Talk:Geoffrey Miller (psychologist)

He's an economist now?
When did that happen?

Based on personal knowledge and consulting his CV, I agree and have removed that. Pengortm (talk) 04:59, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Untitled
I enjoyed reading Geoffrey Miller's book but felt he had not acknowledged other possibilities for human creativity besides his stated belief that it is related to mate selection. -- 18:06, 14 October 2005 User:Marvin Khan


 * Please sign your name. Tony 01:45, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

The Mating Mind
I feel that Miller's book The Mating Mind would deserve an article on its own, as it has become widespread with a large number of readers through the world. --Philipum 12:36, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I've read it myself and I agree, but I wouldn't know what to put there that isn't already covered here. For now I've created a really cheap redirect page; if you think of an appropriate way to move some information there and write a well-formed article on the book itself, without duplicating content between that article and this one, please feel free to do so. ozy` talk 07:08, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Except that this article is quite short. Why not make a section for the book within it? Tony 07:35, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Personally I'm not even sure that the book deserves a section; the extent of the duplicated information would be that great. ozy` talk 21:25, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Ig Nobel win
Should add a reference to winning the 2008 ig noble prize for his work showing that exotic dancers earned more money when ovulating. Jonahstein 00:08, 4 October 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonah Stein (talk • contribs)


 * Congratulations to him! [[Image:SFriendly.gif|20px]] See -- AnonMoos (talk) 07:10, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

37 percent rule
If there isn't an article on that, maybe someone could add just a paragraph here about it. German page: de:37%-Regel. Regards --WissensDürster (talk) 17:54, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Intelligence Citations Bibliography for Articles Related to Human Intelligence
You may find it helpful while reading or editing articles to look at a bibliography of  Intelligence Citations, posted for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human intelligence and related issues. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library at a university with an active research program in those issues (and to another library that is one of the ten largest public library systems in the United States) and have been researching these issues since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research. You can help other Wikipedians by suggesting new sources through comments on that page. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 16:47, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Twitter controversy
On June 2, 2013, Miller posted the following tweet: "Dear obese PhD applicants: if you didn't have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won't have the willpower to do a dissertation #truth"

Removed by CitizenTwo without any explanation why. Not sure if it should be on the page or not (might be too early to post it and that we should wait to see how it works itself out), so leaving it here for discussion. Pengortm (talk) 04:57, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/06/nyu-professor-immediately-regrets-fat-shaming.html - NY Magazine has covered the tweet. Time to add it back?

