| Wikipedia bias |
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| Written by Dr Fred Hansen | |
| Friday, 18 July 2008 | |
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Lawrence Solomon, executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers, sums up the situation well: In theory, Wikipedia is a "people's encyclopedia" written and edited by the people who read it; so on controversial topics, one might expect to see a broad range of opinion. But on global warming, Wikipedia offers consensus, Gore-style -- a consensus forged by censorship, intimidation, and deceit. Solomon undertook several attempts to edit the Wikipedia page on global warming and to delete mistakes for instance about British scientist Bennie Peiser, only to find his entries eradicated time and again. Obviously in the people's encyclopaedia there are two classes of editors: one with genuine imprimatur and another that may be censored. Solomon discovered that network administrator William Connolley, a ruthless enforcer of the doomsday consensus, uses his authority to ensure Wikipedia readers see only what he wants them to see. Any reference, anywhere among Wikipedia's 2.5 million English-language pages, that casts doubt on the consequences of climate change will be bent to Connolley's bidding. There are other examples of course. Just look at the pages Roe v. Wade or Intelligent Design and make up your own mind.
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Comments (6)
Wikipedian Audience
written by Boro, July 18, 2008
What does one expect when the largest audience editing Wikipedia is the dope-head viewers of The Daily Show?
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written by John, July 18, 2008
I'm not sure conflating the pleas of scientific persecution by proponents of intelligent design with the genuine political, economic and scientific controversies involved in anthropogenic global warming is going to do anything to enhance the reputation of GW sceptics with other scientifcally interested sceptics who are still 'on the fence'.
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written by Al, July 18, 2008
Agree with John, I have no idea why you mentioned ID here. It's not really a left/right political issue and if, as far as I am aware, ID is just another word for 'creationism' - ie. the world is only a few thousand years old - then you are a serious fruitcake to give it more than a second's thought. But maybe I'm wrong as to what ID actually is.
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written by John, July 18, 2008
AI - to be fair young earth creationism and I.D. are not one and the same - the latter is a far more sophisticated and indeed plausible form of creationism and is compatible with a 13 billion year old universe.
It may be more 'sophisticated'...
written by JABITheW, July 18, 2008
...but intelligent design is not science. This is because it cannot be used to make a prediction, so it fails to meet a major requirement for the scientific method i.e. falsifiability.
To illustrate the problem consider bacteria in alcohol. Evolution via natural selection predicts that, given enough variety in the initial colony, the bacteria remaining after a week will have developed alcohol tolerance. Intelligent design could predict that. The problem is it could equally predict that the intelligent designer would intervene and turn the bacteria into giraffes. Or a nice bottle of champagne. There's no predictable consequences, so it cannot be tested, as any outcome could be construed to support the theory. On the other hand, if your alcoholic bacteria *have* changed into a magnum of champagne, you can fairly confidently throw evolution out of the window. If you subscribe to irreducible complexity, then the only real flaw in ID is that no irreducible complexity has been found. Of course an intelligent designer could have created the universe to appear any way it wanted, but then we're back to falsifiability as an issue. Intelligent design is not a theory, it is the absence of a theory. Waving your hands in despair at eve understanding anything that's not immediately obvious while neglecting the somewhat irreducible complexity of the designer itself. ID is an awful example of Wikipedia's bias, anyone educated in science or philosophy can see why that article is balanced. Far better examples of bias are the free and fair trade pages and any of the numerous pages on socialism. Write comment
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Recently, quite a few people who occasionally use Wikipedia have told me that they have noticed that this useful online encyclopaedia is left leaning in some of its entries. I always assumed this might just reflect the same bias in the media as a whole. But I was wrong. The bias does not emerge by default but is vigorously enforced, as 
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