinness ones so I cannot check how they listed collaborations between three artists listed equally...though it is likely to be separate in the early days of the Guinness books as something like 'DAVID GUETTA & CHRIS WILLIS' [3] would have been listed as a separate recording act to David Guetta on his own as they've had 4 hits together (if it was just one David Guetta ft Chris Willis that would be added to Guetta's hit total) As the methodology stated in the intro is about two artists releasing a record together and getting to number one and not three artists credited equally by the OCC getting to number one, I wasn't sure where to add GoonRock, but obviously it needs to be on here...
According to the Official Charts Company (OCC), " Party Rock Anthem" is a number one record credited jointly to LMFAO/ Lauren Bennett/ GoonRock. [4] Of these three acts LMFAO are credited with having five Top 75 hits with their other number one " Gettin' Over You" only credited to David Guetta and Chris Willis at this moment (the OCC have decided not to credit LMFAO and Fergie, even though their names are shown on the website, appearing on the single's cover) [5] Lauren Bennett has never had any other hits under her own name, but has had a few hits as part of the band G.R.L., while GoonRock is a producer who has also never had any credited hits of his own. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.154.169.1 ( talk) 15:31, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
...however at this point Tuzapicabit came back after deleting the information...and said...
...however I think that this is not just reporting on what the OCC have put, but turning into a bit of 'original research' by Tuzapicabit as he has put no links to this reasoning...with Tuzapicabit deciding what can or cannot be on the list. However as he didn't want all the secondary artists listed they were all removed from the main list as a compromise...I replied...
"...but you can only go off what the OCC states not what Wikipedia is saying and if the OCC state they are credited jointly then so be it. By the way I have removed all the featured artists from the list because that is your reasoning for GoonRock not being in the main list (he should be, though note that I didn't add him directly to the main list). I have not removed Avery Storm at this point [6] at this point as if you look at the wikipedia article for Nasty Girl (The Notorious B.I.G. song) you can see the cover of the record an it it by Notorious B.I.G. featuring Diddy, Nelly Jagged Edge, and Avery Storm. You can be overly pedantic if you want but all information has to be treated equally, and therefore I expect you to delete Avery Storm from the list if you believe all featured artists are not eligible". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.152.237.218 ( talk) 18:21, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
Now the inclusion of featured artists (or more correctly secondary artists) boils down to the introduction in a very old chart book...which is probably 30 years out of date and one which has not kept up to date with the charts, as in the 1980s any artist with an '&' and 'versus' on their name were seen as a completely separate act and given their own entry. However, now the OCC state that Tina Turner's first hit was "RIVER DEEP, MOUNTAIN HIGH" (number 3 in 1966 with Ike) with Tina having 44 UK Top 75s between 1966 - 2020. Its the same for Cher, who had had 42 UK Top 75s between 1965 - 2013 with her first hit being "I GOT YOU BABE", a number one. So are you going to argue with the Official Charts Company, who are the people whose information we are basing the facts on, the people who make the rules? By the way, there seems to be no information to what makes a hit in the current chart rules for a secondary artist...with the only information being found being the following...
However from the lists of edits it looks like some people have been making it up as they go along, deciding what the rules are...doesn't this go against the idea of Wikipedia, the 'No original research', the neutral point of view, the just 'report on the information from the primary source' idea of the site. I deleted the featured artists from the main list to give people the benefit of the doubt, in good faith, because that what the advice was. But I don't think this is correct, I don't think they should be deleted, I still believe its important information, and I would expect someone to re-edit the information back at some point and maybe put elsewhere in the article.
Its one thing to continue a list from a 1989 Guinness Book of British Hit Singles because the book is not being published, but it does seem that people are sitting on the article, making up their own rules as they go along which is not helping help the wikipedia project, not welcoming to newcomers and you might as well scrap the article and merge it into the main One-hit wonders list as it becomes and as worthy as OnePoll's The Nation's Favourite One Hit Wonders list.
Some of the entries that remain even contradict the OCC's information provided on their site ( "...records with re-recorded vocals (for example, live versions) and Remixes released with substantially different catalogue numbers did not count towards the total and were seen as new hits (see " Blue Monday" as an example). [7] [8]" but if its the Official Charts Company information that people are using to state what is number one then shouldn't it always be the primary source. Do we contradict this source? The people whose chart we are using?
References
The WP:DAILYSTAR, https://dailystar.co.uk/ , is deprecated as tabloid trash with a history of fabrication. I've been removing cites to it, as deprecated. I also removed links to the Irish edition, the Irish Daily Star, https://thestar.ie/ - and Silver seren reverted one, and asked on my talk if this was really the same.
So, this is a question worth going into. We treat the Irish and Scottish editions of The Sun, the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday as being other examples of the same thing. Is the Irish Daily Star the same thing as the Daily Star? Should it be considered deprecated by the deprecation of the UK edition? Is it also tabloid trash that would be a Generally Unreliable source in its own way? Does it have a history of reprinting the UK edition's fabrications? Does it print its own original fabrications? I suspect at this point we need data - David Gerard ( talk) 00:31, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
I can't find any indication that P2P Foundation is a reliable mainstream source, and most of the150-odd links appear to be either self-sourcing ("According to P2P foundation, blah, source, P2P foundation saying blah on its own website") or links to its wiki, which clearly fail RS. The sources we cite are long on cryptobollocks and short on third party commentary - I see very little evidence that any reality-based economists are referencing these articles - it looks like standard in-universe blockchain fandom to me, but David Gerard is better informed on that. It looks to me as if this is a fringe pro-crypto source that we should be using much less than we do, and some of the articles around P2P foundation may be PR. Guy ( help! - typo?) 11:05, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
We currently have 134 citations to mantleplumes.org , which according to this Earth Magazine article is operated by Gillian Foulger, a Professor of Geophysics at Durham University. Both Foulger and the website are promogulators of what is referred to as Plate theory (volcanism), which argues against the prevailing theory of mantle plumes as the cause of geological hotspots like the Hawaiian Islands. As the Earth Magazine article makes clear, "plate theory" isn't out and out fringe, but the existence of mantle plumes is very much considered the mainstream hypothesis. This came to the attention of WikiProject Geology (see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Geology#Plate_theory_(volcanism)) due to the recent creation of the Plate theory (volcanism) article, as well as mass rewriting of hotspot related articles by the author of the article SphericalSong ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) to support the "plate theory" pov and cast doubt on mantle plumes as the source of their origin, citing both mantleplumes.org and Foulger's 2011 book "Plates vs plumes: a geological controversy", see 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 for examples. In my opinion mantleplumes.org displays no evidence of editoral oversight, and is pretty much a self-published source, and self-published sources are totally undue in a topic area like mantle plumes where there extensive reliable peer reviewed journal articles on the topic. Hemiauchenia ( talk) 18:23, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
Every page on this website has been subject to technical review by at least one scientist conversant with the subject material, but that's an incredibly low bar, particularly since there's no editorial board. The
reviewcould just be one person going "looks good" and clicking "publish". I'd say avoid it and stick to the formal literature. XOR'easter ( talk) 19:17, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
was awarded the 2005 Price Medal "for investigations of outstanding merit in solid-earth geophysics, oceanography, or planetary sciences" of the Royal Astronomical Society.[4] That same year she was also made a Fellow of the Icelandic National Academy of Sciences. Like, I don't know if the Royal Astronomical Society is "lame" or "cringe" or whatever, but we live in a society, and this society seems to think she is a volcanologist. I don't think anyone else here so far has been a volcanologist. What does some rando writing goofy articles have to do with source deprecation? jp× g 03:03, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
a self-published advocacy source for a minority viewas Hemiauchenia said. It's no slight upon a scientist to run such a website, but that kind of website is not what we ought to look for. XOR'easter ( talk) 14:00, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
Hemiauchenia ( talk) 10:58, 5 February 2021 (UTC)mantleplumes.org is not a reputable source - it's widely recognised as an advocacy website for a specific - and TBH, pretty fringe - point of view on mantle dynamics. Gillian Foulger created the hypothesis, is/was very involved in that website, and it is decidedly non-mainstream.
This edit [3] changes The Last Narc (TV series) so that we now describe Amazon's documentary series as "fictional" in wikivoice. The change is based on repeated links to http://www.reneverdugo.org; as far as I can tell it's a personal advocacy website that's hosting WP:PRIMARY sources created 20 years before the production of the documentary.
I don't see the point of using primary sources or reneverdugo.org to claim in Wikivoice that a documentary is fictional, when recent, secondary sources are already available to us (e.g. [4] [5] [6]), high-quality newspaper and academic sources on the same general topic are also available (e.g. [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]). - Darouet ( talk) 14:18, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
Okay, so I'm working a bit on the
Bodleian Library at Oxford U.) article and I keep running into a lot of primary sourcing (ie. novels) that apparently use the location as a prolonged backdrop for their story. Most of the time, the library is mentioned in passing or used in a specific scene, while at other times (like for Inspector Morse novels which are set in and around Oxford) seem integral.
As well, different features of the library are used (the front door as a front door to Hogwarts or whatever) for tv and film (though often not by name).
