Home • Search • Translate
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Create your own section and do not edit in anybody else's section. Please limit your main evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs and keep responses to other evidence as short as possible. A short, concise presentation will be more effective; posting evidence longer than 1000 words will not help you make your point. Over-long evidence that is not exceptionally easy to understand (like tables) will be trimmed to size or, in extreme cases, simply removed by the Clerks without warning - this could result in your important points being lost, so don't let it happen. Stay focused on the issues raised in the initial statements and on diffs which illustrate relevant behavior.

It is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff in question, or to a short page section; links to the page itself are insufficient. Never link to a page history, an editor's contributions, or a log for all actions of an editor (as those will have changed by the time people click on your links), although a link to a log for a specific article or a specific block log can be useful. Please make sure any page section links are permanent. See simple diff and link guide.

This page is not for general discussion - for that, see the talk page. If you think another editor's evidence is a misrepresentation of the facts, cite the evidence and explain how it is incorrect within your own section. Please do not try to re-factor the page or remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, leave it for the Arbitrators or Clerks to move.

Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as Arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies, Arbitrators vote at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators (and clerks, when clarification on votes is needed) may edit the proposed decision page.

Evidence presented by Jehochman

ScienceApologist has declared an intention to attack other editors

Responding to intense provocation, SA said, ...I promise to continue to attack others within the bounds of Wikipedia rules without violating POINT or BATTLEGROUND until I see every person I'm in conflict with blocked or banned. That's my full and final goal. Like it? [1] This petulant remark has not yet been retracted or struck. SA has retracted this statement. [2]

ScienceApologist wikilawyers against those with whom he has content disagreements

While this request for arbitration was pending, SA started a frivolous thread at WP:COIN alleging that Jim Butler ( talk · contribs) has a conflict of interest in editing acupuncture because JB is an acupuncturist. [3] So long as an editor follows WP:NPOV and other relevant policies, we should welcome them to edit an article about their field of expertise.

Evidence presented by Seicer

I am currently out of town, and now have access to a laptop, but will have limited internet access until January 2. I will provide a fuller evidence statement, and condense my statements after that. seicer | talk | contribs 23:42, 29 December 2008 (UTC) reply

Wikipedia is a battleground

"I promise to continue to attack others within the bounds of Wikipedia rules without violating POINT or BATTLEGROUND until I see every person I'm in conflict with blocked or banned. That's my full and final goal." 01:08, 3 December 2008

Death threats

"First I'm going to get Hans Adler fired for loving homeopathy. Then I'm going to get JB note imprisoned for impersonating a medical doctor. The I'm going to kill Levine2112 by breaking his back with vertebral subluxation unrelated to chiropractic. Then I'm going to expose Elonka for being an amateur cryptographer with delusions of grandeur. Then I'll put fluoride in ImperfectlyInformed and MaxPont's water to poison them.

Seriously, all, get the FUCK OFF MY TALKPAGE."

03:13, 3 December 2008

While not a serious death threat, death threats are explicitly forbidden under policy. We have blocked for far less in the past.

Retilatory and frivolous actions

"I think that at this point, requesting a community ban of seicer ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log), similar in nature to Guido den Broeder ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log), would be appropriate. As such, I am in support of a community ban for an indeterminate period to be reevaluated at an undetermined point in the future." 15:42, 22 December 2008

After requesting a community ban after a fellow administrator supported such a measure, SA filed a retilatory and frivolous community ban request against myself. Such action was admonished.

Poor edit summaries or actions without consensus

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience

Per Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience, SA was banned from editing WP:FRINGE for 30 days, beginning on November 4, 2008. The ban was for edit warring in an attempt to implement a major change/revision without consensus or discussion.

SA disagreed with the ban, and then attempted to boldly remove the ban message from the guideline's talkpage. It was replaced by a fellow administrator, and it was agreed upon by another administrator.

On December 1, SA began edit warring on WP:FRINGE in violation of the ban, as noted here and here. When reverted, SA lobbed rather incivil comments, as noted here and here. SA was blocked for 48 hours as a result.

Evidence presented by Enric Naval

No adequate tools to deal with fringe science editors

The community does not have adequate tools to fend off fringe science pushers, so it all depends on individual hard-boiled editors (like SA) who have to basically kick the POV pushers out of the talk page in unfashionable but effective ways, like I had to do myself here and here, so they won't scare neutral editors out of the page.

(adapted from my evidence at cold fusion case here)

We can't take every peer-reviewed source seriously

Fringe science POV pushers can cite literally hundreds of cherry-picked primary sources to support their fringe view (examples below). On certain fields they can also cherry pick from hundreds of published secondary sources (in homeopathy, 389 published reviews and meta-analysis).

Examples of piling-up primary sources for POV-pushing purposes:

  • 47 sources in homeopathy, from socking POV-pusher User:Dr.Jhingaadey, who claimed he could gather hundreds of studies
  • 353 papers in Cold fusion out from a list of 1390 papers gathered up by a researcher, just 11 days after the cold fusion arbitration case was closed
  • 14 papers in Sudden infant death syndrome, only god knows what criteria was used since official organisms say that all scientific papers show the exact opposite.

POV pushers won't listen to reasoned arguments

POV pushers will fight nail and toe and wikilawyer endlessly to defend that the sources are valid because a)they are published and b)they are peer-reviewed (see the evidence of homeopathy case (deleted version) for multiple examples). They will dismiss all arguments of being published by non-notable journals, being contradicted by more reliable/notable/representative sources, etc.

People fighting POV pushers are being punished

At some point someone has to call out the crap of this type of POV pushers and rebuff them completely, and all their sources with them, and clean up the articles from their pushing and sources. Editors with high visibility (like SA) will get accused of incivility when they do that.

At that point, we are indirectly punishing actions that defend NPOV on articles and indirectly defending civil POV pushers that wikilawyer about reliable sources, as well as preventing the cleanup of articles.

Chilling effect on moderate neutral editors

Constant POV pushing has a chilling effect on moderate neutral editors, who will think it twice before presenting sources on the talk page. They know that their articles will be attacked endlessly by POV pushers, who will present a series of minor sources that the editor will have to check one by one in order to rebuff them. Eventually, some of those neutral editors will take those articles out of their watchlists, leaving behind only the most polarized, stubborn, COI'ed, and/or POV-pushing editors, with the effects that you can imagine (aka, "collaborative environment" becomes "poisonous environment", see my [ complaints] about how it's imposible to add anything to Homeopathy without unintentionally starting a revert war + full indef protection, and my statement about " editing on this page should look like").

Neutral editors usually pop back into the talk page once they see that the usual POV pushers have been neutralized. (see how collaborative editing on Talk:Cold fusion resumed inmediately as soon as User:Pcarbonn and Jed were banned from the page. In comparison, discussion at Talk:Homeopathy is still poisoned and neutral editors are still being scared away [11]).

If moderate neutral editors don't see that efforts are being made to keep wikipedia free of these sterile fights, then they will eventually reduce their editing frequency and even leave.

Punishing SA

Terrible idea. It would make as much good as punishing the editors who repeatedly revert rabid nationalists at disputed territories articles, and who frequently exchange nationalistist insults with them. Cut that stuff when it appears so it won't disrupt the editing process, but don't prevent them from doing their work. Remember that, like those editors, SA makes a dirty job against stubborn opposition. Now go do something that solves the underlying problem.

Homeopathy on plants, SA's behaviour

(reply to Martinphi's evidence) Homeopathy on plants was discussed on the plant wikiproject here and here, where several arguments against inclusion were presented by several editors other than SA. I see no misconduct here. Also, you were (unintentionally) making an Appeal to authority argument, instead of exposing the arguments of why SA's actuation was wrong.

Specially since, as a post mortem analysis of the dead horse, I still see homeopathic usage still mentioned in articles where non-homeopathic sources give it relevance, like Atropa belladonna, Arnica or Pasque flower.(*) So SA's actuations, ahem, I mean very bold edits which he shouldn't have repeated after being reverted a couple of times have managed to bring a problem forward and improve the encyclopedia, altough causing a ton of disruption on its wake, see Talk:Thuja_occidentalis. Whether it's exclusively SA's fault is a different matter.

(*) (all three I have just tweaked now, since the storms on teapots are finished :P I also tested the waters on the focus of controversy Thuja occidentalis here, I hope that there are no sharks)

Evidence presented by Martinphi

I would like to formally submit the Durga's Trident evidence as presented here, and the evidence of Max Pont here. The Durga's Trident evidence was originally presented by sock. I claim the Durga's Trident evidence as my own, and present it to the Arbitration Committee as my own. I vouch for it, and you may consider it as presented by me. —— Martinphi Ψ~ Φ—— 01:18, 31 December 2008 (UTC) reply

Statement of context

I ask the ArbCom to forget about ScienceApologist's disruptive editing. Forget about his threats, sock puppeting, POINT making, edit warring, incivility, attacks, the amount of time people have spent trying to reform him, his attitude toward Wikipedia, his creation of his own policy, vested contributorhood (etc. etc.), and his divahood. What do those really matter, anyway? They are but the disruption of one single editor, however annoying. The real point is that ScienceApologist is a " debunker," not an "NPOV pusher."

This may be exactly what he ought to be- see below. However, if debunking is not appropriate, then the real problem the ArbCom has to consider, if this is to be about "Fringe science" rather than merely ScienceApologist, is whether or not debunking is to be tolerated on Wikipedia. Even SPOV, let alone debunking, is formally rejected by the community (till the recent Cold Fusion ArbCom at least). If debunking and SPOV are permitted to the exclusion of NPOV, two things will happen:

1, Wikipedia will be living a lie, per its pretense to NPOV.

2, Since on most complex fringe topics skeptics don't know enough to write the articles; and since proponents or even neutral editors won't put up with debunking; therefore, the articles will not acquire the information they need to be complete.

If you want to have complete articles on fringe topics, you will have to find a way to accommodate proponents. This does not mean you have to let the articles become shilling for fringe topics. But it does mean that fringe proponents have to have the same protections as other editors. It also means the the community has to take a firm stand against debunking, because no fringe or neutral editor will stay around to contribute to an article which debunks. And only the proponents know the subjects well. Note the dreadful state of the parapsychology-related articles: User:Annalisa Ventola, User:Nealparr and I could have made them very informative by now, but we've been driven off.

Also, you need to make a statement that although the mainstream view is notable and should be well explained, articles about fringe topics are to be mostly about those fringe topics per WEIGHT of the sources- their history, ideas, etc., rather than a discussion of those subjects from a mainstream POV. Many editors contest this. In fact, the Arbitration Committee has stated:

Encyclopedias are generally expected to provide overviews of scientific topics that are in line with current mainstream scientific thought. [12]

This is a statement that SPOV is the policy of Wikipedia (it is also policy creation by the Arbitration Committee). (see this for further explanation.) If the Committee really meant it, then it should be put into policy that Fringe articles are to be SPOV. But please don't lie to the readers about NPOV any more. The fringe articles are not NPOV.

The committee has come down hard on promotion of fringe views, but it has said nothing about debunking, as if it truly thinks debunking is a good thing. Please either ban fringe topics from Wikipedia, make sure they aren't debunking, or formally embrace SPOV/debunking (have you or haven't you already?). —— Martinphi Ψ~ Φ—— 06:42, 29 December 2008 (UTC) reply


Debunking

You may also wish to read this; it's old (from another ArbCom try) and not perfect for the case, but gives background.

You have seen evidence that a huge number of people agree with ScienceApologist's edits, if not his manners. Presumably, these editors make similar edits. They claim that their edits are in defense of mainstream science.

Has this claim been subjected to a scientific test?

Yes, it has. ScienceApologist, along with several of his friends such as OrangeMarlin, spent a great deal of time eliminating mentions of Homeopathy on articles related to WikiProject Plants. There, he met with mainstream scientists, such as Curtis Clark, Director of Web Development and Professor of Biological Sciences at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Speaking of the fringe POV pushers at WikiProject Plants Clark said:

Even after all these years, it still surprises me that fundamentalism smells the same, regardless of the "principles" considered fundamental. But I did see one thing among the kilobytes of stereotyped, reactionary drivel that would be of use to us plant editors, were we allowed to edit our articles without the "help" of the fundies

Oh no!! WAIT A MINUTE!!!

Clark was actually talking about ScienceApologist and his friends.

What's this?

Clark goes on to say:

Almost every plant has the potential to be used in a homeopathic preparation...If the practice of homeopathy were as deprecated as the practice of animal magnetism, we could still study it as a cultural phenomenon...Sadly, ... the fundies will still delete such references. But at least we will have the knowledge that we acted as scholars. [13]

Clark also said:

The scariest part to me is the statement, "Mention of homeopathy violates NPOV... This is one of the most outrageous cases of censorship that I've run across in a while." [14]

Clark has now confirmed his opinion:

"Science fundamentalism" is a pseudoscience at worst, and a political phenomenon at best, because it assumes that examination of evidence, experimentation, falsification, and the other tools of scientists are insufficient to discredit specific ideas, and that those ideas must be suppressed, or "debunked" in a manner beyond application of the tools of science... As a political movement, IMO science fundamentalism has done great harm to science, leading the gullible to believe that science is nothing more than a belief system.... Homeopathy as a science is bunk.... ScienceApologist is an irritating editor, who in my view does more harm than good....I don't see SA zealously trying to represent fringe ideas at all; I see him zealously trying to suppress them (I have no diffs any different from all those already presented elsewhere). I'm no newbie when it comes to fringe science; I taught evolution for a number of years... demonstrating the unsupportability of a proposition through citations of reliable sources definitely has a place in Wikipedia; debunking, being necessarily POV, doesn't. (excerpted from this thread)

MrDarwin, another mainstream scientist with excellent credentials who left Wikipedia mainly over the same situation [15] said:

(1) a small group of editors who have demonstrated no knowledge, expertise, or even a particular interest in botany have been editing, more or less by fiat, several plant species articles to expunge any and all references to homeopathy, without seeking or even considering consensus or compromise from the Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants project editors, many of whom have been working on these articles for several years (and none of whom are attempting to promote homeopathy); (2) this group of editors continues to mischaracterize other editors as "pro-homeopathy" when what those editors are trying to do is to acknowledge the well-documented use of several plant species in homeopathy; and (3) that it has become apparent that no source will be admitted as "reliable" by this group of editors, not even publications by professional botanists in the peer-reviewed botanical literature. [16]

Note that MrDarwin summarizes in essence much of what the "fringe POV pushers" have been saying.

He also said:

In my opinion, what User:ScienceApologist and User:PouponOnToast are doing is nothing short of far-reaching vandalism in attempting to delete all homeopathic references, however neutrally worded, from numerous Wikipedia articles. [17]

Well, that's how a couple of mainstream scientists viewed ScienceApologist and his friends in one scientific test of whether they are really defenders of mainstream science. I doubt that they act differently in other areas of the wiki (well, I know they don't). Such habits of editing are what I call debunking.

I asked those who support the POV of ScienceApologist & friends "How is it that a mainstream scientist ... called ScienceApologist and his friends fundamentalists who spew stereotyped, reactionary drivel? (In relation to their debates around Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants)"

None of them had an answer. [18]

I have heard from quite a few totally skeptical scientists/professionals by email. Some have asked me not to name them. They feel the same as Clark and MrDarwin. I emailed Coren the username of one of them. Another skeptic I can name would be Northmeister, who's long gone, apparently. You should see what people write to me by email. They start off saying how they are completely skeptical about [fringe claim], then go on to say how disgusted they are by the actions of the "skeptical" editors there. It's happened over and over.

I submit to the Arbitration Committee that ScienceApologist and friends have driven off a large number of skeptics and scientists, not just "fringe POV pushers." I submit also that ScienceApologist is a minor part of the problem and that others on Wikipedia are just as intent on debunking as he is. In fact, they are much more successful, since they don't disrupt as much.

The disruptive actions of "mainstream pushers" are defended here as necessary to defeat "fringe POV pushers" especially civil ones. Others contend that defending science is not sufficient excuse for the disruption. That is how the debate has been framed. I say that those who portray themselves as mainstream pushers are not defending mainstream science. They are just debunking.

That, at least, is what one scientific experiment had to say on the matter. —— Martinphi Ψ~ Φ—— 04:37, 6 January 2009 (UTC) reply

Further

I do hope you read the table of changes I made to NPOV here. Please note also that you just wrote the last section of the table into this ArbCom here!!. They are the changes which were deepest, and which people had the most trouble over- indeed, they put me up for banning and blocking over it, even though I'd done it over several days and no one reverted. Since as I remember it represents the most actual editing I did to policy (rather than just defense of the policy status quo) I think it is highly relevant.

I have done some policy editing also which were attempts to keep policy from being rewritten to help SA and friends, such as Shoemaker's Holiday's attempts to change WP:CIV to be more friendly to SA. And attempts to chance WP:NOR so that any textbook could be used to rebut any fringe claim. Or resisting the WP:PARITY section of fringe, which allows blogs, fringe advocacy sites, and other bad sources. Or resisting the edit-warring in of the Particular attribution section of FRINGE, which allows the Skeptic's Dictionary or the blog of a scientist to be stated as fact or the opinions of "science." I think policy is fine the way it is and the last thing I want to do is change it. I'm not the one who's been trying to change it. SA and friends have been.

Evidence presented by User:Pcarbonn

Destructive editing behavior + potential conflict of interest

ScienceApologist has stated that he wants to get blocked or banned every person he disagrees with. [19] A few weeks ago, he has wrongly accused me of having invested in a company with an interest in cold fusion research, and thus of a conflict of interest. [20] After several stages of forum shopping, such suspicion about my motives has eventually lead the Arbitration Committee to ban me from contributing to cold fusion articles 2 weeks ago, [21] a decision that I find unjust, and dangerous for wikipedia. [22] Since then, many well-sourced, notable arguments in favor of cold fusion have been removed from the cold fusion article. [23] I have issued an appeal of the ban to Jimbo Wales. [24]

Isn't it time to look at ScienceApologist's motivation? Should I disclose his real name, as he has done to Ronnotel and me? [25] [26] I have investigated the circumstances that lead him to issue his death threats to other editors. [27] I have now submitted evidence to the ArbComm that ScienceApologist works for a University with a strong involvement in "hot fusion" research. Could he have a personal incentive to defend such research from the competition of cold fusion one, just as he said I had a financial incentive to defend the reality of cold fusion ? That seems probably far fetched.

Yet, in 1989 already, Eugene Mallove and others have said that the protection of hot fusion research budget was one reason for the quick suppression of Fleischmann and Pons' discovery. They are many more nuclear physicists than cold fusion researchers, and thus many more potential Wikipedia editors with an anti-Cold-fusion interest.(I'm not saying that this is an organized conspiracy, just the sum of individual interests) Wikipedia is not a democracy, and significant minorities deserve a fair representation, per WP:NPOV. The editors defending such significant minority views have a tough job on wikipedia, since they are facing a majority: they should be defended, not banned. Too many editors who wanted fair representation of minority views have already left wikipedia in disgust, often after losing their civility. (Edmund Storms, Jed Rothwell [28], Ron Marshall, [29] ...)

Anyway, does ScienceApologist's real-world interest really matter ? Many editors chose to remain anonymous, and are thus immune from accusation of conflict of interest. Should we penalize those whose identity is known ? I don't think so. It would encourage witch-hunt. We should judge editors only based on their behavior, and check whether they have violated policies. In fact, that's what WP:COI says. There is plenty of evidence that ScienceApologist has violated policies repeatedly. That's what matters.

The Arbitration Committee would be well advised to look how real-word courts make their judgement. Are well-respected citizen allowed to commit crimes, considering their overall balance of contributions to the world ? No, the same laws apply to all, great or small. I wish Wikipedia would do the same. ScienceApologist is even more destructive when he has many followers, as Enric Naval and others clearly suggest here. [30] Pcarbonn ( talk) 09:30, 29 December 2008 (UTC) reply

ScienceApologist has repeatedly violated NPOV

ScienceApologist is a WP:SPA with the sole purpose of silencing significant scientific minority views on Wikipedia. To achieve that aim, he has repeatedly suppressed or mischaracterized reliable secondary sources, so that the so-called "mainstream view" is presented as the only valid one, in violation of WP:NPOV which says : "None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being judged as "the truth", in order that the various significant published viewpoints are made accessible to the reader, not just the most popular one.".

In particular, he has repeatedly suppressed official statements from the 2 reports of the Department of Energy, by far the most notable reviews of cold fusion, sometimes to the point of edit warring on them (in bold below). Yet, these statements were included in the version resulting from the mediation that he accepted. Here is a partial list:

  • "When members of the panel were asked about the evidence of low energy nuclear reactions, twelve of the eighteen did not feel that there was any conclusive evidence, five found the evidence "somewhat convincing", and one was entirely convinced." (DOE 2004) [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40]
  • "Evaluations by the reviewers ranged from: 1) evidence for excess power is compelling, to 2) there is no convincing evidence that excess power is produced when integrated over the life of an experiment. The reviewers were split approximately evenly on this topic." (DOE 2004) [41] [42]
  • "The reviewers identified a number of basic science research areas that could be helpful in resolving some of the controversies in the field" (DOE 2004) [43] [44] [45] [46] [47]
  • ""Even a single short but valid cold fusion period would be revolutionary. As a result, it is difficult convincingly to resolve all cold fusion claims since, for example, any good experiment that fails to find cold fusion can be discounted as merely not working for unknown reasons." [48] [49]
Response to Phil53 below : Per WP:LEAD, the lead "summarizes the most important points — including any notable controversies that may exist". This confirms that the deletion, rather than modification, of significant minority views (one third of the panelists in this case !) by SA is contrary to POV. The current version of the article has the same POV issue, and has the POV tag: it cannot be used to justify SA's edit, but confirms the will of the majority to suppress a significant minority view.(see current talk) This will is further examplified by SA's wholesale deletion of full section that include statements favorable to CF, as you rightly pointed out, without reaching consensus via prior discussion. Besides confirming the points above, it can be seen as vandalism (see "blanking"). I also see that you acknowledge that the last 2 edits are POV edits, even if marginal.

