Ray Saintonge wrote:
Ryan Delaney wrote:
My big problem with this is that very frequently, especially in fields like science and philosophy, commonly held beliefs might be very different from the "correct" beliefs, or the consensus among learned experts. But because of the format of Wikipedia, some extremely wrong beliefs are inserted into articles because they are commonly held, even if they wildly contradict the research that professionals in the field are doing -- and I mean this is just as bad as saying the Earth is flat. The only difference is that the roundness of the Earth is common knowledge, but there are some things in science that are just as obvious to professionals but completely unknown to the general public.
"Commonly held beliefs", "'correct' beliefs", and expert consensus are three different frames of mind, and all three can still be wrong. Often, but certainly not always, the professionals have it right; that's reason enough to leave open the avenues for criticizing science. "Correct" beliefs are often promulgated by people with a political end in mind, and they have no qualms about bending facts if it will help their cause The general public, and thus our editors are often in the difficult position of having a limted basis for making a decision. The need to cite sources should apply equally to the scientists and to those who express commonly held beliefs; the scientists have an advantage here because that practice has been a part of their experience. Science is very poorly reported to the general public. An understanding of what's going on is incompatible with the 15-second sound bite. Look at the evolution of a long established publication like "Popular Science". In its early days, shortly after the US Civil War it had a lot of articles designed to get everybody to think about science; since then it has managed to evolve into something far more gadgety. Much of science has retreated into the ivory tower. This is great for the protection of scientific sinecures, but is terrible for the promotion of scientific understanding by the general public. One of the greatest things that Wikipedia could accomplish would be to produce a generation of critical thinkers with both the tools and the confidance to question any kind of established truth wherever they can find it.
The [[Race and intelligence]] article is a perfect example of this phenomenon. People who know nothing about the research done in this field have many times gone into that article and edited it mercilessly in the name of NPOV because the established scientific opinion presented (and extensively referenced) in the article is very contradictory to the "politically correct" opinion. In my view, Wikipedians need to have more respect for references and experts to prevent this kind of thing from happening. The usual Wiki philosophy usually works in other cases, but in such an emotional subject as [[Race and intelligence]], people tend to go way overboard, and the NPOV and "everyone's equal" policies only make them more convictional about their right to push their POV over that of the academic consensus.
It's a challenge. The statistics say what they say - nothing more, nothing less. The statistics thenselves are unconcerned about how anyone misinterprets them. People don't usually understand what statistics are all about, and are quick to draw conclusions that are not warranted. This subject matter is a good example where we can look for creative ways to build consensus. Simply telling the public that they are wrong and that they should pay attention to their academic betters will get us nowhere except into a never ending flame war. Somewhere along the way the scientists dropped the ball.
Generally speaking (and I am speaking from my personal experience here) whenever what I am calling a "learned expert" -- be it a graduate student in a subject or a PhD or a professional with years of time on the job -- makes contributions, they are well argued and highly referenced. As you say, these people have a lot of experience making these kinds of arguments and I think their method of discovering truth is the best one we have. So no, I don't want to tell the public that "they are wrong and that they should pay attention to their academic betters". I don't think it should even have to be said.
I think people on Wikipedia should be more humble and conscious of the limitations of their knowledge and expertise, and willing to admit that if another person knows more about it than they do, that his or her opinions are more likely to be closest to the truth. If an expert says something you think you can disprove with adequate research and referencing, then go ahead and bring that up. But I've seen some astonishing arrogance in Wikipedians who think their common knowledge should weigh just as heavily as the opinions of eminent and established thinkers in an advanced field.
That doesn't promote the spread of academic-level scientific knowledge that you want -- it obscures it, by breeding a culture that only perpetuates the commonly held beliefs over the rigorous testing of scientific method.
[snip]
In these cases, I don't think that any amount of voiciferous objecting and arguing should be considered relevant. I think that even if the consensus of Wikipedians editing the article disagrees with it, that consensus should lose, unless they can find some evidence that the article is wrong. This obsession with consensus has a real possibility of going terribly wrong. I think the emphasis should be on having Wikipedia advance _correct_ beliefs, not popular ones.
"Correct" too easily becomes "politically correct". It's too easy to become emotionally attached to one's "correct" beliefs. There is great normalizing power to effective consensus building. Scientists would do better by judiciously planting seeds in Wikipedia's great fractal Mendelbrot.
I don't think that Wikipedia should take a position that truth is subjective. I know that's not precisely what you're saying, but I do think this is a dangerous slippery slope.
Some beliefs are wrong despite being widely held. Yes, if you dig deep enough into the philosophy of correspondence theory and epistemology you'll discover that we only know things with a limited degree of certainty. But as you know, that doesn't mean that Wikipedia should include caveats that the moon might actually be made of Norweigan beaver cheese. Science has a way of shifting the burden of proof, and that also happens in academic subjects where the discoveries of a few people are not yet common knowledge despite the availability of the facts to anyone who wants to look at them.
Human civilization works as well as it does because our skills are diversified and we can each specialize to great degrees in individual tasks. But Wikipedia has abandoned that format, and I think that in exchange for freedom of information exchange, we're paying a price we don't have to pay, in the form of scaring away the people who have specialized the most in a single field. I don't want Wikipedia to be an academic journal with all its red tape, politics, and anal-retentive peer review. I just want Wikipedians to be encouraged to understand their limitations, and stick to the things they know.
- Ryan