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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was removed by YellowAssessmentMonkey 07:14, 22 September 2009 [1].

Parapsychology[edit]

Review commentary[edit]

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I am nominating this featured article for review because this article has major problems with original research, tone, and verifiability. Several times, it seems to go well beyond, or even directly contradict what the references say, as well as using a large number of dubious references. Take Parapsychology#Contributions_to_other_disciplines [Edited to add: I've taken the liberty of deleting this entire section: See [2] if the deletion sticks --Shoemaker's Holiday Over 193 FCs served 19:02, 18 August 2009 (UTC)][reply]

Also, my I mention that the citations are very poorly done? They lack much of the information needed to easily find them a lot of the time, like issue numbers. I've had to click repeatedly on issues until I found the relevant one.

Claim Evidence Rejoinder --Rodgarton 06:08, 28 August 2009 (UTC) Comments (please sign)
"The practice of randomization and associated techniques such as "blind" administration of conditions were principally developed in the conduct of early psychical research, and have since become standard practice in scientific experiments." Claims about blinding actively contradicted by citation; randomisation claims overstated: The Bulletin of the History of Medicine does not say any such thing. Its discussion of blinding begins in the late 18th century, and, several pages of chronologically-organised examples later discusses that the first use of blinding in psychic research began after 1884. It does say "From this point [after Richet befgan using blinding sometime after 1884], blinding quickly became an essential feature of psychical research, as did Richet's random selection methods (au hasard), which he used as an additional precaution to ensure concealment. 71 When university-sanctioned psychical and parapsychology research centers were opened in the early twentieth century, blind assessment and early forms of randomization were also an integral component of their research protocols." - However, it does not credit this work with any innovation in the protocols, randomisation, or any other blinding technique.[1]


The Isis source's main statement on the matter is that Richet's randomisation methods were groundbreaking, but also credits various other fields as well, such as the later work of R. A. Fisher, and Pierce's earlier work with using playing cards to randomise a study on the perception of small differences in weights. Hence, "principally developed" is somewhat of an overstatement.[2]

Hacking's (1988) thesis is that randomization developed from tackling the challenges posed by psi research. This is clearly given in the title of the article - "Telepathy: Origins of randomization in experimental design". It is clearly given in the first lines of the article: "Psychic research may seem an implausible place to study the emergence of a new kind of experimental methodology. Yet it is there that we find the first faltering use, by many investigators, of a technique that is now standard in many sciences and mandatory in much sociology and biology" p. 427. This thesis is carefully argued throughout the article, by reference to correspondence by Fisher as well as published texts. Even Fisher's famous "milk-in-the-tea" example of applying randomization is attributed to his prior work on psi research. Naturally, in such a carefully argued thesis, it is possible to pull out some lines to demonstrate contrary points.

Randomization is not the principle topic of Kaptchuck's article, so naturally we do not see Kaptchuck repeating Hacking's thesis; hence we have a false attack. Kaptchuck yet does refer to Hacking's thesis without complaint. However, pointing to what both articles say re randomization, C. Watt (who the complainant quoted in another context) offered that "Historians have argued that the origins of the use of randomisation in experimental design can be traced to the early card-guessing experiments of the SPR (Hacking, 1988;Kaptchuk, 1998)" (Watt, C. A. (2005). "Parapsychology's contribution to psychology: A view from the front line." Journal of Parapsychology 69(2): 215-231.).

As for blind-administration, Kaptchuck identifies it as firstly developed to test the claims of the Mesmerists: "As far as I can ascertain, the first series of blind assessments and sham interventions for the purpose of scientific appraisal was aimed at mesmerism, the most popular and threatening unconventional healing system to appear in the late eighteenth century. ... The first blindfold experiment was performed at Benjamin Franklin's house. A series of women selected by the cooperating mesmerist as "good subjects" were physically blindfolded, with bandages (so that they "could no longer know anything respecting the conduct of the experiment". This information has also been dealt with by Schwartz (Proceedings of the PA, 2006), who, on this basis, argues that Benjamin Franklin should even be recognized as the first parapsychologist. Schwartz yet finds that tests of the dowser Aymar, preceding those by Franklin, introduced blind-administration. The original conference paper is abstracted here http://www.parapsych.org/pa_abstracts_2005.html ; and an online version, focusing on Franklin, can be read here: http://www.stephanaschwartz.com/PDF/blind_protocol.pdf . Most readers will recognize that such tests of dowsing and of being blindly influenced at a distance by another person are expressions of psi research. If there is an argument against that interpretation, then we should be happy to see it.

Accordingly, to say that randomization, and blind-administration, were principally developed in psi research, is true to the thesis of each of the above articles, respectively; and we may add to these the information from the articles by Watt and Schwartz.

This is typical of Rodgarton's sections: Where parapsychology might reasonably be given partial credit, he gives it all, and merely having some technique of parapsychology published in the journal of another field is enough to credit significant contributions to that field. Both are extreme hyperbole. On the specific claims he makes:

Since when was mesmerism parapsychology? It's pretty typical 18th-century vitalist medicine. Are studies of reiki now part of parapsychology? The Kaputchuk source quotes many, many different fields, and covers the history of blinding in all of them. He specifically discusses parapsychology by name in one section, and draws no claims as to any particular importance of parapsychology in blinding while discussing it. As for the randomisation, you're again using original research on the title of Hacking's paper, and ignoring the actual content of it. The Hacking paper shows randomisation was taken on by parapsychology, and that some of the work there was groundbreaking. It then continues to show that other fields then took it up, and refined and developed it. The Hacking paper is much, much too vague to support the inflated claim (giving parapsychology almost all of the credit) made; it would certainly be possible to use it to make claims for parapsychology, but not the claims you made. "Originated" is NOT THE SAME AS "principally developed" Shoemaker's Holiday Over 201 FCs served 10:54, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have clearly represented the core of Hacking's thesis, as I intended to do, in a phrase; and my representation of it is equivalent to that previously given by Watt. Please take note of the precedence that I have followed. The complainant appears to require that we extend this to include all the subtleties and nuances of Hacking's thesis, by a paragraph or two. By all means, then, let it be done. That is no justification, however, to distort the main thesis, nor to censor it, as has been done. The aside on blind randomisation that speaks of "mesmerism as parapsychology" is a non-sequiteur; it does not follow from what I have stated of my reasoning, which also follows the precedence of Schwartz. I can see that my attempt to succinctly deal with both randomization and blind-admin in a single sentence (given that they both deal with what psi research has contributed to basic experimental method), and so by a single phrase - "principally developed" - can create misunderstanding, and it would have been more appropriate to only describe randomization as "principally developed" (or, more strongly, originated) within psi research, and blind-admin as principally developed with the study of psiological research, as science confronted claims of the "paranormal" or similar. The objective of the experiments that I have referred to, of the Academy of Medicine's commission, after all, was to study the claim of "community of sensation," not Mesmerism in general.
I have no intention, by the way, to "inflate" the claims of parapsychology's offerings to science in general or particular sciences. That is not required to offer an account of what it has positively contributed to other sciences. I wish to represent what has been recognized by others. Naturally, there will be argument in how this represented. It does not, however, merit total censure and elimination, and misrepresentation. --Rodgarton 19:55, 31 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I am stating what you did, intentionally or not. You failed to produce a usable, encyclopedic section, and this is mainly because you throw everything in, and apparently skipped over the sections not about parapsychology, which meant that, while there is often a small amount of language in the source to back your claims, the source as a whole generally goes against them. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 203 FCs served 09:10, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I have represented the substantive arguments and historical points, naturally as they are relevant to an article on parapsychology, and as they have already been re-represented (which the complainant ignores). The complainant is simply offering a personal interpretation of how they were represented, on top of a personal interpretation of the articles themselves. Essentially, the complainant wishes to justify elimination of description of the article's substantive points by complaining that how these points are developed and substantiated is not represented in the parapsychology article. The complainant is free to provide such information if s/he wishes. As s/he has chosen, instead, to eliminate the information altogether, it is clear that her/his objective has always been to eliminate the information, and to deny the readers of WP access to it, and then to come up with a spray of points - argued by adamant assertion and emotional appeals - to justify her/his autonomous actions. Instead of an encyclopedic process, we are offered a document of personal disgust. --Rodgarton 04:18, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
The field has also contributed to the advance of statistical methodology, with probability theory having been adopted by Charles Richet to the evaluation of card-guessing results, and considerably advanced by Rhine, Pratt and associates at the Duke University Parapsychology Laboratory from the 1930s. No citation. The Isis source (above, [3]) states "Richet hardly introduced probabilistic reasoning into psychology, let alone into science in general... But it remains true that, outside of astronomy and geodesy, probability had little role in scientific inference at the time Richet wrote" - and then goes on to credit Bioinformatics as a major influence in the further growth of probability in science.

It's also worth mentioning that the Isis source states that Richet's experiments, in the end, had wholly negative results. This is another problem with the article: it has a habit of mentioning studies as having been done, but not mentioning they were deemed negative in the end, e.g. the statement removed here: "...and research trials conducted under contract to the United States government to investigate whether remote viewing would provide useful intelligence information." (They decided it did not)

