Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Licorne/Evidence

Is noting Bjerknes is not a mainstream historian ad hominem?

Only if it is meant to prove that he is "wrong". Which is not why those details were brought up.

WP:NPOV states that mainstream sources should be stated primarily, and that fringe sources should be labeled as such, if included at all (see WP:NPOV#Undue_weight). Bjerknes is self-published, non-academic, revisionist historian, and a Holocaust denier. These are statements of fact, not of opinion, and are easily documented (see our article about him).

I bring these up not as a way of saying that Bjerknes is wrong (I do think he is wrong, but such facts are not the illustration of such), but rather to indicate that he is not mainstream in the slightest. This is an assessment Bjerknes himself would agree with — his whole page is about how the mainstream history of science is full of frauds and dupes (see, i.e., [1]).

Promoting a fringe source as a mainstream source is a form of POV-pushing, and it is quite clear that Bjerknes is not a mainstream source, which is why I bring it up. Noting whether a source is respected or not is not ad hominem at all. True ad hominem would be to say that "because a source is not respected, it is not true." I'm not saying that's the case -- if there is an implicit ad hominem, it might be in Wikipedia's own policy, but I don't think that's the case. Wikipedia does not claim to be a representative of ontological truth, but rather a reflection of consensus on truth. --Fastfission 13:53, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I did not focus on (nor even mention!) that point. Perhaps you forgot to give as reference a certain edit by Licorne, that you have in mind but which is lacking in your argument on the Evidence page. If so, it will be helpful if you find it back and insert it. Meanwhile I'll try to find back some of the many times that I stumbled on (and changed) Licorne's phrases in which he presented mere (minority) opinions as matter-of-fact. BTW the "undue weight" section in NPOV is about opinions, and not about undisputed facts. Harald88 14:55, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

The "undisputed facts" that Licorne attributes are not undisputed at all (and in any case, I do not know where the limits between "fact", "interpretation", and "opinion" lie in something like this; most of this is in the realm of interpretation, in any event), and a good case in point is that he, in that very quote, says that Kip Thorne agrees with Bjerknes. As I outline later on the page, Licorne has been misrepresenting the Thorne case all along, and in fact Thorne concludes exactly opposite of the Bjerknes/Licorne opinion.

I did not see you make that point there. Are you sure you did that then on that page? Indeed such are the real issues, as I elaborated on when it became clear that you misunderstood my argument about your argument. Harald88 21:20, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

In any event, I'm not sure why you would classify my efforts to point out when Licorne promotes self-described fringe sources as authoritative as ad hominem simply because I indicated that they were, in fact, fringe.

