User talk:Guy Macon/Yes. We are biased./Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

"We are biased towards bible scholarship, and biased against biblical inerrancy."

I would like to discuss this recent good-faith addition.

Argument for removal:

I want to avoid this essay claiming that we are biased against religious beliefs. We are not; we describe them but do not comment on whether they are true or false. We say that the scientific theories behind laundry balls and homeopathic medicines are bullshit, but we do not say that Mohamed or Joseph Smith are or are not prophets, nor do we say that Krishna or Jehovah do or do not exist. It seems to me that biblical inerrancy is a purely religious belief.

Argument for retention:

Even if biblical inerrancy is a purely religious belief, there are a bunch of psuedoscientific beliefs that are based upon some persons's interpretation of the Bible combined with a strong belief in biblical inerrancy. Young-earth creationism for example. On the other hand, there are plenty of Christians who believe in biblical inerrancy without believing in any pseudoscientific or fringe theories. Theistic evolutionists for example.

So, retain or remove? --Guy Macon (talk) 06:48, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Remove. This crosses the line from science into religion, which is not the intent of this essay. It's also not technically accurate, as biblical inerrancists still believe that the Bible contains allegories and metaphors, so it doesn't necessarily follow that they are all creationists or pseudoscientists. – bradv🍁 13:18, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your views. Wikipedia has a strong bias in favor of academic sources for history. That is how it should be. If archaeology says Beersheba was founded 6000 years ago and the bible says it was founded 4000 years ago, archaeology wins. Zero^talk 13:06, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Quoted by Tgeorgescu (talk) 14:48, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Tgeorgescu, that's a nice quote, but I don't understand what it has to do with my comment. – bradv🍁 15:14, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

@Bradv: From a WP:HISTRS perspective biblical inerrantist works are WP:FRINGE. This is practiced all over the place inside Wikipedia. Some consider history to be a science, i.e. it includes the history of Christianity and Bible scholarship. Tgeorgescu (talk) 15:21, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Tgeorgescu, using the Bible as a source for scientific or academic viewpoints is the problem though, not just the view that the Bible is without error. For example, the Catholic church claims that the Bible is without error, yet views the creation story as allegorical. – bradv🍁 15:28, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

@Bradv: How about We are biased towards mainstream history, and biased against true believers.? Tgeorgescu (talk) 15:32, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Or We are biased towards historical method, and biased against pseudohistory. Tgeorgescu (talk) 15:34, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Are these not both covered under the evolution / creation comparison? We could easily include all kinds of anti-religious examples, but I'm not sure that's wise. – bradv🍁 15:39, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

My take is that people (mostly vandals or true believers) write religious rubbish inside Wikipedia because it is not clear to them what Wikipedia is about. Making clear what we stand for would reduce unwanted edits. Tgeorgescu (talk) 15:44, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Agree 100%, but I have serious doubts that this addition will accomplish this in a way that the creationism entry did not. Would any sane person reach the bottom of this list and still doubt that when science and theology disagree Wikipedia chooses science every time? What bothers me is the possibility of offending the large number of people who accept science and also believe that the Bible is without error. We might as well add an entry saying that Wikipedia is biased against a belief in God.

Billy Graham was one of those people who accepted science while believing that the Bible is without error:

"I don't think that there's any conflict at all between science today and the Scriptures. I think that we have misinterpreted the Scriptures many times and we've tried to make the Scriptures say things they weren't meant to say, I think that we have made a mistake by thinking the Bible is a scientific book. The Bible is not a book of science. The Bible is a book of Redemption, and of course I accept the Creation story. I believe that God did create the universe. I believe that God created man, and whether it came by an evolutionary process and at a certain point He took this person or being and made him a living soul or not, does not change the fact that God did create man. ... whichever way God did it makes no difference as to what man is and man's relationship to God." Source: Billy Graham: Personal Thoughts of a Public Man (1997) p. 72-74

--Guy Macon (talk) 06:40, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Yup, Wikipedia isn't against religion, it is against playing fast and loose with the facts. Tgeorgescu (talk) 07:50, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Comments on tone, content and purpose here

Alexbrn linked to this essay from a discussion on the craniosacral therapy talk page. I want to say. while I have been involved in Wikipedia for over a decade, I haven't been part of the WP:FRINGE vanguard, and I'd imagine if I was I would be very frustrated with the attempts of people with CoIs to push their point of view in articles. I understand the purpose of having high standards here and I wouldn't suggest changing any of that. I would like to point out some wisdom from Carl Sagan in The Demon-Haunted World.

• "In the way that skepticism is sometimes applied to issues of public concern, there is a tendency to belittle, to condescend, to ignore the fact that, deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the sceptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped." (page 298)
• "The chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is its polarization: Us vs. Them — the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you're sensible, you'll listen to us; and if not, to hell with you. This is nonconstructive. It does not get our message across. It condemns us to permanent minority status." (page 300)

I worry that this essay and Jimmy's ad hominem "lunatic charlatans" has made it a bit too open season on anyone painted as WP:PROFRINGE. Like a correction was needed, but perhaps the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. An approach that specifically focuses on attacking ideas lacking evidence, rather than people with fringe beliefs seems more appropriate to me. You can see a little of this in the current list, for example:

• We are biased towards cargo planes, and biased against cargo cults.

I'm not even sure how to interpret that. Is it trying to say Wikipedia is biased against isolated groups of people who developed rituals based on their brief experiences with cultures that had more advanced technology? People practicing in cargo cults aren't doing anything wrong, they're just very sadly--but also very understandably--mistaken. Are we against those people? Against their beliefs? Against the conditions that created their mistaken beliefs? It's also somewhat self-contradictory. If it wasn't for cargo planes, it's likely they there would be fewer cargo cults.

I think whoever wrote that meant to say something more like We are biased towards cargo planes, and biased against cargo cult science. At least I would hope so. But even taken in that charitable way, this does seem to fit a pattern I see of anti-fringe criticism is becoming so strident that it's getting sloppy, causing a degree of collateral damage, and discouraging good faith editors. - Scarpy (talk) 23:57, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Re: cargo cults, you make a good point. I have changed the place that link points to. I do want to keep the alliteration whenever possible, but I also really want to avoid any hint that we are biased against unpopular religions. That's why you will never see "we are biased against Scientology" on the list.

Re: Sagan, I agree with his take, but this page is not designed to convince anyone to have a skeptical viewpoint or to convince anyone to abandon any of the beliefs that I say we are biased against. This essay doesn't contain any arguments and it does not say why we are biased against X and biased toward Y. There are plenty of words that have been written in various places that try to do that but this is not one of them.

The purpose of this essay is to speak to the heart of someone who, say, really believes that the proponents of antivax are right, that Wikipedia is wrong, and that what Wikipedia says about vaccines shows a bias.

I am not trying to convince them that vaccines don't cause autism. The article does that and has failed to persuade them. What I am doing is taking advantage of the fact that the antivax proponent is very unlikely to also believe in flood geology, laundry balls, or phrenology. By seeing how we are "biased against" those topics, my hope is that the antivax proponent will understand why we are "biased against" antivax.

And even if I cannot convince them if that, at the very least I will have answered the accusation of bias by clearly stating "Yes. We are biased. And we are not going to change." --Guy Macon (talk) 00:52, 9 September 2019‎ (UTC)

I don't see any good faith editors being discouraged in a way which damages the project - if indeed that is an issue. True Believers™ can edit "in good faith" and still create havoc. Then they need to be discouraged. Alexbrn (talk) 06:21, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Have been thinking good and long about this essay and Wikipedia:Lunatic charlatans, and I'm coming around more to the POV expressed in them (I know they're like 5 years old now, but are new to me as I don't often have reason to read or edit alternative medicine articles on Wikipedi). I am a little bit of a bleeding heart for the True Believers™ but in the balance between skepticism and wonder, it does make sense for Wikipedia to be biased towards skepticism. That's how it's always been most useful to me. - Scarpy (talk) 18:30, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Science is not a belief, it's a method based on facts, there's no bias

Although I personally appreciate this entry (and did not know it was recent, nice effort!), I think it in fact misrepresents and diminishes the very point it's trying to make: that science and verifiability are not based on opinion but on a method relying on facts. Thus, writing that WP's community is biased (towards scientific evidence) is I think a misrepresentation, as the point is to reduce bias. Reducing bias might look like a bias when you come from a biased standpoint, but it's not because it looks like a bias that it is an objective bias. Just my 2 cents, and I'm not meaning that this essay should be cancelled ;-) Also I'm not touching on the issues of biases in science, it's a whole other methodological problem that has a different meaning and cause than opinion biases as is the intended (counter-)meaning in "We are biased". --Signimu (talk) 21:47, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

There is the counter argument that individual humans are not wholly equipped to always understand what really is proper science and can only try to bias themselves toward what they perceive to be mainstream science (to varying degrees of success), rather than either rejecting science or else claiming to be the new Galileo. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:48, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

I can see where Signimu is coming from, but I disagree. Signimu writes "WP's community is biased (towards scientific evidence) is I think a misrepresentation", but in my opinion we are indeed strongly biased towards scientific evidence.

