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Wiki is not a very reliable source for citations :) Nevertheless, it points that there are inherit contradictions in any research study. We should avoid make "m

by bholdr 11y ago

Wiki is not a very reliable source for citations :) Nevertheless, it points that there are inherit contradictions in any research study. We should avoid make "marketing" claims.

nkozyra 11y ago
Attacking Wikipedia when the citations for the claims are very clearly stated within is tiresome. If you'd clicked on the citations within you'd find: American Journal of Physiology, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Annals of nutrition & metabolism, etc. If you have issues with those sources, fine, but saying "don't cite Wikipedia" when the article is well-cited is not useful in the least.
- bholdr 11y ago
  Thank you for that clarification. My point was that basing your argument on a paragraph from the Wiki doesn't really hold water. Have you gone through those cited articles? Have you checked the data? You trust that those statements next to the citation are representative of what is actually been said in the article itself. Wikipedia is great, I am all for it. I just personally wouldn't building my argument solely based on what is said there.
  - abandonliberty 11y ago
    The scope and depth of human knowledge is so large that validating accuracy of information is humanly impossible for most interesting subjects beyond experts and the very interested. You're absolutely correct that information needs to be validated, but wrong in singling out Wikipedia. This rabbit hole goes pretty far. I've found false citations from published articles. Conservatively assuming 25 citations per article, the amount you have to validate is 25^(citation depth). There are 11 citations in the above quote, so here's the homework you're requesting: Level 0 validation: 11 Articles Level 1 validation: 275 Articles Level 2 validation: 6875 Articles The knee-jerk distrust of Wikipedia is so old that a paper was published in Nature in 2005 showing accuracy close to that of the Encyclopedia Britannica. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia Just like any other source, you have to assess it. How many editors, to which degree is it a target for vandalism or astroturfing, how well is the article written, the type of the subject material, etc. Therefore I would expect britannica-level accuracy on the caffeine page, and that's pretty good for most discussions.
    - bholdr 11y ago
      Fair enough. Valid points. Still I believe we conflating things here. I believe encyclopedias are good source for well established facts, don't think they are the main source for citation when discussing hypotheses that still undergoing testing. When it comes to Wikipedia, you basically trust it to be up to date with state of the art. Yes, research seems to show that it converges towards some notion of the truth, but it takes time and ultimately you don't know if what you are reading at the moment is a true representation of what was actually written in the original paper. Again, not saying this is bad, I would just be cautious about accepting an argument which is solely a copy&paste from a Wikipedia page that makes claims based on handful publications that I presume the person posting haven't read. To sum up, I am not against Wikipedia, I am somewhat cautions accepting wild statements like "Drinking coffee can Kill you" just because someone took the time to put it into a wikipage (with a bunch of citations). http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/09/15/12/13/australias-main-national-sport-is-leadership-spills-according-to-wikipedia http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/09/15/12/13/australias...
- DanBC 11y ago
  Even wikipedia tells people not to use wikipedia as a source. It's a reasonable point.
nadams 11y ago
> Wiki is not a very reliable source for citations I've always found this paradigm troubling. Any class I've been in has banned the use of wikipedia - but not big-jims-site-o-facts.com, freewebs.com/someuser/page-copied-from-wikipedia.html, or president-facts-dynamic-dns.us.to/obama.html . I'm not saying wikipedia is perfect - but the simple fact that people have bots that monitor pages for bad edits I'm much more likely to believe a wikipedia page than some random buzzfeed article.
- bholdr 11y ago
  >I'm much more likely to believe a wikipedia page than some random buzzfeed article. I think that's part of the problem. You (almost blindly) trust it. Not saying Wikipedia in any way can be compared to buzzed articles, but people don't use buzzfeed articles to make a scientific point in an argument because Buzzfeed is very explicit about what it is and what is not. I feel with Wikipedia it is not as clear, so when using it for your arguments, one should treat it with caution.
  - FilterSweep 11y ago
    > because Buzzfeed is very explicit about what it is and what is not. Are you sure about this assertion? The site is full of neglecting to give credit where credit is due [0] [1] [2], spreading false rumors about important topics [3], and blatantly lying that their business does not rely solely on clickbait [4] [0] https://imgur.com/gallery/r8VBF https://imgur.com/gallery/r8VBF [1] https://imgur.com/gallery/7Ah53 https://imgur.com/gallery/7Ah53 [2] http://gawker.com/5922038/remix-everything-buzzfeed-and-the-plagiarism-problem http://gawker.com/5922038/remix-everything-buzzfeed-and-the-... [3] http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/07/buzzfeed-helped-spread-sandra-bland-rumors.html http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/07/buzzfeed-helped-spread-... [4] http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/why-buzzfeed-doesnt-do-clickbait http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/why-buzzfeed-doesnt-do-clic... While you, an informed HN reader, would not take BF seriously, unfortunately very many people do.
  - nadams 11y ago
    I used buzzfeed as a quick popular example - but Yahoo news is just as bad. I recall a "scientific study" where there was a link between plastic and issues with fetuses. The yahoo news article proclaimed that there was a link, the actual science study said while there may have been related incidents but there was no positive link between the 2. I saw many comments on facebook from pregnant mothers claiming that they threw away all plastic in their house. If they bothered to actually read the official study - they would know that was not necessary. I understand they wanted to be careful - but plastic and materials made of plastic have been around for many many years. Unless they were burning plastic or using plastic exclusively - judging from years of exposure I think there are more important household hazards than that. Again - I'm more likely to believe a wikipedia article with cited sources than a bias site or news report. But yet when you are taught in class - that freewebs site that is made by some random guy is more of a reliable site than a site that can be updated and monitored by people around the world. That's my problem and point. For academia we shouldn't say "you can't use wikipedia but any other site is ok" - but rather "find N articles that support this fact or opinion - where wikipedia is ok to include as a supporting article".

