User talk:TopGun/Neutrality of sources

Nice
Just cited this in a 3O response. I found it neat and clear. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:10, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

A particular view
This is in response to a request by  that I comment:

This essay represents a somewhat extreme view of a post-modern approach to scientific method. I think most scientist would disagree very sharply with most of it. I give what I see about the issues involved, in the recognition that what i say is as personal an understanding as that of the original writer.

To a extent it does represent the way the humanities work, by providing new or revised interpretations, which, though based on the sources being studied and previous work done, still do not always attempt to come to results which can be called "true" in the absolute sense of physical reality. Some aspects can only considered more or less sensible, as a value judgment. One cannot "prove" that Shakespeare's tragedies are better than those of Racine or Sophocles. But some aspects are potentially testable and do have real word correlates: Shakespeare either did or did not write the works commonly ascribed to him, and actual evidence can at least potentially be found to make it more or less probable. (and for a few of the plays, the evidence may be insufficient to actually determine).

In history and biography and similar fields, though there is a "truth" about what has happened in the past, and what people have done and said, it is not possible to attain a fully accurate view of it, because the available data will always be incomplete,  all possible influences cannot be taken into account, and the actual motives of individuals cannot be directly seen; what is attempted is a convincing reconstruction. Though reconstructions cannot be shown to be true, they can be shown to be false, by being inconsistent with established facts and data, and  also be seen as correct in the sense of remaining consistent as additional information pertinent to the problem can be found. Some of the social sciences can be regarded likewise, but to the extent that they make predictions, their correctness can be (eventually) determined--it is this potential testability which lets them be called science.

Natural science is different, because it makes predictions and statements that the world is a certain way; the experimental results that   are reported can be seen accurate or not by attempts to reproduce them, and that the theoretical interpretation can be seen as successful or not by the accuracy of their predictions. They cannot be proven to be absolutely true, because it can never be shown that more accurate observations or observations with new or different methods may show the experimental data to be incomplete or even wrong, and  any theory can potentially be disproven by the eventual failure of its predictions.

Scientists do their work as humans. Sometimes there will be different workers in a field who disagree with which of the experimental facts are correct; more often, there will be disagreement about which lines of inquiry are likely to be successful. People working in the different groups do not generally cite each other, and may publish in different journals. Each group is likely to be extremely stubborn in its views, but eventually data will be found which establishes the more likely solution. In a practical sense the decision is made by which group will get funding, but they will not get funding long if they do not get results.

There are also people  who reject this entire schema. I know people who believe absolutely that none of the facts of physical or biological science can possibly be correct if they contradict their interpretation of certain sacred scriptures, to the extent there is no need even to refute them: their findings are simply impossible. And of course there are people, sometimes dominant in a society, who refuse to accept the findings of science because they harm their own immediate social or economic interests, or do not conform to their own psychological state, or may refuse to think about predictions for the future that interfere with what they want to do in the present.

I think almost everyone at Wikipedia would agree at least approximately with what I have said. I am under no delusion that what I (and they) think to be the state of knowledge is unquestionably correct; there is a sense in which even whether to believe in the reality of a material world is a matter of opinion--and though I would like to call it pathological, I am aware that there are about a billion people who are firmly convinced otherwise. I am also aware that even in my own Western academic tradition, three hundred years ago almost all scholars and people in general would have said the truths of revelation were more important than anything which could be determined by science or reason, and that attempts to even question them were evil. And some of these scholars wrote encyclopedias.

None of this is directly pertinent to what we do in an encyclopedia. We are obliged to present not what is true, which is none of our business, but what people think to be true. We are obliged to present what the current consensus is, and also to try to explain the strength of the consensus. We use a particular method for determining the strength which is to examine the number of reliable publications supporting it, but this involves determining which publications we choose to consider reliable. The difficulties this involves I can discuss elsewhere.


 * As for this page, I think the author has the right to express their views here--I made a few wording changes to make one section sound a little less sure of itself, and I can do more.. I can see two possible courses: revise it to indicate a slightly broader perspective, while making it very clear in the start that this is a personal view and not necessarily a consensus, or more it to a userspace essay--perhaps even restoring the original text. I don't think it right to let it stand as if it were consensus, and views on WP are likely to be so different at least in detail that I think a rfc on the matter not likely to be constructive.

I can certainly give sources for my comments--but all they will be, in the end, are other people's opinions. People with more prestige than I, but still opinions.  DGG ( talk ) 07:29, 6 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks, @DGG. The original author hasn't edited for about five years.  I like your suggestion of moving it to userspace.  Perhaps the page could then be re-created as a redirect to WP:BIASED. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:10, 7 December 2021 (UTC)


 * If he's not. here, Then you & I agreeing are enough, unless someone contests it.I'm doingit. DGG ( talk ) 20:12, 7 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Why was this discussion moved from a Wikipedia talk page to the User page of an editor who's been gone for over 5 years? Move it to your own User page! This is bizarre for you to move it to another editor's User page. Talk about burying it so that no one will see it. Weird. Liz Read! Talk! 02:25, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
 * It was mostly written by this editor, and the normal thing to do is to put it under the primary author's name. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:58, 8 December 2021 (UTC)