Wikipedia needs a mechanism to enforce NPOV

While majorities are often benevolent towards minorities, the history of the real world is also full of examples of majorities oppressing unprotected minorities. There is no reason to believe that Wikipedia is immune to this problem. What happens on Wikipedia when a majority is determined to suppress the opinion of a significant minority ? The cold fusion case is a good example of that.

Editors who disagree on how to represent the preponderence of views according to WP:NPOV discuss it on talk pages. They refer to reliable source in support of their views. If they still disagree, they use the available dispute resolution mechanisms (RfC, mediation, ...). If they still can't find an agreement, they can bring the case to the Arbitration Committee. Unfortunately, at that point, the ArbComm responds that it cannot deal with such content issues, and the minority is thus armless in front of an oppressive majority and is bound to lose. In other words, there is no enforcement mechanism of NPOV.

What's the point of saying that "NPOV is non-negotiable" if there is no mechanism to enforce it ? Since this constitutional issue is probably outside the authority of the ArbComm, I've raised it with Jimbo Wales here

I'm told that ArbComm was not particularly successful in past content decisions. I'm not sure what measure of success is used, as obviously such decisions are bound to displease some : it would be interesting to clarify. From there, it should be possible to decide whether ArbComm can be hoped to get better, or if a separate committee should be set up with more appropriate rules.
New Scientist, a "mainstream" science magazine, recently reported on a scientific paper describing a personality test of 69 contributors to Wikipedia. [50] The test showed that these editors scored low for agreableness and openness to new ideas. This is a small sample, of course, but it gives support to my statements above. This would also mean that the larger population, and thus our readers, are more open to new ideas than editors : shouldn't we ensure that our articles are in line with their interest (while ensuring of course that we provide reliable information with proper attribution) ? Isn't it interesting to note that ArbComm currently addresses only one of the 2 issues raised by this study (agreableness / civility), but ignores the other one (openness to new ideas / NPOV) ?

Evidence presented by Mathsci

Polite POV pushing will always be a problem in fringe science

Since the creation of the internet, fringe science and pseudoscience have found their natural niche. The advocates of fringe science can apparently at last give their own view of their subject. Unfortunately this is completely at odds with the methodology of the world academic community of scientists, whether it be on the scientific basis of parapsychology and orgone or on some of the more extreme claims of alternative medicine. It is very difficult for wikipedia to give a balanced view of some of these topics and, in this sense, wikipedia is some type of ongoing experiment, where perhaps for the first time an attempt is being made to treat what are sometimes considered to be taboo topics in the academic world. Where medical issues arise, there can be a real danger in allowing certain claims to stand unchallenged. Small coteries of academics, often with no formal training in science, have used fringe science to explain racial differences, sometimes intentionally providing fodder for extremist hate groups. Fringe science can often be poor or bad science, frequently motivated by real-world problems such as the energy crisis. Perpetual motion theorists or would-be Einsteins should not be able to peddle their flawed wares on wikipedia unchallenged; likewise experiments that have never lived up to their exaggerated claims, as with cold fusion, should not be misrepresented by exceedingly polite proponents on wikipedia. Fringe science covers a vast range of disparate topics, from protoscience to pseudoscience, and it is not clear that lumping them all together is helpful as far as devising policies on wikipedia is concerned; it seems quite unhelpful for example putting acupuncture, which works for many people, in the same basket as orgone.

Content is far more important than civility in editing fringe science

The policing of articles on fringe science or pseudoscience is extremely difficult. Certainly content is the key here and, when administrators are not directly involved in editing the articles or are unfamiliar with sometimes highly complex material, this can be a well-nigh impossible task. Where tempers can frequently become frayed, it is often much easier to pick up lapses in behaviour than to understand larger intellectual issues. Administrators can develop "relationships" with individual editors, sometimes verging on hostility, with a consequent loss of assumptions of good faith; equally well, they can develop soft spots for POV pushers, eager to nestle under their wings. The repercussions of these personalized conflicts/attachments between administrators and editors appear to be completely unhelpful for building an encyclopedia. What has worked is where academic experts with a good knowledge of the subject have been present as editors and as leaders of discussions on the talk page. I am thinking of medical editors like Eubulides, MastCell, Fyslee, etc. Their presence seems to provide the necessary calm and rational ambiance for building balanced articles. It works much better than micromanagement, something that more than likely will drive this kind of expert away from problematic articles.

Those challenging the claims of fringe science should not act like scientific zealots

It is commendable that those involved in mainstream science, like ScienceApologist, take a stand against polite POV pushers. Few wikipedians do this full time. However, they should guard against this becoming a battle on wikipedia, perhaps taking a leaf out of the book of the medical wikipedians. Sometimes it's hard to keep the temperature down when the rational scientific method seems to have been thrown out of the window. In SA's case, I think his mentor Durova's calm approach to problems will counter his own sometimes volatile tendencies, which can occasionally obscure his wholly laudable intentions. He should make every effort to stay cool. I do not believe that he has exhausted the community's patience: from where I stand, the community is far more concerned at having junk knowledge shunted onto the pages of its much read encyclopedia.

Wikipedia should not encourage popular misconceptions about science

Science provides a method to understand the natural world. Many claimed phenomena in the natural world, such as paranormal experiences or alien abductions, lie outside science and up until now have a large question mark hanging over them. Sometimes within science inconclusive experiments cannot be repeated or new theories are inconsistent or based on erroneous calculations; despite this proponents continue to push these controversial theories, even when their work cannot be published in peer-reviewed academic journals. It is not up to wikipedia to give a new definition of science which encompasses these as new "folk theories". The Encyclopedia Britannica usually does not write separate articles on controversial theories, but mentions them in passing in the context of a larger accepted theory. Wikipedia articles on pseudoscientific theories should explicitly state when a would-be theory has not been accepted by the scientific community. The misnomer that a more neutral point of view is available, independent of the scientific method, when discussing these kinds of problematic theories can be traced back to inadequate education in science. Wikipedia should not promote these myths and misconceptions, no matter how much their readership might hanker after such things.


Evidence presented by User:Peter Damian

Wikipedia is not about debunking fringe views

The aim of Wikipedia is not to debunk fringe views (i.e. to discredit and expose claims as being false, exaggerated or pretentious). It is to present scientific consensus as represented in reliable sources, i.e. reputable and authoritative secondary sources.

But Wikipedia is about neutrality

However, the community still does not have the will to enforce the neutrality principles, nor does it have effective tools to defend itself against the promoters of fringe points of view, and against those with a commercial or other vested interest in promoting fringe viewpoints. Because of this, and because of the lack of will , neutral editors representing scientific consensus are like SA are burning out and suffering persecution.

If such editors are persecuted, or allowed to burn out without being encouraged and supported, this will cause serious problems in the coverage of science in Wikipedia. As the increasing use of Wikipedia as an authoritative reference source leads to increasing awareness of such flaws in the editorial process, this will lead to considerable 'reputational risk' to the project. This may lead to funding being withdrawn and ultimately to the collapse of the project.

Wikipedia needs tools to enforce neutrality, not witch hunts

The problem could be easily solved by stronger enforcement of core Wikipedia neutrality principles. We must stamp out the current practice whereby fringe science POV pushers can cite literally hundreds of cherry-picked primary sources to support their fringe view, or cherry pick from hundreds of published secondary sources. I therefore propose:

  • There should be much stricter enforcement of policies on use of reliable sources. Editors who persistently cherry-pick primary sources against WP:DUE, or who cite unreliable sources, should be indefinitely blocked.
  • The process of identifying reliable sources should be assisted by establishing a committee or board to deal with the appropriate use of sources. The members of the committee do not have to be subject-matter experts, but they will have to be expert in the methods and procedures and principles used in the academic world to ensure that sourcing is reliable.
  • There should be a change of policy to prevent individuals with a blatant conflict of interest, or commercial interests, from editing.
  • Editors experiencing burn-out should be supported and encouraged.
  • Witch-hunts like the current arbitration should be ended forthwith.

Evidence presented by User:B

ScienceApologist attacks those he disagrees with

At Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2008/Vote/Rlevse, ScienceApologist libeled me by claiming that I ran a protection racket regarding Profg ( talk · contribs). I was shocked at his accusation that I am committing extortion - when I challenged him on it, he did not reply. At a minimum, I would expect an apology. Harassment is not a weapon in a dispute - and that summarizes my problem with SA's behavior. -- B ( talk) 23:40, 29 December 2008 (UTC) reply

See also his reply to this evidence on my talk page and his " refactoring" of his accusation with the sarcastic edit summary "User:B thinks "protection racket" is uncivil". -- B ( talk) 13:09, 30 December 2008 (UTC) reply

Evidence presented by MastCell

The "rejection" of SPOV

I'm going to confine myself, at this point, to addressing one recurring fallacy that's been annoying me. "SPOV" vs. "NPOV" is repeatedly presented as an either/or, usually with the corollary that "the community" has "rejected" SPOV in favor of NPOV. Let's go to the tape:

I see that this proposal was discussed by a grand total of 3 logged-in editors. Three. And those three didn't even "reject" it - they essentially agreed that SPOV was redundant and synonymous with NPOV on scientific articles, so a separate SPOV policy was unnecessary.

I'm loathe to shout, but this deserves the bold-italics: SPOV was not "rejected"; it was discarded because it was deemed redundant and synonymous with NPOV on scientific articles by the 3 editors who bothered to comment. Maybe I'm missing more detailed discussion; if anyone is aware of a more thorough discussion or rejection of SPOV, please share the links with me and I'll amend my evidence. But I currently don't see evidence to back the frequently repeated claim that SPOV was "rejected", nor that anything resembling "the community" even debated the topic.

More: SPOV and NPOV are not mutually exclusive. Any reasonable application of WP:NPOV to scientific topics will end up favoring the mainstream scientific point of view. ArbCom formalized this in the cold fusion case, but it's actually nothing new - their finding merely reflected the basic understanding of Wikipedia's goals and already-existing best practices. You can call it SPOV if you want - perhaps it is - but it's also NPOV. MastCell  Talk 06:03, 30 December 2008 (UTC) reply

Evidence presented by Bishonen

I bring no new information below, but I provide certain contexts from the history tab of Science Apologist's talkpage. Considering the abuse of context-free diffs from that history in the evidence sections of Jehochman, Seicer, and Pcarbon, and considering the role played by FT2 in the dialogue on SA's talkpage, I believe my analysis will be labor-saving for the committee.

Bad faith "evidence" against Science Apologist on this page

In their evidence sections above, Jehochman, Seicer, and Pcarbon all quote pieces of sarcasm from an angry SA . To give these quotes without context, as Jehochman does, makes SA appear as a hater of Wikipedia and all who sail in her, and SA's intentions as malicious. [51] Seicer misleads more blatantly and actively, offering a fake context. [52] [53] The actual context of SA's sarcasm is this:

When SA was blocked by Elonka on December 1, a storm broke out on his talkpage. I see 59 [sic: fifty-nine] messages posted to the page over the course of 30 hours, without a single post from SA, [54] most of them attacks. (23 of the 59 edits were by Levine2112, posted in only 5 hours [55]: that would be twenty-three "You have new messages" banners in 5 hours from Levine2112 alone.) Eventually, SA replied ("Get the FUCK OFF MY TALKPAGE" [56]). As soon as he broke his 30-hour silence, it unfortunately brought out FT2, not previously heard from, to tell SA that "You just can't keep posting like that to people." [57] (my italics). FT2 then "tweaked" his own post over and over, as is his habit, until SA broke out into his much-quoted statement that "Well, if that's the alternative you offer me, I promise to continue to attack others within the bounds of Wikipedia rules without violating POINT or BATTLEGROUND until I see every person I'm in conflict with blocked or banned. That's my full and final goal. Like it?". [58] This, if it's read in good faith, and read with the brain rather than with the medulla oblongata, is obviously a sarcastic summary of the attacks that have been rolling in, especially of FT2's statement (SA's post is directed at FT2 specifically). It's quite depressing to see Jehochman and Seicer leave out the conditional clause when they "quote" SA's post above, making it look like the sentence starts with "I promise"—you see how misleading that is? It's a downright misquote. The amazingly poor timing and wording of FT2's post is a pity, too. (I don't call FT2's actions deliberate baiting, but they were pretty darn unhelpful.) There is nothing surprising, and certainly nothing malicious, in SA's part of this history tab. There is simply a lot of anger and of concern for the project from him; and a lot of baiting from some other people. Bishonen | talk 14:44, 30 December 2008 (UTC). reply


Evidence presented by Crohnie

I have put my comment here for a reason, if I am in the wrong place please move it to the proper location. I put my comment here so that I could comment on what Bishonen states. I actually watched the going on at SA talk page. From the moment Elonka posted her question I knew the battle was going to erupt and waited and watched for the usual editors to show up with comments, and sure enough the did. What Bishonen describes is what actually happened. I actually was surprised that this went on as long as it did since there was at least three administrators and then arbitrator watching and commenting on his talk page. I was totally amazed that no one, not one of them put a stop to the discussions going on knowing full well that there would be an uproar when SA popped in. I think everyone who contributed to this should be talked to. They all knew what they were doing, and worst they knew what the outcome would be, SA blowing his top. All of you should be ashamed of yourselves for behaving this way, sorry but this isn't supposed to be the way things work here. I understand, as I assume most everyone else does by now, and that is a lot of editors want SA banned from the site. I consider myself one of the most civil editors that the project can find but this whole affair is way over the top. Every week someone, usually from the same group of editors, post to AN, ANI, and ARB to try to achieve this goal, block/ban SA. Now I do not feel the SA is free of guilt here but I also feel that his behavior at times is being pushed and prodded to the level of incivility that everyone claims they don't like. So how's this for a proposal, everyone treat everyone else with respect, everyone treats the project with respect and get along. I find it terrible hard to take anyone's side here when it's the same editors complaining. I find it terrible suspicious that there was a case just recently against SA that didn't go the way some editors wanted so a decision for another try is being tried here. This may not sound like assuming good faith but I am telling it as I see it as an outsider to all of this. I haven't edited in an article with most of the editors here, and the one's I have, including SA, was a long time ago. So in closing, I think that some editors should revise their comments above to take the accounts of this matter that Bishonen has stated to their own statements so that it not misleading to others. Thanks for listening, I hope I don't end up being sorry I came to comment. -- CrohnieGal Talk 11:57, 3 January 2009 (UTC) reply

Evidence presented by User:Tony Sidaway

The main purpose of this evidence is to raise consciousness of the problems facing us in our objective of creating the most comprehensive and reliable body of general information on science.

Fringe science advocacy affects many science articles

Although the main focus of this arbitration is on articles about fringe science, articles about well accepted science may sometimes be affected by the addition of fringe science concepts or the removal of barriers to acceptance of fringe science concepts. Examples:

Commercial interests are campaigning to subvert and misrepresent science

See Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement and especially Operation Berkshire. See also The Denial Industry by George Monbiot.

This is the context in which much advocacy work for pseudoscience takes place. Science has become politicized and manipulated.

Wikipedia is targeted

  • See www.naturalnews.com/025106.html unreliable fringe source? this article] in which the principal writer of an academic study of pharmaceutical information in Wikipedia (Dr Kevin A Clauson of Nova Southeastern University in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida) reports that "representatives from drug companies have been caught deleting information from Wikipedia pages, information which might make their drugs seem unsafe." The study finds that although in general information on Wikipedia is accurate, it tends to omit important detail such as side-effects:
    "One potential dangerous adverse effect of the anti-inflammatory drug Arthrotec (diclofenac and misoprostol) is that it can cause miscarriage, yet this piece of information is omitted. Another example of missing information is the possibility of the herb St John’s Wort interfering with the action of Prezista (darunavir), a HIV drug."

Wikipedia is frequently a target of advocacy campaigns involving the manipulation of scientific evidence

Mainly through, but not restricted to, tendentious editing, argumentative behavior, open advocacy and disruptive editing, and campaigns of personal vilification.

The community has found it difficult to deal with even blatant advocacy

  • See here for a very hostile response to a challenge of a blatant case of a practising acupuncturist who performs a considerable amount of editing of the article on acupuncture. One editor even ventures the tendentious claim: "An editor's vocation does not create a COI." (conflict of interest). Acupuncture is a controversial field in which scientists have made little headway in distinguishing results from confounding effects. At present the lead section lacks a clear statement to this effect [59], instead using various circumlocutions to give the impression that acupuncture has considerable clinical acceptance.
  • See Condon Committee which to this day, despite some work by me earlier this year, contains a very large amount of criticism and blatant denigration based on obscure primary sources written by minor participants in the Condon investigation. Editors need encouragement to be bold in such cases and stub articles right down and start again (as we do with the biographies of living persons). I regret that I bottled out because I don't want to have to deal with fanatics.

Dangers of misframing

These conflicts are sometimes represented as being between mainstream science and fringe science. This is a subtle misdirection. There is a continuum of debate within science, based on widespread consensus on the scientific method and materialism.

Sources and arguments should thus be evaluated with respect to their acceptance within that debate. There is not some alternative science in which fringe views are more valid than they are held to be elsewhere. Scientific theories are accepted or rejected on the basis of their conformance with the body of scientific work, and a theory that demands the rejection of much that has been tested repeatedly requires especially persuasive evidence.

Wikipedia's overall science coverage has attracted praise

  • The famous Nature study of articles on scientific subjects, conducted in December, 2005, gave Wikipedia good marks on scientific subjects, based on the assessments of experts in the field. Though this was the subject of a rebuttal by the editors of Britannica, it is convincing evidence that Wikipedia's science coverage does not disgrace itself.

Civil POV pushing

In April, 2008, former arbitrator Mark Pellegrini ( Raul654) created an essay Wikipedia:Civil POV pushing. This has been expanded by Mark and several other editors with considerable editing experience in science-related fields where a certain intractable phenomenon has been encountered:

Wikipedia, and specifically the dispute resolution process, has a difficult time dealing with civil POV pushers. These are editors who are superficially polite while exhibiting some or all of the following behaviors:
  • They often edit primarily or entirely on one topic or theme.
  • They attempt to water down language, unreasonably exclude, marginalize or push views beyond the requirements of WP:NPOV, or give undue weight to fringe theories - pseudoscience, crankery, conspiracy theories, marginal nationalist or historic viewpoints, and the like (PCCTL for short).
  • They revert war over such edits.
  • They frivolously request citations for obvious or well known information.
  • They argue endlessly about the neutral-point-of-view policy and particularly try to undermine the undue weight clause. They try to add information that is (at best) peripherally relevant on the grounds that "it is verifiable, so it should be in."
  • They argue for the inclusion of material of dubious reliability; for example, using commentary from partisan think tanks rather than from the scientific literature.
  • They may use sockpuppets, or recruit meat puppets.
  • They repeatedly use the talk page for soapboxing, and/or to re-raise the same issues that have already been discussed numerous times.
  • They hang around forever wearing down more serious editors and become expert in an odd kind of way on their niche POV.
  • They often make a series of silly and time wasting requests for comment, mediation or arbitration again to try to wear down the serious editors.

The types of articles prone to this kind of problem are identified as:

  • Evolution/Creationism
  • Complementary and alternative medicine
  • Global warming
  • Parapsychology
  • The September 11 attacks
  • Racial topics
  • Pseudoscience
  • Marginal or idiosyncratic scientific speculation
  • New religious movements

The essay observes that our dispute resolution process has not been very successful in dealing with the damage to the project, if not the content, by such behavior, and tries to suggest some strategies for coping.

Among principles suggested are:

  • "superficially polite behaviors still may be uncivil."
    • Our Wikipedia:Civility policy supports this by saying: "Editors are expected to be reasonably cooperative...to work within the scope of policies." Thus editors who subvert the neutral point of view are not being truly civil.
  • "Civility is important, but it does not trump other core behavioral and content policies."
    • This is implicit in our policy statements. In particular, Jimbo has frequently described NPOV as one of the most important policies, the one he describes as "non-negotiable".

Evidence presented by Brothejr

Mainstream Vs Fringe

This could also be called: Skeptic Vs Believer or Debunker Vs Promoter.

One of the problems we are facing here is this idea of a war going one between the fringe and mainstream science. We continue to hear various editors state that we must fight the fringe and keep them from promoting their POV's. One example from this vary own arbcom is this:

There are some subjects that really need to be dismissed and discredited, if the encyclopedia doesn't care to be considered a laughingstock in the eyes of the world outside this particular wiki. Woonpton ( talk) 16:52, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

We see this time and again with people railing on how we should not give any fringe topic/article credit and also we should, as an encyclopedia, present the subject as something loony. The problem with this idea of mainstream science prevails over all, is that it is not Wikipedia's job to promote or discredit anything. We are here only to present the topic with as much factual information to inform the reader. Wikipedia is not here to dismiss or discredit anything. To do so would be considered Original Research. We are here only to report of what the topic is in a way to leave the reader better informed without imparting a bias for or against the topic. This is a constant across Wikipedia and does not change because it is a science article.

