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=== Statement by Kingofaces43 ===
=== Statement by Kingofaces43 ===
=== Statement by Floq ===
{{collapse top|This section is no longer needed, and I really don't need to be sent emails by ArbCom clerks if/when various milestones are passed.}}
{{ping|Tryptofish}}, {{ping|Looie496}}, Clerks and Arbs: the sooner some combination of you decide what to do about a case request and a clarification request filed at almost the same time about the same issue, the less complicated things are going to get. --[[User:Floquenbeam|Floquenbeam]] ([[User talk:Floquenbeam|talk]]) 15:59, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
{{collapse bottom}}

=== Statement by Tryptofish ===
=== Statement by Tryptofish ===
Almost simultaneously with Looie's filing of this request, I filed [[Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Clarification request: Pseudoscience]]. As I said there, there are reasonable arguments for either a full case or a more incremental effort. If you decide on a full case, I may want to add myself as a party here, and there are probably other editors who should also be added as parties. But ArbCom might do better to go with a more limited first step. --[[User:Tryptofish|Tryptofish]] ([[User talk:Tryptofish|talk]]) 16:02, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Almost simultaneously with Looie's filing of this request, I filed [[Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Clarification request: Pseudoscience]]. As I said there, there are reasonable arguments for either a full case or a more incremental effort. If you decide on a full case, I may want to add myself as a party here, and there are probably other editors who should also be added as parties. But ArbCom might do better to go with a more limited first step. --[[User:Tryptofish|Tryptofish]] ([[User talk:Tryptofish|talk]]) 16:02, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Revision as of 20:01, 8 September 2015

Requests for arbitration

Arbitration Committee proceedings
Request name Motions Initiated Votes
GMO articles   8 September 2015 {{{votes}}}
[edit]
Open cases

Currently, no arbitration cases are open.

[edit]
Recently closed cases (Past cases)
Case name Closed
Venezuelan politics 25 May 2024
Request name Motions  Case Posted
Amendment request: World War II and the history of Jews in Poland Motion (orig. case) 21 June 2024
Motion name Date posted
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GMO articles

Initiated by Looie496 (talk) at 15:42, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Statement by Looie496

I am uninvolved. I have not edited any of the relevant articles or contributed to any of the relevant discussions. I am acting on a quasi-consensus reached in the ANI page cited above that this matter requires arbitration.

The basic behavioral issue is that many of the parties listed above have edit-warred, accused each other of overly aggressive behavior, and called for topic bans on other parties. Underlying this problem at the deepest level is a disagreement about policy, which comes down to a disagreement about the proper application of the principles outlined at WP:FRINGE. In the scientific community the idea that GMOs are intrinsically harmful is a fringe theory. In the broader community, however, it is at the least a significant minority view, and perhaps even the majority view. Arbcom probably cannot resolve the fundamental policy issue, but it should be able to address the behavioral issues that the dispute has generated.

It has been suggested that applying standard discretionary sanctions would solve the problem. That is possible, but at this juncture I don't want to impose any limits on the remedies available to the committee.

The list of parties to this request is a minimum. Other editors can be added if necessary.

Statement by Jytdog

Statement by Yobol

Statement by Prokaryotes

Statement by GregJackP

My sole involvement in the GMO field is via either: 1) legal articles in which GMO is only tangentially related to the article; or 2) an actual GMO article where a legal case was tangentially related to the article. Bowman v. Monsanto Co. is an example of the first, Pharming (genetics) is an example of the second.

In both cases, my sole involvement is on the legal portion of the content. I could care less whether GMOs are safe or not safe and don't intend to wade into that minefield.

At the core of this is a behavior issue on the part of Jytdog. Jytdog has admitted that he has a POV on this issue, and reacts immediately if his POV is challenged or other viewpoints are presented. Under the guise of "fighting" COI, "eliminating" Fringe, and "defending" MedRS, he repeatedly attacks those who do not have the same perspective as he does. This is typical battleground behavior, and is accompanied by edit-warring, personal attacks, forum-shopping and incivility.

Note that he labels those who disagree with him as "fringe", "COI", and "POV", even when that is not the case. It is behavior that shows the extreme ownership that he feels for these articles and issues, and is not good for wikipedia.

