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Posted by: Sxeptomaniac

I had really hoped they'd keep themselves under control after FeloniousMonk's desysopping a while back, but they appear to be back at it again.

Cla68 seems to have stirred them up by http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Intelligent_design&oldid=408813654#Categories to the Intelligent Design article. Don't think it was a really good idea, but it doesn't justify the reaction.

Now Hrafn has decided to tag various articles as being Creationism stubs, including http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_Tour&diff=408754717&oldid=407177133, a guy who has specifically said that he's not an intelligent design supporter. He signed a petition, so therefore he's a creationist, even if he says otherwise, right? Never mind that he's done nothing else related to creationism, and all indicators are that he never will. Now Guettarda's http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_Tour&diff=prev&oldid=408811088 (since when is the burden of evidence on the one removing material from a BLP?).

I really did not want to get involved with these people again, but I'm not letting them go back to messing with BLPs like they did in the past.

Posted by: Cla68

It seems that they haven't given up trying to tar and feather everyone who signed that petition. Is Hrafn OrangeMarlin or Jim62sch reincarnated? His insulting, bullying attitude and insufferable POV pushing is just like how those other two editors acted around the ID articles when they were editing.

Posted by: NuclearWarfare

Cla, do you honestly think that intelligent design is a scientific http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=theory&sub=Search+WordNet&o2=&o0=1&o7=&o5=&o1=1&o6=&o4=&o3=&h=0?

Posted by: Doc glasgow

It is a theory, and it relates to science. Define science?

Posted by: Sarcasticidealist

By normal definition, a scientific theory is one that has emerged through the scientific method, broadly defined (evolution generally defies controlled hypothesis testing, but there can be more to science than that). Intelligent design is no such thing.

Of course, people might take the approach that you do, and adopt a widely used colloquial definition of "theory". But if you take that definition of "theory", isn't "scientific theory" redundant? Can you think of a "theory" under that definition that doesn't relate to science?

In the interests of clarity and in having words mean something, the definition of "theory" used within the scientific community is clearly the best one.

Posted by: taiwopanfob

Then a theory is something that makes a prediction. You have phlogiston theory and relativity theory.

The central issue of science is coming up with theories and then either finding support for or against them.

Hence adjectives like "discredited" when referring to some theories, and "well supported" when commenting on others.

Posted by: RMHED

Now that smacks of protectionism and self interest. Yeah lets allow the scientists to define what is scientific.

Why not also allow the clergy to define what is religious?

Posted by: Sarcasticidealist

If they're (that is, clergy from all religions) prepared to agree upon a clear definition that can be applied with approximate uniformity and which approximately matches the sense in which the word is already commonly used (to avoid confusion), that's fine with me.

But comparing the clergy to scientists is also somewhat misleading, since the first is defined by a set of beliefs, and the second by a methodology. If a Lutheran pastor concludes through study that, for example, there is no God, then he very quickly ceases to be a Lutheran pastor, regardless of the methodology that led him to that conclusion. If a scientist concludes through study that, for example, the standard atomic model is incorrect, she is still a scientist, provided that she applied scientific methodology in reaching that conclusion.

Posted by: Doc glasgow

It is worse than that. Scientists defining what is scientific is one thing, but what happens here is that some scientists define scientific, and then that controls who gets defined as a scientist and what gets defined as science. It is the last bastion of naive modernism.

The equivalent would be me saying Mormons aren't Christians, because all true Christians agree Mormons aren't Christians. QED

Posted by: Cla68

Yes, it's not up to Wikipedia to decide what is and isn't a scientific theory. Also, I thought the assignation of categories in Wikipedia was not a content judgment. In other words, if "Enneagram of Personality" http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Enneagram_of_Personality&action=historysubmit&diff=408194838&oldid=408183851 to the "Pseudoscience" category, it doesn't mean that Wikipedia is saying that it is a Pseudoscience, only that one or more of the sources are claiming that. If so, then the same thing should be true for Intelligent Design as a scientific theory, because some people, as reported in the sources, claim that it is. I notice that some of the "Science" editors are very quick to cast aspersions of quackery on theories they don't approve of, but very resistant to those theories being classified in opposite terms even if there are reliable sources showing that some people do consider them to be scientific theories.

Posted by: RMHED

Nah, that's just another religious schism. Just replace God with aliens = New Religion.

Who determines the methodology, oh yeah other scientists! Hardly a level playing field.

Posted by: Sarcasticidealist

In the abstract, virtually all scientists would agree on what constitutes a science, with perhaps minor distinctions. Scientists may apply that definition in different ways, but at least they have a common framework by which to argue the question. Look at this business about vaccinations causing autism: the idea is roundly rejected by virtually all scientists, and defended by a tiny minority. But there is agreement on all sides about what criteria the idea must meet in order to be considered "scientific".

Of course, scientists, like the rest of humanity, are fallible, prejudiced, and at times intellectually dishonest. For that reason, they can refuse to accept as scientific theories and fields that are, by their own definition, scientific. But that is not an argument against the "scientific" definition of science.

It is a peculiar egalitarianism that demands that scientists and non-scientists be placed on a "level playing field" on scientific questions.

Posted by: Milton Roe

See science. Yes, it may be Wikipedia, but it's as good a definition of the word as you'll find.

And yes, sciences are predictive. Even in the broadest senses of the word.

Posted by: RMHED

Only because they've narrowed down the answers to ones that agree with their cosy consensus.

Posted by: Doc glasgow

That's circular. To my mind Intelligent Design is certainly a scientific theory, just as much as evolution is. Both try to make sense of the data available. Of course, either may be completely wrong. There are many scientific theories which over the years have been discredited or abandoned.

Posted by: Sarcasticidealist

Darwin's theory is predictive, and falsifiable (at least in principle - as I said earlier, it does defy controlled attempts at nullification, since it's difficult to "evolve" organisms in a lab or over a reasonable period of time). The "theory" of intelligent design is neither.

Yes - always using the same methodological framework.

Posted by: RMHED

Anthropogenic global warming is the 21st Century's Eugenics and will go the same way.

Posted by: Sarcasticidealist

It will be rejected because it's morally repugnant, regardless of underlying scientific validity?

Posted by: RMHED

It'll be rejected because it's bunkum, just like Eugenics.

Although as far as science is concerned it's served a useful purpose in regards to aiding funding. Gotta keep those scientists employed doing something and nothing like a good old scare story to help those funding dollars flow.

Posted by: SB_Johnny

Are you channeling Colbert, or are you one of those people who sighs with relief when the sun rises in the morning?

Posted by: RMHED

No, I'm one of the Anthropogenic global warming deniers. This of course is akin to religious heresy to those who truly believe in the fairytale.

Posted by: radek

Evolution can be tested via inferential statistics, based on data that is made available to us (or was placed there by the aliens to mislead us of course). It's not as good having controlled experiments but the ideal standard is still there. Astronomy or for that matter Psychology or Economics have the same problem. That doesn't make them unscientific just means that progress is harder. (On the other hand medicine CAN have many forms of controlled experiments and they still get quite hokey (by that I don't mean that "Alternative medicine" is better - it's worse, far worse in most cases - just that the mainstream stuff isn't very good to begin with), maybe because the training in statistics is crappy)

Of course I agree that ID is not a scientific theory and that it has no business being in a "Scientific theories" categories on Wikipedia, that's just common sense.