How explicit does the sourcing have to be that connects the novel or a visual representation of a door or a courtyard to the library? My thoughts are that while primary sources are okay (so long as the use of the library is not incidental and therefore
trivial), secondary sources that note the novel's usage of the library would be better. Thoughts? -
Jack Sebastian (
talk) 17:54, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
Is Showbiz411 [13] an RS for material about living persons (other than material about the person who is writing the material in question)? Thanks. 2603:7000:2143:8500:A1A3:633:94F3:E5BF ( talk) 06:49, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
The current WP:RSPWP states that Wikipedia should never be cited, similar to The Signpost. However I think that there are instances when WP and Signpost can be cited as a primary or about-self source. For example, in the namesake article's History section, the statement "Snow wrote in its first issue: "I hope this will be a worthwhile source of news for people interested in what is happening around the Wikipedia community"" is supported by a Signpost article Snow wrote himself. There's no way this is considered unreliable. Overall, there are more than 10 Signpost citations in that article, all of which are non-controversial. Thus, I think it'd be useful to add in WP:RSPWP that context matters; primaries such as those cited in the Singpost article are allowed. Gerald WL 08:52, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
Over the past couple of weeks there has been significant agitation by SPA's and some long time users over at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic talk pages that the idea the virus escaped from a Chinese lab is credible and should be treated as such, despite there being absolutely no evidence for this postulation. People have differed over whether the "lab leak theory" comes under WP:MEDRS or not. One of the major sources of the recent agitation is an article entitled " The Lab-Leak Hypothesis" in New York Magazine by Nicholson Baker from January 4th. I and several others on the talk page don't think it is a reliable source, as Nicholson Baker is a writer who his best known for his experimental novels and has no expertise in virology or medicine, and his inclusion would be undue. Arcturus has proclaimed on Talk:Wuhan Institute of Virology that Infection Control Today is reliable source that the claims that SARS COV 2 leaked from a Chinese lab are credible, citing an article entitled Idea That COVID-19 Began as a Lab Leak Spreads, which reports favourably on the NYM story. Because Infection Control Today has been cited 33 times according to www.infectioncontroltoday.com Arcturus stated:
If you search Wikipedia for "Infection Control Today" (using the quotes) you'll see that it is used in many articles as a source. So how is not a RS? It's certainly not included in the list of deprecated sources. Given the articles in which it's used, maybe it's also MEDRS.
I honestly don't know what to say other than this shows Arcturus has serious WP:CIR issues when it comes to our reliable sources policy. Aside from that "Infection Control Today" looks like a marginal source. It's owned by MJH Life Sciences, an obscure company which I can find little about, and all their other websites like Cancer Network look exactly the same, which doesn't inspire confidence. I can't find out anything about the author of the article and most others on the site "Frank Diamond" other than that he is the managing editor, and there is no evidence of editorial control. Their twitter account only has around 5,000 followers, suggesting that they are not a prominent source among medical professionals. Definitely not a WP:MEDRS, and probably not due for claims about the lab leak theory. Hemiauchenia ( talk) 01:36, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
adaptive mutationand
how BSL-3/4 work is regulatedand
codon usage analysis done in silico, to name only a few points. When reliability turns on matters like these, the topic requires specialist knowledge, and the way we as a community that includes a lot of generalists handles that is by requiring the highest standard of sourcing possible. XOR'easter ( talk) 16:40, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
If it doesn't meet RS, then I'm wondering if there's a hell of a lot of other sources used in medical articles that also don't.Shockingly, not all Wikipedia pages are up to standard. Sometimes, bad sources slip through. An editor might see a "citation needed", Google it and paste in whatever site comes up. An editor might not be familiar enough with churnalism to tell recycled press releases apart from actual reporting. Conflict-of-interest edits can evade detection. That this happened thirty-odd times with the "Infection Control Today" website is regrettable, but unsurprising. XOR'easter ( talk) 15:42, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
has not been thoroughly vetted by the community.Second, even if we do follow its advice, what it talks about as "history" is bloodletting to balance the humors. It even says,
Statements that could still have medical relevance, such as about the effectiveness of historical treatments, are still biomedical— and an ongoing pandemic is obviously still relevant. XOR'easter ( talk) 16:23, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
Social stigma against a condition or treatment, information about disease awareness campaigns or advocacy groups, public perception, public funding for research or treatment, etc.is not biomedical information). The fact that there are a bunch of people who think CORVID-19 came cawing and pecking out of a lab in Wuhan is notable and well-supported by reliable sources. Whether or not this means it actually did is, well, a separate issue. I haven't kept up on the literature well enough to say whether that's what happened. While there is certainly a lot of hubbub about Wikipedia's coronavirus coverage, it is not our responsibility to never write articles which we suspect could cause someone to hold false beliefs. For example, we have an article about the harmful chemicals emitted by aircraft, despite some people believing in chemtrails. If we tell people that Dogwater Independent Picayune-Star said such-and-such, and the Proceedings of the International Medical Prestigiousness Symposium said another, well, we've done all we can. jp× g 20:02, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
I personally would not oppose if the consensus we reach is to avoid any mention of the lab leak theory, I have no "dog in the fight". However, it is important that the discussion exhausts and transpires every nuance so that we can display a resulting consensus in the talk page that exactly explains what is allowed and what is not allowed to be edited regarding the issue. Forich ( talk) 02:34, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
"Did they work in this lab with COVID-19 (or not)"- such scientifically illiterate questions as this are an excellent illustration of why we use the WP:BESTSOURCES, rather than the amateur musings of Wikipedia editors. Alexbrn ( talk) 20:16, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
law enforcement meaningof the word, finds a vial in a lab, or a suspicious genome sequence on a hard drive. How would they tell that the vial contained a sample of a particular virus, or what the genome was sequenced from? By doing science to it. Even in the forensic setting or against an espionage background, the pivotal questions require scientific knowledge to answer. XOR'easter ( talk) 22:01, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
The reliability of a source depends on context. Each source must be carefully weighed to judge whether it is reliable for the statement being made in the Wikipedia article ... an otherwise reliable source that is not related to the principal topics of the publication may not be reliable...'. There has been no suggestion that the New Yorker requires a new RfC on its overall reliability but only whether it is a reliable source for this particular information. Stating otherwise is just obstructive smokescreening. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 16:44, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
This paper evaluates literature only up to April 2020, and finds no support for a lab-origin of SARS-CoV-2 or ideas that it a "bioweapon", stating in the conclusion that "The information and knowledge currently available in the public domain as peer-reviewed publications support a probable bat or pangolin origin of SARS-CoV-2." The paper is otherwise uninteresting as it mostly evaluates what hasn't been said rather than what has. I am not familiar with Le Infezioni in Medicina (infezmed). It describes itself as a "is a peer-reviewed quarterly journal which publishes, free of charge, editorials, reviews, original articles, case reports and letters to the Editor on experimental and clinical investigations concerning any aspect of infectious diseases.". It has an impact factor of 0.748 in 2019, which seems fairly low. Hemiauchenia ( talk) 23:55, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
This website has consistently come up in discussions surrounding the "lab leak claims". From its about page it clearly has some kind of fringe (anti-GMO, anti-pesticide) viewpoint, mostly focusing on agriculture, with the additional promotion of "lab leak" claims since the beginning of the pandemic. independentsciencenews.org is published by the Bioscience Resource Project ( which has a Wikipedia article may need to go to AfD at some point), which declares itself to be a "non-profit 501(c)3 organization". To me, this mostly looks like an essentially self-published source by the sites main author Dr. Jonathan Latham, who has no expertise in virology as far as I can tell and not a reliable souce for virological claims, and undue regardless. Hemiauchenia ( talk) 23:55, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
A November editoral in the Washington Post, entitled The coronavirus’s origins are still a mystery. We need a full investigation. has often been used to support the lab leak suppostion. In the introduction, the article even states: "Most likely, the virus was a zoonotic spillover, a leap from animals to humans, which have become more common as people push into new areas where they have closer contact with wildlife", though the article goes on to state: "Beyond the blame game, there are troubling questions in China that must be examined, including whether the coronavirus was inadvertently spread in an accident or spill from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which had previously carried out research on bat coronaviruses." It then goes on to reference the 2012-2013 "Mojiang Mine incident" where several workers became sick and died of a SARS like illness in after contact with bats. though no viral samples were ever taken. This is covered in the Mòjiāng virus article about a virus that was collected from the locality several years after the incident and has no definitive connection to the illness cases. It concludes the paragraph that "Conspiracy theorists have proposed more outlandish scenarios of a deliberately created pathogen, but they do not hold much water." Overall the Washington Post editorial is not massively fringe, but I question its dueness here. Per WP:MEDPOP, the popular press are not reliable sources to evaluate scientific claims, such as whether or not it is plausible that the virus leaked from a laboratory. As an editorial, it comes under WP:RSOPINION, which generally should not be used for statements of fact. Hemiauchenia ( talk) 00:54, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
In November, an opinion piece entitled To stop the next pandemic, we need to unravel the origins of COVID-19 was published in PNAS by David Relman, a Professor in Medicine, and in Microbiology & Immunology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. In the piece, it is stated that
There are several potential origin scenarios. First, SARS-CoV-2 may have evolved in bats, which are known reservoirs of immense coronavirus diversity (2), and then spread directly, or indirectly via an intermediate host, to humans through natural mechanisms. The degree of anticipated but undiscovered natural diversity clearly lends support to this scenario, as well as support to other scenarios. Second, SARS-CoV-2 or a recent ancestor virus may have been collected by humans from a bat or other animal and then brought to a laboratory where it was stored knowingly or unknowingly, propagated and perhaps manipulated genetically to understand its biological properties, and then released accidentally.