It's been covered by lots of media, I'm not sure why people keep removing it. I noticed one person who removed it was possibly acting in Millers interests because of being a fan of his work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.143.58.64 (talk) 16:18, 4 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I've removed this again. Firstly, it's not an actual 'controversy' unless it provokes significant criticism and argument from notable people, which wasn't evident from the sources. Secondly, it just seems to me too early and too trivial to add this. Whenever anyone posts anything 'controversial' on Twitter, there's always a rush to add it to their Wikipedia biography, but we should really hold off the cyber-mobs and wait to see whether the 'controversy' is of lasting significance first. Robofish (talk) 21:06, 4 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I've been checking sources, and the notability of the Twitter controversy is not in doubt. I think the paragraph about the obesity tweet (which I have just restored to the article), while not the last word about this living person's career, is illuminating about his approach to what is claimed to be a research study on controversial statements. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 16:30, 5 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Tony1 has once again deleted the entire section. I will revert his deletion. It is hard to see how this can NOT be a controversy. A Google search for ("Geoffrey Miller" Twitter obesity) gets over 10,000 hits. The top hits, when I checked were: Huffington Post, NPR, NY Daily News, Englands Daily Mail, ABC News, NY Post, Inside Higher Ed. The University of New Mexico published a formal statement online, which included a video interview with the chair of his department. At the end of that interview, she says that the department will be "investigating" his claims. That's a controversy, and an important one. Whoever Tony1 is, he needs to back off or be blocked from this page. Chaveyd (talk) 03:59, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I say to you, chaveyd, whoever you are, you need to back off or be blocked from the entire site. Tony   (talk)  04:12, 7 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I had thought that was an appropriate commentary on Tony1's multiple deletions of this section without his placing any justification in this talk page. If I am in error, I would appreciate a more experienced editor (other than Tony1) explaining (on my talk page) what was inappropriate. Chaveyd (talk) 04:39, 7 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Chaveyd: it is not a controversy because Miller did not argue it at all. He just apologized and removed the tweet. There was no prolonged argument or defense of the tweet by Miller or his colleagues. It was simply a tweet covered by the media. The Due and Undue weight aspect of Neutral Point of View that Tony1 was talking about has to do with how much significance the tweet is getting on the page. This wasn't a published paper that Miller wrote-it was a tweet, composed in 20s. Whatever connection it has with his research is currently hearsay-we just have the UNM video. IMO this is a waste of time for me, for you, and for everyone else. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.50.146.19 (talk) 06:55, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Actually, Miller stood by his tweet at first. Somebody challenged him, and he said a gaining a PhD requires more than just smarts. I'm sure somebody has a link if that would add to the weight that this is controversy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.143.56.119 (talk) 16:28, 7 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Just re-added the obesity controversy section before seeing a pre-existing history on this page. Given that Miller and UNM are now defending the tweet as having been part of a research project, while others are arguing that this isn't the case, I think at this stage we can clearly call it a controversy.  And per Chaveyd's remarks above, re: the number and quality of news sources reporting on this issue, I think we can clearly call it notable as well.  Given that this controversy is more notable by wiki standards than the rest of Miller's article (his notability by wiki standards is dubious, given how many of the sources for this article are written by Miller) and that the article perilously resembles an autobiography, this controversy cannot be said to be a challenge to the neutrality of the article by "Undue weight" unless we're going to demand that the rest of the article demonstrate its neutrality through the presence of multiple, independent secondary sources writing about Miller's work.  The current prevalence of primary sources would have to be addressed as well.  Firecatalta (talk) 04:59, 10 June 2013 (UTC)


 * For anyone who still doubts whether this controversy is notable, have a look at the traffic stats for Miller's page. In particular, take a look at June 03.  By wiki standards, this controversy would appear to be the most notable aspect of this article.  And don't bother with the "correlation does not equal causation" bit, because it is exceedingly unlikely that there was a sudden explosion of interest in Miller's academic work on June 03. Firecatalta (talk) 17:03, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, and you will also note that it pretty clearly follows an exponential decrease in interest. Whatever interest there was is dying rapidly. This was a media frenzy that does not belong on Miller's page. Also, go read the definition of controversy. As others have stated, there was no long drawn out public argument-I have yet to see a source that claims he ever defended his tweet. If there was controversy in the UNM statements it belongs on the UNM page, not here. I question your bias on this topic. Since you started editing the page you have ballooned a topic from a paragraph to something that threatens to be longer than the rest of this article. This is a tweet. Millions of worse things are said in tweets every day, and they are rarely reported to Wikipedia, and never to the level of detail that you have been adding here. If this section is kept, it should be reduced. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.228.216.146 (talk • contribs) 23:22, 10 June 2013
 * Correct. "Twitter Obesity Controversy" is wrong on three levels: headings don't get caps like that; articles don't feature what an editor thinks is a "controversy" (particularly not WP:BLPs); the issue of a tweet and some immediate blogosphere reactions is fun, but is not of encyclopedic interest unless a reliable secondary source asserts it has some significance. Johnuniq (talk) 23:41, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
 * The tweet has coverage in at least 5 reliable secondary sources (Huffington Post, NPR, ABC News, New York Daily News, and the New York Post), which are included in the relevant section of the article. That's more secondary sources than the entire rest of the article, which is perhaps why it is almost as long.  I am more than happy to submit this section to tighter scrutiny for notability if the same standard is extended to the rest of the article, which quite frankly does not seem notable by wiki standards.  There are 6 sources provided for Miller's academic work, 4 of which are primary (i.e. by Miller) and only 2 of which are independent and secondary (interviews are primary sources).  Please provide additional secondary sources on Miller's notability; otherwise the article should be nominated for deletion.Firecatalta (talk) 23:56, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
 * We are not arguing that the tweet exists. Yes, the tweet was there. It was covered by the news. That does not make it a controversy. That makes it a tweet covered by the news; the secondary sources confirm that a tweet existed. If Miller were to come out and spend a lot of time trying to prove the tweet didn't exist, then we would have a controversy with reliable secondary sources. If Miller were to publicly defend his tweet and argue for its validity, we would have a controversy with reliable secondary sources. As it is,we have secondary sources verifying the existence of a bigoted tweet. As for controversy, all we have is what UNM said, which was not a defense of the tweet. I have no opinion on Miller's notability, but if reliable secondary sources are not added to the remainder of the article, I second your nomination for deletion.