I have not relied on Hacking for this statement, as the complainant implies, so showing what Hacking does or does not say on this point is another false attack. Whether or not Richet's experiments were positive or negative is also beside the issue of the value of his study in methodological terms. The complainant's argument is reminiscent of that often attributed to Rhine that there is no value in studies with only negative results. Citations were collectively provided to this and the following statements to articles in statistical journals and others, for example, to Stevens, W. L. (1939). Tests of significance for extrasensory perception data. Psychological Review, 46, 142-150. I cite some more below. Note that there is not, as the complainant goes on to argue against, any statement here that Richet was the first person to use statistics (!). I did not say you relied on Hacking, but he does directly contradict you. You cited no source whatsoever, unless we're supposed to have read your mind, but the information still appears to be wrong. Furthermore, as, at the time, the article constantly mentioned tests that came out negative that sounded impressive, without mentioning their results (we've been editing much of this out), that this was yet another example of this behaviour was important to pointing out problems with the article. Finally, I do not say that you say Richet was the first to use statistics. I was pointing out what could reasonably be said: If the article had used the Hacking source to discuss Richet, it could have made valid claims for parapsychology and statistics, but, again, the claims made were not the valid ones, but ones I can show at least one source goes against. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 201 FCs served 10:54, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I have trouble following the complainant's argument here; given the emotive spray and ungrammatical reasoning. And the illogical reasoning: To say that "The field has also contributed to the advance of statistical methodology, with probability theory having been adopted by Charles Richet ..." is not contradicted by the statement that "Richet hardly introduced probabilistic reasoning into psychology". In any case, it seems necessary to repeat that I have provided several references in the original paragraph, and have since provided additional ones. Another non-sequiteur. --Rodgarton 19:55, 31 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
WP:NPA, please. That's a half-quotation. The actual quote is "The field has also contributed to the advance of statistical methodology, with probability theory having been adopted by Charles Richet to the evaluation of card-guessing results" Since he did not introduce probabilistic reasoning into psychology, and card guessing is not important to other fields, how is this suitable for inclusion under "Contributions to other fields". There's claims that can and should be made for Richet's work in this article, but you have completely sidestepped them. Furthermore, the quote continues "and considerably advanced by Rhine, Pratt and associates at the Duke University Parapsychology Laboratory from the 1930s." and that seems to be an entirely misleading phrase: I believe you were trying to say they improved experimental techniques for card guessing, but as, I remind you again, the section's title is "Contributions to other disciplines". All you can say about improvements in card-guessing experiments is that they represent a tightening of te experimental techniques of parapsychology. That information could go into the article (if well-sourced) but could hardly count as a contribution to any other discipline. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 203 FCs served 09:10, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The complainant fails to reply to what I noted of the illogicality of her/his argument; this is not changed by completing the sentence, which of course is available in a blink to the reader. Instead, s/he introduces some new points - principally, that the card-guessing method is only relevant to parapsychology. The complainant does not even try to justify this assertion, and that is to be expected for it is simply not true. Card-guessing is a procedure of forced-choice identification, which is a paradigm used throughout psychology to study perception, visual recognition, visual memory, among many other processes. If the statistical methods developed in parapsychology - which involve more than what the complainant now novelly presents as "tightening experimental techniques" - were not relevant to other disciplines it would not have been possible to cite articles on the methods as published in Science and general statistical and psychological journals. In order to rebut this evidence, and, say, the arguments of Stokes that I have also quoted at the length, the complainant is obliged not merely to continue to assert her/his own opinion, or give us ever novel variants of it, but to cite at least one academic source that represents her/his argument. Otherwise, we have only original POV, and nothing of reliable merit. --Rodgarton 04:18, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
A monographic review of the first sixty years of organised parapsychological research has been identified as the first meta-analysis in the history of science, and a similar effort was offered by parapsychological researchers in the journal Nature immediately prior to the now common practice of statistically generalising over independently conducted experiments. [ETA: Provably completely false, and the author knew this.. See [3] which identifies loads and loads of previous meta-analyses, and Rodgarton was fully aware of the earlier ones, as he added in a very different (but equally false) claim to meta-analysis just after a discussion of a 1904 meta-analysis. It's becoming obvious that Rodgarton doesn't care about accuracy in the slightest. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 204 FCs served 21:27, 10 September 2009 (UTC)]] Only relevant cite not reliable - it cites the Nature review, but the review itself cannot, of course, demonstrate that it itself was innovative or influential - that depends on others' reactions. The main cite for this is to the "47th Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association" - and the Parapsychological Association is not a reliable source, nor are conventions peer reviewed or otherwise reliable for such major claims.[reply] We should want some explanation for how academic papers are not reliable given their presentation at one or another conference. The author of the article I mentioned was first author of a paper on meta-analysis in the leading journal of the American Psychological Association, Psychological Bulletin, which must certainly qualify him with some expertise to write on the topic [Bösch, H., Steinkamp, F., & Boller, E. (2006). Examining psychokinesis: The interaction of human intention with random number generators - a meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(4), 497-523.]. In this article, in Psychological Bulletin, there were no less than 51 citations of papers presented to the Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association; which is the source that the complainant calls unreliable. Obviously, these papers were copiously admissible by the editors of the Psychological Bulletin - why should they then not be admissible by the editors of WP? Conference papers are not peer reviewed, and are generally subject to a fairly minimal level of scrutiny. They are essentially no better than self-published sources. Does the Psychological Bulletin paper back your claims? Was it on history of meta-analyses, or on technique? Shoemaker's Holiday Over 201 FCs served 10:54, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I have tried to offer an objective basis for meriting citation of PA presented papers; viz., the precedence of citing them in articles in a very mainstream journal. I believe this stands well above the personal opinions and subjective estimations that have now been explicated as the basis of the complainant's concerns. --Rodgarton 19:55, 31 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You said that other papers were cited. Show this paper was cited. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 203 FCs served 09:10, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Whatever the complainant is now insisting on, it does not appear to be substantive. There has been no claim, nor even requirement, that the article by Bösch in Psychol. Bull. (concerning meta-analysis of a PK database) was referenced in my original note of his meta-analysis of the early card-guessing experiments. The complainant is seeking to obfuscate the issues with trivial points of rhetoric and non-sequiteurs. --Rodgarton 04:18, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
Improved analysis of multiple responses to individual targets was inspired by the occurrence of the challenge in some group tests of ESP, and similar challenges inspired the development of other statistical techniques Some studies discussing the analysis of such results are analyses, but this section is supposed to demonstrate that Parapsychology generalised to other fields - and there is no evidence provided that the statistical discussions linked ever became widely used. The section concerns the contributions of psi research to other fields. There is no statement or implication in the section that "Parapsychology generalised to other fields" (again, a false attack). The fact that papers, as I cited, have been published in various non-parapsychological journals on issues of general interest, but principally developed in psi research, is the evidence of the contribution.

We could add to this estimation of the statistical contributions of psi research from others, e.g., Stokes [Stokes, D. M. (1991). Mathematics and parapsychology. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 85(3), 251-290] writes that "It is perhaps safe to say that parapsychology has had more impact on the field of statistics than on any other orthodox discipline and that parapsychologists have made more important contributions to statistics than to any other orthodox field" (p. 280); and "Due to the statistical nature of the most rigorous evidence for psi, parapsychologists have not only found themselves drawn into debates regarding fundamental statistical issues, but have also had to develop certain areas of statistical theory themselves in order to deal with the unique problems of parapsychology. Also, in several instances, parapsychological situations have provided the inspiration for the development of statistics by the statisticians themselves"(p. 281).

The complainant also takes issue with the reference format. These are offered in the APA style, for which issue numbers are provided only when relevant (i.e., repagination of each issue in a volume); see http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/instruct/guides/apastyle.pdf

It's not a contribution to other fields if the other fields never use it. You still have not provided any evidence of it ever being used outside of parapsychology. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 201 FCs served 10:54, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Again, I would rather rely on objective criteria of contribution - such as publication of ideas, techniques and data in non-parapsychological journals - rather than the subjective and ever arguable measures that the complainant appears to be requiring. --Rodgarton 19:55, 31 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, you have not shown any use of the parapsychological techniques by mainstream fields, until you do, there is zero objective evidence of any sort of "Contributions to other disciplines" - the title of the section. The section is neither "Publications in the journals o fother fields" nor "Uses of other fields in parapsychology. This is basic referencing stuff, and if you don't understand this, you probably shouldn't be working on any sort of controversial article. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 203 FCs served 09:10, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The complainant simply provides further statement of her/his personal criteria for the bases of interdisciplinary contributions. Naturally, the information can always be expanded, but the complainant does not invite this. S/he eliminates the information altogether, so again demonstrating that s/he is primarily interested in eliminating the information, and then coming up with a spray of emotive reasons - with a good deal of ad hominem attack - to justify her/his actions. It could well be said that such approaches disqualify her/him from "working on any sort of controversial article".--Rodgarton 04:18, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

|} We could go through the rest of this section; however, I think it's more useful to look at some others:

Parapsychology#Rhine_era primarily comes from a single source: Berger, Arthur S.; Berger, Joyce (1991). The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. Paragon House Publishers - One might question the neutrality of this, but let's let that pass a moment. More problematic is this paragraph:

The parapsychology experiments at Duke evoked much criticism from academic psychologists who challenged the concepts and evidence of ESP. Rhine and his colleagues attempted to address these criticisms through new experiments, articles, and books, and summarized the state of the criticism along with their responses in the book Extra-Sensory Perception After Sixty Years.

What is the source for this very weak criticism? The people being criticised: Rhine, J.B. (1966). Foreword. In Pratt, J.G., Rhine, J.B., Smith, B.M., Stuart, C.E., & Greenwood, J.A. (eds.). Extra-Sensory Perception After Sixty Years, 2nd ed. Boston, US: Humphries.

It is very bad practice to hand over the task of summarising criticism to the people being criticised, and then, further, not actually bother to mention the critical arguments discussed in the biased source.

Furthermore, there are some major weight issues: Parapsychology is pretty clearly a fringe theory, however, an inordinate amount of weight is given to the Parapsychological Association. For instance, we get this paragraph, from out of nowhere, in Parapsychology#Parapsychology_today:

The Parapsychological Association states that the presently available, cumulative statistical database for experiments studying some parapsychological effects provides strong, scientifically credible evidence for these effects. This includes presentiment, ESP, and mind-matter interaction. The Association states that an increasing number of parapsychologists are moving beyond proof-oriented research, because they believe experimental success has already been established, and instead looking at more detailed factors to better understand the phenomena.