I was asked (via wiki-email) for help by a subject matter expert (SME) in intellectual property law, who was being harassed by Jytdog. I gladly agreed to do so, as he is the exact type of SME that wikipedia needs. The SME is creating content, and has been repeatedly attacked by Jytdog over his edits. I'll return later with diffs to support that. I will note that every time that Jytdog has raised an issue on a legal matter, he was in the minority, and many times the only voice in opposition. When a majority of legal editors, many of whom are attorneys, are telling him that he's wrong, he doesn't hear it, and refuses to drop the stick.

I urge ArbCom to accept this case to resolve the conduct issues by Jytdog, if for no other reason. GregJackP Boomer! 19:05, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Petrarchan47

With thanks to the OP, I must note some problems with the framing of this case. For the insinuation that editors have been promoting the idea that "GMOs are inherently dangerous", I would like to see at least a couple diffs or some proof that this is happening and causing trouble. The ANI thread does not show that "many" are edit warring, and a quasi-consensus can also be claimed for the idea that Jytdog and the ownership issues at the GMO suite since 2013 need to be the subject of deep investigation, as does the support from the community that upholds the POV and ignores glaring behavioural issues with Jytdog. Instead of the false claim that anyone is pushing "pseudoscience" at GM articles, the truth is that Jytdog has constructed and protected a Safety Consensus statement on GMO foods, pasted to at least 6 GMO articles, which does not have support even with 18 references he put together. Proof: RfC. This false construct published by Wikipedia is the subject of this paper which names our GMO article specifically and shows we are (thanks to Jutdog) misrepresenting science. Editors protecting this claim and other GMO POV pushing are hostile to science that doesn't support it, hostile to editors seeking balance, and call any questioning of this "fringe". Science that is being disallowed shows that although the number of studies finding harm is small, it is significant enough to make Wikipedia's wide-ranging safety claims untenable at best.

http://gaiapresse.ca/images/nouvelles/28563.pdf http://www.enveurope.com/content/pdf/s12302-014-0034-1.pdf

The suggestion at ANI was that GMOs could fall under pseudoscience by referencing Seralini. I spoke to that here / +, and suggest a deep look into the Seralini case, and WP editors' responses to it. petrarchan47คุก 18:07, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Kingofaces43

Statement by Tryptofish

Almost simultaneously with Looie's filing of this request, I filed Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Clarification request: Pseudoscience. As I said there, there are reasonable arguments for either a full case or a more incremental effort. If you decide on a full case, I may want to add myself as a party here, and there are probably other editors who should also be added as parties. But ArbCom might do better to go with a more limited first step. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:02, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have copied the following, per Salvio's request, from the Request for Clarification page, where I originally requested the clarification. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:52, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I request that ArbCom make it explicit that the Discretionary Sanctions enacted in the Pseudoscience case apply to content (and accompanying conduct) concerning the health effects of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). This is essentially equivalent to the subset of GMO-related content that is also governed by WP:MEDRS. For typical content within this scope, please see the page on the Séralini affair and the page section on Genetically modified food controversies#Health.

The disputes in this content area go back at least to May 2013 (see Talk:March Against Monsanto/Archive 1#"Broad scientific consensus" and WP:POVFORK). It has recently erupted at a series of incompletely-resolved complaints at WP:EWN: 1, 2, and 3, and a drama-filled discussion at WP:ANI#Editor Jytdog's none neutral GMO edits. My request here grows out of a section of that ANI discussion: WP:ANI#Limited discretionary sanctions?.

I want to point out that it would not be unreasonable for the Committee to decide, instead, that a full case request is needed. The GMO controversy also includes scientific content about ecology and the environment that is not pseudoscience, as well as content about economic, business, political, and governmental issues that are outside of the scope. However, the most contentious disputes do center on fringe claims that GMOs are harmful to human health. I suggest that ArbCom should, for now, take a minimal or incremental approach, and see whether or not the community can make discretionary sanctions work. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:37, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by John Carter

