I am, having two daughters who have obtained degrees in the humanities at the graduate level, though not PhD’s.
However, I was not talking about a PhD, but about any degree whatsoever. To my knowledge you have never actually shared whether you have obtained a degree of any sort, whether a BA or BSc or BEd or anything. If I am wrong about that, then please correct me.
So you agree that Wikipedia should not be dismissed solely on the basis of the fact that it uses multiple authors. Good, I’m glad that is clear now.
Later, Faizal wrote, as a side-remark in a different context:
Then Eddie explained that it was fairly common for students in humanities to spend 10 years in graduate school. To which Faizal now replies:
[quote=“Faizal_Ali, post:82, topic:15226”]
However, I was not talking about a PhD, but about any degree whatsoever.[/quote]
Since I mentioned graduate school and graduate seminars, I was not talking about Bachelor’s degrees. I was talking about MA and PhD programs. So not “any degree whatsoever”, but just graduate degrees. The ten years I mentioned were spent in graduate programs, most of them in the PhD program.
I don’t know whether I have made any explicit statement, but my other statements have made it very clear, in context, that I spent many years in graduate school and since then have taught at a number of secular universities and colleges, which makes it a near certainty that I finished a Ph.D. But if you need it stated directly, yes, I have a doctorate, and a master’s, and a bachelor’s degree.
But what is your point? Are you trying to cast doubt on my arguments by suggesting that I didn’t finish any degrees? Why do you bring up the subject? I mentioned my graduate program above only to make the point to another poster here, i.e., that in graduate school students are expected to address propositions, not to engage in conspiracy theorizing about the motives of those who wrote the propositions. And that’s a good practice.
The point is not how many authors contribute to a Wikipedia article. The point is that in most cases, all of them are academic quacks, untrained in the field they are writing about. That is not true of some of the highly technical science articles, which are quite obviously written by people with some training, but I specified that I was talking about articles on social/political issues. It very often happens that Wikipedia articles contain errors, exaggerations, or wildly biased presentations reflecting the political, cultural, or religious biases of the people writing or editing the articles. These have often been corrected by people who know more about the subject than the original quack who wrote them, but since the quack who wrote them (or any other quack who happens to be hanging around) can undo any change the trained author makes, it is pointless. Full-time professors, with a massive research and teaching and administrative load, and often families to take care of, only have a limited time to make corrections to ignorant Wikipedia articles, whereas young male hobbyists with lots of time on their hands, and few responsibilities, can stay up until 4 in the morning guarding their precious articles, reversing all changes, in the talk pages verbally abusing people who dare to correct them, etc. So the more educated people, with serious adult responsibilities outside of Wikipedia, just have to give up and leave the control of the articles in the hands of the quacks and hobbyists. That’s not the way to run a serious encyclopedia.
The way to run a serious encyclopedia is to hire one of the world’s top ten experts in a field to write the relevant article, have it vetted before publication by one or more of the other top ten experts in the world, and, if the article is later found to have errors in it by experts, to have it changed in the next edition, or, where the need for correction is urgent, to put out frequent supplements with Errata.
The idea of a “democratic encyclopedia” is a very bad idea – at least, for serious intellectual subjects. It’s an OK idea for general information or pop culture discussion, because lay contributors are often very good at putting in accurate information in those areas, but it’s a very bad idea for intellectual subjects, because the premise that all people who would like to mouth off about philosophy, climate change, religion, evolution, etc. have equal understanding of the issues is simply false, and an encyclopedia where someone with less knowledge can remove sentences written by people with more knowledge is a travesty.
Ummmm… You’ve been reading my posts here for how many years? And have not noticed the name of an academic department, one found in most North American universities (including your own), in the first half of the description PS assigned to me? And you’ve never noticed when, in talking about university matters, I’ve said “In my own field of…”?
I’d almost say you were pulling my leg, but your phrasing suggests you mean the question dead seriously.
Of course, in addition to the subject I got my degree in, I learned a great deal about related subjects, such as Philosophy and History, and have often taught other subjects, including Politics, Classics, Greek, and Great Books. But if you want to know the name of the department in which I earned my PhD, it remains at the top of this post, right in front of your eyes. You should read “The Purloined Letter” sometime.
As I made clear, I am not here defending Wikipedia. I agree it is a far from perfect resource. But it has its place, and when it came to providing some background info on this rather insignificant and hopelessly biased organization, one of whose “Important Members” you tried to inflate into someone whose views deserved serious attention, it was spot on. You might have saved yourself considerable embarrassment if you had looked up the NAS on Wikipedia before starting this thread.
Yes, if by “a while ago” you mean 2005. Whether that study’s results hold true 17 years later, I don’t know. In any case, it’s not relevant to my point. The summary statement of the study is:
“Jimmy Wales’ Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries, a Nature investigation finds.”
As I said to Faizal at least twice, I was talking about Wikipedia’s articles on social/political matters, which are often heavily biased. Wikipedia overall is not neutral in the culture wars (as any authentic encyclopedia should be), but has a definite “left” bias. (In conflict, of course, with its own demand that all articles should be written from a neutral point of view.)
The only people who should feel “embarrassed” here are those who made up their mind about the NAS before they read even a paragraph of NAS literature. But then, it’s nothing new for people around here to condemn books, articles, and organizational documents they have not read, but only heard about through negative reviews. “PS” around here more often seems to stand for “Prejudice expressed by (atheist) Scientists” than for “Peaceful Science.”