This is from the section on history of parapsychology, let me emphasise, and yet blatant advocacy is present, cited only to a tiny organisation of about 300 people worldwide (and that tiny organisation is the largest association f parapsychologists, no less), and yet they're allowed to summarise the state of the field, with no challenge from the mainstream view, in the middle of an irrelevant section. I have deleted this particular paragraph now, but this article has a ridiculous number of problems for an FA. It would never make FA today, and is so far from accepted FA standards that I can't see it being brought back up to them anytime soon. One possibility might be to revert back to the featured version, then try and fix problems from there. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 193 FCs served 18:50, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for doing this. I agree that there are severe problems with the article because of recent overzealous editing. I would like to say that I hope that editors will turn the article around and regain its FA status, but like you I think the scale of the problem makes it unlikely. Mentioning that government-sponsored studies were done, without mentioning that they were negative, seems a worryingly blatant case of agenda-pushing. Giving Rhine the "last word" on his own experiments, when plenty was published about them by third parties since then, is also blatant POV. MartinPoulter (talk) 21:09, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In the past week, the editors above (NOTE: Except for MartinPoulter) have the editor above, Shoemaker's Holiday, has edited Parapsychology with a meat cleaver and sledgehammer. The careful wordings and citations, the neutrality and consensus that successfully brought this article to FA has been successfully eliminated. Gone. The article is now canonical: Parapsychology is bullshit and anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot or worse.
After a slash and burn of many long months of consensus editing, the fine editors above now note -- very correctly -- that following their POV edits the article is NOW a stinking heap of garbage. And having gotten it to this stinking state, they now want it de-FA'ed.
I am in total agreement with them. This article is no longer FA quality. Not in any way. Thanks guys! --Nemonoman (talk) 13:16, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
PS. You guys could turn this into a business.
Actually, if you look at the version that was featured, not one thing that has been removed was in it. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 195 FCs served 13:22, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Nor did it contain your many helpful new edits.
As to the info you removed, en masse, with no discussion, god bless you. Apparently you're comfortable that new info, including numerous citations, describing parapsychology in a reasonably positive light may be removed without comment. And that other information describing parapsychology in a skeptical light may be added without comment. Do we detect a pattern?
Some of us editors who regard it as good wiki-business to keep the article neutral were working that new material over. Apparently not fast enough to satisfy you, particularly when you had so much new skeptical material to add.
How much of this FAR is based on the actual quality of the article, and how much is based on a belief that the SUBJECT MATTER does not merit a Featured Article. That's something I'll be thinking about today. --Nemonoman (talk) 15:01, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, but did you actually read my comments above, which explicitly demonstrates that the citations were abused and actively contradicted what was cited to them? Shoemaker's Holiday Over 195 FCs served 15:12, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Nemonoman, I think Shoemaker's Holiday has explained fairly clearly that the information in the article did not always match the sources given, so although there was the appearance of the article being sourced, this was deceptive. Maybe you should re-read the evidence presented in this FAR. Nev1 (talk) 15:23, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I know what he said. This was not my experience. Most of the material that was the subject of this complaint was the work of one new, extremely voluble, editor. In my early work on some of those new edits, I found most of the information being cited. The editor was inexperienced, but working with incorrectly or poorly cited references of new editors is part of the job, it seems to me. That said: I found most of the information being cited when I went looking, with a modicum of difficulty, except in one instance, which I marked[citation needed]. Using [citation needed] is one way of improving an article, by giving some respect to work of new editors. Another, apparently, is to delete it willy-nilly.--Nemonoman (talk) 16:05, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I want to emphasize that I have not had time to review all of the new citations to validate. I suppose if SH can tar them with a broad brush, that is the only option available. Guilty, I suppose, until proven innocent.
Rather than discuss these problems on the article's talk page, or do the hard work of editing reasonably workable material, or at least adding some fixit tags if that would be too much trouble, what we have here is an end run around the typical editorial process, which I find insulting to editors who worked to raise the article to FA status. I am NOT one of those editors, but I respect them and their work. What little work I have done on this article was subsequent to its FA promotion. But I am sorely tired of editors who decide to raise their little complaints in General Forums, rather than with those actively at work on an article.
I have seen with my own eyes parapsychology research in process, good and bad. I was one of the persons involved in bringing Jay Levy's fraud to light: see the Fraud section of the article. I don't know if ESP exists or doesn't exist, but I do have an open mind and I don't have an agenda. I'm one of the editors concerned with WP:RS and WP:NPOV, and this article has issues involving both. Issues that can be and should be worked out through careful effort, good editing, and consensus. Not by sudden escalation to a different venue.
Like I said: delist it. In the long run, this tempest is not worth the teapot. --Nemonoman (talk) 16:46, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Those "actively at work on an article" should have picked up on the attribution of sources as is was introduced, rather than let it deteriorate to the state where someone felt the need to bring it to FAR. Shoemaker's Holiday removed a lot of poorly sourced information, actually removing POV. As for your question "how much of this FAR is based on the actual quality of the article, and how much is based on a belief that the SUBJECT MATTER does not merit a Featured Article", all of the comments I have seen by Shoemaker's Holiday relate to poor sourcing (criterion 1a) so implying prejudice is distinctly unhelpful. Nev1 (talk) 16:59, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The majority of objections I see here relate to changes made by one editor who apparently quit once Ryanpaddy and I began to NPOV some of his edits. The changes that are so objectionable were in place for 8 days total. By contrast, you, Nev1, and SH and MartinPoulter SH and to a lesser extent Matisse have made considerable, POV-changing edits in one big burst yesterday, and then SH FAR'd the article.
Since all the materials removed were suggesting the legitimacy of some areas of psi research, and since all the additions made by the Gang of 3 2 suggest that psi reserach is bullshit, I bring that fact to the awareness of others who may be reading this discussion, and who may decide to express opinions.
The material that the 3 of you was removed may not live up to FA standards. But it is generally considered poor form to remove reasonably added, reasonably cited material without attempting to improve it. Which is why I will be leaving your new Agenda-driven POV additions in place until I've had time to see what, if anything, can be salvaged from them.
The FA question is YOUR question. If you wanted to challenge the material you deleted, or to discuss why you were adding the material you added, you might have done so on the talk page before escalating to this forum.
The FA question is your question, and the outcome up or down is meaningless to me. The quality of the article, good or bad, speaks for itself. I have seen shit raised to FA status, and deserving articles failed. So why do you and your buddies want to make a big ado about this? It seems to me that your edits point to the reason. You don't like the article's tone. If the article doesn't agree with psi research=bullshit agenda you have plastered all over your new additions, then it must be de-FA'ed. In support of this thesis I point to SH's comment that he removed material not present in the FA version. He sure didn't remove the newly added Gang-of-3 approved additions. If SH were really concerned that article had left FA status because of the material that was removed, he could have done this without adding a lot of extra opinions.
While I'm on the subject of poor citations, may I please point out that this and similar comments made above "Giving Rhine the "last word" on his own experiments, when plenty was published about them by third parties since then, is also blatant POV." don't offer much help to me as an editor. What studies, please? Why not quote them in the article, if that's the desire? And also, who precisely is to be given the last word? Must it always be a skeptic to be satisfactory?
In fact I think the discussion speaks for itself, and pretty much proves the point that an agenda is at work. --Nemonoman (talk) 17:46, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
One further item: the ARTICLE must neutral, but not its sources. The sources must be VERIFIABLE, but need not be true, let alone neutral. I invite you have a long hard look at WP:NPOV and WP:RS and read the ACTUAL WORDS there, not what you think the words should be. So a comment like this above about a source ..."primarily comes from a single source: Berger, Arthur S.; Berger, Joyce (1991). The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. Paragon House Publishers - One might question the neutrality of this, but let's let that pass a moment." is essentially off the tracks. If the information is VERIFIABLE, it passes. It need NOT be NPOV. The article, however, must not cite that work to the exclusion of other works contradicting or questioning the citation. Which is why I'm interested that plenty was published about them by third parties since then,. --Nemonoman (talk) 17:56, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I stopped reading your ramblings after you characterised these edits of mine (the only ones I have made recently to the parapsychology article) as POV. You clearly have not read them as I was providing sources. From that, I conclude that have no idea what my stance on the subject is and are clearly trolling. Nev1 (talk) 18:04, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Above, Nemonoman writes "you, Nev1, and SH and MartinPoulter have made considerable, POV-changing edits in one big burst yesterday," referring presumably to the 18 August. I'm also included in the accusation against "the above editors". I made no edits to the article on 18 August, as can easily be confirmed using the article history. I have not edited the article since 11 August. Please retract this unfounded accusation. MartinPoulter (talk) 21:56, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Nev1 and MartinPoulter are entirely correct calling me to account. I apologize to them. My cloudy brain somehow confused Matisse with Martin and I screwed that one over pretty well. Martin, I ask you to forgive this lapse. When you get as old and tired and stupid as I am, you might have a momentary lapse as well. Nev1 is also correct: changes to the article were reasonable and benign by any standards. I did not take the time to note this specifically. This is a failure on my part, and I have no excuse. Nev1, I also ask you to forgive me. I can offer no good reason for you to do this however.
I will correct my above edits to address my mistakes. --Nemonoman (talk) 22:33, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the prompt apology. MartinPoulter (talk) 22:38, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Images lack alt text as per WP:ALT. Please click on "alt text" in the toolbox at upper right of this review page. 03:42, 22 August 2009 (UTC)


Rejoinder: The justifications of the censorship are not reliable. I return to the sources I cited.

  • Hacking (1988) Isis: The article bears this title: "Telepathy: Origins of Randomization in Experimental Design" - that is the thesis of the article. It is very subtly argued, through close reading of correspondence from Fisher, as well as the public texts. The issue is not as black and white as we might like it to be. It is possible to extract one or more sentences of debate - of course it is. But please do not misrepresent the author's thesis. The thesis is surprising (as I noted), but there is an historical reasoning here that merits at least some encyclopedic representation given the bald and contrary representation in this article of Alcock's assertion (with no reasoning behind it) that psi research has contributed nothing.
  • Kaptchuk (1998) Bulletin of the History of Medicine: If the quotes provided by the respondent are not themselves sufficient to establish the point, please survey some others. Kaptchuk wrote "As far as I can ascertain, the first series of blind assessments and sham interventions for the purpose of scientific appraisal was aimed at mesmerism, the most popular and threatening unconventional healing system to appear in the late eighteenth century. ... The commission limited its investigation to determining whether the purported effects of animal magnetism were due to any "real" force [versus illusion]. ... The first blindfold experiment was performed at Benjamin Franklin's house. A series of women selected by the cooperating mesmerist as "good subjects" were physically blindfolded, with bandages (so that they "could no longer know anything respecting the conduct of the experiment" 15 ), and asked to locate where the mesmeric energy was being directed. It was observed that

    while the woman was permitted to see the operation, she placed her sensations precisely in the part towards which it was directed; that on the other hand, when she did not see the operation, she placed them at hazard, and in parts very distant from those which were the object of magnetism. It was natural to conclude that these sensations, real or pretended, were determined by the imagination.

    In another series of experiments, women patients were deceived by the scientists into believing that they were receiving mesmerism from an adjoining room through a paper curtain over a door." Referring back to these scenarios in his "Conclusion," Kaptchuk wrote: "Intentional ignorance [i.e., blind administration of experimental conditions] began as a method to challenge the "bogus" claims of unconventional medicine; some unorthodox practitioners adopted it in self-defense. At times, some nineteenth-century iconoclastic conventional medical leaders found it valuable in their polemics. Later, veiled procedures moved into psychology, psychic research, neurology, psychiatry, and pharmacology." Perhaps the argument, with respect to this particular article, boils down to whether these tests of the Mesmerists amounted to psychical research. There is enough even in these quotes to state the affirmative. I would be pleased to discuss the contrary. It is not original POV, in fact it is quite normative. The argument has also been represented by S. Schwartz (Proceedings of the PA, 2006), who goes on to describe Franklin as the first parapsychologist; while showing that other tests - of the dowser Aymar - preceding those by Franklin introduced blind-administration. The article can be read here: www.stephanaschwartz.com/PDF/blind_protocol.pdf On the same topic, consider also that Boirac in his La psychologie inconnue (1917) represented animal magnetism and telepathy as common to a single class of phenomena; such is how it was thought about at the time; see also Rhine, J. B. (1942). "Hypnotism, "graduate" of parapsychology [Editorial]." Journal of Parapsychology, 6, 159-163.

In another context, the editor in question cites Caroline Watt of the University of Edinburgh, as expressing (to his/her wits) a favorable perspective on parapsychological practice. Watt can be quoted as stating that "Historians have argued that the origins of the use of randomisation in experimental design can be traced to the early card-guessing experiments of the SPR (Hacking, 1988;Kaptchuk, 1998)" (Watt, C. A. (2005). "Parapsychology's contribution to psychology: A view from the front line." Journal of Parapsychology 69(2): 215-231.) . That is, in case you missed it, Watt refers to precisely the two articles I referenced in stating that the scientific procedures in question were "principally developed" in researching questions that we now dub, as per this WP article, as "parapsychological". If my phrase "principally developed" is not an appropriate reflection of this secondary estimation, and my side-line reference to associated procedures ("blind administration") is deemed to be too direct, perhaps another phrase or two can be suggested, in harmony with Watt's assessment, or perhaps by closer - and more representative - examination of the original authors. (Now let us give the same scrutiny to Alcock's baldly quoted assertion.)

  • The proponent of this nomination complains that "The main cite for this is to the "47th Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association" - and the Parapsychological Association is not a reliable source, nor are conventions peer reviewed or otherwise reliable for such major claims." Such assertions fall easily off the tongue, unsupported by even a gesture of evidence, while they blindly defame the editors of the Psychological Bulletin - one of the leading flag-ship journals of the American Psychological Association. We find published in the 2006 volume of this journal an article by the same author in question which, in its Reference section, lists no less than 51 papers as presented at one or another convention of the Parapsychological Association; see Bösch, H., F. Steinkamp, et al. (2006). "Examining psychokinesis: The interaction of human intention with random number generators - a meta-analysis." Psychological Bulletin 132(4): 497-523. If such copious citations to papers delivered at conferences of the Parapsychological Association are worthy enough for the editors of the Psychological Bulletin, they should be worthy enough for citation by the editors of WP.
  • The proponent lastly offers that "there is no evidence provided that the statistical discussions linked ever became widely used." On the contrary, the citations given offer these statistical developments to mainstream statistical audiences, and not for parapsychological usage alone. See, for example:

Greville, T. N. E. (1941). "The frequency distribution of a general matching problem." Annals of Mathematical Statistics 12: 350-354.

Greville, T. N. E. (1944). "On multiple matching with one variable deck." Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 15, 432-434.

Gridgeman, N. T. (1960). "Card-matching experiments: A conspectus of theory." Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (General), 123,(1) 45-49.

Sterne, T. E. (1937). The solution of a problem in probability. Science, 6, 500-501.

Whether these and like articles published in these and other journals ever led to any applications is as much a question for any article published in these journals, and not only those based upon questions of assessing parapsychological data (i.e., those attending to the relationship between humanly generated data, and data generated on the basis of theoretical distributions). The fact of their publication is the evidence of the contribution.

As for the complaint about referring to Richet's work, there is no claim in the censored section that he introduced statistical reasoning into psychology or elsewhere; he was plainly an early adopter and that is precisely what the quote from the proponent represents. And Richet's experiments were entirely negative? Doubtlessly some of his experiments were; but which ones, and if you wish to refer to the negatives, we shall also have to introduce elaboration of the positives. Brush up on such offerings from Richet by following these references:

Balfour, A. B. (1888). "Some remarks on Professor Richet's experiments on the possibility of clairvoyant perceptions of drawings." Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 3: 348-354.