going on to state that:
Some have argued that a deliberate engineering scenario is unlikely because one would not have had the insight a priori to design the current pandemic virus (3). This argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that two or more as yet undisclosed ancestors (i.e., more proximal ancestors than RaTG13 and RmYN02) had already been discovered and were being studied in a laboratory—for example, one with the SARS-CoV-2 backbone and spike protein receptor-binding domain, and the other with the SARS-CoV-2 polybasic furin cleavage site. It would have been a logical next step to wonder about the properties of a recombinant virus and then create it in the laboratory. Alternatively, the complete SARS-CoV-2 sequence could have been recovered from a bat sample and viable virus resurrected from a synthetic genome to study it, before that virus accidentally escaped from the laboratory.
concluding that "Even though strong opinions abound, none of these scenarios can be confidently ruled in or ruled out with currently available facts." Given that this is an opinion piece it comes under WP:RSOPINION, and shouldn't be used for statements of fact, only attributed opinion. It also doesn't mention the WIV by name. While David Relman seems to be a respected microbiologist (seemingly mostly focusing on gut flora,bacteria and archea, with some viral work as well). its difficult to get a sense of whether this represents the concensus of virologists, and whether or not Relman is a prominent enough microbiologist or not that this would be WP:DUE. (It appears he was stating the same thing back in April according to this BoingBoing article) In my view, we should avoid using opinion pieces entirely when discussing the origins of the virus. Hemiauchenia ( talk) 03:02, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
Not including opinion pieces in Wikipedia articles, even ones published in prestigious publications like PNAS, is not censorship.This isn't POV-pushing, either; I would have the same objection to opinion pieces arguing in the opposite direction. XOR'easter ( talk) 07:24, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
On January 15th, the US Department of State released a document entitled Fact Sheet: Activity at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that has been extensively discussed on the WIV talk page, in the document, it is explosively claimed that:
The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was “zero infection” among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.
among other claims. My issue with this is as a US govt document they are a WP:PRIMARY source for the claims, and that the origin of the virus has been polticised, in large part to the actions of the Trump administration, which has also developed a reputation for publishing falsehoods and conspiracy theories, and they cannot be considered a reliable source for the claims prima facie unless they are otherwise corroborated. Hemiauchenia ( talk) 03:31, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
When talking of the COVID-19 and the possibility of lab leak as an origin scenario, one should not conflate between the different classifications of emerging infectious disease, as clearly delineated here in Wikipedia's entry on Emerging infectious diseases.
For the uninitiated, the Wikipedia entry clearly differentiates the scenario of a deliberate release of a bioweapon from an accidental release of a virus undergoing medical research, and for those who have actually read the New York Magazine piece, this distinction is clearly made, and is clearly distinguishable from conspiracy theories made by the likes of Li-Meng Yan and Luc Montagnier, which have been discredited and retracted, respectively. Other than the New York Magazine, a number of other reputable publications have covered the topic of an accidental lab leak, including the Boston Magazine, Wired Magazine, CNET the BBC, Reuters Bloomberg, The Telegraph, The Times, Presadiretta and Culture France, Le Monde, and multiple Washington Post articles, such as this. None of these articles present the possibility of a lab leak as fact, but in the dearth of evidence for any other scenario, they quote some reputable scientists (like David Relman) as saying that it should be considered as a possibility, and should not be discounted. Further than that, Professor Dominic Dwyer, who is one University of North Carolina at Chapel Hillof the members of the WHO's investigation team told The Australian that he is willing to keep an "open mind" to the possibility of a lab leak, even if he doesn't think it's likely.
The question of whether WP:MEDRS applies here, should only pertain to Wikipedia:Biomedical information, and while certain aspects of determining the origins of the virus can certainly be considered biomedical information, there is currently a media and academic black out being imposed by the Chinese government, which was the subject of another reliable source on the possible lab origins of the virus, the Associated Press. The real question we should be asking, is whether there are sufficient reliable sources to establish that there is a controversy around the origins of the virus, to mandate the removal of the "misinformation" and "conspiracy theory" terms associated with the lab leak theory in the articles Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic and Wuhan Institute of Virology, and any other articles where it may crop up. There is now also confirmation from the United States Department of State that a lab leak is a possibility they want the WHO to investigate, which also gives mention to the unknown provenance of Ratg13, a key piece of missing information that gave rise to the lab leak hypothesis, which was covered in the New York Magazine piece. The USDOS statement has been further covered in reliable sources, like this Telegraph article.
Guys, what we have is a legitimate controversy about a possible biosecurity event that certain scientists have been warning about for years. Instead of trying to topic ban me and delete my stuff, it would be better to engage in a good-faith discussion, without conflating the issues.
ScrupulousScribe ( talk) 23:10, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
you are working off very old informationclaim. And yet, this WHO report dwells on the Wuhan market as the source of what it repeatedly calls a zoonotic bat virus. By contrast, no laboratories are mentioned; the word only appears as part of phrases like "laboratory testing". Neither does "pre-adapted" appear anywhere, nor the name of the Wuhan Institute. It is not necessary to repudiate outdated speculation, nor to refute it. I have yet to read of a conclusive study that proves definitely that painting animals on cave walls does not augment the herds in the next hunting season. Yet we are not expected to give that kind of belief system credence in the encyclopaedia. GPinkerton ( talk) 13:54, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
Current findings show that the virus has been remarkable stable since it was first reported in Wuhan, with sequences well conserved in different countries, suggesting that the virus was well adapted to human transmission from the moment it was first detected. This is also corroborated by the epidemiology and transmission patterns seen since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.(page three)
the claim that the virus may have originated in the lab is not biomedical in natureis a stunning claim. Other than the word "claim" itself, every noun in it is a biomedical one, and hypotheses concerning origins of pathogenic viruses are biomedical by definition. GPinkerton ( talk) 01:40, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
There are no MEDR sources proving anything." "
yet even they say the notion cannot be disproven and that it remains a possibility." The lay public and media will just never understand that scientists speak in hedgey modals, not certainties. So when they hear an expert hesitate to declare something "impossible" they assume that thing is a valid option; and when an expert cautiously says "might" or "potentially" a lot they may attribute the behavior to a lack of authority or (worse) as dissembling. This is why it's even more important to use only MEDRS for the "origin story". JoelleJay ( talk) 04:09, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
The earliest recognised case of infection with SARS-CoV-2 was an elderly and infirm man who developed symptoms on 1 December 2019. None of his family members became infected, and the source of his virus remains unknown. Furthermore, 14 of the 41 first cases had no contact with the seafood market. In another report, five of the first seven cases of COVID-19 had no link to the seafood market. Thus, it seems very likely that the virus was amplified in the market, but the market might not have been the site of origin nor the only source of the outbreak.[21]
I feel like somebody ought to mention that the Telegraph story linked up there describes the State Department's assertions as going over like a lead balloon: The claims were dismissed by analysts
; "Zero details given," noted Kristian Andersen, an immunologist at Scripps Research, rating the statement as "an F"
; Mr Pompeo's statement offered little beyond insinuation
. Meanwhile, maybe someone can explain to me how "there was an accidental leak and the Chinese government is covering it up" is not a conspiracy theory. And an almost archetypal one, at that.
XOR'easter (
talk) 02:33, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
Wikipedia should present all origin scenarios with equal weightis patently absurd. There is strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is a zoonotic bat pathogen. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Are you seriously suggesting we give an extra-terrestrial or supernatural origin equal space to medical evidence? At this point, this is speculation on the level of panspermia. GPinkerton ( talk) 12:48, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
know not to askif I interpreted the sources according to the novel method you appear to be using. It is not up to you whether or not others disagree with your claims. GPinkerton ( talk) 14:23, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
This is from Reuters dated January 18, 2021. Factbox: The origins of COVID-19. Wikipedia follows what the reliable sources say. The factbox does not mention conspiracy theory or misinformation. Why wikipedia editors want to interject the term "conspiracy theory" is beyond me and many other editors. -- Guest2625 ( talk) 12:42, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
The factbox does not mention conspiracy theory or misinformation.See: argumentum ex silentio.
beyond me and many other editors.See: argumentum ad populum. The reliable source linked above says specifically that there is no evidence for "lab leak". ("Though there is no credible supporting evidence, some researchers still do not rule out the possibility that the virus was released accidentally by a specialist lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.") Theories without evidence are called what? GPinkerton ( talk) 12:59, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
This discussion is wasting everyone's time at this point. The question of what sort of sourcing we should rely on is clear. WP:MEDRS is the relevant policy, and Alexbrn has explained how that policy applies to this case. - Thucydides411 ( talk) 13:54, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
First of all, I am going to ask editors, specially on the side of the lab leak theory to keep their comments brief in this section. Now, here are the strongest points made on each side:
Next, I'm asking i) for an independent editor to provide his own take on the conclusion, and ii) is there a chance of a middle ground between the two sides that would allow for productive editing? I hope that we are open to hear proposals in that sense. Forich ( talk) 19:30, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
There is only one question in this discussion: that is whether the term "conspiracy theory" should be used for the hypothesis that "the virus might have come from a laboratory accident". The US government has stated it most clearly:
The U.S. government does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus—known as SARS-CoV-2—was transmitted initially to humans. We have not determined whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, China.[22]
Multiple scientists have also stated the same thing. If a conclusion is needed, a request for comment can be opened on the relevant page and a conclusion decided there by a tally of the participant's opinions. -- Guest2625 ( talk) 01:03, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
decided there by a tally of the participant's opinionsis also questionable. Normchou 💬 06:44, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
I would like to point to a recent discussion in a specific context on Talk:Investigations into the origin of COVID-19#WP:MEDRS, where I argued the specious use of MEDRS has the destructive effect of censoring significant viewpoints supported by reliable sources. This is harmful to the Wikipedia project.
