| Revision as of 16:59, 19 August 2009 editNev1 (talk | contribs)56,354 edits cm← Previous edit | Revision as of 17:46, 19 August 2009 edit undoNemonoman (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers6,845 editsm →ParapsychologyNext edit → | ||
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| ::::Those "actively at work on an article" should have picked up on the attribution of sources as is was introduced, rather than let it deteriorate to the state where someone felt the need to bring it to FAR. Shoemaker's Holiday removed a lot of poorly sourced information, actually removing POV. As for your question "how much of this FAR is based on the actual quality of the article, and how much is based on a belief that the SUBJECT MATTER does not merit a Featured Article", all of the comments I have seen by Shoemaker's Holiday relate to poor sourcing (]) so implying prejudice is distinctly unhelpful. ] (]) 16:59, 19 August 2009 (UTC) | ::::Those "actively at work on an article" should have picked up on the attribution of sources as is was introduced, rather than let it deteriorate to the state where someone felt the need to bring it to FAR. Shoemaker's Holiday removed a lot of poorly sourced information, actually removing POV. As for your question "how much of this FAR is based on the actual quality of the article, and how much is based on a belief that the SUBJECT MATTER does not merit a Featured Article", all of the comments I have seen by Shoemaker's Holiday relate to poor sourcing (]) so implying prejudice is distinctly unhelpful. ] (]) 16:59, 19 August 2009 (UTC) | ||
| :::The majority of objections I see here relate to changes made by one editor who apparently quit once Ryanpaddy and I began to NPOV some of his edits. The changes that are so objectionable were in place for 8 days total. By contrast, you, Nev1, and SH and MartinPoulter have made considerable, POV-changing edits in one big burst yesterday, and then FAR'd the article. | |||
| :::Since all the materials removed were suggesting the legitimacy of some areas of psi research, and since all the additions made by the Gang of 3 suggest that psi reserach is bullshit, I bring that fact to the awareness of others who may be reading this discussion, and who may decide to express opinions. | |||
| :::The material that the 3 of you removed may not live up to FA standards. But it is generally considered poor form to remove reasonably added, reasonably cited material without attempting to improve it. Which is why I will be leaving your new Agenda-driven POV additions in place until I've had time to see what, if anything, can be salvaged from them. | |||
| :::The FA question is YOUR question. If you wanted to challenge the material you deleted, or to discuss why you were adding the material you added, you might have done so on the talk page before escalating to this forum. | |||
| :::The FA question is your question, and the outcome up or down is meaningless to me. The quality of the article, good or bad, speaks for itself. I have seen shit raised to FA status, and deserving articles failed. So why do you and your buddies want to make a big about this? It seems to me that your edits point to the reason. You don't like the article's tone. If the article doesn't agree with psi research=bullshit agenda you have plastered all over your new additions, then it must be de-FA'ed. In support of this thesis I point to SH's comment that he removed material not present in the FA version. He sure didn't remove the newly added Gang-of-3 approved additions. If SH were really concerned that article had left FA status because of the material that was removed, he could have done this without adding a lot of extra opinions. | |||
| :::While I'm on the subject of poor citations, may I please point out that this and similar comments made above ''"Giving Rhine the "last word" on his own experiments, when plenty was published about them by third parties since then, is also blatant POV."'' don't offer much help to me as an editor. What studies, please? And also, who precisely is to be given the last word? Must it always be a skeptic to be satisfactory? | |||
| :::In fact I think the discussion speaks for itself, and pretty much proves the point that an agenda is at work. --] (]) 17:46, 19 August 2009 (UTC) | |||
Revision as of 17:46, 19 August 2009
Parapsychology
- Featured article candidates/Parapsychology/archive1
- Featured article candidates/Parapsychology/archive2
| Toolbox |
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- Notified: Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Rational Skepticism, Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Paranormal, Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Psychology, and Misplaced Pages:Fringe theories/Noticeboard (The other Wikiprojects do not appear to have significant recent activity)
I am nominating this featured article for review because this article has major problems with original research, tone, and verifiability. Several times, it seems to go well beyond, or even directly contradict what the references say, as well as using a large number of dubious references. Take Parapsychology#Contributions_to_other_disciplines if the deletion sticks --Shoemaker's Holiday Over 193 FCs served 19:02, 18 August 2009 (UTC)]
Also, my I mention that the citations are very poorly done? They lack much of the information needed to easily find them a lot of the time, like issue numbers. I've had to click repeatedly on issues until I found the relevant one.
