Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard/Archive 94

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Macrofamilies, linguistics, systematic issue on Wikipedia

Hello from the Linguistics Wikiproject. It was recommended in a larger discussion that I bring this up here, but there appears to be a fairly systematic issue with some more fringe elements of linguistics being presented as either fact, or in a more positive light than current scholarship would justify. That said, this is a weird one as it gets into the weeds of linguistics a bit, and I'm concerned that any attempt to be bold on my part will look reckless. I'm going to provide background information, but feel free to jump down to a tl;dr below:

Background

Historical linguistics is concerned with, in part, the genetic relationship between languages. Not all languages are related, and some families do converge at a proto-langugage. All languages which descend from that proto-language are considered related and a member of that family. English, German, Hindi, and Farsi are all Indo-European. Japanese is Japonic, Uyghur and Turkish are Turkic, etc.

Historically, there have been attempts to link these families to each other. In the early half of the 20th century this was a bit of a wild west, but a few theories did eventually become popular which later, as more evidence from more out-of-reach languages emerged, resulted in those theories falling out of favour. This is the case for Altaic, which was a major theory and now there is fairly uniform consensus that it has not been demonstrated to be real, and many of the old lines of evidence have fallen apart. It does still have some support among a small contingent of academics, but it is absolutely not the mainstream. Likewise, most of the old grand proposals to link families together have fallen apart, particularly attempts to link most human languages. (Just as a footnote, some of them do end up working out, to be fair). While Altaic has enjoyed some tiny sliver of continued support, theories like Boreal, Nostratic, Proto-Human, and many others are so far outside the linguistic mainstream that modern scholarship doesn't even discuss them.

Which leads to the main problem.

It's pretty clear that there's been a years-long effort by people who are still into these theories to present them as real and still under serious academic consideration. This has resulted in a mess of articles presenting what are the field's equivalent of quantum woo as real possibilities. This doesn't appear to be some organized effort, and I don't think it's a conspiracy or anything, but I do feel like these articles have been skating by without linguists weighing in quite as much by virtue of them not really being taken seriously by the linguistics community. At it's most egregious, every single macrofamily proposed in this template is rejected by mainstream scholarship, and of those only Altaic is really a topic of serious discussion at all. I've run into issues when trying to clean up some of these articles, where I'm asked for proof that Nostratic is a fringe theory, for example.

tl;dr

A fringe corner of linguistics has spent years creating very reasonable looking articles on Wikipedia which misrepresent the current understanding of the field. I'd really like some help cleaning up these articles, getting them away from being, at best, 50/50 between scholarly consensus and the minority perspective and get them back in line with reality to be much more useful as encyclopedic entries. There's also an issue in that many of these articles are only very tentatively linked to the rest of wikipedia, so it's often hard to even find these articles. I honestly don't even know how possible it is for non-linguists to work on this particular project, particularly in cases like Altaic where there are still some serious respectable scholars who accept it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Warrenmck (talk • contribs) 05:01, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Since you already tried Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics last month, I guess we have a bit of a hole in the linguistic anti-fringe user space... --Hob Gadling (talk) 15:04, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
You've come to the right place. Problem is, the scale of what you are talking about is not something we are equipped to handle at this board unless we are familiar with the subject at hand (which I manifestly am not). Where we can help you is with any pushback you get of the sort you describe, where I'm asked for proof that Nostratic is a fringe theory. If you find much gatekeeping going on and restoration of poor sourcing, etc., do come to this board and start a section. But you absolutely have license to go through and start cleaning house. My advice having done something similar with cosmology-related fringe work more than a decade ago (but, really, we're never done) is to try to figure out which ideas meet WP:NFRINGE (specifically on the basis of WP:FRIND) and which ones need to be removed completely from the encyclopedia due to epistemic closure. A small community of people talking to themselves without any WP:MAINSTREAM notice is a recipe for violating WP:WEIGHT. This game isn't always easy to figure out, but it is a good way to thread the needle. If you find there are certain accounts which are acting problematically, you can mention them here, but please tell them that you are doing so. I am heartened that you appear to be assuming good faith about the contributors not being part of an organized effort. If this is the case, it is possible or even likely that they will take the opportunity to learn and help curate better content. Good luck! jps (talk) 16:14, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
It's not that no-one has replied in WT:LING, it was just less than two :) See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Linguistics#Uralo-Siberian_languages,_proposed_macrofamily_article? and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Linguistics#Requesting_help_with_cleaning_up_some_articles_and_AfD_concerns, where I expressed major concerns with certain aspects of the OP's endeavor, including the idea that Nostratic and Altaic are the only notable macro-family proposals, and all the rest should be dumped into a single article covering all the rest. Frankly, here I can see the pendulum swing to the opposite fringe. Quoting myself from the discussion:
Attempts to be overly bold will appear as reckless also to people familiar with historical linguistics. We should by all means avoid the kind of zealotism familiar from blogs, forums etc. that are indeed largely crowded by people unfamiliar with historical linguistics.
(For those who don't what my last remarks refers to: there's e.g. the Altaic hypothesis, which is a proposal with stable minority support, stable explicit minority rejection, and mainstream disinterest. Both the support and reject camp have sunk to the low of bashing their heads in public web forums with lots of trolling behavior, not excluding otherwise remarkable scholars like Alexander Vovin. Both camps have developed a faithful amateur fanbase, and debates among these fanbases are notoriously abysmally low.)
That said, trimming, pruning, purging, tagging, also merging, PROD-ing and AfD-ing where necessary, sure yes. There is too much in-universe detail in many of these articles that might give the wrong impression about the acceptance of these proposals. But I don't support anything that goes in the direction of a priori rejection as if historical linguistics already has reached the saturation point of established and establishable knowledge beyond which only crackpots dare to go. This is not representative of how historical linguists look at these things.
The OP has understood my concerns, so I am bit surprised how this noticeboard comes into play. For the record, WP has a number of competent mainstream historical linguists (or linguists with an interest in historical linguistics) who at one point have engaged in the question of long-range comparativism. If it is just for wider input regarding this project, let's ping them: @TaivoLinguist, Kwamikagami, Future Perfect at Sunrise, Kanguole, Uanfala, Florian Blaschke, Calthinus, and Sagotreespirit: (please ping others, if they come to your mind). Many of us have been just too lazy to tackle the obviously exisiting issues (@Taivo and I regularly look at Altaic languages, but rarely have the energy to do much beyond a deep sigh). –Austronesier (talk) 18:20, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
@Mathglot: I had this feeling that my ping was incomplete. –Austronesier (talk) 11:23, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
Hello again! A lot of this comes up as the result of a current RfC on Starostin's role in Wikipeida, where I'm trying to address just how systematic this appears to be. You raised some very good points, and it's one reason I'm trying to not procede alone, rather I'd like to build consensus and get some other linguists on board with edits. I encourage you to look at what I've done to the Altaic article recently, it's not my attempt to paint theories which don't have wide support as inherently fringe, rather I would like to make sure that there's less WP:UNDUE issues. Actually I see the Altaic one in particular as the most challenge because of its serious supporters. Likewise Nostratic has a lot of historical interest which will make an encyclopedic rewrite a bit of an undertaking. However, I'm unconvinced that, say Indo-Hittite needs to exist outside as a mention in Hittite. But I really hope it's obvious I'm trying to build consensus here.
"where I expressed major concerns with certain aspects of the OP's endeavor, including the idea that Nostratic and Altaic are the only notable macro-family proposals"
I'd just like to make sure that it's clear I acknowledged you had a point here. I don't think I'm fully qualified to evaluate all the macrofamily proposals, but I do think that most of what is on here probably is better suited by a reworking of the Macrofamily article. You can see what I mean in User:Warrenmck/sandbox, but also I wouldn't intend on moving forward with a bunch of merge requests without outside support and consensus, so please don't worry that I'm just plowing ahead with aggressive edits solo. Indeed, the reason I'm posting in the wikiproject, here, and in an RfC is because I think this is a big, important task which needs multiple people working on the quality and making sure that one person's based perspective (here, me) isn't coming through too strongly in the other direction in response to the issues that are here.
"Many of us have been just too lazy to tackle the obviously exisiting issues"
I'm not surprised! The reason I wanted to bring it up here is this does appear to have created an issue where attempt to clean one article around hindered by the mess of articles which appear to treat these topics with substantially undue weight. A good example of this was my attempt to AfD Allan R. Bomhard, which was initially met with accusations of me trying to "suppress the voice of an academic with a perspective outside the mainstream" which was completely missing the fact that we're talking about a mostly self-published non-academic. But his work had been elevated heavily on Wikipedia, which made making his status in linguistics clear look like I was basically soapboxing. Between that sort of thing and the references to low simmering edit wars going on for a decade on articles like the Altaic one, I think this needs to be a concerted effort to rapidly bring Wikipedia up to standard, because anything less is going to lead to two parallel realities existing in how the information is presented.
Warrenmck (talk) 18:59, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
But you absolutely have license to go through and start cleaning house.
As @Austronesier has helpfully pointed out, my perspectives are biased as well. I don't think this is a project suitable for a single person's overview of linguistics. My background is historical linguistics, but, for example, I have zero basis to evaluate the relationship of indigenous languages in South America. Personally, my domain knowledge is mostly restricted to Polynesian, Semitic, and Indo-European languages. I definitely think that any effort to bring this up to an encyclopedic standard needs a small group working on it, at the minimum.
Warrenmck (talk) 19:10, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm with jps on this. I am not qualified to help with the clean-up and don't have the time or interest to learn enough about the issue to change that. But I applaud your willingness to take on the problem and if you run into fringe push-back am willing to help. Looks like you already found one person who can help more substantially. But for concrete issues you can always post here. Of course ideally the issues should then be presented in a way where people don't need a PhD in historical linguistics to weigh the arguments. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 18:36, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Of course ideally the issues should then be presented in a way where people don't need a PhD in historical linguistics to weigh the arguments
Unfortunately, I think that this may be the case here. Well, not a PhD, but at least a formal background. The only similar situations I can think of are where there's been a weighing in on content in edit wars involving fringe perspectives by arbcom such as Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Cold fusion. Since the edit war that exists in these articles is both temporally spread out and, frankly, appears to be in good faith all around, this isn't exactly the sort of situation arbcom is set up for. I tagged policies in my RfC because I genuinely think we've found a situation where Wikipedia's policies perhaps are insufficient.
Warrenmck (talk) 19:04, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Of course you can dumb down things only so much. What I have in mind is mainly presenting sources by people who are obviously experts, ideally published by a notable scientific publisher who say unequivocally that the majority of scholars rejects a certain view. For example I don't have to understand a theory in theoretical physics to know it is rubbish when everyone from Bohr and Einstein to Hawking and beyond say it is rubbish. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 19:12, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Ah, and here's where historical linguistics gets a bit screwy. Take Allan R. Bomhard, who is essentially self-publishing his continued work on Nostratic, which is undeniably a fringe theory in 2023. That didn't prevent him from eventually getting two seriously heavyweight printings, because in historical linguistics this kind of work can actually be valuable (it can make a case for a macrofamily with new evidence, it can highlight real relationships which were previously missed, such as the Sprachbund nature of Altaic, etc.). Of course, a deep dive through the academic response to that book will make its status a bit more clear, but the problem is that linguists end up essentially going "just trust me bro" on which sources to trust. That book is a particular pain with the way Wikipedia's source standards are set up, since it's not like Nostratic is taken seriously enough to have warranted a particularly serious rebuttal. But see the three failed AfDs to see how this situation is deeply confusing to people outside the field.
Warrenmck (talk) 19:45, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm going to reply to @Mathglot here in response to a related conversation which was converging on this one, so as to not derail an article's talk page too much. This likely won't make sense unless you look there first, but it's pertinent if anyone really wants to follow these conversations closely.
Very true, and we have WP:N and WP:PAGEDECIDE to deal with that. No special linguistic training needed for this step; can be done by bean-counters. This is not the part where domain expertise is helpful.
I strongly disagree with this, due to my core concern. The articles have been made to look very reasonable, so it's not easy for someone without domain knowledge to be aware of what level of acceptance what they're seeing has. This is extra problematic when something was a historically important proposal but fell by the wayside over time; there's a gradient of sources attesting a theory that drops off, then we end up with the above comment where linguists don't exactly refute bygone theories in their papers as a practice. It's very challenging to look at Na-Dene languages (widely accepted), Dené–Yeniseian languages (which is on its way up with acceptance to a mixed degree), and Dené–Caucasian languages (likely bunk) and intuit where articles there weight in modern scholarship.
Some of the difficulties that Snow_Rise points out are inherent to any non-hard science discipline; I've seen a similar type of step-carefully, who-is-mainstream, who-is-outside-it issue in sociological discussions.
It's worth pointing out that, while not a hard science, the toolset historical linguistics tends to use is actually somewhat crunchy. There's increasingly statistical methods being used to validate these, as well. I'm not saying "therefore the scientific method", but "this is a little less interpretive than much of social science".
I'm more familiar with hard sciences, where "first they laugh" paradigm shifts do happen and drive progress in the field.
I think this historically that was certainly true, but it's gotten a little less true. In the early days of linguistics access to information on a language was much more challenging, so a single author could put forward a hypothesis on the basis of them knowing a language or having access to vocabularies which nobody else working on a language family did. This is why a huge number of the citations on these articles are from before the 1960s, as an aside. The Altaic article goes into quite god detail about how those sorts of issues got resolved and eventually lead to Altaic falling out of favour, as well.
It's funny you brought up Chomsky here, because many of his core theories, while highly influential and benefitting the field hugely, didn't really turn out to be true. That's actually a fantastic example of how linguistic paradigms percolate to common knowledge terribly, which is the major issue with Altaic (the idea got out, the fall of acceptance did not). I think that's a good counterpoint for a lot of what we're seeing with these macrofamily articles. The field doesn't generally, accuse people of wasting time with proto-language reconstructions (though the use of mass comparison does elicit those responses). A theory can be wrong and still be the basis for something very valuable, which is sort of the situation we're seeing with Dené–Yeniseian languages coming out of prior theories. As such, people who publish fringier stuff tend not to be as ignored in the field than, say, in physics. That doesn't mean they're accepted as non-fringe, but rather a bunch of people are sitting on the sidelines waiting to see if anything good comes from it.
The issue with looking at some of these through a first they laugh lens is you're seeing these theories well after that point in time. Proto-human went through a "first they laugh" and got followed up with laughing harder. Dené–Yeniseian languages is a direct conuter-point, where someone made a long range proposal and a large (though minority, so far) chunk of the community went "Well now, hold on just a second".
A brief aside just to amuse anyone reading here, but I personally do think that long range historical linguistics is going to be blown a bit open by computational methods and we'll eventually see some of these theories come back to a small extent, in modified ways. As in I personally believe we'll see a genetic relationship between some "Altaic" languages demonstrated through some other method which hasn't really come to the forefront yet. I just want us to be careful not to misrepresent where they are now. I am, philosophically, a lumper, like the editors writing these erroneous macrofamily articles. (I only mention this because I'm certain I look like a diehard splitter in my quest to clean up some of these articles).
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go read Wikipedia:The Importance of Brevity until it sinks in, since apparently I need that. Warrenmck (talk) 01:52, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Just a few general comments, perhaps some unhelpful or unwelcome, but here they are nonetheless.

  • Judging the work of non-academics can be problematic at times. One of the most influential linguists of the early 20th century, Benjamin Whorf, was a non-academic, but his work is widely considered to be a solid contribution to the field in many regards. Some of his ideas (such as Azteco-Tanoan and the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) were acceptable for the state of the art at the time he wrote and within the range of what academics were doing, but have not aged well. The point is that he was accepted by contemporary academics as a solid linguist despite being a fire prevention engineer during working hours.
  • Self-publishing is a problem, obviously, but not a fatal one. Self-published works are sometimes top-notch and widely-accepted in their niche. In my own specialization, one of the widely-appreciated "standard works" is a self-published comparative dictionary of a large Indigenous American language family. The author doesn't even have a PhD! But academics and specialists in the field recognize and accept this piece of work as a quality reference. The latter is the key: the recognition by the mainstream in the field as good work. This is hard to judge sometimes. My colleague's self-published dictionary is recognized by virtually all specialists as a useful and well-done reference. But some of his other publications are not so well-received except by a small minority of peers who are interested in a theory that is widely-rejected by most of us.
  • Wikipedia editing has a fundamental conflict with academic production. Academic job performance is primarily based on published work in reliable sources. So our primary effort must always be focused on that. Next comes our teaching load and the responsibility we have to our students. Wikipedia is a "hobby" that can fill up some of our spare time when we're not raising our kids, mowing our lawns, interacting with our partners, etc. Many of the editors who are most energetic about pushing fringe theories as legitimate academic endeavors are not academics (trust me, we can spot a non-academic Wikipedia editor a mile away) who have found one of those "scientists are ignoring this" conspiracies that they can champion with every fiber of their being and that they truly believe can explain the world. Personally, before I edit an article in Wikipedia or engage in a "discussion" (whether hot or cold), I have to ask myself, "Do I care enough about this topic to take some of my precious spare time?"
  • The requirements of some of Wikipedia's policies (Consensus and Reliable Sources particularly) sometimes conflict with the real world. Take, for example, Altaic or Nostratic (since they've been mentioned above). The vast majority of historical linguists reject both of these old hypotheses of genetic relationship based on questionable methodology and limited data. However, the majority of historical linguists working on the legitimate language families that comprise these larger groups don't bother to write "I reject Altaic and Nostratic" in their published works. It's sort of like a geophysicist having to write, "I reject the Flat Earth hypothesis" in every published work. And yet the "true believers" in Altaic and Nostratic constantly demand on Talk Pages that we produce direct quotes that actually say that very rejection verbatim. If we have one quote against, they then produce a dozen quotes from the minority of scholars who support the fringe theory and thus "win" the argument by a majority of quotes. Wikipedia rules for Consensus tend to disfavor the "absence of support" argument.

