Talk:Fallacy of quoting out of context

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Find sources: "Fallacy of quoting out of context" — search, news, books, scholar, images
Find sources: "contextomy" — search, news, books, scholar, images
Find sources: "quoting out of context" — search, news, books, scholar, images

Contents

[edit] Merge and redirect with contextomy

The contextomy entry overlaps this entry. The word "contextomy" is a scientific-sounding replacement for the commonly-used "out of context," but both wikipedia entries refer to exactly the same concept. Since "taken out of context" returns over 1,000,000 google hits while "contextomy" returns only 429 (many of which are mirrors), preferring "contextomy" is linguistic prescription. --67.10.163.122 17:23, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Don't disagree though I would rename the whole article to Quoting out of context. Fallacy seems POV. Regan123 17:47, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
"POV"? Well, it is defined as a logical fallacy. Are you saying that the definition is POV, too? :)
But I agree, the name "quoting out of context" rings better and is more "canonical" (that is, can be linked in more contexts without a pipe) -- intgr 23:26, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
It is a logical fallacy, but some may misunderstand and maybe I'm just being fussy :-). If two can make consensus then we have it on quoting out of context. Let me know if you need a hand with the merge. Cheers, Regan123 00:28, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Merge. They are articles about the exact same subject. Furthermore, the diatribe at the beginning of contextomy is unencyclopedic nonsense (and is nearly self referential). The term "out of context" clearly means "in a context that sufficiently different form the original context to be misleading." This stuff about how every quote is out of context is equivocation.— Randall Bart 01:09, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Merge. Contextomy is the exactly the same thing as quoting out of context. Contextomy seems to be a very little used word. The article on contextomy could be deleted/redirected to this one, and the examples from Contextomy moved here (and pared down a little/rewritten). cagliost 18:46, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
Merge. The only issue is coming up with a name for the merger. Contextomy is, as Cagliost pointed out, very seldom used. Fuzzform 01:27, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This looks like someone's school assignment

From the Microsoft Word autocorrect substitutions to the flowery prose to the use of the royal "we," much of this article looks like it was adapted from an essay someone wrote for a school assignment. This article really, really needs proper styling and referencing appropriate for an encyclopedia. I started the ball rolling. White 720 (talk) 22:34, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Mere with "Quote mining"

This article is also very similar to the one titled "Quote mining". I will put up a banner with a suggestion to merge if nobody objects. TWCarlson (talk) 20:29, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

  • That one is even worse. I shall redirect this to Misquotation which seems the most succint title for this topic. Colonel Warden (talk) 22:23, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Misquotation lacks both depth of treatment (all it says is "Omission of important context: The context can be important for determining the overall argument the quoted person wanted to make, for seeing whether the quoted statement was restricted or even negated in this context, or for recognizing hints that it was meant as irony.") and sourcing. I am therefore reverting the redirect. This article needs work (the referencing style is all over the place for one), but contains considerably more useful, sourced, information. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 05:12, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Merger proposal

The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
The result was merge here. -- HrafnTalkStalk(P) 17:52, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I am proposing that Quote mining be merged here, per WP:MERGE#Merging #2 'Overlap' & #4 'Context'.

As both are lengthy, sourced articles, I would object to either being merged into Misquotation (which has been suggested), as that article is short, superficial, unsourced and appears to be mainly WP:OR. Any attempt to merge a longer sourced article into it would result in either a very lopsided article or massive curtailment of sourced content, while leaving the unsourced content largely untouched. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 06:08, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

  • There is no good reason to have three or more articles upon the same topic. If some of them are short, superficial, etc. then merger will give us a better result. Misquotation is the best title for the topic because it is brief and commonplace. And it is supported by a separate list of examples. The phrase Fallacy of quoting out of context is ponderous and little used and the current content is of lttle value. Colonel Warden (talk) 08:53, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • No, merger to Misquotation will not "give us a better result", as that article is in no condition to accept non-trivial coverage of any one of the subtopics without creating a severely lopsided article. Such a merge would meet none of the criteria of WP:MERGE#Merging. They are not duplicates, as coverage in Misquotation is vestigial there is no significant overlap, the exact opposite of text is true, and Misquotation is too short and superficial to give any significant context to the subject of the 'fallacy of quoting out of context'. Given that Misquotation is almost pure WP:OR, largely unimproved in its 5 1/2 years of existence, to claim that the contents of this article are "of lttle value" by comparison is patently absurd. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 10:49, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Also, I would point out that 'Fallacy of quoting out of context' is as much a sub-topic of False attribution as it is of Misquotation. As neither of these topics is sufficiently well-developed to accept non-trivial material on a sub-topic, it makes far more sense for this intersection between these two topics to remain as a (well-sourced) separate article. Additionally, moving it to either would be likely to lose its context as a sub-topic of the other. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 09:54, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
I agree completely with Hrafn on Misquotation, but an argument can be made for a merge with 'Fallacy of quoting out of context'. Not a very good argument, IMO. For one thing, quote mining is more than just quoting out of context, as it also involves missatribution as well as unwarranted insertion, deletion and changing of words in the quote. That means that quote mining doesn't really fit in an article about quoting out of context. Also, a merge would break the interwiki links from 'Quote mining'.Sjö (talk) 16:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
'Fallacy of quoting out of context' is explicitly described as a "type of false attribution", so I don't think the misattribution aspect of quote mining is a bad fit. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 16:52, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
Also, a redirect would be maintained so "interwiki links" would not be broken. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 04:17, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
It's a minor point, but contextomy is only a subset of false attribution. As I understand it, false attribution includes both attributing a quote correctly but taking it out of context and attributing a quote to an incorrect source.Sjö (talk) 07:15, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Support. As it stands, Fallacy of quoting out of context is the best candidate for a merge target, and would hopefully remove the need for so many examples in the first place. However, just because Misquotation is currently a mess doesn't mean that it can't be improved by a re-write or merger(s). As far as I see it, Quote Mining is a loaded synonym for Contextomy, which is a subset of False Attribution, itself a subset of Misquotation (I fought hard to resist using some <math> there). OrangeDog (talk • edits) 20:10, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
While contextomy is one of the techniques used it's by no means the only one. I quote from the Quote Mine Project: "In addition, some of the "quotes" were outright fabrications; others were actually taken from creationist authors or other people who doubted, rather than supported, evolution (making their designation as 'evolutionists' itself disingenuous); several were expressions of opinion by people with no expertise in fields related to evolution and many were so old as to be of no use at all in understanding present day evolutionary theory." [1] Add to that the "cherry picking" that is an important factor in quote mining and you'll see that qoute mining doesn't fit in the article about contextomy. If it was to be merged to that article, I foresee that it would eventually be cut with the argument that "this doesn't belong here" and then the information would be gone from Wikipedia.Sjö (talk) 07:31, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
Support. The specific use of the phrase "quote mining" and its origins in the cre/evo field could form a useful section.--Dr Marcus Hill (talk) 18:54, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment: this proposal has dragged on for over two months, due to the thinness of response. We now have three for the proposal, one for a counter-proposal, one for retaining the current division. As such, unless any contrary opinions are registered in the next couple of days, I'll be taking this as a consensus for the proposed merge. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 04:17, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.