Signimu also writes "the point is to reduce bias", but in my opinion that is incorrect. As WP:FALSEBALANCE says, "While it is important to account for all significant viewpoints on any topic, Wikipedia policy does not state or imply that every minority view or extraordinary claim needs to be presented along with commonly accepted mainstream scholarship as if they were of equal validity".

Our article on False balance reads:

• "Unlike most other media biases, false balance may stem from an attempt to avoid bias; producers and editors may confuse treating competing views fairly—i.e., in proportion to their actual merits and significance—with treating them equally, giving them equal time to present their views even when those views may be known beforehand to be based on false information.

Examples of false balance in reporting on science issues include the topics of man-made versus natural climate change, the alleged relation between thimerosal and autism and evolution versus intelligent design."

References

This essay was deliberately written as my response to the constant drumbeat of claims that "Wikipedia is biased" because we say, to take one example, that holocaust studies "is a scholarly discipline that encompasses the historical research and study of the Holocaust" and that holocaust denial "is based on a predetermined conclusion that ignores overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary". Rather than debating the meaning of "Neutral Point of View" and "Bias" again and again, I prefer to save everyone a lot of time and effort by simply stating that, yes, we are biased towards holocaust studies, we are biased against holocaust denial and that we are not going to change. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:31, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks guys for the interesting replies Yes that's how I understand it Guy Macon, but that's still an oversimplification, albeit an useful one. The thing is that WP is not biased towards something, it simply acquired a mechanism close to the scientific method, what we may call the Wikipedia collaborative encyclopedic method. It differs a bit for some points (like for neutrality - it's more stringent), but it's not so different. Writing that we are biased towards something, when in fact we follow a method that was made to reduce bias, is akin to stating that atheism is another kind of religion, when it's not. Both of these cases are instances of mixing belief and knowledge, which is at the root of much misconception throughout History, and is the one thing above all that all encyclopedias must safeguard against. That's why I write that this essay not only misrepresents, but also diminishes the very point it's trying to make. The solution, and the good one, that Wikipedia chose is to rely on knowledge that is verifiable, and not on any personal/collective view/bias. The intention is good, and might be useful, but it's still an over-simplification that can backfire, and maybe expliciting succinctly somewhere that this is an over-simplification would be useful (if you agree with my points above ). --Signimu (talk) 22:33, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

I've made a proposition, read the diff comment for the rationale: [2]. For more context behind, please read the abstract of this excellent book: Vogt, Katja Maria (September 2012). Belief and truth : a skeptic reading of Plato. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199916818. --Signimu (talk) 21:21, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

PS: Guy Macon, my argument has nothing to do with WP:UNDUE, although indirectly focusing on verifiable knowledge rather than beliefs does allow for correct WP:WEIGHT down the line, but it's a mere side-effect of the methodological process, which primary purpose is to triage information. And that's what I point here: if Wikipedia was really biased (towards a view or set of views), it wouldn't work at this scale, because every editors have different views. The only way for these different editors to work together, is to work under a methodology which makes personal views irrelevant. Requiring verifiable knowledge is exactly that. Other criteria may be possible (I don't know, I did not think about it), but this one certainly works, as it's the one used in WP and science in general (where verifiability is replaced by reproducibility, a very close concept). --Signimu (talk) 21:37, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

The idea that one can be wholly unbiased is naive. See e.g. postmodernism. Tgeorgescu (talk) 23:06, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Signimu, this edit[3]goes completely against the message that I want this essay to convey. I violently disagree with the assertion that Wikipedia is biased against belief. You will never see this essay saying that we are biased against any belief, any religion, any god or gods, or indeed anything that is unfalsifiable. It may cover areas where someone pushes pseudoscience because of their religious beliefs, but never the religion itself. For example, this essay does not say that we are biased against E-meters, because the Church of Scientology now says (in accordance with a federal court order) that the E-meter by itself does nothing and that it is used specifically for spiritual purposes.

Your suggestions on this talk page are very much welcome, and indeed I find them to be thoughtful and helpful, but please don't directly edit the essay again. You are free to create an essay containing your disagreements in your own user space, much as WP:DTR and WP:TTR are opposing viewpoints. I would be very happy to see such an essay; I think it is an opinion worth documenting. Helpful hint: if you want to retain control of the content, make it an essay in your userspace. If you are OK with anyone making the content reflect their viewpoint instead of yours, put it in mainspace. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:53, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Wow, I did not expect such an epidermic reaction. I honestly thought and still think my point goes in the same way as yours, but I can understand it might be understood differently. For instance, knowledge about religions is what is documented on Wikipedia, but it's different from believing in those. About not editing anymore, yes of course, my diff comment clearly stated this was a proposition you would be free to accept or not, but I'm surprised you suggest that I breached some kind of courtesy when you allowed multiple edits from various authors previously (including some adding new sentences and not simply copyediting). Anyway, good luck with your endeavour. --Signimu (talk) 00:21, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

It is the nature of Wikipedia:Essays#User essays (compare with Wikipedia:Essays#Wikipedia namespace essays). Anyone is free to make any edit, but I have the final say and will only allow edits that I agree with. Most editors understand this and refrain from making edits to the essay that express an opinion that I have explicitly disagreed with on the talk page. Again, I value your input, even though in this case I do not agree with your conclusion. The points you bring up are in no way stupid or invalid. They simply come from a quite reasonable POV that I do not share. My name is on the essay, so it reflects my opinion. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:44, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, but again that's beside the point on 2 counts: you disagreed with regards to WP:UNDUE when my point had little to do with it, and my edit was a simple proposition that had no intention to rob you from authorship nor control. Rejecting it is ofc ok but your epidermic reaction is inconsistent with allowing other editors to edit. In other words: you are ok with editing if it fits your view, but with the 1st faux pas in your view you'll issue a persona non grata call. You can do that, but it's normal i perceive the previous response as displeasing and arbitrary. A simple rejection would have been enough. --Signimu (talk) 13:52, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

If you are watching this page, I could use your help.

Because of some ongoing health issues, I have been forced to limit how much time I spend editing Wikipedia. This essay is becoming popular, so I am asking for help in fixing obvious problems in some of the pages that essay links to. In particular, I would ask for help improving:

• Holocaust studies
• Mendelian inheritance
• Cargo aircraft
• Venipuncture
• Water treatment

...so that they no longer need cleanup templates at the top.

Any help with these or any other pages I link to in my essay would be very much appreciated. --Guy Macon (talk) 07:15, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Scientific method vs. bias

The scientific method inherently rejects bias. Scientific consensus is a moving pointer based on the aggregate opinion of the subset of people considered to form the "scientific community". It's essentially the point of the scientific method to reject absolutist, untestable hypotheses and instead to hold all concepts as theories subject to verification and falsifiability. Saying, "we are scientifically-minded, so yes, we are biased towards conclusions A, B, C.... ZX, ZY, ZV..." is more dogmatic than scientific - as the length of that list grows, it increasingly becomes an exercise in the author of the list simply asserting what he assumes is the newest-and-greatest scientific fact, when in reality it's merely a summary of his subjective reviews of scientific material, be it individual studies, meta-analyses, or pop-scientific articles describing for the reader what the author thinks "scientific consensus" is. The job of an encyclopedia is to be objective, if Wikipedia is truly meant to be comprehensive (which admittedly is its own debate) then its job is to describe the scientific support, or lack thereof, behind each theory, instead of depicting a narrow subset of opinion based on whatever methodologies, or worse yet, theories, that some quorum of its editors happen to prefer. Frankly, this is why Wikipedia excels at subjects like mathematics and computer science, where the subject matter is hardly subjective at all, and fails abysmally when it comes to discussing current events, political ideology, historical theories, etc., where majority consensus can often be extremely wrong. 2605:E000:CAC3:2400:D66D:6DFF:FE1E:5C03 (talk) 02:44, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

For info, I'm not the author of the above post, although it is fundamentally close to my previously raised point[4] IP user (and other like-minded ones), I have created a counter-view essay at WP:NOBIAS, please feel free to edit it --Signimu (talk) 04:13, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Cool! I love counteressays. I wish more people who act as if WP:DTR was a policy would read WP:TTR. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:42, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Idem, and thanks to you for suggesting the idea, that's why I wrote it --Signimu (talk) 06:16, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Please move to the WP:PRJ

Hello Guy Macon. I would like to encourage you to please move this excellent essay to the Wikipedia namespace. Wikipedia:No. Wikipedia is NOT biased is already there, and I'd like to link them together, for two perspectives on the issue, just like WP:NODEADLINE and WP:DEADLINENOW. You wrote on the 7th of May On reflection, I prefer that it be a userspace essay instead of a mainspace essay. Can I please ask you to reconsider? Or, perhaps, I can copy this to the mainspace, and you can continue to edit your own version in your userspace? Best, Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) ^{please always ping!} 00:36, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

I am having trouble understanding your reasons for making such a move. In what way can you link WP:NODEADLINE and WP:DEADLINENOW that you cannot also do with WP:YWAB, WP:GOODBIAS, or WP:GOODPOV? What, exactly, would be the advantage?

