Begin forwarded message:
From: Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net Date: July 15, 2005 6:45:40 PM MDT To: Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] William M. Connoley, admin? (was: Running the asylum)
See
Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/William_M._Connolley#Larry_Sanger. 27s_definition_of_neutrality
and
Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment/William_M._Connolley
Particularly this quote:
"In science, neutrality is presenting the truth, or what the vast majority of scientific opinion (as measured by published papers) believes to be the truth."
Fred
On Jul 15, 2005, at 5:23 PM, Dan Grey wrote:
On 15/07/05, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
any method of arriving at the truth though reference to expert editors such as himself presents prospects of sustained conflict.
Fred
OK, just for my benefit (and anyone else who may not be 100% au fait with all this) - is that what William suggests we do?
Dan
On Fri, 15 Jul 2005, Fred Bauder wrote:
(quoting me:)
"In science, neutrality is presenting the truth, or what the vast majority of scientific opinion (as measured by published papers) believes to be the truth."
(FB's words:)
any method of arriving at the truth though reference to expert editors such as himself presents prospects of sustained conflict.
As I said, wiki's NPOV should be based around what the weight of scientific papers says. The rest of the arbcomm agrees that this is correct. Quite what FBs objection to it is, I really don't know.
I have never asserted that my opinion alone should be taken as truth - what counts in most cases is whats in the journals. "Reference to expert editors" makes sense, though, if you interpret that as "people who know what the science is". The conflicts arise when people who have no idea what the science is try to push their POV, based on either nothing but prejudice, some dodgy skeptic website, or at best a paper that really is out on a limb.
-W.
William M Connolley | wmc@bas.ac.uk | http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/wmc/ Climate Modeller, British Antarctic Survey | (01223) 221479 If I haven't seen further, it's because giants were standing on my shoulders