Also, I cannot help but raise the issue about WP:CONDUCT even though this is a RSN discussion. As Forich has mentioned above, there is a certain sense of condescension among some of the editors who frequently cite MEDRS in their editing decisions, regardless of whether or not they are correct. Actually, as I noted earlier on the ANI, I can sense quite some tribalism and WP:BITE mentality when I examine the editing history of some of those editors. I am not sure how long this phenomenon has existed on Wikipedia, but definitely feel it is causing harm to the community if continued. Normchou 💬 07:10, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
Maybe these are clues that will never receive further investigationonly to be associated with narratives, whereas in reality there is also a big incentive issue that has not been fully scrutinized. A scientist is, first of all, a human. They need respect, prestige, and money (funding) to continue their career. As Stuart Turville, an immuno-virologist at the Kirby Institute in Australia said, the possibility of a "lab leak"
keeps us up at nightand is
the nightmare within nightmares[23]. Why do you think they are so afraid of this scenario, provided that they are supposed to be only "discoverers of the truth"? The user above, JoelleJay, has mentioned that
the vast majority of scientists did not try to fill those holes with allegations of lab passage. Is this phenomenon a pure consequence of the scientific methodology and/or established norms within the scientific community regardless of any conflict of interest? Now, suppose there exists a significant non-scientific, human factor that incentivizes (in a conscious or unconscious way) these scientists (as humans) to focus more on "zoonotic origin with natural transmission to humans" and less on the "lab leak", then we have a general bias that is difficult to be self-corrected by the scientists only. Such a bias can already exist before all these scientific investigations are conducted and research papers written. Normchou 💬 17:26, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
This theory is the most uncomfortable and most controversial. If true, it would have severe and lasting ramifications on research, geopolitics and trust in scientific institutions. I am not for or against the "lab leak" theory, but merely pointing out the incentive issue that has been ignored in all these discussions. We should allow a NPOV (one of the WP:5Ps) presentation of the issue using other RSes that balances the "over-dueness" of the "scientific" narrative on this specific issue, which is actually subject to the human incentive issue I've mentioned above. Normchou 💬 18:11, 23 January 2021 (UTC); edited 18:31, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
there nothing to suggest otherwise in this instance". In truth, there is something very different about the emergence of SARS-COV-2 from the emergence of SARS-COV-1 and from other emerging diseases in the general, which is it's seeming pre-adaption to humans, and which is the subject of a peer-reviewed paper here. The author's hypothesis was proven when the virus jumped from humans to minks in European fur farms, and the mink version began to rapidly mutate (paper here), and this is the subject of further study. The fact that the virus has been well adapted to humans from the very start, is also mentioned in "Current knowledge supporting origin tracing work" (page 3) of the WHO's "Terms of Reference" document for its investigation, here. This peculiar fact and associated papers/authors have been referenced in a number of reliable sources, and continue to get referenced (like in this BBC report from last night), that were put forward by myself to make certain content changes. I hope you read those papers, and unfortunately, I won't be able to reply further in this thread, as may get too close to the topic I can't talk about. ScrupulousScribe ( talk) 01:22, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
well adapted to human transmission from the moment it was first detected. ScrupulousScribe ( talk) 01:42, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
MEDRS is a collection of guidance and recommendations that would apply to any Wikipedia topic where there is a similar abundance of recent, reliable secondary sources. This is only half the reason for MEDRS; the other half is that (like with BLP) the Wikipedia:Biomedical information topic area is one where errors can lead to serious, immediate, and hard-to-reverse real-world consequences, which means we have to approach it more cautiously and with higher sourcing requirements. (In fact, on many fringe topics there are not high quality sources available - part of the point of MEDRS is that in that case we ought to ignore those topics entirely rather than risk the harm of covering them from a poor source.) While we always want the best available sources, the same urgency and risk does not imply to non-biomedical claims. -- Aquillion ( talk) 23:27, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
can lead to serious, immediate, and hard-to-reverse real-world consequencesis susceptible to a slippery slope, and seems to have completely disregarded the actual cognitive processes of information handling and decision making (including decision making under risk) in autonomous, well-functioning human beings like most of us. Normchou 💬 23:48, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
If anteaters are not thought to be involved by anyone, then you might want to correct the article COVID-19 pandemic, which says the source is "Possibly via bats, pangolins, or both." (Pangolins are often referred to as anteaters.) Bats can transmit rabies, which is far more serious to the individual than COVID-19, and guano is known to cause illnesses, all of which are far more likely than someone contracting COVID-19 from a bat. Seriously, no one would say, "Well I know I can get rabies or other sicknesses from bats, but I don't care about that. What I do care about is the possibility that one person once contracted COVID-19 from a bat."
Pretty much all human activity has some health consequences and if we carry MEDRS to extremes then we will seriously limit sources. Universal health care, war, gun control, imprisonment, cooking, climate change, poverty, fracking - all of these have impacts on human health, but we don't have to source all the related articles to medical journals.
Fringe theories about science rarely receive extensive coverage in medical journals - that's why we call them fringe theories. They may however receive extensive coverage in social sciences. For example white supremacist race theories are not extensively documented in medical journals because they are not real science. But social scientists may study them extensively as social phenomena. The investigator from the SPLC does not need to be a medical doctor nor do they need their reports to be reviewed by medical experts. All they need to know is what any educated person knows, that racist claims have no support in science. They don't have to know how the human genome was sequenced for example.
If we want to write about the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 originated in a lab, we should be able to use articles by responsible journalists and academics who write about it. While they will not typically have medical degrees, they will have sufficient understanding to write about it responsibly.
TFD ( talk) 02:03, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
There's an article, " Alpine race," which "is a historical race concept defined by some late 19th-century and early 20th-century anthropologists as one of the sub-races of the Caucasian race." It was thought that optimal diets for humans differed according to their sub-race. Mediterranean people for example were thought to be better eating fish, while Nordics should eat red meat. Are we supposed to source all these articles to medical journals? After all, someone may change their diet, which has health consequences, based on their supposed membership in a racial sub-group. TFD ( talk) 02:18, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
a barn-dance of scarecrows"; I am not seeing any reasoning for why others should adopt your views, other than the claim that they are being disingenuous, which — well, I'm not, so please try to come up with a different tack. jp× g 22:36, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
Information that is not typically biomedical may still require high-quality sourcing if the context may lead the reader to draw a conclusion about biomedical information, as can occur with content about human biochemistry or about medical research in animals- I see some arguments pointing towards that reasoning above.) But in any case it would be helpful to unambiguously place, as a base case, whether a disease's origin is on one side or the other of the is / is not divide on that page. The obvious places for it are population data and epidemiology if it is biomedical or history if it does not - it could fit into either but does not unambiguously fit with the current examples they give. -- Aquillion ( talk) 23:34, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
Are papers from Academia.edu reliable? I particularly want to know about [25].-- 2409:4073:4D8D:DE3C:9C1:F364:6881:5B1C ( talk) 08:27, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 320 | ← | Archive 325 | Archive 326 | Archive 327 | Archive 328 | Archive 329 | Archive 330 |
About "Content that interprets or summarizes scriptural passages or narratives should generally be cited to appropriate scholarly sources". Several related articles like David or The Exodus mostly don't follow this approach in the "narrative" section, which seems to work fairly well. The Exodus takes a mostly MOS:PLOT approach, While David has a lot of cites, mostly primary outside "tricky" stuff.
So I suggest we soften the "summarizes" somewhat, something like "though a MOS:PLOTSOURCE approach can work well regarding some scriptural stories." Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 11:55, 24 May 2020 (UTC) I've linked this discussion at Wikiprojects Christianity, Judaism, and Classical Greece and Rome.-- Ermenrich ( talk) 23:29, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
I seem to recall that Wikipedia is a secular encyclopediais exactly the reason WP:RSPSCRIPTURE exists. The majority of scripture is considered fiction by the majority of people and can therefore never be a reliable source, even for its own content. There is ample reason to treat the Bible exactly the same as other scripture. GPinkerton ( talk) 23:47, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Why should editors not remove large amounts of material from the project if it doesn't meet policy? What's the value of keeping it? GPinkerton ( talk) 14:50, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
The Exodus sage in the Bible incorporates events in Egypt after the death of Joseph through the Israelite departure, the wilderness wanderings, and the Sinai revelations, up to be not including the conquest of Canaan. The account, largely in narrative form, spreads over four books of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible.-- Ermenrich ( talk) 23:14, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
- The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (2000)The Jewish liberation from slavery in Egypt. The story of the Exodus is contained in a series of narratives in the book of Exodus. It became the epitome of God's power to rescue his people.
- The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt (2001)The biblical traditions concerning the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt are mostly preserved in the second book of the Hebrew scriptures.
- The Oxford Companion to the Bible (1993)The Exodus, the escape of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt under the leadership of Moses, is the central event of the Hebrew Bible.
- Oxford Dictionary of the Bible (2 ed.) (2010)Israel's departure from Egypt.
