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Deepak Chopra

Some discussion coming to boil over whether Chopra's views on quantum science are really fringe, and whether/how skeptic commentary on him should be present. Wise editors' opinions could benefit the discussion I am sure. Alexbrn 19:41, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

how notable are the natterings of a famous person? Unless his comments have generated a lot of commentary in the quantum science world, I think they are best left off en.wp all together. He's a Dr. and health advocate, not a chemist or physicist. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 19:54, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

My impression is that hardcore scientists just don't bother with it; skeptics and commentators on science pooh-pooh it, and new-age types might give it a more sympathetic hearing. It's one of those interesting cases where it's so nonsensical the scientists-in-question don't even bother to rebut it ... Alexbrn 19:59, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

I can understand how this would happen. You wouldn't believe the sheer volume of crazy that shows up in your email inbox if you're listed on a physics department web site. I'm afraid I got lost with the wall of text on the talk page though. a13ean (talk) 20:25, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

• Chopra's views on quantum mechanics are fringe, but also quote famously fringe; plenty of sources do exist characterising the fringiness of his views. I'll dig up some at the weekend, but the current sources are fine. IRWolfie- (talk) 20:59, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

• Recipients of the Nobel Prize are obviously notable as such. I would presume that Ig Nobel laureates also are due some (though lesser) notability for that award, too.--R.S. Peale (talk) 19:44, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Valentino Bocca controversy

A new article on a case where an Italian judge apparently awarded damages to a family claiming the MMR vaccine causes autism. Some content on the same topic was added at MMR vaccine controversy which I reverted. No scientific literature is cited. I'm leaning towards a PROD or AfD but I'd like to ask for opinions here first. :-) Arc de Ciel (talk) 12:20, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

The case should not, IMO have it's own article, but it clearly is relevant to MMR vaccine controversy, since it has created more controversy! It is citable to reliable sources that it is linked to the controversy. Obviously a legal judgement is not a scientific one, but that's a different issue. Paul B (talk) 12:53, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

It's been previously discussed at the MMR controversy article and the consensus appears to have been not to include it. Anyways, I've redirected the article. Arc de Ciel (talk) 08:25, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Morgellons and Talk:Morgellons

Possible topic ban in this fringe-medical-related topic. Mangoe (talk) 15:05, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Moderated discussion on the Tea Party movement

Is this a fringe theory or reliably sourced fact? Independent, high quality scholarship on this issue have concluded that the United States political movement known as the Tea Party consists of both grassroots and astroturf components. Several Misplaced Pages editors, however, have called this conclusion a "fringe theory", stating that the movement "is 100% grass-roots" and It's a grass-roots political movement. Period. These Misplaced Pages editors further claim that any mention of astroturf elements when describing this movement is merely non-factual opinion espoused by a conspiracy of political opponents posing as academics and journalists.

The contesting Misplaced Pages editors have not, to date, produced any reliably sourced refutation of the scholarly consensus that the movement is made up of both grassroots and astroturf elements. They have, however, cited several sources (mostly news media reports) that only mention the "grassroots" components without mentioning the "astroturf" components, as proof that the movement must therefore be 100% grassroots. We'd like some uninvolved input on this matter. Are the above sources promoting a fringe theory? Thanks in advance, Xenophrenic (talk) 16:27, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

As I expected, this was presented with a lot of high-velocity spin and some key facts which undercut Xenophrenic's argument were left out. Only three of these sources actually claim that any part of the Tea Party movement is Astroturfed. I will refer to them by the names of their principal authors: Zellner, Formisano and Dryzek. Dryzek is written by climate change experts and briefly mentions in passing some political phenomena in America. It's sort of a drive-by shooting from an academic standpoint. They're not writing about subject matter with which they have any expertise. They point their rhetorical guns at it, briefly spray some rhetorical bullets in its general direction, and move on as quickly as possible.

Zellner was a law student, not a professor. Almost all the other academic sources we use in the article are written by professors of law or political science, and many are chairs of their departments, teaching at Ivy League universities or other highly respected institutions, appearing multiple times on TV news networks as experts on the law and politics, etc. Zellner just isn't in the same league, and proves it by sourcing his Astroturfing claims with sources that Misplaced Pages would not consider reliable for anything but their own opinions: AlterNet and an opinion column by Paul Krugman, a highly partisan opponent of the Tea Party.