In one of the most ridiculously stupid comments I have ever made (and, remember, that I have lots of experience in stupid statements), I'm thinking that maybe ArbCom might want to consider doing something about this. Personally, I think a case might be preferable, as there are other issues than pseudoscience involved, as has been indicated, but I could live with something being done either by amendment or a full case, as long as something gets done. John Carter (talk) 16:21, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'd love to see discretionary sanctions against those convinced of the wikipedia cabal being sold out to whoever we are all supposed to be sold out to today, such as jps proposes below. On a slightly related point, and I would welcome any input here, I think the time may have come to question whether we should perhaps change WP:PSCI and WP:RNPOV, or at least ask for community discussion of them, to deal with those points where religion and pseudoscience, and, perhaps, fringe or non-majority science, interact. It could also deal with the interactions between mainstream science, "pseudoscience," religion of all sorts, and those areas of the social sciences which sometimes discuss the positions and support of these varied camps. Particular areas of concern, and I guess in this instance I am thinking only theoretically, but others might be able to name specific examples, is the possible question where some scientists declare themselves to hold the majority or truly scientific opinion, and other scientists say that the first group overstates their own position, with perhaps some significant, maybe even majority, of non-scientific or perhaps academic-but-not-science-academia support for the second position, that the "science" of the mainstream or majority scientific position isn't as mainstream or majority as it claims. John Carter (talk) 18:10, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by AlbinoFerret

A full case imho would be the better way to go. Going strait to DS will miss a lot of the issues in this area. Pseudoscience may not be appropriate as there is hard science involved. There are also issues of ownership and possible tagteaming/meatpuppets involved that deserve a good look. The community has failed to deal with this problem, slapping on DS without a look will not break the back of this problem. It will likely just affect a portion of it. AlbinoFerret 16:40, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with AndyTheGrump's statement here [7] and that the infighting has likely scared away editors from the articles. I participated in an RFC on the GMO Food article, but found the caustic nature of the talk page to be more than I wanted to endure, so I left. I believe there are probably others who feel that its just not worth dealing with the caustic nature, and leave, because of this the articles suffer. AlbinoFerret 18:29, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by jps

At the risk of subjecting myself to yet another arbcom case. I would like to give the committee some context for this discussion. The area of "GMOs", that is genetically engineered food, has been an issue at Wikipedia because of the political controversies associated with this area in Europe, the United States, and, to a lesser extent, India. There are many aspects to this story, but these issues have been showing up at the Fringe theories noticeboard discussions for more than two years:

The general argument of many anti-GMO proponents on Wikipedia is either to include sources that indicate that GMOs are bad for health or the environment, but the issue is that these sources tend to be either unpublished or published in dubious journals. The next argument that gets made is that the mainstream articles which are published that indicate genetically modified foodstuffs are not dangerous to health nor are they particularly worse for the environment than non-genetically modified foodstuffs (which are still subject to gene manipulation through many other means -- but no matter) are being written by corporate shills. This is being much trumpeted outside of Wikipedia as well. For example, here we have an article on a somewhat prominent "natural health" site that loudly proclaims, "Wikipedia claims to be run by "volunteers" but is actually edited by corporate-paid trolls on many topics such as GMOs, vaccines, chemotherapy and pharmaceuticals."

Discretionary sanctions for areas that are likely to be targeted by individuals convinced that Wikipedia is part of the big conspiracy would be useful, and there are a number of accounts who promote rather dubious sourcing claims that probably should be shown the door. Examples of such accounts can be given in the evidence section of an arbcomm case, for example.

jps (talk) 17:45, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by (uninvolved) AndyTheGrump

I'd just like to add my voice to those pointing out that this isn't just a 'pseudoscience' issue - there are multiple reasons for opposition to GMOs, many of which have nothing to do with the natural sciences as such, and it is a gross oversimplification to present this as some sort of battle against a fringe driven by irrationality. The debate also involves a complex interaction of economics, politics and sociocultural issues, and proper encyclopaedic coverage needs to take this into account - something that the current battleground behaviour has made a distant prospect. If ArbCom takes on this case, I would suggest that they consider the first priority to be ensuring that measures are taken to ensure that the topic be given the broad encyclopaedic coverage it merits, rather than allowing it to be dominated by faction-fighting AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:15, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by DrChrissy

Question Please can we agree on the scope here. GMO is not only GM-food, it includes GM-animals, other organisms and very possibly, related articles such as Glyphosate. I am not really concerned what the scope is, but I do think we need to be extremely clear here.DrChrissy (talk) 18:01, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is it usual to have a question placed under a "Statement" heading?DrChrissy (talk) 18:42, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by {Non-party}

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the case request or provide additional information.

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

GMO articles: Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter <0/0/0/2>

Vote key: (Accept/decline/recuse/other)

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