I can give you good reason why I would not make such a move. If you read WP:USERESSAY, WP:USERESSAY. and WP:ESSAYPAGES, you will see that in wikipedia space even longstanding essays may be removed or radically revised, and that I would have no more authority over the content than some random editor pushing an antivax, creationist, acupuncturist, or holocaust denier viewpoint. As long as I keep it in my userspace, anyone can edit it (and I strongly encourage such edits) but I have the final say over the content.

Right now if someone comes along and replaces...

• We are biased towards holocaust studies, and biased against holocaust denial.
  

...with...

• We are biased towards bible believers and historical review, and biased against zionism and Jews.
  

...I am free to revert the edit as many times as I wish without violating edit warring policies, I am also free to ban the person who made the edit from editing this essay or the associated talk page.

I try to keep a light hand on this, and pretty much any reasonable change is accepted with thanks, but I don't see any compelling reason to give up control and let the targets of this essay have their way with it. In particular, I see nothing in your comment that cannot be done while this page remains in userspace. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:08, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: Thank you—now that I know your (very good) reasons for having it in userspace, I will WP:CONCEDE, and leave you to it. Thanks for the explanation and the essay, Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) ^{please always ping!} 09:24, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia promotes pseudoscience

If you think that Wikipedia favors sciences and disfavors pseudoscience, you're dumber than the creationists you happen to criticize! Perhaps a blog website from co-founder Larry Sanger will expose how delusional people like you really are!

https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.39.253.193 (talk) 06:03, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

The source does not WP:Verify your claim. We don't deny that we are biased and we are proud of being biased for mainstream science and mainstream scholarship. So, yeah, Wikipedia does take the side of the National Academy of Sciences and of similar academies from other countries. It would be extremely odd for a reputable encyclopedia not to do that. Some theories won, other have lost, jury, judge and executioner are the scientific community; we are merely the scribes of the scientific community. So, while Wikipedia does not formally have to obey the NAS, it has been wholly sold out to the NAS. Wikipedia is to a great extent an annex of the NAS and of the top 100 universities from the Times Higher Education rankings. For some reason you believe that's unfair; we don't; and here our paths part. Tgeorgescu (talk) 06:27, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Citations

Recently I had the idea that citations would increase the impact of your "Yes. We are biased" page - links to sections of Talk pages of articles about exactly those things we are biased against (or biased for), where people complain about our bias, preferably in archives (for stability reasons). I searched the archives for "bias" and collected a few of them - most of the time, the word "bias" even appears in the section header:

• Talk:Astrology/Archive_13#Bias_against_astrology
• Talk:Alchemy/Archive_2#naturalistic_bias_in_article
• Talk:Numerology/Archive_1#There's_more_work_to_be_done
• Talk:Homeopathy/Archive_60#Wikipedia_Bias
• Talk:Vaccine_hesitancy/Archive_5#Clearly_a_bias_attack_article
• Talk:Holocaust_denial/Archive_12#Blatant_bias_on_this_page

There are probably lots of possible links for all the entries. I bet that the average complainer-about-bias-on-Wikipedia is not aware that the same thing they do is also happening on pages where they agree with Wikipedia, such as Holocaust denial. What do you think? With recruiting from the FTN, this could happen in no time. --Hob Gadling (talk) 14:54, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

That sounds like a great addition. (Jean-Luc Picard voice) Make it so. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:52, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

Alright. Collecting useable links on the Talk page first seems a good idea to me. Nothing wrong with multiple entries either, so here goes:

• Talk:Pseudoscience -
• Talk:Astrology - Talk:Astrology/Archive_13#Bias_against_astrology
• Talk:Alchemy - Talk:Alchemy/Archive_2#naturalistic_bias_in_article
• Talk:Numerology - Talk:Numerology/Archive_1#There's_more_work_to_be_done
• Talk:Homeopathy - Talk:Homeopathy/Archive_60#Wikipedia_Bias
• Talk:Acupuncture - Talk:Acupuncture/Archive_13#Strong_Bias_towards_Skeptic_Researchers
• Talk:Energy (esotericism) - Talk:Energy_(esotericism)/Archive_1#Bias
• Talk:Conspiracy theory - Talk:Conspiracy_theory/Archive_12#Sequence_of_sections_and_bias
• Talk:Cargo cult science
• Talk:Vaccine hesitancy - Talk:Vaccine_hesitancy/Archive_5#Clearly_a_bias_attack_article
• Talk:Magnet therapy - Talk:Magnet_therapy/Archive_1#Contradiction_and_bias
• Talk:Crop circle - Talk:Crop_circle/Archive_9#Bower_and_Chorley_Bias_Destroyed_by_Mathematician
• Talk:Laundry ball - Talk:Laundry ball/Archives/2017
• Talk:Facilitated communication
• Talk:Magnetic water treatment
• Talk:Ayurveda - Talk:Ayurveda/Archive_15#Suggestion_to_Shed_Biases
• Talk:Bloodletting
• Talk:Torsion field (pseudoscience) - Talk:Torsion_field_(pseudoscience)/Archive_1#stop_f****_supressing_science_with_your_bias_bull****
• Talk:Young Earth creationism - Talk:Young_Earth_creationism/Archive_3#Biased_Article_(part_2)
• Talk:Holocaust denial - Talk:Holocaust_denial/Archive_12#Blatant_bias_on_this_page
• Talk:Scientific racism - Talk:Scientific_racism/Archive_1#THIS_is_propaganda
• Talk:Global warming conspiracy theory - Talk:Global_warming_conspiracy_theory/Archive_3#Problems_with_the_article
• Talk:Flood geology - Talk:Flood_geology/Archive_4#Obvious_bias
• Talk:Quackery - Talk:Quackery/Archive_1#POV_#2
• Talk:Ancient astronauts - Talk:Ancient_astronauts/Archive_4#Pseudoscience
• Talk:Phrenology
• Talk:Lysenkoism

To do: add links. Just started the recruiting from the FTN I mentioned. --Hob Gadling (talk) 04:14, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

This is insanely great. I love the idea of showing someone who thinks we are biased against antivax dozens of other things we have been accused of being biased against. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:23, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Searching for "NPOV", "balance" and "neutrality" too now. Facilitated communication and Magnetic water treatment are not as easy as the others. Till now, I just did a search and one section jumped at me. --Hob Gadling (talk) 04:41, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Cannot resist, sorry, but we may end up re-examining our Laundry Balls section if anybody looks for reliable sources. I do like it though, and Mr Bacon knows this. -Roxy . wooF 05:09, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Wow, What a clever example of wordplay! You are the first person in history to think of substituting Bacon for Macon. In particular, not a single person in my elementary school or junior high school ever thought of that. It would have been really annoying if they had! Related: another name they had trouble figuring out how to make fun of was my brother, Tuck. :) --Guy Macon (talk) 15:06, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

I do not quite understand the part about "re-examining our Laundry Balls section". Do you mean the Laundry ball article? --Hob Gadling (talk) 08:00, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

When Gee originally wrote this, I mistook Laundry Balls for dryer balls. Dryer Balls actually have an effect (small though it is) on drying in dryers so when I copied the essay to my user page, I removed the balls. (Note: Dryer balls have no effect when washing is hung to dry) -Roxy . wooF 08:38, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

OK, I am finished searching for citations for the moment. Every item where I could find such a discussion on the Talk page has one now. Next step: add to article. What should the style be?

• We are biased towards astronomy, and biased against astrology.
  