Gurney, E. (1884). "M. Richet's recent researches in thought-transference." Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 2: 239-264.

Mazana, J. and M. R. Arino (1991). "Charles Robert Richet and some milestones in the history of allergies." Journal Investig Allergol Clinical Immunology 1(2): 93-100.

Richet, C. (1888). "Expériences sur le sommeil à distance." Revue Philosophique 25(435-452).

Richet, C. (1927). Our Sixth Sense. London, UK, Rider.

  • The proponent complains that "I've had to click repeatedly on issues until I found the relevant one". The references are given in a standard form: that offered by the American Psychological Association, and adopted by many other sciences. It is not customary, in this standard, to list issue numbers, unless the page numbers per issue are re-commenced. That is, if the page numbers continuously accrue throughout a volume, it is not considered necessary to list the issue numbers, in addition to the volume numbers, and pages. In any case, the complainant could have cut down on clicking by simply using the search facilities, on the various journal sites, entering author, year, etc.. WP articles can not be held accountable for problems in accessing referenced articles when these are presented in conventional forms, and when quite simple means are available for direct access to the articles of interest.
  • Lastly, the proponent has offered complaints about some few statements in the section s/he censored. These barely touch 20%, I hazard, of the overall content s/he eliminated. We know that s/he didn't like the information, but what other reason is there to censor it?

Rodgarton 14:25, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Rodgarden's analysis is pretty much completely fallacious. He seems to think that if something was presented to a mainstream audience, it is vitally important to the mainstream (and can be discussed in a section on parapsychology's contributins to the mainstream); that if parapsychologists are said to be early adopters of a technique, alongside other fields, that it was "principally developed" by them, even if the paper itself credits other fields and people with its main development; hell, that just having parapsychological studies mentioned in connection with a technique lets parapsychology claim all credit for them. A few specific points:
  • The Isis source which you used yourself says Richet's experiments were negative.
  • There's a difference between "partially developed" and "primarily developed", some sources might justify the former for some claims, but the section claimed the latter, which goes far beyond the sources. Particularly, the Kaputchuk source in no way justifies a claim of blinding being "principally developed" by parapsychologists just because it has a couple paragraphs mentioning it was used in parapsychological research. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 200 FCs served 09:54, 25 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Issue numbers are a standard part of citations, this was missing them.
The material is available. I would encourage anyone else interested to repeat my alalysis, and see if you agree. Rodgarden's work is appallingly bad example of WP:SYNTH, WP:OR, quote mining, and, in the main, simply making stuff up based loosely on the source in order to puff up the field's alleged contributions to the mainstream to extreme levels. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 200 FCs served 09:42, 25 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Opinion: This discussion should be focused on the question: is Parapsychology still worthy of featured article status. Instead what we've got here is the bickering typical of strongly opinionated editors with differing points of view. The arguments above belong on the discussion page of the article, not here.

This FAR has little legitimacy in and of itself, in my opinion. All that has been presented is a set of concerns related to the sources and uses of data presented in recent edits. That concern is not significant enough in itself to warrant a change of FA status. It's a concern better addressed on the discussion page of the article, not in a FAR.

I challenge Shoemaker'sHoliday, who initiated this FAR, to spell out precisely how the article has deteriorated from its previous FA status, and what steps s/he believes necessary to restore it to that status, or to close this action until further discussion reaches consensus on recent addtions. If that consenus then results in a marked deterioration of article quality, then a FAR is called for. --Nemonoman (talk) 12:00, 25 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I discussed far more than the one new section, I pointed out problems throughout the article. I'll go through again:

Criterion 1a: Poor writing style[edit]

Major problems here. For instance, the lead is very choppy and badly written, as are several other sections. quotes like "The existence of parapsychological phenomena and the scientific validity of parapsychological research is disputed by independent evaluators and researchers. In 1988, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences published a report on the subject that concluded that "no scientific justification from research conducted over a period of 130 years for the existence of parapsychological phenomena."[8] In the same report, however, they also recommended monitoring some parapsychological research, such as psychokinesis on random number generators and ganzfeld effects, for possible future studies.[8] The studies at the PEAR lab, recommended for monitoring by the report, have since concluded. These studies likewise failed to elicit a positive response by the scientific community despite numerous trials.[31] A 2008 study using fMRI showed no detectable psi effect.[43]" are just bad writing, and have no place in a FA.

Criteria 1b and 1c[edit]

There are major problems with depth of coverage (Criteria 1b), and research (1c) including:

  • Letting Rhine be the source for criticisms of himself, then failing to actually name the criticisms, just saying they exist
  • Insufficient detail. Consider the following paragraph, and realise that the only further mention of any of the research or concepts mentioned here is a single sentence: "Some effects thought to be paranormal, for example, the effects of Kirlian photography, disappeared under more stringent controls, leaving those avenues of research at dead-ends."

What is Kirlian photography? What is Ian Stevenson's research? What's astral beaconing? The article doesn't bother to tell the reader.

Criterion 1d: Neutrality issues[edit]

The article fairly often misleads the reader as to the amount of scientific support on the subject. For instance:

  • Criticism is minimised: For example, this is the section on criticism during the Rhine era:
No actual coverage of the details of the criticism is even mentioned.
  • Most criticism of the field is ghettoised at the end of the article, and , due to this structure, most parapsychological claims are allowed to go unchallenged, because the criticism section is written purely from a generic perspective, but the article covers many specific claims. For instance, there is no criticism in the sections on Ganzfield experiments, only a tiny bit in remote viewing, of insufficient length to form a full thought, and the section Parapsychology#Direct mental interactions with living systems again gives the right to analyse and present criticism to the people being criticised.
  • Over-reliance on quoting mission statements, basically giving organisations a free advert. For instance, 'The SPR's purpose, stated in every issue of its Journal, is "to examine without prejudice or prepossession and in a scientific spirit those faculties of man, real or supposed, which appear to be inexplicable on any generally recognized hypothesis"' - This is quoted, but does it actually add anything to the article?
  • Several sections written like an advertisement:
For example, the section "Parapsychology#Establishment_of_the_Parapsychological_Association contains sentences such as
  • The aim of the organization, as stated in its Constitution, became "to advance parapsychology as a science, to disseminate knowledge of the field, and to integrate the findings with those of other branches of science" This basically takes the controversial, at best, discussion of whether parapsychology is a science, and lets its advocates declare its status.
  • "The annual AAAS convention provides a forum where parapsychologists can present their research to scientists from other fields and advance parapsychology in the context of the AAAS's lobbying on national science policy"
  • The section Parapsychology#Anomalous psychology is simply ridiculous. Basically, citing surveys - or rather, failing to cite surveys, as there's a [citation needed] tag there, it seems to advocate for treating any sort of coincidence that people thought was a little weird as evidence of parapsychology. It is highly questionable what encyclopedic value this section holds, which is a particularly bad thing as, if they were discussed neutrally, with discussion of the other possible explanations, and what appears to be the mainstream parapsychological belief that a few, at best, are real, this would have covered an important part of parapsychological belief. As it is, it actually goes farther than what most academic proponents of parapsychology claim. Parapsychology is a fringe belief, yes, but it's being presented here from the perspective of the most extreme, probably non-academic proponents, which only serves to make the field look much worse than it deserves.

Also, it may be worth mentioning that the FAC that resulted in its promotion was not very well attended, and does not seem to have looked into the article in any depth. In all honesty, I think reviewers may have dropped the ball somewhat. Compare Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Parapsychology with the most recent FAs (taken from the last batch of closures): Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/James_Nesbitt/archive2, Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Fungus/archive1, and Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Hurricane_Bob_(1985)/archive1. The Parapsychology FAC was very poorly attended, shows no signs of any detailed reviewing, and I think that it does show in the result. --Shoemaker's Holiday Over 200 FCs served 15:18, 25 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In fairness, standards and expectations at FAC have increased dramatically since 2007, I don't think the reviews this article got back then were exceptional one way or another really. Nev1 (talk) 20:16, 25 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That's true, but I'm not sure it should have passed even at the time. This is the revision that was promoted, and it has a fairly large number of uncited sections. This is the FAC criteria of that period, and it still required that Claims are supported with specific evidence and external citations; this involves the provision of a "References" section in which sources are set out, complemented by inline citations where appropriate. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 200 FCs served 20:46, 25 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: The article is currently rated as FA. Shoemaker's Holiday has set out how it fails the FA criteria by a long distance. Therefore that status needs to be reviewed. The logic couldn't be clearer.
Shoemaker's Holiday is under no requirement to explain here all of the recent edits to the article: that's what edit summaries and Talk are for. This page is about whether the article should be an FA.
The Wikipedia policies of WP:NPOV, WP:FRINGE and WP:RS are non-negotiable in this context. Those policies, not the policies of, say, the Psychological Bulletin (which is secondary literature, unlike WP which is tertiary), have to apply.
One reason I'm not optimistic about real progress is the tone adopted on this page by User:Rodgarton and User:Nemonoman. It should be possible to apply the relevant process to an article without being a target for invented accusations of defamation or bad faith. It clearly isn't encouraging for editors who might potentially step in and fix the damage to the article. MartinPoulter (talk) 17:52, 25 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I very much appreciate SH making his concerns so clear. Many of the items he cites as reasons to de-FA the article include specific quotes and language from the version of the article at its FA promotion. So I note that now SH is anxious to establish that the original FA review was bogus.

As it stands, with SH's many new additions and deletions, an FA article has been effectively wrecked, and I agree that it is no longer at FA status. But I would be remiss if I did not note the hatchet job done in large part by SH to get it to its current POV status, complete with snide quotes, bogus logic, and and blockhead prose.

I'll note again that SH's criticisms have not been raised in the proper forum. He's shopped it over here, I suppose to attempt to gain some cover for his changes, rather than discussing them on the article's talk page.--Nemonoman (talk) 03:24, 26 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]


Rejoinder #2 The complainant is now not only misrepresenting and ignoring the articles that I cited, but turning his/her tack to misrepresenting me. S/he quotes me on the statement of what was "principally developed" - that was precisely restricted to the issue of randomisation, and associated methods e.g. blind administration. I have now provided references from more than one source for this interpretation of the development of core experimental method - including the quotation from Watt that historians have certainly made this point; previously, the complainant was pleased to quote Watt, but now we find Watt is ignored in reply.

If we must restrict ourselves to Hacking's article, it will be there noted, by all reasonable readers that, from the title to the conclusion, the thesis is offered that randomisation was principally developed with psychical research in mind and as practiced. I too could offer many sentential quotes extracted from their context to prove the point: e.g., "the first methodological breakthrough came from across the Channel, from Charles Richet" (p. 437); or "We now think of probability as so integral a part of scientific method and practice that we are astonished to recall how ground-breaking a paper this is" [i.e., Richet's 1884 paper entitled "La suggestion mentale et le calcul des probabilités", Revue Philosophique, 18, 609-674.] Hacking goes on to explain that "suggestion mentale" was Richet's "rather positivistic choice of words for thought transference" [i.e., telepathy]. Again, Hacking states that Richet, in this paper, "did something that, though obvious, no one had quite thought of doing before". Hacking goes on to explain that this involved the random selection of targets (stimuli) for association with a psychological response in order to detect the operation of a beyond-chance factor in the association of the two sets of data. Simply put, by randomly applying experimental and control conditions, blindly to the source of response, a reliable statistical estimation of the operation of any extra-chance factor could be determined. As for the conclusions possible from Richet's data - and quite distinct from the misrepresentation of them by the complainant of these pages - Hacking himself interpreted them as showing that "there is some probability for the hypothesis of mental suggestion - low, but not negligible" (p. 439). In any case, whether or not Richet's results showed the operation of an extra-chance factor is quite distinct from the issue of the value of his procedures of data-analysis. It is mischievous of the complainant to blur this distinction. Let us quietly recognize and take stock of Hacking's thesis, rather than be so surprised by it that we misrepresent it; by such misrepresentation - and, I would add, with such exaggerated importance - as is presently happening in these pages through the authorship of the complainant.

