Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Gmeisenberg/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



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As background, Mankind Quarterly is a journal founded in 1961 as part of a network of explicitly eugenicist academic and political organizations. The journal has a negative reputation within the mainstream academic community.

All editors are WP:SPAs dedicated to Mankind Quarterly and later also Gerhard Meisenberg (Meisenberg is currently the editor-in-chief of Mankind Quarterly). The pattern seems to be creating accounts to agree with each other long after the conversation would otherwise die out. All repeatedly emphasize the same narrow set of points using similar long paragraphs.

These accounts commonly imply personal familiarity with the topics while simultaneously feigning ignorance about the journal's controversial history. Since the username Gmeisenberg suggests a conflict of interest, this appears to be an attempt to avoid scrutiny.

I've tried to reduce this to just show some of the similarities, but there's a lot to sift through.

Very similar wording added to lede of Mankind Quarterly:
 * Anamika1988: "Publication has been quarterly since its founding in 1960. The journal publishes empirical research reports including short communications, theoretical articles, and book reviews. All major areas of anthropology are represented, but the journal is most noted for articles about intelligence in countries and other subjects of cross-cultural psychology, for studies of Flynn effects (IQ increases with modernization) in developing countries, debates of controversial issues, and generally a high prominence of topics related to cultural and biological evolution."
 * Yucahu: "The journal publishes empirical research reports, theoretical articles, review articles, book reviews, and debates. Although all of anthropology is covered, the journal is most noted for articles about intelligence and other subjects of cross-cultural psychology especially in developing countries, debates of controversial issues, and articles related to cultural change and biological evolution.The journal publishes empirical research reports, theoretical articles, review articles, book reviews, and debates. Although all of anthropology is covered, the journal is most noted for articles about intelligence and other subjects of cross-cultural psychology especially in developing countries, debates of controversial issues, and articles related to cultural change and biological evolution.

Assuming that anyone critical of Mankind or Meisenberg's work must be opposed to science itself:
 * Gmeisenberg: "[Mankind] is more "scientific" than the kind of anthropology that its detractors seem to prefer."(A1)
 * Gmeisenberg: "...there is an academic subculture of dogmatically-inclined individuals who are obsessed with race differences. They are firmly convinced that there are large race differences in intelligence, and they are equally convinced that such knowledge is dangerous because it leads to bad attitudes."(A3) This claim is perverse for several reasons. Among them, it implies that the critics of the eugenics journal are the real anti-science racists.


 * Anamika1988: "Most of the references cited are polemics by fringe individuals (Kincheloe etc)."(B2) - This is in reference to Joe L. Kincheloe.
 * Burlika: "[Psychologist William H. Tucker and historian Gavin Schaffer] belong to an intellectual tradition that tends to attribute progress in behavioral genetics and intelligence research to a racist conspiracy."(C1)
 * Yucahu: "It should be made clear that most (virtually all) of the cited sources are polemics written by anti-hereditarian activists."(D1)
 * Yucahu: "We are rather dealing with known culture warriors who have a reputation for going after people whose worldview (in this case, the scientific worldview) they don't share."(D3)

They report having personally poured through the journal and having barely found any objectionable content:
 * Gmeisenberg: "It doesn't get into my head why it should be called a "racist" journal although very little of what is published there is about race differences or race politics. Perhaps 20% or so is."(A1)
 * Burlika: ...I took the time to check this on google scholar. ... from 1980 to the present, there was very little related to race, less than 10%." (C1)
 * Anamika1988: "Perhaps I didn't take enough time, but I couldn't find any rightwing political activism there." and "I couldn't even find much about genetic explanations of race differences. In one debate about geographic differences in economy and IQ, the controversy was only between the importance of sunlight versus the importance of economic history..."(B1)

Implying that because Mankind publishes writers from the Middle East and elsewhere it must not be white nationalist:
 * Gmeisenberg: "They rather include educational researchers from the Middle East who report about IQ studies in their countries and generally attribute their results to characteristics of the local educational systems"(A1)
 * Anamika1988: "Omar Khaleefa, who published several articles in the Mankind Quarterly, disappeared some years ago after running up against Sudanese authorities because of his advocacy for educational reforms in the country. If political activism is so important for Wikipedia, should this be mentioned in the article?" (B1) - He disappeared in 2014, but I couldn't find any reference to this in connection to Mankind, and citing this obscure tragedy suggests intimate familiarity with the journal.
 * Anamika1988: "The "political" issues I found discussed there by some authors were mainly about educational policy in Saudi Arabia, Sudan and similar places."(B1) - "Similar places"?


 * Burlika: "Here I found that some authors who wrote about IQ in exotic countries or sex differences and similar attributed their results to cultural and environmental causes while others preferred genetic or other biological explanations. But mostly the papers are empirical and simply present their results."(C1) - "Exotic countries"?
 * Yucahu: "One sentence with information about geographical origins of the editorial board members is added"(D2) - Yucahu did not add their names, just their geographical origins, Yuhacu explains that "This is not done with most journals, but should be done here because the presence of people from developing countries (e.g., Middle East) and historically excluded ones (e.g., ex-Soviet Union) is sufficiently unique that it provides important information about the journal, for example for people from these countries who want to submit a paper for publication. The independent source is the journal website."(D4)

There are several other signs these are socks, including edits from an IP address which suggest a COI. I can go into this further, if necessary. Grayfell (talk) 23:16, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Comments by other users
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 * Ouch, sorry for the length. I used notepad for this, and I didn't realize how big this was until I posted it. Grayfell (talk) 23:40, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
Gmeisenberg is. Anamika1988 and Yucahu are ✅ to each other and blocked without tags. Burlika is ❌.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:09, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets



 * Tools: Editor interaction utility • Interaction Timeline • User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

Yet another "brand new user" editing to purge it of well-sourced references to his advocacy for racism and eugenics. Guy (Help!) 13:10, 17 December 2018 (UTC) Guy (Help!) 13:10, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * ❌ to the only non-stale account in the archive. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:40, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Closing. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:51, 31 December 2018 (UTC)