Perhaps you have not read Bjerkness' book? His book as Licorne referred to on a Talk page (you did not show that he introduced it as authoritive source in any article space!) is largeley a resource of original sources, which are definitely not "fringe" but mainstream - a bit like a mini Wikipedia. Harald88 21:20, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Here's a contrast: I show that the sources are not mainstream, and according to our policies, if their POV is to be included it needs to be indicated that it diverges from the standard accounts. Licorne, by contrast, seeks to push any source that agrees with him as being the substantive content of the page (rather than being a specific POV), and deals with sources he doesn't like by implying that the authors had personal reasons (their wife would kill them, they can't face the truth, etc.) for not writing "the truth", as he sees it. The latter tactic is ad hominem, defined. The former is a form of demarcation, and of course all demarcation can be problematic but it is perfectly within Wikipedia's policies to do such. --Fastfission 16:34, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I fully agree with you about Licorne; however, I did not see you back up that claim. Harald88 21:20, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, well I'll look up one of the diffs where he claims that sources of this sort justify major changes to the article, rather than should be included as a minority viewpoint (at best), and his defense of these sorts of sources. I only picked Bjerknes because his fringe status should be fairly obvious to people with no knowledge of this literature -- self-publishing, publishing in magazines like Infinite Energy, and long, ranting essays about "racist Zionists" and their role in perpetuating both the Holocaust and the history of it, on websites like "The Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust", singles his status out pretty clearly for most sane people. His marginality is easy to assess, unlike, say, Winterberg, or even the more respectable works, but still considered minority views, of people like Whittaker. It's the easy target, that's all. --Fastfission 01:15, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I am certainly ignorant of full intent of "undue weight" in wikipedia, but from a broader point of view, if you want to give a backing reference to an undisputed but perhaps little known fact, you definitely want to favor a well respected source. Doing anything else would weaken the article's credibility: someone reading it sees a purported fact that is surprising to them, checks the reference and finds it obviously fringe. --Pallen 18:26, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I fully agree. For example, the strong point of Bjerkness' book is that many of his claims are backed up by well respected primary sources. Any argument on a Talk page about such claims by such secondary sources would thus be properly transferred into the article space by directly quoting the original sources, without any need to rely on secondary sources. Attacking the messenger is in such cases very inappropriate, similar to attacking other Wikipedia editors. Harald88 21:20, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Except that, because of his tendency to cherry pick isolated fragments from their context, no quote from him can reliably be used without independently checking the original source - for the context (I am well aware no one has accused him of misquoting). This is a key distinction from a more reputable secondary source.--Pallen 01:26, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I lost all interest in looking at Bjerknes' book after reading Stachel's review of it. Stachel points out exactly that point. I've heard the theory that Licorne actually has Bjerknes' book and not the primary/secondary sources at all - but doesn't want to admit it. So when someone challenges him for the context of a quote, he feels very challenged - because he's unable to produce it. --Alvestrand 07:05, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I happen to have read Stachel's review after reading Bjerknes' book as well as many of the original sources (I foremostly bought it for the reference list). That may have helped me to see that "review" for the junk it is, but I still dare think that I might have spotted it if I had not read Bjerknes's book, just from a critical read. Stachel and Bjerkness are alike - both strongly biased by default, making their opinions unreliable and their phrasings opinated to the extreme. Stachel's review about Bjerknes's book is not worth 10cts - just as Bjerkness'review of Stachel's work wouldn't be worth the paper on which it'd be written either. Did you see the childish (rightly withdrawn) comment by Stachel on Winterberg? It's shameful. Harald88 18:45, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

If you meant the CRS reply to Winterberg as seen on the wayback machine, yes I read it very carefully. I don't see why you call it childish. I wish it hadn 't been withdrawn. I thought it quite convincing overall. Were the quotes from Winterberg wrong (I could not, at the time, find a web copy of Winterberg's paper to follow as I read the CRS response)? If not, it was very important to highlight some of those remarkable quotes from Winterberg (conspiracy hypotheses with zero evidence presented). If you mean measuring pages, I thought that was actually crucial to the logic of some of the arguments. In any case, I am completely open to a non-adhominem criticism of this or any other source. I don't give a fig who invented GR or SR. I find them aesthetic theories, useful until contradicted by evidence (very unlikey in the case of SR; quite possible, at some point, in the case of GR). I care for balanced presentation of the theories, and presentation of history consistent with the current balance of expert opinion. If I were more interested in the history, I might also be interested in my own opinion of the truth (though irrelevant to wikipedia) - but I'm not really interested in this. --Pallen 20:31, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Right: what I find childish is their attack on Winterberg for (according to them) not having clarified that he had tried to get an earlier version of his arguments published, and not the same version: they compared it with the priority issue of Einstein vs. Hilbert. That's entirely irrelevant (their dispute has no priority value, right?!), and typical for 6 year olds. Thus I think it was wise of them to replace it with a shorter version. I have not checked if they omitted some relevant arguments in that shorter version (but that seems unlikely). And yes of course, the style doesn't matter for the relevant facts and arguments. Harald88 01:38, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I think this thread is no longer relevant to Licorne's RfA case, but may be relevant to the "disputes" page. I'll make my comment there. --Alvestrand 21:27, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

RE Schulz's post of Licorne's anti semitic screed: if you don't cull this vile Licorne I'm leaving Wikipedia until you do. I'm ashamed to be associated with anything this wretched.

wvbaileyWvbailey 16:38, 14 March 2006 (UTC)