Doubtless, some persons would like more citations. Let us then go straight to Hacking's concluding remarks. He there offers that even Fisher's famous prime example of how to conduct randomized experiments was informed by his attentions to the proper analysis of psychical research. Specifically, Hacking refers to Fisher's famous example of the lady who claimed to be able to tell whether the milk was poured into her cup of tea before the water was added, rather than by the more civilized reversed operation. Even this example of Fisher's was attributed by Hacking to Fisher's examination of the demands of psychical research. Hacking argued for this interpretation on many fine points; eventually making this appeal, as his penultimate sentence: "Anyone unfamiliar with the social combination of séance and tea may consult the elegant photograph After the Séance."

From head to foot of the article, Hacker quietly argues for this thesis - on such anecdotal and experimental grounds. We can quote the entire article to make the point, but I trust that these citations from the start to end of his article satisfy the reasonably minded. Kaptchuk (the author of another article I cited) refers to the article by Hacking, without being offended by Hacking's interpretations, and we have seen Watt and Schwartz repeating the interpretations without retort.

The complainant wishes to black-mouth me; s/he has a much bigger job ahead of her/him than s/he fancies.

We should also wonder what has happened to all the other issues the complainant first projected, but now makes no mention of. What does s/he have to say of the issue of blind-administration which s/he previously objected to but now shrinks from mentioning? What does s/he now have to say of her/his defamatory accusations against reports in the Proceedings of the Parapsychology Association Conventions, and, naturally, the universities that have hosted these conferences? How does the complainant explain her/his excision of the 80% or so of the information s/he blankly deleted and upon which s/he hazarded not a single comment?

The readers of Wikipedia deserve a reasoned reply, and not more gushes of adjectives and invective, and no more strings of now-we-see-them/now-we-don't assertions, and no more embroidering of these half-baked assertions by cherry-picked quotes.

The readers of Wikipedia deserve to be informed of abiding scholarly opinion, and not the gushing retorts of the blindly informed, egoistically censoring, and mischievously misrepresenting. --Rodgarton 10:03, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

You ask why I don't mention blinding again? I don't talk about blind administration again because it's ABUNDANTLY CLEAR YOU ABUSED THAT SOURCE, AND WERE WRONG, so there's not much more to say. You were wrong. You acted badly with the blinding. Is that sufficiently clear? Because you seem to think that if I don't mention you were wrong (which you were) for one statement means I have accepted you were right (which you aren't). Actually reading the Kaputchuk source blows the claims that blinding was principally developed in parapsychology out of the water, and the Isis paper at best indicates that Parapsychology was an important waystation in the development of randomisation methods, and doesn't offer a single fillip to your blinding claims (which are wrong). As for your new claims about the Isis source, they're merely cherrypicking. If anyone without an axe to grind looks at the information in context, it's clear that you're highly overstating the case.
Furthermore, on the statistical methods, the section was on its importance in other fields of research. Saying that there's no need to show it's important because you didn't say it (only implied it by putting it in that section on its importance to other fields) is disingenuous. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 200 FCs served 12:41, 26 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"it's being highly overstated" - just which source are you disputing as being overstated? And how did you come to misrepresent what I noted as "contributions" as "importance" to other fields? We also note that there are quite a few other assertions you have made that you have failed, yet again, to address in "reply". We await at least something hinting at an attempt at a comprehensive and responsible reply. --Rodgarton 13:03, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
I have clarified above (edit conflicted). Shoemaker's Holiday Over 200 FCs served 13:07, 26 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The complainant now wishes to shift her/his entire complaint, and so to justify for her/his entire excision of the information on how parapsychology has contributed to other fields, upon the issue of whether it was or was not singularly responsible for introducing "blind administration of experimental conditions" as a scientific method. I have provided statements and citations from more than one source that psiological research certainly contributed, in a principally responsible manner, to the introduction of such practices - both from Kaptchuck, and lately from Schwartz. Where is the citation that disputes these sources? I, like C. Watt, have cited both Hacking and Kaptchuck in unison. The question then is as to the source of Fisher's thinking about randomisation. Kaptchuck does not himself address this issue as to the source of Fisher's ideas. He defers it to Hacking, with whose thesis we are already familiar: the scientific questions raised by the examination of psi (or psychical phenomena, etc.) were principally responsible for developing their ideas.

If the phrase "principally responsible" is what fundamentally and singularly irks the complainant-censor of this section, then let us focus on that phrase, rather than using it as a pretext to baldly and unequivocally and brashly censor and excise all mention of any possible contribution of psiological research to scientific ideas and practices. The references I have provided and described clearly demonstrate that readers of Wikipedia may well be informed that research into the question of psi contributes to scientific ideas and practices. History, and those who have noted it, commend this knowledge to us. We have seen, in recent days, that some WP editors are existentially disgusted by this fact. Let us hope that what, in the end, is offered to readers of Wikipedia is more informed by abiding scholarly opinion, as I have recently sought to represent it, than by such ejaculatory disgust, as we have recently suffered. --Rodgarton 14:03, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

No, let's not. Because the WHOLE BLOODY SECTION has problems. I didn't find a sentence in it that was backed by reliable sources, and I'm sure if I went on to the other sections, it'd be the same. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 200 FCs served 14:25, 26 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Another flaccid non-response, another appeal to "what I felt" and "my personal disgust, my interpretation," another withdrawal from the facts laid out. And not the slightest attempt to back up the defamatory assertions with a bit of fact. We're just offered a run of expletives and capital letters as proof of the point. Resign now, I would advise, before causing further embarrassment.--Rodgarton 14:50, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
Not taking the bait anymore,. I've written about 5 pages of analysis now, people can read that. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 200 FCs served 21:00, 26 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

General comments[edit]

Comment. I've followed Parapsychology since the day it was featured on the front page. In that time I believe that its overall quality has improved somewhat, despite sometimes fierce warring between proponents and critics. The issues that Shoemaker's Holiday raise largely relate to very recent additions by Rodgarton. Given their recency, I think the best approach to fixing any problems with these edits is via the article's talk page. I've been making edits to improve Rodgarton's additions and have found the process of discussing the additions on the talk page perfectly adequate. I'm not sure why SH's other concerns, such as missing issue numbers in references, can't be resolved by him either fixing them or letting fellow editors know about them on the talk page so they can fix them. The same goes for SH's concerns over a few items of wording in the article that are separate from Rodgarton's recent additions. I would dispute that the lead is not well written, it scans well for me. And, speaking as a sceptic, I am not detecting the heavy pro-Parapsychology bias that SH describes, although it's my experience that it's common for people on both sides of the issue to see the article as slanted the "wrong" way. Given that the "Contributions to other disciplines" section is what most of the discussion here has been about, and that section was deleted by SH when the review was posted and is still not present in the article, this review feels rather Alice-in-Wonderland to me. I thought the purpose of a Featured Article Review was to try to fix issues. If the largest issue under discussion was fixed before the review even began, it seems strange to be devoting so much verbage to it here. Personally, I think that we should rebuild the "Contributions to other disciplines" section source-by-source on the talk page with careful source-checking, and address the other concerns there too. This review seems too much about personalities and recent changes, particularly a recent addition that has since been removed, and this process seems to be giving off much too much heat and not enough light. Ryan Paddy (talk) 23:28, 27 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
With respect, I've commented on problems in other sections. This article has major problems with depth of coverage and sources: This article is a very shallow discussion of the issue, and would need a lot more academic sourcing to meet criteria 1b and 1c. Indeed, all the neutrality issues are to do with depth of coverage: The sections are poorly developed and explained, and so commentary on them goes missing. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 201 FCs served 01:32, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
We'll have to agree to disagree on that. I find the depth of coverage and the neutral point of view adequate for a featured article. Ryan Paddy (talk) 19:35, 29 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
RP queries the relevance of discussing the eliminated section on the contribution of psi research to other disciplines. The charges of false citation I take quite seriously, and cannot be permitted to pass by as a hit-and-run; the complainant must be obliged to justify her/his statements, and not only actions. I have seen no justification for anything but minor clarification and elaboration, not total censure and defamation. As for restoring this section, I have not considered it necessary to do so, and do not presently consider that it is necessary, having come to the opinion that WP is not the place for academically relevant and informed primary sources; its procedures and policies are not appropriate to the proper discussion of such information; and it best relies on populist or semi-popular secondary sources, as this article traditionally has done. In fact, I fully commend all the edits and cuts the complainant has autonomously undertaken as they now clearly indicate the objective of the article, and allow the article to self-demonstrate its unreliability, from the word 'go'. Naturally, I do not care to have information I have contributed included in such a thing. --Rodgarton 08:23, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
I wasn't questioning your discussion of that section. I was pointing out that SH deleted that section but then criticised it in great detail here, which seemed a weird thing to do in a featured article review. As for the rest of your comment: the beauty of Wikipedia is in its outcomes, not its processes which are often ugly. The outcome regarding that section is in the air, so it's too soon for throwing your toys out of the cot. Personally I don't have an opinion on it yet, because I haven't examined the sources yet. My point is that the bulk of the above discussion belongs on the talk page, not a FAR, because it's about a deleted section. As for your point about primary sources... yes, secondary sources are preferred here because they require less original research. This is an encyclopedia, not a collection of academic papers. Ryan Paddy (talk) 08:59, 1 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Suggested FA criteria are original research, neutrality, citations. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 07:36, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist Large sections are uncited, or only cited to one or two sources, particularly when discussing methodology. Completeness of the discussion is doubtful, and, as it's probably more useful to have a new example, see just below. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 203 FCs served 09:49, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The History of Parapsychology
Feel free to add comments

The history section has real issues due to concentrating almost solely on giving the history of currenly active (or very recently shut) parapsychological organisations, and failing to put it in context by talking about other things which have now failed. Despite the titles, the structure basically boils down to:

This is a very, very organisation-based approach, and leaves out a lot. The worst failing is probably that nothing before 1911 is discussed unless it was part of the Society for Psychical Research - which basically means that the history begins abruptly with an organisation being founded - and the extreme lack of depth. We are never told what's actually being researched in more than a word or two. A quick example:


Worse, important people and even extreme innovators of the field, such as Karl Zenner and Charles Richet only appear in lists of names. ´

In short, the istory section isn't a history section at all: It's a report on notable parapsychological organisations. That's well and good, and even, perhaps, an important part of the article, but we need a discussion of the actual history; of mediumship and Victorian spiritualism, of the people involved with trying to take these phenomena and investigate them scientifically, and how they improved their researches, and of what the important people did and the tests they came up with to study it. None of these appear. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 203 FCs served 09:44, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

[If you wish to comment on this, please leave comments below; if people want to skip over this example, they're just going to be confused if commentary appears anyway]

  • I have a different take. Currently, the history section is 1292 words, out of 4711 words total for the article body. This is far too large a history section, unless the article is attempting (very indirectly) to say that parapsychology is an obsolescent field. (And if that's the point, it should be stated directly, near the start of the history section.) Assuming parapsychology is still an active field, I suggest spinning the history section off to a History of parapsychology subarticle and shortening the section to about 10% of the body (about 500 words). The resulting section should not need subsections. Eubulides (talk) 19:49, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That's sort of the converse of what I was saying: The examples in the current history section are very poorly chosen so that the actual history is never really described, and we instead get a lengthy discussion of the history of a few organisations. It's very long, but it wouldn't serve any purpose to simply shorten it, it would be better to replace it with material that actually covered the history of the field, instead of the history of organisations related to the field.
On striking comments, one problem is that most of the comments are examples. There's a tendency in this sort of thing to presume that if the few examples of pervasive problems are dealt with, the article as a whole is fixed. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 204 FCs served 21:36, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The entire article has some major problems, and the very poor response of many of the regulars on this page is strong cause for concern over whether it could be rescued at this time. Indeed, I've been constantly attacked ever since I started discussion here, so there's no way I'm touching this article's cleanup with a ten-foot pole. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 203 FCs served 09:44, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • A good bit of the review commentary now seems to be obsolete, as the article has been edited, I suppose in response to objections. For example, there's no longer a "The annual AAAS convention ..." phrase in the article. Could you please strike out your comments if they are now obsolete? That will save the rest of us the time of figuring out that these are non-problems. Alternatively, you could put a summary of up-to-date criticism somewhere. Eubulides (talk) 19:49, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist: On 18 August, Shoemaker's Holiday made numerous edits to this article. None of the edits were discussed on the talk page. He then opened this FA Review. Since then, despite repeated requests to discuss these changes or find consensus, SH has continued to make major changes to the article without discussion or consensus.