| Claim | Evidence |
|---|---|
| "The practice of randomization and associated techniques such as "blind" administration of conditions were principally developed in the conduct of early psychical research, and have since become standard practice in scientific experiments." | Claims about blinding actively contradicted by citation; randomisation claims overstated: The Bulletin of the History of Medicine does not say any such thing. Its discussion of blinding begins in the late 18th century, and, several pages of chronologically-organised examples later discusses that the first use of blinding in psychic research began after 1884. It does say "From this point , blinding quickly became an essential feature of psychical research, as did Richet's random selection methods (au hasard), which he used as an additional precaution to ensure concealment. 71 When university-sanctioned psychical and parapsychology research centers were opened in the early twentieth century, blind assessment and early forms of randomization were also an integral component of their research protocols." - However, it does not credit this work with any innovation in the protocols, randomisation, or any other blinding technique.
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| The field has also contributed to the advance of statistical methodology, with probability theory having been adopted by Charles Richet to the evaluation of card-guessing results, and considerably advanced by Rhine, Pratt and associates at the Duke University Parapsychology Laboratory from the 1930s. | No citation. The Isis source (above, ) states "Richet hardly introduced probabilistic reasoning into psychology, let alone into science in general... But it remains true that, outside of astronomy and geodesy, probability had little role in scientific inference at the time Richet wrote" - and then goes on to credit Bioinformatics as a major influence in the further growth of probability in science.
It's also worth mentioning that the Isis source states that Richet's experiments, in the end, had wholly negative results. This is another problem with the article: it has a habit of mentioning studies as having been done, but not mentioning they were deemed negative in the end, e.g. the statement removed here: "...and research trials conducted under contract to the United States government to investigate whether remote viewing would provide useful intelligence information." (They decided it did not) |
| A monographic review of the first sixty years of organised parapsychological research has been identified as the first meta-analysis in the history of science, and a similar effort was offered by parapsychological researchers in the journal Nature immediately prior to the now common practice of statistically generalising over independently conducted experiments. | Only relevant cite not reliable - it cites the Nature review, but the review itself cannot, of course, demonstrate that it itself was innovative or influential - that depends on others' reactions. The main cite for this is to the "47th Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association" - and the Parapsychological Association is not a reliable source, nor are conventions peer reviewed or otherwise reliable for such major claims. |
| Improved analysis of multiple responses to individual targets was inspired by the occurrence of the challenge in some group tests of ESP, and similar challenges inspired the development of other statistical techniques | Some studies discussing the analysis of such results are analyses, but this section is supposed to demonstrate that Parapsychology generalised to other fields - and there is no evidence provided that the statistical discussions linked ever became widely used. |
We could go through the rest of this section; however, I think it's more useful to look at some others:
Parapsychology#Rhine_era primarily comes from a single source: Berger, Arthur S.; Berger, Joyce (1991). The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. Paragon House Publishers - One might question the neutrality of this, but let's let that pass a moment. More problematic is this paragraph:
The parapsychology experiments at Duke evoked much criticism from academic psychologists who challenged the concepts and evidence of ESP. Rhine and his colleagues attempted to address these criticisms through new experiments, articles, and books, and summarized the state of the criticism along with their responses in the book Extra-Sensory Perception After Sixty Years.
What is the source for this very weak criticism? The people being criticised: Rhine, J.B. (1966). Foreword. In Pratt, J.G., Rhine, J.B., Smith, B.M., Stuart, C.E., & Greenwood, J.A. (eds.). Extra-Sensory Perception After Sixty Years, 2nd ed. Boston, US: Humphries.
It is very bad practice to hand over the task of summarising criticism to the people being criticised, and then, further, not actually bother to mention the critical arguments discussed in the biased source.
