User talk:Pauljosephconway/Psychology 2410A at King's

Developmental Psychology Course
Copied from User_talk:Pauljosephconway and from User talk:Lova Falk to continue the discussion here. Joshua Jonathan (talk) 09:26, 25 November 2012 (UTC) and  Lova Falk     talk   09:31, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi Paul, I have now removed several empirical studies from Wikipedia articles. Do I understand correctly that adding an empirical study is part of the students' assignment? In such case, that creates a real problem, because only a few studies are important enough to be described in Wikipedia. This is an encyclopedia, and it should describe accepted knowledge, preferably from secondary sources. One of the students had added a study in which the "results only partially supported the hypothesis." Another one had results "that need further studies to validate their findings." Studies like that simply do not belong in Wikipedia.

This is a frustrating situation, both for the students who see their text removed, and for us regular editors, who need to remove and clean up. Lova Falk     talk   09:20, 24 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Lova


 * Thanks for the note. I understand you concerns; I have heard that Wikipedia prefers to rely on secondary sources. Please understand that we are participating as part of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) Wikipedia Initiative. APS has argued that Wikipedia's focus on secondary sources is sub-optimal, and has been advocating for the increased presence of primary sources on Wikipedia, and has asked instructors such as myself to push for inclusion of more primary scientific material. The nature of the student's present assignment is in this spirit. Unfortunately, not every student is as skilled as we would like in adding this material; variance in success is to be expected in every student endeavor. I apologize for frustration regarding the need to edit material that is presented in a less than ideal fashion from Wikipedia's perspective. Yet, on behalf of APS and the scientific community, I urge you to consider leaving in more primary material than instinct might otherwise recommend, in order to slowly chip away at Wikipedia's preference for secondary sources in order to improve the quality of the primary information that is available to a wide audience, as recommended by APS. PauljosephconwayTest (talk) 04:06, 25 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Paul
 * I am all for including primary sources, but only in certain contexts and certain articles. For instance, in Causes of autism or ADHD controversies I think primary material can have a place. For instance, one study finding a correlation between television viewing in young children and autism is appropriate in an article in which every single possible cause of autism is listed. But in articles with more general subjects, such as Shyness, it is not. The aim is to give neutral information, and neutral also means not giving undue weight to single studies. There must be tens of thousands of studies about very specific aspects of shyness - describing one of them in an encyclopedic article is giving them way too much weight. We cannot suppose all our readers have an academic education and have the kind of critical thinking that is taught at universities. One study in the nineties showed that "during the ages of 10-15, from this study it is determined males become more social and less shy while females become more shy and less social". First of all, how well was the study done, and with how much certainty can the researchers draw this conclusion? My guess is that not all males become more less shy, not all females become more shy. Is it really gender that is the important factor here, or is there another factor that is overlooked? For instance, the boys at this school could have a teacher who encourages the shy ones, whereas the girls have a teacher who scares the shy ones. And even if this study's result is accurate, it still could very well be a very specific result, specific for the time in which it was done, specific for the country or even for the school in which it was done. Have any replication studies been done? Is there a review that summarizes the results of several studies of how shyness changes when children become adolescents? As you see, this is asking for a secondary source. It would have been very interesting if your students would have summarized a review about shyness, gender and age, instead of this one study, that gives information that is way too unsure - which is why I have removed it. And that is why I'll remove empirical studies even in other articles.
 * With friendly regards,  Lova Falk     talk   10:17, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi Lova Apologies for the delay; it is a busy time of the semester. I hear your point about giving undue weight to single studies; the objective is not to present work as the final word on any given subject, but rather as illustrative of the kinds of work being done and--more importantly--how that kind of work is done. Wikipedia is a great tool but one thing it is not good at it helping readers understand how people reached the conclusions that are listed on the site. To a degree I suppose that is the nature of an encyclopedia; on the other hand APS has been requesting that people such as myself add in more primary material in order that the methods become clear. In some cases adding detail regarding a single study can be misleading--for example, placing a lot of emphasis on a study that fails to find evidence of global warming would distort impressions regarding the other 99% of studies that do support that conclusion. Fortunately in most cases my students are not commenting on such controversial topics, but presenting examples of some work that illustrate work typical of the field. Were I to do this assignment in future, I will weight it toward review papers to reduce this concern. Thanks for the feedback. Paul Conway, Instructor, Introduction to Child Development, Fall 2012, King's University College Canada 23:45, 6 December 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pauljosephconway (talk • contribs)

Identyfying reliable sources
I agree with you that scientific research should be available, but removing primary material is based on existing policies Identifying reliable sources, not on instinct. Joshua Jonathan (talk) 05:49, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

APS and Secondary sources
Where exactly does the APS argue "that Wikipedia's focus on secondary sources is sub-optimal, and has been advocating for the increased presence of primary sources on Wikipedia, and has asked instructors such as myself to push for inclusion of more primary scientific material." Joshua Jonathan (talk) 09:28, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Policy change
There are formal procedures to changes policies: "Proposals for new guidelines and policies require discussion and a high level of consensus from the entire community for promotion to guideline or policy." WP:PROPOSAL. "Pushing" does not sound like "discussion and a high level of consensus from the entire community". Joshua Jonathan (talk) 05:49, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Scientific community
I think you better not speak "on behalf of the scientific community"; which % of "the scientific community" is being represented by the APS? Best regards, Joshua Jonathan (talk) 05:40, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Two accounts
By the way: are you using two accounts? See WP:MULTIPLE for Wikipedia's policy on multiple accounts. Joshua Jonathan (talk) 05:49, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Encouragement
After all these questions and criticisms: don't give up! See the second set of the APSWI-goals. Best regards, Joshua Jonathan (talk) 09:44, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Project page
I just found out that you do have a project page Canada Education Program/Courses/Introduction to Child Development (Paul Conway). That's good. But that makes it even clearer that somehow it should be clear for other editors what this is all about. So, I think using a template at talk pages might help. Joshua Jonathan (talk) 21:08, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Replies
Thanks for the feedback, Jonathan. I understand there are Wikipedia policies on this topic, and editors will make judgment calls as need be. The hope is by introducing more primary material, perhaps some of this material will survive edits made by others--it was not a priori obvious to us which material is ideal and which is not. Perhaps you and I disagree regarding the meaning of the term "pushing" but here I mean it as a synonym for "advocating" not "overriding." There is plenty of room for negotiation; the APS Initiative is in its infancy and there are bound to be adjustments--this discussion is part of that process. I asked my students to contribute primary material because that is what we as instructors were asked to do. APS recommended including more primary material in the reference material made available to APS instructors (e.g., the hour-long webinar on the topic); it is possible you will be able to access this material on their website, psychologicalscience.org. APS is very interested in feedback from instructors Wikipedians to improve things; no doubt these kinds of discussions will form a component of my feedback. Hopefully this will reduce friction in future. Yes, I was using two accounts, and in accordance with Wikipedia policy I was doing so for good reason: I made a real account, and then in order to test the student view of the APS Wikipedia Portal I needed to create a test account. I then accidentally replied under the test account. On most talk pages you will find a template that links to the course page--that was part of the assignment. In cases where that is missing, students lost marks. It is an unfortunate reality that students achieve to varying degrees and not all students made it equally clear what their status was. In any event, the course has now concluded. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pauljosephconway (talk • contribs) 00:01, 7 December 2012 (UTC)