Well, I have now reached the end of today's spare time. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 23:13, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

"Self-publishing is a problem, obviously, but not a fatal one."
Just as a quick comment, it sort of is for Wikipedia. This is one of the issues a lot of these huge macrofamily articles have; they're referencing self-published word lists and analysis. Even if a theory has some wider interest derived from the self published source, there's going to be an issue with Wikipedia's source policies on this front. I don't think Whorf is a fair example, linguistics as a field in the first half of the 20th century and, broadly, post-1960 are completely different beasts. Have we had another Whorf, recently? (Sincere question)
"The vast majority of historical linguists reject both of these old hypotheses of genetic relationship based on questionable methodology and limited data. However, the majority of historical linguists working on the legitimate language families that comprise these larger groups don't bother to write "I reject Altaic and Nostratic" in their published works."
And this is exactly what came up when I added a fringe tag to Allan R. Bomhard. Alas.
I do have to say, @TaivoLinguist, as a publishing geophysicist I really appreciate that example. Warrenmck (talk) 23:23, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
It seems like taking a stricter line against self-published sources in linguistics on Wikipedia, including ones representing positive contributions to the field, would weed out a lot of the FRINGE with it. The reliability of the good ones can be established on a case by case basis, with reference to sources. signed, Rosguill talk 00:33, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
That would eliminate quite a fair bit, but definitely that's not a neat solution to addressing this. Linguistics journals don't necessarily have the hardest time publishing fringe theories because they can still actively contribute to the field (and can transition out of being fringe. See what is currently happening with Dené–Yeniseian languages, for example). That doesn't mean they're accepted widely, and often those papers aren't even commented on. Warrenmck (talk) 00:39, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

One more point:

  • Proponents of the fringe families also have a fairly poor understanding of how coincidence interacts with linguistic comparisons. If you're comparing two unrelated languages and have dictionaries of, say, 3000 words each (a not unrealistic number for most good dictionaries), and a rate of coincidence where a word that means X in one language means X in the other language in a word of similar phonological shape of, say, 5%, then you are likely to find 150 "cognate sets". The question is never, "What are the chances of finding 150 words that are similar in both languages?", but "What are the chances of finding systematic similarities between the 200 most common words in both languages?" After all, in any group of 23 people, the chances are 50/50 of two of them having the same birthday, but in linguistics the issue is having two people having June 22 1995 as their birthday. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 23:43, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
But how do you raise those specific concerns without WP:NOR issues, when, as has been pointed out, linguists aren't in a habit of directly publishing counterpoints to fringe linguistics with any regularity? I mean, just look at this mess. Sumerian!? Warrenmck (talk) 23:51, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
If independent sources haven't bothered to comment on an idea, the right thing to do is to remove the idea from the encyclopedia. jps (talk) 00:22, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
The issues is that for many of these proposals there's a cutoff date where a theory transitions from mainstream to fringe, and a lot of the evidence that lead to mainstream acceptance was self published. This creates a very nasty situation in deconvolving historical linguistics from its own past that doesn't exist in the hard sciences quite as much. Warrenmck (talk) 00:37, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
Maybe not, but there are parallels that I see. Check out tired light for example. The proponents of that once perfectly reasonable hypothesis are way out on limbs now. Identifying approximately when the cut-off date was can help move on, perhaps. jps (talk) 00:55, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
Water memory was the one that jumped out to me in physics, actually, but good example. I do think there's a problem with linguistics continually publishing some of the fringe theories. After all, linguistics does benefit from people off in the weeds doing their own thing with data that has otherwise been moved on from. For example, I was just trying to figure out how to AfD Mother Tongue (Journal) (and its editor) and hit a brick wall with the reasoning trying to explain that a journal is both (semi) real and also deeply fringe. I can't think of a similar situation in hard sciences off the top of my head. I simply gave up on attempting an AfD because I foresee people a: misunderstanding the field and b: accusing me of WP:BLUDGEON issues (again, though I just want to be clear that was somewhat warranted) for attempting to clarify. That's why this needs multiple people inolved. Warrenmck (talk) 01:06, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
Oh gee, water memory is an object lesson for the ubiquity of credulity mostly. There is nothing good that came out of that affair other than showing that editors at Nature should have hired James Randi sooner.
Journals are a whole other ball of wax. I don't know what to tell you about that except that we are in the midst of controversy about that as well at Wikipedia talk:Notability (academic journals).
A good approach may be to look for sources that are discussing this issue even informally in the grey literature or even on blogs. You have the benefit there of WP:PARITY since apparently a lot of stuff you are concerned about is self-published.
jps (talk) 01:19, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
I don't want to prep a lit review for every AfD on fringe topics, however. I think that journal is a prime example of what I'm talking about here, though: to an outsider it looks real, and any attempt to delete it on my part would either require a treatises which, to be realistic, nobody will probably read, or I'm going to look like I'm trying to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS by purging countering viewpoints. Unless one (or a few) of the linguists involved here really makes one hell of an effort to convince people in every AfD or merge that looks like this, of which there will be quite a few, then we've run up against a place where Wikipedia's own institutional inertia has created quite a pickle, which results in low accuracy information all over here.
The only solution I see which has been previously utilized on Wikipedia is ArbCom (see cases like this one). Everything has been so slow burn that it can't really be said to constitute an edit war, and in this case I think ArbCom would basically need to solicit expert advice, which I'm not even sure they're set up for. Warrenmck (talk) 01:37, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Again, journals are fraught right now. I don't know what to tell you about that. I have argued that the lack of sourcing on most journals make most of them good candidates for deletion (and the journal you are referencing would get swept up in that). The opposing camp disagrees and maybe they can point to what they think about this case. If you want, check out Physics Essays to see what it is like. Arbitration is for behavioral disputes only. It won't help with content issues and it certainly won't try to convene a council of experts or anything. jps (talk) 01:57, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

"Arbitration is for behavioral disputes only."
This is what I meant by institutional inertia, to be fair. This is a behaviour dispute, just it's clear that ArbCom has taken a stance that the behaviour must be compacted to a quantum of time, rather than some slow burn involving multiple editors over literally nearly two decades where everyone is acting in good faith. But it is, nonetheless, a behavioural dispute directly akin to ones ArbCom has weighed in on in the past with fringe theories. Note I'm not trying to snipe at ArbCom or anyone involved with it on this point, I'm saying "Wikipedia does have a system in place which would be well suited to tackling these problems, but they have perhaps restricted its scope to an extent that they've missed a potential use case. Warrenmck (talk) 02:04, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
@Warrenmck: Wikipedia is not all that dysfunctional in this topic area that you have to take recourse to ultimate measures such as appealing to ArbCom etc. Be bold in a sensible way, see what happens, and call for wider input in cases of actual manifest dispute. Look, no one has contested your major revisions e.g. in Nostratic languages; no-one probably will, and the same thing will hold if you go through Dene-Caucasian related pages with a flamethrower (by all means, do so!). Speaking bluntly: where's the issue at this point?
On a more general note, when we talk about fringe and pseudo-science in an observational discipline like historical linguistics, we have to keep in mind what I call the quality of counterfactuality in different scholarly disciplines. Flat-earth and and Proto-Human language are not just fringe, but pseudo-science by all parameters, yet there is a fundamental difference between them. Flat-earth fantasies violate all principles of exact sciences and are easily falsifiable and are thus positively disproven. Rubbish like Proto-Human violates general scholarly principles like Ockham's Razor, is based on cherry picked data, fails to distinguish chance resemblances from genuine cognacy, and is at odds with all basic axiomatic building blocks of historical linguistics (such as the inevitability of sound change, the largely regular nature of the latter etc.). But it is not poitively falsifiable as in the flat-earth case, in spite of its rotten p-value. Why is this relevant? Because not all long-range proposals are as blatantly nuts as Proto-Human. It is a spectrum from obvious rubbish to heuristically appealing speculations that are slowly evolving into well-argued and well-received hypotheses (as in the case of Austro-Tai in my field of expertise; dozens of others exist especially in Papuan and Indigenous South American studies). So we will depend on independent sources to evaluate notability in every single case, and to qualify these proposals as "fringe", "rejected", "controversial" etc. in the lede paragraph and infobox. Unfortunately, there are many cases where a long-range proposal is covered in a good of independent sources to pass WP:GNG, but only a few of these sources undertake the endeavor of dissecting the "evidence" for obvious reasons (as explained by User:TaivoLinguist), well-known to editors active in fringe discussions. So we might have to live with articles about notable long-range proposals without being fully equipped in order to tag them as "fringe" etc. the way we want to based on our expert knowledge, or to remove/trim detailed expositions of "evidence" presented in favor for them as unabiguously WP:PROFRINGE.
Another systemic problem for the evaluation of these proposals is variable standards in different subfields, as has been pointed out by the "godfather" of linguistic skepticism, Lyle Campbell. According to Campbell, some language families that are treated in a matter-of-factish way by subject-matter experts (a classical case is the Nilo-Saharan family) are actually build on evidence that is a thin and contestable as the evidence for Alataic and Nostratic. So "local consensus" among mainstream scholars will bring us to very different results in the assessment of entities that might actually be on par (in a positive of negative way) if weighed by the same principles. But since WP reflects based on reliable secondary without bias, so be it, in a field that very much depends on subjective assessments by informed experts. –Austronesier (talk) 20:12, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
This is a very good reply, thanks for your time and perspectives. I just want to address two points though, if that's okay:
"Speaking bluntly: where's the issue at this point?"
As has been pointed out on the talk pages for those articles, there has been a very low grade edit war going on years, where things are slowly changed back to a fringier mean over time. This is what I foresee being a huge problem here, that any significant attempts to clean up these articles will be slowly walked back, as it has in the past. Once I and a few other users move on from this project, it'll require active safeguarding to keep fringe proposals from slowly taking over, and as has been demonstrated in the past that's simply not effective.
So we might have to live with articles about notable long-range proposals without being fully equipped in order to tag them as "fringe" etc. the way we want to based on our expert knowledge, or to remove/trim detailed expositions of "evidence" presented in favor for them as unambiguously WP:PROFRINGE.
This is what I see as a failing of the current policies and systems in place in Wikipedia. If the outcome is to just accept that we'll never be able to bring these articles up to a scholarly standard because of the ouroboros of publishing around them then that is a fundamental problem with Wikipedia which potentially warrants a discussion beyond a few motivated users cleaning up a specific topic. Warrenmck (talk) 20:25, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia is the "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit", not must edit. As a tertiary source, we have reasonable house rules that leaves much room for sensible agenda-free editing. Sure, sometimes it is hard to deal with fringe-pushers, whether they're well-intentioned but misguided souls or just fuckwit jerks; I have had my good share of WP:Randy in Boise-moments in the last months, but luckily, this community has never failed me in the end—so far. So just go ahead with some trust in this self-regulating universe before apriorizing fundamental problems. –Austronesier (talk) 21:07, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
Huzzah to everything that User:Austronesier wrote. Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo are two excellent examples of long-range comparisons that were, for decades, pretty much accepted as proven by mainstream historical linguists of all stripes. Indeed, Joseph Greenberg, the very same scholar whose proposal for "Amerind" in the '80s was DOA among Americanists (despite a featured article describing it in Scientific American), was the scholar who first organized the available data to demonstrate both Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan in the early '60s and was widely hailed in the linguistic community. Neither is now accepted as proven. What happened? The two families were set up based on very, very limited data for the vast majority of languages that comprised them. In most cases, entire families of languages were included in them based on little more than a dozen or two words poorly recorded from a single language by non-scientific travelers, merchants, or missionaries. But since linguists working on languages outside Afica had no other evidence on which to base their opinions, these two (huge) families became part of the received wisdom of African languages. I remember seeing them and memorizing them based on maps in introductory textbooks back in the '70s when I first discovered linguistics. I taught them as a graduate instructor in the '80s. But as scientifically reliable information on more and more of these languages became available to historical linguists, and more and more historical linguists turned their eyes from Indo-European to the other language families of the world, these super-famiilies were gradually dismantled (and continue to be dismantled). Niger-Congo is now no fewer than NINE unrelated families (and a handful of isolates) based on Glottolog 4.8 and Nilo-Saharan has been even more radically deconstructed. "Khoisan" no longer exists in even a rudimentary form. Only Afro-Asiatic has survived as a major unit, although losing Omotic on the southern edge of its African territory. So what might have been an uncontested language family in the 1970s might very well be only a historical curiosity today. Therefore while discussing these former "proven" families as contemporary entities is fringe, their presence in articles in Wikipedia is justified as widely-accepted "historical" theories because readers might be encountering them in older linguistic works and need to have a contemporary discussion of what they were and how they lost favor and disintegrated in the light of actual data and the better methodologies adopted by historical linguists. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 00:14, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Going Forward

I disagree with none of that! Note that I'm trying to be very careful not to call Altaic "wrong" or "discredited" but rather stick to more strict definitions of its status without committing a Type II error, and I definitely think that even groupings like Nostratic warrant an article due to historical interest. Would you (@TaivoLinguist) and @Austronesier have any interest in working together on the linguistics wikiproject with me to try to organize

  • a: A centralized list of proposed macrofamilies/families, and perhaps a quality scale for them?
  • b: A standardized "status" label (right now the infoboxes seem quite random, ranging from "probably spurious" to "hypothetical" and any variation in-between)
  • c: A grouping for which are of historical interest and need a huge rewrite (Nostratic, Altaic, etc.) vs which can just be tossed into a bonfire? I definitely am not even close to qualified for that kind of undertaking outside of a very small cluster of languages

I'd hope it's clear from my ongoing edits to various languages in the hypothetical Altaic family that it's not my intent to erase the work of or deny the limited but real support enjoyed by Altaic. I even have pangs of concern deleting self-published lists of word parings because I don't know who out there will find that information valuable, and while it likely doesn't belong on Wikipedia I do hope that much of that information is still easily found for anyone interested in working on the more out there theories, since you never know what good will come from it. I am definitely not trying to erase perspectives. Warrenmck (talk) 00:43, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Word lists should be removed. Most of time they are WP:UNDUE and imply more scientific basis than they actually possess. They are also, almost always, WP:OR by editors with a vested interest in "proving" the relationship. If a person is actually interested in pursuing the evidence they need to look it up themselves in reliable sources and not use Wikipedia as a more detailed introduction to the topic than is warranted by a general encyclopedia. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 01:08, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
I did say I almost feel pangs. Warrenmck (talk) 01:48, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm inclined to agree. I wish I had come here to see just how quickly the conversation had moved before posting so much at length on the original RfC, some of which is redundant on feedback Warren has been getting in the parallel discussion here. In any event, not to wholesale dismiss Warren's concerns about walking the line between over- or under-inclusion of edge case sources, but I do think the solution here is to weed out the word lists, and the self-published sources generally. If there are no editorial controls on a given source, it just doesn't qualify as RS. I appreciate that Warren has reservations, because that content might have utility to some readers, but I doubt the average person who even possesses the capability to make pragmatic use of that content is looking for it on Wikipedia. Regardless, it just doesn't serve a proper encyclopedic function, and is doubly problematic if it is being used to prop up fringe (or psuedo-fringe) as I think we might say is the case here) notions.
On the flip side--and this is reduplicative of lengthier comments I've already made at the RfC, so I won't comment at the same level of detail here--I'd suggest to Warren to save any proposals for eliminating articles until the end of the process, and make sure to establish an affirmative and firm consensus first, even thought this promises to be a taxing effort. These are articles which do meet GNG by and large, so any arguments for merger will have to go the WP:NOPAGE route, which could take some work, especially if the gatekeeping issues are as pronounced as have been suggested. I'm not suggesting Warren gives the impression of being a gung-ho editor likely to go off aggressively pushing AfDs here--he does not give me that impression at all. I just want to reiterate that point here, since this now seems to be locus of discussion about these issue (and probably will be again if/when the time comes to propose mergers). SnowRise let's rap 22:54, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
I'd suggest to Warren to save any proposals for eliminating articles until the end of the process
This is my intent! I'm working on it over in a sandbox (which is linked to on the Linguistics Wikiproject) and won't propose any mergers until I have a full and complete article ready for the wider community to review, and I hope it's not just me working on it. I definitely lack the expertise to tackle a few of those. I'd also hope, as I've mentioned here a few times, that I the tone I've taken in editing Altaic languages has made it clear I'm not out here to strongly push a specific POV, rather just neutrally bring the statements in the articles in line with the current understanding. I'm not trying to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS but rather sincerely improve Wikipedia.
especially if the gatekeeping issues are as pronounced as have been suggested
I don't actually think it's been too bad on the gatekeeping front. In comparison to other fringe topics which result in slow burn edit wars over years on Wikipedia this one actually seems remarkably civil and well intentioned. Warrenmck (talk) 23:15, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
I hope not to read the word "gatekeeping" again (WP:AGF). I have used the word "zealotism" only once in WT:LING and definitely did not apply it to characterize the ongoing project of the OP, but as a potential pitfall if the topic is not approached with care. Hopefully it remains the last time for me to use the Z-word. Especially when so far all editors you are dealing with agree about the fact that fringe is fringe (this includes User:ValtteriLahti12!) and mainly differ in the question of how to present notable fringe topics in WP. There are questions of WP:DUE and especially WP:VOICE. Clearly, we don't want to see fringe presented as fact, we also don't want it to see it just attributed but unfiltered (as in X says: [two lengthy paragraphs plus tables based on primary sources]). But we can certainly describe the core aspects of the fringe proposal, not as a thing of the real world, but as what it is—a fringe hypothesis. Generally, we do have a big problem with articles that start with "X is a fringe hypothesis" with small "Criticism" section and probably also an appropriate categorization at the bottom, but which in the middle are filled to the brim with in-unviverse material from primary fringe sources, which in effect results in the fringe hypothesis being presented in Wikivoice over large portions of the article. We do have this problem, but: name me one editor active in this topic area who does not respond and share these concerns once they have been raised. –Austronesier (talk) 09:02, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
WP:FRIND is your friend. Cut the cruft out. Bon courage (talk) 09:32, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Especially when so far all editors you are dealing with agree about the fact that fringe is fringe
Would that this were true :( Warrenmck (talk) 23:03, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Now that the old Scientology DS was removed, is the subject covered by the pseudoscience and fringe science ct area?

I ask because of [1]'s edits. Doug Weller talk 13:04, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Surley its the saem as any other religion, its not science. Slatersteven (talk) 13:06, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Peter Zeihan

A self-styled "geopolitical strategist" whose opinions are being used a lot to describe contemporary Alberta separatism. He is setting off my fringe guy warning bells. His credentials raise the question of where his expertise in Canadian politics comes from based on a bachelor's degree in poli-sci and a diploma in Asian studies. I haven't found much 'about' him but what I've found is critical of his predictions [2] demonstrate a tendency to make grand statements outside his areas of supposed expertise (such as regarding genetic sciences) [3] and frankly the better the venue the worse it gets Kirkus says of one of his books "The book has entertainment value, but some of the material should be taken with many grains of salt." [4] "His generalizations can seem oversimplified" says Publisher's weekly [5]. Everything I'm seeing about this guy suggests that his expertise should be taken with several grains of salt. (On a personal note, since he is advocating for the annexation of Canada's oil patch I rather hope his opinions are not mainstream within the United States as I'd prefer not to be "liberated" anytime soon.) Anyway before I go about de-Zeihanifying the Alberta separatism article I thought I'd check here and see whether there was a dissenting view of this broad political fortune teller. Simonm223 (talk) 12:30, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Annexation may be closer than you think. :) On catching a flight in Calgary for Atlanta last week, we were processed through security by U.S. TSA and Border Patrol personnel, and were treated as a domestic flight on arrival in Atlanta. Donald Albury 14:07, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Canada has allowed that for Canada-US flights for several decades, and not just from Alberta. Does not indicate an imminent danger of annexation. :) NightHeron (talk) 14:35, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
I travel for business regularly and, yeah, Canada does allow American TSA agents to process Canadian travelers at airports. This is a matter of treaty and not an annexation threat. Any comment on the reliability of Zeihan for Canadian politics? Simonm223 (talk) 15:06, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
The first two links are pretty bad. Kirkus and Publisher's weekly are fine but they're non-geopolitical experts so I can't interpret their comments as being about Zeihan's geopolitical expertise or lack thereof. More to the point, criticizing a general-audience book for lacking precision isn't much of a critique.
Zeihan was Vice President of Strategic Intelligence for Stratfor, a very well-regarded outfit. I know, second-hand, that he was (is?) regularly hired by the DoD to give talks, which also strengthens his credibility. I really, really don't buy the idea that expertise has any link with degrees. I've never read his books, but I wouldn't count him as fringe at all. edit: though that still leaves questions of dueness and weight unaddressed, of course DFlhb (talk) 00:52, 16 July 2023 (UTC) edited 06:35, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

LGBT chemicals conspiracy theory

Recently created article of relevance to this board. Raises BLP issues as well but I'll just list it here for now. There's been some dispute over tagging and BLP concerns. The sourcing seems weak or poor at times e.g. whole long and contentious paragraphs lack inline citations. Nil Einne (talk) 08:49, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Is this part of the famous Alex Jones rant, "they're making the frogs gay"? jps (talk) 13:04, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
RFK Jr is reheating it in his campaign. That may have sparked new interest. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 13:39, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
I think that is indeed why the article was created. The creator has been involved in the RFK Jr article, and added stuff about RFK, but this was removed by another contributor. (These are part of the BLP issues I touched upon.) Nil Einne (talk) 14:07, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
I removed what appears to be unsourced material from the article. Read my rationale here [6]. I also posted about this on the talk page [7]. Another editor made an interesting comment on talk about collapsing the article to about two paragraphs [8]. I agree. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 03:05, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Agree too. I'm not a fan of articles on semi-notable topics that inherently lack a recognizable title. Readers won't come across it, and will be better served by reading fact-checks or watching watching YouTube videos by credible outfits than by reading us. DFlhb (talk) 01:06, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
I hadn't noticed that my concern had already been addressed by a redirect. And thanks to all who improved the article, and addressed the "feedback loop" aspect criticized on the talk page. DFlhb (talk) 17:58, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
Well, the hatnote at the top is certainly one of the more unusual ones I've seen. It seems fairly neutral. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 17:28, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Genetics and educational attainment