Btw, one strong argument in favor evolution over ID is precisely how inefficient lifeforms can be. Why do you think so many people suffer from back aches? If there is/was a designer out there it was clearly either unintelligent or simply malevolent.

Posted by: Milton Roe

It is impossible prove cause and effect to somebody who doesn't want to believe it, in situations that are not ammenable to direct experiment. For example, Peter Duesberg doesn't think HIV is the cause of the epidemic of AIDS. There exist some people who still deny that smoking tobacco causes cause lung cancer. What are you going to do? What's it going to take to make you believe something you don't want to believe.

Posted by: RMHED

To get time off work?

Posted by: radek

I don't know what kind of job you got but I gotta be at mine whether back hurts or not.

Posted by: Sarcasticidealist

Absolutely; that's why I limited my comments to saying that it defies controlled attempts at nullification (by which I meant concocting laboratory experiments, in case I was unclear).

(Though psychology and economics can be quite amenable to laboratory experimentation, depending on what is to be tested.)

Posted by: radek

While we're on the topic I also think that History, even though it's usually placed with the Humanities, or at least certain aspects of it, should and can be scientific.

Posted by: Sarcasticidealist

I agree with that too; I think there's a case to be made that history is, among disciplines, the most inherently interdisciplinary (which means that it includes scientific elements and elements of the other, truer, humanities). But there comes a point where trying to draw disciplinary boundaries ceases to be either interesting or useful.

Posted by: RMHED

But can you empirically prove your back hurts, or is it just a theory?

Posted by: Milton Roe

Yes, but the problem is that there's no piece of evidence you can think of, that will cause the ID people to abandon their beliefs. Which, BTW, cannot be differentiated from the idea that everything was caused by a touch from the noodly appendage of the flying spaghetti monster (FSM).



If we find that the protein sequence of lizards are closer to human than those of chimpanzees, that will deal Darwinism a blow that it will never recover from. POW!!, evolution by natural selection will be gone, and we'll have to start over. However, such screwed up relationships of living organisms in time and space and structure won't bother Pastafarianism (see above) at all. They'll simply say that the FSM choose to design lizard DNA and proteins to be close to humans, for His own sticky, marinarified pleasure. And for reasons Man Cannot Know™. A theory that explains everything and anything by saying the "FSM did it," is not falsifiable. And produces no predictions.

That is why most of us want Pastafarianism taught in schools, if ANY type of ID is. Just because you don't like noodles, doesn't mean you have the right to be prejudiced against my belief in their supernatural powers. You see those two meatballs? They are two parts of my trinity. With the rest of it different in substance, but the same in essense.

There's really no reason in ID, why the tree-of-life as inferred from DNA and protein sequences, should match the evolution of life as we see it from the strata of the fossil record, which in turn matches the dating we get from radioisotope decay studies. That matching must happen in Darwin's view, but not if it all creation was the result of a Higher Al Dente Power. The FSM could have mixed all this stuff up totally, so that there would be no relationship between ANY of this (dating, strata, DNA, protein, morphology), and it could all be random. Except, it clearly isn't. Scientists had most of the sequence of life on Earth worked out even before we could read protein sequences and DNA sequences (which only happened in the last couple of decades for DNA). And now that we can read genes, they show the pretty much the same story as amino acids showed before them, and strata and fossils and radiodating did before THAT. There are a few surprises, but small, not big ones.

ID allows for surprises of any magnitude. So if you're going to go with it, I demand you pay respect to MY version of it. Above. With the sauce.

Posted by: Cla68

That's one reason why I think the ID theory is so ridiculously silly. If the ID proponents seriously believed in ID, then they should be taking it even farther, as in attempting to define, based on the evidence they collect, exactly what the Creator looks like, its/his/her attributes, desires, motivations, goals, location, habits, and history. Of course if they tried to do so, they would alienate every Christian sect that believes differently from whatever they came up with.

Anyway, you all are making good points about what defines science. The problem is, as far as I can find, Wikipedia has no official policy or even guideline defining what it considers to be science. The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fringe_theories and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Scientific_citation_guidelines guidelines don't get into it. So, since Wikipedia can't define what is considered science, it has to categorize any theory under science if someone says so in a reliable, verifiable source. We let the reader decide if it is one or not based on the sources.

Posted by: EricBarbour

That's not how they work---they let the successful wargamer decide, and everyone else (including the reader) can suck it.

Wikipedia is not "scientific" by even the weirdest, most open measurement criteria. Because they
have no standards, everything is up for grabs, and there is no "truth" except what a few interested
crackpots and Aspie college boys say it is.

Posted by: CharlotteWebb

If you think that's circular, you might consider that (a) theories such as Darwinian evolution adapt to their environment in a manner akin to Darwinian evolution, to the extent that science applies a certain selective pressure against ideas incompatible with new data; whereas (b) theories such as "intelligent design" are in fact intelligently designed for socio-political gain, to present data and gaps therein as evidence of conclusions already taken for granted (owing to Sunday-school sing-alongs or whatever).

Posted by: Cla68

I believe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Intelligent_design#Categories and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Theistic_science_theories threads show that, at least for immediate future, there is very little hope that the ID topic stands much of a chance of being presented in a neutral manner in Wikipedia. In the discussion, while I tried to focus on compliance with policy (and I, of course may be mistaken in my interpretation), no one else really attempts to justify their opinion with Wikipedia policy. Instead, they repeatedly state that the article should be a certain way because their way represents the truth. In other words, the sources they prefer say that ID is a blight on humanity, so the article needs to show that. Notice in http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category_talk%3ATheistic_science_theories&action=historysubmit&diff=408945703&oldid=408932851 that several editors openly express a fear of allowing an action that might show ID in a favorable light. They don't even try to hide that they are promoting an anti-ID POV.

I never really understood before the depth of contempt and hatred the anti-ID group displays towards ID in Wikipedia. After looking at a bunch of sources in Infotrac today, however, I think I understand better where it's coming from. What I saw was that the academic community loathes ID and the people who promote it with an almost rabid intensity. I read one article, in an academic journal no less, in which the scientist author at the end of the article lists the contact information for anti-ID organizations and asks readers to contribute to the anti-ID cause! I saw other articles in other academic journals about ID in which the academics writing them made no effort at all to treat the subject in a measured, neutral manner. The high level of antipathy and hostility towards the idea appears widespread and unashamed. I now understand better the odds the ID article in Wikipedia is facing to ever be treated in a neutral fashion.

Posted by: lilburne

I don't know how one would begin to be neutral about a bunch of nutjob loonies. It sort of amuses me that a number of my entomology photos get stuffed onto creationwiki. But it did cause me some concern when I had a couple of midwest educators contacted me about using a photo for a book on the 'Evidence for evolotion" fortunately my fears were alaid:



I particularly like the 'bubble of ignorance' quote at the end.

Posted by: Cla68

ID proponents do strike me as nutjobs if they truly believe they can counter education about evolution with a theory as non-sensical as ID is. Anyway, I thought I would point out that today in the ID topic, all three behaviors described in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Activist essay were on display:

1. Removal of information- Hrafn http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Intelligent_design&action=historysubmit&diff=408927081&oldid=408926607 the category before any discussion on its viability had even begun.

2. BLP- Guettarda tries to sneakily http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_Tour&action=historysubmit&diff=408809032&oldid=408798560 of the infamous ID petition as a creationist, even though the guy says that he isn't one. Guettarda then http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_Tour&action=historysubmit&diff=408811088&oldid=408810739 to try to keep it there.