GPinkerton, I think it's worse than that. PLOTSOURCE is a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS allowing the cliques of genre fans to engage in what amounts to critical review, using Wikipedia as a publishing venue. It gives carte blanche to film fans to, for example, include intricate trivial plot details and showcase their diligent fandom. I am sure that the intentions are generally pure, but the result is great swathes of content that relies solely on individual Wikipedians' observations of primary material - often visual, not based on text that you can check - and that is not how Wikipedia is supposed to work. OK, it's a rather fundamentalist view, but I have seen too many blatantly interpretive "plot summaries" to be at all sanguine about this. Guy ( help!) 18:59, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Personally I do not think plotsource can be used when there is not only more than 3 but more then 100 versions. It seems just a recipe for edit wars over whether or not witches should live or silly text like "according to the NIJV Hop is the greatest, but according to the RNIV its Hope, whilst the ININV says "and hope if the glowiest". Slatersteven ( talk) 12:43, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Guy's point is excellent, the Bible is the most examines commented on and analysed book in human history. I doubt there is one word that has not been mulled over in countless RS. Why do we need to even use it, what is the text that is being argued over here? Slatersteven ( talk) 16:04, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Sometimes a work will be summarized by secondary sources, which can be used for sourcing. Otherwise, using brief quotation citations from the primary work can be helpful to source key or complex plot points.Obviously that "sometimes" applies here and the "otherwise" does not, which means PLOTSOURCE does not apply to scripture; but if there's confusion, perhaps PLOTSOURCE should be rewritten to more clearly state that if secondary sourcing exists we are required to use it and not primary sourcing. -- Aquillion ( talk) 14:31, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
Scriptural texts, like the Bible and the Quran, are primary sources only suitable for attributed, relevant quotes and in compliance with other Wikipedia content policies and guidelines. Content that interprets or summarizes scriptural passages or narratives should generally be cited to appropriate scholarly sources (for example, in the academic field of religious studies) and attributed when appropriate.I guess some edits take this to mean that a summary of the content of say The Exodus from the Bible is in violation of this guideline. I haven't really understood most of the arguments put forth in favor of limiting summaries of biblical narratives in this way, which mostly hinge on (honestly, extremely detail-oriented) differences in different translation and the fact that various groups hold only their translation to be correct. It could indeed be that there's some degree of talking past each other here.-- Ermenrich ( talk) 21:49, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
Added this discussion at WP:RFCLOSE. Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 09:41, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
Newslinger, pinging you since I assume this means that link #5 at WP:RSPSCRIPTURE needs tweaking at some point. Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 16:04, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
Hello, I think there is a bit of an argument going on to what constitutes a one-hit wonder in the UK chart, with some editors making their own rules up rather than just reflecting what is posted on the Official Charts Company site...so I want to know if we to take the OCC's word to who is credited with a hit single and how many singles that act have or not... [1] but first some background info...
Originally in 2008, Cexycy updated the list and put this in the comments page...
and the reply years later was...
Now a few days ago I added "Party Rock Anthem" by LMFAO/ Lauren Bennett/ GoonRock as it was missing from the list...which is how is is listed on the OCC site [2]. At this point that the one hit wonders list was full of secondary/featured artists and so added it to the article and put the following info in the comments section...
"Info about GoonRock (see below) added under 'Collaborations classified as one-hit wonders' though you might want to move him to the main section. I only have the Virgin book to hand, not the Guinness ones so I cannot check how they listed collaborations between three artists listed equally...though it is likely to be separate in the early days of the Guinness books as something like 'DAVID GUETTA & CHRIS WILLIS' [3] would have been listed as a separate recording act to David Guetta on his own as they've had 4 hits together (if it was just one David Guetta ft Chris Willis that would be added to Guetta's hit total) As the methodology stated in the intro is about two artists releasing a record together and getting to number one and not three artists credited equally by the OCC getting to number one, I wasn't sure where to add GoonRock, but obviously it needs to be on here...
According to the Official Charts Company (OCC), " Party Rock Anthem" is a number one record credited jointly to LMFAO/ Lauren Bennett/ GoonRock. [4] Of these three acts LMFAO are credited with having five Top 75 hits with their other number one " Gettin' Over You" only credited to David Guetta and Chris Willis at this moment (the OCC have decided not to credit LMFAO and Fergie, even though their names are shown on the website, appearing on the single's cover) [5] Lauren Bennett has never had any other hits under her own name, but has had a few hits as part of the band G.R.L., while GoonRock is a producer who has also never had any credited hits of his own. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.154.169.1 ( talk) 15:31, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
...however at this point Tuzapicabit came back after deleting the information...and said...
...however I think that this is not just reporting on what the OCC have put, but turning into a bit of 'original research' by Tuzapicabit as he has put no links to this reasoning...with Tuzapicabit deciding what can or cannot be on the list. However as he didn't want all the secondary artists listed they were all removed from the main list as a compromise...I replied...
"...but you can only go off what the OCC states not what Wikipedia is saying and if the OCC state they are credited jointly then so be it. By the way I have removed all the featured artists from the list because that is your reasoning for GoonRock not being in the main list (he should be, though note that I didn't add him directly to the main list). I have not removed Avery Storm at this point [6] at this point as if you look at the wikipedia article for Nasty Girl (The Notorious B.I.G. song) you can see the cover of the record an it it by Notorious B.I.G. featuring Diddy, Nelly Jagged Edge, and Avery Storm. You can be overly pedantic if you want but all information has to be treated equally, and therefore I expect you to delete Avery Storm from the list if you believe all featured artists are not eligible". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.152.237.218 ( talk) 18:21, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
Now the inclusion of featured artists (or more correctly secondary artists) boils down to the introduction in a very old chart book...which is probably 30 years out of date and one which has not kept up to date with the charts, as in the 1980s any artist with an '&' and 'versus' on their name were seen as a completely separate act and given their own entry. However, now the OCC state that Tina Turner's first hit was "RIVER DEEP, MOUNTAIN HIGH" (number 3 in 1966 with Ike) with Tina having 44 UK Top 75s between 1966 - 2020. Its the same for Cher, who had had 42 UK Top 75s between 1965 - 2013 with her first hit being "I GOT YOU BABE", a number one. So are you going to argue with the Official Charts Company, who are the people whose information we are basing the facts on, the people who make the rules? By the way, there seems to be no information to what makes a hit in the current chart rules for a secondary artist...with the only information being found being the following...
However from the lists of edits it looks like some people have been making it up as they go along, deciding what the rules are...doesn't this go against the idea of Wikipedia, the 'No original research', the neutral point of view, the just 'report on the information from the primary source' idea of the site. I deleted the featured artists from the main list to give people the benefit of the doubt, in good faith, because that what the advice was. But I don't think this is correct, I don't think they should be deleted, I still believe its important information, and I would expect someone to re-edit the information back at some point and maybe put elsewhere in the article.
Its one thing to continue a list from a 1989 Guinness Book of British Hit Singles because the book is not being published, but it does seem that people are sitting on the article, making up their own rules as they go along which is not helping help the wikipedia project, not welcoming to newcomers and you might as well scrap the article and merge it into the main One-hit wonders list as it becomes and as worthy as OnePoll's The Nation's Favourite One Hit Wonders list.
Some of the entries that remain even contradict the OCC's information provided on their site ( "...records with re-recorded vocals (for example, live versions) and Remixes released with substantially different catalogue numbers did not count towards the total and were seen as new hits (see " Blue Monday" as an example). [7] [8]" but if its the Official Charts Company information that people are using to state what is number one then shouldn't it always be the primary source. Do we contradict this source? The people whose chart we are using?
References
The WP:DAILYSTAR, https://dailystar.co.uk/ , is deprecated as tabloid trash with a history of fabrication. I've been removing cites to it, as deprecated. I also removed links to the Irish edition, the Irish Daily Star, https://thestar.ie/ - and Silver seren reverted one, and asked on my talk if this was really the same.
So, this is a question worth going into. We treat the Irish and Scottish editions of The Sun, the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday as being other examples of the same thing. Is the Irish Daily Star the same thing as the Daily Star? Should it be considered deprecated by the deprecation of the UK edition? Is it also tabloid trash that would be a Generally Unreliable source in its own way? Does it have a history of reprinting the UK edition's fabrications? Does it print its own original fabrications? I suspect at this point we need data - David Gerard ( talk) 00:31, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
I can't find any indication that P2P Foundation is a reliable mainstream source, and most of the150-odd links appear to be either self-sourcing ("According to P2P foundation, blah, source, P2P foundation saying blah on its own website") or links to its wiki, which clearly fail RS. The sources we cite are long on cryptobollocks and short on third party commentary - I see very little evidence that any reality-based economists are referencing these articles - it looks like standard in-universe blockchain fandom to me, but David Gerard is better informed on that. It looks to me as if this is a fringe pro-crypto source that we should be using much less than we do, and some of the articles around P2P foundation may be PR. Guy ( help! - typo?) 11:05, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
We currently have 134 citations to mantleplumes.org , which according to this Earth Magazine article is operated by Gillian Foulger, a Professor of Geophysics at Durham University. Both Foulger and the website are promogulators of what is referred to as Plate theory (volcanism), which argues against the prevailing theory of mantle plumes as the cause of geological hotspots like the Hawaiian Islands. As the Earth Magazine article makes clear, "plate theory" isn't out and out fringe, but the existence of mantle plumes is very much considered the mainstream hypothesis. This came to the attention of WikiProject Geology (see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Geology#Plate_theory_(volcanism)) due to the recent creation of the Plate theory (volcanism) article, as well as mass rewriting of hotspot related articles by the author of the article SphericalSong ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) to support the "plate theory" pov and cast doubt on mantle plumes as the source of their origin, citing both mantleplumes.org and Foulger's 2011 book "Plates vs plumes: a geological controversy", see 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 for examples. In my opinion mantleplumes.org displays no evidence of editoral oversight, and is pretty much a self-published source, and self-published sources are totally undue in a topic area like mantle plumes where there extensive reliable peer reviewed journal articles on the topic. Hemiauchenia ( talk) 18:23, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
Every page on this website has been subject to technical review by at least one scientist conversant with the subject material, but that's an incredibly low bar, particularly since there's no editorial board. The
reviewcould just be one person going "looks good" and clicking "publish". I'd say avoid it and stick to the formal literature. XOR'easter ( talk) 19:17, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
was awarded the 2005 Price Medal "for investigations of outstanding merit in solid-earth geophysics, oceanography, or planetary sciences" of the Royal Astronomical Society.[4] That same year she was also made a Fellow of the Icelandic National Academy of Sciences. Like, I don't know if the Royal Astronomical Society is "lame" or "cringe" or whatever, but we live in a society, and this society seems to think she is a volcanologist. I don't think anyone else here so far has been a volcanologist. What does some rando writing goofy articles have to do with source deprecation? jp× g 03:03, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
a self-published advocacy source for a minority viewas Hemiauchenia said. It's no slight upon a scientist to run such a website, but that kind of website is not what we ought to look for. XOR'easter ( talk) 14:00, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
Hemiauchenia ( talk) 10:58, 5 February 2021 (UTC)mantleplumes.org is not a reputable source - it's widely recognised as an advocacy website for a specific - and TBH, pretty fringe - point of view on mantle dynamics. Gillian Foulger created the hypothesis, is/was very involved in that website, and it is decidedly non-mainstream.
