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 The Mike Handel Story |
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| Milton Roe |
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Known alias of J. Random Troll
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QUOTE(John Limey @ Tue 2nd March 2010, 6:18pm)  BLP hoax accusing fake Oxford professor of murder makes it into the DYK section and draws 4300 page views. Read all about it at On Wikipedia. Oh, that was diabolical and clever. And educational and funny. And it accomplished something maybe. Even. Limey, I'm starting to like you. In the brotherly and collegial regard of one academic toward another. (IMG: smilys0b23ax56/default/wub.gif) Vivat membrum quodlibet and all that. |
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| Kevin |
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Member
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QUOTE(John Limey @ Wed 3rd March 2010, 11:18am) BLP hoax accusing fake Oxford professor of murder makes it into the DYK section and draws 4300 page views. Read all about it at On Wikipedia. OK, but nearly everyone here already knows Wikipedia is broken, particularly regarding BLPs. For those who don't, will this extra proof turn them? Probably not. How can this be leveraged to actually make a change? |
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| NuclearWarfare |
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Senior Member
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QUOTE(EricBarbour @ Wed 3rd March 2010, 4:04am) Nice work, JL! Thanks! And.... here's MuffledThud asking for help on Resource Exchange. Still hasn't figured out he was punked. Poor lad/whatever. So, what happened to the BLP itself? Oversighted out of existence? Merely deleted ( 00:14, 3 March 2010 Skomorokh (talk | contribs | block) deleted "Mike Handel" ‎ (G3: Vandalism - blatant hoax or misinformation (CSDH)) (view/restore)) "On Wikipedia" has several revisions stored on WebCite though, and those are still up. |
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| Milton Roe |
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Known alias of J. Random Troll
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QUOTE(EricBarbour @ Tue 2nd March 2010, 9:04pm) Nice work, JL! Thanks! And.... here's MuffledThud asking for help on Resource Exchange. Still hasn't figured out he was punked. Poor lad/whatever. I have to imagine "MufledThud" as the sound of his jaw hitting the floor when he finally figures out he's been pwned. (IMG: smilys0b23ax56/default/jawdrop.gif) As for the rest of WP and the chattering-class of obstructionism, there, it may be that this helps not at all. Some people are so stupid that it's impossible to score any debate points against them, because they don't recognize they've been wrong and that they're position is illogical or untennable. They still keep on with it as though nothing had happened. For them, the pointiest POINT might as well be blunt and dull. There is no difference in effect. Perhaps somebody will pick up on the question of the episemological relevence of a citation to a newspaper of record, that doesn't exist on-line and that nobody is willing to dig out of a morgue. If a citation is about an event and nobody reads it, is it the same as if it didn't exist in the first place? Dead tree standard fall in forest; no noise! (IMG: smilys0b23ax56/default/blink.gif) (IMG: smilys0b23ax56/default/ermm.gif) (IMG: smilys0b23ax56/default/hmmm.gif) (IMG: smilys0b23ax56/default/confused.gif) We've long had an argument that WP can't do any damage by resurrecting or exhuming these factoids about living people, and putting them on the web, when they should by all rights have stayed decently mouldering away in the morgue, undisturbed. And now we're sure to see an identical argument that it can't do any real harm if WP puts up such stuff when it's actually imaginary. In the end, the people who argue for BLP for such people who have only morgue stuff available on them, don't really care if that information actually exists in the morgue or not, do they? The truth is not the POINT. They just like to write BLPs. The argument about "reliable sources" which are timeless (notability is NOT temporary, yo, yo) is a distraction, and it doesn't matter what you prove, or don't prove, about it. It won't change their minds, because they do this stuff to non-notables because they want to, not because they can defend it with any sort of cogent argument of any kind. But at least we have cleared some rubbish out of the way. |
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| bambi |
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Member
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As of 0500 March 3 UTC, it is number one in Google for a search for "mike handel" - with or without the quotes. cache link Why doesn't Wikipedia use the NOARCHIVE meta to keep those cache links off of Google, Yahoo, and Bing? This meta in the header section of any page won't affect the ranking for that page. It's also number one in Yahoo and Bing, but apparently they don't have their cache thing together yet for this particluar article. |
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| John Limey |
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Senior Member
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QUOTE(Kevin @ Wed 3rd March 2010, 3:11am) QUOTE(John Limey @ Wed 3rd March 2010, 11:18am) BLP hoax accusing fake Oxford professor of murder makes it into the DYK section and draws 4300 page views. Read all about it at On Wikipedia. OK, but nearly everyone here already knows Wikipedia is broken, particularly regarding BLPs. For those who don't, will this extra proof turn them? Probably not. How can this be leveraged to actually make a change? We thought it might serve as a wakeup call. Judging by the reaction on Wikipedia, it did nothing like that, which is really, truly disappointing. I've said before, and I come to believe it more every day, that only major stories in the mainstream press have the potential to influence Wikipedia at all, and even then the impact is uncertain. I suppose I'm a bit more idealistic than many of the people here, but we did expect more, and I honestly feel like just shutting the blog down. It turns out that people just don't care about facts after all. What's the point? The evidence is out there from Seigenthaler to Taner Akcam to Mike Handel and many more, but there are too many &%^$* on Wikipedia who won't change a darn thing to actually protect people. The willful blindness to the truth is simply shocking. QUOTE(Somey @ Wed 3rd March 2010, 8:24am)
Good work on documenting each step of the process - some folks might not have bothered to do that, probably because it makes the whole task less fun. Not that shooting ducks in a barrel is supposed to be fun, but it does make the whole thing much more citable.