3. Incivility- Guettarda belittles or insults me on article talk pages not http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AJames_Tour&action=historysubmit&diff=408897488&oldid=408879204, or http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AIntelligent_design&action=historysubmit&diff=408540847&oldid=408540731, but http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AIntelligent_design&action=historysubmit&diff=408925341&oldid=408924032. Another editor, Dominus Vobisdu, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category_talk%3ATheistic_science_theories&action=historysubmit&diff=408952831&oldid=408952461 in a different talk page discussion. I think that's a first for me to be threatened with a block for engaging in a talk page discussion. I've never come across that editor before. How did he have so much information about my past?

Anyone else who tries to NPOV Intelligent Design will probably face similar treatment. This is as bad as I've ever seen it with that article. My addition of the category wasn't necessarily correct, but the treatment I received as detailed above was really unnecessarily hostile.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

I think that part of the problem is that a fair and honest representation of "intelligent design theory" would never be accepted by the proponents of intelligent design theory as fair and honest. That is quite simply because intelligent design theory has been advanced for entirely dishonest purposes: it is, at its core, a bald-faced attempt to pass off religious belief as if it were science, for the explicit purpose of forcing a religious belief into a nonreligious context under the cloak of scientific validity. (Many of its proponents do not themselves admit, and may even be cognitively unaware, that this is its purpose.) The problem is that you just cannot get a supporter of intelligent design to set aside their fervent conviction that "God said it, therefore it is true" is a logically correct inference.

The problem is that demonstrating this takes more than a paragraph; it takes an extended examination of both the claims made by intelligent design proponents, and the history and motivations of the major proponents of the theory. And most people don't have either the patience to sit still for that presentation, or even the intellect to fully understand it.

Intelligent design theory is embedded in a huge multilayered conflict in broader culture. To expect Wikipedia, with its stark lack of methodology for the mediation of conflict in any sort of reasonable way, to reach a reasonable conclusion of that conflict is completely unreasonable. No, this one won't end until all the people supporting ID die off, plain and simple.

The fact that intelligent design cannot carry the opinion of the Christian Science Monitor's editorial board (see yesterday's http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2011/0119/Creationists-have-gotten-clever-but-there-s-still-no-debate-over-evolution) should be telling enough. Simply put, intelligent design theory isn't a scientific theory at all; it is, instead, a political strategy, nothing more.

Posted by: lilburne

ID: A religious hoax, masquerading as science, that is swallowed hook line and sinker by the incredulous. Often used in an attempt to subvert the education of the young. See Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District

Then permanently protect the page.

Job done.

Posted by: lonza leggiera

Especially regarding the evolution—sorry— http://ncse.com/creationism/legal/cdesign-proponentsists of what eventually became the textbook Of Pandas and People.

Posted by: Sxeptomaniac

"Unnecessarily hostile" describes the group well. I had hoped they had broken up, or at least moved on, when I was able to interact on the Intelligent Design page regarding reworking the lead without the mob descending, but I guess not.

Guettarda has been fairly dickish in the past, but he seems to have gotten significantly worse lately. There was a time when he usually appeared to be one of the more reasonable members of the group, but now he's the picador, doing his best to goad opponents into doing something stupid.

The interesting part is his bizarre recollections, in which his actions are projected onto the opponent. He lied about me, but, in his memory, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:James_Tour&diff=408844710&oldid=408844364. He was the one who jumped straight in to revert a contentious addition into a BLP, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Guettarda&diff=prev&oldid=408899562.



I don't see how that would be telling. I'd be shocked if they had any sympathy for ID. For one, the Christian Science denomination is not aligned with evangelical/fundamentalist Christianity, from which the vast majority of support for ID is drawn. For another, the Christian Science Monitor is a very solid news organization, in my experience. While they report on religion frequently, I have found them to be surprisingly fair and neutral, even when compared to most other news organizations.

Posted by: Doc glasgow

The Creation Science article contains, not to put a fine point on it, some laughable statements:

ORLY?

If some researcher did (for the sake of argument) discover some evidence that seemed to count against evolution, and tried to publish it in a peer-reviewed journal, what would actually happen?

I mean, he'd be ostracised as cook, have every aspect of his research called into question, have journalists dredging through his past to "prove" he was motivated by religion, and then, even if his findings couldn't be dismissed they'd be put aside as an anomaly to be explained later, a freak result, or evolutionary theory would be tweaked by some complexities to explain the new data.

The notion that evolutionists are open minded here, and all they require is some proof for them to rethink is absurd. The notion that theory evolution is open to falsification is also absurd.

FWIW, I do not believe the existence of God can be "proved," because proof is always subjective - and, with enough will, another explanation can always be found. But the same is true of any number of deeply held beliefs - this is not a phenomenon restricted to religion. The problem with most scientists is they have studied too little epistemology - and therefore ignore their own subjectivity.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Yes, no, maybe. It's not that the data and theory would be suppressed, although it might be ridiculed for a while. However, if new data came out to support it, it would eventually become part of the consensus. Read the WP article on Hopeful Monster which tells one such story in biology in more detail than I have time for, here. In general, atheists are happy with "gradualism", whereas any kind of sudden or "saltatory" change tends to make creationists happy, since it's harder to explain as a slowly-working natural process. If there's a sudden change, now you have one more thing to "explain" and that makes natural laws work extra hard. And science is "lazy," as it prefers Ockham. However, the universe is full of sudden changes as parts of natural processes, just from chaos. Consider avalanches and earthquakes and supernovae. Non-linear physics does admit sudden events happening (seemingly) "spontaneously" from deterministic chaos. As also does linear but non-deterministic quantum mechanics.

Another obvious example are a number of biologists who argued that the human eye is an example of a system of irreproducable completity, thereby making very many creationists happy. However, a careful examination has since shown eyes of varying complexity, all partly functional, from the color patch of single-celled euglena, right up to the glorious peepers of you and me. So nice a progression can be seen, that ID people have notably stopped mentioning the eye at all (they used it as a counter evolutionary example all the time, 30 years ago). Much the same thing is true of biological wings, which have many uses other than propulsion. So none of those need saltation. The creationists are now down to arguing at the level of the bacterial flagellum-- see how far they've retreated. But a sort of saltation in the arrival of life on Earth I suspect will end up being necessary; all it means is that life (as single bacterial cells) evolved someplace else in the universe, where it had more time and conditions to do things more gradually than on Earth. There's nothing unscientific about panspermia as an explanation for the rapid apearance of life on Earth (versus local organic evolution to make non-life into life). However, the debate still rages, because we have no good evidence either way. Organic evolution and theories about how life itself arose, are in a very sorry state indeed compared with ideas about how to get from bacteria to people without ID.

If you want a third example, consider the Big Bang. Read the WP article, which is pretty good. Lemaître, a Catholic priest who argued for a "primeval atom" exploding into the universe in 1927, was ridiculed as promoting religion by the back door, even though his general relativity math was perfectly consistant with Einstein and Friedmann's (Einstein said to Lemaître that his physics was good, but his insight abominable). Lemaître's theory preferred an expanding universe, which was one of Friedmann's theoretical alternatives, but not one supported by any data in 1927. Both Einstein and Friedmann, as pinko secular Jewish types who rejected any sort of personal God, preferred their universe to be comfortably uniformitarian and deterministic; they didn't like big jumps or indeterminism (for that matter, Einstein didn't like quantum mechanics, either!). And there's nothing quite as saltational and indeterministic, as a Big Bang, where known laws of physics all break down.

