h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Wikipedia, the repository of editable facts, has decided that it can choose what is fact and what is fiction. Or rather, it’s founder Jimmy Wales has.

Over on change.org (http://www.change.org/petitions/jimmy-wales-founder-of-wikipedia-create-and-enforce-new-policies-that-allow-for-true-scientific-discourse-about-holistic-approaches-to-healing) a group of people created a petition to try and get Wikipedia’s policies regarding holistic healing changed. Now, whether you agree that holistic healing works or not is besides the point. This issue here is Jimmy Wale’s response to this (http://www.change.org/petitions/jimmy-wales-founder-of-wikipedia-create-and-enforce-new-policies-that-allow-for-true-scientific-discourse-about-holistic-approaches-to-healing/responses/11054)

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No, you have to be kidding me. Every single person who signed this petition needs to go back to check their premises and think harder about what it means to be honest, factual, truthful.
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.
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In short, Jimmy seems to think that unless you can convince a bunch of already biased people, by reproducing things in laboratory conditions, then your work is not fact.

And that is very worrying indeed.

Pretty much every great scientist in history was laughed at by their peers, so relying on those peers is a dangerous step to stopping change from happening. Because not everything can be reproduced or explained by laboratory experiments.

Taking two entries from Wikipedia itself, firstly the one on the Placebo Effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo
This effect has been shown time and again, even under the aforementioned laboratory conditions, to actually work. Yet the majority of the introduction to the article dismisses its effectiveness, and later on in the section on clinical utility it starts off again with reference to work that also dismisses it. So even something that has been clinically proved and accepted, but can’t quite be explained, has an entry that is pretty biased.

At the far end of the scale for the second article, Alien Abduction, again we see that same dismissive tones. Even though it mentions a scientific study that backs up the potential, it is immediately followed by a reference to a Skeptic disputing it. The scientific study was done by a respectable professor at Harvard, the non-qualified or respected Skeptic wrote something for a small paper.


So how then are we to learn more, how are we to further humanity’s knowledge if we don’t at least keep an open mind? Wikipedia is seen as a reference site but if all it references are biased views then we shall see people grow up biased, and we shall see knowledge stagnate.

if it wasnt medicine and science if it was say politics and someone said all wiki articles should be right wing orientated then people would be up in arms, how dare you skew the views of people, but thats what some of the newspapers do...
if we're not willing to produce unbiased works we should at least unlike the alien abduction article have expert vs expert and that way at least its not expert verses nut whos views we like more so we will give more credence to

there is a meaning in my mind somewhere... I will leave it to someone else to unpick...

I think you put it quite succinctly

The problem with the expert vs expert thing though with something like holistic therapy, is the experts against don't actually know anything about it. A closed mind can never learn or be unbiased.

The wider question is "what is truth?"

We'd like it to mean something we can rely on with certainty, but constructing a repository of truthful facts is harder than it sounds.

There is no single test we can perform to determine truth, and so we create review structures which we believe are reliable: Academic peer review in the case of science, juries and tribunals in the case of law.

To submit every assertion of fact through these bodies is impractical, so we tend to rely on opinion of so-called experts or commentators or even the crowd. The point is that it's a sliding scale of reliability.

I sympathise with Wales. He wants his admirably comprehensive repository of knowledge to be truthful, but he will have to concede that it will be variously reliable.

And this is why wisdom-based repositories could supersede Wikipedia in their usefulness, if not in their comprehensiveness. And this is why h2g2 is a very important project.

Well said Icy

I have to admit I also find it amusing that Wikipedia, a site well known for its editable facts, is putting these restrictions and biases in.

There are also scientific bodies maintained partly or wholly by foundations funded by special interests. Their findings are sometimes publishable in respectable peer-reviewed journals, and often retracted after having been discovered to be flawed. But science is never the objective. The goal is the press release, the newspaper article, the 15-minutes of broadcast fame to cast doubt in the minds of the bewildered beholder.

I'm sure you're right.

I'm equally sure that many wouldn't like them to be described as 'scientific bodies'.

Maybe we're losing the meaning of the word 'science', and need a new one.

I'm equally sure that many wouldn't like them to be described as 'scientific bodies'.

Probably not. I certainly don't. But what exactly is the right term? "Prostitute" seems to have been taken.

Language doesn't work that way. You can't reclaim words once lost. You have to launch a new word for the idea you want to retain. 'Science' will from now indicate any activity performed in a white coat. We need a new one for the process of natural experimentation and discovery.

Why not revert to natural philosophy?

And my friend who had to do a haz-mat session in full kit might have been a little concerned if all he'd had was his white coat

I neither agree nor wish to discuss whether lab coat equals science (it doesn't), nor if Wales can define truth or knowledge (he can't), nor whether the Wikipedia editorial policy is correct (it's not), nor that language works the way Icy says (although you are a funny dude, Icy) nor that the scientific method can't be applied to holistic health (it can and should).

Let me ask the more obvious question: Who here wants to start working on the h2g2 placebo phenomena entry? The search function didn't turn up anything in the Guide.

Ideally I'd like one of our doctors (Z, Alex, etc) to attempt that entry. I don't think there's any question that they play an important part in mainstream medicine.

Oh how amusing. Yes of course absolutely no one else than they can possibly understand science well enough to write an entry. Oh, yes, let's please wait a few more decades until one of them can get around to writing it.

This is like the cheese that goes along with the h2g2 participation whine, isn't it?

Doctors have had years to try and explain the placebo effect, and haven't managed it. I say let someone else have a go

After all, we're a Guide, not a scientific research publication

Well, you did ask, HN. I believe many of our best entries have been written by those with real insight, and that's the kind of wisdom we're aiming to showcase in the Edited Guide.

Your sarcastic response although amusing could be seen as a desperate attempt to squeeze out any copy at all from a diminishing community.

But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

The placebo effect is fascinating. I read an article not too long ago that indicated that the placebo effect is actually getting much stronger. So much stronger that it's now making it very difficult to do drug studies.

I believe this is the story I read.
http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect?currentPage=all

Quite interesting.

I admit that my mind is a little too quick to draw connections where connections may not exist, but ... Along with the rise of interference by the Placebo Effect in pharmacological studies, it has become almost impossible to get a candid response to a question posed to passers-by on the street. People used to give opinions; now they deliver sound bites. It's a jaded age.

Yes Icy I did ask. Because Pastey started this thread, I discovered the sugar-pill sized hole in the Guide. I asked to find out if anyone discussing the topic had started an entry. I asked before I started mine.

I’m sorry if you think I’m not qualified to write my entry, or if you want someone else to write it, but I don’t give a For more information, please see my entry on insincere apologies, soon to be showcased in the Edited Guide.

Back to the topic at hand. I quite agree the placebo phenomena is fascinating. Some of the interesting things to come out of recent research include: the placebo response is a powerful aid to healing, you can engage your own placebo response, you can engage the placebo response of another person who knows he is getting a placebo, dogs have a placebo response.

You weren't this aggressive when you started out here. I remember happier conversations with you in the past.

Is that when everyone was suffering under the delusion that I was a man? And now that you all know that I am a woman, what had been believed to be perfectly natural masculine assertiveness is now seen as unladylike and bossy?