Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 00:04, 29 March 2015

ANI

Enjoyed your comments, thank you for engaging.

Do I have "blind spots"? Most assuredly, just like every other editor on Misplaced Pages.

Am I "passionate"? I certainly get frustrated by articles (whether about pharma, environmental issues, or any other industry) that seem to be full of negative material that was pulled from the bottom of the barrel of sources- Donation-funded "investigative journalism" sites, advocacy groups, and well-outside-the-mainstream political groups that I have never even heard of, while ignoring positive information that can readily be sourced from media that are familiar to everyone - the NYTimes, Washington Post, and CNN. Chevron has spent $90M on economic development in the Niger river delta, and the article didn't mention it until I added it today (though it comes up very quickly in a Google search). But we do mention and describe in great detail environmental fines of $2 million and one of $500K. This imbalance between inclusion of negative and positive material leads me to feel that I am not the one who is "passionate", though I am sure that others see it differently.

I don't think you understand me, and I really don't understand you. I hope we can respect each other nonetheless. Or failing that, that we can at least do a good job of pretending. Because being conventional, middle class, American, and unimaginative, trying to be polite just seems like the right thing to do when all else fails. :>) Formerly 98 (talk) 00:11, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

It's actually quite conservative and unimaginative on my part to adhere strictly to the idea of neutrality and a dispassionate presentation of facts, which I do. I hope none of this strikes you as a personal attack. It isn't. I'm not being rude. I'm analyzing and reflecting on your edits as a symptom of a much larger problem. Misplaced Pages has allowed professionals to control articles in their perspective fields while disregarding WP:NPOV and WP:TECHNICAL, and thereby, the reader.

I thoroughly skimmed your edits to the Antidepressant article, though this is just one example of an article that your work has "spun". I would say that approx. 85% of your contributions are tendentious. Roughly 15% were neutral or edits I would support.

• You whitewash by using overly-technical language * *,
• overuse non-neutral, non-independent government sources such as the FDA and NICE *
• to whitewash information about serious side-effects * *.
• You use packet inserts * from drug companies as a reference.
• You remove large sections of negative information citing RS problems *, and leave the reader with muddled text supposedly saying the same thing, but actually devoid of readable content, except to a scientist *.
• You removed negative info about Abilify, and the link to List of largest pharmaceutical settlements with the edit summary "Aripiprazole - not an antidepressant" *.
• You seem to be removing links to people who don't hold your views: "neither Kramer's view nor those of Breggin/Healy POV is mainstream. Undue wt to outlying viewpoints" * You admit you are wrong *, but a month later you remove them anyway with the edit summary "adjust per WP:ELPOV" *.
• You say nothing to correct Jytdog when he removes from the article any mention of "withdrawl", opting for industry speak, "Antidepressant discontinuation syndrome" and forgoing an introductory sentence altogether *.
• You remove* the fact that 80% of each drug passes through the body without being broken down, saying that it was not in the refs cited, yet I find in the citation: The use of antidepressants has increased dramatically over the past 25 years, says Michael Thomas of Idaho State University in Pocatello. Around 80 per cent of each drug passes straight through the human body without being broken down, and so they are present in waste water.*.
• You remove the arguments of opponents, saying "This is just a letter to the editor" *.
• You removed this saying, "Fluoxetine is exceted from humans unchanged or as glucuronide" - cited ref doesn't say that, and package insert contradicts this statement". The first sentence of the cited ref says Fluoxetine, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressant and high-prescription-volume drug, is excreted unchanged or as a glucuronide from the human organism. You are corrected here *, and decide to spin it, imo, here adding this source.

And no one is checking on any of this. You have asked at least twice for immunity from oversight/questioning, and the fact that you weren't laughed off the stage, so to speak, shows me just how far Misplaced Pages has sunk. petrarchan47tc 21:43, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Well, I guess that if you consider the FDA and NICE "non-neutral, non-independent" we're not going to agree on much of anything. Have a nice day anyway! Formerly 98 (talk) 22:36, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

No. This is serious. You are using a strawman to distract from your extremely biased editing which I have touched on above. And I did not claim that the FDA couldn't be used at all, but it was used in one case to change "Antidepressants cause suicidal ideation" to "Antidepressants cause suicidal ideation...within the first few months of use", using only the FDA as a source for the added caveat. This addition implies that any use after the first few months carries with it no chance of SI. For this you would need multiple sources, and if you had them, I would say nothing about the FDA addition. However, this is by no means a widely held view (and one I've never heard, though this is my field) and you were unable to find much to support it. So now Misplaced Pages is telling all of its readers that they are safe from SI (potential for death) if they have taken antidepressants for longer than 2 months based on a non-independent source only. That is a dangerous assertion if there is any chance that it is untrue, and this is exactly what MEDRS is meant to guard against. This editing is not meant to protect the readers, but the pharmaceutical industry.