Alas for the uniformitarians, Hubble found the universe was expanding in 1929, forcing Einstein to call himself stupid for not keeping his mind open. Lemaître, the Catholic priest, had called the shot, and nailed it.

From 1929 to 1962 scientists argued about the Big Bang, which looked suspiciously like a Creation Event out of somebody's mythology. But in the early 60's the microwave background was discovered, and by that time it had been realized that nothing but a Big Bang could explain the primordial concentrations of hydrogen, helium, and deuterium. So the scientists gave up and accepted the religious-looking theory. According to you, this sociological revolution in science toward a theoretical alternative proposed by a priest (!), and looking like Genesis (!) should never have happened. Except it did.

Posted by: Lar

That's the wrong question.

He doesn't. I don't.

But some people seem to, and if there are enough of them that do, under WP's wacky rules, it should be reported as such in the article (and duly categorized).

Posted by: lilburne

I say fuck 'em. http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2002.3.18.201633.381.html . There are plenty of encyclopaedias of nonsense and fallacies they can hang out at.

Posted by: Milton Roe

As both Thomas Jefferson and Josh Billings said, the things that really hurt you aren't the things you don't know, so much as the things you know, that just aren't so.

WP, as a summation of "knowledge," makes no progress in this area. It summarizes the things people think they "know" that just aren't so (like acupuncture and "energy medicine") with the same zeal as it summarizes the most empirically tested and toughest scientific knowledge, like the conservation of momentum and energy, or the constancy of the speed of light.

I'm one of those people who think that WP neither hurts nor helps the cause of education, but is rather neutral, like television or the internet itself. Wikipedia is sort of like a pre-accumulator of trash, something I've likened to WALL*E, whose job it is to sort out a planet-load of crap (trash, junk, and treasure) into neat piles, but has no way of telling the diamonds and the Van Goghs, from the empty pop cans and egg shells. However, the sorting process is helpful. One MORE filter (the one Sanger first proposed) will convert the sorted mess into something amazing. Those of us who use our brains and other knowledge to do that NOW, find WP very useful. The problem is that we weren't trained in epistemology by reading Wikipedia. The next generation might not have that advantage. That's what worries Jon.

Every scientist, as part of their Ph.D. or (at least) post-doc training, has a moment when they stop being an epistemological virgin, and have one or more magical moments in which they realize that for one small item, ALL the experts are wrong. They've missed something, and their underwear is showing. And this can be demonstrated in a way that makes them all blush. At that moment the student becomes part of the club of masters.

WP isn't part of that experience. It's explicitly designed not to be. And if WP is all there is, where will future generations go to avoid remaining "40 year-old virgins" when it comes to knowledge?

Posted by: lilburne

As with proponents of ID: they poison the minds of the young.

Posted by: Cla68

Yes, but Wikipedia's not supposed to be a forum for doing that. In my opinion, the ID article should first present the theory as its proponents present it, then go into an extended discussion on its merits and problems, as Kelly Martin and few others here have eloquently elucidated. The current IDCab watching that article won't let that happen, IMO, because they're apparently afraid that if there is any section in the article that presents ID in any kind of favorable light, some reader might, just might be influenced to believe that there is something to the ID theory. They can't allow that to happen.

They don't seem to understand that their approach to the article is counterproductive for their agenda. By ensuring that the article remains as an obvious attack on ID, it provokes people into wanting to know why Wikipedia hates ID so much. Also, people will continually try to NPOV the article in ways the IDCab don't approve of, so they'll be forced to constantly watch the article 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If the article was written more fairly, then it wouldn't get messed with as much. As Kelly says, hardcore ID proponents would probably still have a problem with it, but I assume they're fewer in number than the general reader who happens on the article and realizes that, as it is currently written, it is a thinly disguised hit piece.

Posted by: lilburne

Then someone should work on that. You don't discourage flies by smearing honey around the place.

[quote name='Cla68' date='Thu 20th January 2011, 10:19pm' post='266253']
In my opinion, the ID article should first present the theory as its proponents present it, then go into an extended discussion on its merits and problems, as Kelly Martin and few others here have eloquently elucidated.
[quote]

I though Kelly Martin said that once they get started you need a book's worth of facts to unravel the crap. Its like engaging with a conversation with the Jehovah Witness lot, you'll just http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/backroom/851717/posts of your time.

Let the IDers use ID to explain this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hedgerowmobile/511914872/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hedgerowmobile/511914872/ by http://www.flickr.com/people/hedgerowmobile/

Posted by: Kelly Martin

The ID/anti-ID fight is one between committed ideologues. Both parties are equally guilty; both sides want their religious beliefs (theistic Christianity on one side, and strict atheism on the other) imposed on others by force. I have no more love for strict atheists than I do for any other sort of fundamentalist evangelical. The thing is, neither side is going to compromise, not even to the point of allowing a fair presentation of the claims made by intelligent design or the very legitimate arguments as to why they fail to comprise a scientific theory (which is a different beast than a "theory about science", which is one of the equivocations that ID proponents are fond of using).

The sad thing is that the argument for intelligent design is so intellectually and rationally bankrupt that there is no need to get all mean and nasty about it; it is certainly enough to dispassionately set forth the case against and let people make up their own minds. Everything I've seen is that the only people who will believe this stuff are those who are already predisposed, by religious belief, to accept it uncritically.

The problem is that "rationalists" (as they sometimes call themselves) tend to be unable to suppress the urge to be snarky about their own belief in their superiority over all those "stupid people" who have not seen the light of reason. And since they have both David Gerard and Jimmy Wales on their side (more or less), they have no reason to restrain themselves on Wikipedia.

Posted by: Doc glasgow

Looks to me like a lot of it is a fight between people who believe in NPOV on one hand and people who don't understand the concept on the other. Either of groups may or may not have religious convictions or be atheists, but that's largely irrelevant. Even a fair-minded atheist hasn't got a look in.

Posted by: Milton Roe

How can you describe ID when it's not close to being a single POV? Those guys know they want a God-of-the-gaps, but they can't decide which gaps need a god.

Once upon a time, god was the Prime Mover, and was necessary to make the planets go around the Sun. Now, it's admitted that they can do that without Him. Then, we needed God to form babies in the womb. Now that's starting to look pretty mechanical. Then anti-evolution proponents gave up on microevolution and admitted that you didn't need God to make teacup pomeranians or Great Danes from wolves, or even different subspecies on different islands. Now that can be automatic. Less and less for God to do....

So, what jobs are left? Do we need god to make humans from other types of apes? How about splitting other apes from each other? Or just to make primates from other mammals? Or make mammals from reptiles?

The reason Father Georges Lemaître won on the Big Bang question, is that he put his theoretical cards on the table and "placed his bet" on a prediction. The ID folks, by contrast, are "not even wrong." They are like nailing jello to a table. When Hubble found the universe expanding, Einstein (father of modern physical cosmology) said "I have made the biggest blunder of my life." (he had inserted a fudge factor into an equation just to make the universe static, because he thought it should be). Einstein saw that had he trusted his own math, he'd had the chance to make one more astounding prediction, like Dirac and the positron. But in both cases, the inventors didn't trust their own mathematical inventions.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

That's utter nonsense. None of the combatants in that fight is fighting for NPOV, which is a concept that's even more incoherent than intelligent design. They're all fighting for their preferred religious belief, or else proxying for someone else's preferred religious belief. All of them are going to claim that they're fighting for the "neutral point of view", of course, because the game requires it.

