User talk:ImperfectlyInformed/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about User:ImperfectlyInformed. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

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Archive 5

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Proposed citation style guideline

Hi OptimistBen, I like your proposal to endorse the Chicago citation style, a hybrid system of footnotes and author-date referencing for all articles. I am considering making a formal proposal to that effect along with guideline implementation recommendations. I'm not sure where to do this, whether at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources or at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), what do suggest? Also, do you think this is the right time to proceed? Any other comments? Thanks a lot! --Phenylalanine (talk) 13:55, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd love to help you, but I think we should wait. I'm super-busy with school until the end of May. After that, we can make a good argument; I'll take some quotes from the Chicago Manual of Style and perhaps other style books. As for where to do it, I don't know; I'd probably do it at the Citing sources place, and you could possibly also mention it at the Policy page. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 16:14, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok. Great! Give me a shout when you're ready. --Phenylalanine (talk) 00:47, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Just wanted to let you know that I won't be around Wikipedia any longer. Sorry about that. Good luck with the project if you decide to pursue it. :) --Phenylalanine (talk) 14:42, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Hope it's just a temporary break! Impin | {talk - contribs} 14:45, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikicookie

Bugzilla 12796 and 7988

Hello,

thank you for your notes. I believe the requests you have asked for are all meaningful. At the moment I am not sure on what topics the developpers are concentrating, and there are surely a lot of good suggestions arround. The best way to get your improvement suggestion done is to do it the wiki-way: do it by yourself. While MediaWiki is an open source project, everyone can take part on the development. (I know not everyone can or will do programming work.) Please forgive me that I must give you a not very satisfying answer at the moment. I will take chance and talk with the developpers about their priority and how we can get more community input into the code.--Wing (talk) 13:00, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Request for agriculture list

As you wish ...

List of basic agriculture topics

The Transhumanist 00:58, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

SmackBot capitalizing and adding "date=" to fact tags

Edits like this seem completely unnecessary. Am I wrong? II | (t - c) 07:26, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the date parameter needs to be there explicitly named so that article is in the hidden category Category:Articles with unsourced statements since July 2008. Rich Farmbrough, 09:51 15 July 2008 (GMT).

Doesn't seem necessary to me. I'm certain that the code there could be made simpler. Ah well. II | (t - c) 10:50, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Economic related wikiprojects

HI II. First off thanks for the work you are currently doing on the various economic wikiprojects. They really are dead and need a breath of fresh air. Let me know if you need help on things. I'm the person that created the Trade Wikiproject just a few days ago. I did so for a few reasons, but let me state where i'm coming from in terms of the various economic projects. In my mind, the problem isn't too many wikiprojects, but too little. Economics and business is a huge field and nobody can speak on authority for everything. Nobody really knows where to start on these project because they are so vast. The reason I'm not that interesting in wp:economics is because I don't really want to work Adam Smith or any other economist or theory. But I would love to work on policy related articles, which I've been doing but it's not coordinated by the project. So this is where I'm coming from. I want to work on trade related articles and I felt that creating a project might help fellow minded users to also help out. Also, I've noticed some users who seem interested in working on trade articles, particularly U.S trade laws and EU trade law. I haven't been in touch with them about the establishment of the project, like I said, it was started a few days ago. So I hope this explains it. Cheers --Patrick (talk) 21:17, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. I disagree that we need more WikiProjects; often they require more maintenance than they are worth. They're good for notifying people of discussions, but we don't need WikiProjects to work on articles. You're certainly not forced to work on Adam Smith. I'd suggest making a subpage on WikiProject Economics about Trade and notifying people on the Talk page of your work with it. I really don't want to keep track of another WikiProject ... they're a huge distraction. When I want to notify the economics community, I don't want to have to post on 5 talk pages. You're right that people don't know where to start, but that is because most people don't really know about trade. We seem to have only a small handful economists working on Wikipedia, and those guys aren't even specialists in trade. Building a WikiProject is not likely to recruit people to your cause. Your best bet is to notify people of your interest in Trade on the WP:ECON talk page and hope they come help, but begin by building up Trade articles with a logical structure. For example, you might rework the international economics page, since it may deserve a page like environmental economics rather than a disambig, especially given the scope of the Category:International economics page. II | (t - c) 21:32, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm going to hold off for a few more days before I start 'advertising' the project. I want to get the stubs sorted out and work on the categories a bit. But it's interesting about the lack of users who are economists. Back in college, I knew a bunch of people who would have love to work on wikipedia if it existed then. Maybe it's the fact that you don't get credit here and considering this a profession where people will do anything to be moved up from the 4th co-author to the 3rd author. Anyways, thanks again --Patrick (talk) 21:55, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, it is interesting how many academics there are in general on here. It supports my generally negative view of academics -- since they're not wealthy, they're extremely egocentric about their work. Again, I wish you wouldn't go forward with the new WikiProject, but I'm not going to fight it. I think that putting effort into the cats, stubs, and cleanup would be much more worthwhile. Good luck with the WikiProject, though, and maybe you're right. II | (t - c) 22:14, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Answer

I missed your your query of 7 July until late last night.

A leg-lift edit is a change that is either purely horizontal (such that even the editor prefers it only because it is a change that he or she has effected), or imposes an arbitrary æsthetic. It doesn't correct an article nor add to it substantively. It is analogous to the compulsive territorial marking of a dog. —SlamDiego_←T 08:00, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

That sounds a whole lot like what is going on over at Wikipedia:Fringe theories! II | (t - c) 18:29, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

There's an awful lot of leg-lifting on Wikipedia. I've not been following WP:FRINGE, but it wouldn't surprise me to see it there. —SlamDiego_←T 01:13, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

TW

Just a heads up, the use of Twinkle to remove good faith edits like this one is viewed unfavouably ;-) Shot info (talk) 05:25, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, yeah, my bad. If it didn't do the minor tag, I imagine it would be fine? II | (t - c) 05:29, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, no, I have no issues with the minor tag bizzo (although I have seen other demand banning for this crime against humanity :-). No, I just have seen admins strip TW users from their TW usage (Levine2112 for example) for their usage of TW for rollback rather than removing vandalism. Some admins (and TW itself actually) see TW for vandalism patrol work only. Shot info (talk) 05:40, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Are you referencing me when you say banning? My problem with using Twinkle is that it tags things as minor, and I used to have minor tags turned off my watchlist by default. I don't see why using Twinkle should be a problem if it wasn't for the minor tag. II | (t - c) 05:43, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Did you read my reply. Allow me to reword.

According to TW (look on their opening paragraph), it is to be used for vandalism work.

There are some admins who think so as well.

These admins have stripped the TW code from some users who used TW for rollback.

I have just given you a friendly heads up.

I don't care about the minor tag, others might, I don't. Shot info (talk) 05:49, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I read your reply. You may not remember that I raised a big fuss over ScienceApologist using Twinkle to revert back a couple months' of edits to Quackwatch, and I thought you might have construed my fuss as a demand for banning. When I raised that fuss, most people regarded the use of Twinkle as a non-issue. That was certainly a more major move than the move I did just now ... I think perhaps the attitude has shifted? II | (t - c) 06:30, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Quoting attribute values

View the source, and you will see an XHTML DOCTYPE declaration. Failing to quote attribute values will not harm the page, but it will mean the page is invalid. The closing slash is also a nod to XHTML. If you can, please use the following construct: <ref name="value"/> Thanks for asking about it. -- Scjessey (talk) 23:27, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, yes, and if we're going to be sticklers you're going to want to put an extra space, like <ref name="value" />. You may want to fix yours. Will it validate without that extra space? Really, what does it really matter if Wikipedia's content validates or not? I think the quoting attributes thing was ill-chosen, actually, although hopefully there's reason behind it. But for Wikipedia, it doesn't seem to bring extra benefits. II | (t - c) 23:31, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

The extra space is optional, and really only required for older browsers. Quoting attributes is necessary to make it conform to the XML standard. The advantages of having valid XHTML include the ability to use namespaces (allowing things like SVG) and automated XML parsing (making it easier for bots, aggregators, etc.) That being said, a project like this should probably have used plain old HTML from the outset. -- Scjessey (talk) 01:43, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Lists of basic topics

Hi. Here's an update of what we've been up to in this WikiProject...

