Talk:Gerhard Meisenberg

{{db-attack}}

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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Wikipedia defines an attack page as "a page, in any namespace, that primarily exists to disparage or threaten its subject." [WP:ATTACK] This is the case here. The page was created with the phrase "...who is the editor-in-chief of Mankind Quarterly, a journal which publishes content endorsing scientific racism and eugenics." The statement that the person is editor of the Mankind Quarterly is factually correct, but the claim that the journal endorses "scientific racism and eugenics" is (1) not verifiable because these terms have no generally accepted meanings. They represent not even specific opinions and are rarely used for any other purpose than as slurs to slander the people to whom they are attached. (2) The claim is unfounded because the journal states on its website that "the often contradictory views that are represented in the Mankind Quarterly are those of the individual authors, not those of the journal’s publishers or editors." (www.mankindquarterly.org/about) Serious academic journals must tolerate viewpoint diversity and publish alternative theories that are those of the individual authors. (3) Inspection of articles from the journal that are publicly available on Researchgate, Google Scholar (www.scholar.google.com) and other sources shows no unusual density of articles that can be construed as "endorsing scientific racism and eugenics" in whatever meaning. These easily accessible sources rather show that some articles propose biological or genetic explanations for their findings while others propose social or environmental ones. The balance between these is in no way unusual. (4) The author of the page claims that the journal "publishes content endorsing scientific racism and eugenics" (present tense) but supports this with old references which date from about the time of the Bell Curve Wars. These sources can only be based on events that happened in a rather distant past, not the recent past or the present, even if they have any basis in fact. (5) The cited references are antihereditarian polemics that are not scholarly but rhetorical in nature and do not provide specific evidence for their lurid claims. A polemic is not meant to present facts, but to express or incite hate. Perusal of these references by the author of this bio confirms that this is his intent. He simply repeats slurs that had been published in these sources. Even if these references were recent, they would therefore not provide substantive support for the claim made by the author. This bio was created with malicious intent, is slanderous, and provides no useful information. It should therefore be removed immediately. Additional: 1. On https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_light it says: "False light is a tort concerning privacy that is similar to the tort of defamation. The privacy laws of the United States include a non-public person's right to protection from publicity which puts the person in a false light to the public." The stated definition is fulfilled in this case. 2. Vandalism is defined by Wikipedia as "editing (or other behaviour) deliberately intended to obstruct or defeat the project's purpose, which is to create a free encyclopedia, in a variety of languages, presenting the sum of human knowledge". This editor uses Wikipedia as a soapbox for his hatreful rhetoric, and obstructs Wikipedia by presenting slurs as if they were facts.Anamika1988 (talk) 16:28, 2 August 2018 (UTC) Anamika1988, if you genuinely believe this article to be an attack page, then please place the db-attack template on the article itself, not on its talk page (i.e. this page). I have added nowiki tags around the template in this section header so this page won't be wrongly tagged in the meantime. IntoThinAir (formerly Everymorning) talk 16:31, 2 August 2018 (UTC) Apparently, he is the editor-in-chief of an academic journal, which makes him a notable researcher according to the guidelines. As for the article as it stands, there is obvious undue weight on controversy. In order to avoid speedy deletion, this needs to be corrected. Narssarssuaq (talk) 12:16, 17 August 2018 (UTC) I did some source checking for this article. Reference 6 (Nature comment): The important excerpt from the commentary in this source is: “By not investigating the race-intelligence link, we not only perpetuate ignorance and the prejudice that thrives on ignorance. We also deprive ourselves of the possibility to tackle the existing inequalities, first by a judicious development policy and – should genetic differences indeed be important – by eventually changing the allele frequencies of the offending genes. We should not get stuck in the twentieth-century assumption that environments are changeable but genes are not. This will no longer be the case in the twenty-first century.” This does indeed suggest a preference for racial equality, but speaking of “advocacy” is perhaps a bit strong. I would read it as simply meaning: “With twenty-first century technology, it’s our choice.” Instead of this Wired piece, we could also cite the complete commentary: https://www.nature.com/articles/458145a. Reference 3: Here Angela Saini is quoted as saying that Meisenberg's views on race and intelligence are "unsupported by evidence, generally receive little to no attention from within the everyday scientific community." It does not say what these views are, but this is clearly stated in Reference 6 above: “By not investigating the race-intelligence link, we … perpetuate ignorance and the prejudice that thrives on ignorance.” This implies the expectation that the research will not show much difference. Because he also writes what can be done if there are "offending genes", the conclusion is that he is agnostic about the results of the research. If Saini is accepted as a source, then this evidence should be added. References 2,3,4,5: These are about the Mankind Quarterly. Sources 2 and 3 (van der Merwe and Saini) contain no useful information about the journal except stating that it is published by Richard Lynn (van der Merwe) or that it is racist (Saini). These authors are journalists and political activists in southern England who have recently been working together to attack scientists, politicians and intellectuals they don’t like. Reference 4 is written by a left-wing Wikipedia troll who rails against the activities of right-wing Wikipedia trolls, and Reference 5 is an old polemic from the Bell Curve wars. Again, these sources simply claim that the Mankind Quarterly is racist without providing any evidence. These are non-scholarly, politically activist sources, all from the same (anti)intellectual fringe. They are not “reliable sources” about anything but themselves by Wikipedia’s usual standards. What should be done here is to follow standard practice and refer the reader to the journal website (www.mankindquarterly.org). This has all the pertinent information, including abstracts of the published articles. Also, this whole article mentions nothing but race and racism, although Meisenberg seems to have written very little about the subject other than the commentary in Reference 6. Wasn’t something like a biochemistry textbook mentioned in an earlier version of this article? What happened to that? Yucahu (talk) 16:09, 22 September 2018 (UTC) "Important" according to who? Wikipedia relies on independent sources, not editorial opinion about primary sources. It is not up to you to decide which parts of a source are important. Your personal opinions about these journalists is also not relevant to Wikipedia. The thrust of reliable, independent sources is that Meisenberg's association with Mankind and involvement in eugenics are significant because of the connection to scientific racism. Since Wikipedia isn't a platform for promotion, it is not acceptable to cherry-pick quotes from this person to imply a position which is not directly supported. If you know of any reliable independent sources about his biology textbook or anything else which isn't already mentioned, please let us know. Grayfell (talk) 20:44, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