NPOV, The Reader, and You

One of the most significant issues with this battle between Mainstream Vs Fringe is that various articles have degraded in style and writing. As editors fight between each other over wording, they tend to forget the third party that is also very quietly involved: the Reader.

One example of how articles degrade with these battles for and against the fringe is to take a look at how such fighting can degrade articles: Here is the Cold Fusion article when it was promoted as a Featured Article: [60]. Here is the same article after it had been reduced to a Good Article: [61]. Finally, here is the same article again after it had been delisted as Good Article: [62]. Take a look at the intro paragraph and how it was written from a FA article all the way down to a delisted GA article. In the FA version, the lead was clearly written and stated what Cold Fusion was without imparting any controversy to the Reader other then to mention that there was a controversy surrounding it. Now take a look at the article after it had been delisted as a GA article. The writing has changed to debunk Cold Fusion and to impart to the Reader a sense that it is nonsensical, whether the editors meant it or not.

When we write articles, we must remember that NPOV trumps everything, even mainstream science and the fringe. It trumps the now disused SPOV and it's reincarnation under WP:MAINSTREAM. This means that no article should promote or debunk any subject as it is not this encyclopedia's job to debunk anything, but to straight report the facts to the reader and let the reader come to their own conclusion.

Evidence presented by Dick Lyon

This case was just pointed out to me; sorry if I'm joining late; this is all about last night.

I re-encounted SA yesterday in a bit of edit warring on Eric Lerner. Reading the talk ( Talk:Eric_Lerner#Activism / LaRouche), it appeared that it would be easy to make a compromise that people could be OK with, within policy: just don't use the irrelevant info from the flaky source; OK, that was naive, but then it seemed an actual compromise would be easy: instead of arguing over how reliable the source is, just include what it says that's relevant to the bio, in a neutral way. So I tried that; didn't work; see edit warring and disruption evidence below.

I'm sure everyone is aware that SA is here to push the anti-pseudoscience POV, and that's OK. What I didn't know is that he is into astronomy/cosmology, and this is the apparent reason for his particularly vehement opposition to any positive phrasing in relation to Eric Lerner or his work. This is not NPOV editing. Sanctions against him need to escalate until he gets it.

ScienceApologist has a conflict of interest

On that talk page, User:ABlake pointed out that User:Elerner himself had (in this comment on his own talk page) clearly pointed out both what's wrong with the material about Lyndon LaRouche that SA wants in Lerner's bio (last March!) and that SA has a clear WP:COI in trying to denigrate alternative cosmology ideas. That he takes his science-related POV and COI into pushing "guilt-by-association" on non-science-related details shows how dedicated he is to smearing persons who hold alternative views.

I asked SA if he has either declared or denied his conflict of interest. It seems that he denies it. On my talk page, he explains that "I really only want the LaRouche stuff in there because it is fascinating how the connections between pseudoscience get made." I still call that a COI/POV problem, since there's absolutely no source to imply the connection he's trying to make.

He says there, "you seem to think I'm on a particular endeavor with respect to Lerner"; that's not what I think. I've seen his destructive negative editing and tactics in many other places, too, all based on his fanatically anti-fringe POV or COI (and I'm no friend of fringe science myself, but I think it needs a chance to be represented more neutrally, and that its proponents shouldn't be attacked).

ps. I thank User:Hipocrite for pointing out above that User:ABlake also has a clear COI, as an employee of Eric Lerner's company. I don't think this much affects my assessments of ScienceApologist's behavior. I recommend we ask both of them to refrain from editing articles in which they have COI. Dicklyon ( talk) 08:16, 31 December 2008 (UTC) reply

ScienceApologist works by edit warring and disruption

In yesterday's fight, after User:Will Beback (a sometimes SA allie) put back what I removed, I realized that some of it was OK, and put in this sensible compromise here. SA reverted with a summary trying to tie his LaRouche connection to better sourced and non-derogatory non-contested information about Lerner; if he can't have the bad stuff in, he wants the good stuff out, which User:ABlake then did; he is obviously trying to compromise and settle with SA, but SA's point and method here just lead to article destruction, as others have mentioned above. So I put it back, and SA reverted me as being tendentious (the best defense is a good attack, he figures?).

ScienceApologist synthesizes negative forms of information from neutral sources

In this edit, he adds the words "though not receiving a degree" to a paragraph that doesn't really need it, from a source that doesn't really say it. The sources doesn't say he got a degree, and wikipedia shouldn't either, but to turn that around to an unneeded negative is just his way to trying to poke at the person. It's not neutral.

In this edit, he removes the EL to the subject's personal home page, and calls him a "devotee of Lyndon LaRouche", citing the word "LaRouchian" in the source, which would be more neutrally interpreted as that Lerner was a member of one of the organizations, which is already accepted and in the article. There's no need to try to make Lerner look more odd than he is by this "guilt-by-association", which is specifically disallowed in WP:BLP as I repeatedly told him in talk-page warnings and edit summaries.

Then he says " Let's quote King directly", which is back to where we came in, pretty much, with this attack book that King wrote on LaRouche having the few words "former Larouchian" easily misconstrued about Lerner; that he was a member of NCLC is fine; calling him a "LaRouchian" is derogatory and not well sourced, from a biased book not about him, and not relevant to his notability, and therefore in clear violation of WP:BLP where it says: "

  • Content should be sourced to reliable sources and should be about the subject of the article specifically. Beware of claims that rely on guilt by association. Be on the lookout for biased or malicious content about living persons. If someone appears to be promoting a biased point of view, insist on reliable third-party published sources and a clear demonstration of relevance to the person's notability.

ScienceApologist spins the issues in a non-productive way

In his presentation slide show online, SA concludes "The Wikipedia community needs to decide whether it is going to provide reliably vetted articles or if it will accommodate those pseudoscience POV- pushers who have the motivation to promote their ideas nearly full time."

Obviously, this is meant to polarize, not converge, different points of view. This is what he does every place he comments. He has not been willing to live the consensus view that fringe theories be presented with appropriate weight on their own terms, plus criticisms. He instead regards anyone who attempts to do so as a "POV-pusher", and attacks them personally as he's doing by trying to smear Lerner with guilt-by-associatin with LaRouche. Dicklyon ( talk) 19:41, 31 December 2008 (UTC) reply

ScienceApologist pushes SPOV over NPOV

The scientific point of view is great, but wikipedia is supposed to present a more neutral point of view. I tried to take Eric Lerner to a more NPOV position tonight, and SA fought it hard, with edits linked and detailed in this talk item of mine at Talk:Eric Lerner#Big bang section -- what_happened?. As shown there, each of his changes was to move away from a neutral presentation and toward one based on the assumption that Lerner is wrong and the mainstream is right; we're not supposed to take sides in controversial issues, which is what was guiding my edits, but he can't stand to see that article not take the mainstream science side. Then here he seeks sanctions to stop me, and accuses me of adding "innuendo" and such; I suppose he means because I added identification of the negative reviewers as proponents of the Big Bang theory; I don't see how it's appropriate to omit that, or why he would characterize it that way; it's much easier to understand the reviews and rebuttals in the context of who the people are and what their backgrounds are. Dicklyon ( talk) 08:14, 1 January 2009 (UTC) reply

Evidence presented by Olive

Response to Mastcell : SPOV discussion archived on discussion page of WP:NPOV [63]

I am stunned by Tzankai's recent block of Martinphi. I am in the dark as to what was on his userpage that caused an indefinite block. Tzankai your description of what has gone on the evidence and workshop pages is not accurate . Except for attacks by one user against Martin here, and I can provide diffs if you want, discussion has been quite even tempered and many editors with multiple viewpoint have been posting . I think there are some excellent proposals coming out of this as well, an indication of progress. I am not comfortable with being characterized as on one side or the other in this discussion. I don't want to see any editor blocked and feel that the Wikipedia environment created over a long period of time has created an environment where an editor such as SA has run a ground. Change will hopefully come with some of the new proposals. As well your judgment of Martin is wildly inaccurate. All editors here are expressing views and possible solutions to concerns. An editor posting here unless uncivil must be protecetd so that no editor is afraid to post. I know of several editors who would like to contribute but won't post here for fear of being attacked or their editing environment compromised. Martin's understanding of this area has helped clarify many issues, and his language can be seen in some of the proposals. I hope Martin has been given a chance to explain and to respond to your block.( olive ( talk) 18:59, 12 January 2009 (UTC)) reply

Evidence presented by Eldereft

Wikipedia exists as a service to our readers (everybody)

Perhaps I am wrong, as my most in-depth source is a case study (N=1) of an atypical user, but it is my impression that our readers come here to be rationally informed, not to receive the proselytory ramblings of fringe promoters or participate in the righting of great wrongs. Ideally, an article will provide essentially the same understanding that a reasonably intelligent but naive reader would attain if they were to read and fairly evaluate every non-Wikipedia source treating the topic.

Most readers have a mainstream perspective

Most readers do not share the peculiar perspective of adherents to certain of the topics covered by Wikipedia:Fringe theories. Unmeasurable putative energy does not exist, NASA did not fake the Apollo program, conservation of energy is more than just a suggestion, magnets do not stimulate the human body's innate ability to heal itself, there is no clinically relevant R3→R3 mapping between the ear and the rest of the body ... and no reader should be required to assume so just to make sense of an article. We have {{ in-universe}} to bring attention to articles written about works of fiction that treat the fictional universe on the same footing as the one we happen to inhabit - similar attention should be paid to the use of specialized terminology in the context of fringe ideas. Homeopathy should define potentized as the term is used by homeopaths, but should generally use diluted except in direct quotes. The parallel is imperfect, but Meridian (Chinese medicine) and Immaculate Conception should be treated in roughly the same manner - sourced expository prose free of evangelism.

Weighting by reliability is not the same as weighting by depth of coverage

Once notability has been established, it is entirely appropriate to source the major claims of a fringe theory to its adherents. Most of the sources which mention the Bates method will simply state that the muscles surrounding the eye, not the lens, are responsible for accomodation. Our article, however, is charged with weighting all sources by their reliability for the statements made, and should relay this as a claim unique to proponents.

ScienceApologist is currently under a mentorship agreement with Durova

The conduct complaints I see against ScienceApologist seem to me to fall into essentially two categories (I can dig up difference links if we really need them): ScienceApologist is too abrupt in deleting or minimizing another editor's preferred sources or in upgrading the perspective of an article; or ScienceApologist has assigned base motives to another contributor. The first kind of complaint may be dealt with through WP:BRD and the several noticeboards (preferably WP:RS/N or WP:FTN, as those WP:AN/I threads tend to close with 'no intervention necessary' after protracted irrelevant drama). Recognizing persistant abuse of sources (by misrepresenting sources or by treating them outside of their prominence or reliability) as a potentially bannable conduct problem might help calm this sort of complaint. Disruptive flare ups by advocacy-only accounts should be consistently deemed meritless. Behavior leading to the second kind of complaint is sometimes provoked by baiting, trolling, stalking, and other social nonsense; nevertheless, it contributes to a decline in the local collegial editing atmosphere, and should be avoided. ScienceApologist is currently being mentored by Durova, and no sanctions undermining this relationship should be applied.


Evidence presented by Phil153

Response to evidence presented by Pcarbonn

User Pcarbonn provides evidence that ScienceApologist has repeatedly violated NPOV. As someone familiar with the cold fusion article, I do not believe most of his diffs support the claims. Using the numbering of the diffs on this permanent link of Pcarbonn's evidence page for clarity:

  • Diffs 25-31, 37-39

[64] [65] [66] [67] [68] [69] [70] [71] [72] [73]

relate to SA's fight against the inclusion of a large amount of information in the lead, where it is extraneous, or balancing cherry picked quotes with other, more general quotes from the same report [74]. SA's editorial judgment is supported by the current lead following a recent rewrite by uninvolved editors [75].

  • Diffs 32,33,34,35,36,42,43 (some repeated)

[76] [77] [78] [79]
are wholesale reverts of bad contribs with multiple issues, not POV removals.

  • Diffs 40 and 41 [80] [81] are very marginal evidence of POV editing from a year ago (December 2007).


That covers all of Pcarbonn's evidence. ( talk) 19:06, 1 January 2009 (UTC) reply


Evidence presented by user:MaxPont

Allowed to break every WP rule if you have friends in the right places?

I am surprised that the title of this Arbcom is Fringe Science, considering that most of the comments in the RFA centered around the disruptive behavior of ScienceApologist [82]. Disruptions that quite often have been unrelated to Fringe science articles. Anyhow, read this quote by Jimbo Wales in a related discussion, (Dec 28th 2008):

“… the majority of Wikipedians prefers a degree of protection and kindness towards minority views, even those views which the majority of us might find to be silly.”.

[83]

IMO, the core issue for the community and Arbcom is this: Do we accept blatant bullying and breach of every possible rule by an alleged defender of the pro-establishment POV? Any other editor with an arrogance and a my-way-or-the-highway attitude like this would have been eternally banned a long time ago.

The big problem for the Wikipedia community is not ScienceApologist but the camp of “pro-Science” POV-pushers who by their unconditional support of ScienceApologist [84] contribute to a brutalised editing environment. It seems that these editors feel that Wikipedia editing should be an all-out war fought with no holds barred.

If these editors manage to make excuses for and save ScienceApologist once again it is more or less official that all the elaborate WP policies and guidelines are nothing but a charade and that the guys with friends in the right places have immunity and can act like lawless thugs with no consequences. One of the supporters of ScienceApologist even explicitly referred to Dirty Harry in his defense of the methods of ScienceApologist [85].

This is institutionalized hypocrisy. To say the least. If ScienceApologist is let off the hook – once again, the repercussions will most likely spread outside Wikipedia. Worst case, Jimbo Wales will have to spend his time on the defensive, trying to refute allegations about thuggish bullying on Wikipedia when he gives his media interviews or deliver conference keynotes around the world.

The abuse of the term Fringe

The legitimate need to prune fringe POVs and Original Research is one thing. But ScienceApologist and his supporters of “pro-science” POV-pushers take this notion too far in the other direction.

De facto, their goal seem to be to an extreme pro-establishment, pro-industry, status quo defending bias that is utterly at odds with the scientific spirit of personal disinterestedness and combining skepticism with openness to new evidence.

The “pro-science” POV-pushers have a naïve view of the infallibility of “Science”. They ignore that another scientific discipline (sociology) have made the scientific discourse their object of study in the field of Science and Technology Studies. What they have uncovered is that scientific “truths” are socially constructed by various communities of competing power interests [86]. Opportunism, politics, vanity, ruthless competition for resources, and a bow to authority are as common in Science as in other areas of human life. For example, trying to have competing scientists fired from editorial boards [87]. To ignore or deny this fact is unscientific.

In particular, when the “pro-science” editors resort to equaling government positions with scientific consensus. Anyone who knows anything about politics and how powerful special interests can influence government decisions would know that a declaration by a government agency that substance X is safe is only partly a result of “Science”. You can even suspect that some of the “pro-science” anti-Fringe Wikipedians are disguised pro-industry POV-pushers with a conflict of Interest.

ScienceApologist has a pro-establishment right-wing political agenda

Under the guise of attacking Fringe POV-pushers, defending the privileged position of Science, and the scientific “mainstream” ScienceApologist has a (not so hidden) agenda that probably best could be described as a pro-establishment bias with a political right-wing flavor. A collection of his mostly bad faith nomination for Deletion WP:AfD is provided below.

Suppression of information about the Dental Amalgam controversy

How should we interpret this bad faith nomination for Deletion WP:AfD together with his statements about Wikipedia editing on his own user page and his proposed WP:Mainstream. That the Wikipedia article about Dental Amalgam should completely ignore the controversy about its safety? [88].

Suppression of criticism against nuclear weapons and the U.S.military establishment

[89] [90] [91]

Suppression of criticism of the health risks from military use of depleted Uranium

[92]

Suppression of criticism of nuclear power

[93] [94] [95] [96] [97] [98] [99]

Suppression of information about advocacy for environmentalism and increased energy efficiency

[100] [101] [102] [103]

Suppression of information about solar power research

[104]

Suppression of information about wind power

[105]

Suppression of criticism of the “anti-environmental” government/industry resistance to Climate Change policy

[106] [107]

Suppression of criticism of consumerism and market capitalism

[108] [109] [110]

Suppression of criticism of the former right-wing government of Australia

[111]

The problems with a “Mainstream” policy

The idea that Wikipedia should be a “mainstream” dictionary and only represent the generally accepted establishment POV will kill Wikipedia as a dynamic evolving collaborative repository of all human knowledge for the Internet age. If a WP:Mainstream [112] is ever enacted it would make Wikipedia an incredible boring project. It also directly contradicts Jimbo Wales’s vision for Wikipedia:

““Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's our commitment.”

[113]

All new knowledge and new opinions begin as minority positions. The viable ideas gradually gain support – often under heavy resistance from the old establishment. With a WP:Mainstream these minority ideas would be suppressed until they are accepted as mainstream themselves. A Wikipedia in the late 1800s would have a very negative article about democracy and the “Fringe” principle of universal voting rights. A Wikipedia in the 1960s would either ignore or have a very negative article about gay rights.

With a WP:Mainstream it will be possible to suppress neutral NPOV descriptions about most of the environmental and health controversies which have a scientific component. The result would be: “dental amalgam is safe”, “trans fats are safe”, “GMO is safe”, “aspartame is safe”, “MSG is safe”, “water fluoridation is safe”, “there is no overfishing and fish quotas are determined by science”, “mobile phone radiation is harmless”, “the FDA is not corrupt in any way”, “drugging children with SSRI is safe”, “Paxil is safe and is not addictive”, “products from organic farms are inherently unsafe”, “vitamin supplements are dangerous and toxic”, “the pesticide Roundup is safe”, "official dietary guidelines are solely based on science and have not been influenced by agro-industry", “fair trade labeling is a fraud”, etc. MaxPont ( talk) 09:25, 2 January 2009 (UTC) reply

Evidence presented by Geogre

Consensus vs. consensus

Of course we're back to the central problem, here, the problem in evidence at the nationalist wars, the science wars, the diet wars, the economics wars, the pyramid scheme wars, and even the Gdansk wars: consensus vs. consensus.

If all we require for writing an article is some agreement, then we must allow every fringe science article to be written by its advocates, every band's article to be written by its fans, every nation's articles to be written by its patriots. However, if what we require is consensus, we have to define the group involved. The band's fans will never agree, and the patriots will fight, and the people who believe their lives (or income streams) have been saved by treating Wilson's syndrome (a quackery) (mistakenly remembered as Wilson's disease, which is real; my apologies to Isaac Newton) will never agree. "Consensus" has to be defined not only in terms of authority (oops), but also in terms of geography (in a virtual world). If we rely on normal Wikipedia means to define "consensus," we're only going to repeat the battles again. (Patriots will get involved to be sure that "consensus" is not defined widely, and fringe folks will get involved to be sure that the AMA and NSF aren't involved.)

Unless we define consensus with reference to language (the English Wikipedia serves the Anglophone world and reflects the consensus of that community), geography (this -pedia serves the industrialized Western world and reflects that view), expertise (this -pedia relies upon professional organizations to weigh in as expert on issues of debate (and this would mean the American Historical Society and UK Historical Association and other professional organizations for the "History of __YourNation__" articles), then we're going to have the advocates writing and editing articles on all subjects.

What's at stake is not the amateurism of Wikipedia. We like to think that the demotic spirit of amateurism means that we avoid the expert standard, but that's absolutely not true. From the earliest days, we've had experts editing, and we've had expert standards. We just haven't put up real life verifications at the gates. Trust me: we've always had experts, and we may have had more of them in the old days than we do now. What's at stake is the hobbyist nature of Wikipedia. Does Wikipedia serve the writer or the reader? If it serves the writer, if it's the game that any school child may play, then we allow all advocates to write their own loves. If it serves the reader, if its duty is to offer researchers and readers information, then we have to have some standard against which advocates are checked (sorry about the passive).

So, if we keep our eyes out of focus and allow "anyone may edit" and "consensus is agreement of any group" to dominate, we're going to have experts run off of every subject (if "expert" is defined by credentials and experience working in a field).

Proposal

It's quite simple, really: we acknowledge that scientific communities are defined by training and experience, and we acknowledge that Wikipedia is inherently conservative, even if that means in error. Let's come to face the fact that Wikipedia is not the venue for the Truth. That's not what we do. We report rather than blaze trails. Thus, we have to report the most agreed upon views, not the most correct.

I know that this rankles, but it's the nature of any encyclopedia to be instantly out of date because it is always being as sparing and cautious as possible. The burden of proof, therefore, is on any divergent or "fringe" view to have overwhelming support before changing the status quo.

Oh, and about the civility

I'm no fan of insulting people, but let's be honest: "I'll see you die by using your own medical procedure" is hardly a death threat. It's more of a dare. It's not only a joke, but it's a commentary. Otherwise, Bishonen's evidence is telling. When any editor becomes the exemplar of "bad" to a heterogenous group of editors with agendas, the talk page is going to be out of all proportion with taunts and baits.

This is the classic Bait and Tackle approach. Get a thousand people to yell, wait "to see what he does next," and pounce. Bleck. That's not admin standard behavior.