A relatively new article I came across while looking at something else. I haven't had a chance to go over it in details, but given what it covers I thought it might be of interest. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 13:02, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Note that the creator of that page was recently sitebanned [9], a decision that is currently under review (but is being widely supported) at ANI [10]. NightHeron (talk) 13:36, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
Definitely deserves scrutiny as an article on a contentious topic by a recently banned user. I quickly looked at it and it's a bit technical, the lead section is bad and there are many instances of WP:WEASEL-type language throughout the article. Also there's no mention of the tiny effect sizes and concerns about eugenics present in many of the sources. I don't see PRS applied to education as a fringe topic, and I think an editor or two with the energy to fix this could make it a pretty good article or subsection of some other article. HansVonStuttgart (talk) 15:36, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
Wouldn't genetic nurture be some kind of reframing of Turkheimer’s laws? Anyway it has been prodded. fiveby(zero) 18:37, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
The article hasn't been prodded, did I miss something? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 12:24, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
deprodded by NeverRainsButPours. fiveby(zero) 14:20, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Hi, sorry, I did not see this discussion beforehand or I would have discussed it before dePRODDing. I think there's enough to write a non-fringe article on, but it may be difficult to fully explain the phenomenon given WP:MEDRS - I don't know quite where the line is drawn between theory (the concept of genetic nurture) and practice (stating that a given condition/attainment is caused by X% of parental genotype). Is there a best practices doc? NeverRainsButPours (talk) 14:30, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
I lack whatever molecular makeup is required to appreciate behavioral genetics and understand heritability, but is indirect genetic effect a more often used term for the concept? fiveby(zero) 14:59, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Indirect genetic effect is the umbrella term, yes, see https://doi.org/10.1093/jhered/esab059. Whether genetic nurture has more nuance to it compared to similar biological concepts, I am not certain at the moment. NeverRainsButPours (talk) 15:10, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
NeverRain, I'm uneasy about anything created by Chamaemelum. Although I listed four reviews semi-related at Genetic nurture, I remain unconvinced, but over my head. I won't oppose anything done there; my first tipoff that Chamaemelum was creating junk was at Alzheimer's disease, where I could see Cham wasn't knowledgeable, but on genetic nurture, I defer to others. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:10, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
Ok I see I missed that this a tangent about a different article. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 15:32, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
No one will have the energy to fix this, if it can be fixed. I'd go with deleting it. XOR'easter (talk) 19:54, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
Checking back through more of Chamaemelum's articles, Tayside children's sleep questionnaire may be copyvio, but I don't have journal access. XOR'easter? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:49, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
"The Tayside children's sleep questionnaire" through WP:Library Wiley, or here is the only journal article, the two book chapters are unavailable through wplibrary but can search for problematic text through Springer Link Pediatric Sleep Medicine and STOP, THAT and One Hundred Other Sleep Scales. fiveby(zero) 14:21, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
On top of the identical phrases flagged by Earwig, there is additional close paraphrasing (e.g., replacing easy-to-read and reliable with accessible and reliable, or changing posted to a representative sample of parents across the region with children in the appropriate age band to mailed to a representative sample of parents with children in the targeted age band across the region). I'd delete the whole thing. XOR'easter (talk) 23:04, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
A POV fork of race and intelligence that should be nuked from orbit. Guy (help! - typo?) 12:59, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
I was concerned that was the case, but am a bit busy to deal with it. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 13:01, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Genetics and educational attainment now linked above. Guy (help! - typo?) 13:06, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
Genetic nurture contained a lot of copyvio in the edit history which has still not been striked. I believe the article should be deleted. The author who has been blocked from Wikipedia is still eager to remove warnings about copyright from their user-page [11]. Psychologist Guy (talk) 17:14, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
They also added copyright to ADE model. A copyright investigation page should probably be filed against Chamaemelum's editing. Psychologist Guy (talk) 17:28, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
Wow, I did not realise just how much Chamaemelum had affected. Yes, these are good topics in statistical genetics, but they should probably be deleted and then recreated from scratch. What's the most appropriate way to get consensus for such an action? NeverRainsButPours (talk) 17:55, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
So, genetic nurture does not need to be at AFD-- I think it can be G-12 speedy deleted (not an admin). Sorry I missed that, and therein lies the problem with disruptive editors-- you can so busy dealing with their messes that you miss the bigger picture. NeverRain, when a WP:CCI is open, you can then use WP:PDEL to remove all of their contributions. We may have enough already for presumptive deletion to apply, but if anyone has time, they can file a CCI. Obviously, I haven't had time, and haven't been paying close enough attention. My hunch is that the damage can probably be contained without a CCI, but that would require us to comb through what contribs are left. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:50, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
I was unable to locate a copyvio by Chamaemelum at ADE model, but the first version of the article, by someone else, from 2008, was a copyvio, so I submitted a CSD G12. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:18, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
Psychologist Guy it is not clear to me that Genetic nurture is copyvio from the first version. Pingault is CC by 4, so that would be plagiarism and fixable without a G12. (I think-- not an expert). I've dug to the best of my ability into the bowels of Trejo and cannot determine which open access license is used. I don't have access to Kong to determine which Open access license is used there either. But by this edit, we definitely have copyvio from this copyrighted source. I can't submit a G12 until/unless I know if the first version is corrupt and there is nothing to revert to, meaning I have to know the licensing of Trejo. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:08, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
PS, I could request a revdel now on the Wang copyvio, but doing so may obscure the rest of the investigation for those of us who can't see deleted revisions; that is, I need the license terms on Trejo before proceeding. The Wang copyvio was introduced at the 3:14 edit and removed in the 5:44 edit; it appears that Chamaemelum edited by chunking in copy-paste text, and later rewriting it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:20, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
The preprint and Biodemography and Social Biology terms[12][13] look straightforward. Is there another version? fiveby(zero) 14:37, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
I was looking at something else apparently. If Trejo is that straightforward, then Genetic nurture need not be at AFD; it is a G12. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:38, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
Hey @SandyGeorgia, just noting I’ve seen this and will open a CCI when I have the time. Moneytrees🏝️(Talk) 05:44, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Note: I just checked the creator's global contributions and it looks like they may have made similar articles in other languages, particularly French. It might be worth somebody checking this, and maybe some of the other languages, out. --DanielRigal (talk) 00:00, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia @Fiveby @Psychologist Guy @ActivelyDisinterested etc, a CCI has been opened at Wikipedia:Contributor_copyright_investigations/Chamaemelum. The negligible edits will be moved in a little bit. Moneytrees🏝️(Talk) 02:25, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Talk:Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

There is a discussion ongoing at Talk:Electromagnetic hypersensitivity that may be of interest to this noticeboard: § World Health Organization Recognizes EHS as a Medical Diagnosis – dudhhr talk contribs (he/they) 16:50, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Zionism, race and genetics

Greetings. A recently created article has been marked for potential issues regarding neutrality and factual accuracy. We require additional attention from individuals who are courageous enough to engage in a potentially challenging environment. 88.12.182.175 (talk) 14:40, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

"a potentially challenging environment" What do you call a nuclear meltdown? A potential health hazard?[Humor] -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 15:05, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zionism, race and genetics. jps (talk) 18:43, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
The AfD is unhelpful as it will slow down / delay the ongoing constructive discussion between editors on the talk page. There are a significant number of high quality and recent academic sources on this subject. As the IP says, it is a challenging (i.e. potentially emotional) topic, so care is needed. On Wikipedia we do not shy away from well-sourced topics just because they are potentially contentious. Onceinawhile (talk) 19:07, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
You are living in a fantasy of your own invention. This has nothing to do with contentiousness. This has to do with making shit up. Point to one place other than that Wikipedia page where "Zionism, race, and genetics" is considered a coherent, single topic. So far, you've just done a lot of WP:SYNTH. jps (talk) 19:20, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
The page has been up 3 days. On being challenged about your familiarity with the sources, you assured the page you had read them. On a rough calculation that means you read 2,500 pages in less than three days. Well done. It's taken me several years to get a handle on that vast literature.Nishidani (talk) 21:23, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
That is a very strange strawman. The article is a massive WP:SYNTH violation, both broadly and on individual sources. Throughout the article there are ideas attributed to sources that aren’t actually there, or the article cherrypicks from them to synthesize a new narrative. If there is any article that gives off the impression that it was built by searching for keywords in Google Scholar and slopping quotes together, it’s this one. Drsmoo (talk) 00:36, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
I seem to have stumbled on a corner of Wikipedia that is inhabiting some bizarre parallel universe where Wikipedia is acting as an advanced college class (full of brilliant participants) rather than an encyclopedia. The idea is not to summarize 2500 pages of academic work in a term paper. The idea is to write articles that conform to basic standards of our WP:ENC. When I say I looked through the sources, that's exactly what I did: LOOKED THROUGH THEM. Close reading is what you would do to verify citations and facts in the article. Looking for big themes is what you do to confirm whether or not there is a coherent subject being discussed in a big way. Are there subfields of critical theory, for example, called "Zionism, race and genetics"? Instead, I found lots of dense analysis that could be used to fine effect as sources of various articles... but crucially nothing that seemed to indicate there was a coherent subject of the sort we would expect in an encyclopedia. Term paper topic? Why not? Entry found between Zionism, Christian and Zionism (disambiguation) in our index? Doesn't look like WP:ENC to me! jps (talk) 02:34, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
yeah, sure. . . There is no evidence you have read the sources, closely or otherwise.Nishidani (talk) 07:12, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
yeah, sure. . . by the way - WP:AGF is a behavioral guideline and WP:NPA is policy. You should have at least learned that with 92,000 edits. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 08:56, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
It's okay. I'm sure working in WP:ARBPIA for more than a decade will cause some to get a bit salty about outsiders coming in and using website procedures and jargon instead of, y'know, reading the books on the syllabus or whatever. jps (talk) 12:29, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
I may be salty but I don't play to the peanut gallery. Nishidani (talk) 12:38, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I respect that! jps (talk) 12:56, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I have not read the article, nor have I read the arguments for and against deletion (and I'm not masochistic enough to do so). But I know which side of ARBPIA this article favors purely because of which editors are !voting in which direction. If the way an editor !votes correlates so strongly with one side that you can predict their !vote regardless of the specific issues or policies being discussed, then that editor is almost certainly a civil POV pusher and should not be editing in the ARBPIA area. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 14:52, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm inclined to the opinion that WP:GEVAL (not to mention WP:FRINGE) implies that simply because one side benefits and one side does not from a particular action at this website, that does not necessarily mean that we have a problem. Where things go south, I think, is when you end up with stuff that goes beyond our website's normal procedures for sifting through what is okay to show the internet and what is not. jps (talk) 15:20, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
@Thebiguglyalien: Yesterday I "broke" my retirement to vote in that AFD specifically to rebut the conclusion you are making here today, because I knew editors would view it the way you viewed it. I'd recommend looking at the sources at the AFD -- just read the first sentence of the abstract of this paper, for one example -- because editors are misrepresenting sources. Anyone who says Zionism, race, and genetics, is not the subject of scholarly study is lying. There really is no other way to look at it. Levivich (talk) 17:29, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Is there a difference between [Zionism]+[race]+[genetics] and [Zionism]+[race and genetics] and [Zionism and race]+[genetics] and [Zionism and genetics]+[race] and [Zionism, race and genetics]? Because I definitely see a difference. I assume that it is only the last example that we are considering for this article, and I do not see this as the subject of the sources (or even part of the sources) provided. If you think I'm incorrect in that, I think that makes me a fool rather than a liar. jps (talk) 18:17, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
I guess the question, and the reason I'm fence-sitting on the issue to a certain extent is this question: Is does the literature that addresses the question of Zionism and race also address questions of genetics or just of heredity? Because genetics isn't exactly the same as heredity. That being said I'm sensitive that's a pretty fine hair to slice in an article in one of the most fraught areas of Wikipedia. I suppose the question then becomes whether this whole debate could be handily solved by just deleting the word "genetics" from the article title and retaining anything else sourced to RSes. Simonm223 (talk) 18:24, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
It's a bit all over the map. The fact of the matter is that race and genetics is, according to the article creator, one of the idealized parent articles of this one (and perhaps that explains the bizarre lack of the Oxford comma). But that subject, we all know too well here at this board, is itself completely fraught not from the perspective of the WP:MAINSTREAM, of course, but because the race realists, that seem to be far louder than their size should allow, are very annoying about a lot of this stuff. These numbskulls (that is, the race realists -- not anyone in these discussions currently of which I'm aware) sometimes use Jewish genetics (as referenced by fiveby helpfully below) to try to say certain politically motivated claims and it is absolutely true that there have been feedback loops in some cases -- instances of this documented in a number of the sources in the article in question. But, my god, is that [Zionism] + [race and genetics] then? I think it is. But then maybe I'm splitting hairs. The question I keep coming back to is: why is this telescoping take trying to serve as a standalone article meanwhile, Zionism as racism is a redlink and people are arguing without irony that this is a separate topic from that? jps (talk) 20:44, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
"Zionism as racism" would be a very loaded title. It also would not cover racist Anti-Zionism. Maybe something like "Zionism and racism" would be an option? I think one of the problems with the current title is that it sounds like there is some kind of connection between Zionism and race and genetics. But as far as I understand it the article is about the use of race theory and population genetics in arguments about Zionism. As to the issue of using "race and genetics" I'm assuming that it is an attempt at bringing together different attempts at employing science to argue for racist Zionism or racist Anti-Zionism. Where racists tried to use race theory in the past they now try to use population genetics as a sanitized version of race theory. Please correct me if I misunderstood what the article is about. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 20:55, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
I see this acting on a kind of hierarchy of style at least. Use of genetics to support Zionism, Racial identity arguments in Zionism, etc., etc. I can think of lots of ways to include some sources and bits of content. But I read the article as is and I see something that tries to tie everything together and ends up looking completely unweidly. jps (talk) 21:14, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Or "Zionist racialism", but it also should clarify what far-right group embraces it... Another possibility is merging in a main article, if it's not notable enough to merit its own. —PaleoNeonate – 21:57, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm not concerned with which side is "right" in this particular instance. I'm concerned with the editors whose !votes always just happen to be favorable to one side or the other, no matter what the policy issue is. Like I said, it's gotten the point where I can find an ARBPIA debate, look only at the usernames to see who supports and who opposes, and then I know which side the proposal favors. This happens in a lot of topic areas, but I've seen it in ARBPIA more than anywhere else, and I don't even edit in this area. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:01, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Thats a very simple minded way of looking at the topic area, and Id be glad to explain why on my talk page. But your comments arent really about the topic here, are they? nableezy - 15:03, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
Noah Tamarkin's "Jewish Genetics" (wplibrary) from Oxford Bibliographies might be helpful here. fiveby(zero) 19:16, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I already have that bibliography and am using it, slowly. There's so much on this topic that some further drafting will be submerged by the extensive reading required, beyond what we already have.Nishidani (talk) 21:20, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Noticed the overlap when i started comparing the references. What's everyone's take on Genetic studies on Jews#History and Hypotheses, Jewish_ethnic_divisions#Genetic_studies, The_Invention_of_the_Jewish_People#Genetic_evidence, etc.? As an ill-informed reader i'm looking for the "for dummies" or charitably "general audience" version for summary context. Side-by-side Zionism, race and genetics and Genetic studies on Jews don't look complementary, but competing maybe? fiveby(zero) 22:31, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
There are legitimate critiques to be had for using genetics to establish group relations in ways that map to social/cultural connections. Classic examples include the problems with "DNA essentialism" arguments that a number of USians use to claim Native American descent (famously Elizabeth Warren got mucked up in that). Those are critiques that do not take issue with the empirical results -- just the interpretations. But the problem there is, then, that there is nothing else to be done when asking questions about who belongs where? It's all group dynamics and identity at that point. Which means you either accept the correlates as evidence or you argue that correlates mean nothing. I don't see a third way. jps (talk) 22:50, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Lewontin had some commentary on Ostrer, Falk, and Abu El-Haj here, and briefly here. Not helpful for the article, but probably worth the quick read. fiveby(zero) 02:55, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
As far as I understand it Zionism, race and genetics is about using genetic studies on Jews (and before that race theory) to argue for or against Zionism. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 22:53, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Then you would be mistaken. It is about the role that genetics and concepts of race have played in Zionism. That is a well studied topic and there is no reason to not have an article on it. Nobody, I hope, is claiming that the current version of this new article ticks all the boxes yet. When the article has reached a point of stability, the title can be revisited. In my opinion this complaint is unjustified. Zerotalk 02:57, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
I am not sure how your comment relates to mine. I have never said that the article shouldn't exist and I never criticized the title (although I proposed a possible alternative above). And I don't think that your description of what the article is about is substantially different from mine. Was your comment directed at someone else or did I misunderstand you? -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 04:09, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
Actually after rereading what I wrote above I have to say that I did criticize the title, but not in the sense that the title is bad just that there may be better alternatives. But I don't think the title is of particular concern. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 04:13, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Have we not established here and in the AfD that this is NOT a fringe theory? This convo may be closed I think.Selfstudier (talk) 10:38, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't think that's been established at all (or even maybe what 'this' is?) Bon courage (talk) 11:59, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
The topics being discussed jut right up against fringe theories (in areas of race and genetics, for example) and it hasn't been established to my satisfaction whether the proposed article content will be able to avoid them completely, presuming the article is kept. There are still open threads in that discussion on questions of how pseudoscience and science are going to be demarcated in the article even as some of the involved users have said that it is important to reference or perhaps debunk certain pseudoscientific claims in the article (for example, those originating form scientific racism). jps (talk) 13:13, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
Tamarkin above points to the tension between geneticists and anthropologist and the echos of 19th and 20th race concepts and eugenics in contemporary debates. These, i think, are well-known divisions in the literature and difficult content for WP, even before the "who belongs where?" of a contentious topic area. In the Afd it is mentioned that a problem exists in some current content and a discussion resulted in the decision to create a new article for an underrepresented perspective. I look at say Jewish_ethnic_divisions#Genetic_studies with the uncritical presentation of Ostrer and imagine i see the issue. But there is also some valid push-back against the solution.
I don't know if that was a solid perspective from Lewontin, that the three main authors are taking some kind of genetic essentialism position, it's too short and vague to be really useful. But it does vaguely hint at a distasteful way the article could go: to present an important and valid perspective but then engage in the debate in a competing manner with other WP content. There are indication from the content that this is where the article is headed. The title and narrow scope which could lead to generating an essay rather than an encyclopedia article. The emotional involvement of the the Afd voters. The perspective of some keep voters, that this is important content, but not always endorsing the title, scope, or content i think shows that there is no real clear idea on how the article will end up serving the reader. The repetitive nature of the long selected quotes in footnotes, which seem to be trying to drive home a point rather than summarizing and making clear for the reader.
It's a work in progress and is making use of high quality sources, yet i do think the keep voters and editors would do well to onboard the criticism of those seeing a potential train wreck of an article ahead. fiveby(zero) 16:32, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
Certainly a good idea to have some constructive rather than destructive engagement, on that we can certainly agree. Selfstudier (talk) 16:59, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
And there's already the first WP:AE case. I doubt it will be the last. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 17:01, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Point of order: Wasn't the posting of this discussion in breach of WP:ARBPIA restrictions? Double checking the template, the "internal project discussions" covered by the ECP protections include AfDs, WikiProjects and noticeboard discussions, so this thread, at its inception, was a breach of WP:ARBPIA. And, based on the community time-wasting exercise this discussion and the associated AfD has become, I think we can see exactly why the CT restrictions cover noticeboard discussions. This was the sole edit of the discussion-launching OP, which is ... real interesting. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:52, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
    You're right. According to WP:ARBECR an ip editor should not have brought this here: "However, non-extended-confirmed editors may not make edits to internal project discussions related to the topic area, even within the "Talk:" namespace. Internal project discussions include, but are not limited to, AfDs, WikiProjects, RfCs, RMs, and noticeboard discussions." Although I think that in an ideal world having the discussion here would make a lot more sense than to take it directly to AfD. Unfortunately it seems that it is impossible to have a civilized and rational discussion about it on Wikipedia. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 14:25, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Talk:Zionism,_race_and_genetics#Requested_move_22_July_2023. I have requested a draftify for the page considering the active templates and consensus that there is a lot left to do to improve the work to get ready for article primetime after the no consensus close of the AfD. Input from all interested would be appreciated. jps (talk) 14:52, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