While I agree that a number of edits made by the new editor Rodgarten needed a lot of review and improvement, that editor at least discussed the changes extensively before they were made. SH excised most of that work without discussion.

SH is now defending his version of the article quite fiercely, and still makes no attempt to discuss or reach consensus.

In its current SH-version, the article has lost any semblance of neutrality. It is very POV and filled with a number of snide comments that do little to further NPOV. SH has introduced his own OR conclusions to a number of sections, determining for the benefit of all that Parapsychology has no worth as a subject of study. I can't make a comment about the references he has added, but I will note that he calls the University of Pennsylvania Press and New Scientist journal "fringe publications", apparently because the don't share his personal point of view. That these publications have not outright rejected the discipline of parapsychology is apparently adequate evidence that they are unreliable sources.

Since SH is a confirmed reverter, since he is now the official Owner of the article, since he will not discuss or otherwise attempt to reach consensus, I can only assume that we're stuck with this article in its current ragged, POV, highly OR'd state.

It no longer deserves FA status. I regard this whole mess as standing Wikipedia on its head: butcher an FA article, and get it delisted, defending against any all reasonable improvements. I can only assume from SH's very apparent attitude of self-righteous skepticism that it was his intent to hurt the article in an effort to better prosyletize his skeptic's agenda. This article became an FA through an admirable effort of well-meaning editors with highly conflicting viewpoints working together to find consensus. That righteous work is gone. Delist.--Nemonoman (talk) 21:04, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A check of Parapsychology's history will show that Nemnonoman's accusations of edit warring against me are baseless. I have not edited the article at all in a week, and, of the handful of the edits I made since taking an interest in this article just before the FAR, only a single one was a revert, for which I gave a reason. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 204 FCs served 21:36, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps I'm missing something? I agree that the article should be delisted. Isn't that the whole point of your efforts? --Nemonoman (talk) 22:19, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Some potentially original research was removed before this FAR even began, so that issue has been addressed. The neutrality concerns of both Shoemaker's Holiday and Nemonoman (who represent either of the "does parapsychology have value?" debate) are greatly overstated, as usual in an article on a contraversial subject. Any citation formatting concerns are easily fixed - Shoemaker's Holiday could easily fix them, as he has found the sources in question. This should never have been a FAR, it should have been some discussion on the talk page, where in my experience good accomodations are usually found. The fact that no such attempt was made unfortunately leads me to agree with Nemonoman that this FAR looks like an attempt to discredit an article on a subject disliked by the nominator, who seems upset by recent pro-parapsychology edits that have since been removed. However, I don't agree with Nemonoman that subsequent edits to the article by the nominator have significantly damaged the article's eligability for featured status. The article still stacks up well against the featured article requirements. Ryan Paddy (talk) 01:21, 4 September 2009 (UTC

