Talk:Andrew Wakefield

Semi-protected edit request on 26 March 2023

Wakefield was not a physician,he was a surgeon 2001:8A0:7FFA:7500:4567:A62E:8D74:9115 (talk) 22:22, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Actualcpscm (talk) 08:33, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Forbes

It's not WP:FORBESCON which makes it WP:RS, but the fact that it is written by a competent full professor. tgeorgescu (talk) 19:21, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I saw the edit that you just reverted. I didn't revert it myself, but it did give me pause.

• On the one hand, Steven Salzberg is undoubtedly a highly-skilled, highly-competent, highly-respected scientist. Further, his identification of Wakefield as a conspiracy theorist is certainly correct.
• On the other hand, is Salzberg's specific expertise close enough to this topic to choose to cite him in particular in calling out Wakefield as the conspiracy theorist?
• On the third hand, as written our article attributed the identification of Wakefield as a conspiracy theorist to Forbes, rather than to Salzberg personally. Is such an attribution appropriate for an opinion piece by a "contributor"? It strikes me that if we're just going to create a list of all the respected scientists who have called Wakefield a conspiracy theorist, fraud, and general dipshit, we're going to need a much bigger article...

I'm not going to revert either one of you at this point, but...food for thought. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:48, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

The policy on WP:BLPSPS is simply "Never use self-published sources ... as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the article". There's no exception in that for experts - the problem is the lack of independent editorial control and verification, not a lack of presumed expertise. Given that we don't need the reference, as we already have seven pefectly usable sources, I'm going to revert per BLP. It simply adds nothing and violates a core policy. - Bilby (talk) 10:54, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

A blanket removal like that would violate WP:SPS policy, which is explicit (my bold) Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer.. You just can't use a source like that in Wikipedia's voice or as an independent source, but instead would have to treat it not as distant as a third-party source and use attribution, which basically was already done when Jabota gisum made this recent edit.

Since it original text was policy compliant, I've gone ahead and restored it. If someone has tweaks to suggest to the language or reassessing overall just how many people we list that call out Wakefield's quackery, that sure can be done, but should be discussed first at this point. Sources like the Salzberg one could possibly not meet that bar if it's established for what is WP:DUE, but it's better not to put the cart before the horse and figure out just what that metric would be. In the meantime, a source like this isn't harming anything, and it's not that long of a list either. KoA (talk) 14:56, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

WP:BLPSPS is really clear, as you quote it - never use a self published source for claims about living people. We do sometimes carve out exceptions, but given that we already have seven perfectly good sources for the claim, why do we need to violate WP:BLPSPS to include an 8th? How about we just leave out the one that we need to use a special interpretation of BLP for and just rely on the other seven? Including this source adds nothing that the seven does not, and leaves us open to accusations that we are ignoring our own policies. - Bilby (talk) 15:12, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, BLPSPS is often taken out of context. SPS policy is where we deal with how to handle self-published sources. That a single sentence over at BLP hasn't been updated and can be taken out of context and out of line with the rest of our central WP:PAG on this is not a reason to double down to cherry-picking that one line. Either way, SPS policy is clear that this is how we handle self-published sources. Especially since we are in a WP:FRINGE subject, WP:PARITY also applies, which ties in to our SPS policy and why we specifically say not to treat them as third-party sources. That application is pretty consistently done for all SPS sources regardless of BLP involvement or not. KoA (talk) 18:26, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm lost as to what you are trying to say. I think this is best taken to BLPN, so I'll raise it there. - Bilby (talk) 22:44, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Seems to me 'conspiracy theorist' is being thrown around as an insult here and the source cited has no special status on that topic or the topic of this page anyhow, even if the New York Times says he said it. I mean if he was editor of the Big Book of Conspiracy Theorists, maybe. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sledgehamming (talk • contribs) 17:56, 18 June 2023 (UTC)