We've created a page for every country of the world! They're not complete, and most of them aren't even in the main namespace yet, but...

A team of editors has been working on them, and they've come a long way.

We're about to run a competition, called "Around the World", in which participants will compete in the completion of specific data items across all of these country lists. For example, one task would be adding the population figure on each page.

The awards images are almost done, and the pages themselves need a couple sections completed before they can be moved to the article namespace and the competition can begin.

We could sure use your help...

Please help out as much as you can, and help us get Around the World started!

Sincerely,

The Transhumanist 17:29, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Cold fusion

Can we not go that route, please? I do not care to comment very often on that article because, frankly, not much is being discussed. To answer your questions in the order posed, the conference sessions indicate open-mindedness from the organizers and political savvy from the CF crowd (they have been holding conferences all along). The Osaka reactor is stunningly uncompelling. Yes. Yes. I have not been to ACS, but if it is like its physics counterpart there are thousands of attendees and scores of sessions. I agree that having a cold fusion session is notable enough to be mentioned in the article, but I disagree with applying our own editorial interpretation to the bare facts. - Eldereft (cont.) 19:14, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Saying that cold fusion has been receiving more attention lately than it has in the past 20 years or so is not synthesis. It is stated in several of the news articles, for example, the Nature news article that Pierre recently brought up. As far as the Osaka reactor, I'll admit that the most remarkable thing about it is that no independent physicists appear to have validated the results. I think it is appropriate to mention post-2004 developments, but I don't care that much either way. If they're valid, they'll receive big attention at some point anyway. II | (t - c) 19:55, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

That actually sounds like a very fair assessment. Noting an increase in attention seems reasonable, we just cannot add to that any language that would lead an independent reader to conclude that a sea change has occurred. As you say, if the results are judged compelling by the physics community then that article should look very different ... in a few years time. - Eldereft (cont.) 20:36, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

This discussion should go on that talk page anyway. My original proposal was, to quote myself, "Cold fusion has attracted renewed attention in the past few years, as evidenced by ACS and APS conferences devoted to analyzing it." Certainly we should change the wording from devoted to "as evidenced by its attendance at ACS and APS conferences", or something, but I think my original proposal gets the gist of it. Did you not get that far in reading what I wrote?

By the way, if your comment on water fluoridation conspiracy theory supports ScienceApologist's move and actions, then I've lost all respect for you. You imply that there's no real scientific basis for the water fluoridation opposition, but that is patently and undeniably false. The most comprehensive systematic review in 2000 found no high-quality evidence that water fluoridation reduces cavities. There have been several Chinese epidemiological studies correlating fluoride consumption with low IQ. There's plenty of molecular evidence to suggest it messes with people. There's evidence that it increases the leaching of lead from brass pipes.[1], which is why a couple studies have highlighted this aspect.[2] ScienceApologist seems to have such an emotional attachment to this issue that he can't engage the studies. I've raised an Arbitration note over his incivility to me, and his POV pushing in reference to this issue. II | (t - c) 21:48, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I was intending my comment to address the one immediately preceding that struck me as insinuating that if only the scientific community would examine cold fusion again they would see its merits. This, I think you agree, would not be proper - WP articles should record without predicting or advocating (or, yes, disparaging). Looking at it in light of this discussion I better understand your comment following mine. Thank you for helping me see your point instead of just sniping. I will drop back there later tonight or tomorrow to clarify unless the discussion has moved on. For now, it is time to start cooking dinner.

I think I agree with many of ScienceApologist's opinions and conclusions, though sometimes it seems with more attention to nuance and willingness to explore sociological rather than physical impact. That move should without a doubt have been discussed on the talk page first, though. - Eldereft (cont.) 22:42, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

It is too bad you're not willing to engage the studies I've referenced either, which are not sociological. Did you even glance at them? II | (t - c) 23:20, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Rhetoric and social perception

You might want to reconsider the utility of expressions of doubt regarding other editors' due diligence to discussions, such as this one. Logically, the tactic adds nothing that is not accomplished by your other arguments. Pointing out that another editor is making a mistaken or irrelevant point may lead others to conclude on their own that such an accusation would have had merit, but an actual statement to that effect does not materially advance the relevant point. Additionally, social lubrication can be a highly effective rhetorical tool, especially when backed by a fair description of quality sources. These are my opinions, you may do with them as pleases you. - Eldereft (cont.) 05:29, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that first sentence was extremely snide. I reserve the right to call people out on mistakes, which they will usually not like -- I've been called out on mistakes plenty of times already, so they shouldn't feel ashamed about it. I'll try to be less snide about it though. The feedback is appreciated -- the snideness really doesn't reflect very well, and certainly continuation of it will turn around and bite me. I'll keep social lubrication in mind. It's too bad that I'm pretty much humorless; Wikipedia could really use more humor. II | (t - c) 07:08, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Massive blanking

A media wiki search on this term brings up some interesting discussions... it seems to be a favourite claim, although it's often called out. ["massive blanking" Badagnani] Verbal chat 21:20, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Haha, that was good for a laugh. :) II | (t - c) 21:40, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

I so appreciated that you actually took the time to deal with the content. You were one of the first. And you said it in so few words. It made my day. Thank you. :) Tundrabuggy (talk) 01:01, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

WP:MEDMOS Please comment.

ImperfectlyInformed, The following addition is being discussed at WP:MEDMOS: "Where possible, it is preferable to reference review articles or other secondary or tertiary sources instead of primary sources (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Reliable sources)." I would appreciate your comments on both appropriateness and the content of the addition. Thank you Paul Gene (talk) 11:49, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Geeze, make up your mind! :)

(I mean that in a light-hearted and good natured way.)

Regarding your third change of position on the denialism category discussion at TGGWS, I am just curious about what you found compelling the second time around? --GoRight (talk) 16:37, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

When I first posted on the RfC, I said "Support – this just seems obvious". After looking at The Great Global Warming Swindle again, it is obvious, especially with a title like that. I actually watched the movie a long time ago, and I'm thinking it overstated its case. So maybe there aren't a ton of a great sources that describe it explicitly as global warming. I don't like that; I think it's a technicality. The sources which don't use that word do say it twisted facts. The ClimateofDenial website, BAS statement, and the others are enough for me. Besides, making a movie is always sort of unscientific way to convince people -- let's skip the scientists, who know what you're talking about, and talk to the people, who don't know what's going on and are easily swayed. Sure, An Inconvenient Truth did that too, but it happened to be somewhat aligned with the science, plus its falsities are a breath of fresh-air when you have to deal with the continuous, neverending march of uninformed opinion in the US. With its title, you know that the Swindle is a swindle. There's a reason every scientific organization endorses anthropogenic global warming (AGW), and the Swindle did not explain that. II | (t - c) 18:40, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

References

You might want to try this tool. It automatically pulls up the PMCID number if you have the PMID (and it appears to work in reverse too). If there is a PMCID, the cite journal template automatically hyperlinks the title of the article to the full article. When you added your Niacin reference to Alzheimer's disease, you placed the PMCID number in a separate template, which wasn't necessary. I use this tool everywhere, it makes for clean references. One of the things that annoy me about many medical and science articles is the sloppiness of citations--it can take me precious time to confirm a statement, because I'm searching everywhere for it. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 22:22, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll keep that in mind. I used [http://toolserver.org/~verisimilus/Scholar/Scholar.php Verisimilus' tool to wikify the information. There is a problem in that article with a lack of PMCID links. Those are the easiest ways to tell if a full-text is available at a glance. II | (t - c) 22:31, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

