Chopra: "The credibility of Wikipedia may be at stake[!]"

[iii]

Deepak on the nexus of pseudoscience and BLP.

Confronting the militant pests at Wikipedia resembles taking hold of a tar baby, as Weiler relates in his most recent post, pointedly entitled "Wikipedia: The Only Way to Win Is Not to Play." The unsavory fact is that skeptics have figured out how to game Wikipedia's attempts to provide fairness, and we are all the loser for it.

[Midsize Jake]

This Chopra op-ed on SFGate looks like yet another excuse for Dawkins-bashing, but the blog being referenced is a bit more even-handed and also links to Wikipediocracy, in the first paragraph even. (There's also a WR link in there, further down.) The motivation is one we've seen before, where people who believe in various "New Age" ideas pretend that their chief opponents are "atheists" so that they can get the (much larger) population of religious folks to support their views, if only indirectly. Nevertheless, their points about Wikipedia are quite cogent, and completely spot-on in many respects.

The primary example used here is the article on Rupert Sheldrake (T-H-L), which does seem to be very long (for someone I'd never heard of, anyway) and also somewhat negative, though probably not as negative as they're claiming it is. Apparently there was a big stink over someone suggesting (facetiously?) that one of his books be burned due to its hopelessly misguided approach to science, and quite a lot of the article is needlessly devoted to this, which is probably why the article, frankly, stinks.

So, important safety tip for skeptical folks: Don't even kid around about book-burning! You might as well just pull out a gun, aim it directly at your own foot, and fire away.

[Zoloft]

Craig Weiler, author of the blog referenced, is a member here.

[Ming]

It is perhaps not irrelevant that the Sheldrake article has been hammered on by Blippy (T-C-L), who three years ago was banging on some other fringe-related articles.

Ming doesn't know anything about Sheldrake's theses, but the fact that they don't have their own article suggests that nobody who knows anything about them takes them seriously.

[IRWolfie-]

Deepak on the nexus of pseudoscience and BLP.

Confronting the militant pests at Wikipedia resembles taking hold of a tar baby, as Weiler relates in his most recent post, pointedly entitled "Wikipedia: The Only Way to Win Is Not to Play." The unsavory fact is that skeptics have figured out how to game Wikipedia's attempts to provide fairness, and we are all the loser for it.

I see Chopra takes the conspiratorial claptrap from Weiler seriously. I suggest people look at the conspiracy mongering from Craig Weiler and try and match it to the specifics. One will quickly see that his conclusions make no sense. He is incorrect on every specific.

When Chopra says "... and have Wikipedia woes of my own, ..." it seems clear that he's talking about the editor Vivekachudamani, who is some form of paid advocate or has a close connection to Chopra, but has been unable to get his way.

[Midsize Jake]

I suggest people look at the conspiracy mongering from Craig Weiler and try and match it to the specifics. One will quickly see that his conclusions make no sense. He is incorrect on every specific.

Ehh, okay, but it would help if you were a bit more specific than that yourself...?

I assume you're referring to Mr. Weiler's apparent belief that "militant skeptics" on Wikipedia have organized into semi-cohesive groups to "game the system." That may not be the case, and if it is the case it might not be such a bad thing... but you can't deny that that sort of thing does happen, or at least has happened, in a variety of topic areas. It should also be hard (if not impossible) to deny that the behavior of Wikipedians in various topic areas (not just pseudo-science) could easily be perceived as organized meat-puppetry by anyone with an outsider's perspective. Meanwhile, I certainly don't believe in the existence of psychic phenomena myself, but I can just about guarantee that there are Wikipedians who, upon reading the first half of this very paragraph, will immediately assume that I not only do believe in it, I'm actually on Mr. Weiler's payroll and have been ever since I appeared on the scene in 2005. (Ignoring all evidence to the contrary, including my earlier post in this thread.)

Either way, Weiler's right about his main point, i.e., "the only way to win is to not play." That part of it should be too self-evident to even be up for discussion.

[iii]

Outing/not-outing sleuth covers a conflict-of-interest noticeboard discussion.

I think this is a bit overblown. But it's on the interwebz so thought you all should know.

[EricBarbour]

Outing/not-outing sleuth covers a conflict-of-interest noticeboard discussion.

I think this is a bit overblown. But it's on the interwebz so thought you all should know.

I wish I could get Mr. Farley to give me a copy of Chopra's website "open letter to Wikipedia". Might be amusing.

[Zoloft]

Outing/not-outing sleuth covers a conflict-of-interest noticeboard discussion.

I think this is a bit overblown. But it's on the interwebz so thought you all should know.

I wish I could get Mr. Farley to give me a copy of Chopra's website "open letter to Wikipedia". Might be amusing.

My Open Letter to Wikipedia

Posted on: November 7, 2013

I’d like to address the unfair and slanted editing of my Wikipedia article. As much as I and the Chopra Center support the ideal of a democratic, open-sourced encyclopedia, serious attention should be paid to bullying editorial gangs who use Wikipedia to further their skeptical agenda. News stories are already appearing to this effect, including a recent spot on BBC World News.

To that end, I’ve attached a letter directed to you from George Brown. I find the control of editorial content on Wikipedia by militant skeptics very distressing. For over five months I have been requesting help to at least attempt to keep this Wikipedia page neutral. I see no action on your part. In fact it has gotten worse. The Journal of Cosmology article that was cited by George was in a special edition. The editor was Sir Roger Penrose (Professor, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford). In addition that article was co authored with Drs. Rudolph Tanzi and Menas Kafatos. By asserting that Dr. Chopra is a purveyor of pseudoscience, you are also implying that the co authors are also pseudo scientists. Dr. Rudolph Tanzi is Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology, at Harvard University and director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Dr. Menas Kafatos is Vice Chancellor for Special Projects, Founding Dean of the Schmid College of Science and Technology, Director of the Center for Excellence in Applied, Computational, and Fundamental Science, and Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor of Computational Physics. And of course you are also implying that Sir Roger Penrose, the editor, is accepting a paper co written by pseudo scientists. How could this be considered a fringe citation? Please help me understand. It seems to me that by not standing up for the truth about this material, you are tacitly supporting their false claims.

Because of the guerrilla skeptics’ control of Wikipedia pages they disagree with, I was compelled to write the following article, The Rise and Fall of Militant Skepticism. As you are no doubt aware, the non-neutrality of some Wikipedia editors is a growing concern and the problem will only grow larger unless Wikimedia Foundation makes a top-down decision to enforce their BLP neutrality policy. I am sincerely and respectfully requesting you to take this action now. If you are unwilling to enforce your own neutrality policy, then it seems the only fair alternative is to immediately remove the page permanently. You have indicated that the Wikipedia community wouldn’t agree with that, but I’m sure Wikimedia Foundation has the option to make that executive decision independently.

Warm regards,

Deepak Chopra

[thekohser]

I presume this is the George Brown mentioned by Chopra.

[EricBarbour]

I presume this is the George Brown mentioned by Chopra.

That's the same gentleman I came up with in searches. He's only a Canadian paralegal, not a real attorney, so he's not much use unless Chopra wants to sue someone in Canada. Most likely Brown's a huge Chopra fan who has offered to help Chopra with the "Wikipedia problem".