Talk:Nina Kulagina

Correct link
p44.pdf (centerforinquiry.org) please correct it. 2A02:14F:179:8861:1CB3:BDE4:2338:CB9B (talk) 20:47, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Winning the paranormal side
This edit by 5Q5 was rather strange, the user added to the article Kulagina won the "paranormal side of the case". The source listed does not use wording like this. This is a bad case of WP:OR. Psychologist Guy (talk) 20:57, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * An unsurprising reversion, frankly, as it maintains the article on Nina Kulagina (a name she never used) as one of the longest-running, most biased, defamatory biographies of a deceased person on Wikipedia. Accusations of fraud in the article made against her using fourth- and fifth-party sources renders them unreliable Hearsay. To wit: 1. Unnamed Russian scientist(s) who themselves may be passing along unsubstantiated rumor(s) or Soviet propaganda. > 2. Russian reporter > 3. Translation from Russian into English. 4. Martin Gardner (who never met Kulagina) > 5. Two book authors parroting Gardner. The cited Randi source actually says she won the defamation case, not a partial victory. I expect a future generation of editors will correct this unethical article. For now, there is no point in trying unless and until someone writes an unbiased mainstream biography that can be used as a source.  5Q5 &#124;&#9993; 14:30, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Let's be honest about this. Your claim that she won the "paranormal side of the case" is not supported by any good sourcing and is factually incorrect as the court never ruled about her alleged paranormal abilities. If we scroll back years on the editing history of the article, the claims about Kulagina winning a partial victory in a defamation case was sourced to this Russian article which says:

"In 1987, Kulagina sued the magazine “Man and Law” for libel. She actually won this lawsuit. The only source available to the public purporting to be the court record is here. This protocol does not say anything that any experiments were conducted to test Kulagina's abilities. According to the protocol, Kulagina was not even present at the trial. The court's conclusion also does not say anything about whether Kulagina has been confirmed to have anomalous abilities. In particular, it says the following:

The assertion of the defendant and co-defendant that the plaintiff does not have unusual abilities, and this is a scam and fraud, is not supported by any evidence. Since this phenomenon has not been studied, it is currently being studied at the USSR Academy of Sciences, the court considers that this part of the information is slanderous. In other words, we are only talking about the fact that the journalists did not have direct evidence that Kulagina was a fraudster, and therefore their statements fell under slander. That is, the argument is a half-truth - Kulagina actually won the case against the journalists, but the court did not at all prove that she had paranormal abilities."

The above quote can be found on an article by the Russian Skeptic Society. This is the only article that has ever been published that actually contains information about the court case. The partial victory claim is accurate. She won the case against the journalists but the court did not rule that she had paranormal powers. So when you say she won the paranormal side of the case this is historically inaccurate and a bad case of WP:OR and likely a violation of WP:Fringe.

In regard to the "partial victory" claim this is also sourced to another article which is already cited on the Wikipedia article, "She sued for defamation in 1987, and was granted a partial victory". In a nutshell the Wikipedia article is accurate. There is no need to start inventing conspiracy theories that Wikipedia is unethical or slandering people. Psychologist Guy (talk) 15:21, 27 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Reply by 5Q5: 1. I never wrote Wikipedia itself is unethical. I said the Kulagina biography in its current state is an "unethical article" on Wikipedia. That is definitely different. 2. I am in fact the editor who on 20 June 2017 was first to add the reference to the Russian Skeptics Society article with link and skeptical quote saying that Kulagina's abilities were not proven as a result of the court decision. Unfortunately, the reference with quote was deleted the following year by another editor on 18 April 2018. I did not waste my time trying to restore it. 3. In my edit that was reverted, I wrote "winning the paranormal side of the case" which is in agreement with James Randi's cited quote "...she sued the editors and won, largely on the basis of testimony given by Soviet parapsychologists." It is therefore not "bad WP:OR" (original research) on my part. Perhaps I should have written it as "winning the paranormal cheating side of the case" to avoid the misinterpretation it elicited. 4. The Russian Skeptics Society article is not the only article on the court case. Editors who are well read on the Kulagina case know that earlier articles with the full court transcript were published in Russian, saved in the Internet Archive and available in 10 click-through pages there or here individually: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and by a Spanish language skeptics website The Critical Eye, linked here to the Internet Archive but also available directly here in http only. I hope this clears the matter up for editors and any journalists, documentary filmmakers, and biographers doing research on Kulagina in the future in search of the facts.  5Q5 &#124;&#9993; 13:37, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

In-text attribution in intro
According to WP:CITETYPE, "statements of opinion or uncertain fact" require an in-text attribution. One reason is to prevent Wikipedia from being portrayed as the one making the statement. The in-text attribution was removed from the sentence in the intro "She was caught cheating on more than one occasion" making it appear as though both Wikipedia and the cited sources are making the statement. This accusation in the subject's native Russia failed a court test. I believe the in-text attribution should be restored or the sentence deleted from the intro entirely, as the topic is covered further down in the article. Alternatively, it could be revised to "She was alleged to have been caught cheating on more than one occasion," which would not need an in-text attribution or conflict with the result of the defamation case and would still be historically accurate.  5Q5 &#124;&#9993; 15:03, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Better idea. To comply with the in-text attribution requirements of WP:CITETYPE I added "according to the authors of several books and publications" to the line in the intro.  5Q5 &#124;&#9993; 15:10, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Proof she was the real deal
I'm not quite on her level yet but would it not help her case if I provided a proper demonstration of her abilities? Because I'm almost there ... 98.22.101.81 (talk) 23:54, 2 April 2024 (UTC)