Mike said:
>> this [post] on the wiki page was wrong on several key points.
A closer look at the rules that regulate Wikipedia,
will lead one to agree with the assessments offered
by Jerry and I.
A review of the processes that control "Wikis" allows one
to realize how the Wikipedia system is openly HOSTILE to
expertise and experience. It is frustrating to admit it,
but while Wikipedia is very good system when the subject
is "popular culture" (for example, the TV shows "Star Trek"
or "Battlestar Gallactica"), it is utterly lame when it comes
to Science with a capital "S", or any subject where skill,
talent, education, and/or experience are required.
I hope we don't need to start a competing Wikipedia page.
I hope that we can simply start e-mailing Mr. Yanga and
convince him to do a better job by sending him snippets
that we can cite, such as presentations we have attended,
things that have been published in the beekeeping magazines,
things published in legitimate science journals, and so on.
Perhaps I am being naive yet again, but I think that
we can change Yanga's mind. If he remains stubborn,
we can have him removed as "editor" of the page given
that he openly stated that he has his own rather
extreme-fringe opinions on the root cause of CCD,
and has expressed open contempt for submissions
that might contradict his preconceived view.
Read the "Straight Dope" web page I cited and see.
Yanga still doubts that pathogens are behind CCD.
In fact, Yanga blames the victims in regard to
CCD, showing just how out-of-touch he is. So, he
has the choice to become educated, or be removed
as "editor". At this point in the game, one must
be willfully ignorant to offer non-pathogenic
scenarios as causes for CCD.
Jerry said:
> I thought that the misinformation was coming from an
> overly enthusiastic citizen, maybe a beekeeper or a
> student with too much time on their hands. At least
> then, one might excuse the lack of citations, fact
> checking.
If we want to fix such things, and correct the
misinformation, we have to understand how the
"rules" make it possible for a amateur like
Yanega, uninvolved with the subject except for
what he might read in the newspapers or on the
internets, to remove something added by Jerry B,
who has vast expertise in the subject matter,
even if Jerry declines the title "expert".
Let me quote from one of the more mild critiques
of Wikipedia. I consider it "required reading",
given how many people trust Wikipedia pages as
if they were fact.
http://wikicensored.info/
"Wikipedia is not only amateur-friendly, but expert-unfriendly.
They pretend not to be, and give lip service to the importance
of expert editors. But when you put the rules together, you
realize that people who are actually authorities on a subject
are forced to argue with one hand tied behind their backs.
For instance, there's an "original research" rule: original
research, i.e. facts you've dug up or deduced yourself but
that are not verifiable in the scholarly literature, are
not allowed. Well, I can see that. You don't want every
unpublished crank using Wikipedia to propagate his crackpot
views. ....but there's another rule called 'Conflict of
Interest', which disallows quoting yourself for the purpose
of bringing public attention to your writings. Which means
that any other person on the planet can write something in
Wikipedia and quote me as an authority, but if I do it myself,
that's suspect. I have done it myself, and the citations
stand if no one objects, but if a crank wants to contradict
me, all he has to do is yell 'Conflict of interest!', and
delete whatever he wants. After all, who knows what scruffy,
fly-by-night vanity presses my books might be issued by
Cambridge University Press, Schirmer Books, University of
California Press?
If the 'ranking' users - those that are more equal than
the others - do not attain this position based on their
expertise, what, then, is their 'rank' based on? It is
based on their devotion to Wikipedia-itself-as-social-dogma,
on the amount of time they spend dutifully performing
tedious maintenance chores, on their bureaucratic
zealotry and their political aspirations. In other
words, in Wikipedia, ultimate decisions about what
constitutes 'encyclopedic fact' and what constitutes
'vandalism' devolve to a cadre of Internet bureaucrats
with no other qualifications than their devotion to
Wikipedianism."
[End of Quotes from Critique]
Let's take one small example of the end result of
the impact of these rules. In the Wiki page on CCD,
Citation 57 is offered in support of the well-known
to be false claim of "No Organic Bee Losses".
It is an item "published" a paranoid conspiracy-theory
website named "Information Liberation", while the very
specific refutation of that claim by Dr. May Berenbaum,
who chaired the National Academies of Science report on
pollinators, quoted in the journal "Science" is not even
mentioned.
http://tinyurl.com/5tqqxl
or
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/316/5827/970?rss=1%5D%5B%5BNEWS
Science 18 May 2007:
Vol. 316. no. 5827, pp. 970 - 972
"ENTOMOLOGY: The Case of the Empty Hives"
By Erik Stokstad
The quote of interest is "'Pesticides can't be an explanation
for why organic beekeepers are losing their colonies',
Berenbaum says."
So are we to believe that no one read that article?
That no one considered that article worth citing?
That an article in "Science" is not considered as
credible as something from a website that also
claims that 9/11 was an "inside job"?
More likely no one bothered to apply appropriate corrections
to the Wiki page in light of the more up-to-date statement
on the specific issue of "organic beekeepers" and CCD.
Of course, no one reading the Wiki page on CCD notices just
what a collection of wack-jobs are "published" by that
"Information Liberation" website, as they don't look at
the homepage of the website to see what else is covered
by that website:
http://www.informationliberation.com/?categories
Mike said:
> The problem with the CCD page on Wikipedia is that no one's
> publishing the rebuttals to all those silly, fringe theories.
Sorry, I just gave an example above of how what HAS
been published is being ignored, yet the fringe
theory remains presented as if it were fact. There's
simply no excuse for missing something published in
"Science" or "Nature", now is there?
Further, if one adds in the beekeeping-specific periodicals,
there can be no doubt that CCD is the result of one or more
pathogens. (One assumes that if newspapers are valid
citations of "fact", industry trade magazines are also valid.)
But "published" does not seem to be the gating criteria
for being cited in a Wiki page. Web pages are cited
(as I pointed out above), presentations are cited, and
newspaper articles are cited. There have been numerous
rebuttals to the silly and fringe theories, but the
refutations have been ignored by an editor who is
indifferent, unresponsive, and not interested enough
in he subject to read an article in the journal "Science".
But the basic problem seems to be that Yanga, the
person editing that Wiki page, has gone on record
as having a vested interest, some sort of personal
axe to grind.
He has a pet theory, and this is the worst sort of
"Conflict Of Interest". He seems to be suppressing
submissions that might refute his own views, given
Jerry's experience. He is ignoring reports that
should change his view. He even refuses to admit
(on the "straight dope" website I cited) that CCD
has continued to kill hives!
So, Yanga is a crackpot.
There is no polite way to say it.
He confesses to his crank theory thusly:
"...what's happened is pretty much what
I expected would happen: the CCD threat
got blown out of proportion; lots of
people came up with wild conjectures to
explain it, none of which panned out;
the dramatic phenomenon didn't repeat
itself; and now people only dimly recall
what all the fuss was about."
No wonder the Wiki page on CCD is the silliest
thing since my false advertising suit against
the producers and director of the movie
"The Never-Ending Story"!
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