Sure. For the same reasons as if some claim appears in the supermarket checkout counter tabloids it must be true.
The tabs are probably stocked by the checkout because typical readers wouldn’t have visited the magazine section, where one could buy Scientific American or National Geographic.
Okay, seriously, a friend writes to complain about the usual garbage at Wikipedia about design in nature. He cites the site’s support for consensus science as an apparent justification for the clown car.
The last two times I heard the term, “consensus science,” were 1) the executive director of a do-nothing organization of Christians in science (which takes a back seat on design in nature) and 2) a top science writer denouncing consensus science as the last refuge of authoritarian mediocrities.
Maybe he and I have run into some of the same people.
Meanwhile, I hope our friend finds something more useful to do with his time than try to reform Wikipedia.
Its editors, whether or not they are sane non-criminals of the age of majority, likely grew up with the idea that science is metaphysical naturalism. Which – being the ultimate truth – is true even in a universe where our brains are shaped for fitness, not for truth.
Not only don’t they know things that cause doubt; they can’t know such things. So they just delete or rewrite them. And call whatever they are doing science writing.
Trying to “correct” Wikipedia is about as useful as trying to “correct” the supermarket checkout counter magazines. People who need to believe Wikipedia are typically a homework-driven version of the people who need to believe in “Hollywood dream weddings” and “Stars’ sad last days.”
So the attempt prompts the question: Why? Not the question: How?
That’s why profs who say they allow their students to use Wikipedia because it’s handy and free are so frustrating.
Come ON! Most of the World Wide Web is free. And there are many more responsible sources out there than Wikipedia.
Slate Magazine has discovered why one shouldn’t use it as a source. For one thing, Wikipedia can turn fiction into fact. Which is, like, okay. Because, once enough canards are in circulation, entire fictional scenarios can be created that are difficult to confute because they appear to be “well-sourced” via constant repetition.
We used to call such stuff baseless rumours. Now it is called “facts” from Wikipedia. Whatever.
“Wikipedia is my library” should be the new definition of sloth. Most of its core articles fail its own standards
To the extent that Wikipedia celebrates anarchy, it will forever be in the process of “cleaning up,” and never getting on with the job, not the way a body with more organization and discipline would.
But as long as all people want to say is that they consulted The Source Everyone Else Uses, it can just wiki on regardless.
See also:
Wikipedia shocked!, just shocked!! … that some editors act for pay to promote stuff. Or detract it, maybe?
Wikipedia hacked by elite sources now
Mathematician complains Wikipedia is promoting “pseudo-science” of multiverse (Surprise us again, will you?)
Wikipedia’s Darwinized Lincoln was historically impossible, it turns out
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