Evidence presented by Woonpton

Brothejr used my words out of context and misrepresented my position

In his evidence section above, Brothejr prominently displays a quote from me as evidence of "people railing on how we should not give any fringe topic/article credit and also we should, as an encyclopedia, present the subject as something loony." (emphasis: the quoted phrase is his words, not mine.) I pointed out on the talk page that the sentence quoted was taken out of context and that I do not in fact hold the position that the quote was used as evidence for, that fringe subjects should be presented in articles as "loony" and asked to have it stricken, but it has not been stricken, so it seems my only recourse is to challenge it here.

The quote was taken from a comment I made in response to a proposal on the workshop page (now stricken) of this case: "Debunking is a form of advocacy that seeks to dismiss and damage the reputation of a subject through the use of rhetoric or argumentation." The entire comment can be seen here. I was arguing against the use of the label "debunking" since it is too often used to denigrate and discredit even well-sourced and neutrally-toned criticism of a fringe subject. The last sentence of my comment, which was taken and used out of context, referred back to the language of the proposal I was commenting on, and was intended to be ironic. I was certainly not arguing for the use of rhetoric or argumentation to advocate for a position in a Wikipedia article; I was simply arguing against the denigration of well-sourced and neutrally-toned criticism of fringe theories. In fact I don't believe advocacy has any place in wikipedia articles, and I've made that clear not only in my explanations on the talk page, but in the tone of my editing of articles, small as my contribution has been (why I've participated so little in editing articles will be addressed below).

It occurs to me that while that sentence taken out of context is certainly not valid evidence of what Brothejr has used it as evidence for, his action in taking a sentence out of context to mean something very different than the passage as a whole, serves as a perfect example of what editors in fringe areas often have to deal with. Someone reads a source, but instead of taking the source as a whole and representing it accurately and fairly as a whole, the person simply scans it for any bit that, taken out of context, could be used to support a point, even if to do so is to do violence to the meaning of the source as a whole. This is not how we should be conducting meta-discussions about a case; this is not how we should be writing an encyclopedia.

The fringe-friendly atmosphere of Wikipedia drives away editors

I came to Wikipedia because I was dismayed by the quality of Wikipedia articles, thinking that as a retired statistician who has deep and broad knowledge of the literature in a wide variety of areas, particularly those called here "fringe theories" or "pseudoscience" I could help improve the quality of content in those areas. I'm not a person who just dives into something without understanding it first, so I spent some time finding my way around the project, studying policy, and observing articles and their talk pages. What I saw convinced me that there was no point in trying to edit articles unless/until I could see some level of commitment on the part of the community to enforcing core policies to ensure the quality of the content. During my time here, I have been aware of several other knowledgeable people who have spent a short time here and left, convinced as I am that there was no point in their participation.

Evidence presented by PhysicsEng

SA's superiority complex

I won't waste space referencing all the evidence regarding ScienceApologist's infractions and his arrogant, condescending and hypocritical comments. MaxPont does perhaps the most thorough job here: [114].

This is a rather poignant example of his arrogance:

"I promise to continue to attack others within the bounds of Wikipedia rules without violating POINT or BATTLEGROUND until I see every person I'm in conflict with blocked or banned. That's my full and final goal.

and,

"as long as [WP:CIV] is still policy here at Wikipedia, I encourage all like-minded editors to use it to destroy [...] people"

and this...

"One of his worst formal transgressions is that he falsely presented one of his own proposals as an enacted WP by referring to it as WP:MAINSTREAM [124] [125] [126] [127]. That is, he presented a draft proposal as an enacted WP - a pure bluff - tantamount to perjury or planting false evidence in a normal court of law."

It amazes me how SA was not banned indefinitely long ago. He obviously feels himself to be superior to anyone who disagrees with him, or takes him to task. I have recently worked with a borderline narcissist for the past 18 months, and much of his behavior reminds me of the examples of SA's behavior documented by MaxPont. You can reprimand, topic ban, temporarily wiki ban him and you will NOT permanently change his behavior; you will get temporary appeasement from him only when he realizes that he is likely to be locked out of his 'playground'. Yes, I said playground; these personalities enjoy the havoc that they cause.

To top it off is this quote, "Suck my genetalia, Jimbo Wales! … Enjoy the shittiest encyclopedia on the planet"

In my reading today I have also noted these comments of others about SA:

From this page, [115]

"Any attempts to control SA's behavior result in cataclysmic severe[3] disruption, including:"

This from, [116]

"Childish, pointy, and wholly indicative that this user simply doesn't get it. This section should be stricken from the discussion. Tarc (talk) 19:03, 22 December 2008 (UTC)"


Although he gives the appearance of working within the 'rules', and knows them perhaps better than most editors, which is characteristic of this personality type, his actions say differently. When he begins to feel that the 'rules' are being used against him, however validly, he makes his opinion clear: [117]

"I'm sick and tired of people trying to tie my hands in disputes and will, frankly, not stand for it."

The utter frustration that he causes is typified in this response to SA's preceding comment above:

"Um.... really? You really don't understand why people thought your canvassing note was non-neutral?! Dude... Why are you so stubborn? I really, really, really don't understand. If you keep being such an asshole, then the community is going to continue to buy into every one of your opponents' allegations, whether valid or not, and the project will be a worse place. Maybe instead of wasting so much time saying, "Fuck you! I'ma do what I want!", maybe instead when good faith uninvolved editors mention something like this to you, you could just say, "I will take that under consideration" and continue on with improving the project. Just a thought... --Jaysweet (talk) 17:18, 31 October 2008 (UTC)"

More of his sarcastic arrogance:

"Yeah, because Wikipedia's dispute resolution process is soo functional. Excuse me while I wretch." ScienceApologist (talk) 12:54, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Finally, there are several editors that, shortly after interacting with him, have praised him, but after more extensive interaction, completely change their opinion of him; some even starting the arbitration about him.

Bottomline: SA eventually alienates most everyone he interacts with; until he learns that painful lesson, he is causing more harm than good. Perhaps you should solicit expert opinions by psychologists/psychiatrists... PhysicsEng ( talk) 00:32, 3 January 2009 (UTC) -Mark reply

Evidence presented by -- 81.131.6.201 ( talk) 23:46, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Irrespective of the positive contributions made by ScienceApologist, this is no defence of the negative ones. In no other walks of life, and in no Wikipedia policy, is this acceptable. The time wasted by the community in dealing with such inappropriate behavior is excessive.

1. ScienceApologist has more blocks than any other editor, by far. [118]

2. ScienceApologist has been subject to more ArbCom cases than any other editor, including:

3. ScienceApologist is acknowledged that "his incivility is given 'leeway'" [120], which is not afforded other editors.

4. ScienceApologist has used sockpuppets abusively, according to a previous ArbCom case. [121]

5. ScienceApologist has made personal attacks against other editors and individuals (too many to mention, and summarized in other ArbCom cases)

6. ScienceApologist has recently admitted harassing other individuals off-site, to the extent of trying to get them fired from their job. [122]

7. ScienceApologist has been blocked (see above), and been subject to several previous cautions, warnings, and counseling (see previous ArbComs). The effectiveness of these has been nill.

8. Other editors also carry out work similar to ScienceApologist, but without any of the associated problems.

Evidence presented by Art LaPella

ScienceApologist's latest mentorship isn't working yet.

Evidence presented by Looie496

The real issue underlying all this is that wp:fringe is a guideline rather than a policy and as such lacks any effective mechanism for enforcement. Therefore disputes about fringe science can generally only be solved by majority rule, which only works for N-vs-1 disputes. N-vs-M content disputes are usually intractable unless there is a consensus for admin action in favor of one side. What is needed, then, is a mechanism that can come to a conclusion that can be enforced by admins. I suggest that we try an "RFC-Fringe" mechanism, which would work similarly to AfD: A proposal would be made that XXX is a fringe theory, and editors could argue this back and forth. After an appropriate time an admin would resolve the discussion with a status of yes, no, or no consensus. If the consensus is yes, then attempts to "push" the theory would be subject to enforcement by admins, starting with warnings and moving on to blocks. Looie496 ( talk) 18:52, 7 January 2009 (UTC) reply

Evidence presented by User:DGG

Enough of the diffs have been cited above, to indicate that it is not the purpose of SA to assist in giving a NPOV. I don't think he's actually helping present a SPOV either.I I am convinced, convinced every bit as much as SA is, that the SPOV is in fact the only valid approach to the physical world; I think that any unprejudiced person open to reason will realise that when all views are presented objectively. The confidence in this is the reason for the objective pursuit of knowledge, rather than propaganda. Propaganda is unnecessary. The opponents of reason and science are welcome to say everything they can possibly say for it. If the full evidence from all views is presented, the conclusion of anyone able and willing to understand the issues will be the correctness of the SPOV.

It is therefore folly to prevent the expression of irrational ideas--it makes people suspect that there might be some truth to them after all, if people are trying to suppress them. let us have biographies of every notable psychic, UFO believer, and homeopath--if their ideas are presented fairly, people will know what to make of them. all that is necessary, is to give an indication that their views are not those of the overwhelming majority of those who know about the subject--that is all that is necessary to avoid being misleading.

SA doesn't believe this. I do not know why, and I have no relevant speculation even. It's not that he's an amateur who doesn't really know his science and is forced to simply assert things; quite the opposite, he's a true expert. It is not that he is unable to give clear explanations and logical arguments; again, quite the opposite, he's an expert here also. I simply don't know why he think that information needs to be suppressed. I don't. I consider homeopathy, for example, as 100% unreasonable, and to the extent that it confuses people about proper medical care, dangerous. I would strongly advocate not treating its practitioners as genuine health care workers. I think the only proper way to go about it is to let people see what it is, from sources whose objectivity is manifest. That's one of the reasons I and many other scientists are here. At least, its one of the reasons we came here--but I am among those scientifically trained people who will not edit these articles, or articles on any pseudoscience or fringe topic, because even good neutral edits are resisted unless they are so blatantly anti-fringe as to seem not merely hostile, but unreasonably hostile. The clearest example of this is the material on the claimed homeopathic use of medicinal plants. People who would remove such information do not have common purpose with the encyclopedia. Until I came here, I would never have imagined it of good scientists

I do know whether he can change his behavior. I am not an optimist here, because of the very recent batch of nominations for deletion of articles on UFO-related people regardless of whether or not they were notable.. DGG ( talk) 05:49, 8 January 2009 (UTC) reply


{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.

Evidence presented by Curtis Clark

Because Martinphi has used my words in support of his position, I'd like to use them to support mine as well (and also agree strongly with DGG above).

Science, by its very nature, is self-defending. Were it not, it would be indefensible, since self-correction is one of its key attributes.

Belief systems are not self-defending; that is the nature of belief. Belief systems cannot be held as intrinsically bad; certainly the existence of Wikipedia is the result of the confluence of belief systems.

"Fringe science" is terminology from a belief system. In science, there is no "fringe". Theories are either capable of falsification or they are not. If they are, they are either supported by observation and experimentation, or they are not. Scientific revolutions and paradigm-shifts are properties of groups of humans doing science; they are not themselves intrinsic to science.

SA promotes a belief system. It is a system shared in part by many scientists, but it is not science.

If SA were using the same tactics to push any other belief system, in my opinion he would already be banned.

Evidence presented by Feline1

From observing & interacting with User:ScienceApologist on numerous articles during 2007 and since (e.g. Immanuel Velikovsky and AfD debates for [ | Ralph Jeurgens], [ | Pensee IVR], [ | David Talbott]) I have found him to be an uncivil editor, self-professedly promoting a single PoV, who sees editing as a "[ | fight against cranks and pseudoscience]". This in itself causes edit warring and disruption to the project. However my contention that this editor has gone further than intemperate behavior, by engaging in vexacious wikilitigation against his "opponents" with a view to getting them banned from the project (" WP:GAME").

One of his principle methods of "dirty tricks" has been his misuse of sockpuppet accounts:

  • 21 June 2007, SA posts a "parting essay" [123],

and takes a six day break, before returning on 27 June and leaving a parting commment. [124]

3 days later, and over the next few weeks, SA creates and uses sockpuppets:

  • 30 June, Fradulent Ideas. [125]
  • 10 July, Mainstream astronomy, [126]
  • 12 July, "76.214.223.142", [127]
  • 13 July, Velikovsky [128]
  • 16 July, Nondistinguished [129]
  • On 27 June 2007, when SA said he was leaving, he continued to masquerading under five different sockpuppets.
  • On 16 July 2007, when SA was masquerading as sockpuppet Mainstream astronomy, and claimed to be leaving again due to being "outright harassed by a certain User:Iantresman", [130]

he continued to masquerade as sockpuppets Fradulent Ideas, Nondistinguished, and under IP addresses 76.214.223.142 and 216.125.49.252.

As presented in evidence by MartinPhi | above , I found the editing style of sockpuppet User:Nondistinguished so distinctivly obstreperous and prone to wikilaywering that I asked him if he was ScienceApologist. SA lied in reply, stating "This is the first time that I ever had contact with you since I started my account" | David Talbott AfD and in fact reported me to an admin for harrassment!

SA continued to lie about his use of sockpuppets and his "having left" wikipedia in his evidence presented [ | above] to an ArbComm.

Evidence of ScienceApologist mis-using sock puppets re: IanTresman ArbComm

It seems to me that in the ArbComm case re: IanTresman, Science Apologist's misuse of sockpuppets misled the community when it formed a judgement:

[ http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User:Mainstream_astronomy&diff=prev&oldid=144910132 ] ScienceApologist as "Mainstream_astronomy" writes "I have been outright harassed .. and can volunteer my time elsewhere".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_sanction_noticeboard/Archive10#Iantresman

The diff shows how other editors interpreted ScienceApologist's message:

  • JoshuaZ's alleged that he ([antresman] had "repeatedly harassed User:ScienceApologist who eventually left the project [..] is now repeating the exact same thing with a relatively new user User:Mainstream astronomy.
  • KillerChihuahua's alleged that "Mainstream astromony posted on his user page that he was leaving directly as a result of Iantresman's harassment"
  • Blueboy96 alleged that "If you drive someone from Wikipedia and you haven't been community banned, you damned well better be".

Using his sockpuppets Velikovsky and Mainstream astronomy, ScienceApologist left 6 messages on iantresman's talk page up until, and including, the day he was banned, so he was probably aware of the Community sanction discussion... and chose not to put the record straight. -- feline1 22:47, 5 November 2007 (UTC) reply


Evidence presented by Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk)

Martinphi has edited policy disruptively, and in ways that make it better possible for him to push his POV or advance his position in a dispute

All dates are 2008, unless otherwise specificed

Attempting to redefine majority to deal with only the particular people actively studying and promoting a fringe theory.


Some examples of editing policy to make it easier for him to promote this view:

2 November WP:FRINGE:

  • [131]. (This may also have been meant to push his view in this content dispute, but that is uncertain)

23 October, Wikipedia:Scientific consensus


Other advocacy:

3 November 2008: [ http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia%3AFringe_theories&diff=249488324&oldid=249414917 Reduced WP:FRINGE to "essay", in what would appear to be a deliberately provocative edit.


15 April, WP:NPOV/FAQ

  • [133], [134], [135] - Editwarred to delete the entire section on pseudoscience, instead linking to quotes from arbcom cases he liked.

27 September, WP:NPOV/FAQ

  • [136] joins an edit was to delete the section on pseudoscience and fringe views.

The FAQ is also what he's ranting about in the quote from 6 October I mention above. He really hates it, and particularly hates that it's been policy for seven years. (Edit-warred into the policy, eh? That would be by Larry Sanger, then, that notorious POV-pusher?)


Using policy to attack Scienceapologist

  • He specifically admits that some edits to WP:CIVIL were for the sole purpose of making it easier to attack Scienceapologist under the Arbcom restrictions here. That was sufficiently long ago that I don't think it's worth going over in more detail than that.


This is not a complete list by any means. I just checked some recent edits, and a few places where I remembered him behaving badly. However, I believe that the point is clear.


If I get around to it, I'll provide some more evidence later.

Evidence presented by User:Backin72

"First I'm going to get Hans Adler fired for loving homeopathy. Then I'm going to get JB (real name redacted) imprisoned for impersonating a medical doctor. The I'm going to kill Levine2112 by breaking his back with vertebral subluxation unrelated to chiropractic. Then I'm going to expose Elonka for being an amateur cryptographer with delusions of grandeur. Then I'll put fluoride in ImperfectlyInformed and MaxPont's water to poison them." [137]
Also see diff where I remove a personal attack based on my profession. From WP:NPA: "some types of comments are never acceptable: ... Using someone's affiliations as a means of dismissing or discrediting their views—regardless of whether said affiliations are mainstream."

Comment: This isn't particularly amusing stuff when some people are editing with their real-life identity. It drives editors away (like myself): and I suspect that is the unspoken intention, or at least known side effect. It is intended to intimidate. It's harassment. I made a naive mistake in deciding to edit here with my real name (since changed): I thought that stuff like NPA, above, would actually be enforced. But obviously, SA is in some sort of special user class, immune to such rules. Which is hilariously ironic, given WP's slavish egalitarian devotion to not having expert editors. So, instead, we have had a de facto "bad cop" arguing from authority, enforcing what he thinks is mainstream science using incivility and attacks. Wow! What a great idea! Do you think maybe enforcing civility and, e.g., having scientifically-literate editors vet a "last good version" of certain articles might be a better approach?

Personal comment (NOTE: I request that this section be removed once case is closed.)

(note: please redact above once case is closed. thanks. I wanted to say it publically, but not archive it.)

Conclusion

The benefit that ScienceApologist brings to the site is grossly overstated by his supporters. He's just a grad student, a/o community college instructor or something, who doesn't grok every area or subtlety.

Some people just don't work well with others. SA simply lacks the personality to edit a wiki. Seriously, ban him for this lifetime and the next as well.

Wikipedia's reluctance to deal with this hyper-disruptive editor is right up there with the Essjay fiasco in terms of trashing WP's credibility. How many more wake-up calls do you need before you deal with both science and civility in a consistent, methodical way?

Thanks for listening. -- Backin72 ( n.b.) 07:26, 11 January 2009 (UTC) reply

Evidence presented by Tznkai

I apologize for the last minute nature of this evidence - but I was doing my best to stay out of this in case a spare clerk was needed/for my own sanity when an Enforcement request came up that none of the other "AE regulars" were around for - the end result of which was me blocking Martinphi indefinitely.

My recent block of Martinphi

My involvement started as a result of this Arbitration Enforcement request by User:Shoemaker's Holiday. I responded to the request nine hours later to indicate I had made a decision and would post it shortly. The complaint in summary was that Martinphi was edit warring in an attempt to display personal information pertaining to Science Apologist in Martinphi's own userspace. In more common Wikipedia parlance - Martinphi was attempting to out Science Apologist. I viewed the relevant deleted page, and confirmed that Martinphi was in fact publishing a page that had been courtesy blanked because of personal information issues.

Essentially, Martinphi was republishing a page in a third user's userspace. That user had communicated with both Martinphi and Science Apologist, and in the course of that communication Science Apologist revealed personal information which has since been courtesy blanked. (There are no links for that reason)

The text of our outing policy - like most of our policies - has some odd mutations, is unstable, and I consider it unreliable - but I've always figured the thrust of it is, don't publish personal information - its a jackass sort of thing to do. However, just because something is a jackass thing to do doesn't mean its a sanctionalable offense on its own. My instincts were certainly turning there, but I also knew there was reasonable disagreement whether or not you can "out" an editor who has already revealed their own identity willingly.

As a result I examined the last 500 contributions of Martinphi (this is a copy) - and also took note of his big Retired sign on his user page. A quick survey showed that Martinphi has done little productive on Wikipedia recently - and plenty unproductive. His extensive contributions in this case, and various philosophical matters were not helpful, but in fact using Wikipedia as a philosophical battleground - and doubly so if you consider there is reasonable suspicion that his driving motivation is to further his conflict with Science Apologist in particular. (In depth analysis may come later)

Long story short, I decided this was not in fact an Arbitration enforcement but a matter of general administration. I blocked Martinphi for an indefinite period and made my rationale at the appropriate noticeboard where as of this posting, discussion is ongoing

Further analysis

The problem between Science Apologist and Martinphi is an old festering one - and many users and administrators and even arbiters have given into the temptation to excuse bad behavior for any number of reasons - including the reasoning that they've been at each others throats so longthat of COURSE this kind of behavior is to be expected.

The fact is, bad behavior - in this case mutual bad behavior, has real noticeable effects on the quality of our work. Fringe science articles become little fiefdoms of POV pushers and the debunkers who fight them - and relevant and useful information gets squeezed out as a result. The reader needs to know who what where when why first, and then and only then is a digression about the scientific community's viewpoint on it on the table.

But here is a more concrete example: this evidence page has ended up roughly divided between those attacking Science Apologist for his failures, and those attacking Martinphi and his failures. We have taken sides. Taking sides is not productive - it grinds progress to a halt. When we let these personal fights fester we invite our userbase to politicize itself and turn Wikipedia into a large Battleground.

Stop them.-- Tznkai ( talk) 17:37, 12 January 2009 (UTC) reply

Evidence presented by {your user name}

before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.


Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Fringe_science/Evidence&oldid=1142571543"
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Create your own section and do not edit in anybody else's section. Please limit your main evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs and keep responses to other evidence as short as possible. A short, concise presentation will be more effective; posting evidence longer than 1000 words will not help you make your point. Over-long evidence that is not exceptionally easy to understand (like tables) will be trimmed to size or, in extreme cases, simply removed by the Clerks without warning - this could result in your important points being lost, so don't let it happen. Stay focused on the issues raised in the initial statements and on diffs which illustrate relevant behavior.

It is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff in question, or to a short page section; links to the page itself are insufficient. Never link to a page history, an editor's contributions, or a log for all actions of an editor (as those will have changed by the time people click on your links), although a link to a log for a specific article or a specific block log can be useful. Please make sure any page section links are permanent. See simple diff and link guide.

This page is not for general discussion - for that, see the talk page. If you think another editor's evidence is a misrepresentation of the facts, cite the evidence and explain how it is incorrect within your own section. Please do not try to re-factor the page or remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, leave it for the Arbitrators or Clerks to move.

Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as Arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies, Arbitrators vote at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators (and clerks, when clarification on votes is needed) may edit the proposed decision page.

Evidence presented by Jehochman

ScienceApologist has declared an intention to attack other editors

Responding to intense provocation, SA said, ...I promise to continue to attack others within the bounds of Wikipedia rules without violating POINT or BATTLEGROUND until I see every person I'm in conflict with blocked or banned. That's my full and final goal. Like it? [1] This petulant remark has not yet been retracted or struck. SA has retracted this statement. [2]

ScienceApologist wikilawyers against those with whom he has content disagreements

While this request for arbitration was pending, SA started a frivolous thread at WP:COIN alleging that Jim Butler ( talk · contribs) has a conflict of interest in editing acupuncture because JB is an acupuncturist. [3] So long as an editor follows WP:NPOV and other relevant policies, we should welcome them to edit an article about their field of expertise.

Evidence presented by Seicer

I am currently out of town, and now have access to a laptop, but will have limited internet access until January 2. I will provide a fuller evidence statement, and condense my statements after that. seicer | talk | contribs 23:42, 29 December 2008 (UTC) reply

Wikipedia is a battleground

"I promise to continue to attack others within the bounds of Wikipedia rules without violating POINT or BATTLEGROUND until I see every person I'm in conflict with blocked or banned. That's my full and final goal." 01:08, 3 December 2008

Death threats

"First I'm going to get Hans Adler fired for loving homeopathy. Then I'm going to get JB note imprisoned for impersonating a medical doctor. The I'm going to kill Levine2112 by breaking his back with vertebral subluxation unrelated to chiropractic. Then I'm going to expose Elonka for being an amateur cryptographer with delusions of grandeur. Then I'll put fluoride in ImperfectlyInformed and MaxPont's water to poison them.

Seriously, all, get the FUCK OFF MY TALKPAGE."

03:13, 3 December 2008

While not a serious death threat, death threats are explicitly forbidden under policy. We have blocked for far less in the past.

Retilatory and frivolous actions

"I think that at this point, requesting a community ban of seicer ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log), similar in nature to Guido den Broeder ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log), would be appropriate. As such, I am in support of a community ban for an indeterminate period to be reevaluated at an undetermined point in the future." 15:42, 22 December 2008

After requesting a community ban after a fellow administrator supported such a measure, SA filed a retilatory and frivolous community ban request against myself. Such action was admonished.

Poor edit summaries or actions without consensus

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience

Per Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience, SA was banned from editing WP:FRINGE for 30 days, beginning on November 4, 2008. The ban was for edit warring in an attempt to implement a major change/revision without consensus or discussion.

SA disagreed with the ban, and then attempted to boldly remove the ban message from the guideline's talkpage. It was replaced by a fellow administrator, and it was agreed upon by another administrator.

On December 1, SA began edit warring on WP:FRINGE in violation of the ban, as noted here and here. When reverted, SA lobbed rather incivil comments, as noted here and here. SA was blocked for 48 hours as a result.

Evidence presented by Enric Naval

No adequate tools to deal with fringe science editors

The community does not have adequate tools to fend off fringe science pushers, so it all depends on individual hard-boiled editors (like SA) who have to basically kick the POV pushers out of the talk page in unfashionable but effective ways, like I had to do myself here and here, so they won't scare neutral editors out of the page.

(adapted from my evidence at cold fusion case here)

We can't take every peer-reviewed source seriously

Fringe science POV pushers can cite literally hundreds of cherry-picked primary sources to support their fringe view (examples below). On certain fields they can also cherry pick from hundreds of published secondary sources (in homeopathy, 389 published reviews and meta-analysis).

Examples of piling-up primary sources for POV-pushing purposes:

  • 47 sources in homeopathy, from socking POV-pusher User:Dr.Jhingaadey, who claimed he could gather hundreds of studies
  • 353 papers in Cold fusion out from a list of 1390 papers gathered up by a researcher, just 11 days after the cold fusion arbitration case was closed
  • 14 papers in Sudden infant death syndrome, only god knows what criteria was used since official organisms say that all scientific papers show the exact opposite.

POV pushers won't listen to reasoned arguments

POV pushers will fight nail and toe and wikilawyer endlessly to defend that the sources are valid because a)they are published and b)they are peer-reviewed (see the evidence of homeopathy case (deleted version) for multiple examples). They will dismiss all arguments of being published by non-notable journals, being contradicted by more reliable/notable/representative sources, etc.

People fighting POV pushers are being punished

At some point someone has to call out the crap of this type of POV pushers and rebuff them completely, and all their sources with them, and clean up the articles from their pushing and sources. Editors with high visibility (like SA) will get accused of incivility when they do that.

At that point, we are indirectly punishing actions that defend NPOV on articles and indirectly defending civil POV pushers that wikilawyer about reliable sources, as well as preventing the cleanup of articles.

Chilling effect on moderate neutral editors

Constant POV pushing has a chilling effect on moderate neutral editors, who will think it twice before presenting sources on the talk page. They know that their articles will be attacked endlessly by POV pushers, who will present a series of minor sources that the editor will have to check one by one in order to rebuff them. Eventually, some of those neutral editors will take those articles out of their watchlists, leaving behind only the most polarized, stubborn, COI'ed, and/or POV-pushing editors, with the effects that you can imagine (aka, "collaborative environment" becomes "poisonous environment", see my [ complaints] about how it's imposible to add anything to Homeopathy without unintentionally starting a revert war + full indef protection, and my statement about " editing on this page should look like").

Neutral editors usually pop back into the talk page once they see that the usual POV pushers have been neutralized. (see how collaborative editing on Talk:Cold fusion resumed inmediately as soon as User:Pcarbonn and Jed were banned from the page. In comparison, discussion at Talk:Homeopathy is still poisoned and neutral editors are still being scared away [11]).

If moderate neutral editors don't see that efforts are being made to keep wikipedia free of these sterile fights, then they will eventually reduce their editing frequency and even leave.

Punishing SA

Terrible idea. It would make as much good as punishing the editors who repeatedly revert rabid nationalists at disputed territories articles, and who frequently exchange nationalistist insults with them. Cut that stuff when it appears so it won't disrupt the editing process, but don't prevent them from doing their work. Remember that, like those editors, SA makes a dirty job against stubborn opposition. Now go do something that solves the underlying problem.

Homeopathy on plants, SA's behaviour

(reply to Martinphi's evidence) Homeopathy on plants was discussed on the plant wikiproject here and here, where several arguments against inclusion were presented by several editors other than SA. I see no misconduct here. Also, you were (unintentionally) making an Appeal to authority argument, instead of exposing the arguments of why SA's actuation was wrong.

Specially since, as a post mortem analysis of the dead horse, I still see homeopathic usage still mentioned in articles where non-homeopathic sources give it relevance, like Atropa belladonna, Arnica or Pasque flower.(*) So SA's actuations, ahem, I mean very bold edits which he shouldn't have repeated after being reverted a couple of times have managed to bring a problem forward and improve the encyclopedia, altough causing a ton of disruption on its wake, see Talk:Thuja_occidentalis. Whether it's exclusively SA's fault is a different matter.

(*) (all three I have just tweaked now, since the storms on teapots are finished :P I also tested the waters on the focus of controversy Thuja occidentalis here, I hope that there are no sharks)

Evidence presented by Martinphi

I would like to formally submit the Durga's Trident evidence as presented here, and the evidence of Max Pont here. The Durga's Trident evidence was originally presented by sock. I claim the Durga's Trident evidence as my own, and present it to the Arbitration Committee as my own. I vouch for it, and you may consider it as presented by me. —— Martinphi Ψ~ Φ—— 01:18, 31 December 2008 (UTC) reply

Statement of context

I ask the ArbCom to forget about ScienceApologist's disruptive editing. Forget about his threats, sock puppeting, POINT making, edit warring, incivility, attacks, the amount of time people have spent trying to reform him, his attitude toward Wikipedia, his creation of his own policy, vested contributorhood (etc. etc.), and his divahood. What do those really matter, anyway? They are but the disruption of one single editor, however annoying. The real point is that ScienceApologist is a " debunker," not an "NPOV pusher."

This may be exactly what he ought to be- see below. However, if debunking is not appropriate, then the real problem the ArbCom has to consider, if this is to be about "Fringe science" rather than merely ScienceApologist, is whether or not debunking is to be tolerated on Wikipedia. Even SPOV, let alone debunking, is formally rejected by the community (till the recent Cold Fusion ArbCom at least). If debunking and SPOV are permitted to the exclusion of NPOV, two things will happen:

1, Wikipedia will be living a lie, per its pretense to NPOV.

2, Since on most complex fringe topics skeptics don't know enough to write the articles; and since proponents or even neutral editors won't put up with debunking; therefore, the articles will not acquire the information they need to be complete.

If you want to have complete articles on fringe topics, you will have to find a way to accommodate proponents. This does not mean you have to let the articles become shilling for fringe topics. But it does mean that fringe proponents have to have the same protections as other editors. It also means the the community has to take a firm stand against debunking, because no fringe or neutral editor will stay around to contribute to an article which debunks. And only the proponents know the subjects well. Note the dreadful state of the parapsychology-related articles: User:Annalisa Ventola, User:Nealparr and I could have made them very informative by now, but we've been driven off.

Also, you need to make a statement that although the mainstream view is notable and should be well explained, articles about fringe topics are to be mostly about those fringe topics per WEIGHT of the sources- their history, ideas, etc., rather than a discussion of those subjects from a mainstream POV. Many editors contest this. In fact, the Arbitration Committee has stated:

Encyclopedias are generally expected to provide overviews of scientific topics that are in line with current mainstream scientific thought. [12]

This is a statement that SPOV is the policy of Wikipedia (it is also policy creation by the Arbitration Committee). (see this for further explanation.) If the Committee really meant it, then it should be put into policy that Fringe articles are to be SPOV. But please don't lie to the readers about NPOV any more. The fringe articles are not NPOV.

The committee has come down hard on promotion of fringe views, but it has said nothing about debunking, as if it truly thinks debunking is a good thing. Please either ban fringe topics from Wikipedia, make sure they aren't debunking, or formally embrace SPOV/debunking (have you or haven't you already?). —— Martinphi Ψ~ Φ—— 06:42, 29 December 2008 (UTC) reply


Debunking

You may also wish to read this; it's old (from another ArbCom try) and not perfect for the case, but gives background.

You have seen evidence that a huge number of people agree with ScienceApologist's edits, if not his manners. Presumably, these editors make similar edits. They claim that their edits are in defense of mainstream science.

Has this claim been subjected to a scientific test?

Yes, it has. ScienceApologist, along with several of his friends such as OrangeMarlin, spent a great deal of time eliminating mentions of Homeopathy on articles related to WikiProject Plants. There, he met with mainstream scientists, such as Curtis Clark, Director of Web Development and Professor of Biological Sciences at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Speaking of the fringe POV pushers at WikiProject Plants Clark said:

Even after all these years, it still surprises me that fundamentalism smells the same, regardless of the "principles" considered fundamental. But I did see one thing among the kilobytes of stereotyped, reactionary drivel that would be of use to us plant editors, were we allowed to edit our articles without the "help" of the fundies

Oh no!! WAIT A MINUTE!!!

Clark was actually talking about ScienceApologist and his friends.

What's this?

Clark goes on to say:

Almost every plant has the potential to be used in a homeopathic preparation...If the practice of homeopathy were as deprecated as the practice of animal magnetism, we could still study it as a cultural phenomenon...Sadly, ... the fundies will still delete such references. But at least we will have the knowledge that we acted as scholars. [13]

Clark also said:

The scariest part to me is the statement, "Mention of homeopathy violates NPOV... This is one of the most outrageous cases of censorship that I've run across in a while." [14]

Clark has now confirmed his opinion:

"Science fundamentalism" is a pseudoscience at worst, and a political phenomenon at best, because it assumes that examination of evidence, experimentation, falsification, and the other tools of scientists are insufficient to discredit specific ideas, and that those ideas must be suppressed, or "debunked" in a manner beyond application of the tools of science... As a political movement, IMO science fundamentalism has done great harm to science, leading the gullible to believe that science is nothing more than a belief system.... Homeopathy as a science is bunk.... ScienceApologist is an irritating editor, who in my view does more harm than good....I don't see SA zealously trying to represent fringe ideas at all; I see him zealously trying to suppress them (I have no diffs any different from all those already presented elsewhere). I'm no newbie when it comes to fringe science; I taught evolution for a number of years... demonstrating the unsupportability of a proposition through citations of reliable sources definitely has a place in Wikipedia; debunking, being necessarily POV, doesn't. (excerpted from this thread)

MrDarwin, another mainstream scientist with excellent credentials who left Wikipedia mainly over the same situation [15] said:

(1) a small group of editors who have demonstrated no knowledge, expertise, or even a particular interest in botany have been editing, more or less by fiat, several plant species articles to expunge any and all references to homeopathy, without seeking or even considering consensus or compromise from the Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants project editors, many of whom have been working on these articles for several years (and none of whom are attempting to promote homeopathy); (2) this group of editors continues to mischaracterize other editors as "pro-homeopathy" when what those editors are trying to do is to acknowledge the well-documented use of several plant species in homeopathy; and (3) that it has become apparent that no source will be admitted as "reliable" by this group of editors, not even publications by professional botanists in the peer-reviewed botanical literature. [16]

Note that MrDarwin summarizes in essence much of what the "fringe POV pushers" have been saying.

He also said:

In my opinion, what User:ScienceApologist and User:PouponOnToast are doing is nothing short of far-reaching vandalism in attempting to delete all homeopathic references, however neutrally worded, from numerous Wikipedia articles. [17]

Well, that's how a couple of mainstream scientists viewed ScienceApologist and his friends in one scientific test of whether they are really defenders of mainstream science. I doubt that they act differently in other areas of the wiki (well, I know they don't). Such habits of editing are what I call debunking.

I asked those who support the POV of ScienceApologist & friends "How is it that a mainstream scientist ... called ScienceApologist and his friends fundamentalists who spew stereotyped, reactionary drivel? (In relation to their debates around Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants)"

None of them had an answer. [18]

I have heard from quite a few totally skeptical scientists/professionals by email. Some have asked me not to name them. They feel the same as Clark and MrDarwin. I emailed Coren the username of one of them. Another skeptic I can name would be Northmeister, who's long gone, apparently. You should see what people write to me by email. They start off saying how they are completely skeptical about [fringe claim], then go on to say how disgusted they are by the actions of the "skeptical" editors there. It's happened over and over.

I submit to the Arbitration Committee that ScienceApologist and friends have driven off a large number of skeptics and scientists, not just "fringe POV pushers." I submit also that ScienceApologist is a minor part of the problem and that others on Wikipedia are just as intent on debunking as he is. In fact, they are much more successful, since they don't disrupt as much.

The disruptive actions of "mainstream pushers" are defended here as necessary to defeat "fringe POV pushers" especially civil ones. Others contend that defending science is not sufficient excuse for the disruption. That is how the debate has been framed. I say that those who portray themselves as mainstream pushers are not defending mainstream science. They are just debunking.

That, at least, is what one scientific experiment had to say on the matter. —— Martinphi Ψ~ Φ—— 04:37, 6 January 2009 (UTC) reply

Further

I do hope you read the table of changes I made to NPOV here. Please note also that you just wrote the last section of the table into this ArbCom here!!. They are the changes which were deepest, and which people had the most trouble over- indeed, they put me up for banning and blocking over it, even though I'd done it over several days and no one reverted. Since as I remember it represents the most actual editing I did to policy (rather than just defense of the policy status quo) I think it is highly relevant.

I have done some policy editing also which were attempts to keep policy from being rewritten to help SA and friends, such as Shoemaker's Holiday's attempts to change WP:CIV to be more friendly to SA. And attempts to chance WP:NOR so that any textbook could be used to rebut any fringe claim. Or resisting the WP:PARITY section of fringe, which allows blogs, fringe advocacy sites, and other bad sources. Or resisting the edit-warring in of the Particular attribution section of FRINGE, which allows the Skeptic's Dictionary or the blog of a scientist to be stated as fact or the opinions of "science." I think policy is fine the way it is and the last thing I want to do is change it. I'm not the one who's been trying to change it. SA and friends have been.

Evidence presented by User:Pcarbonn

Destructive editing behavior + potential conflict of interest

ScienceApologist has stated that he wants to get blocked or banned every person he disagrees with. [19] A few weeks ago, he has wrongly accused me of having invested in a company with an interest in cold fusion research, and thus of a conflict of interest. [20] After several stages of forum shopping, such suspicion about my motives has eventually lead the Arbitration Committee to ban me from contributing to cold fusion articles 2 weeks ago, [21] a decision that I find unjust, and dangerous for wikipedia. [22] Since then, many well-sourced, notable arguments in favor of cold fusion have been removed from the cold fusion article. [23] I have issued an appeal of the ban to Jimbo Wales. [24]

Isn't it time to look at ScienceApologist's motivation? Should I disclose his real name, as he has done to Ronnotel and me? [25] [26] I have investigated the circumstances that lead him to issue his death threats to other editors. [27] I have now submitted evidence to the ArbComm that ScienceApologist works for a University with a strong involvement in "hot fusion" research. Could he have a personal incentive to defend such research from the competition of cold fusion one, just as he said I had a financial incentive to defend the reality of cold fusion ? That seems probably far fetched.

Yet, in 1989 already, Eugene Mallove and others have said that the protection of hot fusion research budget was one reason for the quick suppression of Fleischmann and Pons' discovery. They are many more nuclear physicists than cold fusion researchers, and thus many more potential Wikipedia editors with an anti-Cold-fusion interest.(I'm not saying that this is an organized conspiracy, just the sum of individual interests) Wikipedia is not a democracy, and significant minorities deserve a fair representation, per WP:NPOV. The editors defending such significant minority views have a tough job on wikipedia, since they are facing a majority: they should be defended, not banned. Too many editors who wanted fair representation of minority views have already left wikipedia in disgust, often after losing their civility. (Edmund Storms, Jed Rothwell [28], Ron Marshall, [29] ...)

Anyway, does ScienceApologist's real-world interest really matter ? Many editors chose to remain anonymous, and are thus immune from accusation of conflict of interest. Should we penalize those whose identity is known ? I don't think so. It would encourage witch-hunt. We should judge editors only based on their behavior, and check whether they have violated policies. In fact, that's what WP:COI says. There is plenty of evidence that ScienceApologist has violated policies repeatedly. That's what matters.

The Arbitration Committee would be well advised to look how real-word courts make their judgement. Are well-respected citizen allowed to commit crimes, considering their overall balance of contributions to the world ? No, the same laws apply to all, great or small. I wish Wikipedia would do the same. ScienceApologist is even more destructive when he has many followers, as Enric Naval and others clearly suggest here. [30] Pcarbonn ( talk) 09:30, 29 December 2008 (UTC) reply

ScienceApologist has repeatedly violated NPOV

ScienceApologist is a WP:SPA with the sole purpose of silencing significant scientific minority views on Wikipedia. To achieve that aim, he has repeatedly suppressed or mischaracterized reliable secondary sources, so that the so-called "mainstream view" is presented as the only valid one, in violation of WP:NPOV which says : "None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being judged as "the truth", in order that the various significant published viewpoints are made accessible to the reader, not just the most popular one.".

In particular, he has repeatedly suppressed official statements from the 2 reports of the Department of Energy, by far the most notable reviews of cold fusion, sometimes to the point of edit warring on them (in bold below). Yet, these statements were included in the version resulting from the mediation that he accepted. Here is a partial list:

  • "When members of the panel were asked about the evidence of low energy nuclear reactions, twelve of the eighteen did not feel that there was any conclusive evidence, five found the evidence "somewhat convincing", and one was entirely convinced." (DOE 2004) [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40]
  • "Evaluations by the reviewers ranged from: 1) evidence for excess power is compelling, to 2) there is no convincing evidence that excess power is produced when integrated over the life of an experiment. The reviewers were split approximately evenly on this topic." (DOE 2004) [41] [42]
  • "The reviewers identified a number of basic science research areas that could be helpful in resolving some of the controversies in the field" (DOE 2004) [43] [44] [45] [46] [47]
  • ""Even a single short but valid cold fusion period would be revolutionary. As a result, it is difficult convincingly to resolve all cold fusion claims since, for example, any good experiment that fails to find cold fusion can be discounted as merely not working for unknown reasons." [48] [49]
Response to Phil53 below : Per WP:LEAD, the lead "summarizes the most important points — including any notable controversies that may exist". This confirms that the deletion, rather than modification, of significant minority views (one third of the panelists in this case !) by SA is contrary to POV. The current version of the article has the same POV issue, and has the POV tag: it cannot be used to justify SA's edit, but confirms the will of the majority to suppress a significant minority view.(see current talk) This will is further examplified by SA's wholesale deletion of full section that include statements favorable to CF, as you rightly pointed out, without reaching consensus via prior discussion. Besides confirming the points above, it can be seen as vandalism (see "blanking"). I also see that you acknowledge that the last 2 edits are POV edits, even if marginal.

