Talk:Benson Farb

On the Hill-Tabachnikov paper
I propose adding the statement that Farb was previously an editor for the New York Journal of Mathematics and resigned shortly after a controversy covered by Retraction Watch and Campus Reform, the latter of which quotes fellow editor Thomas Scanlon. To avoid BLP concerns, I will not cite the primary account on Quillette or the paraphrasing of it on Reason. Connor Behan (talk) 17:37, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Campus Reform is a political activist site written by students and run by the political activist non-profit Leadership Institute. It is in no way a reliable source, especially for claims about living persons. Retraction Watch is careful to attribute claims to Hill/Quillette and hasn't vetted or fact-checked anything. It ends by stating "[s]o much remains a mystery about this story." Again, not a reliable source, especially for BLPs. Woodroar (talk) 18:11, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Much of the Retraction Watch article was attributed to Hill / Quillette but they fact-checked the parts that are within their specialization. It confirms two things.
 * 1. Benson Farb was one of the NYJM editors who was in favour of the paper's retraction.
 * 2. Farb criticized the NYJM's editor-in-chief for not publicly announcing the retraction and the reasoning.
 * Both of these are not disputed by any of the parties involved and are therefore not subject to WP:BLP. Two other secondary sources stating that these are true and not disputed by Benson Farb are Terry Tao and Campus Reform. The latter indeed includes some unreliable editorializing but this is not relevant if the scope of our citation is limited to the bits quoted to Thomas Scanlon. Connor Behan (talk) 20:25, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Two issues here, I think.
 * Firstly, Amie Wilkinson. On the BLP noticeboard, the reason this originally turned up was due to her alleged role. RetractionWatch and CampusReform don't mention Wilkinson at all, whilst Tao's blog points out only that Wilkinson rejects Hill's claims (and he accepts this).  Without any reliable sources, we can mention nothing in Wilkinson's bio on her involvement, if indeed there was one at all.  It would be speculation.
 * Secondly, Farb and Hill's articles (and to a lesser extent Tabachnikov's). I am still concerned with BLP, because if we're going down the road of using the above sources, then we find that it appears there may not actually be a ceonsorship issue at all; the piece was heavily criticised by many apart from Farb (Henderson and Brown called it pseudoscience, whilst Gowers said about the paper "I was worried that I would find it convincing, but in fact I found it so unconvincing that I think it was a bad mistake by Mathematical Intelligencer and the New York Journal of Mathematics to accept it", and Wilkinson said "a mathematical journal could risk harming its reputation by publishing an article like this"). The additions so far have made it sound like the piece was pulled because it might offend people; but many of those authorities suggest it was pulled because it wasn't actually a good piece of work. Is it worth mentioning the issue at all, if it's going to reflect badly on the authors? That's the BLP problem. Black Kite (talk) 20:54, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Firstly, I agree that there is not adequate sourcing to mention Amie Wilkinson. Secondly, I need to point out that Henderson and Brown are not scientists while the paper continues to be revised on the arXiv. In any case, we should not be trying to answer whether the paper was pulled due to (a) faulty science, (b) a censorship campaign, or (c) an internalized definition of faulty science that was subconsciously influenced by a censorship campaign. The one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that silently retracting the paper with no announcement was bad practice and fuelled narrative (b). That's what I want to cover. Connor Behan (talk) 22:00, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
 * 1. It doesn't say that.
 * 2. It doesn't really say that, either.
 * What we have is a single source that admits it doesn't know the whole story but repeats some he-said, he-said statements from primary documents, the whole thing full of negative statements about living persons (and in one case, the recently dead). None of that meets WP:BLP. As a single, wishy-washy source, it doesn't even meet WP:NPOV/WP:DUE. Woodroar (talk) 21:02, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Repeating things from primary documents is part of the definition of a secondary document. In this case Farb's description of his role in retracting the paper, which would not be a good source on its own, has been given secondary coverage. This is the usual standard for Wikipedia to state that a particular debate exists. Very few allegations discussed on Wikipedia are cited to sources that have performed their own investigation. Also, while Retraction Watch indeed refers to negative statements, WP:RS does not mandate that a reliable source be neutral about living people or otherwise. Connor Behan (talk) 22:00, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Allegations about living and recently deceased persons need to be based on high-quality sources that have something of their own to say about the issue. Read WP:BLPGOSSIP. Retraction Watch, the only third-party source and a niche source about retractions, is careful not to present these specific allegations as true and simply "shed[s] some light" by quoting and linking to primary sources. We need better sources—yes, sources—that say something specific in their own voice. Per WP:BURDEN, this content has been removed multiple times. If you feel that it belongs, either convince us or take it to WP:RSN or WP:BLPN. Woodroar (talk) 22:39, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
 * The fact that the source "is careful not to present these specific allegations as true" is exactly why it's OK to use. If you check my post above, I'm not trying to present these allegations as true or even focus on them much at all. What we need to cover is that Farb was one of the editors who weighed in on NYJM's highly unusual decision to silently retract a published paper. This is true regardless of whether anyone in the world had a single bad thing to say about Farb. Connor Behan (talk) 23:52, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
 * But how do we say that? Not in Wikipedia's voice, to be sure. And not even in Retraction Watch's voice, nor in The Scientist's voice since they attribute the claims to Hill and Rivin. And what would we say? Farb was one of about sixteen editors who voted to retract an article for several reasons and he believes the editor-in-chief should have included a note about why? So that gives us "Retraction Watch and The Scientist reviewed documents possibly showing that Farb was one of about sixteen editors who voted to retract an article for several reasons and he believes the editor-in-chief should have included a note about why." Does that belong in a BLP? Scratch that, does that belong in Wikipedia anywhere? It's the most vague "let's point in the general direction of a supposed controversy and let our readers make up their mind" kind of statement that we're absolutely not supposed to make. Woodroar (talk) 00:27, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Something to that effect, yes. Whether about a provocative subject or not, retracting a paper three days after it is published without taking great pains to explain this to everyone involved is unheard of. Given the nature of the incident, defaulting to "let's just not mention it at all" when there is even one good source does not make sense. Connor Behan (talk) 01:35, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
 * So something unheard of happens and gets almost no coverage in reliable sources, yet we're supposed to ignore a whole slew of policies and cover it anyways? And funnily enough, your version cherrypicks the Leiter quote while ignoring many others about why the paper was retracted in the first place. You should really consider bringing this to WP:BLPN or WP:RSN. Woodroar (talk) 02:23, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Update: I see that User:Pengortm has found an actual full article in The Scientist. This appears to be the first third-party source with its own actual research and commentary that we've seen. Woodroar (talk) 22:48, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Also note that the Boston Globe has a write-up on this: https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2018/09/28/retraction-watch-potential-censorship/L5FOCTTZWB1Z6Re05pvEbK/story.html - I don't think this is helpful for the Farb article issues under discussion here (of which I have not reviewed the details enough to weigh in). Still mentioning it here since I suspect you'all might be watching related articles. -Pengortm (talk) 02:36, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Also note that the Boston Globe has a write-up on this: https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2018/09/28/retraction-watch-potential-censorship/L5FOCTTZWB1Z6Re05pvEbK/story.html - I don't think this is helpful for the Farb article issues under discussion here (of which I have not reviewed the details enough to weigh in). Still mentioning it here since I suspect you'all might be watching related articles. -Pengortm (talk) 02:36, 8 October 2018 (UTC)