Wikipedia:Academic bias

This is an essay on the neutral point of view policy.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

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This page in a nutshell: If a Wikipedia article has an academic (scholarly) bias, it does not mean it is "taking" sides, and it is not a violation of WP:NPOV. Articles should give an accurate picture of the academic viewpoints in a field. Scholars and scientists decide what is "true" for Wikipedia.

Introduction

This is "The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." It isn't an "anything goes" forum for crank science. This website is devoted to mainstream science and mainstream scholarship. This essay discusses why Wikipedia has, and should have, a pro-academic "bias".

The questions that Wikipedia had to answer were: "How do you learn scientific facts if you are not yourself a scientist? How do you show unto others that you have learned such facts correctly? How do you show unto others that these facts properly belong to science?"

Some editors new to Wikipedia are somewhat surprised to find out that Wikipedia has a pro-academic bias. For example, Wikipedia does take the side of Charles Darwin and calls evolution a fact, or the paradigm of biology to use somewhat fussy language. Wikipedia does apply the pseudoscience label to creation science and intelligent design. How does Wikipedia know this? It knows it from biologists who live by publish or perish. The biologists have reached a scientific consensus that evolution is valid and that creationism and intelligent design are not, insofar as we speak of science. (Creationism is theologically okay, but as far as it purports to be scientific, it is pseudoscience.)

Tolerance does not require refraining from calling a spade a spade. Wikipedia applies the label "pseudoscience" when it is consensually applied by the authorities in the field. See List of topics characterized as pseudoscience. That is not to say that creationist theology is rubbish, but when it tries to be science it does not get beyond pseudoscience. As biologist H. Allen Orr has explained, "Evolutionists are widely perceived as uncritical ideologues, devoted to suppressing all doubt about evolution. It's easy to see how this impression arose: evolutionists, after all, spend most of their public lives defending Darwin against endlessly recycled creationist arguments. So of course we appear hide-bound reactionaries. (So would physicists if the theory of gravity were dragged into court every other year.)" Scientifically seen, creationism is "not even wrong" - it is not science any way one would look at it.

In any science or academic field there are winners and losers. Wikipedia simply does not side with the factions that have lost the scientific/scholarly debate.

Disinterested community of scholars

University professors with a doctorate who are teaching and researching "truth for its own sake" play an important role in building up human knowledge.

From the approved Wikipedia policies and guidelines, it already follows that Wikipedia often takes and should take the side of academia. This pertains to the basics of Wikipedia. Wikipedia editors don't create their own knowledge, but render the viewpoints expressed by the most reliable sources, which are the academics - the people (and organizations composed of such people) that make it their life's work to determine truthful information on a subject within a context where reason and logical argument are expected and rewarded. In respect to present-day biographies, entertainment and politics, reliable press is also included. In this sense, it is obvious that Wikipedia is and should be "biased" towards the viewpoints of academia. According to some theories of scientific knowledge, knowledge is forged by the academic community, as a "disinterested community of scholars seeking truth for its own sake".

This essay is about recognizing the importance of the university (or universities) for the buildup of human knowledge, which Wikipedia has to render. We know the boiling point of mercury, the chemical formula of water and we heard about Julius Caesar from scholars, or people who got such information from scholars. These scholars have created most of our explicit knowledge, at least the explicit knowledge of encyclopedic value. We have to recognize how dependent is Wikipedia upon the academe.

To many experienced Wikipedia editors, this essay is superfluous since Wikipedia policies, guidelines and essays already support/affirm it, e.g. as said by Surturz: "[This is] adequately addressed by WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, WP:RS, etc. and is (indirectly) a re-hash of the WP:VNT argument.

In this case, a pro-academia bias is no violation of WP:NPOV, but a straightforward consequence of how scientific research and philosophical/theological debate work. It is restating the obvious, but it is meant to have an educational (pedagogical) value, just like "verifiability, not truth" (despite being controversial, see the WT:V archives) has educated thousands of editors into prioritizing reliable sources over their own musings about what the truth is. There is no denying that the viewpoints contained in this essay could be gathered from other Wikipedia policies, guidelines and essays. The intent is, however, to give users a quick introduction into how the ball is played inside Wikipedia.