This edit [3] changes The Last Narc (TV series) so that we now describe Amazon's documentary series as "fictional" in wikivoice. The change is based on repeated links to http://www.reneverdugo.org; as far as I can tell it's a personal advocacy website that's hosting WP:PRIMARY sources created 20 years before the production of the documentary.
I don't see the point of using primary sources or reneverdugo.org to claim in Wikivoice that a documentary is fictional, when recent, secondary sources are already available to us (e.g. [4] [5] [6]), high-quality newspaper and academic sources on the same general topic are also available (e.g. [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]). - Darouet ( talk) 14:18, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
Okay, so I'm working a bit on the
Bodleian Library at Oxford U.) article and I keep running into a lot of primary sourcing (ie. novels) that apparently use the location as a prolonged backdrop for their story. Most of the time, the library is mentioned in passing or used in a specific scene, while at other times (like for Inspector Morse novels which are set in and around Oxford) seem integral.
As well, different features of the library are used (the front door as a front door to Hogwarts or whatever) for tv and film (though often not by name).
How explicit does the sourcing have to be that connects the novel or a visual representation of a door or a courtyard to the library? My thoughts are that while primary sources are okay (so long as the use of the library is not incidental and therefore
trivial), secondary sources that note the novel's usage of the library would be better. Thoughts? -
Jack Sebastian (
talk) 17:54, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
Is Showbiz411 [13] an RS for material about living persons (other than material about the person who is writing the material in question)? Thanks. 2603:7000:2143:8500:A1A3:633:94F3:E5BF ( talk) 06:49, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
The current WP:RSPWP states that Wikipedia should never be cited, similar to The Signpost. However I think that there are instances when WP and Signpost can be cited as a primary or about-self source. For example, in the namesake article's History section, the statement "Snow wrote in its first issue: "I hope this will be a worthwhile source of news for people interested in what is happening around the Wikipedia community"" is supported by a Signpost article Snow wrote himself. There's no way this is considered unreliable. Overall, there are more than 10 Signpost citations in that article, all of which are non-controversial. Thus, I think it'd be useful to add in WP:RSPWP that context matters; primaries such as those cited in the Singpost article are allowed. Gerald WL 08:52, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
Over the past couple of weeks there has been significant agitation by SPA's and some long time users over at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic talk pages that the idea the virus escaped from a Chinese lab is credible and should be treated as such, despite there being absolutely no evidence for this postulation. People have differed over whether the "lab leak theory" comes under WP:MEDRS or not. One of the major sources of the recent agitation is an article entitled " The Lab-Leak Hypothesis" in New York Magazine by Nicholson Baker from January 4th. I and several others on the talk page don't think it is a reliable source, as Nicholson Baker is a writer who his best known for his experimental novels and has no expertise in virology or medicine, and his inclusion would be undue. Arcturus has proclaimed on Talk:Wuhan Institute of Virology that Infection Control Today is reliable source that the claims that SARS COV 2 leaked from a Chinese lab are credible, citing an article entitled Idea That COVID-19 Began as a Lab Leak Spreads, which reports favourably on the NYM story. Because Infection Control Today has been cited 33 times according to www.infectioncontroltoday.com Arcturus stated:
If you search Wikipedia for "Infection Control Today" (using the quotes) you'll see that it is used in many articles as a source. So how is not a RS? It's certainly not included in the list of deprecated sources. Given the articles in which it's used, maybe it's also MEDRS.
I honestly don't know what to say other than this shows Arcturus has serious WP:CIR issues when it comes to our reliable sources policy. Aside from that "Infection Control Today" looks like a marginal source. It's owned by MJH Life Sciences, an obscure company which I can find little about, and all their other websites like Cancer Network look exactly the same, which doesn't inspire confidence. I can't find out anything about the author of the article and most others on the site "Frank Diamond" other than that he is the managing editor, and there is no evidence of editorial control. Their twitter account only has around 5,000 followers, suggesting that they are not a prominent source among medical professionals. Definitely not a WP:MEDRS, and probably not due for claims about the lab leak theory. Hemiauchenia ( talk) 01:36, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
adaptive mutationand
how BSL-3/4 work is regulatedand
codon usage analysis done in silico, to name only a few points. When reliability turns on matters like these, the topic requires specialist knowledge, and the way we as a community that includes a lot of generalists handles that is by requiring the highest standard of sourcing possible. XOR'easter ( talk) 16:40, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
If it doesn't meet RS, then I'm wondering if there's a hell of a lot of other sources used in medical articles that also don't.Shockingly, not all Wikipedia pages are up to standard. Sometimes, bad sources slip through. An editor might see a "citation needed", Google it and paste in whatever site comes up. An editor might not be familiar enough with churnalism to tell recycled press releases apart from actual reporting. Conflict-of-interest edits can evade detection. That this happened thirty-odd times with the "Infection Control Today" website is regrettable, but unsurprising. XOR'easter ( talk) 15:42, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
has not been thoroughly vetted by the community.Second, even if we do follow its advice, what it talks about as "history" is bloodletting to balance the humors. It even says,
Statements that could still have medical relevance, such as about the effectiveness of historical treatments, are still biomedical— and an ongoing pandemic is obviously still relevant. XOR'easter ( talk) 16:23, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
Social stigma against a condition or treatment, information about disease awareness campaigns or advocacy groups, public perception, public funding for research or treatment, etc.is not biomedical information). The fact that there are a bunch of people who think CORVID-19 came cawing and pecking out of a lab in Wuhan is notable and well-supported by reliable sources. Whether or not this means it actually did is, well, a separate issue. I haven't kept up on the literature well enough to say whether that's what happened. While there is certainly a lot of hubbub about Wikipedia's coronavirus coverage, it is not our responsibility to never write articles which we suspect could cause someone to hold false beliefs. For example, we have an article about the harmful chemicals emitted by aircraft, despite some people believing in chemtrails. If we tell people that Dogwater Independent Picayune-Star said such-and-such, and the Proceedings of the International Medical Prestigiousness Symposium said another, well, we've done all we can. jp× g 20:02, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
I personally would not oppose if the consensus we reach is to avoid any mention of the lab leak theory, I have no "dog in the fight". However, it is important that the discussion exhausts and transpires every nuance so that we can display a resulting consensus in the talk page that exactly explains what is allowed and what is not allowed to be edited regarding the issue. Forich ( talk) 02:34, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
"Did they work in this lab with COVID-19 (or not)"- such scientifically illiterate questions as this are an excellent illustration of why we use the WP:BESTSOURCES, rather than the amateur musings of Wikipedia editors. Alexbrn ( talk) 20:16, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
law enforcement meaningof the word, finds a vial in a lab, or a suspicious genome sequence on a hard drive. How would they tell that the vial contained a sample of a particular virus, or what the genome was sequenced from? By doing science to it. Even in the forensic setting or against an espionage background, the pivotal questions require scientific knowledge to answer. XOR'easter ( talk) 22:01, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
The reliability of a source depends on context. Each source must be carefully weighed to judge whether it is reliable for the statement being made in the Wikipedia article ... an otherwise reliable source that is not related to the principal topics of the publication may not be reliable...'. There has been no suggestion that the New Yorker requires a new RfC on its overall reliability but only whether it is a reliable source for this particular information. Stating otherwise is just obstructive smokescreening. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 16:44, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
This paper evaluates literature only up to April 2020, and finds no support for a lab-origin of SARS-CoV-2 or ideas that it a "bioweapon", stating in the conclusion that "The information and knowledge currently available in the public domain as peer-reviewed publications support a probable bat or pangolin origin of SARS-CoV-2." The paper is otherwise uninteresting as it mostly evaluates what hasn't been said rather than what has. I am not familiar with Le Infezioni in Medicina (infezmed). It describes itself as a "is a peer-reviewed quarterly journal which publishes, free of charge, editorials, reviews, original articles, case reports and letters to the Editor on experimental and clinical investigations concerning any aspect of infectious diseases.". It has an impact factor of 0.748 in 2019, which seems fairly low. Hemiauchenia ( talk) 23:55, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
This website has consistently come up in discussions surrounding the "lab leak claims". From its about page it clearly has some kind of fringe (anti-GMO, anti-pesticide) viewpoint, mostly focusing on agriculture, with the additional promotion of "lab leak" claims since the beginning of the pandemic. independentsciencenews.org is published by the Bioscience Resource Project ( which has a Wikipedia article may need to go to AfD at some point), which declares itself to be a "non-profit 501(c)3 organization". To me, this mostly looks like an essentially self-published source by the sites main author Dr. Jonathan Latham, who has no expertise in virology as far as I can tell and not a reliable souce for virological claims, and undue regardless. Hemiauchenia ( talk) 23:55, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
A November editoral in the Washington Post, entitled The coronavirus’s origins are still a mystery. We need a full investigation. has often been used to support the lab leak suppostion. In the introduction, the article even states: "Most likely, the virus was a zoonotic spillover, a leap from animals to humans, which have become more common as people push into new areas where they have closer contact with wildlife", though the article goes on to state: "Beyond the blame game, there are troubling questions in China that must be examined, including whether the coronavirus was inadvertently spread in an accident or spill from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which had previously carried out research on bat coronaviruses." It then goes on to reference the 2012-2013 "Mojiang Mine incident" where several workers became sick and died of a SARS like illness in after contact with bats. though no viral samples were ever taken. This is covered in the Mòjiāng virus article about a virus that was collected from the locality several years after the incident and has no definitive connection to the illness cases. It concludes the paragraph that "Conspiracy theorists have proposed more outlandish scenarios of a deliberately created pathogen, but they do not hold much water." Overall the Washington Post editorial is not massively fringe, but I question its dueness here. Per WP:MEDPOP, the popular press are not reliable sources to evaluate scientific claims, such as whether or not it is plausible that the virus leaked from a laboratory. As an editorial, it comes under WP:RSOPINION, which generally should not be used for statements of fact. Hemiauchenia ( talk) 00:54, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
In November, an opinion piece entitled To stop the next pandemic, we need to unravel the origins of COVID-19 was published in PNAS by David Relman, a Professor in Medicine, and in Microbiology & Immunology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. In the piece, it is stated that
There are several potential origin scenarios. First, SARS-CoV-2 may have evolved in bats, which are known reservoirs of immense coronavirus diversity (2), and then spread directly, or indirectly via an intermediate host, to humans through natural mechanisms. The degree of anticipated but undiscovered natural diversity clearly lends support to this scenario, as well as support to other scenarios. Second, SARS-CoV-2 or a recent ancestor virus may have been collected by humans from a bat or other animal and then brought to a laboratory where it was stored knowingly or unknowingly, propagated and perhaps manipulated genetically to understand its biological properties, and then released accidentally.