References

Like this? --Hob Gadling (talk) 08:00, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Looks good. Go for it. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:47, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Hmmm. For those entries without any "you are based" complaints, I could just create a sockpuppet and post a bunch of compla..OW!!! Mom! Hob just hit me!! :) --Guy Macon (talk) 14:52, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Finished. (All your bias are belong to us.) I won't suggest "citation needed" for the unsourced lines now. --Hob Gadling (talk) 17:17, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

I love it! --Guy Macon (talk) 17:50, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Me too. Who will be first to use "Yes, We are biased" version 2.0 ? I will use "all your bias" too as that is genius. -Roxy . wooF 18:17, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Seemed the obvious reply to Guy's typo For those entries without any "you are based" complaints... --Hob Gadling (talk) 20:06, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

You are the wind beneath my wings. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:12, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Style of argumentation

TBH, this essay is less than entirely helpful and represents a shouty, dismissive style of argumentation that does not seem to have done anyone any good. No true believer in pseudoscience is going to be swayed by it, its real main purpose is as a morale-boosting tool for the self-appointed crusaders against them. I wonder if it can really be said that this style of editing has actually done anyone any good. FOARP (talk) 14:31, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

@FOARP: It did some good, namely it makes clear to everyone what editing Wikipedia is about. So, pseudoscience POV-pushers will be blocked or they will avoid pushing POVs, that choice is entirely theirs. But it makes crystal-clear that they will never prevail here. So, this is about establishing boundaries. Some people are honestly not aware that Wikipedia is WP:NOTFREESPEECH. tgeorgescu (talk) 15:59, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

I have been watching how well this essay is working on actual Wikipedia talk pages with an eye to improving it if I can. It has been my experience that a significant number of "true believers" respond by giving up on a campaign to get Wikipedia to stop saying mean things about their favorite brand of pseudoscience. This reduces the number of editors who end up being blocked. Of course some will reject this essay -- especially those who make money from selling a product or service based upon pseudoscience -- but I am not seeing those people swayed by any other argument either. Basically, the style of argument in this essay is sometimes effective, and the style that FOARP advocates for is effective less often. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:19, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Suffice it to say that I am less sure of the long term success of your favoured editing style. FOARP (talk) 18:30, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Then let's have a competition: You try to keep more pseudoscience out of articles with your own method, whatever it is. --Hob Gadling (talk) 19:28, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VfRfVhgbfk --Guy Macon (talk) 20:43, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not like pseudoscience, in fact it hates its very guts. The sooner this is clear to everyone, the better. tgeorgescu (talk) 17:41, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

We do, of course, strive to accurately describe things we hate. See Nazism, Racism and Child pornography. We don't like them but we do document them.

Also, Wikipedia hates some pseudoscience topics a lot more than others. Laundry balls don't hurt anyone other than them paying for something that doesn't work. Ayurveda has caused hundreds of people to die of mercury poisoning, and tens of thousands to not get medical care from real doctors. Believing in ancient astronauts or esoteric energy doesn't hurt anyone, but antivax and facilitated communication have real victims. ^{(The following signature was added later. I was too busy doing crystal meth to add it when I posted.)} --Guy Macon (talk) 20:43, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

People who dont sign their entries should quit wikipedia.

I see what you did there... 😜 --Guy Macon (talk) 20:43, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Stage magic?

Question: are we biased towards stage magic and biased against magical thinking? --Guy Macon (talk) 06:50, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Page move.

Recently, this page was moved to mainspace without asking me. At my request, the move has been undone, but I would still like to go on the record as to why similar cases should not be handled this way.

As a general rule, it should never be the case where the first someone hears about a page being taken out of their userspace is seeing the move in their watchlist (and maybe not even then; not everyone knows to watchlist all of their userspace subpages). That's just rude.

In this particular case, I deliberately placed the page in my userspace. In my userspace, I own the essay and have the final say on content. In mainspace, anyone is free to edit the page to say that we are biased towards holocaust denial, biased against vaccination, etc. This is a very controversial essay, and there are acupuncturists, young earth creationists, scientologists, etc. who would prefer that it say the exact opposite of what it says now.

Also, the move was made with no redirect. This left 45 pages with dead links to User:Guy Macon/Yes. We are biased.

Finally, you should not move pages without checking the talk page bot settings and moving all subpages. As a result of this move old threads from Wikipedia talk:Yes. We are biased would have been archived to User talk:Guy Macon/Yes. We are biased./Archive 1 --Guy Macon (talk) 22:15, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

I have moved User talk:Guy Macon/Yes. We are biased./Archive 1 to User talk:Guy Macon/Yes. We are biased./Archive 2 and Wikipedia talk:Yes. We are biased./Archive 1 to User talk:Guy Macon/Yes. We are biased./Archive 1 to prevent any further confusion regarding which archive is the "first" one. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 22:39, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! I missed that one. (Note to self: next time, smoke crack after editing Wikipedia...) --Guy Macon (talk) 05:29, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Biased against the existence of Santa Claus

Hi @Guy Macon, I think I found a suitable comparison for Santa Claus. Just like the other examples on the page, I compared it with something that is real. I compared it with the existence of Jesus, since according to the article, virtually all historians reject the Christ myth theory and agree that Jesus existed. I hope you find my edit helpful. Thanks! Félix An (talk) 12:58, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Excellent work. A fine addition to the list. Thanks!

My parents told me about Santa Claus. They lied.

They told me about the Easter Bunny. They lied.

They told me about the Tooth Fairy. They lied.

Guess what I assumed when they told me about skunks?   :(   --Guy Macon (talk) 14:15, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

I had a very bad experience with Santa Claus too! It was a huge psychological burden on me for several years after I found out that he isn't real. Félix An (talk) 21:49, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

This is of course, your essay, and you are welcome to note as you wish - but I think that that is a false dichotomy. One can believe or disbelieve in any other particular individual, and that can have nothing to do with ones belief in Santa Claus. - jc37 20:21, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

While I retain the right to make the final decision, I really only act as benevolent dictator when someone wants to add something that like "We are biased towards holocaust denial and biased against inferior non-Aryan races." I am inclined to remove anything that any ordinary editor thinks is a false dichotomy. But first I need to understand the objection.

I am going to assume that by "believing in" you means "believing in the existence of". When most people say "believe in Santa" they mean children believing that a literal person has flying reindeer and brings them presents. On the other hand when most people say "believe in Jesus" they mean "believe in a person named Jesus who is God, who died and rose again, and who takes away their sins". That last bit will never be on this list unless someone comes up with a scientific test that measures sin and salvation and a time machine that can produce a video of the resurrection. Félix An was correct in liking to Historicity of Jesus, because that is something that there is a scientific consensus on.

As for "false dichotomy", I don't think the list is a list of dichotomies at all. Yes, one has to pick evolution or young earth creationism -- it is one or the other -- but those who think that crop circles are caused by aliens have no problem believing in crops, and you don't have to reject venipuncture to accept acupuncture. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:55, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't think you understood my point, but whatever, in reading your arguments, your point, that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy are lies told to children, could apply to the vast majority of "believed-in" characters. You could just as easily add the Bogeyman to that list as well.

I might suggest that, instead of Santa Claus, you could just as easily place the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Xenu, or Prometheus. (and many, many, others...) - jc37 01:09, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

On the left side of the statement I am generally in favor of replacing Jesus with some other topic if I can find one that works as well. Jesus is rather a hot button. The question is what page. We don't have a page about a fringe theory that the tooth fairy actually exists.

On the right side of the statement, we have an example of a serious effort to have Wikipedia say that Santa Exists. We have no such discussion regarding Xenu or FSM.

It might help if you wrote a concrete suggestion in the format "We are biased towards [ Wikipedia page 1], and biased against [ Wikipedia page 2 ]. [ link to discussion ]. A discussion asking that we stop calling something quackery, pseudoscience, a fringe theory, etc. is good. Even better is when that discussion has someone pulling the "NPOV means I get my way" card. -Guy Macon (talk) 02:53, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

lol I wasn't proposing to add anything, I was merely pointing out the deficiencies of something currently added. Keep it on the page, or not, what you do with your essay is up to you : ) - jc37 05:40, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Title suggestion

I would name this article "Wikipedia is b(i)ased on reliable sources".--V. E. (talk) 13:37, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

We already have a page for that: Wikipedia:Verifiability.

This page has a different purpose. See User talk:Guy Macon/Yes. We are biased.#The purpose of this essay. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:18, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Last line contradicts Wikipedia

I know this is an essay meant to take a stab at editors who push specific points of view and twist the knife a bit, but "we are not going to change" actually goes against Wikipedia's values. If mainstream consensus changes, so will Wikipedia. So yeah, if all of professional society succumbs to mass delusion and suddenly believes the Earth is flat, then Wikipedia will say the Earth is flat. Yes, you can talk about how likely the current scientific paradigm is to be broken by new evidence, but to proudly declare that we endorse these points of view and that we are not willing to consider changing paints a pretty ugly picture for you MarshallKe (talk) 22:29, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

It would be a disservice to the reader to in any way imply that, to take one example, Wikipedia will ever change so that we are no longer biased towards holocaust studies, and biased against holocaust denial. It is not possible that even a mass delusion will cause every reliable source to suddenly say that that the Nazi genocide of Jews is a myth or fabrication. Every holocaust denial argument has been exhaustively analyzed and refuted. See Evidence and documentation for the Holocaust. In the case of holocaust denial, "we will never change" is a simple statement of fact.

Now it may turn out that someone might someday come up with evidence that laundry balls actually work (or, more likely, laundry balls change into something else that actually works while keeping the name), in which case I would remove or modify the line "we are biased towards laundry detergent, and biased against laundry balls". So in that sense, yes, Wikipedia may change. But the chances that even one of the items I list will ever change are vanishingly small. I carefully chose areas where the evidence is overwhelming and unlikely to change. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:52, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

I read the sentence "we are not going to change" as "the principle for which the above are examples is not going to change". --Hob Gadling (talk) 19:28, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Hob sums it up very well, as usual. -Roxy the grumpy dog. wooF 19:59, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Indeed. Hob, you can expect a nice bonus in your next Wikipedia paycheck. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:52, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Hey! Stop it, you two, my head does not fit through the door anymore. --Hob Gadling (talk) 16:20, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Flat Earth

See Talk:Flat Earth/Archive 7#Disinformation, the EARTH IS FLAT and this can be SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN. This article is not about Flat Earth, it promotes a round earth.