By the way, did you finally figure out what my PhD subject was?
I wonder what humanities subjects your daughters studied. Of course, you may be using “humanities” more loosely than I would, but it would be interesting to know.
Irony abounds. I rather suspect that one of Turner’s beefs with the indirect cost gravy train is how money may be siphoned off to support other departments that do not generate these funds. Like departments that teach religion or natural theology.
Do you have reason to suppose they don’t? Or are you just grasping any straws you can find?
Do you have reason (by which I mean data comparable to the study I cited, not your personal opinion) to believe the social/political comparison would be different?
And let me remind you of what you actually said:
Now you excepted “some of the highly technical science articles”, but that’s much narrower than the subjects covered by the Nature study. That study invalidates your rant, no matter how many quibbles you come up with.
Not too long ago the wikipedia article on non-coding DNA appeared to be written by a bunch of misinformed clowns, who were even trying to suppress Larry Moran’s attempt to correct it:
Thankfully he appears to have succeeded so at least we know now it’s written by someone who is an actual expert in the field and cites relevant and up to date articles from the primary literature.
I notice the article on de novo gene birth is actually rather excellent, and looking over the “talk” tab I see it’s written by people who are actively publishing in the field.
Whatever the cost of maintaining religion departments to the public purse, it’s a drop in the ocean compared to the billions in research money received by chemistry, biology, engineering, math etc. departments. I was in the fifth-ranked grad program in religion in North America. Guess how many post-docs received federal funding there during the period from 1974 through 1990? One. Count 'em, one. And only for one three-year period. Guess how many post-docs were getting federal funding in the less highly ranked chemistry, physics, biology, etc. departments at the same school, not just once in 25 years, but every year? I can tell you it was quite a bit more than one. And how many post-docs get money from the NIH? Or from various government granting agencies eager to hear the most apocalyptic conclusions regarding climate change from the recipients of the funding? Again, a lot more than one every 25 years, I suspect. If you, or Turner, are concerned about overspending of public funds, the place to look is on the science side of campus, not the Arts side. The Arts side is where the poor country cousins live, occasionally wandering across the lawn of the campus at dinnertime and looking in the dining room window of the Science departments at the feast.
I can tell you one person who thought that the article on Intelligent Design was biased: Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia! Here is what he wrote:
“As the originator of and the first person to elaborate Wikipedia’s neutrality policy, and as an agnostic who believes intelligent design to be completely wrong, I just have to say that this article is appallingly biased. It simply cannot be defended as neutral. If you want to understand why, read this. I’m not here to argue the point, as I completely despair of persuading Wikipedians of the error of their ways. I’m just officially registering my protest. –Larry Sanger (talk) 05:30, 8 December 2017 (UTC)”
“Appallingly biased.” That’s pretty clear, I think.
The issue I raise is that concerning indirect costs and how Turner may suspect they are redirected towards activities that offend his sensibilities. All of the things you list, @Eddie, (…post-docs were getting federal funding in the less highly ranked chemistry, physics, biology, etc. departments at the same school,) are quite apart from the uses of indirect costs.
I guess one question that comes to mind, @Eddie, is why you seem to look favorably on an article that pretty clearly objects to some mechanisms that help “The Arts side”? Turner implies that this is inappropriate subterfuge that does harm to the causes of science and missions of the Academy.
I think I’m lost. Can you be very specific? What particular mechanisms of research funding, according to Turner’s account, would help Arts departments, in addition to the science departments? Are you talking about federal or state grants to universities to cover normal faculty salaries (which salaries allow faculty the summers off from teaching to do research)? Or are you talking about grants for particular research projects, e.g., a federal grant to Professor X at Podunk U to study the effect of TV watching on youth violence? If I know what sort of funding mechanism you are talking about, I might be able to answer your question.
Yes, it’s clear. That’s an opinion regarding bias, which provides no details. It is not an example of bias. It’s also based on the page as it appeared five years and hundreds of edits ago, so may no longer apply.
I still haven’t seen a critic of Wikipedia provide an example of where it is biased.
My suspicion is that Turner believes (with good reason, as I also think this to be the case) that universities use some fraction of indirect costs to support activities (small research/travel grants, assistantships, and the like) of departments and units outside of those that generate the indirect costs (in other words, “The Arts side”). I also suspect that this grates on Turner because he is of the opinion that this props up left-leaning programs in “The Arts” that he does not like.
True, but as the opinion comes from the man who crafted Wikipedia’s neutral point of view (NPOV) policy, it is likely to be a well-founded opinion. If you want to see one of his documents on the general principle of NPOV, you can find it here:
In the particular place I cited, he does not get into details about that particular Wikipedia article. He seems to imply that he has already had numerous arguments with Wikipedia editors about the biases, and that he doesn’t want to go into them again, so he simply refers the reader to the general principles, in the article I just cited.
Our topic here is not the faults of Wikipedia, so I’m not going to try to demonstrate that the ID article is biased. It is, and flagrantly so, as are almost all the articles on Wikipedia dealing with either ID or creationism, but that is an argument for another time and place, not here.
Thanks for clarifying your meaning. I’m beginning to understand, but I’m not quite there yet. I need (a) a definition of indirect costs (as opposed to direct costs) and (b) examples of indirect costs, preferably some examples taken from the sciences and some from the arts. With this in hand, I think I can come back to your paragraph above and digest it fully.