This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Wikipedia:POV pushing is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
POV pushing refers to the act (or attempt or intent) to evade, circumvent, and undermine Wikipedia's neutrality policy (Wikipedia:NPOV) by creating and editing articles so that they disproportionately show one point of view. Ironically, this is often done with the excuse that it's required by Wikipedia:Undue Weight.
POV pushing should not be permitted on any Wikimedia server. The purpose of the Wikipedia project is to create an unbiased and comprehensive encyclopedia which makes the world's knowledge freely available to all people.
It is often necessary to examine a topic from more than one perspective. This is especially so with controversial topics — such as politics, morality, and religion. But many people come to Wikipedia unaware of NPOV or simply do not wish to abide by it, and hence they routinely and deliberately engage in POV pushing.
The reason they do this is probably that they believe that a neutral presentation of the views they advocate will look bad in comparison to opposing views. And the best way to win an argument is to prevent the other side from getting any time to make its argument. Failing that, the goal may just be to make the other side look bad (ad hominem) or to distort that side's views.
Contents |
Global Warming Zealots
The following was written by Lawrence Solomon, author of The Deniers:
My column, below, appeared April 12 in National Post (Toronto). It relates to the global warming issue. Wikipedia's Zealots Loading
As I'm writing this column for the Post, I am simultaneously editing a page on Wikipedia. I am confident that just about everything I write for my column will be available for you to read. I am equally confident that you will be able to read just about nothing that I write for the page on Wikipedia.
The Wikipedia page is entitled Naomi Oreskes, after a Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California San Diego, but the page offers only sketchy details about Oreskes. The page is mostly devoted to a notorious 2004 paper that she wrote, and that Science magazine published, called "Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change." This paper analyzed articles in peer-reviewed journals to see if any disagreed with the alarming positions on global warming taken by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position," concluded Oreskes.
Oreskes's paper -- which claimed to comprehensively examine all articles in a scientific database with the keywords "climate change" -- is nonsense. As Post readers know, for the last 18 months I have been profiling scientists who disagree with the UN panel's position. My Deniers series, which now runs some 40 columns, describes many of the world's most prominent scientists. They include authors or reviewers for the UN panel (before they quit in disgust). They even include the scientist known as the Father of Scientific Climatology, who is recognized as being the most cited climatologist in the world. Yet somehow Oreskes missed every last one of these exceptions to the presumed consensus, and somehow so did the peer reviewers that Science chose to evaluate Oreskes's work.
When Oreskes's paper came out, it was immediately challenged by science writers and scientists alike, one of them being Benny Peiser, a prominent UK scientist and publisher of CCNet, an electronic newsletter to which I and thousands of others subscribe. CCNet daily circulates articles disputing the conventional wisdom on climate change. No publication better informs readers about climate change controversies, and no person is better placed to judge informed dissent on climate change than Benny Peiser.
For this reason, when visiting Oreskes's page on Wikipedia several weeks ago, I was surprised to read not only that Oreskes had been vindicated but that Peiser had been discredited. More than that, the page portrayed Peiser himself as having grudgingly conceded Oreskes's correctness.
Upon checking with Peiser, I found he had done no such thing. The Wikipedia page had misunderstood or distorted his comments. I then exercised the right to edit Wikipedia that we all have, corrected the Wikipedia entry, and advised Peiser that I had done so.
Peiser wrote back saying he couldn't see my corrections on the Wikipedia page. Had I neglected to save them after editing them?, I wondered. I made the changes again, and this time confirmed that the changes had been saved. But then, in a twinkle, they were gone again! I made other changes. And others. They all disappeared shortly after they were made.
Deleted due to fingering the wrong person
Resumed
While I've been writing this column, the Naomi Oreskes page has changed 10 times. Since I first tried to correct the distortions on the page, it has changed 28 times. If you have read a climate change article on Wikipedia -- or on any controversial subject that may have its own Kim Dabelstein Petersen -- beware. Wikipedia is in the hands of the zealots.
See also
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 30 November 2008, at 09:46.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Wikipedia:POV pushing".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.