WP:BURO and WP:BATTLEGROUND make the most rational decision about the content unavailable as "out of process" and disruptive. fiveby(zero) 18:05, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
The request to draftify has been closed. Merely disruptive activity. It is long past time to close this since it is established that this is not fringe. Leaving it open merely provides opportunity for OT additions like the current one. Selfstudier (talk) 18:17, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

What do you mean it's not fringe? It has definite fringe implications mentioned in the text itself. jps (talk) 19:33, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

"Is a legitimate topic for an article" does not imply "is not fringe". Saying that this article does not fall under the criteria for this noticeboard would imply that it does not discuss fringe topics and/or opinions. And given that it discusses race science I don't think that is something anyone here wants to claim. (And there is no consensus on whether this is a legitimate topic for an article.) -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 20:13, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes; any time a scientific or historical subject bumps up against the fringe or is appropriated by fringe figures for their own ends, guidelines about how to cover fringe topics are relevant. XOR'easter (talk) 20:13, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

List of wealthiest historical figures

A lot of fictional claims have been made on this article by relying on dubious sources. See Talk:List of wealthiest historical figures#Stalin?. Aman Kumar Goel (Talk) 04:03, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

A list like this just seems inherently unworkable, due to The vast amount of time covered making the wealth of individual figures incomparable with each other. I would recommend taking it to AfD. Hemiauchenia (talk) 04:18, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
@Hemiauchenia: That makes sense. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of wealthiest historical figures (3rd nomination). Aman Kumar Goel (Talk) 04:31, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
It's inherently a bullshitter's exercise. Even for most rich people alive today, knowing their net worth is hard, because many assets aren't liquid so you need to calculate a fair value (see mark-to-market accounting). It's like if a source said someone had "the highest IQ in history"; the way IQ is calculated inherently makes that statement impossible, because the test-retest correlation (the same person taking an IQ test twice) is only 0.81. Same with wealth, too fuzzy a metric. People like Gates, Zuck, Musk are exceptions because their wealth is largely in the markets, where valuation is easy. Wasn't the case historically. DFlhb (talk) 04:38, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Timothy Ballard and Sound of Freedom (film)

I learned about this just now, but it seems to be appropriate to mention here. --Hob Gadling (talk) 17:25, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I am familiar with neither. Are there any issues right now, or is this more a "people may want to put this on their watchlist" FYI? -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 19:27, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
The filmmakers are QAnon-adjacent and that predilection may have served as motivation for making the film in the first place. People familiar with that morass may wish to make sure that this is properly handled from that perspective. jps (talk) 23:13, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
The second. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:12, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
There's a large social media push to try and legitimize this film as "how child trafficking really happens," while actual scholars on the subject are calling the film complete nonsense. So there's definitely going to be a problem with drive-bys and POV pushers trying to make the article seem to be factual, when it's depicting a fantasy. Also, anyone pointing out the movie is not realistic gets accused of pedophilia, so that's a thing. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 21:08, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
Nobody is calling the film "complete nonsense", and even if someone did that, here's a newsflash: films that are not documentaries are usually "not realistic". Red Slapper (talk) 00:01, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Experts in human trafficking do appear to be calling it nonsense. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:50, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
could you provide a source? Red Slapper (talk) 00:55, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
This one[14] for example. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:57, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Could you point to the sentence in that source the calls the film "total nonsense"? I couldn't find it. Red Slapper (talk) 01:10, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Were you able to find substantially equivalent language in Why Anti-Trafficking Experts Are Torching ‘Sound of Freedom’? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:12, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
No, I wasn't. I saw some criticism about the film's focus on younger kids , which make up a (substantial) minority among child trafficking cases. What is the language that you as see as "substantially equivalent"? Red Slapper (talk) 01:18, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
And after the criticism about the film's inaccurate representation of who gets trafficked and what their story looks like? What do the other experts say isn't an accurate representation of reality (in layman's terms nonsense)? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:25, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Albright says Sound of Freedom is "grounded in this sensational perspective of what child trafficking would be," rather than reflecting its grim reality.
Sound of Freedom offers a "false perception" of how the majority of child trafficking actually takes place, according to Albright.
"What they are learning is so divorced from reality that it does sling back to create harm," says Albright.
I wouldn't say that this is substantially equivalent to "total nonsense" it is closer to "dangerous and actively harmful misinformation". -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 01:33, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
I said it was equivalent to nonsense, note that "total nonsense" is a misquote as well. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:36, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Sorry, "Complete nonsense'. What a significant difference that synonym makes! Red Slapper (talk) 01:40, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
I love synonyms, for instance nonsense and fiction. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:43, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
...and here move the goalposts. Saying that this aspect or that aspect isn't accurate is far removed from "total nonsense". Every film that is not a documentary but a dramatization of some real life story has aspects that have been exaggerated, modified, etc, as this film's producers readily acknowledge. And you know why? Because I said above - fictional action films are just that - fiction. Red Slapper (talk) 01:33, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Unless I am missing something you're the only one to have used the term "total nonsense". I only ever used nonsense and the line you appear to be quoting was "complete nonsense". However would you not agree that "fiction" and "complete nonsense" are substantially equivalent? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:37, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
The "it's fiction" argument takes a huge hit when things like this happen: In the epilogue, actor Jim Caviezel addresses the audience and encourages them to share the movie with others and to pay it forward by buying tickets to allow others to see the movie, to increase the public awareness of the situation and to hopefully end human trafficking. I'm not sure that you increase public awareness of a situation when your depiction of that situation is "divorced from reality" and offers a "false perspective". -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 01:46, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Also got to admire anyone who can say "buy tickets to my movie to end human trafficking" with a straight face. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 01:47, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
What an interesting perspective. Do you similarly think that Al Gore or Guggenheim deserve derision because they sold tickets to An Inconvenient Truth? Red Slapper (talk) 02:16, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Did they say "buy tickets to our movie to end climate change"? If so, yes. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 02:28, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
An Inconvenient Truth is a documentary, I thought you said this was a work of fiction. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:44, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
What difference does in make in this instance, where the objection is supposedly to someone making a pitch to audience to buy tickets to his movie in order to solve a big problem? Did you even read what person no 362... worte in response ? That they said ""buy tickets to our movie to end climate change" it would be worthy of derision ? Red Slapper (talk) 11:40, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
The key point being that they don't appear to ever have said that, I can't find any suggestion that An Inconvenient Truth was marketed that way. You then appear to have moved the goal posts and declared that any promotion of the film effectively did the same thing, which is an odd thing to argue. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 12:22, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Not sure I follow. So it's ok to make a big profit by charging money for your film that is meant to help fix a big issue, but somehow not ok to say that it costs money? Red Slapper (talk) 13:35, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
I don't believe that anyone said that buying tickets to An Inconvenient Truth would fix the issue. Again you've moved the goalposts, its hard to have a conversation when you do that. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 13:51, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
I indeed misquoted, sorry about that. Do you think there's some meaningful distinction between "complete nonsense" and "total nonsense"?
And no, "fiction" and "complete nonsense" are very much not substantially equivalent. By way of example - The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a work of fiction, yet it very realistically and accurately depicts the Cold War espionage scene. Red Slapper (talk) 01:49, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Do you prefer the alternative "dangerous and actively harmful misinformation" which has been suggested? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:54, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
No, I disagree with that editor's opinion. Have you seen the movie, BTW? Red Slapper (talk) 02:17, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
I have, I thought it was pretty good. Personally I'm capable of separating artists from the art, I can enjoy Braveheart even though Mel Gibson is an extremist religious figure and anti-semite. I can enjoy David Bowie even though he is a child rapist. I can enjoy this movie even if the people behind it hold fringe ideas about QAnon. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 12:26, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
ANd I am in the same position, Which is why I find the attempts to tie the movie to QAnon based on things the actors say or believe so despicable, Red Slapper (talk) 13:37, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
It doesn't matter how we feel about what WP:RS choose to say, we cover them without bias or favor. If RS tie the two together so must we, no matter what our own thoughts on the issue are. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 13:51, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
This feels prophetic, in hindsight.[Joke] Warrenmck (talk) 02:41, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Also, anyone pointing out the movie is not realistic gets accused of pedophilia: one of the sources may possibly be useful IRT this context: " Caviezel's final statement double crystallizes the nonetheless foggy stakes: if you're not with us, you're with them, whoever they are." —PaleoNeonate – 14:38, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
  • I am actively concerned about the several established editors over there making blatantly false statements about the reliable sources (and being directly corrected with evidence, but then ignoring the evidence given entirely) in order to ensure the whitewashing of the article so it doesn't discuss the fringe subject matter covered in the sources. We just had TFD claim that the reliable source covered video of a promotional press interview for the film isn't reliable because it could be out of context and also any transcript of the interview could be faked. What the heck is going on? SilverserenC 19:58, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
    The insinuations in your last sentence are highly improper, I suggest you strike them unless you have some very solid evidence for them. Red Slapper (talk) 20:14, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
    I removed it, though your comments above are funny in relation to that, since it seems like you have an extreme COI when it comes to this fringe topic. SilverserenC 23:04, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
    I have absolutely no COI with regards to the film or its cast. Please strike that baseless remark, or I will do it for you as it is a personal attack. Comment on content, not editors.,Red Slapper (talk) 23:23, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
    Saying someone has a COI in relation to their comments and edits on a topic is not a personal attack. That is a comment on the content of responses and actions you've been making. SilverserenC 23:47, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
    I'm not going to bother trying to copy the other links to the times Red Slapper has asked editors "have you seen the movie" since one of them is right above in this thread. But I do question why Red Slapper feels it's fair to demand Original Research from editors despite Original Research being against policy of wikipedia. That definitely points to some kind of fan-of-the-film conflict of interest coloring Red Slapper's judgement and leading towards his repeated denials of what the Reliable Sources say. Saikyoryu (talk) 02:26, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
    @Silver seren: Unlike others, I am fine with discussing particular editors here as I think history shows we can often handle things without involving the more dramatic drahmaboards. But it does skirt the boundaries of decorum and is one of the things this board gets sometimes criticized for. In any case, please follow the directions at the top: If you mention specific editors, please notify them. You may use {{subst:ftn-notice}} to do so. when mentioning anyone by name, just to keep people less riled up. jps (talk) 14:01, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
    Red Slapper turns out to be a sock. Doug Weller talk 06:52, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
    And Saikyoryu. Doug Weller talk 20:50, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Environmental Working Group

I'm uncertain if this is the correct noticeboard, as it isn't clear to me if this is a fringe group per se, but additional eyes might do well at Environmental Working Group. Talk page discussions related to the group's less-than-universally-accepted stances on various chemicals, and how (or if) they should be represented in the article are beginning to heat up a bit. As an extra bonus, WP:MEDRS issues also seem in play. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 22:17, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

I would say this board applies, as the line between anti-science fearmongering about "chemicals" and FRINGE is pretty narrow in general. SilverserenC 22:26, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for posting this. The short of it for those unfamiliar with the topic is that we deal with a lot of fringe stuff from this group whether it's anti-GMO, vaccines cause autism, the "dirty dozen" etc. The core thing right now I've been trying to work on is how to give an overview of the groups major activities with independent sourcing (often where MEDRS comes into play). Sometimes the EWG just doesn't get much attention on some things it does, sometimes only WP:PARITY sources, speak up, etc. The group often makes headlines in the news with reports that are often not peer-reviewed, but generally aren't in reliable sources.
Other content (e.g., sunscreen) has been added in the past in more of a carte blanche manner or in WP:SYNTH territory that gives to the appearance of legitimizing the group as influencing FDA decisions, etc. I think it's fair to say we're at a relative lull right now as some discussion is ongoing with respect to MEDRS needs, but this is a point where more eyes from editors experienced with fringe and MEDRS issues would help alleviate some of the ongoing pressure there for us regulars. KoA (talk) 01:25, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

John Clauser

See also: Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard/Archive 91 § CO2 Coalition

Some of you may be familiar with the tactics of the climate change denial industry run by the oil lobby. In the event that you aren't, they generally handpick a non-climate scientist from another field, preferably someone older and unfamiliar with the subject. In many cases, the chosen representative has an award in a non-climate field so that they can appeal to the authority of the person denying climate science. An example of how they engage in this fallacy on Wikipedia is here.[15] While this might appear harmless to some, this kind of appeal to authority is the bread and butter of climate denial. Without it, it would barely exist as a phenomenon. It's also an extremely effective form of propaganda in the conservative community, who often rely on arguments from authority and loyalty as a basis for their philosophy. This pattern of behavior from the oil lobby occurs regularly, every year or so. The oil lobby's latest candidate is physicist John Clauser, who in May of this year was brought on board the CO2 Coalition, a climate denying oil lobby front group. Today, the right wing blogosphere, which is often used by the oil lobby to spread these fringe claims, released a post on Human Events, a conservative website which has conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec as a senior editor. The post promotes the climate denial views of John Clauser. After it was posted, an anon editor showed up to make these changes.[16] I just reverted them, but I'm wondering if the quote by Clauser should also be removed. It was added in May by Kolg8,[17] a user who sporadically shows up to push conservatism and climate denial on Wikipedia. I'm not sure what to do about these edits and behavior, so I'm posting here to bring it to the attention of the larger community. Viriditas (talk) 08:36, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

I deleted the quote here.[18] I don't see why we should repeating this nonsense. Viriditas (talk) 08:42, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
I agree with that removal. The quote adds nothing meaningful. XOR'easter (talk) 16:53, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
I just realized that the quote by Clausen was in part a restatement of a quote made by Bjørn Lomborg in the past ("There is, however, a very real problem with providing a decent standard of living to the world’s large population and an associated energy crisis"). It makes me think Clausen is using a talking point or script written by the CO2 Coalition. Here’s their original press release with a number of other zingers.[19] Viriditas (talk) 19:28, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
Added footnote: "DeSmog: "According to his listed publications, and his profile on Google Scholar, John F. Clauser has written primarily in the areas of quantum mechanics and atom and X-ray interferometry. He does not appear to have written any peer-reviewed publications directly relating to climate science".[20] Viriditas (talk) 08:52, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
It's sad to see how far Clauser has fallen. I'm a physicist who works in his field. I've watched live his Nobel Prize lecture last year. His mind is clearly gone. Tercer (talk) 10:21, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
This is a situation where WP:NFRINGE seems to indicate that no mainstream sources are really paying attention to this latest scientist to fall victim to Nobel disease and/or the physicist's hubris. We can say that he opposed mainstream science, but I don't see any reason to go beyond that in our pages until there is some notice of his wackiness. I see that he was disinvited from giving a talk at the IMF, but it was such a non-event that it was only covered in the denialist blogosphere which, much to my surprise, is still a thing. jps (talk) 14:19, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
Agreed. I just requested SPP due to the IP tag team reverts. Viriditas (talk) 19:20, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

I reverted some WP:POVPUSHing and poorly sourced WP:PUFFERY added by StarchildSF (talk · contribs). I will inform them of this thread. jps (talk) 21:16, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I see that they cited the Steven Milloy site JunkScience.com[21] which is promoting the CO2 Coalition talking points. I’m surprised to find that there hasn’t been adequate discussion about the unreliability of JunkScience.com (and Milloy in general), and was even more surprised to see that it didn’t appear on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources. This source is not reliable and should never be used on Wikipedia. Viriditas (talk) 21:38, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
Sites get listed on WP:RSP when there have been multiple discussions about their reliability. If a site is so obviously bad there's never a debate about it (or if the only debate ends in a resounding declaration), it's not really a "perennial" matter. So, sometimes the really blatantly bad sites don't get listed. XOR'easter (talk) 23:32, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
Help:Linksearch says it is limited in use to Steven Milloy, so I guess we are okay. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 02:21, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Witchcraft

There's an ongoing discussion at Talk:Witchcraft that may be of interest to this noticeboard. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:09, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Any section in particular? Brunton (talk) 17:12, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
Most of the open sections are part of the same discussion. The most active ones in the last few days are Talk:Witchcraft#Ridiculous! and Talk:Witchcraft#Proposal. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:18, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
Several longtime pro-fringe editors involved, no surprise there... 2603:7000:CF0:7280:58B:3BD4:1DAB:AEB4 (talk) 21:49, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
Essentially, the discussion is about whether something that does not exist would be good or bad if it existed. A difficult decision... --Hob Gadling (talk) 12:19, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
Well, Sabrina the teenage witch fights vampires, so that's pretty good. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:26, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
Well, this section Talk:Witchcraft#The Reality of Witchcraft makes a point the the article is essentially written from a point of view that assumes witchcraft is real. That's a fringe view, isn't it? Skyerise (talk) 14:31, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes and no, it exists, the question is does it work...not in my experience. Slatersteven (talk) 14:37, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
It assumes that the belief in witchcraft as a sociocultural phenomenon existed and still exists today, not that witchcraft itself is real, which it obviously isn't from a rationalist perspective, because magic isn't. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:11, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
I don't believe that it's established that those accused of witchcraft actually did witchcraft. That is, the belief in witchcraft exists, as does the unbelief in it. Yet the unbelief side isn't really represented. Stereotyping is discussed a bit, but it hasn't made it's way into the lead section yet. It seems every time an editor tries to bring the question of stereotyping or projection into the lead, even with sources, it gets removed. Skyerise (talk) 16:13, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
Are you proposing a treatment more in line with something like this, Skyerise? jps (talk) 16:15, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
Not necessarily as an overall treatment. Just inclusion of that side of the discussion. Skyerise (talk) 16:20, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm not sure I see "sides" here. The pretty straightforward summaries in the source I linked to seem close to the WP:MAINSTREAM understanding to me. My question is, what is the alternative position and what are the best sources which indicate that it is something taken seriously? On the other hand, I'm not entirely convinced that the article as written is at complete variance with the source. Perhaps a few tweaks of wording is all that is required? Help us out. jps (talk) 16:25, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
Well, I recently saw a source that noted that Roman Catholicism has avoided taking a firm stance regarding the reality or unreality of magic. Not sure how relevant that is, but it is part of the process of maintaining a stereotype. Also, nearly all the sources which define witchcraft then go on to discuss how much of that definition is due to stereotyping, which discussions generally include material on the reality of witchcraft discussion. If the sources qualify the definition by commenting on these things, shouldn't Wikipedia as well? Skyerise (talk) 16:34, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
Of course, Wikipedia should follow the sources. I think that is uncontroversial. Are there others who say that it shouldn't follow the sources? If no, just try to align the wording. It may be that there is no one who will object. jps (talk) 22:06, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
In progress, but there are a couple of gatekeepers, so we'll see... Skyerise (talk) 22:08, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
These big, thorny issues have now been taken to dispute resolution. Would appreciate more pairs of eyes on the subject. Thanks. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 19:07, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

More Original Fringe Research About the Richat Structure Being Atlantis

There is new unsourced, original research about the Richat Structure being Atlantis being discussed on the Richat Structure's talk page and added to its article again. Go see Talk - Claims About Richat Structure being Atlantis; Talk - Richat Structure; and Richat Structure: Difference between revisions. Paul H. (talk) 14:32, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

@Imjustjamei: Courtesy ping. jlwoodwa (talk) 23:50, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Ian Stevenson

A user has put 1000s of words on the talk-page and has been deleting sources critical of Stevenson's reincarnation claims and is now adding dubious tags. I don't have time to go through all the edits as this is not normally a topic that interests me. Any experts in this subject area might be able to help. Psychologist Guy (talk) 20:47, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

It is a slow but very dedicated rewrite focused on removing, invalidating, or watering down criticism of the subject's reincarnation research and or the concept of reincarnation in general. Non-summer vacation eyes appreciated. - LuckyLouie (talk) 20:52, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
Fun times. I went a bit back in time. I'm a little confused about the argument about Baker. I see references to Stevenson in there. Maybe I've messed up the citation? Anyway... we'll see. @O Govinda: should be aware of this discussion. I will notify them. jps (talk) 01:10, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Inner Healing Movement

Religious memory recoverers, belongs on watchlists. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:10, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

LK-99

Since LK-99 is a supposed room-temperature superconductor, the relevant article is liable to attract some questionable attention. Keep an eye on it. ―Susmuffin Talk 20:00, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Suicide of Beranton Whisenant

A 2017 suicide of a private person (a low-profile civil servant). As the revision history makes clear, the only reason this article was created was because of social media disinfo that briefly seized on the case to push baseless conspiracy theories. Now up at AfD; more eyes welcome. Neutralitytalk 03:41, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Roger A. Pielke

Roger A. Pielke draws exclusively on directories and affiliated sources. We cite his blog for statements of his contrarian beliefs on climate change, but we don't cite the articles to which he is responding, which point out that he is a contrarian. Almost all coverage is related to his son Roger A. Pielke Jr. who has no climate qualifications and is generally classified as a climate change denialist.

