Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hockey stick controversy


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete (but with many incoming links, I will redirect to Hockey stick graph). The basic argument for deletion is that the article is a WP:POVFORK, which is an article that covers the same subject area of another article, in a manner that compromises the WP:NPOV policy.

Having compared this article with Hockey stick graph, I find that this argument has a great deal of merit. Both articles contain a chronological history of how the graph was assembled, and list out the scientific and political challenges to the graph. Labelling one version of this chronology with the controversial term "controversy" is deeply problematic in view of the NPOV policy.

In defense of the article, it has been pointed out that the controversy in itself is a notable subject. Another argument was presented that deletion of the article would constitute censorship. Regarding notability, deletion of this article does not preclude notable challenges from being presented in the main article about the graph. As to the censorship argument, the NPOV policy contains a section on undue weight. Pseudoscientific arguments should not be presented as being on par with actual science.

Since I find that this article does run afoul of the POVFORK policy, I am closing this discussion accordingly. Sjakkalle (Check!)  12:27, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Hockey stick controversy

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This article is basically a WP:POVFORK of hockey stick graph giving undue weight to the political debate ginned up by the climate change denial machine. Any significant content is already in the main article at. While the graph has cultural significance, it is a very minor element of the science of climate change, and two (enormous!) articles, including what is basically a spun-out criticism section, seems excessive, especially since quite a bit of this article has had to become basically a line by line rebuttal of contemporaneous denialist talking points that were rapidly shown to be incorrect. Hockey stick graph is twice as long as quantum mechanics and this, incredibly, is longer still. Guy (help!) 16:21, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Environment-related deletion discussions.  Megan Barris   (Lets talk📧)  16:58, 23 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Neutral. Two questions: Is the controversy not notable in and of itself (e.g. with book such as the The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars to warrant its own article? Can the article not be written in a way that does not give undue weight to climate change denial rhetoric? Snooganssnoogans (talk) 21:51, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
 * , in itself? Not beyond the graph. Seriously, we have four times as much content on this as we do on quantum mechanics. That makes no sense. Guy (help!) 08:14, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
 * That seems like an argument for breaking it up into more pages rather than deletion. The QM category contains 509 pages. Pelirojopajaro (talk) 09:24, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
 * , my problem is this. The hockey-stick graph is just a representation of temperature records. Its only significance is that it is sufficiently striking that the climate change deniers lost their collective shit and set about trying to make it not true. In this they failed. There is genuinely only one topic. Or rather, the two topics are the instrumental temperature record (which we have) and the hockey-stick graph freakout. And I think we're far enough past that freakout now to prune down the content to a few of the less obviously bad faith attempts and treat it as a single subject. Guy (help!) 09:39, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
 * keep - I think the controversy is notable. Arguably the article is too long, but that can be fixed by shortening, not deleting it. Also I don't think its a fork; it is its own subject. Saying it gives undue weight to the political debate is somewhat odd, because the political debate is the main point of the controversy William M. Connolley (talk) 22:20, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
 * , but the political debate was not in good faith, that's the point. The "controversy" was engineered and sustained by the climate change denial industry. Guy (help!) 08:15, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
 * That the controversy was not in good faith is irrelevant to the deletion debate; that's a discussion about the page content. FWIW, though, I do not believe that the debate was entirely or originally "engineered"; it would be better to say that the flames of what could have been a valid scientific discussion were fanned out of all proportion. And of course the degree of plausibility of debate has changed over time; nowadays, with multiple independent repros, there's nothing left, scientifically, but this article isn't (shouldn't be) about the science. You are I think right that the page is too huge and doubtless duplicates much that is in the HS page William M. Connolley (talk) 09:57, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I feel like there has to be at least one notable historical controversy involving an actual hockey stick, and that this phrase would be ambiguous to any such instance. BD2412  T 02:18, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep per William M. Connolley. This is not a WP:POVFORK, but a standard WP:SUMMARY situation where a subtopic that would be WP:UNDUE to cover in full length within the main article gets its own page. Regards, HaeB (talk) 03:28, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep per Connolley & HaeB. The article has some definite issues but is not a POVFORK. Pelirojopajaro (talk) 06:17, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. Spiffy sperry (talk) 13:41, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. Is there a rationale for deletion?  I'm not seeing one.  The article is extensively sourced, well organized, on topic, with notable subject matter.  I get that the climate change debate creates challenges & obstacles for balanced treatment of related topics in wikipedia.  But.  We don't have any meaningful standard for "appropriate article length".   The complaint that it's longer than quantum mechanics is not, by itself, a logical reason for any action here, much less complete obliteration.  --Lockley (talk) 19:22, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Quantum mechanics has a separate page at Introduction to quantum mechanics. -- Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 19:26, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment: It seems that no other sources describe anything like a "hockey stick controversy" as being a thing with that title. I cannot even find a source which collates these events in a coherent fashion. Much of the content in this article is repeated in other articles and is handled better, IMHO. How is this not WP:SYNTH? jps (talk) 19:50, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure about that interpretation of WP:SYNTH, but in any case e.g. National Geographic refers to it as "the Hockey Stick Controversy" here and one of the sources currently cited in our article even carries the term in the title. Regards, HaeB (talk) 15:32, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
 * My worry is that this source may be lifting this terminology straight from Wikipedia. jps (talk) 14:44, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Well the article references Media Advisory: The Hockey Stick Controversy which is from 2005, while the article itself only dates from 2007. The terminology is used in a number of other places, such as An unwinnable fight by Mike Hulme. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 15:16, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks. These sources, however, don't seem to agree with the structure of the current article. They seem to indicate something much more narrow. jps (talk) 19:33, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
 * "Dummies guide to the latest “Hockey Stick” controversy", 18 February 2005 by Gavin Schmidt and Caspar Amman in RealClimate, also "The Latest Myths and Facts on Global Warming" by James Wang and Michael Oppenheimer, published in 2005 by Environmental Defense, pp. 3–6 covers the topic, with a box on p. 6 explaining 'The “hockey stick” controversy'. That's concise but pretty broad, covering the main actors up to that date, of course the congressional hearings came later. . . dave souza, talk 10:32, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete - dump whatever isn't there already into Climate change denial --Rocksanddirt (talk) 20:32, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete - per nom POVfork, also this is just spammy use of the same sources not convinced the weight is due and not useful at this length PainProf (talk) 00:49, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:FORK and WP:TNT. I am not against a selective merge to Climate change denial. Labeling pseudoscience as "controversy" is a red flag of nonsense. We are not a soapbox for everyone wishing to spread disinformation. Bearian (talk) 16:22, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete - as too detailed and it would be a waste of an editor's time to attempt to summarise it as there is already a summary attempted in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_graph#Controversy_after_IPCC_Third_Assessment_Report. Chidgk1 (talk) 19:12, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete Holy cow, how much more blatant does the duplication need to be before it registers? Compare Hockey_stick_controversy and Hockey_stick_graph, including subsections. That's about 75% the same stuff, and those are big sections. The same kind of redundancy is woven throughout the article. If it's important, it can go into Hockey stick graph; we really don't need an obvious POV fork to impart a slightly different flavour of the same material, at length. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 22:32, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Merge or delete I'd say. It shows independent notability, but not enough for its own article.  Wiki Macaroons Cinnamon? 18:18, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:14, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Some of those promoting deletion of that article are complaining that this article devotes too much attention to the arguments of the climate sceptics. I have a contrary impression. While this survey article gives due attention to both sides of the dispute, it is heavily biased as it strongly and systematically favours the theory that the climate is unprecedently warming. This bias is quite systematic, therefore, I shall present only some examples of it.
 * Keep Deleting this is pure censorship. It is defined as denial stuff.. but there is not argument for how that is? The article is well documented. No other article sums it up as well as this one. If so please link to that. All links are valid. It is very analytic in dealing with the points made. So WHY deletion? Are we afraid of people knowing both sides of the matter? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.165.132.198 (talk) 12:46, 3 August 2020 (UTC)  — 93.165.132.198 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Keep A lot of serious scientists and other professionals have thrown doubt on the validity of the Hockey Stick curve as an accurate representation of past temperatures. Notably the work of Steve McIntyre should not be ignored or suppressed. Wikipedia would be a poorer source of information if that kind of honest scientific debate is nowhere to be found.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.179.218.127 (talk) 16:13, 3 August 2020 (UTC)  — 188.179.218.127 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Keep Most definitely. This controversy is growing as time goes by as predictive models are revised. I agree with HaeB this is not a WP:POVFORK, but a standard WP:SUMMARY situation where a subtopic that would be WP:UNDUE to cover in full length within the main article gets its own page. It is its own topic and is being cited as such by notable sources, increasingly so. Regards, Alfy32 (talk) 16:23, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. Very important article covering serious issues. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.51.218.74 (talk) 18:04, 3 August 2020 (UTC)  — 80.51.218.74 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Heavily trim, I think? This is a deeply confusing mess.  It's not a straightforward WP:POVFORK, not least because it's fairly NPOV—there's a case that it gives too much weight to reports by sceptics, perhaps, based on the fact that it has more stuff on them than Hockey stick graph, but it doesn't seem clear-cut to me.  And, per comments above, sources seem to exist that suggest that something by the name of "hockey stick controversy" is notable.  On the other hand, it clearly has large amounts of redundancy to HSG.  Moreover, HSC is supposed to be about the political controversy (at least judging by the hatnote on HSG), but reams of content on here seem to be about sceptical scientists publishing things.  Perhaps it should be kept, but trimmed to the politics stuff, with any useful content from the "science" bits merged into HSG, Climate change denial or somewhere else. YorkshireLad  ✿  (talk)</b> 22:34, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom and the above "delete" !votes. Redundant, overlong, POV-fork-ish, weaselly. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 23:20, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep.