Sounds good to me. I'll delete the twitter obesity section, and let's have a look at the notability of the rest of the article. Firecatalta (talk) 00:50, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Update: an IP added it back in. I'm not removing it so as to avoid entering an edit war, but if someone else wants to, please go ahead.  In the meantime, I have commented on their talk page and encouraged them to join the discussion here. Firecatalta (talk) 20:01, 11 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I believe that the controversy section belongs here, but I am deleting the section of it which referred to a Tumblr page titled "Fuck yeah! Fat PhDs." Unless that page was sponsored by someone who has academic or journalism credentials to back it up, it becomes just another Internet page, and one with an unnecessarily extreme title. Plus, that page is really addressing a larger issue in academia, which is taking off on a tangent from a neutral tone that we should try to keep in this discussion. Chaveyd (talk) 02:57, 12 June 2013 (UTC)


 * There have been a number of claims above that this is not a controversy because Miller pulled his comment and apologized for it. That does not, by itself, seem to be enough to remove the issue from "controversy", at least based on other Wikipedia pages. Twitter remarks that were then apologized for remain on the pages in "controversy" sections for Dan Ellis, Sam Olens, Andrea Reimer, Greta Berlin, and Kevin Pietersen, and most likely others that I didn't find in a simple search. Apologizing and removing the tweet is not enough, by Wikipedia standards, to prevent something from being a controversy. And Mr. Miller has "defended" his tweet, saying that it was part of his research project. Chaveyd (talk) 02:57, 12 June 2013 (UTC)


 * In the end I decided that I think it's notable in the context of a broader discussion about fat-shaming and related issues, but that it is uncertain whether it is notable as an incident in and of itself. So I think discussion of the tweet incident could find a home as a sub-section of Fat acceptance movement or related articles, but not as its own article or as part of the Miller article.  Regardless, I think we all agree at this point that the Miller article as a whole is utterly un-notable.  Everyone on board with my nominating it for deletion? Firecatalta (talk) 03:25, 12 June 2013 (UTC)


 * At this point, I am certainly not a fan of the man. And I agree with earlier comments that there are insufficient secondary sources for the earlier parts of this article. But I think that Mr. Miller is an important and notable figure in the area of Evolutionary Psychology. Here's my evidence. Using Google, I identified the three journals that appear in the top of Google searches on "Evolutionary Psychology". They are: "Evolutionary Psychology", "Psychology Today", and "Science Daily". Searches for Geoffrey Miller in these journals find him as a writer, reviewed writer, or topic in 23 articles in Evolutionary Psychology, 12 articles or posts in Psychology Today (although 2 of those are about the obesity controversy), and 103 posts on Science Daily (although many of these seem to be duplicates, including the same line about his as a "Young Turk"). Of course some of these articles are speaking poorly of him, but that doesn't prevent him from being notable. And the top journals in his field do, according to this basic search, find him to be quite notable. Chaveyd (talk) 03:54, 12 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Good search! This thread is getting long, so let's start a new one.  TBC below! Firecatalta (talk) 03:59, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Secondary, reliable sources required.
The info below has been moved from the article to the talk page until a secondary, reliable source can be found to support its notability and inclusion in the article. See WP:PSTS and policies on primary sources in biographical articles.

