User:Zvika/Interview/ScienceApologist

Please do not edit this page. This page contains an interview conducted with User:ScienceApologist on March 18, 2008. Discussion concerning this interview and the parallel interview with User:Martinphi should be carried out on the page User talk:Zvika/Interview.


 * Please start by introducing yourself. Who are you? What is your goal in editing Wikipedia? What drew you to edit the "fringe" articles?

I'm a graduate student at the Astronomy Department of Columbia University. I came to Wikipedia as a community college instructor in physics and astronomy at Harold Washington College in Chicago. There, I noticed a number of students were getting a lot of information from Wikipedia, and a goodly amount was incorrect or misleading. I first started editing to clean-up the astronomy-related pages (proudest accomplishments are Big Bang and redshift), but quickly found myself helping out at pages that were fully-devoted to describing fringe claims and pseudoscience. Examples include plasma cosmology, Immanuel Velikovsky, Apollo moon landing hoax accusations, intelligent design, and creationism. I was involved with a number of arbitrations on pseudoscience-related subjects before becoming aware that there existed an entire area on Wikipedia plagued by misleading and counter-factual statements, namely those articles monitored by members of the Paranormal Wikiproject. This is where I first encountered User:Martinphi who, in my estimation, functions solely as an advocate for placing unreliable and poorly-vetted wording supporting the material existence of the paranormal in articles about aliens, ghosts, ESP, etc. The dispute between my aim and his aim is ongoing. Since this time, I have also become involved with conflicts regarding complementary and alternative medicine such as homeopathy.

I believe that Wikipedia articles should conform to the most reliable, vetted, and factual understanding that humanity has about material reality, that is, everything that is observable, measurable, and explored through the scientific method. I am particularly interested in articles relating to physical reality because that is the area in which I am most educated.


 * You state on your user page that "dysfunction [...] now prevails on Wikipedia." Could you explain what bothers you in how Wikipedia currently functions? How do you think the situation can be remedied?

The problem is that many of the people editing articles about pseudoscience and the paranormal are themselves passionately committed true-believers who want to make Wikipedia articles conform to their beliefs. These editors become dedicated POV-pushers who advocate for “fair treatment” that ultimately means marginalizing scientific critique in defiance of science's prominence. Simple statements of fact such as “there is no scientific evidence for this belief” are challenged through reinterpretations of various Wikipedia policies such as WP:NPOV, WP:RS, and ironically, as of late, WP:NOR. Normal channels of dispute resolution are not able to handle effectively the conflicts with such users for the following reasons:


 * 1) Compared to the POV-pushers described above, the people advocating for a neutral framing of subjects are generally not as committed. Scientists leave Wikipedia with departing essays stating that they wasted too much time fighting silly battles.
 * 2) Many third-parties who attempt to help resolve these disputes fail to realize that, in the areas related to science, simply aiming for “balance” as you would with a political controversy is equivalent to pandering to a false dichotomy. NPOV is not “balance”; explicitly, there is an undue weight clause to that effect. Too often, people who are unfamiliar with science do not understand how truly insignificant the views of the pseudoscience POV-pushers are in comparison to the mainstream understanding of material reality. It doesn't help matters that the dedicated POV-pushers tend to out-number the dedicated advocates for neutrality.

If the community would empower administrators to deal substantively and decisively with POV-pushing complaints while providing a space for neutral editors such as myself to improve problem articles free from the harassment of these types of single-purpose accounts, this would improve the situation greatly.


 * According to WP:WEIGHT, an "article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints […] in proportion to the prominence of each." What is your interpretation of this policy in cases where POVs departing from the scientific mainstream have many proponents? For example, in your opinion, what would be the correct structure of the article on Young Earth creationism?

When it comes to material reality, the group that has by far the most significant viewpoint is the scientific community. These are the people who study the subject professionally and are the obvious experts on the subject. Whenever an article begins talking about material reality, the scientific viewpoint absolutely must be given the most weight.