The FDA is subservient to the White House, which is not an independent scientific organization. It takes money from the pharma industry = not independent. Examples from: FORBES and Harvard

And again from Harvard:

"The forthcoming article in JLME also presents systematic, quantitative evidence that since the industry started making large contributions to the FDA for reviewing its drugs, as it makes large contributions to Congressmen who have promoted this substitution for publicly funded regulation, the FDA has sped up the review process with the result that drugs approved are significantly more likely to cause serious harm, hospitalizations, and deaths. New FDA policies are likely to increase the epidemic of harms. This will increase costs for insurers but increase revenues for providers.

"This evidence indicates why we can no longer trust the FDA to carry out its historic mission to protect the public from harmful and ineffective drugs. Strong public demand that government “do something” about periodic drug disasters has played a central role in developing the FDA.2 Yet close, constant contact by companies with FDA staff and officials has contributed to vague, minimal criteria of what “safe” and “effective” mean. The FDA routinely approves scores of new minor variations each year, with minimal evidence about risks of harm. Then very effective mass marketing takes over, and the FDA devotes only a small percent of its budget to protect physicians or patients from receiving biased or untruthful information.34 The further corruption of medical knowledge through company-funded teams that craft the published literature to overstate benefits and understate harms, unmonitored by the FDA, leaves good physicians with corrupted knowledge.5 6 Patients are the innocent victims.

As a fan of mainstream sources, I wonder how your views have become so divergent. petrarchan47tc 23:25, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

I guess I would disagree with your assertion that the harshness of the criticism quoted in your sources is a majority opinion or even a relatively common one. Oftentimes the response to extreme viewpoints is not to debate their proponents so much as to ignore them. But since we are not approaching a sort of common viewpoint, I will simply wish you a good day. Formerly 98 (talk) 01:54, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Petrarchan47, you aren't the only one who has faced problems with Formerly98's editing practices. I'm not fully sure the best way to go about dealing with the situation but at the very least you could raise an issue about on the NPOV board. I have given some thought to doing it myself but I have been very busy the last couple of weeks. The ANI board issue was not "resolved" but the administrator said that it was not the correct forum. Arguing with him will do you no good as he isn't interested in building consensus but if you decide to proceed further with an investigation, I can offer my experiences. My suggestion is to do some research on the proper way to do this first. Misplaced Pages is a somewhat bureaucratic organization so you will need to do it correctly if you want to be taken seriously. I'm not an expert myself but willing to assist if needed.Doors22 (talk) 03:11, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

PS - I have seen him reject sources from the FDA if he isn't pleased with the facts. When you wrote you are retired at the top of your talk page, have you decided you are done editing Misplaced Pages? I would encourage you not to do that but it isn't the first time Formerly98 has discouraged another editor for participating entirely. Doors22 (talk) 03:14, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello, my friend. I'm not arguing with him. I'm exposing him. He is one small part in a very large problem facing this "encyclopedia". I know that the co-founder of Misplaced Pages does not care about this activity, and holds the same views that these extremists do concerning anything but the establishment/government viewpoint. I know that when this spindoctoring results in a loss in credibility for WP, the sharpest minds here respond with denial of the problem by shooting the messenger with lazy ad hominems. I know that there are Administrators who actively cover for this spindoctoring, while others look the other way. I think ArbCom is a potential venue for the scale of this, but noticeboards lower than ArbCom are stacked to the hilt with bootlickers. It doesn't matter how F98 and others in the 'MEDRS cult' behave, or how they misapply WP guidelines and policies - they are let off the hook every time. I have no more inclination to contribute to this corrupted project than I do any other establishment mouthpiece (CNN, MSNBC, Fox, BBC, etc) being used to further special interests rather than unadulterated truth. petrarchan47tc 20:51, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Disclaimer: I should say I have no inclination to edit here at this time. If it looked as though my time wouldn't be wasted, I would help. But I spent the last couple of years here dealing with this exact type of thing. I went through proper channels, and discovered what I describe above, and what leads me to call this a corrupted project. There simply aren't enough editors who care to put in the time and fight this activity. I do wonder why a person would choose to spend their free time endlessly arguing with characters who are up to no good, at a noticeboard stacked against them. I simply don't see the utility of this setup. petrarchan47tc 01:45, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree, although I wouldn't say it was "corrupted" at all. I would say that it is designed to work this way. For more relevant information on why the system is working exactly how it supposed to work, see our article on technological utopianism, and pay very close attention to the criticism section. This will explain everything. Viriditas (talk) 03:43, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

