Talk:Australian Measles Control Campaign

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AVN
AVN is not a credible organisation. They have been instructed to put disclaimers on their website and to change their name, they have also had their nonprofit status revoked. See Australian Vaccination-Skeptics Network. The section on "criticism" of this initiative was in fact entirely made up of AVN's "criticism", sourced from AVN's own materials. That sourcing is neither reliable nor independent. It gives undue weight to the fringe views of people whose court history shows them to be systematically untruthful.
 * This is not doubt very true. But the fact remains that they have raise stupid claims and fears against this vaccination, and the data table of claims and subsequent evidence are very eloquent in showing how stupid and unjustified those claims were, and how disingenuous that body has been. This is all very relevant to this article, and any repeat of deletion is not acceptable - a point made on the IP users Talk Page who left the unsigned comment above. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 11:49, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Sources must be reliable, independent and secondary. AVN’s claims are cited to their website, which is none of these three things.
 * The exception to this is that we can use a primary and unreliable source as a citation for the fact that said source made a claim. Tornado chaser (talk) 01:01, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
 * No, because if it's not covered in an independent source, it's not significant. I could go into the article on Earth and include the statement that the earth is flat according to the Qur'an, cited tot he Raelians, and that would justly be removed because although the Raelians have indeed said that, it is not significant, as evidence the fact that no reliable independent sources have repeated it. You can (just about) get away with using AVN as a source for AVN claims on the AVN article, provided there is a reality-based rebuttal, but to use AVN as a source for their bullshit in an article that is not about them, is unacceptable per WP:RS, WP:FRINGE, WP:UNDUE, WP:SELFPUB and half a dozen other well established content principles.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.21.88.44 (talk) 00:11, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Am I being thick? Surely it's acceptable in this context to include the citation to the flawed data and statements within a datatable which is demonstrating that data presented as criticism by an anti-vaccination campaign group is based upon flawed data! If you take out the citation to that data (albeit sourced from an unreliable campaign group - I think we've all got that bit) you have no evidence to support the datatable showing that the scaremongering was based upon flawed data, as shown by the actual real-life data in the datatable and the quotation and citation to unreliable scaremongering, as subsequently announced by the Health Minister. I have reverted the edit which removed the citation in the data table. (Will editors please sign their postings with four tildes, like this: ~ ) Nick Moyes (talk) 01:14, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Don't put yourself in a position where you could be accused of a PA, such as calling an editor "thick" Tornado chaser (talk) 01:21, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you - you are absolutely right to point this out to me. I do apologise to all, and I have rephrased the first sentence of my response. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 08:08, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Sources must be reliable, independent and secondary. If the views of AVN are significant, they will be covered in reliable independent secondary sources and we don't need to cite them directly. If they are not covered by reliable independent secondary sources, then they are not significant and should not be covered. Applicable TLAs: WP:RS, WP:FRINGE, WP:UNDUE. Remember, AVN has been ordered to include disclaimers on its website, and to change its name, and has had its nonprofit status revoked. it is a fringe group that lies a lot. So we have a section saying that a bunch of lying charlatans said X, witht he source being the bunch of lying charlatans saying X, on the basis that we want to say how wrong the bunch of lying charlatans were. That is not how Wikipedia is supposed to cover counterfactual claims. Do ask at WP:FTN if you are at all confused about this. 82.21.88.44 (talk) 00:02, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Please don't edit war, I am going to mention this at FTN to get more opinions. Tornado chaser (talk) 02:01, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
 * One person cannot edit war. For an edit war to exist here, requires that someone else reinserts the disputed material. That would be you. ,So please don't edit war. I have pointed you to the policy. This is a fringe group whose claims have been authoritatively adjudicated as unreliable on multiple occasions, we should not include their fringe claims unless someone else has decided they are significant enough to be worth addressing. And the fact that this argument is even happening, is evidence that this is not so. You could fix the issue immediately by simply substituting a source that meets our standard criteria of reliability and independence, but you haven't. I could not find such a source. Can you? If you can't, the claim has to go. 82.21.88.44 (talk) 15:42, 17 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Would need secondary sourcing covering the AVN stuff. This is original research based on primary sources. Alexbrn (talk) 02:19, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Despite the request not to WP:EDITWAR, I note that Alexbrn went ahead immediately afterwards and deleted this section after Tornado chaser clearly stated he would raise the matter at Fringe Theories Noticeboard. My only aim here is to ensure a WP:NEUTRAL article, certainly not to give fringe theorists a platform. Nevertheless, I feel the article should show that a fringe group made false claims about a legitimate vaccination campaign that were so spurious yet serious that they resulted in a formal (and cited) statement from the Federal Health Minister being published. The reason for the Health Minster's intervention was demonstrated by a data table showing ridiculous false claims versus genuine health outcomes, each data column being supported by a citation. Now, if the datatable is to remain, the sources that cite both sets of contrasting data should also remain. So, I was not impressed when the citation evidencing that false data column was deleted, leaving the genuine health outcomes in one column (with a citation) but the whacky data in an adjacent column no longer linked to the archived page it came from.
