User:Philip J. Rayment/bias

Purpose
This page is an attempt to document some of the anti-creation and anti-ID bias on Wikipedia with empirical data.

Methodology
I tried to keep this really simple, at the expense of high precision. To determine the word counts and criticisms % values, I selected the entire body of the article or section (from the first word to the last word (so excluded things like the article or section heading and boxes (e.g. POV box) at the top, list sections such as Bibliography, External Links, and References, and Category boxes). This means that the table of contents, edit links, footnote references, and headings and boxes within the selection are included in the word count.  I then copied and pasted (unformatted text) into OpenOfficeOrg writer (version 2.0) and used its word-count facility to count the size of the text.

Legend

 * The Article column is a link to the version checked (always the latest version at the time).
 * Size is the size of the article in words (see Methodology above).
 * Criticism section is the title of and link to any criticism section in the article.
 * Criticism % is the percentage (according to the word count) of the criticism section.
 * Criticisms start indicates how far through the article the criticism starts.

POV arguments
Wikipedia requires that articles are written from a neutral point of view, but there is often dispute over what is neutral and what is not. I've seen editors from both sides accuse the other side of wanting to push their POV, whereas (in my opinion), they are both wanting to be neutral, even though one or both of them are not being so.

Whilst it is not against any policy to express a POV on a talk page, I consider it indicative of a person's bias when they try and justify their "neutral" view with what is clearly a non-neutral view. What follows is some examples:
 * In response to a new user expressing the view that the Intelligent design article is attempting to discredit Intelligent Design:
 * ElderStatesmen--you're wrong. Evolution is a fact, established by so much evidence, it would take thousands of years just to read it all. Creationism, of which ID is a subset, is a pseudoscience, and that's that. The article is about ID, but it does not have to endorse it or pretend that it is a legitimate science.


 * In response to the same new user suggesting that some other (non Wikipedia) articles are more balanced:
 * Much more balanced? They both describe intelligent design as scientific. It isn't. One cannot dismiss the scientific method, and try to redefine science, while being scientific.


 * In a discussion about what is science and what isn't:
 * ...why is showing ID for what it is (junk science) rather than what its proponents would like it to be (science) a problem?