Miller believes that our minds evolved not as survival machines, but as courtship machines, and proposes that the human mind's most impressive abilities are courtship tools that evolved to attract and entertain sexual partners. By switching from a survival-centred to a courtship-centred view of evolution, he attempts to show how we can understand the mysteries of mind. The main competing theories of human mental evolution are (1) selection for generalist foraging ability (i.e., hunting and gathering), as embodied in the work of researchers such as Hillard Kaplan and Kim Hill at the University of New Mexico, and (2) selection for social intelligence, as argued by Andrew Whiten, Robin Dunbar, and Simon Baron-Cohen.

He has published on visual perception, cognition, learning, robotics, neural networks, genetic algorithms, human mate-choice, evolutionary game theory, and the origins of language, music, culture, intelligence, ideology and consciousness. He studies human mental adaptations for judgment, decision-making, strategic behavior and communication in social and sexual domains. Apart from mutual mate-choice and sexual selection theory, this includes work on:
 * human mental traits as fitness indicators (reliable cues of underlying phenotypic traits and genetic quality);
 * social attribution heuristics, as adapted to the statistical structure of individual differences (including genetic and phenotypic covariances);
 * animate motion perception mechanisms, as adapted to typical patterns of intentional movement; and
 * consumer behavior (applications of evolutionary psychology in product design and aesthetics, marketing, advertising, branding, and the use of genetic algorithims for interactive online product design).

Article & twitter notability
Continued from above:

"At this point, I am certainly not a fan of the man. And I agree with earlier comments that there are insufficient secondary sources for the earlier parts of this article. But I think that Mr. Miller is an important and notable figure in the area of Evolutionary Psychology. Here's my evidence. Using Google, I identified the three journals that appear in the top of Google searches on "Evolutionary Psychology". They are: "Evolutionary Psychology", "Psychology Today", and "Science Daily". Searches for Geoffrey Miller in these journals find him as a writer, reviewed writer, or topic in 23 articles in Evolutionary Psychology, 12 articles or posts in Psychology Today (although 2 of those are about the obesity controversy), and 103 posts on Science Daily (although many of these seem to be duplicates, including the same line about his as a "Young Turk"). Of course some of these articles are speaking poorly of him, but that doesn't prevent him from being notable. And the top journals in his field do, according to this basic search, find him to be quite notable. Chaveyd (talk) 03:54, 12 June 2013 (UTC)" Quoted by Firecatalta (talk) 04:00, 12 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Going to bed soon so will have to sleep on this and return in the AM. In the meantime, here's a resource I've been looking at while thinking about this (notability of academics).  The main criterion that Miller would meet is the first.  I guess this leaves us at an impasse about whether & where to put the twitter thing. Firecatalta (talk) 04:06, 12 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi all - so I agree, Miller seems notable by wiki standards for academics. UNM and NYU are investigating Miller due to his claim (not the university's) that this was part of a research project.[1 ]  Where do people currently stand on the twitter issue, given that info? Firecatalta (talk) 13:28, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * The Twitter thing is just so trivial. The man is a significant figure in bringing together and extending several aspects of evolutionary psychology in highly productive ways. If people insist on including trivia, WP:BALANCE indicates that it should not overbalance the relatively short article by occupying a whole section of its own. A short not at the bottom is quite sufficient. I'd not even bother with that. Tony   (talk)  15:00, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * You may wish that the Twitter thing was trivial, but speaking as an academic, it really is a big deal. This is one of the very few kinds of things that can get a tenured professor fired, especially since having been on graduate admissions committees, he may have made his university susceptible to lawsuits. And if his claim that this post was part of his "research" is correct, that places him in some serious trouble. Every university of any note requires such research to be approved by the IRB (Institutional Review Board), and if he's receiving any federal funding then he's required by law to have such research approved by the IRB. (I was chair of our institution's IRB for four years, so I'm speaking from experience.) If he was receiving federal funding, then it's likely that he would be banned from future grants for something like 5-10 years. Even if he wasn't receiving federal funding, the normal action for such IRB unapproved research is that every research project he wants to work on for the next 5 years (or so) would have to be approved by the chair of his home institution's IRB. So this has certainly been a big deal in the feminist blogs and lots of news articles and shows, but it's also a big deal in terms of his academic reputation and his career future. And since his only reason for being included in Wikipedia is because of his academic reputation, something like this that threatens to dramatically challenge that reputation is significant. Chaveyd (talk) 15:36, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Vote for retaining article: Obvious notability in field Tim bates (talk) 08:17, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks Tim bates! What's your opinion on the notability of the twitter issue? Firecatalta (talk) 00:49, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

