William Connelley no longer neutral contributor (Re: to Jimbo)

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RE: [WikiEN-l] William Connelley...

Allan Crossman

24 Nov 2003 24 Nov '03

9:39 p.m.

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This bit is important -- it might be that "within the field" of postmodern literary criticism (for example), some idea 'X' is accepted as a matter of course, and that no one within that field questions it. But outside the field, others may find reason to dispute it vigorously.

No, that's not a fair example, as postmodern literary criticism is just one camp in the study of literature. But if all camps - that is, nearly everyone who was an expert in literature - accepted some particular claim about literature, then that claim could probably be stated with no qualifiers (I suspect there are very few such claims in literary study...) Here the question is - does nearly every expert in whatever field "global warming" falls under (environmental science, or whatever) accept William Connolley's claim? I don't know yet. -- Allan Crossman - http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk PGP keys - 0x06C4BCCA (new) || 0xCEC9FAE1 (compatible)

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Jimmy Wales

24 Nov 24 Nov

9:40 p.m.

New subject: William Connelley no longer neutral contributor (Re: to Jimbo)

Allan Crossman wrote:

...

Here the question is - does nearly every expert in whatever field "global warming" falls under (environmental science, or whatever) accept William Connolley's claim? I don't know yet.

I'm still not sure that I can agree. Let's suppose that nearly every expert in environmental science or whatever agrees with claim X, but at the same time a large number of political activists disputes it vigorously -- let's imagine that they are Greenpeace activists, instead of conservative activists, just for fun. In a case like that, I don't think that _Wikipedia_ should be in the business of labelling the view as 'obviously false'. We can say that "most scientists say that it is obviously false" or we can say that "William Connelly, noted thus-and-so, says that it is obviously false" or any number of things in that neighborhood. But because it is disputed by non-lunatics, we need to step away from making the claim ourselves. --Jimbo

Tim the Enchanter

10:15 p.m.

New subject: William Connelley no longer neutral contributor (Re: toJimbo)

I would say the answer to that is no. You could go to a library and look up GW and you would find numerous books on either side of the argument. You could do the same thing with a search on Google or a similar site and the results would be the same however, considering the nature of the internet, you might not consider that ample proof one way or the other. I think Ed's suggestion of making Dr. Connelly a source would be the best way to handle it. [[User:T-Money]] ----- Original Message ----- From: "Allan Crossman" <a.crossman(a)blueyonder.co.uk> To: <wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org> Sent: Monday, November 24, 2003 3:39 PM Subject: [WikiEN-l] William Connelley no longer neutral contributor (Re: toJimbo)

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Here the question is - does nearly every expert in whatever field "global warming" falls under (environmental science, or whatever) accept William Connolley's claim? I don't know yet. -- Allan Crossman - http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk PGP keys - 0x06C4BCCA (new) || 0xCEC9FAE1 (compatible)

Fred Bauder

10:34 p.m.

New subject: William Connelley no longer neutral contributor (Re: toJimbo)

While we were chatting the following reasonable language has been put into the article which Ed has not reverted: SEPP (or Fred Singer) has also commented on the question of [[Ozone depletion]], incorrectly asserting that the statement "CFCs with lifetimes of decades and longer become well-mixed in the atmosphere, percolate into the stratosphere, and there release chlorine." is controversial [http://www.sepp.org/ozone/ozonefranklin.html]. Fred

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From: "Tim the Enchanter" <t-money(a)thehouse.ws> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org> Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 16:15:00 -0600 To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] William Connelley no longer neutral contributor (Re: toJimbo) I would say the answer to that is no. You could go to a library and look up GW and you would find numerous books on either side of the argument. You could do the same thing with a search on Google or a similar site and the results would be the same however, considering the nature of the internet, you might not consider that ample proof one way or the other. I think Ed's suggestion of making Dr. Connelly a source would be the best way to handle it. [[User:T-Money]] ----- Original Message ----- From: "Allan Crossman" <a.crossman(a)blueyonder.co.uk> To: <wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org> Sent: Monday, November 24, 2003 3:39 PM Subject: [WikiEN-l] William Connelley no longer neutral contributor (Re: toJimbo)

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Jimmy Wales

10:22 p.m.

New subject: William Connelley no longer neutral contributor (Re: toJimbo)

Fred Bauder wrote:

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SEPP (or Fred Singer) has also commented on the question of [[Ozone depletion]], incorrectly asserting that the statement "CFCs with lifetimes of decades and longer become well-mixed in the atmosphere, percolate into the stratosphere, and there release chlorine." is controversial [http://www.sepp.org/ozone/ozonefranklin.html].

I suppose it is just a smidge 'softer' to say 'incorrectly' rather than 'obviously false'. But it still commits _Wikipedia_ to a stand on an issue that we shouldn't take.