This article reads as if it were written by someone sympathetic to climate change denialism. Guy (help! - typo?) 12:58, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

User:JzG, I’m surprised this article hasn’t been fixed by now. Pielke is characterized as a climate denier, not a contrarian, by Joseph Romm and others, who have demolished his bizarre arguments, so it’s unusual that these arguments remain in his biography without challenge or correction. Viriditas (talk) 23:11, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Graham Phillips (writer)

A fringe mess. The repeated use of the term "controversies" is too mild for this fringe nonsense. There are too many publications listed (I just removed a self-published one described as a scientific examination - copied from the publisher) and don't belong just after the lead. Most of the rest is promotional, dubious sources, etc. Doug Weller talk 08:54, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, Doug, ever watchful. Please edit as appropriate. --Animalparty! (talk) 02:52, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Muhammad related AfDs

This article is frequently recreated in a suspicious manner for almost 10 years now. It is about a non-notable book that aims to prove Islamic prophet Muhammad was actually Hindu God Kalki.
The non-notable author of the above book. Aman Kumar Goel (Talk) 02:08, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Investigation of UFO reports by the United States government

Investigation of UFO reports by the United States government (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

In principle, this seems like a fine subject for an article. As it is currently written, it seems to lack a great deal of context.

jps (talk) 18:30, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Lab leak theory at NPOV

There's currently a discussion at NPOVN in regard to the COVID-19 lab leak theory that might be of interest to this noticeboard. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:33, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Discussion Concerning Kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro

There is currently a discussion about splitting off the various conspiracy theories and moving them into a sperate article. The discussion can be found here. -Ad Orientem (talk) 02:47, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Ross Coulthart

Critique of this reporter's fringe advocacy being removed. - LuckyLouie (talk) 15:01, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Physics Essays

I am not sure what the next step for Physics Essays is. It is an uncritical article on an obviously fringe journal. I asked on reference desk for reviews this journal's quality. However, nobody has succeeded. And since the AfD for the article was closed as "keep", I am at loss as to what I am supposed to do now. What is the protocol for dealing with a fringe article without any significant coverage? Ca talk to me! 15:00, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

It's obviously a crackpot journal, so no physicist will waste their time writing a review about it. The difficulty is how to convey this to lay people, they won't be familiar with the bibliographic databases either, in order to understand that being included only by ESCI is a red flag. Tercer (talk) 15:09, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
Some physicist out there ought to be willing to write down what everybody knows about Physics Essays and a few others. As long as they made no specific claims about individual living people, even a blog post or a page on a faculty website would be admissible. XOR'easter (talk) 15:59, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
I would be very happy if a physicist other than me were to do that. Tercer (talk) 17:17, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Why is this an article? There are no sources about this low-impact journal. jps (talk) 19:25, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

The consensus of the AfD was that WP:NJOURNALS was applicable and satisfied. It has always been low impact, but the fact that the people who calculate impacts did so for it means that it's worth recording. XOR'easter (talk) 20:08, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
I've complained about that indexing standard before, but have made little headway. I see literally no usable sources for this journal except for its inclusion in arbitrary lists. The closest I could find was a fringe physicist's blog where he complaining about another fringe physicist using the journal as evidence of publication. It's such bottom of the barrel scraping here that I am at a loss. This may be the example that shows why WP:NJOURNALS is corrupt. Anyone want to start a WP:VP on the subject? How about User:Headbomb or User:Randykitty? jps (talk) 20:13, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
WP:NJOURNALS asks that journals be catalogued in selective indices, the same indices that the whole academic profession uses to guide its business (for good or ill). Disparaging those amounts to rejecting the standards of the subject we're supposed to be documenting and substituting our own. (Do I personally want to burn down the academic publishing industry? Kinda, yeah. But that's a different hobby. Wikipedia isn't the place to throw Molotov cocktails.) The sources are present, reliable, and independent; stepping outside of the RS to find more will end up scraping the bottom of the barrel, whatever the topic. XOR'easter (talk) 20:31, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
Plus, if you want to find coverage of Physics Essay in books, it certainly exists. Nothing I can access sadly. "Electronics World + Wireless World Volume 96, Issues 1647-1658" is a maybe, but it's from the 1990s when the journal made more sense. There's also some criticism of Harold Puthoff around. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:00, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
This is not about disparaging indices, it's about whether there exist reliable sources we can use to write a sensible article. As Physics Essays illustrates, just because the journal was included in a selective index doesn't imply that such sources exist. Which makes WP:NJOURNALS fatally flawed. Tercer (talk) 22:35, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm not sure why the current article isn't "sensible". Sure, it doesn't have a giant disclaimer that the journal is bunk (a disclaimer which the people who like fringe physics will either ignore or take as a badge of honor). That's suboptimal, but not disastrous. So, I'm not seeing the fatal flaw. There's a downside, maybe, that applies in rare edge cases — journals respectable enough to have been selectively indexed at some point but which are now evidently schlock while also not having that schlockiness documented outside of the occasional forum post. How common are those journals? Every guideline has edge cases, hard cases make bad law, etc. XOR'easter (talk) 23:56, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
The current article claims it is peer-reviewed. The current article says it is publishing science. The current article heavily implies it is part of academic physics. None of this is true. Seems like it is doing a disservice to the reader to say as much, but apparently we are allowed (and perhaps even required if I read into the revert of my excising of these "facts" correctly) to say these things because this journal itself says it about them? In what WP:FRINGE world does this make sense? jps (talk) 02:25, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
I've argued at some length that the claim about it being peer-reviewed should be removed. XOR'easter (talk) 14:15, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
For that I thank you. But look at the pushback! "Where is your source that argues otherwise?" The point is, we lack sources to such an extent that it makes it nearly impossible to write a factual article on the subject. Even a factual stub! jps (talk) 16:41, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
We don't write articles to help crackpots. Who we should have in mind are people who don't already know about Physics Essays and read Physics Essays to find out. And we are not helping them right now.
I don't think this is an edge case. The existence of reliable sources is the very foundation of Wikipedia. A guideline implying we should write an article without them is rather destructive.
Think of a less contentious case: a journal that is indexed by Scopus and has an impact factor but is neither fringe nor influential, just irrelevant and uninteresting. I'm sure there are plenty of these. Why should we have articles about them? And, crucially, based on what could we write those articles? Tercer (talk) 06:46, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Why shouldn't we have articles about them? The information to write them is available—citation indices are good for that much—and they could benefit the encyclopedia, e.g., by being linked from whatever sources we use that happen to be published there. (Even a dull journal can publish the occasional thing worth citing in one of our millions of articles.) The article Physics Essays isn't a page written without reliable sources; it's a page written without access to all the reliable sources that we wished existed. XOR'easter (talk) 14:30, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Because Wikipedia is not a database. If there's no information about a journal other than what is on the citation index there is no point in writing an article. I think WP:NASTRO does the analogous job very well: it explicitly excludes astronomical objects that are only one entry in a large database. The corresponding article would be an eternal stub consisting of little more than the name, position, and magnitude. Tercer (talk) 15:27, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
There is another downside for editors who are trying to source a page or evaluate a claim of notability and do not realize Physics Essays is not an RS! I always check wikipedia when I come across unfamiliar journals as sources, and while we here know to be suspicious of indexing in ESCI or Copernicus, for most editors if WP says it's a peer-reviewed academic journal without noting any issues they're going to assume it's legit. JoelleJay (talk) 04:41, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
the same indices that the whole academic profession uses to guide its business (for good or ill). Disparaging those amounts to rejecting the standards of the subject we're supposed to be documenting and substituting our own. I disagree with this take as well. I think Wikipedia is at its best when it is extremely conservative in its standards for standalone articles. I want to see multiple sources written about a journal in serious, comprehensive fashions before writing an article on it. I don't want to just check to see something is on a list regardless if that is what tenure committees lazily do. jps (talk) 18:10, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Before anybody starts an extended discussion about NJournals, it's probably worth while to have a look at the histories of that page and its talk page. Basically, each time there was an attempt to either invalidate NJournals or to elevate it to an accepted guideline (currently it's just a guideline), there are basically three groups of editors: 1/ Those who want to do away with it and require journal articles to adhere to GNG or be deleted; 2/ Those who argue that academic journals are what WP is based upon and that therefore all journals should be regarded automatically notable; and 3/ Those that support NJournals as it stands. Personally, I think that both 1 and 2 have undesirable effects and that the current praxis is a workable compromise. Personally, again, I'd tighten things a bit (getting rid of criteria 2 and 3), but that runs into the same "no consensus" situation. --Randykitty (talk) 21:30, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
    It should have been deleted because it lacks sufficient coverage in secondary sources. I've seen lots of non-notable articles survive AfD, so this is not unusual. There should be a deletion team that finds and deletes these articles.
    WP:NJOURNALS btw is just an essay expressing the opinions of whomever contributed to it. Since some editors take it seriously, you might consider changing it. While you cannot improperly canvass, if you use notice boards to get wider input it should have a positive effect.
    The article says nothing beyond what one would find if they went to the journal's webpage. In that sense, it's not doing any harm. And being fringe (I am unfamiliar with the journal) is not a reason for deletion. TFD (talk) 23:06, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
    A "deletion team" that goes around deleting articles that explicitly survived AfD would be a massive overruling of community decision-making. XOR'easter (talk) 23:41, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
    This is the problem with notability policies that end up thumbing their noses in the face of other established Wikipedia rules. To be fair, NJOURNALS isn't the only one that does this, but it seems pretty egregious that it is allowing an article to be written that claims without so much as a wink and nod that Physics Essays is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about physics. jps (talk) 02:28, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
    See WP:VNT. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:50, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
    C'mon. WP:TRUTHMATTERS. jps (talk) 03:13, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
    I envisioned something like Wikipedia:New pages patrol which goes around deleting or AfDing articles that do not meet policy. However, it does not include older articles.
    While you may describe a vote of 8 editors community decision making, these types of votes usually have little input beyond the people who created and contribute to the article. Then there are editors who routinely vote keep regardless of the merits. And they don't even have to persuade uninvolved editors the article should exist, just get "no consensus." Having more uninvolved editors weighing in would better reflect community consensus. TFD (talk) 13:28, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Should I send this to WP:Deletion review? There is now evidence that it is impossible to write a WP:NPOV-complying article on this journal. Ca talk to me! 13:08, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
The point of DRV is to reevaluate whether an AfD was closed properly, not to relitigate the arguments made there. It's for deciding whether the closer misread the consensus.
Nothing indicates that an NPOV article is impossible about this journal. The only problem is that no physicist has bothered to write down the obvious yet. NPOV means fairly reflecting what the reliable sources say. The article does that. If further reliable sources existed, they would probably have more to say, and our article would have to be expanded to reflect that. XOR'easter (talk) 14:10, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
NPOV is more about representing viewpoints published by reliable sources fairly. None of the listed sources provide any views about the journal, just general statistics. I interpreted it as violating NPOV because there is no views to represent, so we can not representing fairly [...] all the significant views. Ca talk to me! 14:26, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Here's the issue, then. If no one has bothered to mention the obvious issue, then that means that the topic is likely not notable per WP:NFRINGE. That's, like, the whole point of our WP:FRINGE guideline. And now that's being superceded by WP:LOCALCONSENSUS about academic journals which is being run like a petty fiefdom without accountability. jps (talk) 15:39, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Incorrect. Until and when you have reliable sources that establish this journal is a fringe journal, NFRINGE does not apply. --Randykitty (talk) 15:58, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
That has never been how this has worked for anything but fringe journals. Every other topic covered by WP:FRINGE does not demand a source explaining that the thing is fringe because fringe ideas are often ignored. When they are ignored, we consider the idea to be so obscure as to be non-notable. That's the way we have done this for more than 10 years. jps (talk) 16:06, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Nothing indicates that an NPOV article is impossible about this journal. I disagree. I think the fact that we cannot even get the statement "peer-reviewed" removed from the article means that we are running into impossibilities here. jps (talk) 16:43, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia editors having a barney is a sign that the day ends in -y, not that an article is impossible to write. XOR'easter (talk) 16:49, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
In this particular case there are no sources about whether the journal is peer-reviewed other than the journal itself. I think it's a clear case of impossibility, as opposed to a mere disagreement. Tercer (talk) 16:57, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
I mean, I see their point. They've deemed the journal worthy of a standalone article. WP:ABOUTSELF seems to cover the scenario where no other reliable source contradicts the claims of the journal. What's the alternative argument? That we can accept the indexing as a reliable source but nothing else? Then we end up with the stubbiest of stubs (which, to be fair, I tried, but I think I agree with User:Headbomb that WP:ABOUTSELF applies and I'm not sure that unduly self-serving is what is actually going one when the physics cranks who run that outlet are claiming "peer review" in their description of the activities of the place -- it's just misleading since it is obviously only going to go out to other crank or crank-sympathetic reviewers since literally no one else would ever agree to review for Physics Essays). jps (talk) 17:14, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
I would be willing to argue that the claim of being peer-reviewed is unduly self-serving. And as I said somewhere in this mess of a discussion, I think it is WP:UNDUE for the MOS:LEDE given the state of the article. By the letter of wiki-law, the lede should be talking about how the journal was delisted from Scopus! XOR'easter (talk) 17:20, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Okay, but until we have a source like "Delisting Review" that talks about delisting, I hesitate to say we can say anything about that given WP:OR. I wonder if WP:COMMONSENSE can be applied in this instance. I would argue "probably not" since it is directly relevant to a disputed claim (that the journal is garbage). jps (talk) 17:23, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
ESCI requires that journal are peer-reviewed. Physics Essays is indexed in ESCI. That's one RS that considers ESCI to be peer-reviewed.
Peer reviewed is an activity that happens. It does not necessarily imply quality or meaningfulness. A kindergartner asking their classmate for feedback on drawing is peer-review. So do cranks asking other cranks.
The usual wording when the quality of the peer review is under question is something like "describes itself as a peer-reviewed journal, although the quality of the process has been questioned [citations supporting criticism of the peer review process at said journal]".
Find these sources, and we can include them in the article. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:28, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
You know and I know that peer review does not necessarily imply quality or meaningfulness. However, we ought to consider the perspective of readers who don't necessarily know that; including that bare descriptor in the article can send a misleading impression to an audience less acquainted with the possibility that cranks can "review" other cranks, that too many referees just skim for typos, etc. We don't need more sources just to drop the "peer-reviewed" descriptor from the text. While one could infer from ESCI that some kind of review process at least nominally happens, that doesn't obligate us to use the words. XOR'easter (talk) 17:35, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
On WP:FRINGE itself, we describe a situation that is relevant here: Journal of Frontier Science... uses blog comments as its supposed peer review. In my reading, we might accept such a thing as peer review even though for most of Wikipedia's existence the WP:FRINGE guideline has asked us not to do that. I suppose you are hanging your hat on ESCI indexing, then, but... hmm... that kind of hoopjumping seems a bit WP:SYNTHetic to me. jps (talk) 17:42, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
No, by your own standards you need a source explicitly claiming that Physics Essays is peer-reviewed. Tercer (talk) 17:47, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
And we have it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:49, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Only by syllogism.
A whole lot is riding on (1) being assumed to be correct. And, moreover, such arguments have tended in the past to be frowned upon per WP:SYNTH. YMMV.
jps (talk) 17:55, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
(1) A reliable source says all the journals included in a list are peer reviewed.
(2) A journal is on the reliable source's list of peer-reviewed journals
(1)+(2) that journal is peer reviewed.
Every claim back by any sources have the same supposed weakness you just 'unearthed'. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:23, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

We have specific reason to doubt Clarivate and Taylor & Francis's claims that all the journals conduct legitimate peer review and it is documented in our article Emerging Sources Citation Index. I am less than enthused that you have not acknowledged this yet. jps (talk) 20:07, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

NJOURNALS is an essay and carries zero weight in AfDs. So the fact that the keep !votes did not cite any policy or guideline should have been taken into consideration. JoelleJay (talk) 04:21, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
I had forgotten about this wrinkle. It may be time to revisit a question of AfD or marking the essay as {{historical}}. We need to break the juggernaut that is the NJOURNALS LOCALCONSENSUS. jps (talk) 11:54, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
Articles should always be based on reliable, independent, secondary sources. Topics that are not subject to an official SNG default to the GNG, which requires SIGCOV in multiple reliable, independent, secondary sources. If a topic is only sourced to primary or non-independent sources, like databases or its own website, it should not have a standalone page. If a topic under GNG does not have SIGCOV, it should not have a standalone page. The journal is clearly FRINGE, so that means the higher standards of FRINGE also apply. All of the issues above regarding how the wiki page only regurgitates what the journal says about itself are a great example of how it is not possible to write an NPOV article from primary and non-independent sources. JoelleJay (talk) 04:32, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm afraid you're misreading WP:ABOUTSELF. All five criteria need to apply for a claim to be acceptable. And we have a hard fail at criterion 4, namely there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity. Tercer (talk) 17:29, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I'd say there is reasonable doubt there. XOR'easter (talk) 17:36, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
I think that this clause is meant to apply mostly to impersonations on Twitter and the like. Or the odd case where someone appears on the talkpage of the Wikipedia article arguing that some factoid or another is wrong. jps (talk) 17:37, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Indeed, there is no doubt the Physics Essays website is authentic. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:50, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
How about criterian 1? the material is neither unduly self-serving nor an exceptional claim. (emphasis mine). Saying that a journal that claims to debunk Einstein every week is "peer-reviewed" without any additional clarification is an exceptional claim. When layperson(like me) first hears the word "peer-review", there is an expectation that the peer-review is meaningful unless stated otherwise. Let's take account of the readers. Also, this discussion just proves the usefulness of notability. We have so little coverage to work with that original research and NPOV violations are inevitable. Ca talk to me! 00:01, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
I think the tag on the article is a good compromise so far. Other than that I don't see a solution for how to edit this article. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 04:03, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

The next step

I believe a structured approach would aid in determining consensus. So far, I see these three possible options presented in this discussion. Feel free to add more options as needed. Ca talk to me! 09:00, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

  • Option 1 - Remove the term "peer-review" as a descriptor
  • Option 2 - Consider the website of Physics Essays to be unreliable and remove all information sourced solely to that source
  • Option 3 - Delete the article
  • Option 4 - maintain current status
  • Oppose first three, support option 4, for the reasons explained ad nauseam above and at the article's talk page. Option 3 is, frankly, absolutely ridiculous given the resounding "keep" at the recent AfD. --Randykitty (talk) 10:28, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
Status quo as detailed on the talk page and above indeed. If you have reliable sources that dispute/question the peer-review claim, then we can revisit this. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:36, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
Pinging participants - @Tercer @XOR'easter @jps @Steve Quinn @JoelleJay @The Four Deuces Ca talk to me! 10:42, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Option 2 (but also okay with Option 1 and Option 3 and definitely not okay with the fourth one). I also think we need to look at redoing the AfD/marking {{historical}} for WP:NJOURNALS which has clearly become a place where WP:WikiLawyering reigns supreme. This is an essay masquerading as WP:PAG and I am appalled that it is being used to WP:POVPUSH for WP:FRINGE claims (even if this is just due to officious adherence to a set of policies essentially invented out of whole cloth without community input rather than something like WP:ADVOCACY -- but note that editors can end up acting as a WP:PROFRINGE advocate even if they aren't intending to do so). jps (talk) 11:52, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
    WP:NJOURNALS is a terrible essay, as it advises people to write articles without having reliable sources to based them on. It's a mystery why anybody takes it seriously or confuses it with an actual policy. I support deleting it. Tercer (talk) 12:06, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
    According to the results of the last AfD (which I initiated seven years ago(!)), the appropriate move would be to gain consensus for marking the essay {{historical}}. I think it is a good idea to have a WP:RfC that did this. jps (talk) 12:12, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
    Reading through the deletion discussion, it turns out that WP:NJOURNALS was intended to be a guideline, which is why it is written as one. In the ensuing discussion it failed to gather support. Hence it should be tagged as {{failed}}. Definitely not as {{essay}}, as it was never intended as one, and not as {{historical}} either, as it that would imply it was at some point supported. Tercer (talk) 12:36, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
    Well, WP:PAGs are descriptive rather than prescriptive. Because there has been a concerted group of people acting as though there was consensus for these rules to operate, in point of fact that was how Wikipedia worked for a time. Marking the essay as "historical" is a way to tell people to move on from this while preserving the history where many discussions referred to this part of Wikipedia in their arguments. The time to have marked it as "failed" would have been when it failed to gain a consensus. Wikipedia, remember, works on a "fake it till you make it principle" in a lot of areas. Or, in this case, "fake it until people notice and start sounding alarm bells". jps (talk) 12:58, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Support first three. Optimally we would delete the article, since we don't have reliable sources with which to write a decent article, but that seems unlikely given that it just survived an AfD. Barring that, we should remove all information that can't be reliable sourced, which means almost the entire article. At an absolute minimum, we need to remove the claim that it is peer-reviewed, because this is not true even according to Physics Essays itself!. In any case, the status quo is clearly untenable given the shitstorm going on. Tercer (talk) 12:02, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
    Physics Essays says this

    Articles submitted for publication will be reviewed by scientific peers. Realizing the interchangeable roles of authors and reviewers, the positive aspect of the reviewing process will be retained by providing the authors with the reviewers’ comments. Each author should judge which parts of the reviewers’ suggestions are appropriate to improve the quality of his or her paper. The editor, who is responsible for the Journal, will allow a large degree of freedom to the authors in this process.