So, far the diberri tool has been 100% accurate in finding PMCID links. This is how I work: I'll search Pub-Med for appropriate references, always using the newest ones first, and moving backwards. I then place the PMID number in the diberri tool. If I find a fully linked article, I'll read it (I'm not big on methods, usually just the abstract, results and conclusions). There are some older references that don't have PubMed links, but most do. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 22:35, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I see what you're saying about hyperlinking titles with the PMC link. The problem with that is that your average reader doesn't know that, and not all titles are to PMC links. That's why I would prefer if the PMC link was kept distinct from the title -- so a reader can tell at a glance what articles are free access. II | (t - c) 22:44, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

as a further complication, many items are open access, but not in PMC-- being on various non-PMC repositories or in OA journals, or posted on miscellaneous sources. There is unfortunately currently no comprehensive way of finding them, though Google Scholar often manages fairly well if all the links are folllowed and checked. We threfore still need to add links manually. DGG (talk) 03:18, 13 August 2008 (UTC).

August 2008

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to make constructive contributions to Wikipedia, at least one of your recent edits did not appear to be constructive and has been reverted or removed. Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. ScienceApologist (talk) 21:37, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

This is the last warning you will receive for your disruptive edits. The next time you violate Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy by inserting commentary or your personal analysis into an article, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. ScienceApologist (talk) 21:38, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

This is the last warning you will receive for your disruptive edits.
The next time you violate Wikipedia's no original research policy by inserting unpublished information or your personal analysis into an article, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. ScienceApologist (talk) 21:39, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Please remember to assume good faith when dealing with other editors. Thank you. ScienceApologist (talk) 21:41, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Fluoridation

It may be best, in light of the current discussion, to utilize materials from actual anti-fluoridation organizations regarding their motivations (studies, etc.) for opposing fluoridation. That way, it wouldn't be synthesis, but actually represent actual reasons the groups (such as Fluoride Action Network) have opposed fluoridation. I think that would solve the problems other users have outlined with the addition of new information about problems found with low-level fluoride ingestion. Badagnani (talk) 00:27, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Orthomolecular

Hi there. I've been trying to find a form of words that might cover the same ground as that pseudoscience box and be acceptable to everybody involved. I think most of the editors on the page would agree that OM isn't as unreal as homeopathy or therapeutic touch, but is obviously seen as not mainstream science. Could you live with "This lack of serious testing of orthomolecular medicine has led to its practices being classed with other less plausible forms of alternative medicine and regarded as unscientific." diff? Tim Vickers (talk) 16:17, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

WP:ECON/A favor

If you find the time, could you take a minute to form an opinion about the importance of Hicksian demand function to WP:ECON, and weigh in on the discussion? So far this one article is in dispute, and I'd like to start building consensus around the importance criteria. Thanks, I appreciate it. -FrankTobia (talk) 20:47, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Economics article

Yep, more thanks on your several excellent edits. I haven't been able to sit down and compose for a while. Hopefully that will end sometime and I can add rather than just arguing details. CRETOG8(t/c) 20:55, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Hey, thanks. The talk pages can be a deterrent to making edits. The intelligent people who are good at writing find it difficult to be bold, while those who suck don't worry about messing things up. :p It's similar to the way that scumbags find it so easy to run and succeed in politics, or business, in my estimation. They don't second-guess. II | (t - c) 21:21, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Recycling

Hi.

If you want to add criticism of John Tierney's article to the Recycling article, that's great - the more points of view, the better.

But please don't remove Tierney's point of view. I added the summary of his article back to the article, because he raises important issues that readers should be made aware of.

For you to erase that summary, and then replace it with a single sentence about "inefficiency," is a denial of what Tierney actually said. And it's closed minded. It's also censorship.

I also added a POV tag to the article, and started a section on the talk page to talk about this.

Again, you can add as much criticism of Tierney's article as you want. But please stop erasing the summary of his article. I want readers to be exposed to all points of view. The article should be balanced.

Grundle2600 (talk) 18:27, 25 August 2008 (UTC)3

Xylitol

ROFL sorry mate...my editor automaticaly marks my edits as minor and I often forget to flip the switch - and I didnt comment my bad... thanks for reverting the undo!! benjicharlton (talk) 05:25, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

No biggie, glad to see more scientific references! II | (t - c) 05:36, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Obama article probation

Thank you for your contributions to the encyclopedia! In case you are not already aware, an article to which you have recently contributed, Controversy over an Obama–Ayers connection, is on article probation. A detailed description of the terms of article probation may be found at Talk:Barack Obama/Article probation. Also note that the terms of some article probations extend to related articles and their associated talk pages.

The above is a templated message. Please accept it as a routine friendly notice, not as a claim that there is any problem with your edits. Thank you. - Wikidemon (talk) 17:44, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

The edit warring and accusation aren't cool. Also, please do look at the effect of your edits - you've dupliciated the exact same prose, citations, etc., in the edits and in the article. I had integrated a bunch of material from the lead into the main article. Per WP:LEAD the lead is supposed to summarize the article, not repeat it or contain unique material. Wikidemon (talk) 17:44, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Replied on the article talk page, where this discussion belongs. The prose is not the same, and of course the citations are going to be the same. The lead should summarize the entire article, not just the stuff you want it to summarize. II | (t - c) 18:06, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

How do you know what I want? I don't recall your asking me. Perhaps you can assume that I am simply trying to improve the article. I'm alerting you to be more careful in approaching Obama-related articles. Article talk pages and edit summaries are for discussion aimed at improving article contents, not for scolding other editors - see the terms of probation, for example. If you can slow down a bit you will see that my edits bring the article up to style guidelines and do not slant anything one way or another. Wikidemon (talk) 18:09, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

In economics it is called revealed preference. I'm sorry if I've come off as harsh, but you still haven't come up with a good reason to tell only the "controversy" half of the story in the lead, and you were the one who initially reverted with no real reason, sparking a mini edit-war. In fact, the lead should explain the extent of Obama's relationship with Ayers rather than teasing about it. See WP:LEAD about teasing. II | (t - c) 18:16, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, and on Wikipedia it is called assuming bad faith. The entire article is about the controversy, not the relationship between the men (which is not notable, and more or less a non-issue because there is no relationship). No, you're edit warring - you made a hasty judgment and an ill-considered edit, justified by nothing more than a baseless accusation that I was being sketchy. Now please, focus on content, not editors. I strongly suspect this was a simple mistake and misjudgment on your part and that you simply didn't read the article or its history carefully before rushing to judgment. My guess is our positions on the focus of the article are nearly identical, and that you are misinterpreting my stylistic concerns as some kind of political bias. Wikidemon (talk) 18:38, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

MedRevise.co.uk

A medical revision wiki, with a lot of potential. With a colleague I have set up a Medical Revision website, called MedRevise.co.uk. It is not trying to compete with Wikipedia, but trying to be something else useful, and fun. If you are interested, please read our philosophy and just have a little look at our site. I would appreciate your feedback, and some contributions if you have the time. Thanks a lot! Christianpunk (talk) 17:38, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikismile

ScienceApologist (talk) has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Cheers, and Happy editing!
Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

This was thrilling to me. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:55, 5 September 2008 (UTC)}}

PSTS Policy & Guidelines Proposal

Since you have been actively involved in past discussions regarding PSTS, please review, contribute, or comment on this proposed PSTS Policy & Guidelines.--SaraNoon (talk) 19:02, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Just as sure as God made little green doctors...