Concerning the climate sceptics, systematically an argument ad hominem is used. It has been stressed that climate sceptics are related to the oil companies and are financed by these companies; that they are not real scientists, etc. However, in that article, there are rare if not none corresponding remarks about the conflicts of interests of the climate activists. It has never been asked in this survey about the external to science motives of those scientists who support the hockey stick model(s). And when this article discusses "Congressional Investigations":

"The letters told the scientists to provide not just data and methods, but also personal information about their finances and careers, information about grants provided to the institutions they had worked for, and the exact computer codes used to generate their results,"

then this article describes it as

"The increasing politicisation of the issue..."

I managed to download 28. July 2020 version of that article. The last literature reference dates to 2015. In 2011, Michael Mann sued Tim Ball who had declared that Mann had committed scientific fraud. This court saga has not yet ended. However, in that article, I did not find any references to that court saga, despite the court documents are pretty available on the internet.

However, these shortages of that survey article can be recovered. Jüri Eintalu (talk) 15:07, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete. In most cases, the existence of articles about "X" and "X controversy" means that the "controversy" is covered in WP:UNDUE detail, and I don't see any reasons to believe that this case is any different. My layperson's understanding is that the hockey stick graph is a representation of mainstream climate science, and the "controversy" is an aspect of climate change denial, which is important as an economic and political force, but is fringe or fake science. In the context of this scientific topic, therefore, covering the supposed "controversy" at great length violates WP:UNDUE, and the fact that the undue detail has been spun off into a separate article does not change that.  Sandstein   19:16, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete: per UNDUE, POVFORK and if it existed, WP:WHATTHEHELL?. This may be the longest single article I've ever seen on Wikipedia, and it's not even about something -- it's about people bitching about a graph explaining something else.  I cite the rule maybe about twice a decade, but if there's every a time we should ignore the damn rules and blow something the hell up, it's here.   Ravenswing      02:08, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:FORK and WP:TNT. Since this is clearly a pointless content fork and would take a fundamental rewrite to meet Wikipedia's standards if it wasn't anyway. So, there's zero good reason to keep it. Whoever wrote it should write a book or blog post or something like that instead. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:33, 10 August 2020 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. <b style="color: #FF0000;">Please do not modify it.</b> Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.