This explains a lot. petrarchan47tc 03:38, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

There are other editors who do care, Petrarchan47 - quite a few of them, in fact - but many others have retreated, resigned (like you are trying to do but others won't let you), moved on to other projects where there is less disruption, or they are staying busy warding off ARBCOM, AE, AN-I, and AN attacks themselves. Baiting, taunting, tag team, harassment and hounding are common tactics. Many of the same issues you mentioned above don't stop at product/corporate articles, either. They have bled over to BLPs where guidelines like WP:MEDRS, WP:PSCI and WP:FRINGE are actually superseding BLP policy. It's just plain wrong. The scope of it is ever-reaching. It is magnified by those admins who are too busy to do a thorough analysis of the disputes, and end up supporting bad behavior inadvertently because of faux community consensus. Newbies fall prey rather quickly which is why WP is in dire need of more editors, and is currently promoting a drive to encourage more female editors. Unfortunately, many editors who have managed to survive the battleground are weary, and wrongly tagged as the cause of disruption which tarnishes one's credibility. We have a few admins who either (1) had the wool pulled over their eyes or (2) support a particular POV, oftentimes subconsciously. I am still hanging in there because I have chosen to maintain faith in the majority of our admins and their ethical standards. I want to believe most editors become sysops because they truly want to help, and fix the problems. So what are our options? Right now, not many. We can choose to (1) stop editing the problem article and other articles like it (which means WP loses to censorship and advocacy), (2) keep editing, following policy, and eventually end-up getting railroaded and TB anyway, or worse, or (3) hope a truly concerned admin will take notice and try to fix the problem if it can be fixed. If admins would focus less on behavior and analyze what the actual content dispute is all about, they will have a much clearer picture of which editors are causing the behavior issues. If a pod of editors infiltrate an article's TP, and those editors never participated writing prose at that or other articles, and have an edit history that comprises edits primarily on TPs, noticeboards, and reverts on main page articles all focusing on similar topics, there's the first indication of questionable activity. I also know for a fact that some of the most problematic, disruptive editors in the named topics were actually allowed to come back after being banned from WP for SPI activity, and severely disruptive behavior. It may be representative of kind hearted admins giving an editor yet another chance, but I would think after 5 chances there should be a cut-off point, no? There are also independent websites on the internet springing up everywhere that are exposing user names you've probably encountered, so don't feel like it's only happening to you. I was absolutely amazed by the depth of the activity. Atsme☯ 00:04, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Emptiness

We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;

But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends.

We turn clay to make a vessel;

But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends.

We pierce doors and windows to make a house;

And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends.

We spend endless hours to create an online encyclopedia;

But it is on the 'to be edited' space that the effort lives.

Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not.

Dear Petra. Somewhere in the Emptiness of "Future Misplaced Pages" is a Use-full-ness place to be happy. I hope someday you find it. . Buster Seven Talk 16:32, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Buster, your sweetness is palpable. petrarchan47tc 21:52, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

This may interest you

I've been working on W. Maxwell Cowan lately, because it was the last thing User:Tryptofish and I were collaborating on before he had to temporarily leave Misplaced Pages. What's interesting about this is in the course of my research, it turns out Geoffrey Raisman was his only graduate student, and in addition to being influenced by Cowan, Raisman also authored two of Cowan's major biographies (one for Oxford and the other for the Royal Society), which I'm presently using as sources. In any case, Raisman is now famous for his work on Darek Fidyka. If I get around to it, I'll probably end up working on either Raisman or Fidyka's article. Both may interest you, so please take a look when you have time. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 05:06, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Wow, very cool, V. Thank you for doing this, and alerting me to Fidyka. There are some sweet spots here on WP. But I find myself muddied by the surrounding territory, to be honest. Best, Sarah

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