What Wikipedia does not discuss is whether the mainstream scholarly view is right or wrong. Wikipedia does not question the mainstream view, it just takes for granted that it is true or at least that it is the best approximation of truth available today.

For writing about the pop music star Justin Bieber, we may expect that the mainstream press gives us more information about him than articles published with peer-review in scientific journals. In fact, what academics are in respect to scholarship, journalists are in respect to everyday events. They are professionals with a reputation of fact-checking and their area of expertise consists of everyday events like political events, disasters, crime, entertainment, etc. Plato and Aristotle did not have a diploma, because it was not usual for people in those times to have such credentials; meanwhile academics and journalists became specialized professionals, i.e. their activity got standardized and professionalized. So, besides a pro-academia bias, Wikipedia has a pro-press bias, meaning that the publications of the independent press, those with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, are prioritized over less reliable sources of information.

Who is who in the academe

In order to be able to identify reliable sources, we have to have some rule of thumb for who is an academic and who isn't, about who is an authority in their field and who isn't. So, sooner or later, it is unavoidable to pass judgment about who's who in the academe. "I like how they write and I believe them on their word of honor that they have checked the facts" is too subjective for WP:RSN. In fact, this is no more than recognition of what is practiced daily at WP:RSN, it just has to be formally acknowledged in order to end nonsensical claims like "your pro-academia bias is a violation of NPOV".

Accreditation matters. We would not want to be taught by someone who got their diploma through mail order or got a PhD for writing three essays on alternative medicine. We should not turn the requirement for proper accreditation into a fear of a global accreditation conspiracy meant to silence the politically undesirable. Credentials matter, and accreditation is there in order to prevent fake credentials.

An academic has:

Credentials (typically an earned PhD, another doctorate or a terminal degree from a properly accredited university);
A paid position, typically as a full-time professor at an accredited university;
Research output in reputable peer-reviewed journals (preferably ISI-indexed).

Jacques Derrida has been smeared with claims that he believed that all opinions are equal. As described by Rick Roderick in a TTC course, the only people who said that all opinions are equal were those permanently committed to the insane asylum. Likewise, Wikipedia does not believe and should not believe that all opinions are equal. Deciding who to trust and who to ignore is of capital importance when writing an encyclopedia. There is plenty of room for pluralism, there is no room for rubbish.

Here is what a Christian has to say about who counts as a scientist:

The CHOPSY test

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WP:CHOPSY

Judging from the viewpoint of an encyclopedia, scientific facts have broad mainstream scientific acceptance. If a scholarly claim is principally unworthy of being taught at Cambridge, Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, the Sorbonne, and/or Yale, then it amounts to sub-standard scholarship and should be never considered a reliable source for establishing facts for Wikipedia. Any claim which would be unequivocally ridiculed at those universities cannot establish facts for Wikipedia. To the extent that such claims are notable, they should be rendered inside Wikipedia, but always with attribution and duly stating that they are minority or fringe views.

WP:EXTRAORDINARY applies to giving the lie to those six universities, especially when they all toe the same line.

Note: something like CHOPSY already exists within WP:PAGs, it is called WP:BESTSOURCES.

No claim to perfection

A final note: there is no claim here that academia is pure embodied perfection. However, academia has the capacity to learn, research and integrate new viewpoints, which places it above pretty much every other enterprise for generating knowledge. And Wikipedia has neither the task of reforming academia nor of correcting its failures. "Wikipedia is behind the ball – that is we don't lead, we follow – [we] let reliable sources make the novel connections and statements and find NPOV ways of presenting them if needed." If academia has systemic bias, Wikipedia could hardly redress it, since it would have to rely upon peer-reviewed sources published by scholars and by definition scholars are part of academia and part of such systemic bias. Wikipedia is not a platform for publishing original research, even if it is aimed at redressing some real or imaginary harm produced by academia. Nor is it a platform for giving undue weight to novel academical insights. The question is not whether academia has a systemic bias, but what Wikipedia could do about it, and the answer is: nothing, Wikipedia is constrained by its own policies and guidelines to be unable to do anything about it, and this is part of its design as an encyclopedia that reflects accepted knowledge.

