On Mon, 8 Dec 2003, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
[I'm using Ed's email as a starting point for some thoughts I've been attempting to put into an intelligible form over the last few weeks, & perhaps add to the article on [[NPOV]].]
In light of the Cunctator's keen observations....
I wonder what people mean when they say "most scientists believe X". This has a bearing on how we write about non-mainstream ideas such as alternative medicine.
- What is a majority view?
If indeed 51% of scientists (or doctors holding a Western M.D. degree, or moviegoers, or Linux enthusiasts) BELIEVE A CERTAIN THING, then the article should simply report that the indicated proportion of the group in question adheres to that POV.
If the majority is larger than 51% - say, 95% - we can safely call that an "overwhelming majority". If it is 99.8% we can say "virtually all". (Note that some published writers might considered 2/3 to be "overwhelming", but that is just THEIR POV! If as many as 1/3 of a group disagree with something, our readers are better served by telling them that 2/3 of the group believe it, and that 1/3 of the group disbelieve it).
Having stated the general principle, I wonder how many are still with me? Getting bored? Angry? . . .
Despite my own populist & leftist sympathies, I can't help but be suspicious of any argument that attempts to determine what is "truth" by a vote. And I can't help finding any such statement worthless.
First, let me define one point here. When talking about any issue, I think it is fair to say that the viewpoints expressed will come from one of three groups:
*Professionals -- by this I mean scientists, scholars, medical doctors, priests or pastors, accountants, &c. These are the people whose lives revolve around researching, formulating & expressing opinions on issues.
*Informed non-professionals, or amateurs -- these are the folks who don't make their living from researching, formulating & expressing opinions, but do so on their own dime. The professional groups sneer at their opinions, & condescendingly call them "amateurs" -- forgetting that the original meaning of the word comes from describing people whose work is a labor of love. Much like all of us on Wikipedia. (Well, me at least; if Jimbo is distributing checks to everyone for their contributions, mine have been consistently getting lost in the mail.)
*Uninformed non-professionals. These are the people who aren't informed about a given issue, & tend to repeat what they hear without any significant understanding. This is the realm of Urban Legends, Superstition, Crackpot Theories, & similar ilk -- but it is also fair to say all of us in one topic or another fit into this group. Can we be sure that, at any given moment, we could defend our views on every conceivable topic? About Abortion? About the existence of God? Concerning Israel? Whether or not Democracy is the best form of government? If Tolstoy is a better author than Mickey Spillone?
I think it is fair to say that ideas from this last group face the hardest time from those of us who care about Wikipedia: unless it can be shown that one of these ideas are held belongs to a significant group or a tradition, it will get removed rather promptly from Wikipedia. The consensus is that the ramblings of Joe Blow you might meet in a bar is not as interesting as the opinions of Ayn Rand, Noam Chomsky or Plato (to pick at random some examples), & labelled "quackery" & gets voted off Wikipedia.
Okay, end of my digression concerning catagories; let me proceed to my argument.
Too often on Wikipedia, it appears that we are looking for some kind of ex cathedra decision of what the professionals think about an issue. We want the professionals to say, "This is truth." Except for those who want to be able to say, "The professionals think A, but they are wrong & it is clear that the truth is B." But as I reflect on how knowledge is achieved, this kind of paradigm rarely occurs.
Explaining the views of the professionals on an issue, I feel sometimes that I am confronting a situation best explained by the decisions of the US Supreme Court: sometimes they issue decisions unanimously, in a single opinion; sometimes they make a decision where the vote is 8-1, 7-1, 6-3, or 5-4, & there are two opinions; sometimes the vote is equally split, but where almost every justice issues her or his own opinon about the case argued before them. In the latter case, for Wikipedia to report that "55% percent of the professionals believe A" grossly misrepresents the various POVs.
If you follow me so far, then you see how vital it is to explain the reasons why there are different POVs in an article. Sometimes this divergence is due to yet insufficient evidence; other times it is due to other reasons (e.g., professional A vehemently argues for his POV because that is the same POV of his employer; professional B argues for her POV because it is the opposite of the POV of her ruling party).
So what I try to do is state what is the _consensus_ concerning a given issue. The scientific consensus is that the Earth is round -- a fact even the Flat-Earthers will admit. The consensus of historians is that Columbus made a voyage in 1492, & reported to the rest of Europe the existence of a continent, which was later known to be the Americas, & was widely known -- a fact even those who claim that the Vikings, the Phoenicians, the Iberians or the aboriginal hunter-gathers who crossed over the Bering Sea into those continents some 50 millenia before will admit.
Every argument needs a starting point; no topic should be treated as a game of Calvinball where the score is 23 to Q.
My POV on this matter is that we need to report the arguments of the various POVs concerning an issue in understandable detail, rather than count noses & report the result. And further, we should not restrict ourselves to the consensus of the professionals; too often their consensus is based on non-rational opinions. To quote the example of Lysenko on the study of genetics in the Soviet Union is an extreme case, & too many people are likely to say that it would never happen in a free environment; more apt, & suggestive of just how wrong the consensus on an issue could be is the case of deciphering Mayan inscriptions. Due to the fiercely-held opinion of the pre-eminent (yet very learned) Mayanologist Sir Eric Thompson, the understanding of these Native American inscriptions made no headway until _after_ his death! Progess on this problem could only be made outside of the professional establishment, in this case, amongst scholars & professionals in the Soviet Union who were isolated from the mainstream.
I remember a saying from the early 20th-century physicists: "The only way to get a new theory accepted is to wait for all of the opponents to die."
This is not to say that we must give more weight to evey anti-establishment viewpoint than to that held by the establishment. Frankly, I feel it is important to set forth what might be called the "convential thinking" about a subject, just because it what any reader of Wikipedia expects to find. Right now I'm attempting to set forth the consensus of Biblical scholars on the actual dates when the various books of the New Testament were written; & yet I feel the articles are not as strong as they could be because I don't know (& frankly don't care to do the research to find out) what the traditional views on authorship are. I don't feel it is useful to have an article about the _Epistle to the Hebrews_ that states that many religious writers since Origen doubted St Paul ever wrote that work, without explaining why millions of Christians believed for centuries that he had; it unfairly makes anyone who argues the later viewpoint look stupid & ill-informed.
I could continue on, but I've already spent a couple hours writing the text above. Is this a worthwhile extension of the concept of NPOV to be worth discussion, or is this merely my peculiar historigraphic approach to the subject, without much interest to anyone except myself?
Response on or off the list is welcome.
Geoff