“Yes, we are biased!”

[CMAwatch]

Essay by Guy Macon (Ianmacm sock? Not sure.):

“Yes, we are biased!”

Some points are fairly agreeable (e.g. science > pseudoscience).

[Archer]

Some points are fairly agreeable (e.g. science > pseudoscience).

Good for the author, that this fact imposes itself upon their intelligence. Hardly seems like something to brag and posture about though. The other shoe drops shortly thereafter:

We are biased towards medicine, and biased against homeopathy.[8]
We are biased towards actual conspiracies and biased against conspiracy theories.[11]
We are biased towards vaccination, and biased against vaccine hesitancy.[12]

Wikipedia seems to give big pharma (among others) a rather easy ride.

[Archer]

We are biased towards the existence of Jesus and biased against the existence of Santa Claus.

[ericbarbour]

a) necrotized thread

and

b) far as I can tell, Guy Macon's stupid essay had very little impact. People are still pushing whatever they can get support for.

Said it before and will say it again: if they were serious about discouraging pseudoscience and crackpottery, they would make an official policy stating that "Wikipedia is a product of science and knowledge and is therefore opposed to false sciences and superstitions". But that will NEVER happen. They have the policies adjusted just the half-assed way they like 'em. So they can play political abuse games as they wish.

[Archer]

a) necrotized thread

and

b) far as I can tell, Guy Macon's stupid essay had very little impact. People are still pushing whatever they can get support for.

Said it before and will say it again: if they were serious about discouraging pseudoscience and crackpottery, they would make an official policy stating that "Wikipedia is a product of science and knowledge and is therefore opposed to false sciences and superstitions". But that will NEVER happen. They have the policies adjusted just the half-assed way they like 'em. So they can play political abuse games as they wish.

In any case it's a fine example of the motte-and-bailey fallacy that contemporary political media is based upon.

Someone should add these:

We are biased towards consensus and against democracy.
We are biased towards guidelines and against policies.
We are biased towards the verifiable and against the demonstrable.

Notice that the essay was posted right as covid-19 started going around. Pharma smelled the money and set about forcing their product upon the nation, at public expense.

[ericbarbour]

Notice that the essay was posted right as covid-19 started going around. Pharma smelled the money and set about forcing their product upon the nation, at public expense.

Are you seriously suggesting that WP is cooperating OFFICIALLY with Big Pharma to promote Covid vaccines?

[Archer]

Notice that the essay was posted right as covid-19 started going around. Pharma smelled the money and set about forcing their product upon the nation, at public expense.

Are you seriously suggesting that WP is cooperating OFFICIALLY with Big Pharma to promote Covid vaccines?

I'm not sure what you mean by "officially", but yes, content on Wikipedia seems very well aligned with the interests of big pharma.

[Archer]

The google ngram viewer is rather useful at times. As one might expect, the condescending term "vaccine hesitancy" is not part of the natural lexicon, it only appeared after 2010. In other words it's rhetoric - that is, propaganda.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?c ... itive=true

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?c ... itive=true

It's perhaps interesting that the line about "vaccine hesitancy" was added August 2019, here's the diff https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =910667823.

The reader should wonder why anyone would write such an obnoxious 'essay' in the first place. Obviously it's meant to be antagonistic.