Talk:Tolstoy syndrome

JanWMerks: I am concern that, being a newcomer, you don't yet understand how Wikipedia works.

Let me try to go through the article and point out how the previous version needed improvements, according to Wikipedia policies and guidelines


 * 1) "psychological or pathological patterns of behavior ... in any scientific discipline" --- right now, all we have is Tolstoy's quote: it isn't clear whether he meant to apply it to science specifically.
 * 2) "compulsive in his self-examination, self-destructive in his lifestyle" --- this is editorializing, not phrased in an NPOV way. Who says this? Is it universally accepted? Citations to the biography of Tolstoy would be good
 * 3) Lysenko --- not clear that this was an application of the "Tolstoy syndrome", or fear of the Soviet state. Again, references to the use of the phrase, or discussion of Lysenkoism would be welcome.
 * 4) Wegener --- here is the clearest case, I think, of the Tolstoy syndrome. In both the Lysenko and Wegener case, however, I fear that explicitly labeling their cases with this term may very well violate No original research. Has anyone else associated Wegener with this Tolstoy quote? If not, that's original research and the whole paragraph should be dropped.
 * 5) Kriging --- here is where your POV is showing through strongly. The strong implication here is that Matheron is ignoring the truth, and that you are correct. This is a great illustration of a POV edit. Again, is there any evidence that people (other than yourself) have used the term "Tolstoy syndrome" for any controversy in geostatistics?
 * 6) References to geostatistics --- These references are not relevant to the discussion about the Tolstoy Syndrome: they don't support the use of the term.

If you want to write a serious article about the use of the term "Tolstoy syndrome", or about the underlying behavior, you are welcome to find primary or secondary sources that discuss it, in some historical context. It isn't proper, however, to use this article to push your point of view about the statistical underpinnings of geostatistics.

Thanks! -- hike395 05:51, 15 April 2006 (UTC)


 * In response, JanWMerks blanked my comments, and then reinserted his version of the article, which is now below:

-- hike395 11:07, 16 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I haven't found a direct linkage of Wegener with Tolstoy syndrome, but the paper by Gold that I've just added to the References implicitly makes this link. -- Avenue 23:46, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

All Wikipedians and all Krige's men cannot put the distance-weighted average and its variance together again.
Blatantly biased but carefully crafted NPOV's do not bring sound scientific knowledge to the world. --Iconoclast 22:18, 16 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm truly sorry that you think my edits are biased -- by definition, biased edits are not NPOV. I care much more about NPOV than about geostatistics. Fortunately, all of our editing and explanations are public: the Wikipedia community will gradually fix any bias we have introduced in the articles. -- hike395 01:25, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

It is blatantly biased to suggest that Fisher's F-test, the quintessence of analysis of variance, violates Wikipedia's Vanity rule and/or No New Research rule. Lipschutz gives the formula for the variance of the weighted average, Volk shows how to derive it, and AI-Geostats gives it on a website. If you scale down your rhetoric, I'll scale down mine.

I'm extremely concerned about geostatistics! Bre-X caused a friend of a friend of mine to blow out his brains because he lost not only his own money but that of his family and friends. Before Bre-X drilled the first borehole at the Busang property I had already brought to the attention of the Ontario Securities Commission that geostatistics is an invalid variant of mathematical statistics. I'm working on a synopsis of my case against geostatistics, and on a scientically sound alternative.

The question of whether or not each distance-weighted average has its own variance results in mutually exclusive NPOVs. That's the very point I've tried to make since I drifted into Wikipedia on April 1st. In the purest of all sciences, diametrically opposed views are as rare as hen's teeth. Either geostatistics or mathematical statistics is scientifically flawed. My money is on math stats! --Iconoclast 22:18, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

The Tolstoy Syndrome (TS) is a description of the aptitude of humans to ignore the truth despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The syndrome may reflect pathological and psychological patterns of behavior that could occur under certain conditions in any scientific discipline. In his own words, Count Leo Nicolaevitch Tolstoy (1828-1910) observed, “I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabrics of their life”.

Compulsive in his self-examination, self-destructive in his lifestyle, gender biased but brilliant in observing his contemporary foes and friends, Tolstoy’s opinion is traceable to the moral questions that were central to his work, and that continue to linger and obsess our civilization. Unbiased peer review is central to scientific integrity in our civilization.

Trofim Lysenko, a Soviet agronomist, single-handedly but with Stalin’s blessings corrupted the science of genetics and its peer review. Alfred Wegener, a physicist and metereologist, noticed the jigsaw fit of West Africa and South America and proposed continental drift when he found fossil evidence to suggest these continents were once joined. Geologists mercilessly ridiculed Wegener until his hypothesis was recognized as plate tectonics long after he was lost on a glacier in Greenland in November 1930. When Sir Ronald A Fisher was knighted in 1953 for his work on analysis of variance and his F-test, each weighted average had its own variance. When Matheronian geostatistics was hailed as a new science in the early 1960s, the distance-weighted average was the first and only weighted average to lose its variance during an honorific rebirth as a kriged estimate. By implication, the variance of a subset of some infinite set of distance-weighted averages is as meaningless a measure for variability, precision and risk as its covariance is for spatial dependence.

References


 * 1) Clark, I, Practical Geostatistics, Applied Science Publishers, London, 1979
 * 2) David, M, Geostatistical Ore Reserve Estimation, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1977
 * 3) Philip, G M and Watson, DF, Matheronian Geostatistics: Quo Vadis? Mathematial Geology, 18, 1990
 * 4) Hallam, A, Great Geological Controversies, Oxford Science Publications, 1989
 * 5) Helman, H, Great Feuds in Science, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1998
 * 6) Journel, A G and Huijbregts, C J, Mining Geostatistics, Academic Press Inc, London 1978
 * 7) Kohn, A, False Prophets, Basil Blackwell Inc, New York, 1986
 * 8) Lipschutz, S, Theory and Problems of Probability, McCraw-Hill Book Company, New York
 * 9) Volk, W, Applied Statistics for Engineers, Krieger Publishing Company, Huntington, New York, 1980