...I recently edited medical degree to point out that ther term does not exclusively imply, nor should it have been permanently redirected to Doctor of Medicine. Given your recent post to the Naturopathic Medicine talk page, I wonder if you are interested in putting the case. I tend to get confused and write long winded posts, probably because I can't understand what the objection is in the first place. So far only two users have weighed in, but I feel like we aren't getting anywhere. Naturstud (talk) 18:40, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't think the battle is really worth fighting, and I only tentatively support it. I don't really think of chiropractors as medical doctors myself -- I see them as more similar to physical therapists. I'm not even sure that naturopathic doctors should be considered medical doctors, although they would seem to be specialists in nutrition and herbalism. Their extensive training in homeopathy bothers me. II | (t - c) 19:00, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Ayurveda

This discussion has been moved to Talk:Ayurveda#JSR.27s_new_article_replacing_the_existing_one. II | (t - c) 07:32, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Consensus about Austrian economics on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Economics

Hi there,

I thought you would like to know that we are trying to hammer out a consensus statement about Austrian economics on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Economics. Please drop by and leave your comments.

thanks, lk (talk) 16:53, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification. I've glanced at it, and didn't add anything because 1) I don't have any disagreements per se and 2) I don't really know much about Austrian economics. I'm reluctant to call it fringe, though, and I think it is more mainstream than Marxian economics. II | (t - c) 23:12, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

WP:MOSBIO

Hi. :) Sorry if I misunderstood WP:MOSBIO re. Matthias Rath, but I'm not sure if I did - it says "Post-nominal letters indicating academic degrees (including honorary degrees) should not be included following the subject's name." M.D. is a post-nominal indicating a medical degree. So my understanding is we should describe when and where he earned it, but in the main biographical text, rather than directly after his name in the lead. This differs from other kinds of titles such as OBEs. Lfh (talk) 06:47, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

It's not saying the information should not be put in the lead, but that simply putting a bunch of initials after a person's name is poor style. See Wikipedia:MOSBIO#Academic_titles. Similar to the examples, it should be rephrased as "Rath is a controversial vitamin entrepeneur. He earned an MD at Hamburg ..." or whatever. II | (t - c) 07:14, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Using Harvard citation for footnotes

I was just reading your rant about footnotes, and gather that the problem is that i) it's difficult to read text with inline citations, and ii) if you move them around, they can break.

Are you aware of the Harvard citation no brackets template Template:Harvnb? It seems to address the problems that bother you about the way citations are currently done. Essentially, all the citation details would go into a references section, and the inline text footnote would just be something like:

A statement that needs to be cited.<ref>{{Harvnb|Smith|2002|p=100}}</ref> Another statement.

At the end of the article there would be a section like this:

==Notes==
{{Reflist}}
 
== References ==
*{{citation |last=Smith |first=John |title=Macroeconomics |publisher=Harvard |year=2002 }}

Tulip Mania uses this system, and it seems to work quite well.

best, lk (talk) 13:09, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

You're right about the problems. That system is fairly slick. The biggest problem is that it is a bit complex and newbie-unfriendly. II | (t - c) 21:51, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Ernst, Meeker, Haldeman

I just created a new talk-page section Talk:Chiropractic #Ernst, Meeker, Haldeman about that recent edit to Chiropractic; could you please follow up there when you have the time? Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 22:15, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Concerning the Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists of basic topics

(the RfDs have already run their course)

RfD nomination of Navy of Sudan

RfD nomination of Navy of Belarus

I have nominated Navy of Belarus (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) for discussion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at the discussion page. Thank you. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP)} 16:01, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Navy redirects

We've been "bluelinking" the Navy of x links in the basic topic country lists, by creating redirects for them, even for the countries that have no navy.

There's been a little controversy over the navy redirects for the landlocked countries (many of which have no navy), as you can see above. But it's all been worked out. Each country with no navy gets a redirect to wherever it is reported that it has no navy, or failing that, to its "military of" article.

The country lists are coming along slowing but surely. It shouldn't take too much longer before they will be complete enough to move into article space (!), but I can still use all the help I can get. (hint hint).

The Transhumanist 20:46, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

We could sure use your help in bluelinking the links in these lists (each link appears in the one of the various country basic topic lists):

To bluelink them, create a redirect to wherever the information is covered. If there is no entity, redirect to where that is (or should be) covered.

If you have any questions, please contact me. The Transhumanist 20:58, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Persistent, disruptive editing by User:Vision_Thing

Hi II, please leave a message here. Wik idea 11:50, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Request for help

Hi. I'm contacting you because you are listed as a member of the lists of basic topics WikiProject.

An important and major collaboration we are feverishly working on is the development of a topic outline for each and every country of the world. The set has 247 pages in it!

This is a super important undertaking because it will help readers find what they are looking for concerning countries on Wikipedia.

We could really use your help in filling in blank items on these pages.

Please contact me on my talk page concerning your availability.

The Transhumanist 00:51, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

On randomness

Here is an very nice overview of Taleb's Black Swan. Yes you could call him an underground man/Pyrrhonian sceptic. [3] Hope all is well. LoveMonkey (talk) 17:14, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Here is as simple an answer as I could find to your question that you asked awhile ago...[4] LoveMonkey (talk) 18:13, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion policy

Please stop adding this. You need a discussion on the talk page before you can make such a change to the policy. (It's too bold). Thanks, Rjd0060 (talk) 22:08, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

The same goes for this edit. Take it to the talk page, although it is really unlikely this will gain consensus. Garion96 (talk) 22:11, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Simple Green

Thanks for doing the dirty work of bringing Simple Green to DRV. I was planning to teach myself how to substitute all the templates and do it myself, but I wanted to wait until I was done stewing about the deletion before doing so and maybe getting a second opinion about it to see if I was wrong to be peeved. But you've saved me from having to do all that. Thanks. Neil916 (Talk) 06:59, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi there. Thanks for recreating this page, as I agree, the product is certainly notable. I'm sorry about the general hassle at DRV because you're right, it's a tough area for non-admins to participate on an equal footing. In fact, it's when it became obvious that non-admins would not be eligible to view deleted articles that I decided to become one. Many admins are willing to provide you with a userfied copy of a deleted article - I certainly am. Take care, Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 17:42, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words. I admit I probably overreacted. I started 3 threads (not including the one on Akradecki's page) in response to that deletion. I was surprised that contested speedies had to taken to DRV, since they seemed more technically-based than proposed deletions. "Blatant advertising" seems a bit subjective, which speedy critera are not supposed to be according to the 3 criteria listed at the top of WT:CSD. Still, I suppose DRV works OK. In the long-run, articles which deserve to get written will get written and stay around. Also, I did put up a request for userfication and nobody userfied it. At least two of the deletions being discussed were just requests to userfy. It bothers me when admins are so inconsiderate that they won't even let the users have the information they wrote back. I had to deal with that when I posted a comment on a BioMed article this past summer. Five and a half months and they wouldn't review or publish the comment or even give it back to me, until I started threatening to raise a stink and emailed their new parent, Springer. Allegedly, open-access relies on "the community" to review articles, but apparently BioMedCentral doesn't like it when the community points out major errors.II | (t - c) 19:21, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

The Elements of Style

fyi, in regards to your userpage, Wikisource has s:The Elements of Style; it is a Featured text candidate, which isnt going to well because we lack the pagescans to verify its accuracy. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 09:44, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm not sure I understand. If it is scanned in Google Books, why do you lack the pagescans? II | (t - c) 07:03, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I can not see a "Full view" copy of the original book in Google Books; the only copy I can see is a modern reprint, which is likely based on the Gutenberg edition, so any errors in the Gutenberg transcription will carry though (sadly, Gutenberg etexts have many errors and, more often, erroneous formatting).