How can we turn this into a top-line blurb, then? "Burning Mike Handel at both ends"? "Existence isn't all it's cracked up to be"...?
I liked Zoloft's idea: "Wikipedia can't Handel the truth". |
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| Doc glasgow |
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Wikipedia:The Sump of All Human Knowledge
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Wow, that's exactly the breaching experiment that I was contemplating myself. Kudos to the perpetrator - solid point made! For the record, the article (as deleted) read... QUOTE Michael "Mike" Handel (born June 3, 1930) is a biologist. He was the Terrence F. Gregory Professor of Biology at Magdalen College, University of Oxford.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Early life
* 2 Early academic career
* 3 Israel
* 4 Oxford
* 5 Retirement
* 6 References
Early life
Handel was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1930. His father, Howard Handel, was a British chemist at Imperial College London, then on sabbatical at the University of Michigan. When Handel was three, in 1933, the family moved back to London.[1]
In 1947, Handel entered University College, Oxford where he read biology, graduating in 1950. After graduation, Handel, capitalizing on his American citizenship (gained by virtue of being born in Michigan) left the UK for the US, working for a year in a laboratory at Columbia University in New York City. In 1951, he began graduate study in the biology department at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1954–1955, he returned to the UK to do research at the University of Cambridge and in 1957 he received his doctorate from Berkeley.[1]
Early academic career
Handel left Berkeley to become a lecturer in biology at the University of Glasgow, where he remained until 1960, teaching and conducting research in animal behavior and psychopharmacology. In 1961–1962, Handel received grant money to study animal behavior in his own lab at Glasgow and left his teaching responsibilities behind.[2]
Also, in 1961, Handel married Jane MacLaren, a student in literature at Glasgow. They would go on to have three children.[1]
Israel
In 1963, Handel was invited to visit Tel Aviv University as a researcher and faculty member, and he arrived ready to continue his research. He left in 1968 to return to the UK.[1]
Oxford
In 1968, Handel joined Magdalen College as professor of biology. He remained at Magdalen until 1986, and from 1971 to 1983 held the highly prestigious Terrence F. Gregory Chair. The college eliminated the chair in 1983 for funding reasons.[3]
Nonetheless, many of Handel's experiments, particularly in the 1970s, were highly controversial with animal rights groups, who attempted to bomb his laboratory in 1974; the bomb failed to explode and no one was injured.[4]According to the police, the triggering mechanism on the bomb, which was based on parts taken from an alarm clock, was not properly connected. Handel defended his research after the attack, saying that it was important for the pursuit of knowledge and science, but protesters called him a "Nazi", a "murderer," and accused him of "perpetrating a holocaust against animals". [5]
Handel's research, nonetheless, led to important insights into the toxicity of psychoactive compounds and set the groundwork for later accomplishments in the field.[1]
Retirement
Handel retired from Magdalen in 1986, moving to a family home outside Birmingham. He lectured briefly at the University of Birmingham but soon withdrew from academic life. He currently lives at his home near Birmingham and enjoys spending time with his grandchildren.[2]
References
1. ^ a b c d e "Farewell to Professor Handel". The Magdalen College Record. 1987.
2. ^ a b "Catching up with Michael Handel - His Reflections on Magdalen in the 70s". The Magdalen College Record. 1996.
3. ^ "Gregory Chair Suspended". The Magdalen College Record. 1983.
4. ^ Patterson, Charles (1993). Animal Rights. Enslow Publishing. pp. 79.
5. ^ Richards, David (11 April 1974). "Attempted bombing of biology lab". The Oxford Times. |
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