This needs to be done in spite of the fact that people hold beliefs that contradict scientific facts. For example, although according to some surveys the majority of Americans do not believe in common descent, Wikipedia should not treat this belief as the most prominent viewpoint. To see why, consider the fact that the majority of Americans also think that the phases of the moon are caused by the Earth's shadow. Should we change Wikipedia's explanation of this occurrence? Surely not! The general public is notoriously misinformed and unaware of scientific facts. It is our responsibility to write a reliable reference work that reports facts without pandering to the misconceptions harbored by amateurs. The experts who know the facts of material reality are scientists, not John Q. Public. Whenever “majority viewpoints” are demonstrably incorrect we should not portray them as fact. We may report the existence of such viewpoints in Wikipedia, but it would be irresponsible for us to frame the subject as a “debate among equals” or a “legitimate controversy”.

Since Young Earth creationism is a topic which takes a particular religious perspective and claims that it describes the origins of material reality, the scientific counter to this idea is directly relevant. To be clear, religious beliefs, dogmas, and ideas are generally not explicitly relevant to science, but are rather about the supernatural or spirituality. Though religion and science are normally separate subjects, in an article like Young Earth creationism, they get muddled. If certain religious groups make claims about material reality, and if their ideas contradict the available scientific evidence, then a reliable encyclopedia must be explicit about the contradiction. So, for example, while there are religious interpretations of global flood that are not of scientific relevance, there are occasions (and creationism is the most obvious example) where beliefs about a global flood directly contradict scientific facts. Wikipedia should explicitly state this. Furthermore, creationists are not reliable sources for describing material reality and should only be used as sources for their own beliefs in articles devoted to reporting their beliefs. When describing beliefs that explicitly run counter to the facts, a good reference work will point this out plainly.

Unfortunately for Wikipedians editing articles about pseudoscience, the scientific community tends to outright ignore the protestations of “alternative viewpoints”. This means that there might be a greater quantity of sources arguing for a minority viewpoint than disputing it.


 * Content disputes are often caused by disagreements over what constitutes a reliable source. How would you define a RS? What evidence would another editor need to show you to convince you that a source, which backs your position, is not actually reliable enough to use as a citation?

Another user has outlined the “librarian's criteria” for reliability here. In my view, a reliable source is attributed to an expert and is agreed by other experts in the subject to be accurate. The best sources are heavily cited by other experts as being accurate. To convince me that a source that backs my position is not reliable, it would be sufficient for another editor to show me that the source (or the idea promoted by that source) has been roundly criticized by a preponderance of experts in the subject.


 * You have recently stated that you think "Civility is arbitrary. ... [T]he entire concept needs to be trashed...." Please explain this opinion.

In my opinion, the Wikipedia community has placed too much emphasis of late on civility. An editor can be uncivil occasionally and still be a fabulous contributor: such peccadilloes should not be deal-breakers. Currently, some administrators exclusively enforce civility-violations and refuse to address the substantive issues of improving the encyclopedia. Right now the community is more likely to ban a user who makes fantastic contributions but calls someone a puerile name than a disruptive, tendentious POV-pusher who is superficially polite to a fault. This is wrong.


 * ArbCom has made decisions which relate to some of the problem areas under discussion, including the cases Pseudoscience, Paranormal, Martinphi-ScienceApologist, and Matthew Hoffman. What is your overall opinion of these decisions? Comment on the role of ArbCom decisions and actions or inactions in ameliorating or exacerbating the problems relating to contentious articles.

ArbCom decisions have been a mixed bag, some have been great, some have been downright boneheaded. One problem is that arbitration is not supposed to deal with content-decisions, but ultimately every fight on Wikipedia is over content. This means that ArbCom is stuck putting out (or starting) peripheral fires without dealing with the main problems. I have a high opinion of certain arbitrators and a low opinion of others. In general, I think that ArbCom enacts the will of the community fairly well, but oftentimes the will of the community is counter to what is best for creating a reliable encyclopedia. While the problematic, high-profile ArbCom decisions attract notice, problematic activities happen on a much smaller scale perpetrated by administrators and users every day. Ideally, ArbComm would lead the community toward a better way of dealing with disputes, but one of the known problems in a democracy is that the mediocrity of the community often is reflected in its chosen leaders. One persistent problem: most encyclopedias are controlled by content-experts, but Wikipedia is not.


 * Any final words?

Reliable descriptions of material reality are only made through the expert consensus of the scientific community. While Wikipedia is charged with reporting on various alternative viewpoints, the fact that these alternative viewpoints are not reliable descriptions of material reality must be made clear for Wikipedia to be the best encyclopedia it can be.


 * Thank you for taking the time to respond to our questions.

It was my pleasure.