Formisano is a professor of history, not law, not political science, at the University of Kentucky. He has published at least two op-ed columns which demonstrate that he likes Barack Obama and the Democrats (political oopponents of the Tea Party) very, very much. Some of us suspect that an anti-Tea Party bias crept into Formisano's work, particularly since he has based his Astroturfing accusation on a claim that absolutely no one else has made: that the "Institute for Liberty," a genuine Astroturfing group which purports to speak on behalf of the Tea Party when it isn't Astroturfing for Indonesian corporate clients, is in fact a part of the Tea Party.

The remainder of the sources cited by Xenophrenic do not explicitly claim that any part of the Tea Party is Astroturfed, and to claim that they do is an example of WP:SYNTH. Some of them refer to "top-down" organizing, which is not necessarily Astroturfing; and when you take a closer look at the actual organizing activities they describe, it's the sort of thing that Formisano, Zellner and Dryzek would cheerfully call "community organizing" if it was done by Barack Obama instead of Dick Armey, with the same amount of money provided by billionaire George Soros instead of the billionaire Koch brothers.

This takes us to the next problem. Formisano, Zellner and Dryzek are trying to redefine the word "Astroturf" to include community organizing activity, but the word "Astroturfing" has been a stable and well-recognized political science term for roughly 30 years. It refers to a deceptive effort by paid corporate and political operatives to pretend that a grass-roots movement exists where there is no such thing. All these sources acknowledge that there is a very strong grass-roots or "bottom-up" element existing in the Tea Party. The rest of these elements merely amplify an actual existing grass-roots element, rather than manufacturing one where one does not actually exist.

Xenophrenic is left with three sources. Each is shaky in its own way. They're countered by literally dozens of reliable sources, including the peer-reviewed academic writings of Elizabeth Price Foley, a law professor who has repeatedly appeared as an expert on law and politics on CNN and other news networks. There are also sources from such eminently reliable, fact-checked news organizations as The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, CNN, and National Public Radio. Generally these sources say, "The Tea Party movement is a grass-roots movement." Period. Full stop. Or they refer to members as "grass-roots activists." Implicit in these statements is a refutation of the claim that the Tea Party is partially Astroturfed.

Xenophrenic presented only half of the truth. Now that the other half of the truth has been presented, let's hear from previously uninvolved editors and admins, to determine whether "The Tea Party is part Astroturf" is (A) the majority viewpoint that belongs in the article lede per WP:WEIGHT, (B) a minority viewpoint that belongs farther down in the article per WP:WEIGHT, or (C) a fringe opinion that doesn't belong in the article at all per WP:FRINGE. Xenophrenic supports (A). I support (B), along with four other editors. Arthur Rubin supports (C). What do you think? Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 14:33, 28 July 2013 (UTC) (I've indicated no such support. -Xenophrenic)

"he likes Barack Obama and the Democrats" is not a valid reason to describe someone's opinions as 'fringe'. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:40, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

You are correct, and it's also not a valid reason to describe a fact as 'fringe', as several editors have attempted to do. Also, after having looked at the 2 links to Formisano pieces provided by P&W, the allegation of 'bias' is unsupported - not that it would matter anyway when determining the reliability of sources. Xenophrenic (talk) 05:10, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

All that is required to support a statement of fact is one reliable source. A book about the Tea Party written by a professor of history (Formisano) and published by Johns Hopkins University Press meets that standard. The publisher has determined that he is competent to write about the subject, and his personal opinions are irrelevant to whether the facts in his book are accurate. John Dryzek is an established expert on both democratic theory and evironmental politics. While Zellner was a law student, his article appeared in the Connecticut Law Review, which meets rs.

AFAIK there is nothing fringe in saying that the Tea Party movement consists of both groups set up by wealthy individuals and groups set up by concerned citizens, i.e., "astro-turf" and "grass-roots" organizations. Of course even reliable sources may be wrong. It could be for example that the Tea Party Express is not part of the Tea Party movement, or that it was not created by a Republican consulting firm, but was set up by tens of thousands of citizens acting together. If that is true, then the way to challenge what the sources say is to find sources that say something different.