by bholdr 11y ago

Wiki is not a very reliable source for citations :) Nevertheless, it points that there are inherit contradictions in any research study. We should avoid make "marketing" claims.

nkozyra 11y ago

Attacking Wikipedia when the citations for the claims are very clearly stated within is tiresome. If you'd clicked on the citations within you'd find: American Journal of Physiology, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Annals of nutrition & metabolism, etc. If you have issues with those sources, fine, but saying "don't cite Wikipedia" when the article is well-cited is not useful in the least.

bholdr 11y ago
Thank you for that clarification. My point was that basing your argument on a paragraph from the Wiki doesn't really hold water. Have you gone through those cited articles? Have you checked the data? You trust that those statements next to the citation are representative of what is actually been said in the article itself. Wikipedia is great, I am all for it. I just personally wouldn't building my argument solely based on what is said there.
- abandonliberty 11y ago
  The scope and depth of human knowledge is so large that validating accuracy of information is humanly impossible for most interesting subjects beyond experts and the very interested. You're absolutely correct that information needs to be validated, but wrong in singling out Wikipedia. This rabbit hole goes pretty far. I've found false citations from published articles. Conservatively assuming 25 citations per article, the amount you have to validate is 25^(citation depth). There are 11 citations in the above quote, so here's the homework you're requesting: Level 0 validation: 11 Articles Level 1 validation: 275 Articles Level 2 validation: 6875 Articles The knee-jerk distrust of Wikipedia is so old that a paper was published in Nature in 2005 showing accuracy close to that of the Encyclopedia Britannica. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia Just like any other source, you have to assess it. How many editors, to which degree is it a target for vandalism or astroturfing, how well is the article written, the type of the subject material, etc. Therefore I would expect britannica-level accuracy on the caffeine page, and that's pretty good for most discussions.
  - bholdr 11y ago
    Fair enough. Valid points. Still I believe we conflating things here. I believe encyclopedias are good source for well established facts, don't think they are the main source for citation when discussing hypotheses that still undergoing testing. When it comes to Wikipedia, you basically trust it to be up to date with state of the art. Yes, research seems to show that it converges towards some notion of the truth, but it takes time and ultimately you don't know if what you are reading at the moment is a true representation of what was actually written in the original paper. Again, not saying this is bad, I would just be cautious about accepting an argument which is solely a copy&paste from a Wikipedia page that makes claims based on handful publications that I presume the person posting haven't read. To sum up, I am not against Wikipedia, I am somewhat cautions accepting wild statements like "Drinking coffee can Kill you" just because someone took the time to put it into a wikipage (with a bunch of citations). http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/09/15/12/13/australias-main-national-sport-is-leadership-spills-according-to-wikipedia http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/09/15/12/13/australias...
DanBC 11y ago
Even wikipedia tells people not to use wikipedia as a source. It's a reasonable point.