Wikipedia needs a mechanism to enforce NPOV

While majorities are often benevolent towards minorities, the history of the real world is also full of examples of majorities oppressing unprotected minorities. There is no reason to believe that Wikipedia is immune to this problem. What happens on Wikipedia when a majority is determined to suppress the opinion of a significant minority ? The cold fusion case is a good example of that.

Editors who disagree on how to represent the preponderence of views according to WP:NPOV discuss it on talk pages. They refer to reliable source in support of their views. If they still disagree, they use the available dispute resolution mechanisms (RfC, mediation, ...). If they still can't find an agreement, they can bring the case to the Arbitration Committee. Unfortunately, at that point, the ArbComm responds that it cannot deal with such content issues, and the minority is thus armless in front of an oppressive majority and is bound to lose. In other words, there is no enforcement mechanism of NPOV.

What's the point of saying that "NPOV is non-negotiable" if there is no mechanism to enforce it ? Since this constitutional issue is probably outside the authority of the ArbComm, I've raised it with Jimbo Wales here

I'm told that ArbComm was not particularly successful in past content decisions. I'm not sure what measure of success is used, as obviously such decisions are bound to displease some : it would be interesting to clarify. From there, it should be possible to decide whether ArbComm can be hoped to get better, or if a separate committee should be set up with more appropriate rules.
New Scientist, a "mainstream" science magazine, recently reported on a scientific paper describing a personality test of 69 contributors to Wikipedia. [50] The test showed that these editors scored low for agreableness and openness to new ideas. This is a small sample, of course, but it gives support to my statements above. This would also mean that the larger population, and thus our readers, are more open to new ideas than editors : shouldn't we ensure that our articles are in line with their interest (while ensuring of course that we provide reliable information with proper attribution) ? Isn't it interesting to note that ArbComm currently addresses only one of the 2 issues raised by this study (agreableness / civility), but ignores the other one (openness to new ideas / NPOV) ?

Evidence presented by Mathsci

Polite POV pushing will always be a problem in fringe science

Since the creation of the internet, fringe science and pseudoscience have found their natural niche. The advocates of fringe science can apparently at last give their own view of their subject. Unfortunately this is completely at odds with the methodology of the world academic community of scientists, whether it be on the scientific basis of parapsychology and orgone or on some of the more extreme claims of alternative medicine. It is very difficult for wikipedia to give a balanced view of some of these topics and, in this sense, wikipedia is some type of ongoing experiment, where perhaps for the first time an attempt is being made to treat what are sometimes considered to be taboo topics in the academic world. Where medical issues arise, there can be a real danger in allowing certain claims to stand unchallenged. Small coteries of academics, often with no formal training in science, have used fringe science to explain racial differences, sometimes intentionally providing fodder for extremist hate groups. Fringe science can often be poor or bad science, frequently motivated by real-world problems such as the energy crisis. Perpetual motion theorists or would-be Einsteins should not be able to peddle their flawed wares on wikipedia unchallenged; likewise experiments that have never lived up to their exaggerated claims, as with cold fusion, should not be misrepresented by exceedingly polite proponents on wikipedia. Fringe science covers a vast range of disparate topics, from protoscience to pseudoscience, and it is not clear that lumping them all together is helpful as far as devising policies on wikipedia is concerned; it seems quite unhelpful for example putting acupuncture, which works for many people, in the same basket as orgone.

Content is far more important than civility in editing fringe science

The policing of articles on fringe science or pseudoscience is extremely difficult. Certainly content is the key here and, when administrators are not directly involved in editing the articles or are unfamiliar with sometimes highly complex material, this can be a well-nigh impossible task. Where tempers can frequently become frayed, it is often much easier to pick up lapses in behaviour than to understand larger intellectual issues. Administrators can develop "relationships" with individual editors, sometimes verging on hostility, with a consequent loss of assumptions of good faith; equally well, they can develop soft spots for POV pushers, eager to nestle under their wings. The repercussions of these personalized conflicts/attachments between administrators and editors appear to be completely unhelpful for building an encyclopedia. What has worked is where academic experts with a good knowledge of the subject have been present as editors and as leaders of discussions on the talk page. I am thinking of medical editors like Eubulides, MastCell, Fyslee, etc. Their presence seems to provide the necessary calm and rational ambiance for building balanced articles. It works much better than micromanagement, something that more than likely will drive this kind of expert away from problematic articles.

Those challenging the claims of fringe science should not act like scientific zealots

It is commendable that those involved in mainstream science, like ScienceApologist, take a stand against polite POV pushers. Few wikipedians do this full time. However, they should guard against this becoming a battle on wikipedia, perhaps taking a leaf out of the book of the medical wikipedians. Sometimes it's hard to keep the temperature down when the rational scientific method seems to have been thrown out of the window. In SA's case, I think his mentor Durova's calm approach to problems will counter his own sometimes volatile tendencies, which can occasionally obscure his wholly laudable intentions. He should make every effort to stay cool. I do not believe that he has exhausted the community's patience: from where I stand, the community is far more concerned at having junk knowledge shunted onto the pages of its much read encyclopedia.

Wikipedia should not encourage popular misconceptions about science

Science provides a method to understand the natural world. Many claimed phenomena in the natural world, such as paranormal experiences or alien abductions, lie outside science and up until now have a large question mark hanging over them. Sometimes within science inconclusive experiments cannot be repeated or new theories are inconsistent or based on erroneous calculations; despite this proponents continue to push these controversial theories, even when their work cannot be published in peer-reviewed academic journals. It is not up to wikipedia to give a new definition of science which encompasses these as new "folk theories". The Encyclopedia Britannica usually does not write separate articles on controversial theories, but mentions them in passing in the context of a larger accepted theory. Wikipedia articles on pseudoscientific theories should explicitly state when a would-be theory has not been accepted by the scientific community. The misnomer that a more neutral point of view is available, independent of the scientific method, when discussing these kinds of problematic theories can be traced back to inadequate education in science. Wikipedia should not promote these myths and misconceptions, no matter how much their readership might hanker after such things.


Evidence presented by User:Peter Damian

Wikipedia is not about debunking fringe views

The aim of Wikipedia is not to debunk fringe views (i.e. to discredit and expose claims as being false, exaggerated or pretentious). It is to present scientific consensus as represented in reliable sources, i.e. reputable and authoritative secondary sources.

But Wikipedia is about neutrality

However, the community still does not have the will to enforce the neutrality principles, nor does it have effective tools to defend itself against the promoters of fringe points of view, and against those with a commercial or other vested interest in promoting fringe viewpoints. Because of this, and because of the lack of will , neutral editors representing scientific consensus are like SA are burning out and suffering persecution.

If such editors are persecuted, or allowed to burn out without being encouraged and supported, this will cause serious problems in the coverage of science in Wikipedia. As the increasing use of Wikipedia as an authoritative reference source leads to increasing awareness of such flaws in the editorial process, this will lead to considerable 'reputational risk' to the project. This may lead to funding being withdrawn and ultimately to the collapse of the project.

Wikipedia needs tools to enforce neutrality, not witch hunts

The problem could be easily solved by stronger enforcement of core Wikipedia neutrality principles. We must stamp out the current practice whereby fringe science POV pushers can cite literally hundreds of cherry-picked primary sources to support their fringe view, or cherry pick from hundreds of published secondary sources. I therefore propose:

  • There should be much stricter enforcement of policies on use of reliable sources. Editors who persistently cherry-pick primary sources against WP:DUE, or who cite unreliable sources, should be indefinitely blocked.
  • The process of identifying reliable sources should be assisted by establishing a committee or board to deal with the appropriate use of sources. The members of the committee do not have to be subject-matter experts, but they will have to be expert in the methods and procedures and principles used in the academic world to ensure that sourcing is reliable.
  • There should be a change of policy to prevent individuals with a blatant conflict of interest, or commercial interests, from editing.
  • Editors experiencing burn-out should be supported and encouraged.
  • Witch-hunts like the current arbitration should be ended forthwith.

Evidence presented by User:B

ScienceApologist attacks those he disagrees with

At Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2008/Vote/Rlevse, ScienceApologist libeled me by claiming that I ran a protection racket regarding Profg ( talk · contribs). I was shocked at his accusation that I am committing extortion - when I challenged him on it, he did not reply. At a minimum, I would expect an apology. Harassment is not a weapon in a dispute - and that summarizes my problem with SA's behavior. -- B ( talk) 23:40, 29 December 2008 (UTC) reply

See also his reply to this evidence on my talk page and his " refactoring" of his accusation with the sarcastic edit summary "User:B thinks "protection racket" is uncivil". -- B ( talk) 13:09, 30 December 2008 (UTC) reply

Evidence presented by MastCell

The "rejection" of SPOV

I'm going to confine myself, at this point, to addressing one recurring fallacy that's been annoying me. "SPOV" vs. "NPOV" is repeatedly presented as an either/or, usually with the corollary that "the community" has "rejected" SPOV in favor of NPOV. Let's go to the tape:

I see that this proposal was discussed by a grand total of 3 logged-in editors. Three. And those three didn't even "reject" it - they essentially agreed that SPOV was redundant and synonymous with NPOV on scientific articles, so a separate SPOV policy was unnecessary.

I'm loathe to shout, but this deserves the bold-italics: SPOV was not "rejected"; it was discarded because it was deemed redundant and synonymous with NPOV on scientific articles by the 3 editors who bothered to comment. Maybe I'm missing more detailed discussion; if anyone is aware of a more thorough discussion or rejection of SPOV, please share the links with me and I'll amend my evidence. But I currently don't see evidence to back the frequently repeated claim that SPOV was "rejected", nor that anything resembling "the community" even debated the topic.

More: SPOV and NPOV are not mutually exclusive. Any reasonable application of WP:NPOV to scientific topics will end up favoring the mainstream scientific point of view. ArbCom formalized this in the cold fusion case, but it's actually nothing new - their finding merely reflected the basic understanding of Wikipedia's goals and already-existing best practices. You can call it SPOV if you want - perhaps it is - but it's also NPOV. MastCell  Talk 06:03, 30 December 2008 (UTC) reply

Evidence presented by Bishonen

I bring no new information below, but I provide certain contexts from the history tab of Science Apologist's talkpage. Considering the abuse of context-free diffs from that history in the evidence sections of Jehochman, Seicer, and Pcarbon, and considering the role played by FT2 in the dialogue on SA's talkpage, I believe my analysis will be labor-saving for the committee.

Bad faith "evidence" against Science Apologist on this page

In their evidence sections above, Jehochman, Seicer, and Pcarbon all quote pieces of sarcasm from an angry SA . To give these quotes without context, as Jehochman does, makes SA appear as a hater of Wikipedia and all who sail in her, and SA's intentions as malicious. [51] Seicer misleads more blatantly and actively, offering a fake context. [52] [53] The actual context of SA's sarcasm is this:

When SA was blocked by Elonka on December 1, a storm broke out on his talkpage. I see 59 [sic: fifty-nine] messages posted to the page over the course of 30 hours, without a single post from SA, [54] most of them attacks. (23 of the 59 edits were by Levine2112, posted in only 5 hours [55]: that would be twenty-three "You have new messages" banners in 5 hours from Levine2112 alone.) Eventually, SA replied ("Get the FUCK OFF MY TALKPAGE" [56]). As soon as he broke his 30-hour silence, it unfortunately brought out FT2, not previously heard from, to tell SA that "You just can't keep posting like that to people." [57] (my italics). FT2 then "tweaked" his own post over and over, as is his habit, until SA broke out into his much-quoted statement that "Well, if that's the alternative you offer me, I promise to continue to attack others within the bounds of Wikipedia rules without violating POINT or BATTLEGROUND until I see every person I'm in conflict with blocked or banned. That's my full and final goal. Like it?". [58] This, if it's read in good faith, and read with the brain rather than with the medulla oblongata, is obviously a sarcastic summary of the attacks that have been rolling in, especially of FT2's statement (SA's post is directed at FT2 specifically). It's quite depressing to see Jehochman and Seicer leave out the conditional clause when they "quote" SA's post above, making it look like the sentence starts with "I promise"—you see how misleading that is? It's a downright misquote. The amazingly poor timing and wording of FT2's post is a pity, too. (I don't call FT2's actions deliberate baiting, but they were pretty darn unhelpful.) There is nothing surprising, and certainly nothing malicious, in SA's part of this history tab. There is simply a lot of anger and of concern for the project from him; and a lot of baiting from some other people. Bishonen | talk 14:44, 30 December 2008 (UTC). reply


Evidence presented by Crohnie

I have put my comment here for a reason, if I am in the wrong place please move it to the proper location. I put my comment here so that I could comment on what Bishonen states. I actually watched the going on at SA talk page. From the moment Elonka posted her question I knew the battle was going to erupt and waited and watched for the usual editors to show up with comments, and sure enough the did. What Bishonen describes is what actually happened. I actually was surprised that this went on as long as it did since there was at least three administrators and then arbitrator watching and commenting on his talk page. I was totally amazed that no one, not one of them put a stop to the discussions going on knowing full well that there would be an uproar when SA popped in. I think everyone who contributed to this should be talked to. They all knew what they were doing, and worst they knew what the outcome would be, SA blowing his top. All of you should be ashamed of yourselves for behaving this way, sorry but this isn't supposed to be the way things work here. I understand, as I assume most everyone else does by now, and that is a lot of editors want SA banned from the site. I consider myself one of the most civil editors that the project can find but this whole affair is way over the top. Every week someone, usually from the same group of editors, post to AN, ANI, and ARB to try to achieve this goal, block/ban SA. Now I do not feel the SA is free of guilt here but I also feel that his behavior at times is being pushed and prodded to the level of incivility that everyone claims they don't like. So how's this for a proposal, everyone treat everyone else with respect, everyone treats the project with respect and get along. I find it terrible hard to take anyone's side here when it's the same editors complaining. I find it terrible suspicious that there was a case just recently against SA that didn't go the way some editors wanted so a decision for another try is being tried here. This may not sound like assuming good faith but I am telling it as I see it as an outsider to all of this. I haven't edited in an article with most of the editors here, and the one's I have, including SA, was a long time ago. So in closing, I think that some editors should revise their comments above to take the accounts of this matter that Bishonen has stated to their own statements so that it not misleading to others. Thanks for listening, I hope I don't end up being sorry I came to comment. -- CrohnieGal Talk 11:57, 3 January 2009 (UTC) reply

Evidence presented by User:Tony Sidaway

The main purpose of this evidence is to raise consciousness of the problems facing us in our objective of creating the most comprehensive and reliable body of general information on science.

Fringe science advocacy affects many science articles

Although the main focus of this arbitration is on articles about fringe science, articles about well accepted science may sometimes be affected by the addition of fringe science concepts or the removal of barriers to acceptance of fringe science concepts. Examples:

Commercial interests are campaigning to subvert and misrepresent science

See Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement and especially Operation Berkshire. See also The Denial Industry by George Monbiot.

This is the context in which much advocacy work for pseudoscience takes place. Science has become politicized and manipulated.

Wikipedia is targeted

  • See www.naturalnews.com/025106.html unreliable fringe source? this article] in which the principal writer of an academic study of pharmaceutical information in Wikipedia (Dr Kevin A Clauson of Nova Southeastern University in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida) reports that "representatives from drug companies have been caught deleting information from Wikipedia pages, information which might make their drugs seem unsafe." The study finds that although in general information on Wikipedia is accurate, it tends to omit important detail such as side-effects:
    "One potential dangerous adverse effect of the anti-inflammatory drug Arthrotec (diclofenac and misoprostol) is that it can cause miscarriage, yet this piece of information is omitted. Another example of missing information is the possibility of the herb St John’s Wort interfering with the action of Prezista (darunavir), a HIV drug."

Wikipedia is frequently a target of advocacy campaigns involving the manipulation of scientific evidence

Mainly through, but not restricted to, tendentious editing, argumentative behavior, open advocacy and disruptive editing, and campaigns of personal vilification.

The community has found it difficult to deal with even blatant advocacy

  • See here for a very hostile response to a challenge of a blatant case of a practising acupuncturist who performs a considerable amount of editing of the article on acupuncture. One editor even ventures the tendentious claim: "An editor's vocation does not create a COI." (conflict of interest). Acupuncture is a controversial field in which scientists have made little headway in distinguishing results from confounding effects. At present the lead section lacks a clear statement to this effect [59], instead using various circumlocutions to give the impression that acupuncture has considerable clinical acceptance.
  • See Condon Committee which to this day, despite some work by me earlier this year, contains a very large amount of criticism and blatant denigration based on obscure primary sources written by minor participants in the Condon investigation. Editors need encouragement to be bold in such cases and stub articles right down and start again (as we do with the biographies of living persons). I regret that I bottled out because I don't want to have to deal with fanatics.

Dangers of misframing

These conflicts are sometimes represented as being between mainstream science and fringe science. This is a subtle misdirection. There is a continuum of debate within science, based on widespread consensus on the scientific method and materialism.

Sources and arguments should thus be evaluated with respect to their acceptance within that debate. There is not some alternative science in which fringe views are more valid than they are held to be elsewhere. Scientific theories are accepted or rejected on the basis of their conformance with the body of scientific work, and a theory that demands the rejection of much that has been tested repeatedly requires especially persuasive evidence.

Wikipedia's overall science coverage has attracted praise

  • The famous Nature study of articles on scientific subjects, conducted in December, 2005, gave Wikipedia good marks on scientific subjects, based on the assessments of experts in the field. Though this was the subject of a rebuttal by the editors of Britannica, it is convincing evidence that Wikipedia's science coverage does not disgrace itself.

Civil POV pushing

In April, 2008, former arbitrator Mark Pellegrini ( Raul654) created an essay Wikipedia:Civil POV pushing. This has been expanded by Mark and several other editors with considerable editing experience in science-related fields where a certain intractable phenomenon has been encountered:

Wikipedia, and specifically the dispute resolution process, has a difficult time dealing with civil POV pushers. These are editors who are superficially polite while exhibiting some or all of the following behaviors:
  • They often edit primarily or entirely on one topic or theme.
  • They attempt to water down language, unreasonably exclude, marginalize or push views beyond the requirements of WP:NPOV, or give undue weight to fringe theories - pseudoscience, crankery, conspiracy theories, marginal nationalist or historic viewpoints, and the like (PCCTL for short).
  • They revert war over such edits.
  • They frivolously request citations for obvious or well known information.
  • They argue endlessly about the neutral-point-of-view policy and particularly try to undermine the undue weight clause. They try to add information that is (at best) peripherally relevant on the grounds that "it is verifiable, so it should be in."
  • They argue for the inclusion of material of dubious reliability; for example, using commentary from partisan think tanks rather than from the scientific literature.
  • They may use sockpuppets, or recruit meat puppets.
  • They repeatedly use the talk page for soapboxing, and/or to re-raise the same issues that have already been discussed numerous times.
  • They hang around forever wearing down more serious editors and become expert in an odd kind of way on their niche POV.
  • They often make a series of silly and time wasting requests for comment, mediation or arbitration again to try to wear down the serious editors.

The types of articles prone to this kind of problem are identified as:

  • Evolution/Creationism
  • Complementary and alternative medicine
  • Global warming
  • Parapsychology
  • The September 11 attacks
  • Racial topics
  • Pseudoscience
  • Marginal or idiosyncratic scientific speculation
  • New religious movements

The essay observes that our dispute resolution process has not been very successful in dealing with the damage to the project, if not the content, by such behavior, and tries to suggest some strategies for coping.

Among principles suggested are:

  • "superficially polite behaviors still may be uncivil."
    • Our Wikipedia:Civility policy supports this by saying: "Editors are expected to be reasonably cooperative...to work within the scope of policies." Thus editors who subvert the neutral point of view are not being truly civil.
  • "Civility is important, but it does not trump other core behavioral and content policies."
    • This is implicit in our policy statements. In particular, Jimbo has frequently described NPOV as one of the most important policies, the one he describes as "non-negotiable".

Evidence presented by Brothejr

Mainstream Vs Fringe

This could also be called: Skeptic Vs Believer or Debunker Vs Promoter.

One of the problems we are facing here is this idea of a war going one between the fringe and mainstream science. We continue to hear various editors state that we must fight the fringe and keep them from promoting their POV's. One example from this vary own arbcom is this:

There are some subjects that really need to be dismissed and discredited, if the encyclopedia doesn't care to be considered a laughingstock in the eyes of the world outside this particular wiki. Woonpton ( talk) 16:52, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

We see this time and again with people railing on how we should not give any fringe topic/article credit and also we should, as an encyclopedia, present the subject as something loony. The problem with this idea of mainstream science prevails over all, is that it is not Wikipedia's job to promote or discredit anything. We are here only to present the topic with as much factual information to inform the reader. Wikipedia is not here to dismiss or discredit anything. To do so would be considered Original Research. We are here only to report of what the topic is in a way to leave the reader better informed without imparting a bias for or against the topic. This is a constant across Wikipedia and does not change because it is a science article.