The "neutral point of view" is that intelligent design is a system of religious belief that has been expressed in a manner so as to appear to naive individuals to be a set of scientific claims, created as a political gambit to displace the teaching of evolution in public schools in the United States. However, neither side of the conflict is willing to leave it at that; the anti-ID people feel the need to heap scorn and condemnation on everything anywhere near intelligent design, and the pro-ID people are obviously unwilling to admit to the status of intelligent design as political theatrics. The true shame is that the difference between the neutral point of view and the point of view espoused by the anti-ID crowd is mainly one of tone.

Posted by: taiwopanfob

God is the sysadmin for the Great Big Computer In The Sky. Science is us trying to steal the source code from that motherfucker, fix the bugs, and get our sorry posteriors off this planet. Can anyone really have lived until they have B.A.S.E. jumped the Verona Rupes on Miranda?



Well, in some ways he was a number of decades ahead of the game: the cosmological constant has since re-appeared in modern cosmologies as one of several free parameters.

Posted by: Milton Roe

B.A.S.E. jumping in environments with no atmospheres? Sounds exciting... for a short time. Then SPLAT. Maybe you're rather bungee jump that one.

Bleh, it doesn't count unless you have data to explain. He should have noted that it was a constant of integration, set it to zero, noted that that made the universe expand, predicted THAT, and then said it could be resurrected again, in case the rate of expansion was not constant....

Posted by: Sxeptomaniac

And that's it. The anti-ID group likes to make dire predictions about the quacks taking over WP if they aren't there to be its saviors, but really it's all about their own egos.

Even the most glowing WP article would be unlikely to convert anyone to believe in ID. They pick that belief up in their homes and churches, not the internet.

Posted by: EricBarbour

That's exactly where Wikipedia falls down as a "reference". The admins support snarky "science"
POV pushers, who battle pointless and unending wars with equally-snarky Christian POV pushers.

And nobody shows the slightest concern for the average Joes and Janes who are reading ID articles
on WP and trying to make sense of them. If WP's "elite" (what a funny thing to call those mutants)
really wanted to stand up for the scientific view, they'd go out and debate the ID people--in person,
in homes and churches (and other public places). But no, they are (all) cowards and backstabbers.

It's easier, safer and more fun to snipe at the "enemy" on an "encyclopedia-MMORPG-thing".

Posted by: Doc glasgow

No, that certainly not the neutral point of view. It may well be that that's THE TRUTH, it may well be that that's the VAST MAJORITY POINT OF VIEW or even (dare I say it) the SCIENTIFIC (whatever that means) POINT OF VIEW. I'm not seeking to refute any of that.

However, your statement is ultimately an assessment, a judgement, a commentary, an editorial.

A neutral article would seek not to assess, but only to report the assessments of others (giving due weight to their prominence). The opening paragraph, which I grant would be incredibly hard to write, needs to be extremely minimalist, and seek to find a description both sides could accept (yes, that's the lowest common denominator).

I'd expect it to be:

"Intelligent design is a hypothesis/argument that scientific data is best explained by postulating a designer.... The term was first coined by xx in 19xx, but it has earlier antecedent in the [[argument from design]] dating back to Thomas Aquinas. Proponents typically describe it as [quote from leading ID proponent], but critics typically dismiss it as [quote from leading anti-ID authority].

*Paragraph expanding on how ID self-describes
*Paragraph expanding on critique
*History of the movement
*Account of support, number and prominence of advocates
*Account of opposition, evidence that there is a "scientific consensus"
*Account of variations in the ID argument (is it monolithic?)
*Account of variations in the criticism (are there people who have said 'NO, but')
*Narration of flashpoints, legal cases and controversies

Not saying it is easy, but the essence of neutrality is attempting to find wording that (sane people on) the other side could grudgingly accept

Posted by: lilburne

That is the problem. With no editorial decision making the whole thing is open to continued sniping. You will never get rid of it, there will always be someone wanting to battle.



Draw the line, and close it off.

Intelligent Design: Anything but - total CRAP - move along nothing to see here.

There fixed it.

Posted by: lilburne

Back in the mid 80s I was the duty chemist in a chemical factory on the night shift. I had a young guy as an assistant which they used to call "Basher" as he could be found testifying in the shopping mall at the weekend and doing the same in the pubs in the evening. Nice enough kid and we sort of got on OK - until this one night when there was little to do, and he was bored and wanted something to read. Without thinking I gave him the latest issue of the "http://www.newint.org/index.html" to read, it was sponsored by Oxfam, Save The Children, and Christian Aid, amongst others.

Anyway he took one look at it, put it down, walk out of the lab and I never saw him for the rest of the shift, also he didn't speak to me for a month. The reason was that particular issue had articles on dinosaurs and fossils.

Posted by: Doc glasgow

A long time ago a picked up a book on Creation Science - it sat unread on a bookcase among thousands of others. When studying in a liberal university, a friend was doing an essay on a related topic, and I offered to lend her the book for her interest. When I brought it in for her, I was seen with it in the common room. What happened next astounded me: liberal, broad-minded people, responded with scorn and anger to the very idea anyone would even read the book. It was book-burning anger.

I am NOT (and never have been) a proponent of Creation Science, but it struck me that had I entered that same liberal common room with a copy of Mein Kampf people would have given me the benefit of the doubt, and perhaps even applauded a broad reading scope of even objectionable books.

Intelligent liberals tolerate horoscopes, Scientology, new-age mantras, feng shui, and any other amount of unscientific mumbo-jumbo. Why is it that ID so causes their blood to boil? If they are so confident of the strength of the intellectual argument against it, why are they so bloody defensive? (Even here in the UK, where there is no history of interference with education.)

Kelly is correct, if the anti-ID position is so strong, then gaming the article should be utterly unnecessary.

Posted by: lilburne

There is an underbelly of it. Going back to the early 80s a friend of mine had become involved with some fundamentalist Christian sect when we was sent down for drugs. After his release he moved to a Cornwall where there was group of them. On one visit to see him they'd gathered together all of the kids from about 3 or 4 families to show them some Creation Science films they'd got from America. Some of the biggest load of tosh I've ever had the misfortune to see. I felt really sorry that the kids were being subjected to it. However, it was that experience which made me realize what the problem had been with the NI magazine.

As you may have gathered I have no sympathy for those that they prey on weak.

As for horoscopes, feng shui, crystals, and other new-age crap, they are rarely as debilitating as the GOD MADE US crapology, from fundamentalist Christians, Moslems, Jews, apologies to any of the other fuckwits that I may have missed out. I may revise that when the astrologers start demanding equal time in school along side Astronomy.



People simply like to mock those that are thought to be inferior. It is part of the human experience. If you don't want then kick the crap out, or settle on a fixed version of it. There is no valid reason for it being continually tinkered with by either side.

Posted by: Cyclopia

I am a biologist, and you are totally wrong.

Quantum theory was much more revolutionary and puzzling than a confutation of evolution would be. I mean, accepting that external reality depends from the observer is one of the most obscene heresies you could tell to any pre-quantum physicist. Yet it fitted the data magnificently, so it was accepted.

If an alternative theory consistedly fitted unequivocal data that evolution can't fit, plus fitting all already existing data, it would for sure meet some strong resistance at first (I don't deny cultural inertia) but it would be soon eventually accepted and the guy who came up with the alternative theory would really, truly be first in line for a Nobel prize. Everyone of us knows that.