nadams 11y ago

> Wiki is not a very reliable source for citations I've always found this paradigm troubling. Any class I've been in has banned the use of wikipedia - but not big-jims-site-o-facts.com, freewebs.com/someuser/page-copied-from-wikipedia.html, or president-facts-dynamic-dns.us.to/obama.html . I'm not saying wikipedia is perfect - but the simple fact that people have bots that monitor pages for bad edits I'm much more likely to believe a wikipedia page than some random buzzfeed article.

bholdr 11y ago
>I'm much more likely to believe a wikipedia page than some random buzzfeed article. I think that's part of the problem. You (almost blindly) trust it. Not saying Wikipedia in any way can be compared to buzzed articles, but people don't use buzzfeed articles to make a scientific point in an argument because Buzzfeed is very explicit about what it is and what is not. I feel with Wikipedia it is not as clear, so when using it for your arguments, one should treat it with caution.
- FilterSweep 11y ago
  > because Buzzfeed is very explicit about what it is and what is not. Are you sure about this assertion? The site is full of neglecting to give credit where credit is due [0] [1] [2], spreading false rumors about important topics [3], and blatantly lying that their business does not rely solely on clickbait [4] [0] https://imgur.com/gallery/r8VBF https://imgur.com/gallery/r8VBF [1] https://imgur.com/gallery/7Ah53 https://imgur.com/gallery/7Ah53 [2] http://gawker.com/5922038/remix-everything-buzzfeed-and-the-plagiarism-problem http://gawker.com/5922038/remix-everything-buzzfeed-and-the-... [3] http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/07/buzzfeed-helped-spread-sandra-bland-rumors.html http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/07/buzzfeed-helped-spread-... [4] http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/why-buzzfeed-doesnt-do-clickbait http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/why-buzzfeed-doesnt-do-clic... While you, an informed HN reader, would not take BF seriously, unfortunately very many people do.
- nadams 11y ago
  I used buzzfeed as a quick popular example - but Yahoo news is just as bad. I recall a "scientific study" where there was a link between plastic and issues with fetuses. The yahoo news article proclaimed that there was a link, the actual science study said while there may have been related incidents but there was no positive link between the 2. I saw many comments on facebook from pregnant mothers claiming that they threw away all plastic in their house. If they bothered to actually read the official study - they would know that was not necessary. I understand they wanted to be careful - but plastic and materials made of plastic have been around for many many years. Unless they were burning plastic or using plastic exclusively - judging from years of exposure I think there are more important household hazards than that. Again - I'm more likely to believe a wikipedia article with cited sources than a bias site or news report. But yet when you are taught in class - that freewebs site that is made by some random guy is more of a reliable site than a site that can be updated and monitored by people around the world. That's my problem and point. For academia we shouldn't say "you can't use wikipedia but any other site is ok" - but rather "find N articles that support this fact or opinion - where wikipedia is ok to include as a supporting article".