Attack on Justin Ward

where is the evidence that he is a left wing Wikipedia troll? [[ WP:BLP applies to talk pages. Doug Weller talk 23:45, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

Grayfell does not seem to know that a "reliable" source is one that can be traced to a verifiable primary source. A secondary source that presents unverifiable claims is not a reliable source. The Macarthur reference is a reliable source because it references a verifiable primary source (a published Nature commentary). Conveniently, it even quotes from it. This is not the case with the other sources, such as Saini and van der Merwe. They claim things for which they provide no independently verifiable source. They present no evidence whatsoever. Everyone can pull things out of thin air and put them in a student newsletter or an opinion piece for a newspaper. That happens all the time. Without verifiable evidence (in this case, something that Meisenberg has said, written or done), these sources are rubbish. You mention Meisenberg's "involvement in eugenics". What evidence do you have for this? What qualifies as involvement in eugenics? Please explain. And what evidence do you have for cherry-picking? Can you provide quotes that contradict the quote in the Wired article? Or is there only one cherry to pick in the whole garden?

Sorry about the unflattering description of Justin Ward. In his article he complains only about right-wing trolls although trolling by diverse fanatics is a general problem for Wikipedia. Anyway, he mixes up the descriptive with the polemical, which is a red flag. At the very least, he gives his readers the impression of being more than a bit biased. Yucahu (talk) 20:10, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Your definition of "reliable source" is not Wikipedia's definition of reliable source. Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, independent sources. Primary sources should only be used with caution, and we do not triage secondary sources based on how closely they adhere to primary sources... otherwise we would just use primary sources. For Wikipedia's purposes, the "evidence" is the statements presented as factual by reliable outlets with reputations for accuracy and fact checking. Nothing you have presented, or which I have found looking through his work, has led me to doubt any of this.

To restate this once again: There are reliable sources already cited in the article, and if these source don't paint a flattering picture of Meisenberg, that still doesn't make those sources any less reliable. Grayfell (talk) 01:48, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