    This there is zero evidence that this is not the case (and plenty that it is e.g. [22]). If it's a journal for crackpots (which it is), the peers are other crackpots, and give crackpot feedback. Or the peers give relevant feedback, but the editor allows the authors to ignore that feedback under the "a large degree of freedom" aura. That doesn't mean there is no peer review. It means it's questionable or meaningless peer review. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:45, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
    When we claim in Wikivoice that a journal is peer-reviewed, the reader should assume that the journal is in fact peer-reviewed in the usual sense. Not that it's technically peer-reviewed, but actually has questionable or meaningless peer-review. Wikipedia is not a conman. Tercer (talk) 14:52, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
    If it's a journal for crackpots (which it is), the peers are other crackpots, and give crackpot feedback. I am amazed that you are arguing this. Surely the peers relevant for peer-review of a subject are the experts in the subject, not the crackpots. The relevant epistemic community is never the community of crackpots. That this nuance is lost on indices is a shame, but we are under no obligation to repeat this mistake in our work here. jps (talk) 14:57, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Option 1 at minimum. WP:BURDEN comes into play here. The claim that this journal is peer reviewed has been challenged, and the standard to include information in an article (when challenged or likely to be challenged) is that it must be directly supported by a reliable source. It is not good enough to argue the negative (ie saying “but there are no sources saying it isn’t peer reviewed”)… we must prove the positive (by citing a source that directly says it IS peer reviewed). Blueboar (talk) 12:42, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Option 3 I'll accept option 1 and 2 as solutions, but my strongest support is on deletion. The AfD focused on whether WP:NJOURNAL is applicable or not. It is indeed applicable and passes the criterion listed. However, me and many other editors have attempted to find sources to no avail. The current coverage of the topic can easily exist in a directory of journals. This lack of sources leads to an wp:NPOV and WP:FRINGE violating article with no room for improvement. Besides, an essay cannot overpower an guideline unless in an exceptional circumstance, which I am not seeing here. And the notion that SNGs somehow trump GNG is completely untrue. NJournal even says it so: It is possible for a journal to qualify for a stand-alone article according to this standard and yet not actually be an appropriate topic for coverage in Wikipedia because of a lack of reliable, independent sources on the subject. The new source added alleviates my concerns and provides reader with valuable context. I do still support option 2 though. Headbomb's argument is rendered null now since a reliable source discrediting Physics Essays has been found. I would not be opposed to a AfD renomination though. Others might have different ideas. Ca talk to me! 12:38, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Option 3, second and third choice option 2 and 1. There is no policy-based reason for option 4. --Hob Gadling (talk) 13:35, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Option 3 Delete. It probably survived AfD because the discussion attracted little attention except from editors who either sympathized with the aims of the journal or just routinely vote to keep if there are any reliable sources at all. This discussion shows that if it was brought to the attention of a wider audience, it likely would have failed AfD. If a second AfD is attempted, it should be publicized through advertising it on relevant project pages. Bear in mind that any efforts to bring the AfD to wider attention must follow WP:CANVASS. TFD (talk) 14:54, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Option 3>Option 2>Option 1. This should have been deleted in the first place because there were no guideline-based !votes to retain it and no secondary independent coverage. JoelleJay (talk) 16:11, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Option 1 and Option 2. I agree "peer reviewed" should be removed based on the several discussions involved about how to deal with this article and per WP:BURDEN. Also, relying on the website for accurate information is not possible at this point based on our discussions and the articles it publishes. The website description of the journal about itself is obviously a sham, and Wikipedia should not support this. ----Steve Quinn (talk) 21:28, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Option 1 and option 2 for reasons I have argued on, by now, multiple pages. Option 3 would require overturning an AfD out-of-process. XOR'easter (talk) 15:36, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
  • XOR'easter, we have not a single source that questions this journal's peer-review procedure or its status as a fringe journal. Options 1 and 2 are based solely on the opinion of WP editors. Hence, options 1 and 2 boil down to original research. Our article mentions what could be sourced: it was dropped by Clarivate and Scopus and its current impact factor is 0.6. I can't image an author looking at our article and then deciding to submit his work there. It would be even better if we could find some RS criticizing its contents/review procedures, but as it is it's pretty clear that this is not a prestigious venue for one's hard work. But as long as we lack such RS, we should not remove "peer-reviewed". --Randykitty (talk) 16:00, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Randykitty, you have WP policy backwards… We can not state that it IS peer reviewed without a reliable independent source to support that statement. Ok, sure, I suppose the same is true the other way… we also can not state that it isn’t peer reviewed without reliable sources - but what that means is that we must remain silent on the question, and not discuss peer review AT ALL. Blueboar (talk) 17:01, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
  • It's not original research to deem a source unreliable, or to decide that a particular compound word is (a) the wrong adjective for what ought to be communicated and (b) not worth including in the lede. XOR'easter (talk) 16:58, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
    The only acceptable wording if there's a concern, but no sources expressing that concern, is 'the journal describes itself as peer-reviewed' Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:24, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
  • {{WP:OR]]says things like The prohibition against original research means that all material added to articles must be verifiable. It does not say anywhere that you are not allowed to remove material. --Hob Gadling (talk) 17:53, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
  • If a WP editor looks at what a journal publishes and then decides "this is crap" and based on that decides that peer-review at this journal must be non-existent or bad, then I call that original research. --Randykitty (talk) 17:52, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
    But if we don't have a reliable source for such a contentious claim, it shouldn't be in the article. Editors make personal judgments all the time on whether a particular source is reliable, and it seems like no one here is arguing this journal is reliable, so we can't treat the journal's own claim that it is peer-reviewed as a reliable source for that fact. JoelleJay (talk) 20:03, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
    Also, I found this: However, «Physics Essays» is not a reputed scientific journal but rather a free forum where extravagant views on physics (in particular, those involving parapsychology) are welcome; as for «mainstream» physicists, they do not seem to take Radin’s claim seriously.[23] "Free forum" sure suggests a lack of peer review. JoelleJay (talk) 20:20, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
    Wonderful source! The published version is here, in issue #4, not issue #3 as the preprint claims. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:24, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
    I call that original research It does not matter what you call it. It only matters what the policies and guidelines call it. --Hob Gadling (talk) 05:48, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
    I tend to agree that WP:ONUS, among other things, gives a lot of preference for removing contentious claims from articlespace. To argue that a removal done of the basis of something like a due-diligence check of whether the aspects of editorial reliability are found at a particular source is "original research" is basically asking us to act like poorly programmed robots that rely on rules made up ahead of time rather than enacting common sense in the service of making an excellent reference work. We're not talking about penning an essay about the intricacies of attestations about peer review. We're talking about removing a label that has been questioned in good faith. jps (talk) 15:58, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Options 1 and 2. No need to overturn the AfD, but we should treat it as what it is. Actually, with respect to Option 2, I don't have a problem with citing it for attributions of opinion, just not for statements of fact. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:13, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

RfC drafting proposal

I have started a discussion about possibly marking NJOURNALS as historical. Please join it if you are interested. jps (talk) 13:02, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

How about just editing the essay?

Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(academic_journals)#Recommend_reinstatement_of_this_edit. More eyes and voices would be greatly appreciated. jps (talk) 16:30, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Related RfC about NJOURNALS

Y'all may be tired of this, but go ahead and take a look at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(academic_journals)#RfC_on_notability_criteria and see if you have any way to help.

jps (talk) 13:06, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Conspiracy theory

A push to add equivocating language in the lead describing how the term 'conspiracy theory' is used to disparage legitimate viewpoints. Discussion starts at Talk:Conspiracy_theory#Lead_is_not_neutral_and_article_maybe_is_not and continues from there. - LuckyLouie (talk) 17:08, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

  • Interestingly, this recent book[24] is very good on what constitutes a conspiracy theory in general (and in relation to COVID-19 lab leaks, etc, in particular) and on how they are treated. Good to see scholarly books starting to appear on this topic! I recommend it. Bon courage (talk) 14:11, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Eric Zuesse

The article on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cites "How the 2004 Presidential 'Election' Was Stolen by George W. Bush" in support of RFK Jr.'s position. Is it a reliable source? It was published in what seems to be a group blog (i.e. not an actual publication with editorial oversight). Their blogroll links to websites such as ZeroHedge, Globalresearch.ca and InfoWars.

I think Eric Zuesse's articles speak for themselves:

On August 18th, the terrific "Moon of Alabama" blogger posted his brilliant exposé of an operation that the U.S. and its allies support and are lobbying to win the Nobel Peace Prize, but that's really just a group of people who help Syria's anti-Assad jihadists by medicating their injured jihadists, and by carrying off and disposing of the jihadists' victims' corpses. The headline is "The 'Wounded Boy In Orange Seat' — Another Staged 'White Helmets' Stunt". This story concerns staged (faked) photos by that Western-funded-and-backed jihadist organization — photos which have prominently been spread in Western 'news' media (and here's an example of that Western propaganda on August 20th, from NPR's sanctimonious sucker Scott Simon, quoting the New York Times's sanctimonious sucker Nick Kristof, both of them suckers of their own government's hoax, and passing it on to their fools who trust their deceived and propagandistic 'reporting'). It's all being done in order to fool Western publics to support their governments' financial and military assistance to (actually) the jihadists who have been imported by the U.S. and allied governments into Syria to overthrow Assad, who is supported by the majority of Syrians, while the United States and the jihadists it backs are despised by 82% of Syrians. They're imported to conquer land there, and to help bring down the Assad government and to replace the existing secular Syrian government with a 'pro-Western' government run by 'our' jihadists, who (unlike the secular government of Bashar al-Assad) will allow the fundamentalist-Islamic royal families who own Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to pipeline through Syria into the European Union, their oil and gas, so as to supplant Russia's oil and gas in Europe — the biggest-of-all energy-market.

93.72.49.123 (talk) 21:01, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Fringe author on a fringe blog. The very definition of unreliable. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 23:20, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
I have removed the reference from the article. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 23:24, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. 93.72.49.123 (talk) 23:46, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
More from him: [25] --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:00, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
I removed all mainspace references except those in the Love Canal article. I replaced one with a proper source, two with citation needed tags, and removed two that were redundant. The source used for Love Canal is, unlike the others, at least not a blog post. Also it's from 1981 and I don't know whether Zuesse has always been this fringe. And since it is used multiple times it would probably require a closer look to determine its usability. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 14:19, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Luis Elizondo

Complete removal of any criticism (leaving only praise) and a great many dubious edit summaries claiming synthesis, bias, unfairness, BLP concerns, etc. from a new editor with less than 80 edits (80% of them to this article). There is a great deal of reliably sourced criticism out there that will need to be added. This is on my to-do list. - LuckyLouie (talk) 22:01, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Just reverted, they've opened up a discussion at WP:BLPN, see Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Luis_Elizondo. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:23, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
This is a complete misrepresentation. The article is swimming in negative tone, language, and littered with all manner of BLP-violating 'conditionals' that Elizondo 'claimed' this and that. I don't care about woo woo nonsense, but people on this board seem to be debunker/skeptic level. Which is fine, to each their own. Articles will be neutral to a fault no matter what you think about the subject.
Some of the "criticism" section was literally praise. Citing the NY Times article reporter from that 2017 event that she didn't think to believe him after their first meeting -- I listened to that podcast. Literally in the same minute before that, she said he was "completely credible" and that the subject made her initially doubt. Which she obviously got over as she wrote the article about his work. Leave bias at door or best yet in the garbage. My name is not Alexander Hamilton (talk) 23:35, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
Now they've been indeffed. Discussion continues at BLPN. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:09, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Draft:Anti-vaccine activism

I think I have this draft off to a good start, but obviously there is a lot of building to be done. I may soon be going off-wiki for a few days, so would very much appreciate some extra hands. Cheers! BD2412 T 02:31, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

COVID Lab Leak essay MfD

Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/User:Adoring_nanny/Essays/Lab_Leak_Likely_(3rd_nomination) is up for deletion that would be of interest to many here. As a CT subject, it could also benefit from a set of admin eyes or two. KoA (talk) 14:32, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

David Marius Guardino

Seems not very NPOV at the moment. --Hob Gadling (talk) 05:19, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Supposedly known for claims of psychic contact with Elvis, this individual doesn't seem to meet WP:BASIC notability. I see mentions in Weekly World News, three or four CreateSpace self pub books, and one article in the Christian Post. The article contains a list of newspaper articles that are claimed to have carried a story about legal action involving the subject, but I'm not sure this would amount to any substantial coverage beyond trivial WP:SENSATION. A strangely-written article by an account (User:Diopolis) that confusingly redirects back to the article itself. This is a good candidate for AfD. - LuckyLouie (talk) 14:31, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
On the off chance it could be adequately-sourced, I dropped a note at WikiProject Skepticism. - LuckyLouie (talk) 16:38, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
I'll have a crack at it, if you can give me a bit of time before pulling the plug on it. Looks like fun. Robincantin (talk) 17:13, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Bruce Lipton

A user is repeatedly removing Science-Based Medicine from the Bruce Lipton article claiming incorrectly it is a self-published source. Psychologist Guy (talk) 17:32, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Panspermia (again)

A new user is trying to whitewash the Panspermia article. I'm about to log off, so I would appreciate other people stepping in. Thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 13:14, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Considering pseudo-panspermia is the primary form of Panspermia discussed in the literature and is frequently just referred to as Panspermia, why is the primary article dedicated to the fringe theory and not the actual plausible theory which uses the same term? It’s absolutely erroneous to say “panspermia is a fringe theory” when modifications of it are mainstream within astrobiology considering the “pseudo-panspermia” distinction is not one universally made in the literature?
I think there’s a bit of a mistake made in using that “fringe” citation given the context of the article it’s directly addressing, which was one that argued that SARS was extraterrestrial in origin and “had all the makings of an extraterrestrial incident”.
As a meteoriticist I have to say I found the lede lacking in nuance, there Warrenmck (talk) 00:55, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
"Pseudo-panspermia" is not a type of panspermia, It is an entirely different topic. There is no doubt that Panspermia sensu stricto is a fringe theory. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:06, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
Looking at scholar, "panspermia" seems to be overwhelmingly used for the concept sensu stricto i. e. The transport of living organisms. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:12, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
What terms are you searching? Try appending "chondrite" and then restrict your searches to real journals (i.e. not the Independent Journal of UFO Research or what have you, not trying to criticize any credible journal here):
An 57Fe Mossbauer Study of the Metamorphic Sequence in Unequilibrated Ordinary Chondrites:
"these results for the possibility of interstellar panspermia are examined"
From AGU. Meteorites as Messengers of Potential Life:
"Scientists have discovered that carbonaceous chondrites contain large amounts of organic molecules, amino acids, and even water. These studies have led scientists to theorize that the origin of life on Earth is related to the arrival of meteorites on our planet. This theory is called Panspermia."
Is Glycine Able to Survive under Irradiation in Space? (Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres volume 39, pages1–89 (2009))
The question of the relative stability of these prebiotic compounds under the interstellar radiation field is therefore an important question to be addressed. In the panspermia hypothesis, the survival and transfer of the amino acids from space to planets is indeed a necessary condition for the appearance of life, and, especially, their resistance to the solar UVradiation in ice is a key issue
Implications of Captured Interstellar Objects for Panspermia and Extraterrestrial Life
Several studies have investigated the feasibility of interstellar panspermia (Melosh 2003; Adams & Spergel 2005), and recent numerical simulations appear to suggest that lithopanspermia between members of the solar birth cluster was feasible (Belbruno et al. 2012). Assessing the biological survival of alien microorganisms within interstellar rocks is not possible since we do not know their biological survival limits nor the travel time. However, as seen from Tables 8(a) and (b) of Mileikowsky et al. (2000), interplanetary panspermia between Mars and Earth could deliver as many as ∼1012 microbes in meter-sized objects (with suitable shielding) for transit times of ≲1 Myr. Hence, it seems plausible that much larger objects, such as the ones discussed above, could transfer alive microorganisms; in fact, Wallis & Wickramasinghe (2004) proposed that even a few kilograms of microbe-bearing fragments may suffice to seed the target planetary systems with life.
Comets and meteorites played an important role in our solar system by transporting organic molecules to Earth (Ehrenfreund & Charnley 2000; Thomas et al. 2006); the delivery of these biomolecules (pseudo-panspermia) imposes less stringent requirements than panspermia (Lingam & Loeb 2017).
The strong split Wikipedia is making here is not reflected in the actual field, at least not outside a niche of astrobiology, and astrobiologists are certainly not the only people discussing panspermia. Only the last paper there made the distinction between panspermia and pseudo-panspermia, but all refer to pseudo-panspermia.
I stand by my statement that "Panspermia is considered a fringe theory" lacks so much nuance as to be incorrect. Warrenmck (talk) 01:26, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
WP:FRINGE is broader than Fringe theory. There is a difference between labeling in articlespace and the work that is done to comply with our guidelines. jps (talk) 14:18, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

As I said in 2021...

The best summary of mainstream viewpoint on panspermia would be something a bit like this. Is panspermia theoretically possible? Yes, there is a remote possibility that early solar system comets brought basic building blocks of life on earth (e.g. amino acids and the like). It's extremely fringe, given we've got all the ingredients already here on earth, with plenty of mechanisms to turn them into the building blocks of life, without the need to bring in space things. Panspermia just shifts the problem of the origin of life to a different planet, which somehow explodes without instantly destroying life/building blocks, which would then travel for millions of years in the inhospitable environment of space, and in a freak coincidence lands on Earth).