Fred Bauder

10:45 p.m.

New subject: William Connelley no longer neutral contributor (Re: toJimbo)

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From: Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)bomis.com> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org> Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 14:22:28 -0800 To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] William Connelley no longer neutral contributor (Re: toJimbo) Fred Bauder wrote:

I suppose it is just a smidge 'softer' to say 'incorrectly' rather than 'obviously false'. But it still commits _Wikipedia_ to a stand on an issue that we shouldn't take.

I don't think there is any credible evidence to the contrary. At least not that is part of the canon of knowledge. Fred

Gareth Owen

25 Nov 25 Nov

10:02 a.m.

New subject: William Connelley no longer neutral contributor (Re: toJimbo)

"Tim the Enchanter" <t-money(a)thehouse.ws> writes:

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I would say the answer to that is no. You could go to a library and look up GW and you would find numerous books on either side of the argument.

Or you could look in scientific journalists. You will find a great many scholarly papers supporting GW, and comparitively very few that do not. They may be wrong, but they're not really sharply divided. Don't judge cutting edge science by what appears in the popular press. If you want to know what scientists are thinking, look in journals. -- Gareth Owen "The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity" -- W. B. Yeats forsees the standard of debate on wikipedia-l

Delirium

10:24 a.m.

New subject: William Connelley no longer neutral contributor (Re: toJimbo)

Gareth Owen wrote:

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"Tim the Enchanter" <t-money(a)thehouse.ws> writes:

I would say the answer to that is no. You could go to a library and look up GW and you would find numerous books on either side of the argument.

Well, perhaps "comparatively few", but certainly not "none" or "almost none". They've declined in number recently, but there are still a good number of "sceptical" papers being published. There was one in Climate Research pushed just a few months ago (January 2003) by Soon and Baliunus that raised somewhat of a ruckus (abstract at http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/cr/v23/n2/p89-110.html, among other places). Whether this paper or any others are accurate or not is another matter, but it is true that they're being published in mainstream peer-reviewed journals, by researchers at fairly prestigious institutions. -Mark

Gareth Owen

11:32 a.m.

New subject: William Connelley no longer neutral contributor (Re: toJimbo)

Delirium <delirium(a)rufus.d2g.com> writes:

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Well, perhaps "comparatively few", but certainly not "none" or "almost none".

Well, thats what "comparatively few" means. If I'd meant "none" or "almost none", thats what I'd've said.

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Whether this paper or any others are accurate or not is another matter, but it is true that they're being published in mainstream peer-reviewed journals, by researchers at fairly prestigious institutions.

I know. Thats why I stressed that there was *not* unanimity in the field, especially in the field of interpreting indicators to show the climatology of the past, such as the paper you cite. -- Gareth Owen "It's not a human or civic right to edit wikipedia." -- kq cuts to the core of the banning debate

Jimmy Wales

12:59 p.m.

New subject: William Connelley no longer neutral contributor (Re: toJimbo)

Gareth Owen wrote:

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Then that's what we should say, of course. It's really a bit much for _Wikipedia_ to leap from that to saying that the other side is "incorrect" or that what they are saying is "obviously false".

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Don't judge cutting edge science by what appears in the popular press. If you want to know what scientists are thinking, look in journals.

I think that's right, but I also think that one difference between an encyclopedia and a journal is that an encyclopedia has to hold to a much higher standard of proof before declaring something to actually be the case. Journals can afford to be partisan and sloppy in a way that we can't. --Jimbo

Gareth Owen

1:23 p.m.

New subject: William Connelley no longer neutral contributor (Re: toJimbo)

Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)bomis.com> writes:

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Then that's what we should say, of course. It's really a bit much for _Wikipedia_ to leap from that to saying that the other side is "incorrect" or that what they are saying is "obviously false".

The thing with which Ed Poor disagreed is universally held to be true. You can follow atmospheric mixing within any number of passive tracers, and break down CFCs with UV in the lab. You get chlorine. I have never heard anybody (except Ed Poor) dispute this. To suggest that CFCs they behave differently in the atmosphere is ... crazy.

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Journals can afford to be partisan and sloppy in a way that we can't.

I'd disagree. Journals can (and do) afford space to any number of well researched papers that are out of line with academic consensus, but whose resarch methodology reach basic standards. Besides Ed's continued refutation of unpalatable facts (such as the behaviour of CFCs in the atmosphere) is the only partisan opinion I've seen expressed. -- Gareth Owen I'm very enamoured of the idea of meta-content markup ... there are a lot of cool possibilities. But we should be reluctant to tamper much with a system that totally works in an amazing way. -- Jimmy Wales

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Allan Crossman
Delirium
Fred Bauder
Gareth Owen
Jimmy Wales
Tim the Enchanter