 * Now, I'm quite happy for the entire data table to be deleted, but I do feel the article would not be WP:NEUTRAL or, indeed, complete if the impact of false claims were not refered to. Nor do I think that referring to false claims would be WP:UNDUE in the light of the Health Minster's public intervention and accusations of 'crackpots'. Note that I had earlier entitled the section 'Flawed criticism of the campaign' but this was changed by Tornado chaser, presumably to make it sound more neutral.
 * So there's an irony in our conflicting approaches to editing here - I think we all want the same outcome - a fair and neutral article that covers the story of the measles vaccination campaign without wandering off into undue irrelevancies. The Health Minister's intervention against these crackpot theorists seems to be a genuine part of that story, so I believe it should remain. Maybe we should leave his statement in, but drop the data table completely? How would editors feel about that? Note that, as the matter has been raised at WP:FTN, I believe it would be appropriate to revert the deletion of the relevant section so that our discussion here can be read in context. However, here is the page prior to recent re-deletion of the section under discussion. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 11:19, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I have restored the deleted section, I like the table but it may be OR and I would not object to its deletion on OR grounds, but given the health minister's intervention, I think mention of AVN's inaccurate claims needs to stay. Tornado chaser (talk)
 * No. They are an unreliable fringe primary source. Their opinion and criticisms are meaningless and irrelevant. Information in an article must be sourced to reliable secondary sources - except where a primary source can be used to justify claims about itself. AVN can be used to source claims on its own article about itself, it cant be used elsewhere except where other secondary sources indicate due weight. See WP:V, WP:RS, WP:UNDUE. Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:52, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

The most-salient aspect is that the AVN's predicted effects had no credible evidence. The second-most salient aspect is that their prediction is almost 20 years out of date. To include the obvious OR in the form of a prominent table is way overblown. Removing the sentence: "These proved to be groundless and are compared in the table below to the actual results:" and the table would leave the statement of criticism, the fact of their flawed predictions, and the response from the Health Minister. That's all that is necessary for a bygone pseudo-controversy. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 15:59, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I removed the table as that seems to be the consensus. Tornado chaser (talk) 21:01, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
 * But you left the unreliable polemical source. Why? It is now completely unnecessary. There are no claims in the article that are not covered by the cited reliable source.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.21.88.44 (talk) 23:37, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I can't figure out whey there is a cite error. Tornado chaser (talk) 21:01, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
 * There were two errors: 1) The ref name="" form of a tag needs a full reference somewhere else on the page, and it was inside the table which was deleted. 2) The name of a reference needs to be inside quotes in that type of tag, and it wasn't actually needed at that point in the page. I have fixed both. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 21:25, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I have restored the AVN source for now as the other source gives a 404, I am not adamant that AVN be a source, unless the other option is no source at all. I don not object to replacing this with a different source, but it shouldn't just be deleted. Tornado chaser (talk) 23:47, 17 October 2017 (UTC)