Because you might endure some indignity.
Because other bloggers might use Wikipedia as a mark of dishonesty....
I refer to
this Brian Dunning blog entry.
In which he admits he used WP as a source for info on DDT, and was promptly attacked for it by other science bloggers.
Note this in Tim Lambert's
comment:
QUOTE
The JunkScience guy has a blatant libertarian agenda. The SourceWatch guy has a blatant anticorporate agenda. Big whoop! They're both still researchers. I have no problem citing either if they've done the research I'm looking for.
If you must insist that this makes everything coming from either guy always right or always wrong, then you should demand to see the voting history of every scientist or researcher in order to determine the quality of their work.
As the Skepchick blogger (and actual working entomologist) said:
QUOTE
I can guarantee you that within 24 hours of this post, there will be at least one, probably more, commenters that will accuse me of racism (“you want to kill brown people in Africa!â€) or of lying about DDT. They have shown up all over my blog whenever I bring up the topic of DDT and Rachel Carson. Their primary methodology is copy/paste of the same old tired arguments over and over.
So. Although WP has a prevailing pseudo-screwball-left-wing pro-Israel bias, the DDT article
(and probably other articles dealing with pesticides) is being diddled by a very different crowd.
Result: still basically the same. Wikipedia is POVed all over the place.
(Bonus! Read the WP article on
Steven Milloy, operator of junkscience.com.
Left hand, meet right hand. Wash, repeat.)
This post has been edited by EricBarbour: