[WikiEN-l] RE: William Connelley no longer neutral contributor

[Sheldon Rampton]

Probably I should stay out of this one, but oh well, here goes...

The discussion thus far has dealt with several, separate topics: (1) 
the appropriate role of "experts" vs. "non-experts", and of William 
Connolley in particular; (2) global warming; (3) chlorine and the 
ozone layer; and (4) the bona fides of S. Fred Singer (Ed Poor's 
favorite authority on topics the topic of global warming).

With regard to the problem of "experts" vs. "non-experts," my own 
expertise (ahem) comes from having written a book that is titled 
(with ironic intent), "Trust Us, We're Experts." In it, my co-author 
John Stauber and I make the point that many seeming "experts" are in 
fact people with undisclosed conflicts of interest that skew their 
points of view in ways that the public doesn't always see. For this 
reason, it behooves us all to take experts with a grain of salt 
rather than merely deferring to their claims of superior knowledge.

Nevertheless, the fact is that experts _do_ exist in many areas who 
have more knowledge than lay people in the area of their expertise. 
If I am trying to decide whether to have brain surgery, I think I am 
probably better off taking the advice of a physician than of my uncle 
Byron (even though the surgeon MAY have a profit-related motive for 
wanting to influence my decision).

Ed seems to be saying that since William Connolley is an expert in 
his field of climate science, Connolley should therefore be treated 
as someone with a "point of view." Here, Ed is making a category 
error. It is true that experts frequently have strong opinions 
related to topics in their field of expertise. However, non-experts 
ALSO frequently have strong opinions related to topics in their 
fields of NON-expertise. A case in point here is Ed himself, who 
clearly has a strong opinion about the topic of global warming, even 
though he is not an expert in that field. (I'm not saying this to 
disparage Ed. He's acknowledged himself that he is not an expert in 
the field, and for that matter, neither am I.)

I see no reason whatsoever to believe that non-experts in a field are 
better able to arrive at NPOV formulations than experts in a field. 
If anything, experts are _better_ able to do this. Consider, for 
example, the following summary of a news story that appeared awhile 
back in the New York Times:

>New research indicates that incompetent people tend not to know they 
>are incompetent. Not only that, they also tend to be very confident 
>that they know what they're doing -- even more confident of their 
>own competence than people who really do know what they're doing.
>
>   The New York Times reports that Cornell University psychology 
>professor David Dunning reached those conclusions in a study he 
>conducted with a graduate student, and wrote about his findings in 
>the December 1999 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social 
>Psychology.
>
>  The researchers concluded that one reason incompetent people do not 
>know how much they do not know, is that the cognitive skills 
>required to be competent are also required for recognizing actual 
>competence.
>
>   Researcher Justin Kruger told the Times that the incompetence of 
>incompetent people "robs them of their ability to realize" they have 
>a problem. It also makes it difficult for incompetent folks to 
>recognize competence in others.
>
>   By the way, the researchers say they also noticed that people who 
>can't tell a joke tend not to realize that they're not funny -- and 
>as a result they persist in telling jokes badly.

SOURCE:
http://www.truthinjustice.org/incompetent.htm

I think as Wikipedia continues to mature and becomes better regarded 
as a credible information  resource, it is likely to attract more and 
more contributors with expertise and credentials. We ought to welcome 
this development (without, of course, excluding the participation 
non-experts). But if we start declaring that the experts' 
contributions must be labeled as "their point of view," we will be 
effectively giving experts second-class status compared to 
non-experts, which is precisely an ass backwards way of doing things.

What Ed is really saying here is that he, Ed, disagrees with some of 
William Connolley's edits. Rather than try to insist that Connolley's 
edits all be flagged as "Connolley's point of view," Ed should deal 
with this the same way everyone else does when they have a 
disagreement: He should try to work it out with Connolley in a 
mutually acceptable way. If Ed is simply feeling out-gunned by 
William Connolley's expertise and thinks that Connolley is a BIASED 
expert, the proper solution is that Ed should try to find ANOTHER 
expert with a point of view more to Ed's liking, and recruit that 
expert to participate in working on the global warming article. 
(Maybe he can recruit S. Fred Singer to speak for himself.)

(2)
I'm not going to say much about global warming, other than to point 
out that it is a completely different topic than the issue of 
chlorofluorocarbons and the ozone layer. The only thing the two 
issues have in common is that they both relate to atmospheric science 
and that environmentalists are concerned about both of them, while S. 
Fred Singer thinks that they aren't much of a problem.

The other point that should be made about global warming is that it 
is a topic that has been discussed two arenas, namely the arena of 
scientific investigation, and the arena of public opinion. The 
scientific investigation has been conducted in peer-reviewed 
scientific journals, which is where scientific investigatiosn SHOULD 
take place. The public debate has played out in newspapers, 
magazines, political parties and other fora. It is appropriate that 
both arenas exist, but it is important to avoid confusing the two.

(3)
With regard to the effect of human chlorine emissions such as 
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) on the ozone layer, this really _is_ a 
settled matter. Even S. Fred Singer, who was stridently dismissive of 
CFC-ozone theory in the 1980s and early 1990s, has largely dropped 
the topic. The August 25, 1995 issue of _Science_ magazine quotes him 
saying, "I'm now reasonably convinced that CFCs make the major 
contribution to stratospheric chlorine, and what has convinced me is 
the published data." He's hardly said a word about the topic since 
1996, even on his own web site. His "Stratospheric Ozone" page 
contains a slew of articles that he wrote up through 1995, the year 
that the scientists who first warned of the ozone hole received a 
Nobel Prize. After 1996, all Singer has on it site is a duplicate of 
something he wrote the previous year grousing about the Nobel award, 
followed by a single brief letter he wrote in 1998 that deals with 
some tangential points but doesn't challenge any of the main points 
in the scientific CFC-ozone consensus.
-- 
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------