The Twitter coverage in the article is way out of proportion. If you want to retain it, I suggest doubling or tripling the information on his science. Tony  (talk)  08:17, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi Tony, I understand that you don't want information on the twitter incident included on this page at all, let alone in such detail. However, I agree with Chaveyd above that since this man is solely notable for his academic work, a tweet that brought him under such heavy criticism in his capacity as an academic is notable and in balance with the rest of the article, especially since we now know that he defended it and UNM and NYU are investigating it.  If this "scandal" were about a personal incident such as receiving a DUI, then I agree that the incident should not be included in the article, and if somehow it were notable enough for inclusion (which of course it would not be), then it would deserve one line at best.  But again, as Chaveyd says above, this tweet reflects on and could impact his academic future.  If you want to exclude it from the article, it would be best to weigh in on the specific reasons why you think it is not notable.  Firecatalta (talk) 12:57, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Not exclude it, but express it in proportion. Tony   (talk)  13:11, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
 * That makes sense. One solution would be to take the information stored in the thread above this one and add it back in with reliable sources, which would be a good idea in any case.  A second solution would be to reduce the amount of information contained in the twitter section, but I think it would be hard to do that without removing the factors that explain why this tweet was notable.  I'm definitely open to ideas for how to do that, though.  A third & less usual solution would be to create a separate article for the twitter controversy, and include a 1-2 line description on Miller's page with a link to the twitter controversy article for more information, e.g. "Geoffrey Miller (twitter controversy)."  Thoughts?  Firecatalta (talk) 13:20, 18 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Firecatalta, on a COI issue: have you ever had anything to do with Professor Miller? Tony   (talk)  12:58, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I most certainly have not had anything to do with Miller. I'm trying to propose solutions to help you achieve your goal of minimum inclusion of the twitter information while helping Chaveyd achieve their goal of including the information.  If you would prefer to ignore these potential solutions and talk about COI instead, that's fine.  You created the article.  Do you have a COI you would like to disclose? Firecatalta (talk) 16:19, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Seeing as he brought it up, I see Tony lists him among the 6 "people whose work continues to have the deepest impact" on him, which is a clear COI issue given his edits. I also note that related searches like '"geoffrey miller" obese' return more results than "geoffrey miller" psychologist on major search engines, in case anyone is any doubt about the legitimacy of including the section or it's proportionality.87.113.102.210 (talk) 23:17, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
 * "So what?" (to all of your assertions). You appear to be on a smear campaign against the subject of the article. Tony   (talk)  12:28, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Edit summary for revert of revision 560373318
My edit summary got cut off by an accidental hit of the return key, so I'll put it here. I think Miller's claim is offensive and ridiculous too, but unfortunately we would either need a reliable source to include that information in the article in its current form (i.e. a stated fact), or else to have some grounds to cite it as a notable source criticizing Miller for inaccuracy. Firecatalta (talk) 00:48, 18 June 2013 (UTC)