*Keep And just fix it. Some of the commentary about what's "wrong" with it point to issues that are easily resolved. Naturally articles degrade over time, but the amount of time spent going over it line by line to find things wrong with it could more productively be spent maintaining and upgrading it. I agree with Paddy (above). The article, despite numerous edits, still resembles FA and can be tweaked. --Nealparr (talk to me) 10:27, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Given the article has undealt with tags on many sections, has sourcing issues, mentions huge numbers of things off-hand, then fails to explain what they are, given everyone whose commented on the history section (as of now) has said it needs very major rewriting, given that Nemonoman is actively advocating for removing such fixes as have already happened, and given the increase in FA criteria since it passed to assure that they really are the best of the articles, when this was, at the very best, a weak candidate that probably barely met or actively failed many of the weaker requirements of the time, I don't think this is practical. It deserves the increased scrutiny of a new FAC. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 204 FCs served 17:25, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, whatever you guys do, de-FA it or just fix it, your comments about the original FA article being "at the very best, a weak candidate"... that's bullshit. What you read in that article, for better or worse, is the result of many months of writes, rewrites, arguments, and compromises, and even a few arbitrations. Many different editors from a variety of backgrounds came together to write something that we all could feel proud of. The end result was entirely based on compromising. We had many eyes upon it, and what you see in the actual FA review is just a small portion of editors involved, small because the actual FA review occured in many different places around Wikipedia and involved many editors, and the FA review was just a formality. If it wasn't as comprehensive as you would like, well, sorry about that, but it was written in WP:SUMMARY style, as it should have been, with its spin-off articles linked to like they were supposed to be. The article was whittled down to around 60K, as we were told to do by the reviewers. It was never meant to be an entire book about the subject. I don't claim that article was perfect, but it was definitely the best article I've ever read about such an obscure topic, and it was definitely worth being featured. It's easy to criticize and say it made it through because of weak requirements at the time, but -- from experience -- it's even harder to actually write a featured article as we did. How many have you written? --Nealparr (talk to me) 18:04, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The lists credit me with 7 between the two accounts; I think it may be a little higher as I also got involved with group projects like Evolution, and I wasn't a nominator, just major contributor, on H.M.S. Pinafore. I also have two Featured portals, about half of all featured sounds, about 5% of featured pictures, and a list or two.
I realise this isn't easy, but compare this to other broad-overview FAs, such as, say, Intelligent design, Climate of India, History of Sheffield, Hardy Boys, Definition of planet, or, to give another psychology concept, Philosophy of mind. I think you may agree that all of these are better-written, and have better-chosen examples and choices of what to discuss. Parapsychology has several strong points that could be built upon. The lead is good, and the criticism and controversy section pretty good as well. But it falls down when trying to explain the history of parapsychology, and when discussing the methods and research done, and that's a problem.
In short, it needs more and better-sourced discussion of parapsychology, particularly its history (which starts in medius res, concentrates too much on the history of modern organisations, thus concealing the actual development of the field, and doesn't do a very good job at explaining many of the techniques at all. Sentences like "The technique was developed to quickly quiet mental "noise" by providing a mild, unpatterned sensory field to mask the visual and auditory environment." don't make any sense to the uninitiated after the word "noise". While the next two senteces clarify a bit, it does seem very jargon-laden and unclear. (Also, isn't Ganzfield, as a German noun, always capitalised?) Shoemaker's Holiday Over 204 FCs served 19:10, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
What can I say? It's a little different when the topic is both controversial, and obscure, and you have a lot of impassioned editors involved. None of the ones you listed off are really that controversial, and they're all pretty mainstream. Evolution has wide acceptance in science. Intelligent design is almost universally condemned. Parapsychology has always been just a small handful of PhDs exploring topics most PhDs don't, and even the opposition has always been mainly a small group of vocal opponents who bothered to write a scathing critique. Most people don't care about parapsychology.
What you see is what you get when there's a small set of sources to begin with, and of what's there, half are ruled out as unreliable. There used to be greater detail on the history. It was whittled down because it was said that too much space was devoted to the history and not enough on the research and criticism. There used to be a lot more on the research. Half that was dropped because the details came from parapsychologist themselves. The sources were said to be unreliable, eventhough no one else was around to describe what the parapsychologists were doing. No details could given that "unfairly" put parapsychology in a "positive light". It's a frustrating way to write, I tell you. You want to talk about details on the research? Jeeze, man, let me give you an example of how bad it was. So PEAR conducted millions of trials on PK. That's a notable detail. Couldn't put that in the article, though, because they said it was a "big number argument" that somehow made parapsychology seem more legitimate. Tried to put in reported results, attributed to the researchers, along with a disclaimer. Nope, no statistics could be reported, of course, because they're not reliable. Almost nothing from the parapsychology side could be written in any detail, at all, even when attributed to the author. It was horrible : ) Despite all of that, you still got a pretty well-written article that met FA standards. Never perfect, but I'd be willing to say probably about as good as you'll get on this topic (assuming the same editor backgrounds).
Like I said, go for it, feel free to de-FA it. Just don't belittle the original FA version. It was very well written given the circumstances, and definitely worth featuring. I could write a dozen FA articles about mundane subjects with none of the grief and in a fraction of the time involved in writing this one. --Nealparr (talk to me) 20:54, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If that's true, then, yes, it was a major achievement to get it as far as it did. However, I think there are at least some pro-Parapscyhcology sources of sufficient reliability - the textbooks, for instance - and I think that, if we can avoid the old problems, this should be improvable. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 204 FCs served 21:27, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The sticking point is obvious. Will the article be one edited carefully through discussion and consensus, or will it be subject to sweeping, non-neutral edits as recently? I'm entirely ready to Keep if we return to an earlier version of the article and make incremental changes, verifying as we go, along the lines of the process RyanPaddy has suggested more than once in the talk page of the article. There are several experienced editors with a reasonable history of neutral editing on this article, who I respect and applaud. Their careful editing should be standard for an article that has achieved FA status. If we can return to that standard, there's no reason to delist this article. --Nemonoman (talk) 13:06, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist mostly because the article is simply not very WP:NPOV. I do not think it gives proper WP:WEIGHT to the majority sentiment that parapsychology, as a discipline, is either populated by people who have come to dubious conclusions about the existence of psychic powers or is simply bunk. Attempts to illustrate this more clearly in the article and in the lead have been systematically removed or watered-down. ScienceApologist (talk) 22:27, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment This is rubbish, but it's probably the real reason behind this FAR so it's nice to have it said openly. I'm a sceptic and I'm perfectly happy that whenever well-sourced statements that are appropriate to the article have been found it's been possible to negotiate their addition to the article. The lead in particular now has a very clear statement of the sceptical position, describing parapsychology as "contraversial", stating that the consensus of the scientific community is that no proof of psychic abilities has been found, and saying that many scientists view the field as pseudoscience. These are all statements with good reliable sources, which is why they stick. Your past unsuccessful attempts to add sceptical sources that don't meet Wikipedia's reliability criteria are indications of the article working correctly, not failing. Sources such as self-published sceptical articles by authors of no particular note don't belong in this or any article. Ryan Paddy (talk) 00:15, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I would kindly ask you to retract your allegations. I am NOT ScienceApologist, and have stated precisely what I found problematic about this over and over. I found some surprising claims, checked them against the sources, and found they in no way supported the claims. I checked further, and found other problems, mainly with depth of coverage. While a few sections are or were misleading, by actively suppressing information by, say, mentioning the government funded experiments but not mentioning that these experiments were decided to show no useful results that would merit further study, and this cited to a report on the failure of the experiments. That, I think you'll agree, is not on. However, on the whole, the big neutrality issues are mostly sorted. What isn't sorted is that many aspects of parapsychology aren't included, the history section is an utter failure, and I'm not entirely convinced we discuss all the major avenues of parapsychological research. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 204 FCs served 01:35, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad we agree that neutrality isn't presently an issue for the featured status of this article. But I don't agree that the completeness of the article is an issue. I find the article, including the history section, to be comprehensive in its coverage. But if you believe the depth of coverage could be even better, by all means widen it. The concern that you've raised regarding the history section focusing on organisations appears to be a question of style. You could edit that section to have less of a focus on organisations, and you may well be able to add some more historical details. The current level of comprehensiveness is adequate, but as with anything there's always room for improvement. Ryan Paddy (talk) 02:46, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Given the higher standards FAs are now held to, I think we're right to insist on a fair bit more. That said, I do think the History section is a major issue. I doubt me any other FA has a history section that fails to actually explain the beginning of the field, for instance, instead jumping to an event somewhat after, or any of the other liberties taken. I also think that citations are still an issue in some places, though gradually improving. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 204 FCs served 02:52, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The founding of the Society for Psychical Research would seem to make the beginning of organised parapsychology. If you have reliable sources that discuss noteworthy early individual researchers that were precusors to the organisation of parapsychology as a field of research then the editors of the article would doubtless welcome them. But I think it's equally reasonable for the History section to start with the first organised group attempt at creating the discipline under discussion, as it currently does. Of course, if your main interest is in highlighting that Victorian interest in seances was how the field started then you'll need one or more reliable sources that draw that conclusion, so that it's not original research. Ryan Paddy (talk) 03:29, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, while reviewing the sources for that huge section Rodgarton added, even if they weren't suitable for his use, they would be very suitable for this, and emphasised very different aspects. Plus, any decent source about parapsychology's history could be used for such discussion as you mention.
Perhaps I wasn't clear: I've read a lot on this subject while preparing for this FAR, and the history section doesn't just look odd from me looking at it, but from comparing it to what other sources indicate as important. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 204 FCs served 04:29, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The purpose of a FAR is to fix the article. If you have sources on hand that make you think the History section is incomplete, then perhaps you could use them to fix it? Ryan Paddy (talk) 19:46, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'll be honest: after the constant attacks, here, on my talk page, on Talk:Parapsychology, and elsewhere, simply for having pointed out problems and attempted to fix them, I am not going to commit to the major effort of reading and preparation necessary just so I can prolong the constant personal attacks and false insinuations as to my motives. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 204 FCs served 20:21, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If you constructively edited the History section rather than just throwing rocks at it, I imagine that suspicions as to motive would be reduced, not increased. Having said that, I can understand if it's work you don't have time for. Please note that doubts about good faith are not the same thing as personal attacks. I would like to assume good faith, it's just difficult in the face of the circumstances and approach of this FAR. Anyone who hangs around a contraversial article like Parapsychology for long enough starts to become suspicious of actions that could be interpreted as undue promotions or attacks of the subject or the article, and this FAR looks a lot like the latter. The reason for my suspicion is that I would expect an experienced editor acting in good faith to attempt to use the talk page to discuss and fix the kinds of relatively simple concerns you've outlined rather than abruptly opening a FAR, and to not make a big song and dance in a FAR about a very new section that had already been removed. That choice of approach makes me suspicious about good faith. We should assume good faith, but actions can cause that assumption to be eroded. Ryan Paddy (talk) 22:49, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If you had followed this from the beginning, you'd know that it opened with the discovery of massive abuse of sources. Much of this turned out to be in a relatively new sections, but discovering such things in an FA is, in my eyes, ALWAYS cause to seek as widespread review as possible. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 204 FCs served 23:18, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I did follow it from the start. The recent edits you refer to as "abusive" were removed before the FAR began. So it's still a mystery to me why you highlighted them in the FAR. Did they leave behind some sort of offensive smell? Ryan Paddy (talk) 02:56, 8 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, as the person who removed them, I can assure you they were removed after the FAR began, and long before it became clear that this was largely isolated to the sections removed. I had mainly checked those sections, those problems were extreme, and other sections had a host of obvious problems which we've slowly been fixing. If it were just the other problems, the article would still be problematic, but some time to fix it before FAR might have been justified. As it was, for all I knew sources were abused throughout the article, and it had a lot of other problems beyond that. So you can see why I started an FAR. I do think the remaining problems, coupled with the increase in standards, probably means it should be delisted for now, so that it's subjected to increased scrutiny after a hopefully relatively short period of improvement. For one thing, it leaves out a lot of important sources like the NAS report; it's not clear whether all the problems with highly negative sources having only the positive parts mentioned (e.g. saying that they were by the U.S. government, not that the results were decided to be wholly negative by them) have been caught and fixed; the problem where the only discussion of the criticism of Rhine is to say that Rhine rebutted them still remains, and there's a lot of unfixed problem tags. If we can fix it all, that's fine, but this should NOT leave FARC as an FA until all of that's fixed. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 204 FCs served 14:31, 8 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As an addendum, though, FARCs are not on a fixed schedule, so if progress can be made, it'll be kept open. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 204 FCs served 20:32, 8 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist - I've been keeping an eye on this, as OR concerns always get my attention (maybe its because they are my initials). I noticed the original problems and I still see problems. It is all a mess and is obviously not an FA nor was when it was first promoted. I have many issues with the sourcing now and it is to the point that I would almost suggest deleting the article and starting over. Sigh. Ottava Rima (talk) 01:59, 9 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist because the article is self-demonstratively unreliable, with not even a pretence at reliability. Were the article intended to be reliable, it would demonstrate, from the outset, an objective to be dispassionately informative about parapsychology's aims, assumptions, methods, databases, theories, interdisciplinary relationships, etc.. Instead, it presents an objective of advocating for a certain set of opinions about parapsychology, giving paramount importance to controversiality, and then by a simple black-and-white representation of this controversiality. This leads to an unreliability that can be appreciated from any point in the article, e.g., from the bulk of the images selected to illustrate it, from the weight of references to the "anti", by absenting any mention of the positive functions of the field (e.g., confronting claims of the paranormal). As soon as the article pretends to offer concrete information, it fails to be factual and to demonstrate a well-rounded and informed basis of representation: e.g., in the first paragraph, it distinguishes between "sensory deprivation and the Ganzfeld", although the latter is a form of sensory deprivation. As this page and that of the article's discussion page reveal, more objectively constrained and factual information has continually been forced to fall away before certain editors' emotive shouts of "abuse," ad hominem slights against another's prose, "see no evil" self-defense, partisan opinions presented as self-evident truths, autonomous culling of information on the basis of such opinions, bogus consensus expressed by scapegoating others, specious rejoinder on rhetorical rather than substantive issues, and so on. Any attempt to provide more objective and comprehensive information is simply deleted amid a spray of such irrational processes. These irrational processes have ubiquitously conditioned the article's information, rendering it fundamentally and self-demonstratively unreliable. At best, this article could partly serve as an introduction to qualitative opinions of non-parapsychologists about parapsychology, or as a partial basis for an article on the sociology of parapsychology, but it should not be presented as offering knowledge about parapsychology itself. Accordingly, not only should the article be delisted, but it should be deleted altogether as an article on parapsychology, and more accurately reframed as something like "qualitative critiques of parapsychology: a compendium of personal selections". --Rodgarton 04:25, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