Furthermore, there are some major weight issues: Parapsychology is pretty clearly a fringe theory, however, an inordinate amount of weight is given to the Parapsychological Association. For instance, we get this paragraph, from out of nowhere, in Parapsychology#Parapsychology_today:
The Parapsychological Association states that the presently available, cumulative statistical database for experiments studying some parapsychological effects provides strong, scientifically credible evidence for these effects. This includes presentiment, ESP, and mind-matter interaction. The Association states that an increasing number of parapsychologists are moving beyond proof-oriented research, because they believe experimental success has already been established, and instead looking at more detailed factors to better understand the phenomena.
This is from the section on history of parapsychology, let me emphasise, and yet blatant advocacy is present, cited only to a tiny organisation of about 300 people worldwide (and that tiny organisation is the largest association f parapsychologists, no less), and yet they're allowed to summarise the state of the field, with no challenge from the mainstream view, in the middle of an irrelevant section. I have deleted this particular paragraph now, but this article has a ridiculous number of problems for an FA. It would never make FA today, and is so far from accepted FA standards that I can't see it being brought back up to them anytime soon. One possibility might be to revert back to the featured version, then try and fix problems from there. Shoemaker's Holiday 18:50, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
- Thanks for doing this. I agree that there are severe problems with the article because of recent overzealous editing. I would like to say that I hope that editors will turn the article around and regain its FA status, but like you I think the scale of the problem makes it unlikely. Mentioning that government-sponsored studies were done, without mentioning that they were negative, seems a worryingly blatant case of agenda-pushing. Giving Rhine the "last word" on his own experiments, when plenty was published about them by third parties since then, is also blatant POV. MartinPoulter (talk) 21:09, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
Images: File:Wm james.jpg: without a source, how do we know this is William James? DrKiernan (talk) 12:34, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
- In the past week, the editors above have edited Parapsychology with a meat cleaver and sledgehammer. The careful wordings and citations, the neutrality and consensus that successfully brought this article to FA has been successfully eliminated. Gone. The article is now canonical: Parapsychology is bullshit and anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot or worse.
- After a slash and burn of many long months of consensus editing, the fine editors above now note -- very correctly -- that following their POV edits the article is NOW a stinking heap of garbage. And having gotten it to this stinking state, they now want it de-FA'ed.
- I am in total agreement with them. This article is no longer FA quality. Not in any way. Thanks guys! --Nemonoman (talk) 13:16, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
- PS. You guys could turn this into a business.
- Actually, if you look at the version that was featured, not one thing that has been removed was in it. Shoemaker's Holiday 13:22, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
- PS. You guys could turn this into a business.
- Nor did it contain your many helpful new edits.
- As to the info you removed, en masse, with no discussion, god bless you. Apparently you're comfortable that new info, including numerous citations, describing parapsychology in a reasonably positive light may be removed without comment. And that other information describing parapsychology in a skeptical light may be added without comment. Do we detect a pattern?
- Some of us editors who regard it as good wiki-business to keep the article neutral were working that new material over. Apparently not fast enough to satisfy you, particularly when you had so much new skeptical material to add.
- How much of this FAR is based on the actual quality of the article, and how much is based on a belief that the SUBJECT MATTER does not merit a Featured Article. That's something I'll be thinking about today. --Nemonoman (talk) 15:01, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
- I'm sorry, but did you actually read my comments above, which explicitly demonstrates that the citations were abused and actively contradicted what was cited to them? Shoemaker's Holiday 15:12, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
- Nemonoman, I think Shoemaker's Holiday has explained fairly clearly that the information in the article did not always match the sources given, so although there was the appearance of the article being sourced, this was deceptive. Maybe you should re-read the evidence presented in this FAR. Nev1 (talk) 15:23, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
- How much of this FAR is based on the actual quality of the article, and how much is based on a belief that the SUBJECT MATTER does not merit a Featured Article. That's something I'll be thinking about today. --Nemonoman (talk) 15:01, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
- I know what he said. This was not my experience. Most of the material that was the subject of this complaint was the work of one new, extremely voluble, editor. In my early work on some of those new edits, I found most of the information being cited. The editor was inexperienced, but working with incorrectly or poorly cited references of new editors is part of the job, it seems to me. That said: I found most of the information being cited when I went looking, with a modicum of difficulty, except in one instance, which I marked. Using is one way of improving an article, by giving some respect to work of new editors. Another, apparently, is to delete it willy-nilly.--Nemonoman (talk) 16:05, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
- I want to emphasize that I have not had time to review all of the new citations to validate. I suppose if SH can tar them with a broad brush, that is the only option available. Guilty, I suppose, until proven innocent.