 * The source is Pascal Wallisch, research scientist at the Center for Neural Science at New York University, PhD (University of Chicago) 2007. His blog claims that it was selected as one of the official blogs for the Society for Neuroscience. So this seems like a reliable source. However, I don't like the way the contribution was worded: "it has now also been shown that the tweet lacks a factual basis" is, IMO, an inappropriately strong statement for a study that was based on a volunteer, opt-in survey. It seems like a useful and relevant discussion, possibly worth a link, but it is nowhere near as definitive as the previous contribution implied. Chaveyd (talk) 05:31, 18 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi there! Wikipedia standards for reliable sources usually require that the source have editorial oversight (see WP:RELIABILITY for more details), but I can see where you're coming from, in that WP:SPS allows for the reliability of the author to make the source reliable in some cases. For facts & figures, it's still preferable to put a link to the study itself, and more preferably to a relevant review article. We can definitely include that information along the lines of, "Pascal Wallisch, research scientist at the Center for Neural Science at New York University, criticizes the tweet on additional grounds, saying that in addition to being offensive, the tweet has no basis in fact."  I think the fact that a prominent neuroscientist from Miller's guest university is criticizing the tweet on factual grounds is most relevant to this particular discussion in any case.  Overall, I agree that the info is useful and relevant, and that the edit was certainly in good faith.  Firecatalta (talk) 12:31, 18 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I like that solution, and will add that. I still think the phrase "no basis in fact" is a little strong, so I'll use "factually incorrect", which I think is just a bit weaker. In his own conclusion, Wallisch writes "Just because *this* specific way of probing the relationship [between obesity and Ph.D. completion] didn’t work does *not* mean that there is no possible relationship", so I think we should be careful not to overstate his conclusion (which I think the original contribution did). A more accurate phrasing might be "in addition to being offensive, statistically the tweet does not agree with available evidence". That might be a bit too wordy, but if others think it's better to be cautious, I would certainly view that as a 'friendly amendment'. Chaveyd (talk) 15:04, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Agreed - I think your edit does a great job of stating his point without emphasizing it in a way he might not have wanted, and I think it's definitely fine to sacrifice brevity for accuracy. Thanks for your work on this!  Firecatalta (talk) 16:46, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

The Mating Grounds podcast / book
It would probably be worthwhile adding to the career section the podcast entitled "The mating grounds" which he authors/hosts with Tucker Max and Nils Parker. Details found at http://www.thematinggrounds.com/about-mating-grounds/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.45.88.44 (talk) 09:43, 24 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Seems reasonable: is the book out? podcast/book certainly seems a change in direction so worth noting Tim bates (talk) 16:18, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Twitter and secondary sources
I just removed the following "including the website Jezebel, the magazine XOJane, and Disrupting Dinner Parties criticized his public statement about obese individuals," the problem with this is that it was sourced by these 3 websites themselves; these are primary sources, not se3condary sources and so fail to establish their own notability to be here. What is required is some piece (not copied from here) which talks about these 3 sites commenting on Miller's tweet, and because so far we dont have that I have removed all 3 sites. Other information in this section may be similarly vulnerable thought he initial wire ref looks fine to me. ♫ SqueakBox talk contribs 20:30, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
 * IMO the section looks fine now and I trust nobody will now either attempt to remove any of the sourced material which is there (as some ips have been trying to do) or to re-add these 3 websites unless of course a reliable secondary source can be found. Remember this needs to be a WP:BLP living persons policy compliant article and adding negative material without secondary sources is not acceptable. ♫ SqueakBox talk contribs 05:33, 30 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Further to the above: I've just removed a line about another tweet by Miller, because this was only sourced to the tweet itself and had no commentary on it from reliable secondary sources. We can't describe comments as 'controversial' without any evidence of an actual controversy over them. Robofish (talk) 14:57, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Let us remove this twitter section altogether. It is not notable.Zezen (talk) 13:02, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

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Query over an editor's potential conflict of interest
User:Greyfell is reverting attempts to remove the personally motivated gripe text.