NPOV, The Reader, and You

One of the most significant issues with this battle between Mainstream Vs Fringe is that various articles have degraded in style and writing. As editors fight between each other over wording, they tend to forget the third party that is also very quietly involved: the Reader.

One example of how articles degrade with these battles for and against the fringe is to take a look at how such fighting can degrade articles: Here is the Cold Fusion article when it was promoted as a Featured Article: [60]. Here is the same article after it had been reduced to a Good Article: [61]. Finally, here is the same article again after it had been delisted as Good Article: [62]. Take a look at the intro paragraph and how it was written from a FA article all the way down to a delisted GA article. In the FA version, the lead was clearly written and stated what Cold Fusion was without imparting any controversy to the Reader other then to mention that there was a controversy surrounding it. Now take a look at the article after it had been delisted as a GA article. The writing has changed to debunk Cold Fusion and to impart to the Reader a sense that it is nonsensical, whether the editors meant it or not.

When we write articles, we must remember that NPOV trumps everything, even mainstream science and the fringe. It trumps the now disused SPOV and it's reincarnation under WP:MAINSTREAM. This means that no article should promote or debunk any subject as it is not this encyclopedia's job to debunk anything, but to straight report the facts to the reader and let the reader come to their own conclusion.

Evidence presented by Dick Lyon

This case was just pointed out to me; sorry if I'm joining late; this is all about last night.

I re-encounted SA yesterday in a bit of edit warring on Eric Lerner. Reading the talk ( Talk:Eric_Lerner#Activism / LaRouche), it appeared that it would be easy to make a compromise that people could be OK with, within policy: just don't use the irrelevant info from the flaky source; OK, that was naive, but then it seemed an actual compromise would be easy: instead of arguing over how reliable the source is, just include what it says that's relevant to the bio, in a neutral way. So I tried that; didn't work; see edit warring and disruption evidence below.

I'm sure everyone is aware that SA is here to push the anti-pseudoscience POV, and that's OK. What I didn't know is that he is into astronomy/cosmology, and this is the apparent reason for his particularly vehement opposition to any positive phrasing in relation to Eric Lerner or his work. This is not NPOV editing. Sanctions against him need to escalate until he gets it.

ScienceApologist has a conflict of interest

On that talk page, User:ABlake pointed out that User:Elerner himself had (in this comment on his own talk page) clearly pointed out both what's wrong with the material about Lyndon LaRouche that SA wants in Lerner's bio (last March!) and that SA has a clear WP:COI in trying to denigrate alternative cosmology ideas. That he takes his science-related POV and COI into pushing "guilt-by-association" on non-science-related details shows how dedicated he is to smearing persons who hold alternative views.

I asked SA if he has either declared or denied his conflict of interest. It seems that he denies it. On my talk page, he explains that "I really only want the LaRouche stuff in there because it is fascinating how the connections between pseudoscience get made." I still call that a COI/POV problem, since there's absolutely no source to imply the connection he's trying to make.

He says there, "you seem to think I'm on a particular endeavor with respect to Lerner"; that's not what I think. I've seen his destructive negative editing and tactics in many other places, too, all based on his fanatically anti-fringe POV or COI (and I'm no friend of fringe science myself, but I think it needs a chance to be represented more neutrally, and that its proponents shouldn't be attacked).

ps. I thank User:Hipocrite for pointing out above that User:ABlake also has a clear COI, as an employee of Eric Lerner's company. I don't think this much affects my assessments of ScienceApologist's behavior. I recommend we ask both of them to refrain from editing articles in which they have COI. Dicklyon ( talk) 08:16, 31 December 2008 (UTC) reply

ScienceApologist works by edit warring and disruption

In yesterday's fight, after User:Will Beback (a sometimes SA allie) put back what I removed, I realized that some of it was OK, and put in this sensible compromise here. SA reverted with a summary trying to tie his LaRouche connection to better sourced and non-derogatory non-contested information about Lerner; if he can't have the bad stuff in, he wants the good stuff out, which User:ABlake then did; he is obviously trying to compromise and settle with SA, but SA's point and method here just lead to article destruction, as others have mentioned above. So I put it back, and SA reverted me as being tendentious (the best defense is a good attack, he figures?).

ScienceApologist synthesizes negative forms of information from neutral sources

In this edit, he adds the words "though not receiving a degree" to a paragraph that doesn't really need it, from a source that doesn't really say it. The sources doesn't say he got a degree, and wikipedia shouldn't either, but to turn that around to an unneeded negative is just his way to trying to poke at the person. It's not neutral.

In this edit, he removes the EL to the subject's personal home page, and calls him a "devotee of Lyndon LaRouche", citing the word "LaRouchian" in the source, which would be more neutrally interpreted as that Lerner was a member of one of the organizations, which is already accepted and in the article. There's no need to try to make Lerner look more odd than he is by this "guilt-by-association", which is specifically disallowed in WP:BLP as I repeatedly told him in talk-page warnings and edit summaries.

Then he says " Let's quote King directly", which is back to where we came in, pretty much, with this attack book that King wrote on LaRouche having the few words "former Larouchian" easily misconstrued about Lerner; that he was a member of NCLC is fine; calling him a "LaRouchian" is derogatory and not well sourced, from a biased book not about him, and not relevant to his notability, and therefore in clear violation of WP:BLP where it says: "

  • Content should be sourced to reliable sources and should be about the subject of the article specifically. Beware of claims that rely on guilt by association. Be on the lookout for biased or malicious content about living persons. If someone appears to be promoting a biased point of view, insist on reliable third-party published sources and a clear demonstration of relevance to the person's notability.

ScienceApologist spins the issues in a non-productive way

In his presentation slide show online, SA concludes "The Wikipedia community needs to decide whether it is going to provide reliably vetted articles or if it will accommodate those pseudoscience POV- pushers who have the motivation to promote their ideas nearly full time."

Obviously, this is meant to polarize, not converge, different points of view. This is what he does every place he comments. He has not been willing to live the consensus view that fringe theories be presented with appropriate weight on their own terms, plus criticisms. He instead regards anyone who attempts to do so as a "POV-pusher", and attacks them personally as he's doing by trying to smear Lerner with guilt-by-associatin with LaRouche. Dicklyon ( talk) 19:41, 31 December 2008 (UTC) reply

ScienceApologist pushes SPOV over NPOV

The scientific point of view is great, but wikipedia is supposed to present a more neutral point of view. I tried to take Eric Lerner to a more NPOV position tonight, and SA fought it hard, with edits linked and detailed in this talk item of mine at Talk:Eric Lerner#Big bang section -- what_happened?. As shown there, each of his changes was to move away from a neutral presentation and toward one based on the assumption that Lerner is wrong and the mainstream is right; we're not supposed to take sides in controversial issues, which is what was guiding my edits, but he can't stand to see that article not take the mainstream science side. Then here he seeks sanctions to stop me, and accuses me of adding "innuendo" and such; I suppose he means because I added identification of the negative reviewers as proponents of the Big Bang theory; I don't see how it's appropriate to omit that, or why he would characterize it that way; it's much easier to understand the reviews and rebuttals in the context of who the people are and what their backgrounds are. Dicklyon ( talk) 08:14, 1 January 2009 (UTC) reply

Evidence presented by Olive

Response to Mastcell : SPOV discussion archived on discussion page of WP:NPOV [63]

I am stunned by Tzankai's recent block of Martinphi. I am in the dark as to what was on his userpage that caused an indefinite block. Tzankai your description of what has gone on the evidence and workshop pages is not accurate . Except for attacks by one user against Martin here, and I can provide diffs if you want, discussion has been quite even tempered and many editors with multiple viewpoint have been posting . I think there are some excellent proposals coming out of this as well, an indication of progress. I am not comfortable with being characterized as on one side or the other in this discussion. I don't want to see any editor blocked and feel that the Wikipedia environment created over a long period of time has created an environment where an editor such as SA has run a ground. Change will hopefully come with some of the new proposals. As well your judgment of Martin is wildly inaccurate. All editors here are expressing views and possible solutions to concerns. An editor posting here unless uncivil must be protecetd so that no editor is afraid to post. I know of several editors who would like to contribute but won't post here for fear of being attacked or their editing environment compromised. Martin's understanding of this area has helped clarify many issues, and his language can be seen in some of the proposals. I hope Martin has been given a chance to explain and to respond to your block.( olive ( talk) 18:59, 12 January 2009 (UTC)) reply

Evidence presented by Eldereft

Wikipedia exists as a service to our readers (everybody)

Perhaps I am wrong, as my most in-depth source is a case study (N=1) of an atypical user, but it is my impression that our readers come here to be rationally informed, not to receive the proselytory ramblings of fringe promoters or participate in the righting of great wrongs. Ideally, an article will provide essentially the same understanding that a reasonably intelligent but naive reader would attain if they were to read and fairly evaluate every non-Wikipedia source treating the topic.

Most readers have a mainstream perspective

Most readers do not share the peculiar perspective of adherents to certain of the topics covered by Wikipedia:Fringe theories. Unmeasurable putative energy does not exist, NASA did not fake the Apollo program, conservation of energy is more than just a suggestion, magnets do not stimulate the human body's innate ability to heal itself, there is no clinically relevant R3→R3 mapping between the ear and the rest of the body ... and no reader should be required to assume so just to make sense of an article. We have {{ in-universe}} to bring attention to articles written about works of fiction that treat the fictional universe on the same footing as the one we happen to inhabit - similar attention should be paid to the use of specialized terminology in the context of fringe ideas. Homeopathy should define potentized as the term is used by homeopaths, but should generally use diluted except in direct quotes. The parallel is imperfect, but Meridian (Chinese medicine) and Immaculate Conception should be treated in roughly the same manner - sourced expository prose free of evangelism.

Weighting by reliability is not the same as weighting by depth of coverage

Once notability has been established, it is entirely appropriate to source the major claims of a fringe theory to its adherents. Most of the sources which mention the Bates method will simply state that the muscles surrounding the eye, not the lens, are responsible for accomodation. Our article, however, is charged with weighting all sources by their reliability for the statements made, and should relay this as a claim unique to proponents.

ScienceApologist is currently under a mentorship agreement with Durova

The conduct complaints I see against ScienceApologist seem to me to fall into essentially two categories (I can dig up difference links if we really need them): ScienceApologist is too abrupt in deleting or minimizing another editor's preferred sources or in upgrading the perspective of an article; or ScienceApologist has assigned base motives to another contributor. The first kind of complaint may be dealt with through WP:BRD and the several noticeboards (preferably WP:RS/N or WP:FTN, as those WP:AN/I threads tend to close with 'no intervention necessary' after protracted irrelevant drama). Recognizing persistant abuse of sources (by misrepresenting sources or by treating them outside of their prominence or reliability) as a potentially bannable conduct problem might help calm this sort of complaint. Disruptive flare ups by advocacy-only accounts should be consistently deemed meritless. Behavior leading to the second kind of complaint is sometimes provoked by baiting, trolling, stalking, and other social nonsense; nevertheless, it contributes to a decline in the local collegial editing atmosphere, and should be avoided. ScienceApologist is currently being mentored by Durova, and no sanctions undermining this relationship should be applied.


Evidence presented by Phil153

Response to evidence presented by Pcarbonn

User Pcarbonn provides evidence that ScienceApologist has repeatedly violated NPOV. As someone familiar with the cold fusion article, I do not believe most of his diffs support the claims. Using the numbering of the diffs on this permanent link of Pcarbonn's evidence page for clarity:

  • Diffs 25-31, 37-39

[64] [65] [66] [67] [68] [69] [70] [71] [72] [73]

relate to SA's fight against the inclusion of a large amount of information in the lead, where it is extraneous, or balancing cherry picked quotes with other, more general quotes from the same report [74]. SA's editorial judgment is supported by the current lead following a recent rewrite by uninvolved editors [75].

  • Diffs 32,33,34,35,36,42,43 (some repeated)

[76] [77] [78] [79]
are wholesale reverts of bad contribs with multiple issues, not POV removals.

  • Diffs 40 and 41 [80] [81] are very marginal evidence of POV editing from a year ago (December 2007).


That covers all of Pcarbonn's evidence. ( talk) 19:06, 1 January 2009 (UTC) reply


Evidence presented by user:MaxPont

Allowed to break every WP rule if you have friends in the right places?

I am surprised that the title of this Arbcom is Fringe Science, considering that most of the comments in the RFA centered around the disruptive behavior of ScienceApologist [82]. Disruptions that quite often have been unrelated to Fringe science articles. Anyhow, read this quote by Jimbo Wales in a related discussion, (Dec 28th 2008):

“… the majority of Wikipedians prefers a degree of protection and kindness towards minority views, even those views which the majority of us might find to be silly.”.

[83]

IMO, the core issue for the community and Arbcom is this: Do we accept blatant bullying and breach of every possible rule by an alleged defender of the pro-establishment POV? Any other editor with an arrogance and a my-way-or-the-highway attitude like this would have been eternally banned a long time ago.

The big problem for the Wikipedia community is not ScienceApologist but the camp of “pro-Science” POV-pushers who by their unconditional support of ScienceApologist [84] contribute to a brutalised editing environment. It seems that these editors feel that Wikipedia editing should be an all-out war fought with no holds barred.

If these editors manage to make excuses for and save ScienceApologist once again it is more or less official that all the elaborate WP policies and guidelines are nothing but a charade and that the guys with friends in the right places have immunity and can act like lawless thugs with no consequences. One of the supporters of ScienceApologist even explicitly referred to Dirty Harry in his defense of the methods of ScienceApologist [85].

This is institutionalized hypocrisy. To say the least. If ScienceApologist is let off the hook – once again, the repercussions will most likely spread outside Wikipedia. Worst case, Jimbo Wales will have to spend his time on the defensive, trying to refute allegations about thuggish bullying on Wikipedia when he gives his media interviews or deliver conference keynotes around the world.

The abuse of the term Fringe

The legitimate need to prune fringe POVs and Original Research is one thing. But ScienceApologist and his supporters of “pro-science” POV-pushers take this notion too far in the other direction.

De facto, their goal seem to be to an extreme pro-establishment, pro-industry, status quo defending bias that is utterly at odds with the scientific spirit of personal disinterestedness and combining skepticism with openness to new evidence.

The “pro-science” POV-pushers have a naïve view of the infallibility of “Science”. They ignore that another scientific discipline (sociology) have made the scientific discourse their object of study in the field of Science and Technology Studies. What they have uncovered is that scientific “truths” are socially constructed by various communities of competing power interests [86]. Opportunism, politics, vanity, ruthless competition for resources, and a bow to authority are as common in Science as in other areas of human life. For example, trying to have competing scientists fired from editorial boards [87]. To ignore or deny this fact is unscientific.

In particular, when the “pro-science” editors resort to equaling government positions with scientific consensus. Anyone who knows anything about politics and how powerful special interests can influence government decisions would know that a declaration by a government agency that substance X is safe is only partly a result of “Science”. You can even suspect that some of the “pro-science” anti-Fringe Wikipedians are disguised pro-industry POV-pushers with a conflict of Interest.

ScienceApologist has a pro-establishment right-wing political agenda

Under the guise of attacking Fringe POV-pushers, defending the privileged position of Science, and the scientific “mainstream” ScienceApologist has a (not so hidden) agenda that probably best could be described as a pro-establishment bias with a political right-wing flavor. A collection of his mostly bad faith nomination for Deletion WP:AfD is provided below.

Suppression of information about the Dental Amalgam controversy

How should we interpret this bad faith nomination for Deletion WP:AfD together with his statements about Wikipedia editing on his own user page and his proposed WP:Mainstream. That the Wikipedia article about Dental Amalgam should completely ignore the controversy about its safety? [88].

Suppression of criticism against nuclear weapons and the U.S.military establishment

[89] [90] [91]

Suppression of criticism of the health risks from military use of depleted Uranium

[92]

Suppression of criticism of nuclear power

[93] [94] [95] [96] [97] [98] [99]

Suppression of information about advocacy for environmentalism and increased energy efficiency

[100] [101] [102] [103]

Suppression of information about solar power research

[104]

Suppression of information about wind power

[105]

Suppression of criticism of the “anti-environmental” government/industry resistance to Climate Change policy

[106] [107]

Suppression of criticism of consumerism and market capitalism

[108] [109] [110]

Suppression of criticism of the former right-wing government of Australia

[111]

The problems with a “Mainstream” policy

The idea that Wikipedia should be a “mainstream” dictionary and only represent the generally accepted establishment POV will kill Wikipedia as a dynamic evolving collaborative repository of all human knowledge for the Internet age. If a WP:Mainstream [112] is ever enacted it would make Wikipedia an incredible boring project. It also directly contradicts Jimbo Wales’s vision for Wikipedia:

““Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's our commitment.”

[113]

All new knowledge and new opinions begin as minority positions. The viable ideas gradually gain support – often under heavy resistance from the old establishment. With a WP:Mainstream these minority ideas would be suppressed until they are accepted as mainstream themselves. A Wikipedia in the late 1800s would have a very negative article about democracy and the “Fringe” principle of universal voting rights. A Wikipedia in the 1960s would either ignore or have a very negative article about gay rights.

With a WP:Mainstream it will be possible to suppress neutral NPOV descriptions about most of the environmental and health controversies which have a scientific component. The result would be: “dental amalgam is safe”, “trans fats are safe”, “GMO is safe”, “aspartame is safe”, “MSG is safe”, “water fluoridation is safe”, “there is no overfishing and fish quotas are determined by science”, “mobile phone radiation is harmless”, “the FDA is not corrupt in any way”, “drugging children with SSRI is safe”, “Paxil is safe and is not addictive”, “products from organic farms are inherently unsafe”, “vitamin supplements are dangerous and toxic”, “the pesticide Roundup is safe”, "official dietary guidelines are solely based on science and have not been influenced by agro-industry", “fair trade labeling is a fraud”, etc. MaxPont ( talk) 09:25, 2 January 2009 (UTC) reply

Evidence presented by Geogre

Consensus vs. consensus

Of course we're back to the central problem, here, the problem in evidence at the nationalist wars, the science wars, the diet wars, the economics wars, the pyramid scheme wars, and even the Gdansk wars: consensus vs. consensus.

If all we require for writing an article is some agreement, then we must allow every fringe science article to be written by its advocates, every band's article to be written by its fans, every nation's articles to be written by its patriots. However, if what we require is consensus, we have to define the group involved. The band's fans will never agree, and the patriots will fight, and the people who believe their lives (or income streams) have been saved by treating Wilson's syndrome (a quackery) (mistakenly remembered as Wilson's disease, which is real; my apologies to Isaac Newton) will never agree. "Consensus" has to be defined not only in terms of authority (oops), but also in terms of geography (in a virtual world). If we rely on normal Wikipedia means to define "consensus," we're only going to repeat the battles again. (Patriots will get involved to be sure that "consensus" is not defined widely, and fringe folks will get involved to be sure that the AMA and NSF aren't involved.)

Unless we define consensus with reference to language (the English Wikipedia serves the Anglophone world and reflects the consensus of that community), geography (this -pedia serves the industrialized Western world and reflects that view), expertise (this -pedia relies upon professional organizations to weigh in as expert on issues of debate (and this would mean the American Historical Society and UK Historical Association and other professional organizations for the "History of __YourNation__" articles), then we're going to have the advocates writing and editing articles on all subjects.

What's at stake is not the amateurism of Wikipedia. We like to think that the demotic spirit of amateurism means that we avoid the expert standard, but that's absolutely not true. From the earliest days, we've had experts editing, and we've had expert standards. We just haven't put up real life verifications at the gates. Trust me: we've always had experts, and we may have had more of them in the old days than we do now. What's at stake is the hobbyist nature of Wikipedia. Does Wikipedia serve the writer or the reader? If it serves the writer, if it's the game that any school child may play, then we allow all advocates to write their own loves. If it serves the reader, if its duty is to offer researchers and readers information, then we have to have some standard against which advocates are checked (sorry about the passive).

So, if we keep our eyes out of focus and allow "anyone may edit" and "consensus is agreement of any group" to dominate, we're going to have experts run off of every subject (if "expert" is defined by credentials and experience working in a field).

Proposal

It's quite simple, really: we acknowledge that scientific communities are defined by training and experience, and we acknowledge that Wikipedia is inherently conservative, even if that means in error. Let's come to face the fact that Wikipedia is not the venue for the Truth. That's not what we do. We report rather than blaze trails. Thus, we have to report the most agreed upon views, not the most correct.

I know that this rankles, but it's the nature of any encyclopedia to be instantly out of date because it is always being as sparing and cautious as possible. The burden of proof, therefore, is on any divergent or "fringe" view to have overwhelming support before changing the status quo.

Oh, and about the civility

I'm no fan of insulting people, but let's be honest: "I'll see you die by using your own medical procedure" is hardly a death threat. It's more of a dare. It's not only a joke, but it's a commentary. Otherwise, Bishonen's evidence is telling. When any editor becomes the exemplar of "bad" to a heterogenous group of editors with agendas, the talk page is going to be out of all proportion with taunts and baits.

This is the classic Bait and Tackle approach. Get a thousand people to yell, wait "to see what he does next," and pounce. Bleck. That's not admin standard behavior.

