Mike Sutton
Dr Mike Sutton is the author of 'Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret'.
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Petty Martinets with Fact-Censorship Agendas Control the Content of Contested Knowledge on Wikipedia
Jan. 24, 2015 6:34 am
Having published my book with ThinkerMedia, had the unique discoveries in it highlighted in a science feature article in the national press, presented the findings at several venues , and then published them in a peer reviewed academic journal , I remain dedicated to trumpeting from the rooftops my unique discoveries about the story of Patrick Matthew, Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace.
From that cause, when, last week, a Wikipedia editor took it upon himself to delete some of these independently verifiable "New Facts" from the Wikipedia Patrick Matthew page , I rallied to such brute censorship by publishing them elsewhere in an essay on Rational Wikipedia .
What happened next is most revealing. Two Wikipedia editors went to the relevant "talk" page on my essay in Rational Wikipedia and did the following between them:
- Accused me of publishing a "cover-up" conspiracy theory, despite the fact that I have always maintained that there is zero evidence of any such thing and that the conventions of the British Association and the Royal Society fully explain why 19th century gentlemen of science would be unlikely to cite Matthew's ideas in print.
- Accused me of possibly lying when I published the fact that my article on Matthew, Darwin and Wallace had been peer-reviewed. This reveals the lack of credibility of this Wikipedia editors abilities to check facts, rather than follow his own biased-hunches, because the evidence my paper was rigorously peer reviewed is immediately discoverable with a simple Google search: here .
- Accuse me of having a "fringe" agenda - as though publishing newly discovered dis-confirming facts for old mere un-edvidenced "knowledge-beliefs" - and pointing out that Darwinists have been ignoring the established Royal Society rules of priority for scientific discovery - is in some way the enterprise of a crank rather than the moral duty of us all.
- Spread unfounded gossip that Professor Milton Wainwright of Sheffield University, England might be a "an intelligent design apologist". This was done to allude to the possibility that my research might be driven by a Creationist agenda, based upon the fact that my Rational Wikipedia essay cites a peer reviewed history of biology paper by Professor Wainwright.
- Wrote that my use of the word "Darwinist" was characteristic of the behavior of "Creationists". They seemed not to know that the term "Darwinism" was coined by Darwin's great friend Huxley (nicknamed Darwin's Bulldog) in 1866 as a positive term: Here. So Darwinist or Darwinism - what, exactly, is the difference?
- Suggest I have some kind of persecution complex. The reasoning for this suspicion was explained by fact that I pointed out that Professor James Moore's response to the news of my discovery that naturalists well known to Darwin and Wallace had read and cited Matthew's book pre-1858 was unlikely to be anything that had not been discovered earlier and dismissed as irrelevant. By referring to Moore's obvious fallacious and desperate Semmelweis Reflex press-blurt, as a "knee-jerk response" I apparently gave myself this complex.
In light of me bringing the behavior and clearly muddle-headed "attempted thinking" of these Wikipedia editors - who I believe are suffering from what I'm coining here "Wiki Martinet Syndrome" - to the wider attention of the general public, we cannot be certain that the editors of Rational Wikipedia will allow my essay to remain on their site - or that they will allow its associated "talk" page to remain open to public scrutiny. I have, therefore, made a complete copy of both and archived them.
Oh duh and dagnabbit! D'ya think that scholarly precaution means I just infected my brain with yet another dose of the dreaded "persecution complex'?
Whatever the rational case, if you care to read through the talk page on my Rational Wikipedia essay you will see the points of contention raised by several members of that online community and my responses to each of them.
Please keep up-to-date with further "evidence" (or not as the rational case may be) of my apparent persecution complex and my irrational conspiracy building by stalking me on Twitter
Brian Josephson
April 26, 2016 at 4:13 pm
a compendium of wikitania
I collected some informative comments on wikipedia's processes in a section of my own talk page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Brian_Josephson#The_World_is_Watching.21
Many thanks Brian.
I shall read, digest and then disseminate.
