[WikiEN-l] BLP conundrum

[Ray Saintonge]

daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>I recently came across the following article: 
>_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Sylvia_Browne_ 
>(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Sylvia_Browne) .  To get you up to speed, Sylvia Browne is a self-professed psychic. 
>Invevitably,  James Randi is not impressed. Neither is Danny. 
> 
>On the other hand, does this merit an article. She is an LP, so this is  
>essentially a "Criticisms of a BLP" article. On the other hand, it is quite  
>well-sourced, at least from a perfunctory glance at it. 
> 
>Still, do we want to open the door to these kinds of articles? Criticisms  of 
>Sylvia Browne could lead to Criticisms of Uri Geller to Criticisms of George  
>Bush to Criticisms of Tom Cruise to Criticisms of [pick your favorite]. The 
>very  hypothesis of the article is POV. Surely, this is not what we are here 
>for. 
> 
>I'd really like some input. Ideally, it should be merged, but the precedent  
>this poses should also be mentioned.
>
Merge.

"Criticisms of ..." articles are bound to POV, especially when the 
subject is a person.  The entire article seems to focus on her personal 
dispute with James Randi, and his obsessive campaign to find fault with 
her.  The tone of the article takes sides with Randi, and fails to 
recognize that he is as big a part of the problem as she is.

Psychic phenomena of all sorts are controversial, but if the objective 
is to discuss such phenomena dispassionately and objectively it cannot 
be done by focussing on a personal feud between two publicity seeking 
personalities   Strangely the claim that Browne's psychic visions are 
bunk presupposes that there are claims by others that are not, and that 
she is instead not representative of mainstream psychics.

The sources for this article are indeed plentiful, but seemed chosen 
with the sole intent of highlighting sensationalism.  While I would be 
highly critical of Browne as a representative of psychic phenomena, I 
also think that the article puts too much stress on the failures of her 
public performances, and is there purely to make her look bad.

Ec