Anything more than basic building blocks arriving on earth, like full living organism, like bacteria, mushrooms, cephalopods, etc. is full on time cube nutter territory. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:06, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:23, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't really think that "It's extremely fringe" is true. As a meteoriticist I see references to panspermia in papers constantly, and I've provided a few above. Accepting panspermia as the origin of life is most certainly fringe for all the reasons mentioned, but it's not fringe in the way that the article seems to want to say, at least not considering the "Pseudo-panspermia" seems to be a distinction that doesn't universally exist among publishing researchers and may just be a shibboleth for a certain subsection of astrobiology?
"Anything more than basic building blocks arriving on earth, like full living organism, like bacteria, mushrooms, cephalopods, etc. is full on time cube nutter territory"
This is clearly true, but the notion that "panspermia" must be more than this is not backed up by the literature at present. Even if that distinction does exist in technicality within a subset of astrobiology, WP:COMMONNAME kicks in:
"In determining which of several alternative names is most frequently used, it is useful to observe the usage of major international organizations, major English-language media outlets, quality encyclopedias, geographic name servers, major scientific bodies, and notable scientific journals."
"Panspermia" is absolutely used in the literature to refer to amino acids and other minor building blocks, vs. entire life whole-cloth. If Wikipedia wants to make that distinction too then it should justify it, but I don't think that justification can be made and Pseudo-panspermia should be merged into Panspermia. Warrenmck (talk) 21:35, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
The thing is that there is obvious rehabilitation that can happen for the idea, but Fred Hoyle was so bonkers towards the end of his life that he ended up pulling his student Chandra Wickramasinghe right down into the wackiness. Fred Hoyle, being far more famous than practically anyone else who is vaguely related to this idea, ends up making the main thrust very fringe-y. Unfortunate, but beyond the remit of Wikipedia to fix per WP:RGW. jps (talk) 14:23, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
Let me rephrase this to be much more succinct: as someone who works and publishes in the pertinent field, I am surprised to learn that Wikipedia has an article calling it an unqualified fringe theory and I and I had never heard of Wickramasinghe until this post. I think the statement in the current article is deeply misleading and the attempt to bifurcate the article into panspermia and pseudo-panspermia is an artificial distinction not shared by the actual academics in the field in question. The article should be reworked, but it should not say "Panspermia is a fringe theory" when a whole host of papers directly discuss (what Wikipedia calls) pseudo-pansepermia as panspermia, and pseudo-panspermia should be merged into panspermia.
A bit clearer? :) Warrenmck (talk) 04:07, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes, there are references to panspermia everywhere. But they're empty references, much like one might conclude "further research is needed", or an attempt to connect your research to sensationalist BUT WHAT IF LIFE CAME FROM SPACE??? nonsense to make it easier to justify grants under the well, it's technically possible defense. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:34, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
So fortunate you have not seen the nonsense versions of panspermia. I think Headbomb is correct, however, that the off-handed and "serious" references to panspermia found in certain papers and texts that do not engage with the truly out-there ideas just are not paying attention to the way true advocates of panspermia have behaved. They may not even know that there are such things as "advocates" of panspermia. I saw something similar with references to coherent catastrophism in certain geology texts. I don't think the authors realized that the groups arguing in favor of comet wackiness were descended from Velikovskians, for example. jps (talk) 01:35, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
To complement what Headbomb wrote, there's also the panspermia pushed with the intent to deny much of mainstream biology and its discoveries, like complex multicellular life having evolved here, and possibly abiogenesis, apparently through natural undirected processes. Some propose not only a rewrite of that but even claim that series of directed seeding events from space are responsible for mutations and evolution, we've even seen COVID era related claims pushed in WP, that it too would be from space (ridiculously preadapted space pathogen), etc. (Added in a second edit): then as far as we know, the universe is old and big enough for life to have developed elsewhere to be plausible, since it happened here. But it also seems to be rare enough that two independently evolved, advanced enough civilizations exploring space may never be able to meet or even detect eachother. We're looking for life in the solar system and the little material presented as evidence so far may be from Earth or simple molecules also used by life that may be more common than previously thought. This of course makes claims of Earth having been seeded by E.T. life extremely implausible, unless it was basic ubiquitous components, like that perhaps helped in abiogenesis... —PaleoNeonate – 21:17, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
Also a return to the four papers above *[26] (uses the wrong title, the article starts on the page before)
The article concludes "This translates to only a very slim chance that life can be transported from one solar system to another. It seems that the origin of life on Earth will have to be sought within the confines of the solar system itself, not abroad the galaxy."
This is presentation by high school students that read stuff online. I doubt they would have recognized nutters if they found any, especially if have the appearance of respectability. Completely unreliable for anything.
  • [28] This one I don't have access to, but again, from a conference. The threshold to get in them is extremely low. I don't know what it concludes, but again, far from a high quality source.
  • [29] is from Avi Loeb who sees extraterrestrial life in his cereals.
So yeah, those are far from 'serious' sources. The core issue, ultimately, is that you have astrophysicists trying to do biology without a lick of idea about what the state of research is in biology. All of what's needed for life can all happen here on Earth. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:12, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
See also this quote by Jack Cohen

In summer 2002, I was at the Cheltenham Festival of Science. Lots of biologists presenting, for sure. But... one very popular event was a presentation by three famous astronomers: ‘Is There Life Out There?’ I prefaced my first question to them by a little imaginative scenario: three biologists discussing the properties of the black hole in the middle of our galaxy. It was very clear that the astronomers really believed that they could discuss ‘life’ professionally, whereas everyone saw biologists talking about black holes as absurd.

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:18, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
This feels like you're attempting to construct a case for keeping the article the way it is. I think it's pretty hard to deny that the Wikipedia article does not align to the current usage or understanding in sciences, feelings of WP:FTN aside. Attempting to No True Scotsman anyone who doesn't view Panspermia and Pseudo-Panspermia as a [[bright line]] is not keeping with a neutral POV, especially considering that deliniation of terms seems to be far more important on Wikipedia than in astrobiology itself. Warrenmck (talk) 21:09, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
Took me a while to understand what you were trying to say here. You made it unnecessarily difficult by, for no apparent reason, nowiki-ing the legal term bright line, which I had never heard before, and by using lots of multiple negatives.
But the brunt seems to be just a repetition of the statement that one obscure science branch you bloat to "the sciences" - uses the word "panspermia" with a different meaning than the rest of the world. That case seems similar to hexagonal water: you actually have a point but it is not that your meaning takes precedence and kills off the much better known Hoyle/Wickramasinghe meaning, but that we need a disambiguation page construct, as with hexagonal water and Exclusion zone (physics). First draft: Panspermia (pseudoscience) and Panspermia (astrobiology). --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:17, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
the much better known Hoyle/Wickramasinghe meaning
While this may be true on the Fringe Theory Noticeboard I would be shocked to find that this attitude isn't essentially a partial feedback loop on-wiki. Bright line as a term has existed long before Wikipedia, and Wikipedia:Civility just in general a bit, here.
we need a disambiguation page construct
This still looks to me like Wikipedians pumping up a minor (though very extant, to be sure) fringe theory. The fringe theorists and the astrobiologists don't have a huge amount of overlap, outside of a few people. "Panspermia" is used, routinely, without qualification, to refer to what Wikipedians (and many astrobiologists, to be certain) are referring to as Pseudo-Panspermia, and I think that the language used in the article is going to misinform people. I'm not sure you're wrong though with this at some level, though. It looks a lot like the situation with the article for Altaic (see the discussion above about linguistics articles) where a fringe(y) theory and a valid theory have co-existing terms. Warrenmck (talk) 09:50, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
[multiple negation again] partial feedback loop on-wiki I have known Hoyle and his silly ideas long before Wikipedia existed. Everybody who has debated anti-evolutionists knows them. But I never heard the other meaning before you mentioned it here. We just have different interests and specialties.
My point about "bright line" was that you made it unnecessarily difficult to look it up, no matter how old it is. --Hob Gadling (talk) 11:40, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
"Everybody who has debated anti-evolutionists knows them."
Okay, we're into WP:CAMP territory here. Not trying to accuse you outright of any imporper behaviour but I do think that there's something very problematic here going on, probably unintentionally. Let's break it down:
  1. The Wikipedia Fringe Theory Noticeboard pays close attention to the Panspermia article (good, to be clear)
  2. There is a concerted, explicit effort to make sure that Panspermia is referred to as a fringe theory
  3. There is a concerted, explicit effort to bifurcate panspermia into two articles, either thematically or explictly, with the common name article dedicated to the fringe theory and a less common term being used for what publishing scientists typically call Panspermia.
  4. Countering evidence that the definition being provided in the article is neither universally used nor is it unquestionably as fringe as it is made to seem on Wikipedia is being dismissed out of hand (a diagnostic warning sign for WP:CAMP behaviour).
  5. Hoyle/Wickramasinghe are being elevated desepite not being particularly critical voices in the actual portions of astrobiology and meteoritics in question, essentially creating a feedback loop of WP:PROFRINGE material just long enough to smack it down, creating wild balance issues.
Sorry, this doesn't pass a smell test. I am not trying to accuse you or any other editor in this process of essentially conspiring to supress content, but I do have an issue with how this is being handled here. The notion that the article about Panspermia needs to be dedicated to dispelling the fringy version of Panspermia despite that not being the only scholarly understanding of what Panspermia is doesn't sit right. Warrenmck (talk) 00:41, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
This is so boring, I regret reading it. Instead of trying to find a solution, you are making accusations while claiming you are not. This will not lead anywhere. --Hob Gadling (talk) 12:20, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
It was the Vogons, wasn't it? I knew it! Guy (help! - typo?) 14:04, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
Ugghh, can you imagine the paperwork involved? SnowRise let's rap 23:59, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

David Grusch UFO whistleblower claims

David Grusch UFO whistleblower claims (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I think this is a step backwards. But I should probably let others have a shot at this.

Please put this on your watchlists and try to tone down the breathlessness if at all possible.

jps (talk) 02:31, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

The UFO-related articles in general seem to have attracted a lot of new accounts with few edits seeking big changes. See Luis Elizondo. - LuckyLouie (talk) 15:33, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
I am not surprised. Judging from the posts to the main UFO subreddit on Reddit and other forums, David Grusch has convinced numerous people, who were once on the fence, that UFOs are definitely extraterrestrial spacecraft and has excited the "UFOs are extraterrestrials" proponents that "full disclosure" is near and their beliefs have been and are justified. He and the Congressional hearings have really been a major boast to recruitment of new proponents and moral among the true believers. It seems like David Grusch, despite providing nothing new, has started a UFO feeding frenzy, which is likely being reflected in Wkipedia edits. The "David Grusch UFO whistleblower claims" article could useful as a clear discussion of what he did and more importantly did not say and the complete lack of any first-hand observations on his part. Paul H. (talk) 16:21, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
See below. - LuckyLouie (talk) 22:01, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
Honestly, the UFO sub on Reddit shouldn't be taken seriously. There were some serious contributors many years ago, but they've been replaced with lunatics. Most of the people on that sub are over the edge. Viriditas (talk) 12:17, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
That's interesting, since I found the congressional hearings less than convincing. Viriditas (talk) 10:18, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Chronic lyme disease

There's an IP user edit warring at Chronic lyme disease. I'm not sure it's whitewashing, but I don't think it's an improvement either. Hemiauchenia (talk) 12:02, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Marcel Vogel

Includes WP:FRINGE ideas about plant communications and UFO metal samples, but I can't find any WP:RS discussing them. - LuckyLouie (talk) 13:21, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  • Prothero, Donald R. (2017). UFOs, chemtrails, and aliens. pp. 151–2. for the metal sample — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fiveby (talk • contribs)
Thanks, good find. - LuckyLouie (talk) 14:01, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
Kane, Carolyn L. (September 2014). "Synthetic Fluorescents: Day-Glo from Novelty to Norm". Journal of Design History. for Vogel Luminescence
Galston, Arthur W. (July 1974). "The Unscientific Method: By Ignoring Accepted Rules of Evidence, the Authors of a Popularized Book on Plants Reach Many False Conclusions". BioScience. brief mention
Nagel, A.H.M (March 1997). "Are plants conscious?" (PDF). Journal of Consciousness Studies: 215–230. shows just how far out there he is on plants, but careful with that author she's a proponent. Snippet on crystals in Chandler, Russell (1993). Understanding the New Age. p. 103.
Belgrade, Daniel (2019). "Talking with Plants". The Culture of Feedback: Ecological Thinking in Seventies America. can't find online but can email if you'd like, or WP:RX can get it. fiveby(zero) 14:59, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
 Done - LuckyLouie (talk) 17:36, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Trauma model of mental disorders

Unhappiness about the article's one-sidedness on the Talk page. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:24, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Telegony (inheritance)

Pseudoscience or obsolete science? IPs prefer the first. --Hob Gadling (talk) 11:18, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

I removed both, and just left it as a theory. I also moved the 2014 report to the end of the article. It is a single, primary source, and, IMHO, could be removed until secondary sources are found. Donald Albury 21:54, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Otherkin

Otherkin (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) This appears to be mainly written in a style which accepts certain supernatural claims as wholly factual. I'd encourage FTN to be cognizant of the fact that some academics refer to notions of Otherkin as religoius (and perhaps it should be handled as such), but the entire article itself is written in an in-universe style and cites twitter and blogs galore. I've removed a self published flag which was basically from a tweet, but there's a huge mess in this article in terms of it not even being vaguely encyclopedic. Not sure if this is best here or on some other, but given the mythical/fantastical creatures being treated as credible and "otherkin.net" being one of the primary cites I think this warrants some other eyes considering how intrinsically linked to the paranormal the topic is. Warrenmck (talk) 17:58, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

YMMV, but this article reads much better to me than others we have seen in this kind of gray area betwixt paranormal and religious beliefs. Definitely remove the less-than-reliable sources. I am not at all clear how they know that the "first" instance of this sort of thing dates to the 1970s. I guess maybe one of the couple academic articles written on the subject might clear that up and perhaps serve as a means to reframe and reposition the article in a more grounded history. But I don't really see all that much here that is taking fantasy elements as "plain truth". jps (talk) 18:04, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
I think perhaps that's a bit up to how you're reading it, but I'll concede it's probably less black and white than it could be and I could have phrased my post here better. I'm going to try to at least remove things which have zero citations that meet Wikipedia's standards, I've put out a call on the talk page for those with a veseted interest in the topic to help find sources that meet Wikipedia's standards, as well. Warrenmck (talk) 18:19, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
@ජපස There were enough good sources sprinkled in there to clean it up substantially while still leaving a decent article. It was a lot less messy than I was worried about, but I wouldn't mind a second set of eyes considering the amount of material I removed. Warrenmck (talk) 18:44, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
...not at all clear how they know that the "first" instance of this sort of thing dates to the 1970s Ouija board told a group of magician to call themselves "Elf Queen’s Daughters" around 1970. Silmarillion 1977. Fiction, invention, and hyper-reality is underutilized, WP:RX can get the relevant chapters. fiveby(zero) 19:51, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
I removed the 1970s section as WP:SYNTH. Considering that there's a decent amount of scholarship referring to these beliefs as fundamentally religious in nature, WP:NPA applies. Please see WP:NPA#WHATIS. I'm really hoping that FTN can purge itself of these attitudes, there's no reason the people involves can't be responsible for improving the article and much of the underlying content which I assume was added by those into the concept was quite good. There's zero call for this on Wikipedia. Warrenmck (talk) 20:07, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
Already prior to the publication of S[ilmarillion], a movement of self-identified Elves had emerged when a Ouija board spirit allegedly instructed a group of American magicians to name themselves the Elf Queen’s Daughters sometime around 1970. The original members of the Elf Queen’s Daughters told Margot Adler [citing The Magickal Movement] that their identification as Elves was tongue-in-cheek, but they inspired other people to self-identify as Elves, and these people went on to speculate about possessing Elven genes or Elven souls. The publication of S in 1977 consolidated the Elven movement’s foundation on Tolkien and inspired members to experiment with Valar-directed rituals. This did not last, how-ever, and from the 1990s onwards, most self-identified Elves have distanced themselves from Tolkien’s fiction... Davidsen, Markus A. (2017). "The Elven Path and the Silver Ship of the Valar". In Cusack C. M. (ed.). Fiction invention and hyper-reality : from popular culture to religion. Routledge. Who was i attacking? fiveby(zero) 20:20, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
Apparently reality is too absurd for me. My sincere apologies. Warrenmck (talk) 20:43, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
Poe's Law on Wikipedia basically means you can't tell when someone is faithfully repeating another's position or making fun of it. jps (talk) 20:50, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
And sincerely no worries, i'm obviously not a skilled communicator. fiveby(zero) 21:17, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
@Fiveby this one was entirely on me. There's a Poe, then there's whatever this is... a Hyperpoe? Warrenmck (talk) 21:48, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Clean eating

This article is in a bad way, and looks like there is confusion to what clean eating is. See talk-page discussions. Psychologist Guy (talk) 23:53, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Clean Eating is marketing, not science.[30]. Bon courage (talk) 04:21, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
Isn't this basically the same subject as natural food? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 03:11, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

RFC on status of Polyvagal theory

Readers of this board may be interested in the RFC just opened at Talk:Polyvagal_theory#RfC_to_address_“unproven”_in_the_lead_of_this_article MrOllie (talk) 23:41, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Dark energy

Can someone please restore the Dark energy article to a sane state? Recent edits are clearly WP:OR (and most likely complete bollocks), but I'm not sure where the 'good' article ends. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:25, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Someone conveniently labelled "Original Article" below all of the huge WP:OR stuff, and I'm somewhat familiar with the topic and was pretty comfortable just deleting everything there. Warrenmck (talk) 23:34, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
They attempted to get Vixra (a preprint website primarily used by crackpots/cranks) whitelisted [31], which is not a good sign. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:41, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
Yeah... let's see what happens but I expect WP:NOTHERE Warrenmck (talk) 23:42, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

RFC on lede of Witchcraft

Readers of this board may be interested in the RFC just opened at [[32]] 2603:7000:C00:B4E8:315E:BA69:522B:4431 (talk) 14:26, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Millionaire discovers secret to eternal life

So, among other things, this guy takes 111 pills per day and has blood transfusions from his son, and claims he has reversed aging.[33] He's got lots of press coverage from the credulous to the amused, but nothing (I can find) properly sceptical/scientific about these ... exceptional claims. The question is, how should Wikipedia deal with this, if at all? More views on the Article's Talk page welcome. Bon courage (talk) 21:22, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

We can introduce him to Steve Kirsch and they'll turn us all into vorlons in no time at all. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:30, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
The bio sourcing looks questionable, and even ignoring the aging BS it needs cleanup. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:40, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

RFC regarding the life-extension practices of Bryan Johnson

There is a discussion at this talk page as to whether or not the life-extension practices of Bryan Johnson (entrepreneur) should be mentioned in the article. Given that it is what he is most known for by the general public and media, I feel as though it would be violating both WP:notability and WP:NPOV to not include it, as long as his practices are described neutrally. The other editor feels as though it is too fringe to include and that it cannot be properly contextualized. We would appreciate if others could give their input. Thanks!Vontheri (talk) 05:16, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Is there any particular reason to start this as a new thread rather than as simply an additional post or a subthread to the above thread on the exact same issue? Also I do not see any WP:RfC either here or on the talk page. IMO it's premature to start an RFC when editors have only just posted on this noticeboard for feedback. Nil Einne (talk) 09:13, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
Because I didn't see that Bon Courage had made the previous post. If I had noticed, then I would have posted there instead. He said in the thread at Talk:Bryan_Johnson_(entrepreneur) "Maybe a query to WP:FT/N is in order?" I interpreted the statement "maybe a query to ft/n is in order?" as meaning he was suggesting to me to make a post here, as I assumed he would have worded it differently had he already done so, and I would have expected that he would have informed me had he done so, as is typical practice. I also didn't expect that if he had made such a post that it would have such a sarcastic title. I assumed it would be worded neutrally, as I did, attempting to explain both our perspectives without bias.
I have never started an RFC before, so please forgive me that I was not totally familiar with the process for doing so. I am going to formally start the process correctly now. Only one other editor has given (minimal) input besides Bon Courage and myself, and to achieve consensus it would be preferable if more than just three people are involved. Given that it has been a couple days without additional responses, I don't think an RFC is premature.
Bon courage: posting to multiple relevant talk pages is not "spamming". Posting to only one page with a specific perspective would be canvassing. Posting to multiple pages, as long as all are relevant, was an attempt to attract a balance and diversity of views. I really don't appreciate the sarcastic attitude you keep presenting. It's okay to disagree, but please be respectful and civil. Sarcasm is not helpful in reaching consensus. Vontheri (talk) 17:50, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
Posting to a well-frequented noticeboard is not canvassing. Really, you are giving the bollocks this guy pushes too much personal credence. The very headline of the source I linked is "Millionaire 'ageing backwards' by using 'son's blood to live forever'". If you think taking a rational approach to nonsense is sarcastic, maybe you shouldn't be editing FRINGE topics on Wikipedia. Bon courage (talk) 17:57, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
WP:CANVASS (on WP, a noticeboard post is not canvassing, but notifying individual editors may be) and WP:FORUMSHOP may be useful reading, but also WP:GEVAL, WP:RS, WP:MEDRS and WP:NOTPROMOTION; then WP:ABOUTSELF, that should not be used for self-serving claims... —PaleoNeonate – 00:51, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
Who says how much credence I am or am not giving to his practices/views? I haven't said anything about my personal views on what he's doing, because my personal views really aren't relevant. But if you really must know, I think he is prone to hyperbole and/or self-delusion, and probably some narcissism thrown into the mix (as is often the case with people of his level of wealth.) At the same time, I would be surprised if many of his practices, such as his dietary practices and frequent diagnostic testing doesn't have at least some sort of positive impact on his health, but I'm quite skeptical that he has literally reversed his "biological age". It's also quite possible that some of his practices could have negative health effects, such as the plasma transfusion.
I simply think it would be incomplete to not mention the thing he is most known for, which are his anti-aging practices, as I've said a hundred times already. I would be totally against anything being included that endorsed his views/practices. I just want it to be neutrally and factually stated that he does what he does. Nothing more, nothing less. To exclude it would be to make the article incomplete, comparable to if the article for George Washington described his military career but never mentioned that he was the first American president. Vontheri (talk) 18:13, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
There's lots of RS for Washington, so the comparison seems weird. Just calling this stuff "anti-aging" is POV. Bon courage (talk) 18:30, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
Seems to have been spammed to several noticeboards and WikiProjects too. Bon courage (talk) 09:14, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Michael Mosley (broadcaster)

This guy has written a bunch of fringe books promoting the keto diet. He has some extreme views such as banning fruit, advocating fasting and promoting a dangerous 800 calories a day diet which has been criticized for increasing stress amongst those with eating disorders. Outside of that he does promote some sensible advice such as a type of Mediterranean diet.