The point is that yes, one freak result is just one freak result. But if you have a predictive theory this means that you can design experiments and/or observation that will lead to more and more "freak results" until you simply cannot ignore them.

Posted by: Cyclopia

Well, I personally do not tolerate horoscopes, Scientology, and almost all unscientific mumbo-jumbo. But you have a good point.

The answer -at least for myself- is that while it is easy to show that horoscopes and Scientology are nonsensical BS, Creationism and ID instead dangerously disguise as science. And disproving their arguments, while easy for the scientifically educated person, is not so easy for an educated person but with a weak scientific background. They can look convincing. Often to disprove many of their apparently reasonable arguments you have to resort to very long explanation and introduce concepts which are not immediately trivial -and many people will prefer of course to listen to the easier,clearer (but deeply wrong) version.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

There are portions of the evolutionary model that have been falsified in recent years, especially as we've learned more about intervivos gene transfer, gene suppression, and all sorts of other things that complicate the relatively simplistic model of inheritance that has been taught to high school students for the past several decades. As a result, there has been a significant overhaul of the details of the mechanisms by which evolution progresses. However, the fundamental premise remains intact.

Part of the problem is that there is so much evidence in support of evolution, and the processes by which evolution occurs are so complex and, in many cases, not fully understood, that it would take truly remarkable evidence indeed to falsify all of it in one fell swoop. A single piece of evidence that cannot be readily cohered to the existing framework indicates that the framework is incomplete or inaccurate in some part, but isn't by itself enough invalidate the entire evolutionary principle.

All this means that evolution is unlikely to be falsified, not that it can't be. Biologists are constantly finding new, and sometimes surprising, results, and the full model is constantly under revision to account for those results. Which is exactly as it should be.

Posted by: Doc glasgow

Whilst I didn't agree with all of it, I can heartily recommend Francis Wheen's angry and inciteful book "http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/how-mumbo-jumbo-conquered-the-world-by-francis-wheen-570206.html".



"You have a choice: either read it, or pre-emptively shred your brain in anticipation of the coming darkness. "

Posted by: Jagärdu

The answer is much simpler, and entirely political (at least in the United States). I'm a liberal myself, but I detest all the culture wars nonsense that gets pandered about by both liberal and conservative politicians and talking heads to rile up their constituents/consumers. A couple of years ago I recall arguing with a friend who was convinced that George Bush's "No Child Left Behind" forced schools to teach ID in order to get funding. Say what? The history of this "debate" in the United States is a political history. The only reason it appears in the conscious of the 90% of the population who aren't fanatical nutjubs on either side, is strictly politics. ID is utter nonesense, but it is also just as harmless as the tooth fairy. But liberals are made to fear conservatives and their ideas (and vice versa), especially the ideas that are less important when push comes to shove, because that's how you play the political game here.

Posted by: Cyclopia

I am European and I've never crossed the Atlantic Ocean, so I can't comment in full on the political issue (even if it's leaking in Europe from the US).

However I don't know if ID (or the tooth fairy) are harmless if high-ranking politicians believe in it. Wouldn't it have an effect on education and science funding? Would you want your school to teach the tooth fairy?

Posted by: CharlotteWebb

Thanks due to evolution, even the tooth fairy won't stay harmless forever.

Posted by: Cyclopia

Looks like a great book. I still have to read Sokal's one in my bookshelf.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

No, it's not. Teaching nonsense to children as if it were not nonsense is harmful, to them and to society, because it tends to result in people who do not know how to think. In a society in which the population is expected to participate in its own governance, it is essential that people are trained to think, at least to some degree. Of course, this itself exposes me as a liberal; conservatives, in general, prefer to have someone else do their thinking for them and tell them what it is they are to believe.

This is one of the main objections commonly expressed at WR about Wikipedia in general, in fact: that Wikipedia is contributing to a dumbing down of society in general.

Posted by: Lar

I call BS. As with the CC fiasco, some participants aren't arguing for a particular POV. At least if you consider me a "participant", anyway.

I just want WP's policies followed. If that's even possible, which I increasingly question.

Posted by: Jagärdu

I'd love my school to teach the creation myth in Genesis, as a story. Teaching "about" ID as a socio-political movement is also recommended, later in schooling when contemporary US History is taught. I'm not sure that anything related to the ID beliefs of politicians is directly effecting science funding. That sounds like the kind of myth that scares up the liberal masses if you ask me. My opinion is that the best thing for someone who does not want ID taught in schools to do is to ignore the issue into insignificance. By not ignoring it we etch it into the embattled cultural identities that politicians pray upon.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

It's my experience that the "referee" types that foolishly wade into these combat zones thinking that they can, through some sort of magic power, convince determined ideologues to put aside their fervently-held beliefs and instead follow Wikipedia's inchoate and antinomic policies are almost always doomed to failure, in part because Wikipedia's policies are inchoate and antinomic, and in part because what they're trying to do amounts to converting someone from one religion (whatever fervent belief they have) to another (Wikipedianism).

I don't doubt that there's some small number of insane idiots, such as yourself, Lar, who are wading into the fray preaching the holy glories of the Way of Jimbo. I just don't think that your god's power is strong enough to carry the day.

Posted by: Sxeptomaniac

This is true. Each end of the political spectrum here fear each other, and have various pundits perfectly happy to stoke that fear further. In the case of ID, the anti-ID zealots often combine that fear with condescension and hate, while thinking of themselves as the elite saviors of science.

The thing many anti-ID people don't understand is that their hate feeds ID proponents as much as anything. It gives them the opportunity to play martyr. A dispassionate argument is far more likely to be effective, if anything could be. The displays of loathing simply allow the ID supporter to remake themselves into a victim.

Posted by: lilburne

Oh come on they'll play the victim until such time that they can have the Flintstones categorized as a documentary of historic fact.

Unless you can arrange for the first part of the ID article to categorically state "The following beliefs are held by Loony Tunes", then it shouldn't be on the damn site.

Some editorial POV is a GOOD THING.

Posted by: Jagärdu

Bingo. That's why I don't get all worked into a frenzy over this all the time like some people do. ID is not a "scientific theory", and the category would never stick on Wikipedia and it hasn't. End of story. No big deal.

Posted by: Doc glasgow

Absolutely - as long as it is mine.

Can I also redirect:
*[[Scientology]] to [[Scam]]
*[[United States of America]] to [[Global Pollution]]
and
*[[WTO]] to [[Third World exploitation]]?

Posted by: Lar

Ya, I'm an idiot, and ya, my efforts won't carry the day. But I've refuted your assertion that I'm pushing one side or the other, I think. Cold comfort, but there you are.

Posted by: Sxeptomaniac

I'm more annoyed at the behavior in that topic than the actual content. I have some opinions regarding the category, but if it stays or goes, it's ultimately not that big of a deal. The exception is when they start mucking around with Biographies in really wrong ways, as they have with Rosalind Picard and James Tour in the past.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Yes. I don't think children who believe in ID will actually be harmed unless they go into biology (or some health-care field) and try to do research. At that point, you find out what happens if a belief in the tooth fairy also entails the idea that god causes cavities so it does matter if you personally brush your teeth.

The problem with ID in biology is that it turns off all question-asking activity, because the answer is always "God did it." Which generally means the old-white-guy-in-the-sky, the gaseous vertebrate who has a penis but no navel, did it. In the case of Pastafarianism, "the Flying Spaghetti Monster did it". The Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) also has no navel, but does have two great big meaty balls . Pastafarians believe that Moses was able to view the rear parts of the meatballs, after FSM emerged from the flaming bush, where he had been residing on "simmer."

