[WikiEN-l] WP:DENY is a steaming pile of crap.

[Durova]

>> OK, so let's take this test and try it on an article.
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgellons
>> Here we have a case where some very sincere people are campaigning
>> to get the medical establishment to recognise a disease.  The
>> medical establishment refuses, saying this is just symptoms of
>> already known diseases.
>> Read www.morgellonswatch.com if you have the time; the top two or
>> three posts are a very balanced statement of the medical
>> establishment's POV here.

>I neither know nor want to know anything about Morgellons.  There are
>clearly some people who believe that it is a validly distinct syndrome,
>and others who don't.  It is not for us to judge which of them is
>correct.  The fact that the medical establishment is in opposition is
>not in itself a valid argument against this  concept.  It is an argument
>from authority.  We can only say what each side believes.
That rather misses the point.  What we're doing here is looking at
the actual article, the actual editors of the actual article, and
seeing if the proposed test yields an unambiguous answer: who are
the Martin Luther Kings and who are the Jason Gastriches?

******
A particularly apt side of this is that the medical establishment has a
distinctly different explanation for Morgellons: delusional parasitosis.

I've watched this article from a distance and protected it twice.  The POV
problems are compounded with COI issues, but the underlying matter as I view
it is this.

It is not Wikipedia's role to make an editorial statement about which of
these two radically different explanations is correct.  It is our role to
represent the shape of the debate so that a reader who comes to this site
can see where the two sides are, get a rough sense of the proportion of
peer-reviewed research and qualified professionals on either side of the
debate, and get a basic outline of the grass roots movement that advocates
for recognition as a separate disease.

As new research and developments occur it's entirely possible that this
balance will shift.  Wikipedia's function as a tertiary source necessarily
places it on the tail end of whatever developements take place, after other
reliable sources have published.  Editors who wish to misuse the site's open
edit function for soapboxing deserve polite explanations of our standards
and how we function, and if they fail to adjust then a series of external
limitations can remedy the situation.

-Durova