- Rather than discuss these problems on the article's talk page, or do the hard work of editing reasonably workable material, or at least adding some fixit tags if that would be too much trouble, what we have here is an end run around the typical editorial process, which I find insulting to editors who worked to raise the article to FA status. I am NOT one of those editors, but I respect them and their work. What little work I have done on this article was subsequent to its FA promotion. But I am sorely tired of editors who decide to raise their little complaints in General Forums, rather than with those actively at work on an article.
- I have seen with my own eyes parapsychology research in process, good and bad. I was one of the persons involved in bringing Jay Levy's fraud to light: see the Fraud section of the article. I don't know if ESP exists or doesn't exist, but I do have an open mind and I don't have an agenda. I'm one of the editors concerned with WP:RS and WP:NPOV, and this article has issues involving both. Issues that can be and should be worked out through careful effort, good editing, and consensus. Not by sudden escalation to a different venue.
- Like I said: delist it. In the long run, this tempest is not worth the teapot. --Nemonoman (talk) 16:46, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
- Those "actively at work on an article" should have picked up on the attribution of sources as is was introduced, rather than let it deteriorate to the state where someone felt the need to bring it to FAR. Shoemaker's Holiday removed a lot of poorly sourced information, actually removing POV. As for your question "how much of this FAR is based on the actual quality of the article, and how much is based on a belief that the SUBJECT MATTER does not merit a Featured Article", all of the comments I have seen by Shoemaker's Holiday relate to poor sourcing (criterion 1a) so implying prejudice is distinctly unhelpful. Nev1 (talk) 16:59, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
- The majority of objections I see here relate to changes made by one editor who apparently quit once Ryanpaddy and I began to NPOV some of his edits. The changes that are so objectionable were in place for 8 days total. By contrast, you, Nev1, and SH and MartinPoulter have made considerable, POV-changing edits in one big burst yesterday, and then FAR'd the article.
- Since all the materials removed were suggesting the legitimacy of some areas of psi research, and since all the additions made by the Gang of 3 suggest that psi reserach is bullshit, I bring that fact to the awareness of others who may be reading this discussion, and who may decide to express opinions.
- The material that the 3 of you removed may not live up to FA standards. But it is generally considered poor form to remove reasonably added, reasonably cited material without attempting to improve it. Which is why I will be leaving your new Agenda-driven POV additions in place until I've had time to see what, if anything, can be salvaged from them.
- The FA question is YOUR question. If you wanted to challenge the material you deleted, or to discuss why you were adding the material you added, you might have done so on the talk page before escalating to this forum.
- The FA question is your question, and the outcome up or down is meaningless to me. The quality of the article, good or bad, speaks for itself. I have seen shit raised to FA status, and deserving articles failed. So why do you and your buddies want to make a big about this? It seems to me that your edits point to the reason. You don't like the article's tone. If the article doesn't agree with psi research=bullshit agenda you have plastered all over your new additions, then it must be de-FA'ed. In support of this thesis I point to SH's comment that he removed material not present in the FA version. He sure didn't remove the newly added Gang-of-3 approved additions. If SH were really concerned that article had left FA status because of the material that was removed, he could have done this without adding a lot of extra opinions.
- While I'm on the subject of poor citations, may I please point out that this and similar comments made above "Giving Rhine the "last word" on his own experiments, when plenty was published about them by third parties since then, is also blatant POV." don't offer much help to me as an editor. What studies, please? And also, who precisely is to be given the last word? Must it always be a skeptic to be satisfactory?
- In fact I think the discussion speaks for itself, and pretty much proves the point that an agenda is at work. --Nemonoman (talk) 17:46, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
- Kaptchuk, T. J. (1998). Intentional ignorance: A history of blind assessment and placebo controls in medicine. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 72, 389-433.
- Hacking, I. (1988). Telepathy: Origins of randomization in experimental design. Isis, 79, 427-451.
- Hacking, I. (1988). Telepathy: Origins of randomization in experimental design. Isis, 79, 427-451.