So anyway, in biology, if FSM designed it that way, what's the point of trying to understand cause-and-effect?

This is especially true of behavior. When a male lion moves into a new pride, and drives the dominant male out, his next step is to kill all the cubs. Why? Because the FSM made lions that way, why; end of inquiry. When a human female with children enters into a second marriage, the new adoptive father is several times more likely to physically abuse the children from the first marriage, than non-adoptive fathers are. Is this related to lion behavior, or is this due to The Devil and some kind of Sin? Is human behavior a matter of biology at all? Or is it entirely driven by a war between God and Satan (and sometimes, a large and angry mass of levitating pasta).

We got the FSM out of astrophysics at the time of Galileo and Newton, and astrophysics is poorer for it, because now students have to learn all kinds of difficult math, instead of much more interesting theological speculation, such as how seraphim manage to keep FSM aloft as he moves the crystal spheres of the planets, without getting all smeared with tomato sauce. Biology is the last holdout, now, as ID people struggle to tell a story that won't show humans as being some kind of extra-complicated really smart animal. (As though animals of other kinds were not something admirable and amazing).

Are we going to let this happen? Or am I going to have to march down to the nearest K-12 school with a can of Chef Boyardee as a teaching aid?

Posted by: lilburne

Go for it.

You cannot crowd source this type of content, because it will always be fought over. The IDers will always want it slanted to validate, if only in part, ID. The contras will always want to ensure that the derision is absolute.

Remove the most egregious derision, settle on a version and lock it. Its not as if the facts on the issue ain't going to be changing any time soon. It is done and dusted, finished, and requires no more polishing, or tarnishing. Learn to let go.

Posted by: CharlotteWebb

Posted by: Milton Roe

You know, metaphorically that's damn near what happened with the Cretaceous extinction event. The belt of an asteroid.

Any animal that couldn't get underground or underwater, didn't make it, and didn't leave any ancestors. All the mammals of the time were rat-sized, and the big ones evolved later. The rest of the critters that made it were a motely crew of bees, frogs, crocodiles, and the like. The burrowing dinosaurs were small, and later grew feathers (yes, birds). Anything so big as to be caught in the open on land, was toast.

Posted by: lilburne

+10 Very cute.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bar-art/414998399/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bar-art/414998399/ by http://www.flickr.com/people/bar-art/, on Flickr

Posted by: CharlotteWebb

Posted by: Milton Roe

Here's one from Loma Linda University Medical Center. Note that Operating Room Jesus does not have to worry about sterility issues. Else that surgeon would surely be rapping "Doctor J's" knuckles with that retractor.

Posted by: Sxeptomaniac

Someone else may correct me, but some of the items I've read (and saw in a museum exhibit) lately state that scientists have found quite a bit of evidence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_dinosaur (or early forms of them in some cases) by that point. The dominant view now seems to be that velociraptors, and related species farther back, were feathered, from what I've been seeing.

Posted by: SB_Johnny

Presumably Jesus Cooties are a good thing to have.

Posted by: Cla68

That is part of the problem with the IDCab. They seem to believe that most of Wikipedia's readers are idiots and wouldn't be able to decide for themselves that ID is silly unless the article assuredly tells them that it is. If I say on the ID talk page, "Present the article without taking a side and let the reader decide on their own which is true" and I've said this many times on many different articles that were being attacked by POV-pushers, the answer is always silence or a personal attack.

Posted by: lilburne

Validation! People will use any positive or negative comment on a website to validate their POV. If it has the imprimatur of wikipedia so much the better. You know and I know that most people spend less then 10 seconds on a web page. Few are going to read a detailed and subtle argument, even less are going to follow the references.

Posted by: Cla68

So, you're scared that someone might accidentally become a believer in ID unless you prevent them from seeing any kind of neutral or positive presentation on it?

Posted by: lilburne

I have no doubt that the person will already be a believer.

It does seems odd though to disabuse some one of an error by first presenting that error in a positive light.

Posted by: taiwopanfob

It is simply not possible to describe ID in a positive light, as (noted above) ID is manifestly idiotic at the source. We should ask that the anti-ID editors tone down their vitriol and internecine conflict: if they display more than a nanosecond of patience, they will get exactly what they want in the end.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

It would be nice if we could, in fact, assume that Wikipedia readers are not idiots. I would like to believe that the people who go to Wikipedia are the sort who want to learn something, enough that they'll read closely and completely and think about what they read. Unfortunately, I think that actually holding that belief would be profoundly delusional. Certainly it's not true of far too many of Wikipedia's editors, and in general I think most of the people looking at Wikipedia at any given time are simply trying to get enough information to answer their homework assignment, or to win a bar bet; they're not going to be doing a complex critical analysis of everything they read. The simple fact is that most people are idiots, or at least willing to act as if they're one unless specifically prodded not to. Wikipedia's readers are generally credulous; they uncritically assume that what they read on Wikipedia is true. If they didn't, they wouldn't be reading Wikipedia at all.

Posted by: Cyclopia

The point is that if you don't say that ID has no scientific value and it is rebuked by overwhelming scientific consensus, you are withholding crucial information from any description of ID.

And it's not matter of being an idiot. Lots of arguments of ID proposers (or creationists) can make apparent sense if you don't have a proper scientific education (e.g. the famous canard that the second principle of thermodynamics is at odds with evolution).

Unless of course your interpretation of NPOV is the following:
http://www.joeydevilla.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/teach_the_controversy_t-shirt_designs.jpg

Posted by: Milton Roe

Wikipedia has pages on John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories and Moon landing conspiracy theories. Perhaps what we really need is to call it Intelligent Design conspiracy theories. Elohim (the gods) really should be plural in genesis, and Elohim really does say "let us make man in our image." What is this "us" and "our" stuff? Somebody's talking to somebody else. Conspiracy, no? And all the Omphalos hypothesis stuff involves essentially a conspiracy to create stuff so it appears to be older than it is. That fits.

Posted by: lonza leggiera

Perhaps His Divinely Omnisapient Majesty was an early proponent of the royal "we"?

But if you want WP's policies followed, then surely you should be "arguing for a particular POV"—namely, one that's supposedly "neutral" according to what you have so aptly categorised as its "wacky rules". Presumably what you really meant here was the standard mantra of nearly all participants in a POV dispute—namely, that your own POV is neutral, and that of everyone who disagrees with you with isn't.

The problem with this is that in the area of pseudoscience, Wikipedia's rules on neutral point of view are not merely "wacky", or incoherent, as Kelly says, but blatantly self-contradictory. Presumably, you, Cla68 and Doc Glasgow are relying for your advocacy of a bland he-says-she-says style of exposition on the first bullet point in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NPOV#Explanation_of_the_neutral_point_of_view of what is supposed to be a neutral point of view:
Fair enough—I would prefer it myself if Wikipedia's article on the Intelligent Design scam were to be constructed somewhat along those lines.

But the so-called ID Cabal can just as easily support a claim to be advocating a "neutral" POV by pointing to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:PSCI dealing with pseudoscience:

Such inconsistency in the "rules" is a perfect recipe for generating the sort of acrimony that bedevils the talk pages of any WP topic on which a sizable population of cranks holds strong points of view.

Posted by: taiwopanfob

You are misrepresenting Cla68's position. The lot of you are.