Evidence presented by Woonpton

Brothejr used my words out of context and misrepresented my position

In his evidence section above, Brothejr prominently displays a quote from me as evidence of "people railing on how we should not give any fringe topic/article credit and also we should, as an encyclopedia, present the subject as something loony." (emphasis: the quoted phrase is his words, not mine.) I pointed out on the talk page that the sentence quoted was taken out of context and that I do not in fact hold the position that the quote was used as evidence for, that fringe subjects should be presented in articles as "loony" and asked to have it stricken, but it has not been stricken, so it seems my only recourse is to challenge it here.

The quote was taken from a comment I made in response to a proposal on the workshop page (now stricken) of this case: "Debunking is a form of advocacy that seeks to dismiss and damage the reputation of a subject through the use of rhetoric or argumentation." The entire comment can be seen here. I was arguing against the use of the label "debunking" since it is too often used to denigrate and discredit even well-sourced and neutrally-toned criticism of a fringe subject. The last sentence of my comment, which was taken and used out of context, referred back to the language of the proposal I was commenting on, and was intended to be ironic. I was certainly not arguing for the use of rhetoric or argumentation to advocate for a position in a Wikipedia article; I was simply arguing against the denigration of well-sourced and neutrally-toned criticism of fringe theories. In fact I don't believe advocacy has any place in wikipedia articles, and I've made that clear not only in my explanations on the talk page, but in the tone of my editing of articles, small as my contribution has been (why I've participated so little in editing articles will be addressed below).

It occurs to me that while that sentence taken out of context is certainly not valid evidence of what Brothejr has used it as evidence for, his action in taking a sentence out of context to mean something very different than the passage as a whole, serves as a perfect example of what editors in fringe areas often have to deal with. Someone reads a source, but instead of taking the source as a whole and representing it accurately and fairly as a whole, the person simply scans it for any bit that, taken out of context, could be used to support a point, even if to do so is to do violence to the meaning of the source as a whole. This is not how we should be conducting meta-discussions about a case; this is not how we should be writing an encyclopedia.

The fringe-friendly atmosphere of Wikipedia drives away editors

I came to Wikipedia because I was dismayed by the quality of Wikipedia articles, thinking that as a retired statistician who has deep and broad knowledge of the literature in a wide variety of areas, particularly those called here "fringe theories" or "pseudoscience" I could help improve the quality of content in those areas. I'm not a person who just dives into something without understanding it first, so I spent some time finding my way around the project, studying policy, and observing articles and their talk pages. What I saw convinced me that there was no point in trying to edit articles unless/until I could see some level of commitment on the part of the community to enforcing core policies to ensure the quality of the content. During my time here, I have been aware of several other knowledgeable people who have spent a short time here and left, convinced as I am that there was no point in their participation.

Evidence presented by PhysicsEng

SA's superiority complex

I won't waste space referencing all the evidence regarding ScienceApologist's infractions and his arrogant, condescending and hypocritical comments. MaxPont does perhaps the most thorough job here: [114].

This is a rather poignant example of his arrogance:

"I promise to continue to attack others within the bounds of Wikipedia rules without violating POINT or BATTLEGROUND until I see every person I'm in conflict with blocked or banned. That's my full and final goal.

and,

"as long as [WP:CIV] is still policy here at Wikipedia, I encourage all like-minded editors to use it to destroy [...] people"

and this...

"One of his worst formal transgressions is that he falsely presented one of his own proposals as an enacted WP by referring to it as WP:MAINSTREAM [124] [125] [126] [127]. That is, he presented a draft proposal as an enacted WP - a pure bluff - tantamount to perjury or planting false evidence in a normal court of law."

It amazes me how SA was not banned indefinitely long ago. He obviously feels himself to be superior to anyone who disagrees with him, or takes him to task. I have recently worked with a borderline narcissist for the past 18 months, and much of his behavior reminds me of the examples of SA's behavior documented by MaxPont. You can reprimand, topic ban, temporarily wiki ban him and you will NOT permanently change his behavior; you will get temporary appeasement from him only when he realizes that he is likely to be locked out of his 'playground'. Yes, I said playground; these personalities enjoy the havoc that they cause.

To top it off is this quote, "Suck my genetalia, Jimbo Wales! … Enjoy the shittiest encyclopedia on the planet"

In my reading today I have also noted these comments of others about SA:

From this page, [115]

"Any attempts to control SA's behavior result in cataclysmic severe[3] disruption, including:"

This from, [116]

"Childish, pointy, and wholly indicative that this user simply doesn't get it. This section should be stricken from the discussion. Tarc (talk) 19:03, 22 December 2008 (UTC)"


Although he gives the appearance of working within the 'rules', and knows them perhaps better than most editors, which is characteristic of this personality type, his actions say differently. When he begins to feel that the 'rules' are being used against him, however validly, he makes his opinion clear: [117]

"I'm sick and tired of people trying to tie my hands in disputes and will, frankly, not stand for it."

The utter frustration that he causes is typified in this response to SA's preceding comment above:

"Um.... really? You really don't understand why people thought your canvassing note was non-neutral?! Dude... Why are you so stubborn? I really, really, really don't understand. If you keep being such an asshole, then the community is going to continue to buy into every one of your opponents' allegations, whether valid or not, and the project will be a worse place. Maybe instead of wasting so much time saying, "Fuck you! I'ma do what I want!", maybe instead when good faith uninvolved editors mention something like this to you, you could just say, "I will take that under consideration" and continue on with improving the project. Just a thought... --Jaysweet (talk) 17:18, 31 October 2008 (UTC)"

More of his sarcastic arrogance:

"Yeah, because Wikipedia's dispute resolution process is soo functional. Excuse me while I wretch." ScienceApologist (talk) 12:54, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Finally, there are several editors that, shortly after interacting with him, have praised him, but after more extensive interaction, completely change their opinion of him; some even starting the arbitration about him.

Bottomline: SA eventually alienates most everyone he interacts with; until he learns that painful lesson, he is causing more harm than good. Perhaps you should solicit expert opinions by psychologists/psychiatrists... PhysicsEng ( talk) 00:32, 3 January 2009 (UTC) -Mark reply

Evidence presented by -- 81.131.6.201 ( talk) 23:46, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Irrespective of the positive contributions made by ScienceApologist, this is no defence of the negative ones. In no other walks of life, and in no Wikipedia policy, is this acceptable. The time wasted by the community in dealing with such inappropriate behavior is excessive.

1. ScienceApologist has more blocks than any other editor, by far. [118]

2. ScienceApologist has been subject to more ArbCom cases than any other editor, including:

3. ScienceApologist is acknowledged that "his incivility is given 'leeway'" [120], which is not afforded other editors.

4. ScienceApologist has used sockpuppets abusively, according to a previous ArbCom case. [121]

5. ScienceApologist has made personal attacks against other editors and individuals (too many to mention, and summarized in other ArbCom cases)

6. ScienceApologist has recently admitted harassing other individuals off-site, to the extent of trying to get them fired from their job. [122]

7. ScienceApologist has been blocked (see above), and been subject to several previous cautions, warnings, and counseling (see previous ArbComs). The effectiveness of these has been nill.

8. Other editors also carry out work similar to ScienceApologist, but without any of the associated problems.

Evidence presented by Art LaPella

ScienceApologist's latest mentorship isn't working yet.

Evidence presented by Looie496

The real issue underlying all this is that wp:fringe is a guideline rather than a policy and as such lacks any effective mechanism for enforcement. Therefore disputes about fringe science can generally only be solved by majority rule, which only works for N-vs-1 disputes. N-vs-M content disputes are usually intractable unless there is a consensus for admin action in favor of one side. What is needed, then, is a mechanism that can come to a conclusion that can be enforced by admins. I suggest that we try an "RFC-Fringe" mechanism, which would work similarly to AfD: A proposal would be made that XXX is a fringe theory, and editors could argue this back and forth. After an appropriate time an admin would resolve the discussion with a status of yes, no, or no consensus. If the consensus is yes, then attempts to "push" the theory would be subject to enforcement by admins, starting with warnings and moving on to blocks. Looie496 ( talk) 18:52, 7 January 2009 (UTC) reply

Evidence presented by User:DGG

Enough of the diffs have been cited above, to indicate that it is not the purpose of SA to assist in giving a NPOV. I don't think he's actually helping present a SPOV either.I I am convinced, convinced every bit as much as SA is, that the SPOV is in fact the only valid approach to the physical world; I think that any unprejudiced person open to reason will realise that when all views are presented objectively. The confidence in this is the reason for the objective pursuit of knowledge, rather than propaganda. Propaganda is unnecessary. The opponents of reason and science are welcome to say everything they can possibly say for it. If the full evidence from all views is presented, the conclusion of anyone able and willing to understand the issues will be the correctness of the SPOV.

It is therefore folly to prevent the expression of irrational ideas--it makes people suspect that there might be some truth to them after all, if people are trying to suppress them. let us have biographies of every notable psychic, UFO believer, and homeopath--if their ideas are presented fairly, people will know what to make of them. all that is necessary, is to give an indication that their views are not those of the overwhelming majority of those who know about the subject--that is all that is necessary to avoid being misleading.

SA doesn't believe this. I do not know why, and I have no relevant speculation even. It's not that he's an amateur who doesn't really know his science and is forced to simply assert things; quite the opposite, he's a true expert. It is not that he is unable to give clear explanations and logical arguments; again, quite the opposite, he's an expert here also. I simply don't know why he think that information needs to be suppressed. I don't. I consider homeopathy, for example, as 100% unreasonable, and to the extent that it confuses people about proper medical care, dangerous. I would strongly advocate not treating its practitioners as genuine health care workers. I think the only proper way to go about it is to let people see what it is, from sources whose objectivity is manifest. That's one of the reasons I and many other scientists are here. At least, its one of the reasons we came here--but I am among those scientifically trained people who will not edit these articles, or articles on any pseudoscience or fringe topic, because even good neutral edits are resisted unless they are so blatantly anti-fringe as to seem not merely hostile, but unreasonably hostile. The clearest example of this is the material on the claimed homeopathic use of medicinal plants. People who would remove such information do not have common purpose with the encyclopedia. Until I came here, I would never have imagined it of good scientists

I do know whether he can change his behavior. I am not an optimist here, because of the very recent batch of nominations for deletion of articles on UFO-related people regardless of whether or not they were notable.. DGG ( talk) 05:49, 8 January 2009 (UTC) reply


{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.

Evidence presented by Curtis Clark

Because Martinphi has used my words in support of his position, I'd like to use them to support mine as well (and also agree strongly with DGG above).

Science, by its very nature, is self-defending. Were it not, it would be indefensible, since self-correction is one of its key attributes.

Belief systems are not self-defending; that is the nature of belief. Belief systems cannot be held as intrinsically bad; certainly the existence of Wikipedia is the result of the confluence of belief systems.

"Fringe science" is terminology from a belief system. In science, there is no "fringe". Theories are either capable of falsification or they are not. If they are, they are either supported by observation and experimentation, or they are not. Scientific revolutions and paradigm-shifts are properties of groups of humans doing science; they are not themselves intrinsic to science.

SA promotes a belief system. It is a system shared in part by many scientists, but it is not science.

If SA were using the same tactics to push any other belief system, in my opinion he would already be banned.

Evidence presented by Feline1

From observing & interacting with User:ScienceApologist on numerous articles during 2007 and since (e.g. Immanuel Velikovsky and AfD debates for [ | Ralph Jeurgens], [ | Pensee IVR], [ | David Talbott]) I have found him to be an uncivil editor, self-professedly promoting a single PoV, who sees editing as a "[ | fight against cranks and pseudoscience]". This in itself causes edit warring and disruption to the project. However my contention that this editor has gone further than intemperate behavior, by engaging in vexacious wikilitigation against his "opponents" with a view to getting them banned from the project (" WP:GAME").

One of his principle methods of "dirty tricks" has been his misuse of sockpuppet accounts:

  • 21 June 2007, SA posts a "parting essay" [123],

and takes a six day break, before returning on 27 June and leaving a parting commment. [124]

3 days later, and over the next few weeks, SA creates and uses sockpuppets:

  • 30 June, Fradulent Ideas. [125]
  • 10 July, Mainstream astronomy, [126]
  • 12 July, "76.214.223.142", [127]
  • 13 July, Velikovsky [128]
  • 16 July, Nondistinguished [129]
  • On 27 June 2007, when SA said he was leaving, he continued to masquerading under five different sockpuppets.
  • On 16 July 2007, when SA was masquerading as sockpuppet Mainstream astronomy, and claimed to be leaving again due to being "outright harassed by a certain User:Iantresman", [130]

he continued to masquerade as sockpuppets Fradulent Ideas, Nondistinguished, and under IP addresses 76.214.223.142 and 216.125.49.252.

As presented in evidence by MartinPhi | above , I found the editing style of sockpuppet User:Nondistinguished so distinctivly obstreperous and prone to wikilaywering that I asked him if he was ScienceApologist. SA lied in reply, stating "This is the first time that I ever had contact with you since I started my account" | David Talbott AfD and in fact reported me to an admin for harrassment!

SA continued to lie about his use of sockpuppets and his "having left" wikipedia in his evidence presented [ | above] to an ArbComm.

Evidence of ScienceApologist mis-using sock puppets re: IanTresman ArbComm

It seems to me that in the ArbComm case re: IanTresman, Science Apologist's misuse of sockpuppets misled the community when it formed a judgement:

[ http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User:Mainstream_astronomy&diff=prev&oldid=144910132 ] ScienceApologist as "Mainstream_astronomy" writes "I have been outright harassed .. and can volunteer my time elsewhere".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_sanction_noticeboard/Archive10#Iantresman

The diff shows how other editors interpreted ScienceApologist's message:

  • JoshuaZ's alleged that he ([antresman] had "repeatedly harassed User:ScienceApologist who eventually left the project [..] is now repeating the exact same thing with a relatively new user User:Mainstream astronomy.
  • KillerChihuahua's alleged that "Mainstream astromony posted on his user page that he was leaving directly as a result of Iantresman's harassment"
  • Blueboy96 alleged that "If you drive someone from Wikipedia and you haven't been community banned, you damned well better be".

Using his sockpuppets Velikovsky and Mainstream astronomy, ScienceApologist left 6 messages on iantresman's talk page up until, and including, the day he was banned, so he was probably aware of the Community sanction discussion... and chose not to put the record straight. -- feline1 22:47, 5 November 2007 (UTC) reply


Evidence presented by Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk)

Martinphi has edited policy disruptively, and in ways that make it better possible for him to push his POV or advance his position in a dispute

All dates are 2008, unless otherwise specificed

Attempting to redefine majority to deal with only the particular people actively studying and promoting a fringe theory.


Some examples of editing policy to make it easier for him to promote this view:

2 November WP:FRINGE:

  • [131]. (This may also have been meant to push his view in this content dispute, but that is uncertain)

23 October, Wikipedia:Scientific consensus


Other advocacy:

3 November 2008: [ http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia%3AFringe_theories&diff=249488324&oldid=249414917 Reduced WP:FRINGE to "essay", in what would appear to be a deliberately provocative edit.


15 April, WP:NPOV/FAQ

  • [133], [134], [135] - Editwarred to delete the entire section on pseudoscience, instead linking to quotes from arbcom cases he liked.

27 September, WP:NPOV/FAQ

  • [136] joins an edit was to delete the section on pseudoscience and fringe views.

The FAQ is also what he's ranting about in the quote from 6 October I mention above. He really hates it, and particularly hates that it's been policy for seven years. (Edit-warred into the policy, eh? That would be by Larry Sanger, then, that notorious POV-pusher?)


Using policy to attack Scienceapologist

  • He specifically admits that some edits to WP:CIVIL were for the sole purpose of making it easier to attack Scienceapologist under the Arbcom restrictions here. That was sufficiently long ago that I don't think it's worth going over in more detail than that.


This is not a complete list by any means. I just checked some recent edits, and a few places where I remembered him behaving badly. However, I believe that the point is clear.


If I get around to it, I'll provide some more evidence later.

Evidence presented by User:Backin72

"First I'm going to get Hans Adler fired for loving homeopathy. Then I'm going to get JB (real name redacted) imprisoned for impersonating a medical doctor. The I'm going to kill Levine2112 by breaking his back with vertebral subluxation unrelated to chiropractic. Then I'm going to expose Elonka for being an amateur cryptographer with delusions of grandeur. Then I'll put fluoride in ImperfectlyInformed and MaxPont's water to poison them." [137]
Also see diff where I remove a personal attack based on my profession. From WP:NPA: "some types of comments are never acceptable: ... Using someone's affiliations as a means of dismissing or discrediting their views—regardless of whether said affiliations are mainstream."

Comment: This isn't particularly amusing stuff when some people are editing with their real-life identity. It drives editors away (like myself): and I suspect that is the unspoken intention, or at least known side effect. It is intended to intimidate. It's harassment. I made a naive mistake in deciding to edit here with my real name (since changed): I thought that stuff like NPA, above, would actually be enforced. But obviously, SA is in some sort of special user class, immune to such rules. Which is hilariously ironic, given WP's slavish egalitarian devotion to not having expert editors. So, instead, we have had a de facto "bad cop" arguing from authority, enforcing what he thinks is mainstream science using incivility and attacks. Wow! What a great idea! Do you think maybe enforcing civility and, e.g., having scientifically-literate editors vet a "last good version" of certain articles might be a better approach?

Personal comment (NOTE: I request that this section be removed once case is closed.)

(note: please redact above once case is closed. thanks. I wanted to say it publically, but not archive it.)

Conclusion

The benefit that ScienceApologist brings to the site is grossly overstated by his supporters. He's just a grad student, a/o community college instructor or something, who doesn't grok every area or subtlety.

Some people just don't work well with others. SA simply lacks the personality to edit a wiki. Seriously, ban him for this lifetime and the next as well.

Wikipedia's reluctance to deal with this hyper-disruptive editor is right up there with the Essjay fiasco in terms of trashing WP's credibility. How many more wake-up calls do you need before you deal with both science and civility in a consistent, methodical way?

Thanks for listening. -- Backin72 ( n.b.) 07:26, 11 January 2009 (UTC) reply

Evidence presented by Tznkai

I apologize for the last minute nature of this evidence - but I was doing my best to stay out of this in case a spare clerk was needed/for my own sanity when an Enforcement request came up that none of the other "AE regulars" were around for - the end result of which was me blocking Martinphi indefinitely.

My recent block of Martinphi

My involvement started as a result of this Arbitration Enforcement request by User:Shoemaker's Holiday. I responded to the request nine hours later to indicate I had made a decision and would post it shortly. The complaint in summary was that Martinphi was edit warring in an attempt to display personal information pertaining to Science Apologist in Martinphi's own userspace. In more common Wikipedia parlance - Martinphi was attempting to out Science Apologist. I viewed the relevant deleted page, and confirmed that Martinphi was in fact publishing a page that had been courtesy blanked because of personal information issues.

Essentially, Martinphi was republishing a page in a third user's userspace. That user had communicated with both Martinphi and Science Apologist, and in the course of that communication Science Apologist revealed personal information which has since been courtesy blanked. (There are no links for that reason)

The text of our outing policy - like most of our policies - has some odd mutations, is unstable, and I consider it unreliable - but I've always figured the thrust of it is, don't publish personal information - its a jackass sort of thing to do. However, just because something is a jackass thing to do doesn't mean its a sanctionalable offense on its own. My instincts were certainly turning there, but I also knew there was reasonable disagreement whether or not you can "out" an editor who has already revealed their own identity willingly.

As a result I examined the last 500 contributions of Martinphi (this is a copy) - and also took note of his big Retired sign on his user page. A quick survey showed that Martinphi has done little productive on Wikipedia recently - and plenty unproductive. His extensive contributions in this case, and various philosophical matters were not helpful, but in fact using Wikipedia as a philosophical battleground - and doubly so if you consider there is reasonable suspicion that his driving motivation is to further his conflict with Science Apologist in particular. (In depth analysis may come later)

Long story short, I decided this was not in fact an Arbitration enforcement but a matter of general administration. I blocked Martinphi for an indefinite period and made my rationale at the appropriate noticeboard where as of this posting, discussion is ongoing

Further analysis

The problem between Science Apologist and Martinphi is an old festering one - and many users and administrators and even arbiters have given into the temptation to excuse bad behavior for any number of reasons - including the reasoning that they've been at each others throats so longthat of COURSE this kind of behavior is to be expected.

The fact is, bad behavior - in this case mutual bad behavior, has real noticeable effects on the quality of our work. Fringe science articles become little fiefdoms of POV pushers and the debunkers who fight them - and relevant and useful information gets squeezed out as a result. The reader needs to know who what where when why first, and then and only then is a digression about the scientific community's viewpoint on it on the table.

But here is a more concrete example: this evidence page has ended up roughly divided between those attacking Science Apologist for his failures, and those attacking Martinphi and his failures. We have taken sides. Taking sides is not productive - it grinds progress to a halt. When we let these personal fights fester we invite our userbase to politicize itself and turn Wikipedia into a large Battleground.

Stop them.-- Tznkai ( talk) 17:37, 12 January 2009 (UTC) reply

Evidence presented by {your user name}

before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.


Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Fringe_science/Evidence&oldid=1142571543"

Videos

Youtube | Vimeo | Bing

Websites

Google | Yahoo | Bing

Encyclopedia

Google | Yahoo | Bing

Facebook




Top Of Page

Home • Search • Translate

© CSE