Re: [DIYbio] OFF-TOPIC: taboo on using Wikipedia (school settings)

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> Some topics are written by vested interests of
> business or some celebrities claiming facts and truth.Many topics and
> time frame details are twisted and false.Some details are hidden.

Sounds exactly like academic publishing to me. Without reliable
citations, a clear lack of vested or competing interest, a fully
available dataset for original work (which isn't actually permitted on
Wikipedia in any case), you can't trust anything, whether on a wiki or
not.

So as I said; if you study the article for evidence of bias or
competing interest, and ensure that the citations aren't complete
nonsense and actually back up the written text, then you can by all
means cite *that revision* of a wikipedia article, just as you can cite
any other body of text, ever.

If you don't do that, then your citation is as worthless as if you'd
cited a Seralini "GMO Safety" paper published in an "Academic Journal"
without studying *his* methods, citations, biases and industry
(and journal!) affiliations.

On Wed, 31 Jul 2013 16:37:12 +0530
vrgopal <vrgopal@gmail.com> wrote:

> Wiki is used as an unverified info source of general knowledge by
> children.But academia has different views because of bias and
> incompleteness of info.Some topics are written by vested interests of
> business or some celebrities claiming facts and truth.Many topics and
> time frame details are twisted and false.Some details are hidden.For
> general reading with a pinch if salt it is ok.Otherwise no.
>
> V.Rajagopalan
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On 31-Jul-2013, at 4:20 PM, Cathal Garvey
> <cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:
>
> > There is a false perception that Wikipedia is a random free-for-all
> > and that it's exclusively written by untrained individuals.
> > Further, that statements are poorly sourced.
> >
> > This varies widely between articles, but if you treat Wikipedia like
> > any other source of information, you'll be fine. That is, if you
> > insist on seeing reliable citations, observe the background on the
> > article (check edit history and talk pages for useful debate on
> > content), and when citing Wikipedia, *cite the current revision,
> > not the wiki page*. That is, go to "history", and get a permalink
> > to the present revision, so that your citation doesn't change under
> > your derivative article.
> >
> > Of course, academics as a rule dislike Wikipedia for the same reason
> > they dislike most distributed education platforms, so expect heavy
> > bias against it.
> >
> > And, of course, bear in mind that even the best cited Wikipedia
> > articles can be exactly as bad as the best cited research papers:
> > written and supported by biased industry bodies, riddled with
> > seemingly reasonable logical fallacies, and drawing false
> > conclusions from sound data. Wikipedia is an Encyclopaedia. The
> > only difference between it and other Encyclopaedias is that it
> > grows and amends more rapidly, and has a long memory for prior
> > state.
> >
> > On Tue, 30 Jul 2013 20:56:52 -0400
> > Jeswin <phillyj101@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I was reading the commentary article "We Must Face the Threats" in
> >> J Neuro [1] and noticed that they cite Wikipedia. Now, I realize
> >> that this isn't a regular journal article but teachers and
> >> professors seem to treat Wikipedia as absolutely verboten. If an
> >> article in a journal can cite Wikipedia, then why can't it be used
> >> as a source in informal assignments like homeworks. A research
> >> paper would require harder stuff but in my experience thus far,
> >> Wikipedia is shunned by instructors.
> >>
> >> Comments?
> >>
> >> [1]http://www.jneurosci.org/content/29/37/11417.full.pdf
> >
>