If you can see an original copy in Google Books (i.e. the 1918 edition), it might be that I am disadvantaged as an Australian, and I would love it if you could download the PDF, so that we can set up a proofreading project that everyone can participate in. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 09:05, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Oh, no, I see the same one as you. II | (t - c) 19:10, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

RS/N

I left a comment on the Aspartame controversy thread you started at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard. It is really not a big deal, especially since I already said I was leaving the article, but it is usually considered good form to notify users when you mention them by name. I seem to recall that you and I had a nice little collaboration at Alternative medicine not all that long ago, so I know you are interested in helping the project. Regards, - Eldereft (cont.) 03:18, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry. It was snide of me to reference you as someone who isn't justifying your actions without notifying you. I thought about notifying you, but I put it off. I mentioned you in part to draw a response. It's not a good excuse, but I'm stewing over what I see as a lack of intellectual honesty, and so I slipped in a little attack at you and Verbal. I can't really respect that you're not willing to offer an opinion on the issue. I suppose, if you feel especially conflicted, I can respect that you're making no comment rather than making an intellectually dishonest judgment. II | (t - c) 03:49, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

welfare normative

Hello--See my comment at Talk:Welfare_economics#positive_economics. I was pretty sure about this, but I decided to go looking for an unambiguous source. Unfortunately, I'm in mid-move, and since my current project is game theory, those are the only books that I kept accessible, so it took a bit of searching. I found a nice unambiguous source. I also found dribs and drabs of possibly contradictory stuff, but nothing really clear--I gather from one source that welfare economics was considered normative, and then when things got really nicely formalized people considered for a while that maybe it was positive and only the points of opinion and argument should be considered normative. But (while it wasn't clear from that source) it's pretty clear to me now that we're back to welfare economics being normative.

In the externalities example you brought up--the positive part would be: When the river isn't privately owned or regulated, it will be polluted. The normative part would be: and that will make at least some people unhappy. CRETOG8(t/c) 07:11, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah, well, sorry for the confusion. I've always personally thought more of economics is normative than economists are generally willing to admit, but it may just be that I'm not all that well-informed on what economists really think is normative. I just have an undergraduate economics degree, and my professors were always fairly into the idea that economics is distinguished by its positive focus, and they always seemed to include things like Pareto efficiency in there. What year are you in your graduate studies, if you don't mind me asking?

I'm not sure I follow your example, though. Happiness or unhappiness is a positive phenomenon, albeit one that is very difficult to measure. So if a change makes one person happier and nobody else less happy, that seems like a positive phenomenon, and a Pareto improvement. I'm sorta just going out on a limb and probably making all sorts of mistakes, and one of them might be talking about happiness -- what is it? In economics they generally talk about "better off" as having more stuff, or at least the capacity to have more stuff. Is the value judgment here that having more stuff is better? If one has more stuff, can't one automatically get rid of it? So is it really a value judgment to say that more stuff is better off? I'm probably oversimplifying -- the more stuff needs to come from somewhere, and so environmentalists might object to having more stuff -- or even to someone else having more stuff. II | (t - c) 08:09, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I've always thought I'm well in the mainstream in my classification of normative vs. positive. Honestly, though, it's one of those things which usually gets discussed at only the high end (philosophy of economics) and low end (sophomore-level econ), so it might be that there's more takes on it that I just don't hear discussed much.

Utility (which is what I meant when I used "unhappy", although some folks who study happiness might disagree with the equivalence) is largely treated as a non-positive in econ. There's lots of positive analysis which comes from making assumptions about people and their utility, but when you go back to the utility part, it's usually considered normative. My feeling is that comes from a few places--(1) since happiness can't be measured (according to standard economic approaches), any assumptions about it are kinda assumptive; (2) since there's such a strong tendency to make the normative judgment "more utility better", that pushes back to saying utility itself is normative; and (3) different notions of utility allow for different interpretations (although this is mostly irrelevant to a limited concept like Pareto optimality).

Whether more stuff is better brings in a lot of different assumptions--it generally works out that way (as you say, partly because it's usually assumed you can throw it away if you feel like it's too much). And a lot of recent work on other-regarding preferences makes things like distribution relevant in a different way. For instance, if everyone was complete selfish, I'd be better off if someone took away Tiny Tim's crutches, broke one, and gave me the other one. But given that I'm not impoverished or lame, my utility is higher from Tiny Tim keeping his crutches.

Anyway, babbling. I'm in my n^th year of studies--I've been at it too long, and I'm out this year with or without the paper. (and thanks!)CRETOG8(t/c) 16:07, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

an article needing tidier refs

I was going through the alt med articles and came across Methylsulfonylmethane. I made some of its many citations inline, but didn't know what else to do with it lol I just thought it needed inline cites, but I thought you might be able to format the refs some more as you seem to know what you're doing. I saw it and thought of you:) Sticky Parkin 23:58, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Upcoming podcast

Thanks for your interest in our upcoming podcast about controversial articles. If I understand your comment correctly, you're on the west coast of the US? That means our proposed time (6pm EST) is 3pm in your area. Does this time work for you, now that we've cleared away the other less palatable options? Hope to speak with you soon! Scartol • Tok 18:54, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

~~Nope. As I said, I also work full-time, and so I'm busy 9:30 - 5:30.~~ If you're talking about Sunday, that's fine. II | (t - c) 19:03, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Just a reminder that the Wikivoices podcast on controversial articles hosted by Scartol and Awadewit is happening on Sunday at 6 pm EST. Please add ideas to our list of discussion topics here and come prepared to give a short summary of your work on controversial articles at the beginning of the podcast. Awadewit (talk) 22:54, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I have added some suggestions for "conversing about controversy". If you have any further suggestions, please do add them. Awadewit (talk) 02:39, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

II, thanks again for participating. We're happy to announce that it's live, and you're invited to listen to the finished product in all of its OGG format glory. Cheers! Scartol • Tok 02:14, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

List of environmental problems

For a while, you wanted to create a list of environmental problems. [5] I was reminded of it when I saw Talk:List of environmental disasters#A problematic page, which alludes to it. Therefore, you may be interested in joining the discussion. -- Wavelength (talk) 17:33, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the note! Sorry I didn't reply very quickly, but I do appreciate these things. Got a lot on my plate at the moment, though. Need to just focus on something. II | (t - c) 06:21, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Major depressive disorder / Trypt / 5-HTP

Interesting -- I made basically the same change some time ago, and OrangeMarlin was very opposed to it. I never really understood why -- I think maybe M.D.s are trained at some deep level to never allow themselves to say anything positive about any treatment that isn't on an official list. Anyway, let's see how it fares this time. Regards, looie496 (talk) 05:12, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Explanation

One mistake: I meant Tom Butler, not Jim Butler. I haven't had enough exposure to Jim Butler to comment on. I corrected myself on the workshop.

From current Wikipedia policy, it would be difficult to pinpoint anything that you or Tom Butler have done that would warrant any action, but my point in that discussion is that it is failures in current Wikipedia policy that have led us here. Levine2112 is a long-term disruptive editor that seems intent on promoting homeopathy and stirring up the maximum amount of drama surrounding any opposition he meets. In my mind, Butler's personal investment in nonsense such as EVP renders him unsuitable for editing. As for you, can you argue that your intent is not to present alternative medicine in the most positive light that you can justify? I do grant that having taken more time to look over your last several months worth of edits, I find them more suggestive of a problem than demonstrative of one.