Should we add that one to list? I had expected it to be there already... --Hob Gadling (talk) 14:59, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

I just added this:

We are biased towards an (approximately) spherical earth, and biased against a flat earth.

Excellent find! The discussion has it all;, "bias" "NPOV" ALL CAPS, "dogmatic", "censorship", fake moon landings, even "the motive to destroy the [flat earth] theory was to destroy all religions". That discussion is a perfect example of what we are dealing with. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:45, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Looks like the substitution works just fine. BTW, the signature should go on a line by itself. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:27, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Line about the stab-in-the-back myth

I was thinking about adding a line about this subject, possibly along the lines of:

"We are biased towards backstabbing, and biased against the stab-in-the-back myth."

We have been accused of being biased for documenting the stab-in-the-back myth's fictional nature. CJ-Moki (talk) 07:23, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Could be, but Wikipedia is not biased towards backstabbing. That could be construed as Wikipedia fomenting rebellion or something like that. How about biased towards documenting backstabbing? tgeorgescu (talk) 07:50, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea. CJ-Moki (talk) 07:52, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

I am thinking about this one. First, I am not seeing a discussion where Wikipedia is being accused of bias or where someone trots out the old "NPOV is the magic word that means I get my way and Wikipedia isn't allowed to say anything negative about X" argument. Second, I like the bit about us being biased against the Stab-in-the-back myth -- that's just the sort of thing I like to cover on this page -- but I am not happy with the available choices for something we are biased towards to contrast it with. "We are biased towards documenting backstabbing"[5] is rather unsatisfying. First, the Betrayal article sucks. Second, we certainly want to define betrayal -- and more academic sources about betrayal would be a big help -- but we really aren't that much interested in documenting specific betrayals, most of which are not notable and are as common as dirt. I welcome suggestions for a formulation that gets around these issues. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:20, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Well, the mainstream counterpart to the SITBM is that Germany lost WW I on the battlefield. Not as catchy as the existant YWAB entries. --Hob Gadling (talk)

We have a page about Squirrel Girl but no page that is specifically about why Germany lost WW1. The closest I could find was Hundred Days Offensive, but I am still not seeing a way to fit it into the format we have been using. Also, pretty much everyone who believed that particular consiracy theory is dead of old age.

I am going to give up on this one. Maybe "We are biased against Jewish space lasers and biased towards Laser brooms" has more potential? Guy Macon (talk) 19:44, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

First I heard about laser brooms. Since there must have been a lot of engineers involved in that, it is pretty likely that at least some of them were Jewish... and if so, Greene was right!

I tried to find a section containing both complaints about "bias" and either "Jewish" or "laser", but failed. Meh, it's not strictly needed. --Hob Gadling (talk) 20:47, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

We clearly^{[Citation Needed]} have a shortage of Nazis complaining abut Wikipedia. I will alert the folks working on editor retention that they need to work harder on fascist retention. :) --Guy Macon (talk) 23:44, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Artemisinin

Artemisinin is a product of semi-synthesis. While you may say it has been inspired by TCM folklore, it is the result of hard-core scientific work. Qigong and Tai chi are effective because they are physical exercise, and physical exercise is effective. And so on. tgeorgescu (talk) 19:30, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Artemisinin is indeed an effective treatment for malaria. It can be extracted from the artemisia annua herb or synthesized. Artemisia annua has indeed been used as a treatment for Malaria by certain Chinese herbalists for well over a thousand years. The problem is that traditional Chinese medicine has thousands of other treatments for Malaria, most of which are useless and some of which are poisonous.

Tu Youyou, who won the Nobel Prize for her work, discovered that artemisia annua reduced the number of malaria parasites in the rodents' blood. She started with 2,000 TCM remedies, and rejected 1,999 of them as being ineffective. So if anyone reading this takes one of the many traditional Chinese medicines that have not been tested by real scientists and found to be safe and effective, all I can say is that the odds are at least 2000 to one against you.

Actually, the odds are worse than that. Tu Youyou found artemisia annua listed as an ingredient in a recipe for treating intermittent fevers in a 1,600-year-old text. The problem is that the recipe called for the traditional boiling water, which destroyed any antimalarial properties. For sixteen thousand years no TCM practitioner discovered that they were making the treatment ineffective by destroying the artemisinin in the herb by boiling it. It took a real scientist to figure it out. --Guy Macon (talk) 07:34, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm a "lunatic charlatan" since I use traditional Chinese medicine! Help, what do I do?

(Moved here from my talk page. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:00, 31 October 2021 (UTC))

Since I and the rest of my family in China occasionally use traditional Chinese medicine (kinds that are "officially approved and tested" by the Chinese government and sold neatly in pharmacies in China with a drug number, not fresh herbs), and their regular doctors (not TCM doctors) occasionally recommend TCM for stuff like colds, I said to my "canine friend" that Chinese medicine was fine. I was not aware that the English Wikipedia editors classified TCM as pseudoscience. See here. Now every time I use any sort of TCM or Western medicine mixed with TCM (yes, that is a thing in China), I feel guilty because according to Wikipedia, I am a "lunatic charlatan." What should I do now? Should I embarrass myself and add an entry to WP:YWAB, saying, "We are biased towards Western medicine and biased against Chinese medicine", citing my conversation on the talk page? Or should I make a userbox saying, "This user is a lunatic charlatan because he uses Chinese medicine" and add it to my user page? Félix An (talk) 21:02, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi! I will be busy this weekend and likely won't be able to write up a detailed answer until Monday, but let me just briefly say that I am very interested in fixing any areas in WP:YWAB where I got it wrong. For example, I regularly look for any evidence that laundry balls do clean clothes better than plain water, and I regularly look for any evidence that laundry detergent doesn't clean clothes better than plain water. If I ever find any such evidence I will modify or perhaps delete the entry "We are biased towards laundry detergent, and biased against laundry balls."

That being said, I don't see a single mention of Traditional Chinese medicine on the WP:YWAB page, and I would not allow a blanket claim that we are biased against TCM. Some TCM is pseudoscience. Some isn't. For example, Turmeric/curcumin is a TCM remedy that appears to benefit certain patients. while Rasa shastra has been shown to be harmful[6]. So a lot depends on exactly which TCM remedies you take and what you are treating with them.

In the talk page thread you link to above you mention taking Berberine for diarrhea.

Do you have any evidence that in China regular (not TCM) doctors prescribe Berberine for diarrhea? The fact that it is in avalilable in a Chinese drug store means nothing. My local Wallgreens is full of fake medicine.[7]

Do you have any clinical studies that show Berberine to be a safe and effective treatment for diarrhea?

BTW, if you create the userbox it should say

• "This user follows the advice of lunatic charlatans."

The claim...

• "This user is a lunatic charlatan because he uses Chinese medicine"

...is incorrect in two places.

First, the lunatic charlatans are the people who prescribe drugs but can not produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments that those drugs work. The people who use those drugs are fools who listen to charlatans, not charlatans.

Second, Only some TCM consists of work not published in respectable scientific journals and without evidence through replicable scientific experiments that it is effective and safe. So you would have to be more specific. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:31, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Félix An, again I ask:

• Do you have any evidence that in China or anywhere else actual doctors with medical degrees prescribe Berberine for diarrhea?
• Do you know of any any clinical studies that show Berberine to be a safe and effective treatment for diarrhea?

Guy Macon (talk) 19:00, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

I asked the Wikipedia Reference Desk this question one time ago, and I think someone cited something from PubMed, but I will have to look at my contribution history to find it. I'm busy with university lately; sorry for the late reply! Félix An (talk) 20:56, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Félix An, the best way to deal with this situation is to become informed and follow this advice:

• "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." - William Kingdon Clifford
• "A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree of certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which this world is suffering." - Bertrand Russell

It's important to follow the evidence and not continue to use "remedies" which lack good evidence. More quotes here: User:Valjean#Skeptic quotes -- Valjean (talk) 02:20, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Re: "I asked the Wikipedia Reference Desk this question one time ago, and I think someone cited something from PubMed", the question was posted here:

• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2021 January 21#Can you help me find a WP:MEDRS that shows the use of berberine in treating traveller's diarrhea?

In that discussion DMacks answered Félix An's question:

"As a followup to Fgf10's PMID:20738174 2011 primary-research (single trial) ref and Abductive's hinting that the actual researchers might not have a neutral perspective or well-designed/validated work, PMID:33149763 is a 2020 very recent meta-analysis that cites it. The first ref sounds promising on its own ('The results validate in vivo and in vitro antidiarrheal activity of Berberis aristata extracts and provide its chemical fingerprint.'). But it takes the independent review for us to learn that 'The quality of evidence of included trials was moderate to low or very low': even with a total of 38 trials, there are indications of effectiveness but 'there is still a lack of high-quality evidence for evaluating the efficacy and safety of berberine.'".