May I have a guarantee that the editor has never had any personal contact with the subject of the article? Tony (talk)  05:03, 4 October 2018 (UTC)


 * You spelled my username wrong, calling this "personally motivated gripe text" is loaded and poisons the well, and referring to me as "the editor" is legalistic and dehumanizing. Please just address me as a person and I will do the same.
 * I have not had any personal contact with the subject of the article, nor to my knowledge do I have any conflict of interest involving Miller or any other topic being discussed. Incidentally, one of the people who has commented on this talk page is Tim Bates, who does have a documented professional relationship with Miller. Bates was president of ISIR, a society Miller belongs to. Is this a conflict of interest? Perhaps you should ask him if this matters to you, or take it up with WP:COIN if you'd prefer. So do you have any conflicts of interest you'd like to disclose?
 * This content was removed by an IP in September with the edit summary "Twitter drama usually isn't important enough to merit a wikipedia mention." This is a reasonable, subjective opinion, but Wikipedia goes by reliable sources, not opinions.
 * Another IP from a different location re-added information about the controversy a few hours ago.
 * I chose to restore the previous version, with a minor adjustment to preserve one of the sources added by the IP, since this seemed like it had better sources and prior consensus.
 * If you want to discuss this, go ahead. Regardless of how this information is conveyed, accusing me of being personally motivated and insinuating a COI because I restored content which had been in the article for almost two years is not assuming good faith. Grayfell (talk) 05:55, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Whether you're guilty of COI or not (it appears not), it's still personally motivated gripe text, and a distraction to the science. And please explain "as well as apologize to this colleagues", which you have inserted into the article. Tony (talk)  06:15, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
 * They were typos, obviously. I've fixed them. This source seems useful, so I included it, and the content it supported, from the previous revert. If you have any evidence this is personally motivated, present it here or take it to a noticeboard. Otherwise focus on content. Grayfell (talk) 07:35, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I worked on this section extensively at least a year ago. It was awful and used lots of primary sources. We do now instead use credible secondary sources. I don't believe that Grayfell had anything to do with the original, but it's all in the history. It may be an unfortunate distraction but this distraction was real and affected his career and reputation so hard to see how we could justify deleting it. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 11:08, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
 * You claim it affected his career. One solution might be to expand the text on his scientific advances while rationalising the scuttlebutt text. Tony (talk)  12:27, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Not my claim, what the sources say. Expanding his scientific career sounds a great idea. Please tone down the aggression and stop assuming everyone is against Miller. I am a fan of his science and found the Twitter episode lamentable but not as bad as how we portrayed it. You weren't there to fix it then. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 13:00, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, thank you. Any additional reliable, independent coverage of Miller is welcome. The problems with the rest of the article are mild, but to me it seems like the problem is not a lack of content, so much as it is a lack of reliably sourced content. The rest of the article is leaning too hard on a small number of primary sources. As one example, summarizing the hundreds of pages in a book in a couple of paragraphs is always going to be difficult (if the book is worth summarizing, anyway). When a summary of a book is supported only by that book, the longer it is the less I trust that it's neutral. It's too easy and too tempting for editors to highlight the parts that they personally found interesting while glossing-over the parts they didn't. There has to be room for compromise for this kind of thing, but third-party sources are still preferable.
 * As for the twitter section, according to sources he was censured and taken off of committees. I don't see how anyone could say this didn't effect his career. Wikipedia does (for various reasons) treat academics differently from other bios, but academic or not, no adult is insulated from reliable sources. Striking a balance between due weight and gossip is always difficult, so we should be discussing that, if that's the problem. Grayfell (talk) 20:43, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

The so-called "Twitter incident"
This section is exclusively based on primary sources, which is not compatible with Biographies_of_living_persons. To make things worse all sources are websites. Not a single reliable secondary source. And such reliable secondary sources are mandatory in biographies of living persons, in particular if contents is concerned that is injurious to a person's reputation. So, according to our rules, the section definitely needs to be removed. I know what steps to take if the removal is undone again. Please refrain from undoing it again. --Saidmann (talk) 19:00, 28 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Because there have been no objections against the above arguments, the section will now be removed. --Saidmann (talk) 12:01, 9 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Your assertion that there were no reliable secondary sources in this section is obviously false. NY Mag, HuffPo, Inside Higher Ed, and The Atlantic are all reliable secondary sources. Restored. Bueller 007 (talk) 18:37, 17 August 2020 (UTC)