"giving paramount importance to controversiality, and then by a simple black-and-white representation of this controversiality" This is per WP-Fringe. The vast majority of sources do not treat Parapsychology as anything more than a controversial fringe "science" that cannot be taken seriously. We are not allowed to produce content that advocates for fringe groups as we merely reflect scholarship. The scholarship cannot be used to make the claims you wish it to. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:14, 9 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The paramount emphasis on controversiality, with its negative effect on the reliability of the information, is not "per WP-Fringe". That policy instructs editors to take care in the treatment of what are considered fringe claims. There is no evidence of such care in this article. On the contrary, controversiality is allowed to dominate the article and to distort the information it presents. I have documented this distortion and unreliability with respect to the very definition of the field given in the first paragraph; and in the highlighting of marginal studies on controversial and passing issues in the field, and ignorance of the substantive issues (e.g., giving as examples of studies of the 1970s that of Moss' in Kirlian photography, but nothing of the much more prevalent, multi-laboratory alpha-band EEG studies); add to this the factual error concerning the Ganzfeld, noted above. One can continue to demonstrate such elementary errors of fact, and unreliability of information; yet the basic principle of distortion in the advocacy of the pseudo-skeptical side of controversiality will be obvious to any truly skeptical student of the field; and these points will continue to be ignored by the editors of this article. The above respondent continues this tradition, and provides yet another example of the irrational processes of the article's construction: offering more personal opinion, blankly stated without reference, as self-evident truth, with the typical lather of hyperbole; viz., "The vast majority of sources do not treat Parapsychology as anything more than a controversial fringe 'science'" (note the odd capitalization of "parapsychology"; another pointer to the lack of elementary knowledge of those who presume to inform us about the field, and to "merely reflect scholarship"). I have provided objective information by way of questionnaires in order to assess such claims, but the information, naturally, has been deleted, in further evidence of the agenda-driven distortions and preference for irrationalism and personal opinion of the editors of this article. There are no "claims you wish" the article to make, as the above respondent charges against me; that is just more obfuscation by colorful trivialisation and ad hominem slight; and another demonstration of the unwillingness of the editors of this article to discuss the substantive issues I have raised. These issues simply boil down to an objective of producing a programmatically comprehensive, objectively constrained rather than personally opined, responsible and informative article. Instead, editors deny such efforts, while preserving and continuing to make elementary errors, over numerous edits, and positing opinion gleaned from the populist and pseudo-skeptical literature in preference to that which is objectively constrained and attained from academic sources. Delist and delete.--Rodgarton 01:14, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
The long-term elementary error I note above in distinguishing between "sensory deprivation and the Ganzfeld" was corrected by another editor on 11:52, 10 September 2009.
WP:FRINGE makes it clear that fringe science cannot be treated as science. WP:WEIGHT reinforces that the controversy and fringeness of this science must be the dominant aspect of this page. You disagree with these two, as you seem to disagree with Wikipedia's policies and beliefs. Wikipedia is not here to promote your fringe group. You can find plenty of other Wikis without such standards that may be more accomodating. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:50, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think taking from WP:WEIGHT that the "fringeness of this science must be the dominant aspect of this page" is a poor interpretation of that section of NPOV, which actually states that "Views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views" (my emphasis). This is actually the article to describe those views held by the tiny minority that is parapsychology, not unchecked without its criticism, but not suppressed or censored either. --Nealparr (talk to me) 22:32, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Nealparr's comment -- I think the 'fringeness of this science must be dominant' comment reflects an agenda not compatible with overall WP philosophy. --Nemonoman (talk) 23:07, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
While the article should describe parapsychology, it needs to cast it in a light appropriate to its respectability. While Parapsychology is NOT the most fringey subject out there - enough respectability attaches to it that I believe we can get away with simply making sure that a small, but significant amount of criticism appears where relevant. However, the article has had some major problems - slowly being reviewed and fixed, it must be admitted - of mentioning high-profile groups that studied it, e.g. the U.S. Government, but suppressing their findings if negative, and occasionaly breaking a neutral tone to outright advocate for parapsychology (largely dealt with).
That sort of thing isn't acceptable, I think you'll agree. We need to check sources and make sure we don't have any of that sort of thing left, then, basically, we just need to include a few sentences of relevant criticism here and there, for example, Langmuir's and other criticisms of Rhine should probably be discussed, instead of simply saying they exist and that Rhine wrote a book discussing them. For most sections, a sentence or two per section should be ample; some may need a little more, others might well not need any. This shouldn't substantially increase the amount opf criticism, though, as any duplicate material in the extensive criticism sections could be removed. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 204 FCs served 23:29, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
SH, I applaud this statement of principle: a good summary of guidelines for editing this article. I sincerely hope we can find ways to reach consensus as we implement. As Pres Obama said about health care reform -- "a few details need to be worked out...". --Nemonoman (talk) 12:50, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's pretty much a common-sense approach. The only real addition I might make is that parapsychology has a fringe as well, and, when dealing with it, we should probably include rather more criticism than when, as here, talking about parapsychology as found in respectable academia. For example, I believe there's a lab that "tests" television psychics, and uses no control, e.g. they might ask her to make a report for a 70-year old in Boston, and then have that 70-year old rate it for accuracy, without seeing how other 70-year-olds in Boston would rate it. Given that Barnum statements are well-known, this research has been eviscerated by pretty much every other scientist who's talked about it. So if we wanted to include things like that - the fringes of parapsychology - we ought to take a rather more critical approach. However, these are the fringes of parapsychology, and unless more prominent than I've been led to believe, probably shouldn't appear in this overview. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 204 FCs served 15:25, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That's not really parapsychology. If you have ghost hunters running around saying they're "certified parapsychologists" or some junk, it's not parapsychology, it's fraud. If you likened it to intelligent design proponents calling themselves biologists, how much coverage of them would you give them in the biology article? That's WP:WEIGHT. There is a ghost hunting article for fake parapsychologists. --Nealparr (talk to me) 16:40, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
[Unindent] Pretty much what I thought, though it might be good to mention that sort of lunatic fringe to explicitly seperate it from the mainstream of parapsychology. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 204 FCs served 16:42, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It'd be difficult to find credible sources that identifiy that sort of lunatic fringe as actual parapsychology. --Nealparr (talk to me) 22:42, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I find it a little unsettling that someone said, "not unchecked without its criticism, but not suppressed or censored either" as if I was saying that there should be no information. Instead, I said that the page should be -dominated- by the sources that state that the matter is a fringe science. That is per Weight and Fringe. By misleadingly replying to what I claim, the whole discussion is manipulated in a manner that only verifies the unsettling manipulation of trying to push this as something that is not a fringe science. I find such things inappropriate, and I would ask that when you respond to me, please actually respond to what I say instead of making claims to the contrary in order to push a view. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:13, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I was commenting on exactly what you said, "dominate". The article should not be dominated by anything. I also have an issue with what Shoemaker said, "cast it in a light appropriate to its respectability". It shouldn't be doing that either. All of that is editorializing. The article should present credible sources representing all relevant views, in proportion to their prominence among the people involved in the topic. Not editorializing ends up with what we have now, which (even with its faults that are being corrected) is not dominated by anything in particular. The criticism section doesn't dominate the page. At roughly 68 kb, remove the criticism section and you're left with roughly 48 kb of straightforward information. It doesn't have to be dominated by a single aspect of the topic, ie. its fringiness. Parapsychology has been around for over 130 years. The historical aspect of it could fill volumes, but it's not dominated by that either. The goal isn't to slant the article to be about one aspect of the topic. It's to cover all relevant and notable aspects, without editorializing. To dominate the page with sources "that state that the matter is a fringe science" you are, in fact, suppressing the other aspects of the topic. There's a lot of credible sources that talk about (just one example aspect) the history of parapsychology, without delving heavily into the science/non-science debate. Parapsychology predates the term pseudoscience by almost 100 years. The topic isn't all about how it's pseudoscience. Neither WP:WEIGHT, nor WP:FRINGE, directs you to treat a subject that is pseudoscientific as all about pseudoscience. I know, because I contributed in writing them. Even the astrology article is not dominated by its pseudoscientific aspect.
Btw, you took my comment, talking about what WP:WEIGHT says, and twisted it around into accusations of agenda pushing, and you say I'm misleading? Forgive me if I'm not all that sympathetic. After editing years of editing Wikipedia, I don't take accusations seriously without diffs. Least of all hypocritical ones. --Nealparr (talk to me) 22:42, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"I was commenting on exactly what you said, "dominate". The article should not be dominated by anything." Fringe says otherwise. Your failure to accept that and your constant disruption needs to come to an end right now. FAR is not for you to push something that goes against our policies. You can step off the soap box and stop disrupting things, or you can be taken to AN for a request of a topic ban of both the FAR process and anything related to Parapsychology. You think there is a suppression? Fine, think that. Go to some other Wiki that lacks any academic or logical standards and push some unscientific lie simply because you can't handle the fact that we require actual sources and matters based on how it is treated in actuality. You want a fantasy world. That goes against everything Wikipedia is about. Wikipedia wont change because you want it to. So, you have your option - stop the disruption, or processes will be started to stop you. You have blatantly lied about what I say, and now you are continuing trying to twist words. I do not accept such people, so you are at the end of my patience. You have the two options. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:29, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You obviously are confusing me with someone else, or not actually reading what I wrote. WP:FRINGE does not say that an article needs to be dominated by anything, feel free to try to point out where it does. I have not been disruptive, feel free to try to point to where I have. I have not advocated parapsychology, feel to try to point out where I have. But above all that, stop saying I'm twisting your words when you are totally twisting mine, and adding to it that I support some position that I don't. You're on some weird attack position against me personally, when all I've done is disagreed with what you think policy says. Your reading of Wikipedia's policies is incorrect, that's all. Saying that doesn't make one an advocate of parapsychology, or warrants personal attacks. So seriously, again, diffs or keep it to yourself. --Nealparr (talk to me) 15:09, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"But above all that, stop saying I'm twisting your words when you are totally twisting mine" Bull. I only respond to what you claim -I- claim. Once again, you are twisting things. I warned you, and you are making it clear that you will need to be topic banned because you are not here for anything but spreading misconceptions, out and out claiming things that are false, and disobeying our standards in order to push a view. And "does not say that an article needs to be dominated by anything" is so patently absurd that it is unbelievable that you would even write it: "Coverage on Wikipedia should not make a fringe theory appear more notable than it actually is" Right there at the very top. Very clear. The article -must- be presented in the actuality of it not being an actual science. Therefore, the dominant idea within the article can and only should be that this is not a science. You don't like it because it gets away from you promoting some fringe view. So stop the crap. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:24, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Let's take this to AN because I am getting really tired of you saying I'm promoting a fringe view when I haven't, and you've provided no diffs that support that I do. At AN you'll be required to provide diffs, and I won't have to deal with unsupported accusations.
WP:FRINGE deals with inclusion to Wikipedia based on notability. Parapsychology, everyone agrees, is notable for inclusion. WP:FRINGE also deals with where inclusion should occur, again, based on notability. Parapsychology is not notable in science articles such as physics and biology. It's not included there. It's fringe there. Parapsychology is certainly notable in an article about parapsychology. The fact that parapsychology is pseudoscience is not the only aspect to the topic of parapsychology. In this article, there is 48 kb of information having nothing to do with that, and 20 kb of information about that. It's not dominated by the fact that its pseudoscience, it shouldn't be, and WP:FRINGE doesn't say that it should be. It'd be a really short, biased essay, not an article at all, if it were dominated by the fact that it's pseudoscience. Again, look at the astrology article, the example pseudoscience Popper used when he coined the term. It's not dominated by that aspect. It too is under the purview of WP:FRINGE.
Not once did I even say that you advocate that it should be dominated by anything. I only said that it shouldn't be, and that interpreting policy to say that it should is a bad interpretation. I've never said that you support any position on anything. You're the one saying -I- support some advocate position, and frankly I'm tired of hearing that. So, yes, let's take it to AN so you'll at least have to back that up with something substantial, and they can review your style of bullying people into agreeing with you through personal attacks, of which you've made several against me and other editors who you seem to disagree with. Let's. --Nealparr (talk to me) 15:54, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Or, rather, the proper venue is WP:ANI. I'll let you give your version of the events first if you'd like. Please provide diffs. Alternatively, we can agree to disagree and move on (I won't talk to you, you won't talk to me), but I must insist that for a resolution of that sort, you stop accusing me of advocacy. If you're going to continue doing that, I require diffs. A great deal of the criticism on this article I wrote myself, so I don't deserve that label, or your disrespect. --Nealparr (talk to me) 16:44, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The only diffs that will be presented will be to your comments here in which you continue to disrupt this process. Your spastic edits above are only verification of that. The fact that you claim there are "personal attacks" when the only thing that has been discussed are your -actions-, which is clearly not a personal attack shows that you are acting inappropriately. WP:NPA makes it very clear that such accusations -are- a personal attack, so you are in violation of yet another policy. The more you talk, the more evidence you provide that you are not here to act appropriately. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:15, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You made what I felt is an inaccurate interpretation of policy in response to someone's comment (who you also labeled an advocate). I commented that I felt that interpretation is inaccurate. You called me an advocate who twists your words. I defended myself. You continued. If there's disruption here, you "dominate" it. ANI can figure it out. --Nealparr (talk to me) 17:24, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It is only inaccurate because you either 1. don't understand it and that is the reason why you are in violation of the policy or 2. don't care about our policies and will try to manipulate whatever you can in order to push a fringe view. Either way, your actions are completely inappropriate and unwelcome at Wikipedia. You didn't "defend yourself", you have been acting offensive from the very beginning. That is how many fringe POV pushers operate. You are dead set on operating in a manner that is not appropriate for Wikipedia and have violated many, many rules. Ottava Rima (talk) 21:00, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Wrong. I've been working with Shoemaker on improving the article in response to his complaints about the article. You're the one who's been offensive. Reread what you wrote. You've been calling me a POV pusher in every post you wrote since I disagreed with you. You can't just call someone a POV pusher, not produce diffs to back it up, and expect me just to sit back and take it. I offered to drop it and move on if you stop doing that. You insist on doing it. I said you can post to ANI first, but if you're not going to I'll be happy to post first. One way or the other you need to stop the personal attack of calling me a POV pusher. I won't be called that by someone who won't even bother to check my edits. --Nealparr (talk to me) 23:20, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"You're the one who's been offensive" Really? Offensive would require me attacking people. Instead, I have been responding to people who attacked me. Funny how that words. However, your reversal of the two is indictative of your reversing of minority and majority positions in order to promote the view you wish. And pushing a POV is an adjective and describes actions. It is not a "personal attack". Please read WP:NPA - it says to focus on the actions of others. And check your edits? I am responding to the way you are twisting language above. If you are acting differently elsewhere, then that only shows a greater problem with your editing here. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:45, 13 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You want a fantasy world.
Wikipedia wont change because you want it to.
You don't like it because it gets away from you promoting some fringe view.
You are dead set on...
...promote the view you wish
You have no clue about what I want, what I like, what I am dead set on, or what view I wish. But that's a lot of talk about me personally, and not my actions. Again, reread what you wrote and come at me differently. Maybe a little less belligerent. --Nealparr (talk to me) 03:48, 13 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

[Unindent] May I politely suggest that this battle is likely to be unhelpful, get us nowhere, and just cause problems with little benefit. It'd probably be better to drop it, and possibly use {{hat}} {{hab}} tags around it. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 204 FCs served 03:45, 13 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fine by me. --Nealparr (talk to me) 03:48, 13 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist. There are ongoing problems both about agenda-pushing and breadth of coverage. It could be made into an FA, but it's not now. Cutting the article any slack would send the wrong message to the agenda-pushers. Shoemaker's Holiday has shown an amazing tenacity and it's a pity that such stubbornness seems necessary just to implement a needed process on this article. MartinPoulter (talk) 11:08, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
  1. ^ Kaptchuk, T. J. (1998). Intentional ignorance: A history of blind assessment and placebo controls in medicine. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 72, 389-433.
  2. ^ Hacking, I. (1988). Telepathy: Origins of randomization in experimental design. Isis, 79, 427-451.
  3. ^ Hacking, I. (1988). Telepathy: Origins of randomization in experimental design. Isis, 79, 427-451.
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