Guy Macon (talk) 04:31, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

So we have an answer. [8] says that "there is still a lack of high-quality evidence for evaluating the efficacy and safety of berberine."

What anyone chooses to put into their body is none of my business, and if you want my medical advice it is "don't listen to medical advice from an electronics engineer".

That being said Wikipedia will never say anything negative about all traditional Chinese medicine. There clearly are some beneficial treatments in traditional Chinese medicine. See [9].

On the other hand Wikipedia will never say anything positive about all traditional Chinese medicine. There clearly are things that will make you very sick or even kill you that are accepted parts of traditional Chinese medicine. See [10].

As the maintainer of the WP:YWAB page, it is my decision to continue focusing on individual medical treatments that have been shown to be harmful but still have editors promoting them, and continue to avoid painting all of traditional Chinese medicine (or all of conventional western medicine for that matter) with a broad brush.

Finally, a comparison of life expectancy in China when they only had traditional Chinese medicine with life expectancy since the introduction of conventional western medicine is compelling evidence that the Indian Medical Association, while somewhat handcuffed by a desire to not offend powerful politicians with the ability to hurt them, generally gets it right, and that the Ministry of AYUSH is a steaming pile of crap which should be disbanded and everyone involved should be fired and never again allowed to work anywhere in Indian government. Guy Macon (talk) 13:19, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Not quite sure how that subject jump from Chinese to Indian traditional medicine happened. --Hob Gadling (talk) 14:43, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Ack! Got interrupted in the middle of writing my response and went completely off the rails. Worst county misidenification since Christopher Columbus. :( --Guy Macon (talk) 06:03, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

@Guy Macon I made a "user is lunatic charlatan userbox" and added it to my page. Here is the template.

This user follows the advice of lunatic charlatans, because they use Traditional Chinese medicine.

Félix An (talk) 14:42, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

As I said before, I don't think your userbox is accurate or fair.

First, neither i or Jimbo ever hinted that practitioners of Traditional Chinese medicine are lunatic charlatans. That's a lie you made up. What Jimbo actually said was:

"Wikipedia's policies around this kind of thing are exactly spot-on and correct. If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals - that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately. What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of 'true scientific discourse'. It isn't."

As I have repeatedly explained to you, Some TCM has been published in respectable scientific journals and can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments. Other TCM can't, and is the work of lunatic charlatans.

Second, the users of TCM are not lunatic charlatans. They are the victims of lunatic charlatans.

Please change your user box to read:

"This user follows the advice of lunatic charlatans and uses medicine that has not been shown to be safe or effective."

Right now you are telling a lie about Jimbo's position. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:34, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: it would be an understatement to say that you're steelmanning Jimbo's position here. If vibranium was real, this would be vibranium-manning. If we are taking Jimbo's statement at face value, at a minimum, he's engaged in a mind projection fallacy (let's forget for a moment that it's clearly an ad hominem). What's literally conveyed here is that anyone who advocates anything that's not published in a peer-reviewed journal is both a lunatic (meaning crazed, mad, insane, demented) and a charlatan (A malicious trickster; a fake person, especially one who deceives for personal profit). This is the actual bit that needs the citation. You mean to tell me that Jimbo could prove every single person that is interested in Chinese medicine, for example, is unequivocally mad and actively trying to defraud people? There are plenty of nouns and adjectives that could be used instead here, almost any of them would be orders of magnitude better. "Wrong" comes to mind. "Mistaken" might be another. You could also perhaps try "incorrect." Might I suggest, if you really want to be clear, "a person who is at this moment was advocating something not supported by meta-analyses or well-designed randomized controlled trials published in reputable journals." The mental gymnastics people are willing to engage in to support this the "lunatic charlatans" noun phrase would make young Earth creationists blush. Protecting Wikipedia from misinformation is a laudable thing, but I suspect you don't realize the extent to which you contaminate that effort when you pedestalize language like that. If you want to say it's hyperbole, say it's hyperbole. Say it's not meant to be taken literally. But the only thing that looks like insanity here, to me, is the willingness to die on Lunatic Charlatan Hill. - Scarpy (talk) 08:36, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

There is a huge logical leap from What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of "true scientific discourse". It isn't. to What's literally conveyed here is that anyone who advocates anything that's not published in a peer-reviewed journal is both a lunatic [..] and a charlatan. The first says, with LC standing for the input from lunatic charlatans, "LC is one of the things Wikipedia does not use", and the second says, "All things Wikipedia does not use are LC". The context of Wales' quote suggests that he thinks acupuncture and a few other things are similar to LC, but not that they are LC. It is called hyperbole. --Hob Gadling (talk) 09:35, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

@Hob Gadling: Allow me to rush to the agreement that's being offered by your cheap debater's tactic here. If you're going to ignore the rest of what he said, and only focus on that one sentence, then you should strongly disagree with what Guy says below, where he implies that anyone that prescribes something not supported by a randomized controlled trail is not simply "wrong" or "mistaken," but rather is simultaneously mentally ill (a lunatic) and deliberately defrauding people (a charlatan). Rather, what you're saying is that there are lunatic charlatans in the world, but that they don't represent true scientific discourse. (That's a more defensible statement, but still a wrong one. Because, demonstrably, there are plenty of people with mental illnesses who have published good work in scientific journals and a small subset of those people have also defrauded people during their lives. So the statement is still false.) - Scarpy (talk) 23:37, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

The use of the word "lunatic" has nothing to do with mental illnesses. In this context, it just means someone who has a worldview disconnected from reality (probably because of their delusions of grandeur telling them that the reasoning they used to get there is impeccable, and because they think they do not need to listen to anyone who disagrees, since those are wrong anyway). If you don't even understand that, there is no point in discussing this subject with you. Also, you do not need to ping me because I have a watchlist. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:43, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Oh, right. When you say a lot of stuff that does not make sense ("vibranium"?), it is not a cheap debater's tactic to argue against the one item that does make sense but is clearly wrong, especially if that one item is the logical foundation of the whole contribution. You do know that if the foundation of something is bad, the whole thing collapses, don't you? --Hob Gadling (talk)

"Lunatic Charlatan" is an accurate description of anyone who prescribes any drug or treatment that has not been tested in a double blind clinical trial. They are purposely hurting people and leading them away from the real doctors who want to help them because doing so is profitable. So, OK. I disagree with the lunatic bit. I say that they aren't crazy. They are evil. Jimbo was being nice. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:59, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: No, it's not. And the burden of proof is on you here. You're making a much broader statement (as I described above and you have conveniently ignored) about that person than what they're actually doing. That person might be wrong, or mistaken, or incorrect, or causing harm, or many combinations of those things, if they are "prescribing any drug or treatment that has not been tested in a double blind clinical trial." But prescribing any drug or treatment that has not been tested in a double blind clinical trial, does not speak to state one's of mental health or their motivations making such a prescription. It could be a mentally healthy person who's simply been mislead about the state of the literature, or who believes in the fullness of time their observations will be supported in RCTs and has entirely benevolent intentions. I'll even grant you that some of them might be mentally ill and/or have intentions to defraud people, but you haven't proved either of those things assuming the truth of your preconditions.

This is no different than when Todd Friel asserted to Christopher Hitchens he (Christopher) was willfully suppressing the obvious truth of a creator because he wanted to live immorally. - Scarpy (talk) 23:37, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

@Guy Macon I updated my userbox. I'm sorry about my misunderstanding of the term. Félix An (talk) 19:22, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

I feel concerned that Wikipedia editors might regard me as a lunatic charlatan, and I am willing to stop using or discard whatever supplement or medication that makes me or my family members lunatic charlatans. How should I fix my reputation? Félix An (talk) 19:24, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

In my official role as King Of Wikipedia,^{[Citation Needed]} I hereby declare that Félix An is not a lunatic, a charlatan, or a lunatic charlatan. If anyone has a problem with my determination, just send them to me for "reeducation".

My advice regarding supplements and medications is to ask someone who has a medical degree, and to do what they say to do. There are some parts of TCM that medical doctors will no doubt strongly endorse and other parts they will recommend against. For one example of good TCM, see [ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34420189/ ]. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:48, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Dictionary misuse

It is rarely correct to, as Scarpy does above, take a multi-word English term, look up the definitions of each word, string them together, and proclaim that you have arrived at the true meaning if the phrase. That's not how English works. This is a basic error in how one interprets phrases in the English language. The meaning of a two word phrase is not always the same as the meanings of the individual words combined.