There are cases where secondary sources and primary sources contradict each other. We call this fake news. Are you saying that Wikipedia is designed to spread fake news? Is this the purpose of Wikipedia? Also, the sources you cite are not independent. In particular, Saini and van der Merwe worked together. According to their pieces, they first went after one Toby Young (whoever that is), then they extended their attack to the scientists of the London Conference when they learned that Toby Young had visited that conference. These two journalists belong to the same action group. They fabricated a story, and put it in two different outlets. Call that independent? Their history shows that these are worldview-defending tribal warriors of sorts. This is a red flag. More to the point, only those secondary sources whose claims can be independently verified are "reliable". Claims in secondary sources that cannot be verified are unreliable, and those that are demonstrably false are either errors or lies. Here we are dealing with allegations that are unsupported by any evidence. To the extent that there is any evidence from primary sources (i.e., facts), they contradict the storyline that moved from Saini and van der Merwe into this Wikipedia bio. Wikipedia allows primary, secondary and tertiary sources (PSTS): "Deciding whether primary, secondary or tertiary sources are appropriate in any given instance is a matter of good editorial judgment and common sense, and should be discussed on article talk pages." In articles about people who are interesting only for what they have published, and this includes scientists in addition to various kinds of intellectuals, good editorial judgment and common sense demand to use mainly their published writings even if these are primary sources. In this case secondary sources are preferable only when primary sources are not available, such as when something has never been published or a manuscript has been lost. In this case we have the worst case imaginable. Here the secondary sources cited are not merely unreliable. We are rather dealing with known culture warriors who have a reputation for going after people whose worldview (in this case, the scientific worldview) they don't share. Yucahu (talk) 13:57, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

They are independent of the topic of the article. They are independent of Meisenberg. What else would the term "independent" mean? Good lord... Your conspiratorial insinuations about their "worldview" is totally unsupported and is not worth discussing further.

Your opinions about mainly using primary sources is fundamentally opposed to common practice and Wikipedia's policies. From Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources: Wikipedia articles should be based mainly on reliable secondary sources, i.e., a document or recording that relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere.; from Wikipedia:Verifiability: Base articles on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. (WP:SOURCES); from Wikipedia:No original research: Do not analyze, evaluate, interpret, or synthesize material found in a primary source yourself; instead, refer to reliable secondary sources that do so. (WP:PRIMARY, emphasis in original); and many, many more besides.

It is not up to you to decide why these people are "interesting", it is up to reliable, independent sources. It is also not up to you to choose which primary sources are evidence, and which are not. Having glanced at Meisenberg's work, specifically his self-published book, I do not see any contradiction at all, but nobody cares about my original research, and nobody cares about your original research either. Grayfell (talk) 20:27, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Biographical article with no biographical details

Various of my edits have been reverted with comments stating that the edit was either whitewashing or bold editing. I believe both statements to be inaccurate. This article is a biographical. However, it does not contain biographical details about the subject. I have used the same source quoted in the article ("Gerhard Meisenberg". medical.rossu.edu. Retrieved 25 July 2018) to add the missing details.

Evangw29114 (talk) 10:14, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

That is not an independent source. With people associated with fringe ideas, we cannot use essentially autobiographical sources, per WP:FRINGE. Guy (Help!) 20:04, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

In God's Image

While I think you're right that this book was published by a vanity press, JzG, I think we should include it here, because it was reviewed in at least a couple of scholarly journals - one that I cited and also this. We could perhaps say something in the article about the book, based on its reception in these reviews. Cordless Larry (talk) 14:10, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Per WP:PROFRINGE, I am OK with that as long as the reviews are reality-based and not white supremacist / eugenicist sympathetic. Guy (Help!) 20:03, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

I do not have access to the Quarterly Review of Biology review, but the Springer review is dismissive and derisive of the book for multiple reasons, specifically highlighting the author's shoddy sexism. The reviewer facetiously says the book ...has a place of pride on my shelf in between Immanuel Velikovsky and Philippe Rushton (some of whose work is cited In God’s Image). It has no index, which is quite possibly a blessing. The review does nothing to indicate that the book has any independent significance, or is even seen as legitimate scholarship. The book is only academically significant as a demonstration of Meisenberg's pseudoscientific ideology. Anything more than a sentence or two seems like it would be giving this obscure, self-published book undue weight. Grayfell (talk) 01:34, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

If you want, you can read the full text of the Quarterly Review of Biology review here. It seems to be mostly but not entirely unfavorable in its assessment of the book, concluding that "the overall program of the book [is] too extreme, too ideologically driven, and too biologically and anthropologically unsophisticated." IntoThinAir (talk) 01:43, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Great, thanks! Based on that, here's a proposed paragraph:

Meisenberg wrote and paid to publish the 2007 book In God's Image: The Natural History of Intelligence and Ethics, explaining Meisenberg's claims regarding how genotype determines both physiology and behavior. Evolutionary Biologist and historian R. Paul Thompson, for The Quarterly Review of Biology, described the book as well written, but based on unsupported generalizations, saying "the overall program of the book [is] too extreme, too ideologically driven, and too biologically and anthropologically unsophisticated." Anthropologist Jonathan M. Marks, for the International Journal of Primatology, criticized both the underlying premise of the work, and Meisenberg's "uncritical and cavalier approach" to the topic. Marks listed the book with those by J. Phillipe Rushton and Immanuel Velikovsky.