going on to state that:
Some have argued that a deliberate engineering scenario is unlikely because one would not have had the insight a priori to design the current pandemic virus (3). This argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that two or more as yet undisclosed ancestors (i.e., more proximal ancestors than RaTG13 and RmYN02) had already been discovered and were being studied in a laboratory—for example, one with the SARS-CoV-2 backbone and spike protein receptor-binding domain, and the other with the SARS-CoV-2 polybasic furin cleavage site. It would have been a logical next step to wonder about the properties of a recombinant virus and then create it in the laboratory. Alternatively, the complete SARS-CoV-2 sequence could have been recovered from a bat sample and viable virus resurrected from a synthetic genome to study it, before that virus accidentally escaped from the laboratory.
concluding that "Even though strong opinions abound, none of these scenarios can be confidently ruled in or ruled out with currently available facts." Given that this is an opinion piece it comes under WP:RSOPINION, and shouldn't be used for statements of fact, only attributed opinion. It also doesn't mention the WIV by name. While David Relman seems to be a respected microbiologist (seemingly mostly focusing on gut flora,bacteria and archea, with some viral work as well). its difficult to get a sense of whether this represents the concensus of virologists, and whether or not Relman is a prominent enough microbiologist or not that this would be WP:DUE. (It appears he was stating the same thing back in April according to this BoingBoing article) In my view, we should avoid using opinion pieces entirely when discussing the origins of the virus. Hemiauchenia ( talk) 03:02, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
Not including opinion pieces in Wikipedia articles, even ones published in prestigious publications like PNAS, is not censorship.This isn't POV-pushing, either; I would have the same objection to opinion pieces arguing in the opposite direction. XOR'easter ( talk) 07:24, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
On January 15th, the US Department of State released a document entitled Fact Sheet: Activity at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that has been extensively discussed on the WIV talk page, in the document, it is explosively claimed that:
The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was “zero infection” among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.
among other claims. My issue with this is as a US govt document they are a WP:PRIMARY source for the claims, and that the origin of the virus has been polticised, in large part to the actions of the Trump administration, which has also developed a reputation for publishing falsehoods and conspiracy theories, and they cannot be considered a reliable source for the claims prima facie unless they are otherwise corroborated. Hemiauchenia ( talk) 03:31, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
When talking of the COVID-19 and the possibility of lab leak as an origin scenario, one should not conflate between the different classifications of emerging infectious disease, as clearly delineated here in Wikipedia's entry on Emerging infectious diseases.
For the uninitiated, the Wikipedia entry clearly differentiates the scenario of a deliberate release of a bioweapon from an accidental release of a virus undergoing medical research, and for those who have actually read the New York Magazine piece, this distinction is clearly made, and is clearly distinguishable from conspiracy theories made by the likes of Li-Meng Yan and Luc Montagnier, which have been discredited and retracted, respectively. Other than the New York Magazine, a number of other reputable publications have covered the topic of an accidental lab leak, including the Boston Magazine, Wired Magazine, CNET the BBC, Reuters Bloomberg, The Telegraph, The Times, Presadiretta and Culture France, Le Monde, and multiple Washington Post articles, such as this. None of these articles present the possibility of a lab leak as fact, but in the dearth of evidence for any other scenario, they quote some reputable scientists (like David Relman) as saying that it should be considered as a possibility, and should not be discounted. Further than that, Professor Dominic Dwyer, who is one University of North Carolina at Chapel Hillof the members of the WHO's investigation team told The Australian that he is willing to keep an "open mind" to the possibility of a lab leak, even if he doesn't think it's likely.
The question of whether WP:MEDRS applies here, should only pertain to Wikipedia:Biomedical information, and while certain aspects of determining the origins of the virus can certainly be considered biomedical information, there is currently a media and academic black out being imposed by the Chinese government, which was the subject of another reliable source on the possible lab origins of the virus, the Associated Press. The real question we should be asking, is whether there are sufficient reliable sources to establish that there is a controversy around the origins of the virus, to mandate the removal of the "misinformation" and "conspiracy theory" terms associated with the lab leak theory in the articles Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic and Wuhan Institute of Virology, and any other articles where it may crop up. There is now also confirmation from the United States Department of State that a lab leak is a possibility they want the WHO to investigate, which also gives mention to the unknown provenance of Ratg13, a key piece of missing information that gave rise to the lab leak hypothesis, which was covered in the New York Magazine piece. The USDOS statement has been further covered in reliable sources, like this Telegraph article.
Guys, what we have is a legitimate controversy about a possible biosecurity event that certain scientists have been warning about for years. Instead of trying to topic ban me and delete my stuff, it would be better to engage in a good-faith discussion, without conflating the issues.
ScrupulousScribe ( talk) 23:10, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
you are working off very old informationclaim. And yet, this WHO report dwells on the Wuhan market as the source of what it repeatedly calls a zoonotic bat virus. By contrast, no laboratories are mentioned; the word only appears as part of phrases like "laboratory testing". Neither does "pre-adapted" appear anywhere, nor the name of the Wuhan Institute. It is not necessary to repudiate outdated speculation, nor to refute it. I have yet to read of a conclusive study that proves definitely that painting animals on cave walls does not augment the herds in the next hunting season. Yet we are not expected to give that kind of belief system credence in the encyclopaedia. GPinkerton ( talk) 13:54, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
Current findings show that the virus has been remarkable stable since it was first reported in Wuhan, with sequences well conserved in different countries, suggesting that the virus was well adapted to human transmission from the moment it was first detected. This is also corroborated by the epidemiology and transmission patterns seen since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.(page three)
the claim that the virus may have originated in the lab is not biomedical in natureis a stunning claim. Other than the word "claim" itself, every noun in it is a biomedical one, and hypotheses concerning origins of pathogenic viruses are biomedical by definition. GPinkerton ( talk) 01:40, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
There are no MEDR sources proving anything." "
yet even they say the notion cannot be disproven and that it remains a possibility." The lay public and media will just never understand that scientists speak in hedgey modals, not certainties. So when they hear an expert hesitate to declare something "impossible" they assume that thing is a valid option; and when an expert cautiously says "might" or "potentially" a lot they may attribute the behavior to a lack of authority or (worse) as dissembling. This is why it's even more important to use only MEDRS for the "origin story". JoelleJay ( talk) 04:09, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
The earliest recognised case of infection with SARS-CoV-2 was an elderly and infirm man who developed symptoms on 1 December 2019. None of his family members became infected, and the source of his virus remains unknown. Furthermore, 14 of the 41 first cases had no contact with the seafood market. In another report, five of the first seven cases of COVID-19 had no link to the seafood market. Thus, it seems very likely that the virus was amplified in the market, but the market might not have been the site of origin nor the only source of the outbreak.[21]
I feel like somebody ought to mention that the Telegraph story linked up there describes the State Department's assertions as going over like a lead balloon: The claims were dismissed by analysts
; "Zero details given," noted Kristian Andersen, an immunologist at Scripps Research, rating the statement as "an F"
; Mr Pompeo's statement offered little beyond insinuation
. Meanwhile, maybe someone can explain to me how "there was an accidental leak and the Chinese government is covering it up" is not a conspiracy theory. And an almost archetypal one, at that.