My basic thesis is that it is not only desirable, but necessary to topic-ban or block editors based on the POV they bring to the articles they edit. NPOV and appropriate balancing cannot be achieved by people that possess fringe viewpoints. I don't claim that that view is in line with current policy.—Kww(talk) 03:40, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

If you looked at Jim Butler's contributions, I'm sure you would put him into your category as well. If we topic-banned editors based on "the POV they bring", then we wouldn't have these articles. Nobody has a neutral point of view. Some of the WP:MED editors are medical doctors who were instructed, and believe at a deep level, that all alternative medicine is quackery. Just the other day I had to fix an edit done by one of the more prolific MD editors which contradicted a Cochrane review of a CAM antidepressent, 5-HTP. One of the more involved editors in the CAM arena, Fyslee, has an article called sCAM at another wiki. When I started editing here, the alternative medicine section on efficacy was a hackjob sourced largely to Quackwatch and an old NEJM editorial. So I think you're looking at this through a bit of a lens. If the articles on CAM had been overwhelmingly positive when I came here, I may have been editing from the other side of the coin.

If you followed that link on efficacy, you'll see that the US Institute of Medicine's 2006 book took a relatively favorable view of CAM; the IOM noted that CAM's evidence-base appeared prima facie comparable to conventional med. Edzard Ernst is a strong supporter of certain CAM treatments. Similarly, the Alternative Medicine Review and many other CAM journals are indexed in PubMed. On the other hand, the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine is not indexed in PubMed. That's probably because it takes an extreme, and largely editorial, stance on CAM, similar to Quackwatch. One could make an argument, then, that it's not CAM that is fringe, but Quackwatch. For better or worse. I'm not a fan of much of AltMed such as colon cleansing and homeopathy. My opinion is that improper nutrition and diet is a factor in many illnesses and that some herbs and biogenic substances such as kava, devil's claw, 5-HTP and xylitol are effective. Many of these substances have surprisingly provocative evidence, but they have been ignored by mainstream medicine until now. I'm fortunate that I'm in a time when we're going through another paradigm shift -- the realization that AltMed isn't all quackery, and that it can in some cases provide similar relief without nearly as many side-effects. If I had started editing these articles 3 years ago, I would not have sources as authoritative to demonstrate the point of view that I thought should be included.

It's easy to argue that since the topic which one wants to criticize is "fringe", it should not be neutral, even though that clearly contradicts WP:FRINGE. It's also easy to play on the conventional assumptions of people on Wikipedia, most of whom are not well-versed on the most recent developments in areas, and convince them that something is fringe. That's what's happened with AltMed, and also with water fluoridation. The US is, and always has been, the biggest supporter of fluoridation. Europe largely phased it out in the 80s and 90s. Only 5.7% of the world fluoridates water. Yet both the US and Europe have comparable rates of tooth decay. 4/14 scientists on the NAS panel studying fluoride's toxicity stated that they opposed it afterwards, and the majority indicated their opposition by classifying dental fluorosis as toxic. The researchers who did the most comprehensive systematic review of fluoridation criticized it as well, and noted in the BMJ that the universally low rate of caries cannot be explained by fluoridation of water or salt.[6] To characterize those who oppose fluoridation as ignorant, fringe, or whatever else, as SA repeatedly does, contradicts good sources going back to fifty years.

I'm not well-versed enough in cold fusion to say whether similar issues arise there, but it wouldn't surprise me. It's quite possible that more research is going on in Japan, where a researcher at Osaka University recently announced that he has a consistently working CF reactor. Since hardly any of us speak Japanese or look at its journals, calling it fringe may not reflect its status globally. It seems hard to believe that a professor at Osaka University could announce this and not face critical examination from the country's physicists. Then again, if such research existed, one would think that Pcarbonn would be all over it.

I tentatively agree that disruptive, dramatic editors could be topic-banned. SA is undoubtedly one of the worst offenders, yet you call for only a 90 day ban on him instead of the lifetime ban for the rest of us. And why include Hans Adler? He's an oustanding contributor to an outstandingly important area, mathematics. Is there something in particular, besides editing in homeopathy occasionally, which makes you want him banned for life? II | (t - c) 06:53, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Nootropic

Have seen that you have spent the time working on the Nootropic page. Have added and arranged a few thinks but looks like their is a lot more that needs to be done. There is actually a fair bit of medical literature on this topic. My interest was increased by the recent nature article recommending wide spread use of stimulants. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081208/hl_nm/us_brain_drugs_3 Doc James (talk) 17:24, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I gave up after I found that many of the papers were not available through my library. It's something I'm interested in looking at again though. II | (t - c) 17:38, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I have access to 29000 e journals threw my university. I can try to help out if you need anything in particular. Should probably stick with reviews for starters. Seem like a lot has been done but most of it is of poor quality. I know some of the info for some of the drugs can be found on their individual pages. Wondering if we should move what is applicable over to this page?

See if you can maybe get an admin to move it for use. I agree that cognitive enhancers is a better turn. Nootropics is too obscure. I do not think may would be interested under that name.--Doc James (talk) 19:24, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Agree with all your comments. :) II | (t - c) 21:07, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Cold fusion

I see that you have taken an interest in cold fusion in the past. This is an part of a newly realized book call 13 things that do not make sense.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524911.600-13-things-that-do-not-make-sense.html?page=5

http://www.amazon.com/Things-That-Dont-Make-Sense/dp/0385520689

It is well done. Not sure how accurate it is but sounds plausible and is a good read.

--Doc James (talk) 19:41, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

It does look like a fun read. I try to read more basic science, since I'm not a scientist and I get enough speculative stuff on Wikipedia. I had a long response to you here, but basically it summarizes to: I don't have a strong opinion on cold fusion, but I don't like dismissing published PhD physicists with dated research, blog entries, and the popular press. Currently we've got two editors pushing that position, ScienceApologist and JzG, who may well get another editor, Pcarbonn, topic-banned from the cold fusion article for adding published papers and related information on cold fusion. It's an interesting turn of events. Have you seen the ArbCom page? II | (t - c) 21:07, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Might I offer my review of "13 things that don't make sense". I read a few chapters of the book in a book store, notably not the cold fusion section, but I read 4 or 5 of the other 13 things. What struck me is how the book quoted material out of context. There were a number of examples but the section on "sex" sticks out, the author abuses Dawkins in my mind. The goals of the book is to high light ambiguous and uncertain. The text stretches truth and makes selective citation of the literature to strengthen its thesis. The act of citing selectively and stretching the truth is also an issue with CF. The context is important I added a reference sent to "Nature" by a large fraction of the Caltech faculty debunking CF in 1989. This is a very significant paper and has yet to be incorporated into the paper while many of the "lesser" proponents articles have been. Properly weighting these articles is important. I've gone on tirades about this before but the proponents have more endurance than all except the likes of ScienceApologist. If you do read "13 things" consider it no less speculative than the worst of Wikipeida science, albeit entertaining.--OMCV (talk) 06:23, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't be surprised if "13 things" cites selectively from the literature. But at least I am fairly convinced that we have no free will, and I'm pretty sure the weight of the non-philosophy literature supports me in that. As far as a 1989 letter to the editor, I'm not too impressed by something that's 20 years old. I'm no expert, but a 1989 letter to the editor is a questionable refutation at best. The 2004 DOE report was pretty critical, but I don't really think it justifies excluding the details of CF which have been published in decent journals like the European Physical Review.

Since you mentioned the Caltech faculty, you might find this article by David Goodstein interesting. Near the end, he says "[w]hat all these experiments really need is critical examination by accomplished rivals intent on proving them wrong. That is part of the normal functioning of science. Unfortunately, in this area, science is not functioning normally. There is nobody out there listening."

This type of divide between groups of thought is probably more common in the social sciences and humanities. I just made an edit to paradigm shift on the Keynesian revolution, where people who made similar points as Keynes were ostracized from the community of economists. But it can happen with natural sciences as well.