• Burning Man is not a man who is burning.
• The Black Panthers are not panthers that are colored black.
• Chinese Checkers are not checkers from China. They are a form of Halma from Germany.
• The Red Scorpions are not scorpions that are colored red.
• A Horned Toad is not a toad with horns. It is a lizard with spines.
• The Silver Dollar Group is not a group of silver dollars.
• A Mountain Chicken is not a chicken from the mountains.
• English Horns are not horns that come from England. They are woodwinds that come from Poland.
• A Conspiracy Theory isn't a theory about a conspiracy.
• Grape Nuts are not nuts made from grapes.
• A Buffalo Wing isn't the wing or any other part of a buffalo.

--Guy Macon (talk) 22:59, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

This is what I mean by gymnastics. This is exactly how English works, it's a very common way to form noun phrases. proper nouns that don't follow this are minute compared to what people almost always mean when an adjective precedes a noun. When someone says a yellow school bus, what they mean is that there's a school bus that's the color yellow. I will happily take this bet searching any legitimate text corpus if you want to see what's more commonly used. - Scarpy (talk) 23:55, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

I'll go further - here are my proposed terms. If I'm correct, you publicly withdraw your support for this phrase and the essays that contain it, never use it again on Wikipedia, and link back to this discussion when you see it used by others to further discourage its use. Of course, you can still use other WP:CIVIL adjectives and nouns to describe people advocating something that is not supported by randomized controlled trials as you wish.

If I lose, I will publicly endorse the use of this phrasing on Wikipedia and never question it's use on Wikipedia ever again.

To be clear here, what I'm proposing is that we search an agreed upon text corpus (e.g. American National Corpus) and compare the number of times that a proper nouns appear that contain an adjective and a noun, compared to the number of times a noun phrase is formed by an adjective preceding an noun or an adjective preceding a noun phrase. If the second is larger than the first, I win. If the first is larger than the second, you win. We can have a neutral third party preform the search and even engage a neutral linguistics professional to configure the search parameters. Deal? - Scarpy (talk) 00:23, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

This is stupid. There is no connection between the stunt and the thing it is supposed to prove. Guy's point is that your logic is bad, since you did take a multi-word English term, look up the definitions of each word, string them together, and proclaim that you have arrived at the true meaning if the phrase. Your bad logic ("this is a swans, therefore it is white") is refuted by one single counter-example ("look, this swan is black"), and it will not suddenly turn non-bad by counting examples ("white swans beat black ones by 91%, so all swans are white!")

Give it up. We have a lot of experience refuting bad reasoning, and you can throw as much bad reasoning at us as you want, it will stay bad reasoning. --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:16, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Hey Hob; what's Blue and smells like Red Paint? --Guy Macon (talk) 20:50, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

I guessed that one, then googled it and found that I was right and that is is a "dad joke"... --Hob Gadling (talk) 09:02, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Good work

This edit [11] by Félix An is exactly the sort of improvement I am looking for. Good work! --Guy Macon (talk) 00:30, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Should we add "We are biased towards COVID-19 vaccination, and biased against COVID-19 misinformation"?

This concerns the following edit/revert: [12][13]

In general, I welcome input from other editors, but in all but the most obvious corrections I prefer that any changes be discussed here on the talk page first, and my loyal   minions   sycophants   fanbois   henchmen   talk page stalkers   talk page watchers are encouraged to revert any undiscussed changes.

So, should we add "We are biased towards COVID-19 vaccination, and biased against COVID-19 misinformation" to this list?

First, if at all possible I like new entries include a link to a discussion where someone claims Wikipedia is biased against something. See Talk:Astrology/Archive 13#Bias against astrology for an example. We can't always find such a discussion (If anyone can find a discussion that claims that we are biased against phrenology or Lysenkoism please add it). I would be surpised if such a discussion doesn't exist regarding Covid antivax. We just have to find it (or if there are several, find the best one).

Second. COVID-19 misinformation is too general to compare with. This is where a talk page discussion helps. I would have suggested COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and hesitancy as a better page to compare COVID-19 vaccination with.

So, should we add this? I am inclined to say yes, but then again my brain is controlled by the microchips^{[Citation Needed]} Bill Gates puts into the vaccines... --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 14:41, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

I think we should add it. The topic is clearly the subject of mis- and disinformation, both from political and pseudoscience actors.

Thanks for sharing your reasoning. Since this essay is still in your userspace, you are the ultimate arbiter of content here, so we need to understand your wishes and expectations.

Here are some related sections on my talk page. Feel free to borrow/copy any ideas. 1, 2, 3 -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:06, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm not convinced, though I totally agree with the sentiment and message the edit conveys. Thing is, what we have is a humourous essay with rather biting points made, in a funny and powerful way. Info vs Misinfo just doesn't reach the high standards already set by the essay. Felix makes a very good point though, and the message made is totally on topic, just isn't shocking or surprising. My 2p. -Roxy the bad tempered dog 22:02, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Lichtenberg

Just found an old contribution of mine in Talk:Oscillococcinum and tweaked it a bit: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's quote "When a book and a head collide and there is a hollow sound, is it always from the book?" is still a good question when you replace "book" by "Wikipedia article" and "hollow" by "biased". When your opinion and a Wikipedia article disagree, does it mean that the Wikipedia article is biased?

Is that good enough to add here? --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:04, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

I rather like the "When your opinion and a Wikipedia article disagree, does it mean that the Wikipedia article is biased" wording and am very much inclined to put some variation of it in the essay. I am undecided about the head/book quote. My first reaction was "books aren't hollow and don't make a hollow sound when hit". This may be because I tend to be overly literal, though. Does anyone else have an opinion on this?

I suggest some real-world testing. There are a few people who I really want to hit over the head with Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:27, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

GMOs?

In this edit[14] User:PalauanLibertarian added this to the list:

• We are biased towards GMO safety, and biased against GMO conspiracy theories.

References

Suggested additions are welcome, but please suggest changes on the talk page instead of just adding them without any discussion. This entry had a couple of problems, which may be fixable.

First, the ref didn't go to a specific talk page discussion that alleges that Wikipedia is biased. In fact the page linked to currently only shows a few messages about a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. PalauanLibertarian, could you please look through the Archives at Talk:Genetically modified food and give us a link to a specific discussion? I suspect that you will find no shortage of claims of bias if you look at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Genetically modified organisms.

Second, while "biased against GMO conspiracy theories" is fine, "biased towards GMO safety" just links to the GMO article. We could link to Genetically modified organism#Controversy, but I don't see anything there that shows Wikipedia taking a stand the way we take a stand on the other "biased towards" articles such as "We are biased towards vaccination" or "We are biased towards laundry detergent".

Suggestions from talk page watchers on whether we can salvage this one and whether it is a good fit are welcome. Guy Macon (talk) 01:40, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Magnetic therapy bias

Maybe you should actually look into things befire you take abuased stance against them, eh? This essay makes you look like an idiot in a few other places, too.

https://podcasts.ufhealth.org/magnetic-nanoparticles-can-increase-cortisol-production/ 2603:8000:1B01:866D:D4B3:70D1:3A25:B663 (talk) 12:31, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

The above is a typical pseudoscientific alternative medicine argument. See Magnet therapy. Just because magnets are involved in one kind of experimental treatment (injecting a gland with magnetic particles then causing them to heat up by applying a rapidly alternating magnetic field), that does not establish that a completely different kind of treatment (permanent magnets, no injected particles) has beneficial health effects. Such claims are unproven and no effects of magnets on health or healing have ever been established.

As for your childish "idiot" namecalling, I refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:23, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Help needed

I would like to ask my loyal minions   sycophants   fanbois   henchmen   talk page stalkers  talk page watchers for assistance.

Through the invaluable assistance of others, most of the entries on this list have links to places where someone claimed we are biased against, say, laundry balls.[15]

Three items are missing such discussions:

• We are biased towards science, and biased against pseudoscience.

• We are biased towards psychology, and biased against phrenology.

• We are biased towards Mendelism, and biased against Lysenkoism.

Can anyone find discussions claiming we are biased against phrenology, Lysenkoism, or pseudoscience?

Discussions on Wikipedia would be ideal, but even an obsure plog or twitter discussion about how Wikipedia is biased against phrenology would be sufficient to establishe that someone claimed we are biased on that topic.

If you can fix this, you can expect a little something extra in the paychecks we all get for supressing the TRUTH[16][17]... --Guy Macon (talk) 04:28, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

For pseudoscience there's this, although it mainly claims that we may wrongly classify certain topics as pseudoscience.

I couldn't find any claim that we were biased against Lysenkoism (maybe it doesn't have many adherents today?) but I did find the opposite claim. (t · c) buidhe 02:50, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Fascinating article on "Wikipedia’s Lysenkoism", but in my opinion completely wrong. The author, while fighting for their preferred definition of such terms as "sex" "gender" and "female" (ignoring the easily observed fact that word definitions and usage change over time) completely mangles the meaning of "Lysenkoism", redefining it as "any deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable" (it actually refers to one specific set of wrong opinions by Trofim Lysenko and to Joseph Stalin making those wrong opinions the only acceptable biological science in the USSR). Interesting, but not much use in this essay.