See? Yer a fucking idiot who just wants to pick stupid fights on Wikipedia. NONE of the ID arguments make any sense at all. Zero. Nada. Not a single one. Further, it takes almost nothing to refute them. Milton Roe's commentary here is an example, and it's clear he isn't even trying. Indeed, as far as I know, not one experiment has had to be conducted, not one tiny bit of research, not an iota of analysis is required to totally demolish ID. It's all utterly transparent bullshit, as every last fucking non-Discovery Institute source on the matter unambiguously states.

Why? See Kelly Martin's remarks for the answer.



You are absolutely blinded by your own incompetence. ID is not the problem. Idiots who accept anything at Wikipedia are not the problem . It is your intellectually dishonest engagements with Cla68 that are the problem -- they put the anti-ID position in a poor light.

Why can't you and your other ninnies just fuck off Wikipedia, Wikipedia Review and most any other places? Your attitude, fearmongering, and related does more harm than good to the otherwise honorable anti-ID cause.

Seriously: Save The World By Fucking Off. Those who know ID is a stinking shithole of pseudoscience are begging you!

Posted by: Cla68

I think it was Doc Glasgow who said in relation to the attempts by some editors to add negative information to the beginning of the Messianic Judaism article that an article about any religion, belief system, or philosophy should first describe it the way its followers believe it, without any pejorative opinions. Then, any criticism or contrary opinions can be given in the article, followed by any rebuttals to that criticism. I agree with this approach as it gives the topic a fair presentation, but without omitting anything. The article's lede should be structured the same way.

My impression, however, is that the anti-ID editors are afraid that someone would only read the positive presentation of the ID theory and not read the criticism section. They really shouldn't worry about it. I know it's anecdotal evidence, but most people I know who use Wikipedia to help them with school or to look up something tell me that they only read the article's intro, then skip down to the references section. As long as the intro summarizes the main points of the article, readers should be getting a fair presentation of the article's content.

Posted by: Gruntled

I agree at least 95% of the time with Kelly, but I think she's gone just a tad far here. Yes, there are many people who uncriticallly accept everything they find on the Internet. It's not a problem peculiar to Wikipedia. Equally, there are people who go to Wikipedia to find photos and links.

Posted by: Cedric

The fact that uncritical acceptance is not a phenomenon limited to Wikipedia in no way nullifies the point she is making here. To put it in wikipediot argot: "WP:OTHERIDIOCYEXISTS".

Posted by: SB_Johnny

A contribution from the wilderness from somebody who has run into the IDCAB before:

Posted by: Kelly Martin

If anything, Wikipedia compounds the general problem of idiocy on the internet by shellacking its essentially random content with a thin coating of encyclopedic respectability. Encyclopedias, as everyone knows, are edited by knowledgeable people and reviewed closely by people who would know to make sure they're correct. It's a lot easier to believe Wikipedia, which claims to be, after all, an "encyclopedia", than it is to believe Joe's Blog About Cars, especially since the latter has pictures of Joe's puppies prominently displayed just above his very-well researched article about the 1962 Corvette. The reader isn't going to realize that Joe is quite likely more knowledgeable on that topic than Wikipedia, unless (as is quite likely the case) the Wikipedia article was written by Joe.

The simply truth is that most people don't critically evaluate what they hear, no matter where they hear it. ("The Daily Show: Where more people get their news than probably should.") But they're even less likely to do so if they hear it from someone who says it under color of respectability, and Wikipedia has long tried to engender a false aura of respectability, when in reality it's just a gigantic graffiti wall.

To bring this back to topic, this is essentially the same strategy being used by ID proponents: they are taking a religious belief and dipping it in a thin coating of scientific shellac to make it appear to be a scientific theory, to take advantage of the fact that many people (especially those who grew up in the third quarter of the last century) have been enculturated to trust scientists pretty much without question. Scientists don't lie, after all. They're just not capable of it!

Posted by: lilburne

Don't know who http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hrafn is but http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard&diff=411857857&oldid=411839410#David_Berlinski encounter.

Posted by: Cla68

He http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&limit=500&target=Hrafn a militant atheist. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, except that you're not supposed to try to use Wikipedia to promote your activism. I'm sure Wikipedia's administration will be correcting the problem any minute now.

Posted by: Sxeptomaniac

Hrafn's quite the charming individual, that's for sure. Their watchlist must be massive by this point. I have no idea how someone could have that much time on their hands.

Posted by: Kwork

I had an encounter or two with Hrafn, and I tend to agree with his POV. The problem is that he wants to be sure that nobody misses his point. For instance, if I were editing that particular biographical article, I would stop at saying in the lead at: "David Berlinski (born 1942) is an American educator and author of several books on mathematics. Berlinski is a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture." The stuff about intelligent design could come later. After all it seems that the man has done other things, some of them perhaps of value. There is plenty of time to discuss the intelligent design nonsense later.

It is a common problem on WP. Its like the Bobby Fisher article. Sure the guy was a jerk, but since he was famous as a great chess player, there is no need to put his personality problems in the lead. But in the Bobby Fisher article it is a long lead, and the negative stuff comes at the end, so its not so bad. Hrafn is pushing to get the most problematic stuff about David Berlinski right in the first sentence, and that seems unnecessary.

Posted by: lilburne

For my pains I watched the debate Berlinski had with Hitchens last year. Totally unconvincing and Hitchens slapped him about quite thoroughly. Berlinski may well be a leading critic of evolution, but that doesn't make him a leader of the ID movement.

There are hearsay accounts of Berlinski saying that he does it because the IDM pays well. He's a high class intellectual whore, but Hrafn is too much into his ID hate to realise that.

Posted by: EricBarbour

Hrafn is not an "atheist", he is a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents/Hrafn, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hrafn#A_statement_from_retirement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive506#User:Hrafn. You were confused into thinking he was an honest atheist, because his abusive activities are so http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hrafn/Looney_Bin.

(He http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Hrafn#Thank_you with Cirt occasionally. Plus, he spends a lot of time http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=25759 the Unification Church articles,
thus making himself sometimes look like a rabid conservative. I was confused by this too. He's just http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Hrafn&diff=next&oldid=153339408.)

Some crackpots love Miley Cyrus, some crackpots love Sonic the Hedgehog, and some crackpots love ID/creationism. It's just a focus for their OCD, the actual subject matter isn't relevant.

Posted by: EricBarbour

Just got a reminder that Moulton repeatedly http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=17060&view=findpost&p=89334 Hrafn back in 2007-08.
The David Berlinski article has been a battleground for a http://netknowledge.org/wiki/User_talk:Moulton/WikiversityArchive#How_Hrafn_and_Odd_nature_missed_the_mark,_too.

Read http://users.actrix.co.nz/grimm/.
Go ahead, explain to the rest of us what his "religious beliefs" really are.

Like far too many Wikipediots, in the 1990s he was trolling the nerdiest possible subjects on Usenet.
Fave subjects: comic books, http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.frp/browse_thread/thread/17df0dc679492f4b/2c91e8c5f5cfbf68?q=tim+makinson#2c91e8c5f5cfbf68, TV shows, and http://groups.google.com/group/alt.psychology.personality/browse_thread/thread/d366c1e60d7cde47/6feae503aa03cadd?q=tim+makinson#6feae503aa03cadd.

Now, is http://users.actrix.co.nz/grimm/photos.html the face of a Wikipedia troll, or not?........