I'm not saying that the mainstream not doing their homework and debunking stuff correctly makes cold fusion right, or that the article should take that view. But I generally don't see the harm in describing its research in its own page, especially when the research is published in peer-reviewed journals.. II | (t - c) 08:40, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

The "Nature" paper I mentioned isn't a letter to the editor its an authentic research article meant to to counter P&F article in Journal Electroanalytical Chemistry and a couple of other papers in other journals. In a large part this was the end of cold fusion for the mainstream for better or worse. I agree with you about its best to present all the material we can and I hope you've taken my point that the proponents of the field have a hard time doing this fairly. I certainly don't know as much about the current state of affairs as the proponents. But I've checked on some of their evidence there was one ppt a couple months back that listed pro CF researchers, a few companies and a few minor academics including the likes of John Bockris, a well known fraud (or moron) from the days of P&F. This hurt their position in my mind.

Paradigm shifts is an interesting concept. I think the concept took on a life of it own after Kuhn published his book. I think your analysis of social and naturals sciences is reasonable. My personal opinion is that the shifts only happen where the evidence is still mostly ambiguous. We aren't going to have a revolution regarding the nature of the atom or the transcription of proteins but I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't radical changes in thought about dark matter or the Hayden period.

I like the free will conversation you tossed out. Another issue I had with "13 things" is science can't deal with everything its limited to things that are quantifiable and falsifiable. Neither free will or a deity are assertions which are quantifiable and falsifiable thus they sit outside the scope of science. Thanks for writing back, I've got to go.--OMCV (talk) 13:59, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Hey, I'm flattered that you replied, so more thanks to you. I'm gonna try to avoid that CF page, and I think you're right about those two papers that he did bring up (but maybe not on all recent papers). In all the sciences, everyone's dealing with the same data, and the shift happens in the interpretation of the data. So, what's your interpretation of the purported 'excess heat' data? Can it be attributed to calorimetry?

The subjects he talks about are difficult subjects to research. I had read all the articles about free will before reading "13 things". They tried to look at things with neuroimaging. With neuroimaging this question does become quantifiable and falsifiable. WRT the purpose / necessity of sex. This is a intensely debated subject with no good conclusions. Same with the discussion of aging and death. CF however is however not my feild. His analysis of the others however is good so I have given him the benefit of the doubt.Doc James (talk) 15:39, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm kinda into the basic psychology/sociology stuff, and just the basic cause -> effect of reality. Given that the interaction between genes and environment produces all human behavior, I feel like 'free will' is falsified every second of every day. I read a few interesting papers lately:

Vohs KD, Baumeister RF, Schmeichel BJ, Twenge JM, Nelson NM, Tice DM (2008). "Making choices impairs subsequent self-control: a limited-resource account of decision making, self-regulation, and active initiative" (PDF). J Pers Soc Psychol. 94 (5): 883–98. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.94.5.883. PMID 18444745. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) (added to self-control)
Tice, D.M.; Baumeister, R.F.; Shmueli, D.; Muraven, M. (2007), "Restoring the self: Positive affect helps improve self-regulation following ego depletion" (PDF), Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43 (3): 379–384, doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2006.05.007 (added to ego depletion)
I added a couple references on how much stereotypes can effect individuals yesterday. See effects of stereotyping. Pretty striking. Makes one wonder what the effect of the constant 'POV pusher' name-calling throughout the Wikipedia might be.II | (t - c) 02:49, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Its true the subjects that "13 things" deal with are difficult to research each for different reasons. Most of science is reductionist, it works best when it can isolate all variables accept one and then identify that A has such a high correlation with X it is safe to assume that A causes X. When causes can not be isolated, cause A, B, C, D... this reductionist model breaks down. In my opinion such is the case with life, sex, and death. For many of the books subjects the available research data is thin due to physical constraints (dark matter...). In some sections he stretches the statistics to make the subject more interesting (homeopathy and placebo). Finally the "free will" argument I think is mostly semantics. I generally allow proponents to define their terms. I would assume most people who support "free will" would claim it is more than neurons, making tomography mostly meaningless to them. To them "free will" is something that can't measured and I doubt they even consider methods to test the existence of free will. For this reason I consider "free will" outside the scope of science, thus science must decline to comment on the subject. As a scientists I don't like science overstepping its bounds. I think limiting its role strengthens it as a tool. I would hate to see science become a religion. Personally I'm right there with you guys believing in a deterministic world in which "free will" does not exist, but I don't consider it a scientific belief. I know that Brooks is smarter than falling for this straw man and would never ask "does free will exist?". Instead I think he framed it something like "why do we believe in free will?" which is a question science can probably ponder because people are more open to how "belief" is defined. I didn't mean offense on the cold fusion page or here. I enjoy the philosophy of science and its application. My concerns with the cold fusion page is that I don't trust Pcarbonn or Jed for an instant. I think my concerns are coming up in the talk page at this point and its good that we are debating the finer point of one of the thousand papers from a CF proponent. Have a good one guys.--OMCV (talk) 11:53, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes the homeopathy section was the worst in the book, but physicians use placebos all the time. And there is very good evidence that they work in certain conditions. Large numbers of physicians use them and in my opinion this is the entire basis of homeopathy, alternative medicine, and much of psychiatry.--Doc James (talk) 16:57, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

AC election talk page

I just wanted to make sure that you were aware that I responded to your question about the NPOV FAQ at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2008/Candidate statements/Vassyana/Questions for the candidate#Devolution. If I can further clarify, or if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to let me know. Be well! Vassyana (talk) 11:40, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

It's a good answer. One concern of mine is that "consensus" by the community is somewhat misleading. Most of the community never comments on issues because they're just randomly editing articles. You have a self-selected little sample, and you extrapolate that to "the community". Even if these discussions drew a broader base, however, we can't necessarily expect better resolutions. The majority of people in the US would probably not want what you want on Wikipedia, and they would probably be inclined to be even less careful in their examination. It's similar to the difference between our current legal system, which has checks and balances and a strict bar of evidence, and Greek's legal system, which executed Socrates on the basis of a lot of rhetoric. II | (t - c) 20:57, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Talk:Aspartame controversy

Thanks for joining the discussion in Talk:Aspartame controversy. However, I hope you aren't offended by my reminding you to please comment on the contributions and not the contributors. Thanks! --Ronz (talk) 01:46, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not offended by the reminder. I was offended that you basically appeared to assume I was lying to you, but I'm sorry for snapping you. Please consider doing a little more digging when someone points something out. I'm also a bit puzzled as to how you can argue that the controversy is manufactured when the controversy is quite clear from all of the sources. II | (t - c) 02:03, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry if you assumed something like that. I'm glad it's clear. You saw why I thought what I did.

My concern is that editors are doing research to support a controversy, rather than relying upon sources that document the controversy. I'll try to make that clearer on the talk page. --Ronz (talk) 03:37, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Guido

Hi II,

Regards your comment here, I agree - the process was terrible even if the outcome was appropriate (in my opinion). The whole reason I wanted to wait was to format the evidence into something useful; the various MFDs and Guido's own ANI posting outpaced my ability to sort the evidence. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 03:10, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

If the process was terrible, is the outcome valid, even if appropriate? I don't think anything would change, but ideally bans would be decided by an uninvolved group assessing the evidence, rather than those who would be happy to get rid of someone who disagrees with them.