On the other hand, the jcom.sissa.it paper is just what I was looking for. In seems to be quite clearly claiming that Wikipedia is biased against pseudoscience. Example: "their scepticism is applied asymmetrically, always against beliefs contrary to scientific and medical orthodoxy and, and their efforts are invariably against groups espousing those beliefs". The paper even lists Breibart.com as the first citation! Good find. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:01, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

When they gave that definition of Lysenkoism, they were quoting straight from our article on the term I don't believe the medium.com article was saying that Lysenkoism includes all forms of pseudoscience, but rather making an analogy between Lysenkoism (which suggests that evolution occurs within a single organism and they aren't bound by genetics) and people being transgender. Regardless, it's a biased article that doesn't work here. An alternative could be a discussion in Wikipedia that affirms that we do believe in Mendelism, such as this extensive discussion from Talk:Evolution or this one. RedPanda25 19:59, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Help needed

I would like to ask my loyal minions   sycophants   fanbois   henchmen   talk page stalkers  talk page watchers for assistance.

Through the invaluable assistance of others, most of the entries on this list have links to places where someone claimed we are biased against, say, laundry balls.[18]

Three items are missing such discussions:

• We are biased towards science, and biased against pseudoscience.

• We are biased towards psychology, and biased against phrenology.

• We are biased towards Mendelism, and biased against Lysenkoism.

Can anyone find discussions claiming we are biased against phrenology, Lysenkoism, or pseudoscience?

Discussions on Wikipedia would be ideal, but even an obsure plog or twitter discussion about how Wikipedia is biased against phrenology would be sufficient to establishe that someone claimed we are biased on that topic.

If you can fix this, you can expect a little something extra in the paychecks we all get for supressing the TRUTH[19][20]... --Guy Macon (talk) 04:28, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

For pseudoscience there's this, although it mainly claims that we may wrongly classify certain topics as pseudoscience.

I couldn't find any claim that we were biased against Lysenkoism (maybe it doesn't have many adherents today?) but I did find the opposite claim. (t · c) buidhe 02:50, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Fascinating article on "Wikipedia’s Lysenkoism", but in my opinion completely wrong. The author, while fighting for their preferred definition of such terms as "sex" "gender" and "female" (ignoring the easily observed fact that word definitions and usage change over time) completely mangles the meaning of "Lysenkoism", redefining it as "any deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable" (it actually refers to one specific set of wrong opinions by Trofim Lysenko and to Joseph Stalin making those wrong opinions the only acceptable biological science in the USSR). Interesting, but not much use in this essay.

On the other hand, the jcom.sissa.it paper is just what I was looking for. In seems to be quite clearly claiming that Wikipedia is biased against pseudoscience. Example: "their scepticism is applied asymmetrically, always against beliefs contrary to scientific and medical orthodoxy and, and their efforts are invariably against groups espousing those beliefs". The paper even lists Breibart.com as the first citation! Good find. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:01, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

When they gave that definition of Lysenkoism, they were quoting straight from our article on the term I don't believe the medium.com article was saying that Lysenkoism includes all forms of pseudoscience, but rather making an analogy between Lysenkoism (which suggests that evolution occurs within a single organism and they aren't bound by genetics) and people being transgender. Regardless, it's a biased article that doesn't work here. An alternative could be a discussion in Wikipedia that affirms that we do believe in Mendelism, such as this extensive discussion from Talk:Evolution or this one. RedPanda25 19:59, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Wikidata

Hello Guy Macon. Last night, I noticed this essay still had an interwiki link; I removed it and added it to the relevant Wikidata item. A few hours later my change was reverted. Apparently Wikidata really does not like linking userspace pages to items. I raised this at their central discussion point (link), seeking consensus to use common sense (their version of IAR), but it does not look like there will be consensus. They suggested moving the page out of userspace. Thoughts on how to proceed? HouseBlaster^talk 21:19, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

My information may be out of date, but is it still possible to vandalize Wikidata and thus introduce vandalism into a Wikipedia page without it showing up in the page history? If they fixed that, great, but if they didn't I am against any use of Wikidata on Wikipedia, and would prefer to avoid it on my userpages.

The suggestion to move the page out of userspace is very bad advice. In userspace, I control the content (I let pretty much anyone make any changes they want, but retain the final say.) Without that control the page would be filled with things like...

• We are biased towards Joe Biden, and biased against Donald Trump.
• We are biased towards Donald Trump, and biased against Joe Biden.
• We are biased towards cryptocurrency, and biased against fiat government currency.
• We are biased towards real money, and biased against scammy "crypto" money.
• We are biased towards unborn children, and biased against murder by abortion.
• We are biased towards women owning their own bodies, and biased against religious zealots taking away our basic reproductive rights.

...or whatever other hobbyhorse someone want to coatrack in. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:34, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

'Cargo cults'

If Wikipedia is actually biased against cargo cults, the predominantly Melanesian political/social/religious protest movements amply documented in anthropological literature, I'd like to know why. I suspect that what Wikipedia (or at least those citing this essay) may be biased against are phenomena metaphorically described as 'cargo cults', almost invariably be people who know next to nothing about the origins of the term. Given my personal bias against the misuse of metaphor, and the obvious issues regarding the usage of metaphors stripped of their cultural background to the extent that they amount to little more than prejudice about the 'other', I suggest we remove the sentence in question. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:51, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

You make a good point. How about this: We are biased towards cargo ships, and biased against cargo cult science. Would that work for you? --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 23:11, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Given that cargo cult science (an article I was unaware of) repeats exactly the same dubious and frankly offensive mischaracterisations of actual cargo cults, I don't like it at all. That article clearly requires extensive editing, at minimum. As much as I respect Richard Feynman in other ways, his expertise on anthropological subjects appears to be non-existent, and it is entirely inappropriate to treat his claims about the 'cults' (a term anthropologists tend to now avoid) as if they are anything more than superficial trivialisations, told for effect. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:44, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough. May I assume that cargo cult programming would raise the same objection? Right now I am inclined to simply nuke the entry. Perhaps I can replace it with something about Prosperity theology if I can find something with similar wording to contrast it with.

While researching this, I found some interesting research/opinions: [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27]. This is so far from my area of expertise that I don't know what to make of it.   :(  

Also, in my opinion Vailala Madness should be a paragraph in cargo cult, not a seperate article. You might want to consider flagging it for a merge. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 00:43, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Yup, a fascinating topic, for sure. I scratched the surface doing my anthropology degree, though that was back in the tail-end of the last century (jeez, I'm getting old...) and much more seems to have been written since. Anyway, I see you found Lamont Lindstrom's Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology piece, which has to be the best short introduction to the subject available. As for not being sure what to make of it, you aren't alone. Anthropologists are now arguing (politely, but firmly, per the norms of academic discourse) as to whether there is really an 'it' at all, or whether they haven't invented 'cargo cults' entirely, by looking for ways to fit all sorts of diverse phenomena into a theoretical construct built around what seemed at the time a nice alliterative phrase.

Regarding the Vailala Madness article, it looks to me as if it may have its origins in a student essay or similar, and is very dated in its sourcing - it would need some work to include it in the main article, but I'll see if I can figure something out.

As for nuking the 'cargo cult' entry in your essay, I'd agree that seems the best option. If I was into making mischief I might suggest replacing it with "We are biased towards transportation, and biased against transsubstantiation" just to wind up half of Christendom, but that wouldn't really be appropriate either. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:37, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Done. That transsubstantiation almost-pun is great, but I am purpously only criticizing pseudoscience, obviously wrong cults, etc. and avoiding taking aim at legitimate religious beliefs. If one person believed in the dual miracles that bread and wine become literal muman meat and blood and that in an amazingly convenient co-miracle the meat and blood are completely indistinguishable from bread and wine, we would call them crazy. If a thousand believed it we would be comparing it with belief in Xenu. But a billion people believing it makes it a mainstream religious belief.

Regarding cargo cults, I would like to see that article clarify that there are two seperate concepts in play here; the dubious claim about indigenous Melanesian beliefs, and the metaphor describing very real things like Cargo cult programming and Cargo cult science, even though the thing they are named after may not even exist. I think the "As metaphor" section of our article on Boiling frog is a good example of how we should approach this. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 17:21, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

I suspect that Wikipedia policy would probably justify a separate article on 'cargo cult' as metaphor. Lamont Lindstrom, for one, has written extensively on the subject - of how the term has taken a life of its own, both in Melanesia (where it is now sometimes used as a label to disparage the politics of opponents), and in the wider world, where it has morphed into (amongst other things) a critique of consumerism and "unrequitable desire, both ordinary and peculiar". The issue so far though has been that almost everyone except the anthropologists responsible for popularising the term has got the origin wrong, or at best oversimplified and decontextualised it to nothingness, and I'd be rather wary of perpetuating this. Metaphors are tricky things to write about at the best of times, and I'd frankly be surprised if any article didn't end up rehashing the oversimplifications, and then filling itself up with random examples of stuff people have applied the term to. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:55, 13 December 2023 (UTC)