XOR'easter (
talk) 02:33, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
Wikipedia should present all origin scenarios with equal weightis patently absurd. There is strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is a zoonotic bat pathogen. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Are you seriously suggesting we give an extra-terrestrial or supernatural origin equal space to medical evidence? At this point, this is speculation on the level of panspermia. GPinkerton ( talk) 12:48, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
know not to askif I interpreted the sources according to the novel method you appear to be using. It is not up to you whether or not others disagree with your claims. GPinkerton ( talk) 14:23, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
This is from Reuters dated January 18, 2021. Factbox: The origins of COVID-19. Wikipedia follows what the reliable sources say. The factbox does not mention conspiracy theory or misinformation. Why wikipedia editors want to interject the term "conspiracy theory" is beyond me and many other editors. -- Guest2625 ( talk) 12:42, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
The factbox does not mention conspiracy theory or misinformation.See: argumentum ex silentio.
beyond me and many other editors.See: argumentum ad populum. The reliable source linked above says specifically that there is no evidence for "lab leak". ("Though there is no credible supporting evidence, some researchers still do not rule out the possibility that the virus was released accidentally by a specialist lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.") Theories without evidence are called what? GPinkerton ( talk) 12:59, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
This discussion is wasting everyone's time at this point. The question of what sort of sourcing we should rely on is clear. WP:MEDRS is the relevant policy, and Alexbrn has explained how that policy applies to this case. - Thucydides411 ( talk) 13:54, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
First of all, I am going to ask editors, specially on the side of the lab leak theory to keep their comments brief in this section. Now, here are the strongest points made on each side:
Next, I'm asking i) for an independent editor to provide his own take on the conclusion, and ii) is there a chance of a middle ground between the two sides that would allow for productive editing? I hope that we are open to hear proposals in that sense. Forich ( talk) 19:30, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
There is only one question in this discussion: that is whether the term "conspiracy theory" should be used for the hypothesis that "the virus might have come from a laboratory accident". The US government has stated it most clearly:
The U.S. government does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus—known as SARS-CoV-2—was transmitted initially to humans. We have not determined whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, China.[22]
Multiple scientists have also stated the same thing. If a conclusion is needed, a request for comment can be opened on the relevant page and a conclusion decided there by a tally of the participant's opinions. -- Guest2625 ( talk) 01:03, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
decided there by a tally of the participant's opinionsis also questionable. Normchou 💬 06:44, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
I would like to point to a recent discussion in a specific context on Talk:Investigations into the origin of COVID-19#WP:MEDRS, where I argued the specious use of MEDRS has the destructive effect of censoring significant viewpoints supported by reliable sources. This is harmful to the Wikipedia project.
Also, I cannot help but raise the issue about WP:CONDUCT even though this is a RSN discussion. As Forich has mentioned above, there is a certain sense of condescension among some of the editors who frequently cite MEDRS in their editing decisions, regardless of whether or not they are correct. Actually, as I noted earlier on the ANI, I can sense quite some tribalism and WP:BITE mentality when I examine the editing history of some of those editors. I am not sure how long this phenomenon has existed on Wikipedia, but definitely feel it is causing harm to the community if continued. Normchou 💬 07:10, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
Maybe these are clues that will never receive further investigationonly to be associated with narratives, whereas in reality there is also a big incentive issue that has not been fully scrutinized. A scientist is, first of all, a human. They need respect, prestige, and money (funding) to continue their career. As Stuart Turville, an immuno-virologist at the Kirby Institute in Australia said, the possibility of a "lab leak"
keeps us up at nightand is
the nightmare within nightmares[23]. Why do you think they are so afraid of this scenario, provided that they are supposed to be only "discoverers of the truth"? The user above, JoelleJay, has mentioned that
the vast majority of scientists did not try to fill those holes with allegations of lab passage. Is this phenomenon a pure consequence of the scientific methodology and/or established norms within the scientific community regardless of any conflict of interest? Now, suppose there exists a significant non-scientific, human factor that incentivizes (in a conscious or unconscious way) these scientists (as humans) to focus more on "zoonotic origin with natural transmission to humans" and less on the "lab leak", then we have a general bias that is difficult to be self-corrected by the scientists only. Such a bias can already exist before all these scientific investigations are conducted and research papers written. Normchou 💬 17:26, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
This theory is the most uncomfortable and most controversial. If true, it would have severe and lasting ramifications on research, geopolitics and trust in scientific institutions. I am not for or against the "lab leak" theory, but merely pointing out the incentive issue that has been ignored in all these discussions. We should allow a NPOV (one of the WP:5Ps) presentation of the issue using other RSes that balances the "over-dueness" of the "scientific" narrative on this specific issue, which is actually subject to the human incentive issue I've mentioned above. Normchou 💬 18:11, 23 January 2021 (UTC); edited 18:31, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
there nothing to suggest otherwise in this instance". In truth, there is something very different about the emergence of SARS-COV-2 from the emergence of SARS-COV-1 and from other emerging diseases in the general, which is it's seeming pre-adaption to humans, and which is the subject of a peer-reviewed paper here. The author's hypothesis was proven when the virus jumped from humans to minks in European fur farms, and the mink version began to rapidly mutate (paper here), and this is the subject of further study. The fact that the virus has been well adapted to humans from the very start, is also mentioned in "Current knowledge supporting origin tracing work" (page 3) of the WHO's "Terms of Reference" document for its investigation, here. This peculiar fact and associated papers/authors have been referenced in a number of reliable sources, and continue to get referenced (like in this BBC report from last night), that were put forward by myself to make certain content changes. I hope you read those papers, and unfortunately, I won't be able to reply further in this thread, as may get too close to the topic I can't talk about. ScrupulousScribe ( talk) 01:22, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
well adapted to human transmission from the moment it was first detected. ScrupulousScribe ( talk) 01:42, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
MEDRS is a collection of guidance and recommendations that would apply to any Wikipedia topic where there is a similar abundance of recent, reliable secondary sources. This is only half the reason for MEDRS; the other half is that (like with BLP) the Wikipedia:Biomedical information topic area is one where errors can lead to serious, immediate, and hard-to-reverse real-world consequences, which means we have to approach it more cautiously and with higher sourcing requirements. (In fact, on many fringe topics there are not high quality sources available - part of the point of MEDRS is that in that case we ought to ignore those topics entirely rather than risk the harm of covering them from a poor source.) While we always want the best available sources, the same urgency and risk does not imply to non-biomedical claims. -- Aquillion ( talk) 23:27, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
can lead to serious, immediate, and hard-to-reverse real-world consequencesis susceptible to a slippery slope, and seems to have completely disregarded the actual cognitive processes of information handling and decision making (including decision making under risk) in autonomous, well-functioning human beings like most of us. Normchou 💬 23:48, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
If anteaters are not thought to be involved by anyone, then you might want to correct the article COVID-19 pandemic, which says the source is "Possibly via bats, pangolins, or both." (Pangolins are often referred to as anteaters.) Bats can transmit rabies, which is far more serious to the individual than COVID-19, and guano is known to cause illnesses, all of which are far more likely than someone contracting COVID-19 from a bat. Seriously, no one would say, "Well I know I can get rabies or other sicknesses from bats, but I don't care about that. What I do care about is the possibility that one person once contracted COVID-19 from a bat."
Pretty much all human activity has some health consequences and if we carry MEDRS to extremes then we will seriously limit sources. Universal health care, war, gun control, imprisonment, cooking, climate change, poverty, fracking - all of these have impacts on human health, but we don't have to source all the related articles to medical journals.
Fringe theories about science rarely receive extensive coverage in medical journals - that's why we call them fringe theories. They may however receive extensive coverage in social sciences. For example white supremacist race theories are not extensively documented in medical journals because they are not real science. But social scientists may study them extensively as social phenomena. The investigator from the SPLC does not need to be a medical doctor nor do they need their reports to be reviewed by medical experts. All they need to know is what any educated person knows, that racist claims have no support in science. They don't have to know how the human genome was sequenced for example.
If we want to write about the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 originated in a lab, we should be able to use articles by responsible journalists and academics who write about it. While they will not typically have medical degrees, they will have sufficient understanding to write about it responsibly.
TFD ( talk) 02:03, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
There's an article, " Alpine race," which "is a historical race concept defined by some late 19th-century and early 20th-century anthropologists as one of the sub-races of the Caucasian race." It was thought that optimal diets for humans differed according to their sub-race. Mediterranean people for example were thought to be better eating fish, while Nordics should eat red meat. Are we supposed to source all these articles to medical journals? After all, someone may change their diet, which has health consequences, based on their supposed membership in a racial sub-group. TFD ( talk) 02:18, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
a barn-dance of scarecrows"; I am not seeing any reasoning for why others should adopt your views, other than the claim that they are being disingenuous, which — well, I'm not, so please try to come up with a different tack. jp× g 22:36, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
Information that is not typically biomedical may still require high-quality sourcing if the context may lead the reader to draw a conclusion about biomedical information, as can occur with content about human biochemistry or about medical research in animals- I see some arguments pointing towards that reasoning above.) But in any case it would be helpful to unambiguously place, as a base case, whether a disease's origin is on one side or the other of the is / is not divide on that page. The obvious places for it are population data and epidemiology if it is biomedical or history if it does not - it could fit into either but does not unambiguously fit with the current examples they give. -- Aquillion ( talk) 23:34, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
Are papers from Academia.edu reliable? I particularly want to know about [25].-- 2409:4073:4D8D:DE3C:9C1:F364:6881:5B1C ( talk) 08:27, 4 February 2021 (UTC)