Sunday, January 07, 2007

Skeptical sentence removed from Wikipedia IBWO page

Here.

January 8 update: And now the battle is joined. Someone replaced the skeptical sentence, and the person at 71.60.179.184 (who originally removed the sentence) not only replaced it, but went on to busily remove some more skeptical information from the page.

As of this moment, that page has already been edited six times today.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well an "information source" that had an entry for a town, Erdosville, Nebraska, that never existed - and included that "information" for over a year- can't really be trusted to vet their content. The Erdosville entry was up long enough for a real estate agent to advertise being able to sell houses near "world-famous Erdosville."

No information on whether that real estate agent is a Cornell grad.

Anonymous said...

Well, at least the big if statement remains, i.e., If confirmed . . .

Anonymous said...

As a frequent commenter on the blog and believer that the CLO and Auburn Ivory-billed "discoveries" are one of ornithology's biggest screw-ups, I nevertheless must defend Wikipedia.

We are not going to get a listing in Wiki to this blog. You can expect them to be "balanced in a formal way". That is, you will get "if confirmed..." and "not conclusive..." to describe the CLO and Auburn work but that is just about all. Wiki even has the Sibley's doubts in there too. But that is all that is judged to be "science" on this whole fiasco.

You should expect the tone and sourcing of a good encyclopedia. And that is all.

Anonymous said...

I agree with the frequent commentator. Until the ornithological establishment, including academics with PhDs other than Jackson, stand up for the integrity of ornithology and Science rejects bogus science we cannot expect perfection from Wikipedia. We certainly cannot fault them for accurately reflecting the sorry state of published science (excepting Sibley and Jackson) and high-profile journalism (excepting the Chicago Tribune article) with respect to the IBWO.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps the Wiki shortcomings will encourage a science writer to do a story about the "real story."