Sorry for sort of attacking you in my comment, by the way, in that statement. I've generally respected the way you edit and your relatively calm demeanor, but I don't buy the whole "my journal is a name-journal, so yours can't be included". And the way people use secondary vrs primary in the context of medicine is not even logically correct, since many of the statements made in "primary sources" are actually secondary -- they are citations to work done in other articles, just like in reviews. Being the author of review does not make one more credible. What matters is what data is being used to support a statement, if any. A "primary" article which cites its statement or provides data is more reliable than a speculative review. However, nobody but Paul gene agrees with me. Yes, reviews are generally better sources, but it's annoying when people treat it like war (card game). My NEJM or BMJ source trumps your BMC source and the NAS source trumps both of them sorta stuff. II | (t - c) 06:02, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

That assumes that the involved parties are too involved to ever decide purely on the merits of the editor and their contributions. I would disagree with that - I put up with a lot from Guido, I read every damned thing he wrote (even when it was the same damned thing again and again - apologies, I'm still irritated by his pushing and not by your questions), and I think I'm experienced enough of an editor to know whether there was merit to it. I don't want to get rid of him because he disagrees with me - I'm fine with (sourced) disagreement and would prefer it if a consensus can be reached on the weight it should be given and how controversial it is (and accordingly the detail - "...though this is controversial" versus "...though one study found X did not apply to Y population when they were hungry"). These are difficult questions which should be discussed calmly, not edit warred over, gamed and bludgeoned until good editors who are willing to compromise leave in disgust because of one POV-pusher, and not even a civil one, is too damned stubborn to even say "look, I disagree and think it's totally wrong, but it's sourced so it has to stay". I want to stop him from continuing his one-man campaign that he is right about everything and everyone else is wrong because I think it would lead to a skewed, POV encyclopedia that presents only one side of a debate. I'm still waiting to see what he does on Citizendium or wikisage. As for the process, if the result is valid, at some point we have to use common sense. We all have limited time, and every bit of drama takes away from actually expanding the encyclopedia. There were enough experienced editors with enough sustained interactions (and enough attempts to explain the problems with his edits) that I'm confident it's not just me. In particular, User:Crohnie did her best to redeem Guido with some very sincere and heartfelt explanations, and looked very carefully at his contributions. If she's on my side, I'm pretty confident that I'm not mad with power or flatly wrong. Things are more likely to get treated like war if one side ratchets up the hostility; Guido didn't use a ratchet, he used a scissor lift. He never grokked that this made it less likely to get what he wanted.

Of course, you're welcome to discuss the inclusion of material in the CFS page; if you do it fruitfully instead of using Guido's bludgeoning approach, I'm pretty sure you'd get a fair hearing. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 13:11, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

When I say that an outcome is valid, I mean that the process was followed. The conclusion of a syllogism can be valid but not true, or invalid but true. Guido's case fits the latter: as you said, the process was terrible. The best way to do these bans of long-term editors is not to appeal to some vague 'community' comment, but to take a random sample of long-term editors and have them judge evidence presented by those seeking the ban, allowing for a reply by the person being banned. That's how we do juries in the United States, and it works pretty well. The Arbitration committee most closely fits this design.

The CFS page has too much drama to be worth my time right now -- I'd rather not do a bunch of work only to have it destroyed with one revert by an 'apologist of science'. It seems as if the sides are evenly split in terms of numbers, but your side is much more aggressive in editing, and in asserting their opinions as fact. For example, sciencewatcher dismissed both a 2005 and a 2007 Journal of Clinical Pathology review from the BMJ Group as "unreliable" because he didn't agree with their conclusions. It's not exactly our job to critique reviews. Although we can do some of that, WP is based on reliability rather truth, and my impression of the discussion thus far suggests that the side which Guido was on is not really getting a fair trial. The general argument is that everything that's not mentioned in the very mainstream general journals, such as Lancet should be shut out. Yet the researchers involved in the JCFS have credentials and experience on the topic as well, and I don't think that the whole 'the JCFS is not indexed in PubMed' is enough to shut a journal devoted to CFS out of the CFS article. II | (t - c) 08:08, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

SA at RFAR

You should probably go back and sign your comment about the SA RFAR request.

You said that SA's roughly 50% record at AFD is "not great". That depends on the types of nominations brought. For example, an editor who was devoted to locating borderline cases and getting them community reviewed would probably be doing an excellent job if the results were 50% - it would indicate that the editor is accurately nominating their target cases. Or in my case, where a significant fraction of my AFD nominations are technical nominations following either a DRV or a PROD that didn't meet required conditions, the percentage means absolutely nothing about my record of AFD nominations.

I do think there is something interesting to be gleaned from SA's nomination history; a much higher fraction of his first 85 AFD nominations resulted in delete than from his more recent 80. The reason(s) for the change could only be determined by a review of all/almost all of the cases. A better division might be roughly the first 50, the middle 56, the last 59. But the percentage itself is pretty much meaningless here. GRBerry 04:52, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that is interesting. It reflects either SA spinning out of control, a growing inclusion bias, or pure randomness. :) Probably a mixture of all. I agree that it's unfair to target his AFDs based on that percentage. Don't really understand why I need to sign when there's a header above with my name on it, but I did. II | (t - c) 06:02, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry

If you were treated shabbily by Jagra when you tried to edit the article last summer. There is really no excuse for that. Ward20 (talk) 08:25, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science

An Arbitration case in which you commented has been opened, and is located here. Please add any evidence you may wish the Arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science/Evidence. Please submit your evidence within one week, if possible. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, Daniel (talk) 01:00, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Systemic risk

Hello--good job with systemic risk in externality, and that article has been added to my enormous queue of stuff I want to read. CRETOG8(t/c) 16:54, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

The externality article has been on my enormous list of things to improve. :) The paper I added didn't look that great, but please do try to keep me on my toes, since you know more economics than I do. :p

You can quickly get what what I was reading from that article by doing CTRL-F "externality" (or maybe external). Also, I got the cite template stuff from the Verisimilus Google Scholar tool. It's a nice one. II | (t - c) 20:47, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

good job proposing deletion

wow, i was surprised to find the fluorine deficiency page... good job proposing deletion. i tagged it. -Shootbamboo (talk) 20:19, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Please don't blindly revert

If you disagree with only one of the three edits I made at coral calcium, please just don't undue all of them. That's just counterproductive. 71.246.31.235 (talk) 02:16, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

GM Foods

The listed reference for Pusztai's work was not an original paper, but rather a response to an editor. I could not find his paper, since I had spelled his name wrong in my Pubmed searches (you made the same spelling error I did in your comment field of your edit). After you said his work was published I realized my error and found his paper (Effect of diets containing genetically modified potatoes expressing Galanthus nivalis lectin on rat small intestine. Ewen SW, Pusztai A. Lancet. 1999 Oct 16;354(9187):1353-4.) but the paragraph on the wikipedia page greatly exagerated his claims. For example there is no mention in the paper about immune system damage. I am fine with just removing the paragraph as you have done, but am also bummed that my first wikipedia edits were so quickly scrapped after having a bad reference and the statement "To date [the Pusztai study] remains one of the best designed and carefully controlled feeding studies of genetically engineered foods on mammals..." was left up for quite some time. Cheers, Kahultman (talk) 06:35, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah. I don't hold it against you, and thanks for trying to fix the section. I found it strange that you unwikilinked Pusztai's name. If you'd glanced at his article you would have found the paper. I didn't delete the paragraph, either, just moved it to the controversy section. II | (t - c) 17:42, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, if you're interested in the GM food controversy, in 2005 a group of researchers legitimately found negative effects which they attributed to the GM process [7][8]. II | (t - c) 17:47, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

RfA thankspam

Thank you for your participation in my recent RfA, which failed with 90/38/3; whether you supported, opposed or remained neutral.

Special thanks go out to Moreschi, Dougweller and Frank for nominating me, and I will try to take everyone's comments on board.

Thanks again for your participation. I am currently concentrating my efforts on the Wikification WikiProject. It's fun! Please visit the project and wikify a few articles to help clear the backlog. If you can recruit some more participants, then even better.

Apologies if you don't like RfA thankspam, this message was delivered by a bot which can't tell whether you want it or not. Feel free to remove it. Itsmejudith (talk), 22:45, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Denbot (talk) 22:45, 21 January 2009 (UTC)