[edit] Synthesis 'Contextomy in political spin' section

[Moving this to talk, until such time as sources can be found for this interpretation of the primary sources. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 09:57, 2 March 2009 (UTC) ]

Contextomy is also a common spin tactic among unscrupulous political journalists. Consider the yew tree controversy that plagued former Vice President of the United States Al Gore in the late 1990s. The trouble began when David Ridenour, a conservative columnist for the Austin American-Statesman, wrote a piece criticizing the Vice President’s environmental policy agenda. Ridenour specifically criticized Gore’s willingness to put “environmental politics before people” as a moral failure and cited a passage from his 1992 book Earth in the Balance as evidence of this willingness. In the passage, Gore describes his stance on the preservation of the Pacific Yew, a tree with potentially important medicinal uses:

The Pacific Yew can be cut down and processed to produce a potent chemical, Taxol, which offers some promise of curing certain forms of lung, breast and ovarian cancer in patients who would otherwise quickly die. It seems an easy choice — sacrifice the tree for a human life — until one learns that three trees must be destroyed for each patient treated. (p. 119)

Proceeding from this quotation, Ridenour (1998) argued that the Vice President would rather sacrifice people than deplete the Yew population, and thus lacked human compassion. Following the publication of the article, numerous references to the quotation appeared in conservative op-ed columns, magazines, radio, and television shows across the country. A year later, it even surfaced in a discussion of environmental policy on the floor of the House of Representatives. After reading the excerpt to his House colleagues, Rep. David McIntosh (R-Indiana) took issue with the Vice President’s apparent preference for trees over human lives:

Three trees versus a human life, three trees versus the ability to prolong someone's life who is suffering from cancer? I would pick the individual, the person, the human being who is a cancer patient and suffering from that dreaded disease and say it is clear three trees are worth it. We can sacrifice three trees to save one human life. But the Vice President apparently does not think that is so clear (109th United States Congress, 2nd Session, 145 Cong. Rec. H3376, 1999).

If it were merely the ratio of trees to human lives that had bothered the Vice President, Rep. McIntosh’s outrage might be justified. However, a very different picture of Gore’s concerns emerges when the excerpt is examined in the context of the words immediately preceding and following it in his book (Ridenour’s excerpt appears in bold):

Most of the [tree] species unique to the rain forests are in imminent danger, partly because there is no one to speak up for them. In contrast, consider the recent controversy over the yew tree, a temperate forest species, one variety of which now grows only in the Pacific Northwest. The Pacific Yew can be cut down and processed to produce a potent chemical, Taxol, which offers some promise of curing certain forms of lung, breast, and ovarian cancer in patients who would otherwise quickly die. It seems an easy choice — sacrifice the tree for a human life — until one learns that three trees must be destroyed for each patient treated, that only specimens more than a hundred years old contain the potent chemical, and that there are very few of these Yews remaining on earth. Suddenly we must confront some very tough questions. How important are the medical needs of future generations? Are those of us alive today entitled to cut down all of those trees to extend the lives of a few of us, even if it means that this unique form of life will disappear forever, thus making it impossible to save human lives in the future? (p.119)

In its original context, Gore’s expression of reluctance to cut down Yews does not, as his critics alleged, appear to be motivated by a fanatical pro-flora platform. Rather, it is based on the decidedly pro-person concern that toppling too many now would limit the supply available to benefit cancer patients of future generations. By strategically omitting this and other legitimate reasons Gore offered for preserving the Yew, Ridenour reduced the Vice President’s sober assessment of the dilemma to an embarrassing blurb confirming his reputation among conservatives as a “radical” environmentalist.

[edit] References

  • Gore, A. (1992). Earth in the Balance. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
  • Looking at the record of the Vice-President, 109th Congress, 2d Sess., 145 Cong. Rec. H3376 (1999) (testimony of Rep. David McIntosh, R.-Indiana).
  • Ridenour, D. (1998, August 16). How would Gore fare if he were called on to serve? Austin American-Statesman, p. A15.

[End of removed synth material HrafnTalkStalk(P) 09:57, 2 March 2009 (UTC) ]

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