For the practical purpose of writing Wikipedia articles in nuclear physics, it does not really matter if nuclear physicists are "truly" disinterested, nor whether employment for physics faculties is biased according to gender, theological beliefs or political opinion. They may matter in articles about the sociology of science, but they cannot change the way scientific articles in nuclear physics should be written. Theological bias is a subject in the history of science, e.g. describing the early reception of the Big Bang hypothesis by the physics community. But Wikipedia, were it available when the Big Bang hypothesis was initially stated, would have had no business in correcting the scientific consensus because it seemed theologically biased against what smacked of creatio ex nihilo:

Big Science

According to Paulo Correa et al., Wikipedia favors Big Science. I am not sure if he means that WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE directly lead to such a result, but Wikipedia does favor mainstream views and the scientific consensus while more or less rejecting the fringe views, except when describing those fringe views in articles exclusively devoted to them. In itself, this is neither good nor bad, it is a choice which Wikipedia makes in selecting which sources to trust. If Wikipedia made the contrary choice, the result would be chaos. Wikipedia is not a search engine, and it does not index/render all sorts of papers "fair and balanced". It also isn't a PR outlet for each person's own pet idea.

Mainstream encyclopedia

Wikipedia is mainly a venue for expressing views supported by established science and peer-reviewed scholarship (and perhaps reputable press, for certain subjects). Editors are supposed to understand this, to wish this, and to be competent at doing this.

Supporting mainstream science and mainstream scholarship is, therefore, required of all editors. Failure to respect mainstream science leads to the loss of disputes, and may result in being blocked and eventually banned. Strong adherence to mainstream science and mainstream scholarship is what made Wikipedia one of the greatest websites on the Internet. So, dissent from mainstream science and mainstream scholarship will be perceived as an attack upon Wikipedia itself. If you want to win a dispute, your claims must be backed by reputable science or peer-reviewed scholarship. If you cannot honestly do that, then you must refrain from making those particular claims. And remember, Wikipedia is just a mirror: mainstream science and mainstream scholarship exist outside of Wikipedia and cannot be changed through editing Wikipedia, Wikipedia merely reflects them. If you want to change science/scholarship, you have to be a scientist or a scholar; Wikipedia is not the venue for revising scientific opinion.

Wikipedia's take on the Bible

This explains very well the theological POV of Wikipedia. Major universities study the Bible as a book of ancient mythology because that's what universities are supposed to do. And Wikipedia sides with the major universities.

Wikipedia is biased for the mainstream academia. Therefore, the POVs shunned by the mainstream academia get short shrift at Wikipedia. Wikipedia isn't biased against Christianity, but it is biased against fundamentalist and very conservative Christianity.

Conclusion

Wikipedia is a place where we reflect the academic mainstream. If you don't like doing that, you won't like it here. Wikipedia is not about you and your personal views, and the sooner you learn it, the better. Wikipedia editors have the three rights stipulated at WP:FREE; for the rest, they work as servants. If you are not an editor in order to serve Wikipedia, you are in the wrong place.

Clearly, publicly and unapologetically, Wikipedia is wholly sold out to the academic mainstream. Therefore, inside Wikipedia propaganda for extremist or marginal ideas is done by trolls, misinformed naives, fools and madmen. Such ideas cannot be appreciated by Wikipedia. Most edit wars arise from a profound incapacity to understand what Wikipedia is. Nobody here gives a *** about what you believe (or about what I believe, for that matter). This encyclopedia is based on knowledge, not belief. Nobody here has a problem with newbies, but we do have a problem with cocky tendentious editors.

If you want a tongue-in-cheek definition, Wikipedia is academic OSINT: we can read the papers written by the most illustrious professors.

What Wikipedia is can be summed up in these memorable words: "We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."