Grayfell (talk) 02:50, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

I just found another review of the book in Cortex. It doesn't seem to be that negative, e.g. in this quote: "No matter how profound or controversial the issues might be, this book presents them in non-technical language and with a subtly ironical approach that only sometimes borders on cynicism about the human condition. The style is flamboyant, the text is full of unexpected turns of thought, full of challenges to received wisdom, and surprising explanations for human thoughts and beliefs." IntoThinAir (talk) 05:07, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Oh boy. Good find, but, dang, that's hard to work with... I tried to contextualize who wrote each review, but John Glad is going to be tough to do in a neutral way. This is an academic who advocated "humanistic arguments in favour of universal eugenics", and who wrote for Mankind Quarterly and was interviewed in The Occidental Quarterly. This seems like the kind of thing that should be mentioned, right? It's going to seem a bit odd to mention it, but it's going to seem a lot worse to leave it out. Other than two books on eugenics towards the end of his life, his published works appear to be mostly about Russian literature, which seems like an odd qualification for reviewing this book, but as far as I know, Cortex is legit so... I dunno what to do with that. Grayfell (talk) 08:43, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

I say we exclude that per WP:PROFRINGE and the fact that his connection to Mankind Quarterly raises questions about independence. Guy (Help!) 08:45, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

• Good work folks. I especially like the link to Velikovsky. Guy (Help!) 08:24, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

This sounds good to me, too. I just wonder whether we could clarify the final sentence? By "listed the book with those by...", do we mean that the book is being compared with books by those authors? Cordless Larry (talk) 09:26, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

References

I appreciate your attention to my comments. I am a novice and probably selected a subject too controversial to start with. Two additional thoughts: 1) I have compared the German and English version of this subject on Wikipedia. In my opinion, they present two very different pictures of him. How should we handle those discrepancies? 2) Regarding the book in question (In God's image), I have found citations to it in two different books: - Stephen K. Sanderson in In Religious Evolution and the Axial Age: From Shamans to Priests to Prophets (pg 228), he quotes Meisenberg correlations between IQ and religious belief. - It is also cited by Kyle Summers, Bernard Crespi in Human Social Evolution: The Foundational Works of Richard D. Alexander It is also in the catalog of many respectable US libraries (e.g. University of Pennsylvannia, you may find it by doing a catalog search. https://franklin.library.upenn.edu/bento?q=gerhard+meisenberg&meta=t). While I have not read the book, I am sure it expands on the ideas this subject has expressed in the past which are clearly described in the Wikipedia article. Evangw29114 (talk) 18:59, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Each Wikipedia has its own norms, guidelines, and (I think) policies. Content is not always going to be consistent from one to the other. Any changes based on content elsewhere would have to be evaluated on its own merits, and would still have to be based on reliable sources.

Do those new sources contain commentary about the book, or do they merely cite it? Grayfell (talk) 21:13, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Merely citation. Evangw29114 (talk) 23:15, 1 January 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.49.64.85 (talk)

Attack page

When I mentioned here that I was aware of an academic who had been harmed in real life because of his Wikipedia article, Gerhard Meisenberg was the person I was referring to. Today is the second time this article has been tagged as an attack page. The first time was last August, [1] and I think the person who formerly added the tag was one of Meisenberg's former students. This time, it was tagged by an experienced Wikipedian.

Dr. Meisenberg discussed this article with me a few months ago, so I know its history. The majority of the material that's caused the article to be tagged was added by one user, Grayfell. [2] When the article was tagged as an attack page last August, in response to the tag two uninvolved users, user:GB_fan and user:Narssarssuaq, tried to fix the problems with the article. [3] [4] [5] However, all of these users' changes were undone by the person who had originally added the material, [6] [7] restoring the article to the version that had been tagged. From August to the present, Grayfell also has reverted seven other attempts by various users to address the same issues. [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] Isn't the Wikipedia community supposed to have safeguards to prevent a user from doing this type of thing to an article about a living person?

I think this article is an embarrassment to Wikipedia in its current state, and I'm clearly not the only person with that opinion. @Phil Bridger: since you declined to delete the article, can you help address the issues that have caused it to be tagged as an attack page twice? @Randykitty: you seem to be tracking my edits (and you've welcomed me to Wikipedia multiple times after my IP address changed), so I'd like your opinion, too. 2600:1004:B123:3B1F:D954:A6C:E861:3E2A (talk) 22:36, 6 May 2019 (UTC)