TFD (talk) 15:52, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

All of the above reliable sources say that the TP movement is astroturfed, not just three. Five of them specifically use the "astroturf" word, while the remaining sources explain the astroturfing in detail as "top down" organizing, inauthentic/fake grassroots advocacy, and "front group" manipulation -- all decades-old definitions of astroturfing in the context in which they are used. Your claim that several scholars published by Oxford, Princeton, Johns Hopkins and peer-reviewed journals have redefined "Astroturfing" doesn't help your argument; if true, it discredits your argument. Your claim that all of the above reliable sources are "countered by literally dozens of reliable sources" is false, and it is time to call your bluff. Please produce some here, with the exact verbatim text you are citing from those sources, that "counter" the fact that this grassroots movement is also astroturfed. All I've seen so far are sources that just mention the grassroots part, and there is no "implicit" or "explicit" refutation of the astroturfed part there. To quote a reliable source above: "Often the line between real grassroots and astroturf lobbying is blurred, however. A movement may be partly spontaneous but partly orchestrated." Your claim that being one "implicitly" disallows the other is a fiction. Xenophrenic (talk) 05:10, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Jumping is, as a completely uninvolved editor:

• I don't think this is a "fringe" issue; this is more about public relations and American politics isn't it?
• Astroturf has wide currency as a term meaning a fake/deceptive/paid-for effort to ape popular ("grass-roots") support; other uses of this word are peculiar
• The terms "grass-roots" and "astro-turf" are PR terms (POV-labelling) and we can expect them to be used by partial and hostile commentators respectively. I would usually avoid either of them in the lede of an article, except my impression (from across the Atlantic) was that the TP movement was formed largely from within the Republican party by disaffected members who formed a kind of mass pressure group. The proposed wording along the lines of "grass-roots with astro-turf components" is the kind of writing that makes WP look bad. Alexbrn 05:46, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

You are probably right that this isn't a "fringe" issue, but at least 3 editors called it that. Looking at the argument above by P&W, it appears that WP:RSN and RS:NPOVN would be better suited to address his concerns. You are absolutely correct that "astroturf" and "grassroots" are PR terms, and the PR industry is partly responsible for the "peculiar" synonyms and definitions (Example: They redefine "astroturf" as "front group"). Proposed wording for the lede about the movement's dual nature (grassroots and astroturfed) would definitely benefit from a more thorough explanation of the nuanced make up of the movement. That might be better relegated to the body of the article. Xenophrenic (talk) 23:30, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

This appears to be forumshopping at its most intriguing. Not only is it not related to the stated topic of this noticeboard, is not phrased in a neutral manner etc. it also manages to take absurdist potshots at other editors without notifying them of this discussion, yet another venue for what the OP has posted in far too many places already. , the TPm moderated discussion page (multiple posts), self-deletion of his own RfC/U, BLP/N, AN and AN/I posts inter alia all pretty much insisting that he only wants the WP:TRUTH <g> Collect (talk) 01:54, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

And that is yet another example of pure, unadulterated Collect, misstating the facts as usual. I did indeed announce this posting to the editors; I've taken this Talk page matter to only one noticeboard/forum, this one; I've never "self-deleted" an RfC/U, BLP/N, AN, or AN/I post. TRUTH-challenged as usual I see, but I'm sure you are just trying to be a "good faith participant " with your comment here. Xenophrenic (talk) 06:42, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Transgenerational epigenetic observations?

This seems like rather an exceptional claim (that circumstantial information is transmitted to subsequent generations genetically), also evident in the links from here. The Överkalix study seems to have had some press coverage and is also treated as "reviving" the evolutionary debate in this piece. Any geneticists in the house?

The specific result is a bit odd (the opposing gender-specificity of the descent), but the concept that there can be trans-generational effects mediated via epigenetics doesn't surprise me in the least. As big as genomics are, epigenetic inheritance is the hot topic in genetics these days. Maybe, though, I am missing your point. Is there something specific that raises issues for you? Agricolae (talk) 07:04, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Quite probably just my ignorance - but it seemed maybe some there was some suggestion of Lamarckian inheritance in play. Is it really mainstream science now that environmental influence is transmitted by some kind of genetics? Well, I live and learn! Alexbrn 07:22, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, environmental influences can induce systemic changes in DNA methylation and this can alter gene expression, and some DNA methylation differences are passed to subsequent generations. Neither of those are debated. Is that Lamarkian? Depends on your criteria for Lamarkianism, I guess. Bear in mind that the environmentally-induced epigenetic changes are not necessarily adaptive, so in one sense it is no different than exposure to a mutagen, which makes changes that are then passed down. With this particular study, I would have to read it to see whether they controlled appropriately - it may just be classic Darwinism. If the famine killed off one end of the gene pool, then the progeny of the survivors would have different allele frequency than the non-famine population, whether those allelic differences are methylation-based or simply nucleotide sequence-based. Still, the general concept is accepted, at least in theory. Agricolae (talk) 08:25, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

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