Talk:Andrew Wakefield

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)

If you are unfamiliar with policy, I don't know what else to say except to reread WP:FORBESCON to reiterate it. It also is explicit that we cannot use them as a third-party source, and those last few words are there for good reason. That's because such sources can still be used, just not as a third-party source. If you want to see the supplemental guidance on that, WP:INDEPENDENT covers the subject broadly to help readers with some the nuance that informs our policy language.

The short summary there is A third-party source is one that is entirely independent of the subject being covered, e.g., a newspaper reporter covering a story that they are not involved in except in their capacity as a reporter. The opposite of a third-party source is a first-party or non-independent source.[1] A first-party, non-independent source about the president of an environmental lobby group would be a report published by that lobby group's communications branch. A third-party source is not affiliated with the event, not paid by the people who are involved, and not otherwise likely to have a conflict of interest related to the material.

Third-party and independent are often used interchangeably, but here all that matters is to treat it like a source closely affiliated with the subject rather than independent/third-party. We need to use attribution in those cases practically all the time when it cannot be treated as a third-party source. That's all. Whether such sources are absolutely needed here is something that sure can be discussed separately, but the BLP question is a tangent to that since the current text follows our guidance on SPS. What matters now is what is WP:DUE. KoA (talk) 00:39, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

That reading - that we can use an SPS in a BLP if we use it as a primary source - has been opposed when it was raised in RFCs in the past. It might be a viable interpretation, and maybe the community is more supportive of that now than they have been in the past, but I'd only use that card if we really, really needed the source, which in this case we simply don't. - 00:45, 19 June 2023 (UTC) Bilby (talk) 00:45, 19 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)

Semi-protected edit request on 21 June 2023

"Wakefield's study and his claim that the MMR vaccine might cause autism led to a decline in vaccination rates in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, and a corresponding rise in measles and mumps infections, resulting in serious illness and deaths"

This statement is misleading because it suggests a CORRELATIVE relationship only between the decline in vaccine rates and the increase in MMR cases and not necessarily a CAUSAL relationship. Correlation does not equal causality (ie. that two events occur at the same time does not prove that one is the cause of the other). A scientific study needs to be cited that would show such a causal relationship. ShrodingersChat (talk) 17:28, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

 Not done -- that specific claim is directly supported by the NEJM source at the end of the paragraph. Nice try, but no. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 17:35, 21 June 2023 (UTC)