In general the medical community have avoided reviewing his books, however, there was a detailed review by Red Pen Reviews for his book Fast 800 Keto [34] which gave the book a 58% score for scientific accuracy. Red Pen Reviews have reviewed other keto books and given them a much lower score. Mosley's Fast 800 Keto book is misleading because in the end he basically advocates a type of Mediterranean diet long-term which has nothing to do with Keto.

An IP is repeatedly removing the 58% score for scientific accuracy for the book and claiming incorrectly that doesn't apply to the book overall, even though we can all see the score at the top of the review says "overall score". There have been complaints in the past that Michael Mosley's Wikipedia article is too sympathetic for his low-carb fringe ideas about diet. I have re-written some of the article and I wouldn't say it is bad but there seems to be some attempts at white-washing any criticism of Mosley's dietary ideas from the article. I have looked online and I can't find any other expert reviews for Mosley's books. The Red Pen Reviews website is a very good source, but I would hate to see a review by them misrepresented on Mosley's Wikipedia article. Psychologist Guy (talk) 23:30, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

The trouble is Mosley has the status as sort of the BBC's "David Attenborough of health" and is relayed uncritically by them.[35] without being whack enough to have attracted any published scepticism. Just goes to show yet again why we need WP:MEDRS for any health claims I suppose. Bon courage (talk) 04:13, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
I agree with that, this guy is promoted heavily by the British media as an expert. It's hard to find critical or neutral coverage of his claims. The only other good source I have seen is Abby Langer's website [36]. However, some may object to that source as it is self-published. Psychologist Guy (talk) 11:44, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Alkaline Water Scam

This company is mad that we identify alkaline water as a scam.

Don't know how much traction this campaign may be getting, but it was noticed by a third party so watch-listing alkaline water might be worthwhile.

jps (talk) 01:19, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

"Life Ionizers conducted an undercover investigation of the discussion page on Wikipedia about water ionizers and found that Wikipedia’s editors refuse to consider the input of experts who offered to contribute to the water ionizer article. The most likely reason for this is that Kangen water™ sales reps have tried to edit the article with their pseudoscientific claims.

LOL. When your grift doesn't work, blame other grifters. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 02:19, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
Reading information that is publicly available for free to anyone is conducting an undercover investigation? I have to update my CV. Apparently I'm an experienced undercover investigator. Who knew? -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 14:50, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
The "undercover investigation" must have been easy, like looking at the talk page history? Since all WP articles are expected to comply with policy like WP:PSCI and that WP:MEDRS quality sources exist directly supporting the criticism,[1] I don't see that as the work of a few opiniated editors or of a nefarious global skepticism cabal... I saw an MDPI source promoted on the talk page, but that cannot be used in attempt to "balance" against much better sources (WP:GEVAL). —PaleoNeonate – 03:01, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Fenton, Tanis R.; Huang, Tian (June 2016). "Systematic review of the association between dietary acid load, alkaline water and cancer". BMJ Open. 6 (6): e010438. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2015-010438. PMC 4916623. PMID 27297008.
Is MDPI (as a whole) not considered MEDRS? Good to know...I knew many of their journals are questionable but didn't know if there was consensus about the publisher. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 13:45, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
WP:MDPI --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:34, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Madhukar (author)

The biography of Madhukar may need some attention. I removed some unsourced content about Quantum mysticism (a topic I know nothing about). The article has many general references that are unlikely to be found online, and I'm unfamiliar with the publications. Politrukki (talk) 17:13, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Difficult to find any WP:FRIND sources about this individual. A lot of self-promotional social media and listings with time and date of his retreat events. Boilerplate bio says he was born in Germany in 1957 and worked as a TV journalist before becoming a yoga master. He's mononomial(?) like Madonna and Cher, but there aren't any independent sources that find him notable enough to even mention his former first and last name. Someone with better Google-fu may be able to come up with sources to meet WP:AUTHOR. If not, a good candidate for AfD. - LuckyLouie (talk) 19:06, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
I went ahead and AFD'd it. I couldn't find any independent sources at all. Warrenmck (talk) 03:14, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
Which was beside the point, it had already gone through an AFD with a delete vote without actually being deleted. Problem solved. Warrenmck (talk) 10:34, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Chan Thomas

New bio of fringe author could benefit from extra eyes. - LuckyLouie (talk) 19:41, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shivkar Bapuji Talpade

AfD concerning a man who is claimed to have invented first successful airplane 8 years before Wright Brothers. Editorkamran (talk) 13:15, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I find his time-traveling far more intriguing:
"Talpade is reputed to have constructed an unmanned, heavier-than-air aircraft, named Marutsakhā, and flown it above Bombay's Chowpatty Beach in 1895."
"The aircraft was purportedly inspired by the Vaimānika Shāstra ("Science of Aeronautics"), a text authored in 1904 that is frequently associated with descriptions of aircraft in the Vedas."
-- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 13:51, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
@Random person no 362478479: Vaimānika Shāstra was written during 1918 - 1923. That's long after the invention of airplane. Editorkamran (talk) 13:56, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
Even that date seems questionable. I was just quoting the Talpede article to point out the inconsistency. I don't expect people who believe in this kind of fringe to get the most basic facts straight. It's the glaringly obvious inconsistencies that make my day. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 14:05, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
Yes, that's one of the reasons why I started this AfD. It is better to limit the subject to the movie Hawaizaada. Editorkamran (talk) 14:10, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
If it is deleted it should probably be turned into a redirect to the film. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 14:35, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
I think there are enough reliable sources and that the argument that a sources written after the film should not be used is nonsense. And of course some of those sources are used to make the same points in the movie’s article, so why are they ok there but not in his? A redirect would not be enough, you’d have to merge some into the movie article no people might rightly object to that. Doug Weller talk 20:49, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
I would expect there to be a lot of unreliable sources in the wake of the movie. But I agree that does not mean that everything written after that is unreliable. Just like we cannot assume that things written before are reliable. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 23:49, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
I am being misrepresented here. I said that the sources that were created in the wake of the movie should not be used for establishing GNG because the subject is inheriting notability from the movie. Editorkamran (talk) 06:53, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
If the sources are reliable there is no reason why they should not count towards notability. If the interest caused by the movie leads to quality sources then that's good. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 07:03, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
Mainstream media in India has been a mouthpiece of the ruling party.[37] That means the so-called "quality sources" are promoting fake narratives and then other sincere "quality sources" are countering those false claims. These things don't have encyclopedic value. For example, the ruling party promoted The Kerala Story just like it had promoted Hawaizaada[38] but we don't have Women recruitment for ISIS in Kerala. Editorkamran (talk) 08:38, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
Yes current mainstream media in India are in many instances not reliable and not quality sources. I would probably even support declaring all current Indian media unreliable for certain topic areas. And I agree that if all that RS do is refute false claims that is an issue. But that is a very common issue when it comes to WP:FRINGE topics. I would certainly like better sources than the ones currently used in the article, but I don't know if those exist. Personally I have no opinion on whether or not Shivkar Bapuji Talpade should have a stand-alone article or whether the relevant information should just be added to Hawaizaada. I simply haven't really looked into the matter enough to form an opinion. You are right that there is no dedicated article about Women recruitment for ISIS in Kerala, but there is an article about Love Jihad. So in that case the conspiracy theory is treated in an article separate from the movie, just not in a stand-alone article. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 09:14, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
  • What Doug said. The claim that he flew a plane has no basis whatsoever, and even if it did, wouldn't change the fact that it was unmanned (ie even if true wouldn't be the "first" anything). That's no reason to delete an article, however, it's a reason to write it neutrally with non-fringe sources; which has been done. Vanamonde (Talk) 21:08, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
  • The subject is clearly not notable, only debunking of the false claim that he invented the first successful airplane has some coverage from WP:RS. I think some content can be merged into Claims to the first powered flight at "Other claims" section. Editorkamran (talk) 08:38, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
    "only debunking of the false claim that he invented the first successful airplane has some coverage from WP:RS." That is more or less the case with all conspiracy theories. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 09:16, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

James Tour

New editor insists that Intelligent design is not pseudoscience. May belong on more watchlists. --Hob Gadling (talk) 17:51, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Seems like there have been waves of whitewashing and POV-pushing happening for a while. Separating out his religious belief from his support of intelligent design is not a good idea. Also, promoting his h-index and number of citations in the lede is nothing short of bizarre and looks like someone was trying to engage in promotionalism of some sort. A few of the awards listed look a bit thin, in my opinion, as well. On the other hand, I think his support for intelligent design may deserve more prominence that it is currently enjoying. jps (talk) 01:33, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Ross Coulthart

Ross Coulthart (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I proposed a new source for this page on the talkpage. [39] Help in figuring out what to do with this would be appreciated. jps (talk) 22:23, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Anthony Peratt

Anthony Peratt (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Note that a significant amount of this article is devoted to a coatrack that various petroglyphs represent aurora phenomena. He seems to be making these claims adjacent to Electric Universe ideas. Can others look to see how to contextualize/weight these ideas? jps (talk) 22:21, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

"An Editorial Conundrum" for Journal of Folklore Research when their "scientific reviewers expressed considerable skepticism" for the ouroboros paper. That extracted quote from The Truth of Myth is highly misleading, here's more: "One problem is that taking mythology as a guide to the actual past can lead to extremely speculative reconstructions. For example, Marinus van der Sluijs and Anthony L. Peratt combine a detailed survey of the geographical distribution of the mythical image of the ouroboros...Does this sort of speculation mark a bold new interdisciplinary venture made possible by modern science, or a return to the unbridled extravagance of nineteenth-century “solar mythology”? fiveby(zero) 23:24, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
Currently the paragraph about petroglyphs is entirely sourced to WP:PRIMARY sources. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 23:12, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
Probably shouldn't be citing The Serpent Symbol In Tradition from Arktos Media? fiveby(zero) 23:45, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
The In Tradition part of that title is this traditionalism by the way. van der Sluijs books are self-published anyway so removed it also. fiveby(zero) 02:39, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Keith Kloor on rich benefactors of pseudoscience

This piece doesn't include stuff we didn't already know, but it is an excellent riposte to the recent breathlessness infecting the US Congress. I can think of many different articles where this source might be useful. Note that it is an opinion piece, but the person writing it is Keith Kloor, an acknowledged expert on the subject. jps (talk) 17:02, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Taurine

In June 2023 there was a lot of traffic on this article as the British media had misrepresented a paper and made far-fetched claims that taurine has been shown to reduce aging in humans and reduce several chronic diseases. This caused a lot of IPs to visit the article. The actual paper took most of its data from mice studies [40]. There are no clinical trials that have been done on this. Unfortunately there are now a lot of fringe claims being promoted about taurine on social media.

Another paper which is cited on our Wikipedia article [41] cites data from mice and monkeys. The paper being cited in the lead does not cite clinical data, it cites studies on rodents, monkeys and worms [42], the paper itself admits "Clinical trials in humans seem warranted to test whether taurine deficiency might drive aging in humans", that is because there currently is no human data. I believe both of these studies should be removed from the article. They are not review papers. The data being discussed does not apply to humans. Despite this, the Wikipedia article lead currently says "Taurine levels are inversely-associated with aging-related diseases in humans". Psychologist Guy (talk) 14:52, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Incoming cryptid

Hello all,
Great spider. I've checked the article deleted via Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Great Spider back in Jan 2020 and it's different enough not to meet WP:G4. @Premeditated Chaos: pinging closing admin.
--Shirt58 (talk) 🦘 03:27, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Did it kill Leo G. Carroll already? --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:05, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
Also Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Jba_fofi. Why can't it be speedied? Same sources William J. Gibbons and Nick Redfern. Cryptid Afd's are much fun but they need some new material. fiveby(zero) 12:43, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
By the way, Dlthewave or Bloodofox ever heard of a Barbegazi? fiveby(zero) 12:50, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
The Great Spider of the Congo? What does it feed on? The Large Fly of Rwanda? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:14, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
On a serious note can we just make a list of cryptids from MonsterQuest and merge this (and whatever else comes our way from them) into that? "List of MonsterQuest characters" or something like that? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:16, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Flood myth#Historicity - comets again

This pushes Bruce Masses' concept: "His hypothesis suggests that a meteor or comet crashed into the Indian Ocean around 3000–2800 BCE, which created the 30-kilometre (19 mi) undersea Burckle Crater and Fenambosy Chevron, and generated a giant tsunami that flooded coastal lands". I looked at the two articles and found that this hypothesis isn't generally accepted. Doug Weller talk 16:09, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

UFO sightings in Yugoslavia

New article. Oh my. Seems to have spilled over to List of reported UFO sightings too. - LuckyLouie (talk) 16:35, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Domestic violence against men

Domestic violence against men (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

There is a longstanding consensus, reaffirmed e.g. at this RfC, that the victims of domestic violence are overwhelmingly women. Every once in a while we see someone come along who wants very badly to challenge this consensus (e.g. like this) but it never gets anywhere. However a new effort to relitigate the issue has brought my attention to another article which appears to be functioning as a WP:POVFORK on the matter. That article is Domestic violence against men, which states in its lead that The relative prevalence of intimate partner violence against men to that of women is highly disputed between studies. There is a section on "Gender symmetry" which appears to contain a highly biased sampling of research, and also some pretty tendentious language such as It is notable that when Erin Pizzey, founder of the world's first women's refuge; in Chiswick, UK, reported her data showing that men are abused by women almost to the same extent as vice-versa, she received death threats from feminists. It's going to take more than just me to address the issues here. Anyone with the stomach for it is invited to wade in! Generalrelative (talk) 06:23, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

  • @Generalrelative: That RfC is on the whether the lede should have "overwhelmingly women", not that the theory of gender symmetry should be ommited.
Fringe theories in science "depart significantly from mainstream science and have little or no scientific support." Gender symmetry does have significant, reliable scientific support, which is cited in the article in question. It is an alternative viewpoint.
You have continuously left out any evidence on what you say is "highly biased". Such a thing is listed as an example of Civil POV pushing: "They argue that reliable sources are biased while their own preferred sources are neutral." Also on WP:FRINGENOT, "Opponents to reliable sources will often argue that their opponents reliable sources are FRINGE because they spread false information or have a viewpoint which is not mainstream". If it is biassed, it is not a good idea to remove it for that reason. WP:FRINGE says "Alternative theoretical formulations from within the scientific community are not pseudoscience, but part of the scientific process. They should not be classified as pseudoscience but should still be put into context with respect to the mainstream perspective."
Now what the article says about Erin Pizzey certainly may be WP:UNDUE, but that does not mean that it is fringe. Panamitsu (talk) 11:14, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
If the mainstream viewpoint is that "the victims of domestic violence are overwhelmingly women" to the extent that by consensus it's presented without qualification in the main article, other articles should not be saying stuff like "The relative prevalence of intimate partner violence against men to that of women is highly disputed between studies" without making clear that whatever the dispute, it's well accepted that victims of domestic violence are overwhelmingly women. If alternatively theories are to be presented, they need to be put in proper context which means a theory with such limited support that we can simply say the victims of domestic violence are overwhelmingly women without qualification needs to be correctly represented as a theory with very limited support. Whether you personally want to say it has 'significant, reliable scientific support', I don't really care provided you don't downplay how little support it has in any articles. Nil Einne (talk) 12:40, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
That is what I am saying. It presents WP:FALSEBALANCE, not fringe theories. Panamitsu (talk) 21:42, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
Good to see we can agree that this is false balance. I've made a few edits to the lead to accord with this basic agreement. Generalrelative (talk) 22:07, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
Editors with experience in NPOV disputes or this particular topic might also want to review recent edits at Domestic violence and Intimate partner violence and their talk pages. There's also a new RfC running at Talk:Domestic violence#RFC on "Worldwide, the victims of domestic violence are overwhelmingly women". Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 12:34, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

I remember some time back with Violence against men was a shitshow. I went back to it today and it reads much better than I had remembered, but someone with some category sense might want to look at the associated Category:Violence against men and see that everything is on the up-and-up. jps (talk) 16:53, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

  • On the related page Intimate partner violence we're still seeing what appears to me to be very insistent POV-pushing against established consensus by the same user, most recently and glaringly here. I've raised the behavioral issue on the user's talk page. With regard to the matter of fact, the user appears to believe that the community consensus that the article should continue stating that "the victims of domestic violence are overwhelmingly women" is somehow consistent with them adding There is not yet consensus on whether IPV is gender symmetrical or asymmetrical.
    When it comes to the FRINGE guideline, it's clear that the "gender symmetry" hypothesis qualifies as an alternative theoretical framework rather than pure pseudoscience, so we do need to discuss it. But it's also clear that the vast majority of high quality sources say that the victims of serious domestic violence are overwhelmingly women. Which is why the consensus has stood for several years despite the contentious nature of the gensex topic area. But that consensus is only as good as the motivation to uphold it against determined WP:1AM behavior. More eyes would be greatly appreciated! Generalrelative (talk) 00:41, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
    Again, this would be more appropriate for the Neutral point of view noticeboard. Panamitsu (talk) 00:54, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
    Perhaps, but at this point taking it to another board would be forum shopping. In any case, I thank you for self-reverting and look forward to working with you collaboratively in the future. Generalrelative (talk) 01:13, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
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