 * These are journalistic sources reporting gossip. Gossip is no reliable information. What we need is a reliable secondary source from the field of science, because the person we are dealing with is a scientist. Please wait until the discussion on this talk page is settled before reverting anything. --Saidmann (talk) 12:35, 18 August 2020 (UTC)


 * This clearly had an impact on his career. Even if it were gossip in some narrow sense (which is subjective) it's still encyclopedically significant. You do not have consensus to remove this content. The burden is now on you to gain consensus. Grayfell (talk) 01:39, 24 August 2020 (UTC)


 * If it has "an impact on his career", it should be able to support such a statement by scientific sources. This has not been done. The "burden to gain a consensus" is always on those who want to have something in. "Tweets" are no reliable publications. As such, they are not even primary sources according to our rules. They are internet gossip. Online news media reporting about such gossip are therefore no secondary sources according to our rules. Reliable secondary sources are, however, mandatory in articles about living persons according to our rules. Please stop reverting things before the discussion here is closed. --Saidmann (talk) 11:21, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

I have reincluded the controversy in the career section with some adjustments. It is notable and it was covered by NPR which is a reliable source. If you remove that, I will alert other editors because it's simply edit warring at that point. You need to gain consensus on the talk page before you go removing large bodies of text. Sxologist (talk) 11:56, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Political views
Why do Miller's political views keep being removed? The guy started as a self-proclaimed lifelong Democrat who wrote anti-capitalist books (Spent) but has now become a Tucker Carlson-loving member of the far right. That's an incredibly interesting conversion that people deserve to know about. Is someone trying to protect Miller by hiding these views from the public? 98.148.215.217 (talk) 16:30, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
 * As I mentioned in my reverts, "far-right" is a term that lends itself to some interpretation, so it may not be very useful in this context, especially if it isn't properly contextualized or if Miller hasn't described himself using that term.
 * I also pointed out that this doesn't strike me as being very relevant to the subject of the article, which is Miller's academic work—not his political leanings.
 * Lastly, please refrain from making nefarious insinuations about editors who have reverted your edits—make sure you understand the reason behind the reverts behind making any accusations. Revirvlkodlaku (talk) 02:51, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Are his views covered in secondary sources, like news outlets? Has he written about them in his own book or anything? It seems like it lacks notability for inclusion. Zenomonoz (talk) 02:59, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm personally a big fan of Miller's early work. I recommend The Mating Mind to anyone interested in evolutionary psychology. But Miller's political shift since writing both that and Spent is somewhat breathtaking. I ended up here (on Miller's Wiki page) because when I followed him on Twitter and saw his tweets, I actually thought I might be looking at the wrong Geoffrey Miller. This is why I think it's relevant to mention. Sometime after Miller getting censured for his "mean tweets" about overweight PhD applicants, and maybe as a response, his worldview shifted radically. I don't think we can speculate as to why this happened, but the fact that it did is worth noting. 98.148.215.217 (talk) 15:39, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
 * While I acknowledge the point you're making, I think what's more important is how, if at all, his supposed worldview has affected his academic work. Revirvlkodlaku (talk) 16:09, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is difficult to discern because he has hasn't published anything since 2017. I don't know if his work is getting rejected or if he's just stopped writing. It appears all his brainpower is being focused on Twitter unfortunately. Saw tweet from him today, in fact, suggesting that the Proud Boys convicted for January 6th were all FBI plants. Dude is completely off his rocker now. Would love to see some long-form journalism about what happened to him. 98.148.215.217 (talk) 22:19, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
 * If his political views have been reported on in secondary sources or news articles, they can be included on Wikipedia. It's most likely he is just not that relevant for a journalist to bother covering. Zenomonoz (talk) 01:34, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
 * His political views *have* been reported in secondary sources. If you do a Google News search for Geoffrey Miller, the fifth hit is an article about Miller saying that US college presidents are more like "Cold War commissars" or "party political officers in communist Russian or Chinese universities." 2603:8000:1700:43DB:4BE:DF3C:456:3987 (talk) 18:44, 31 March 2024 (UTC)