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So you can dismiss opinions out of hand because of a "non-idiot bias", and I have to exhaustively dismantle the entire Wikipedia article along with its citation

So you can dismiss opinions out of hand because of a "non-idiot bias", and I have to exhaustively dismantle the entire Wikipedia article along with its citations? I'll do that right after you do so with the AAPS, all of its member MDs, and all the research cited in its reports on covid. All I did was laugh at someone citing Wikipedia as if it carried any weight in itself. By the way, the section the user referenced doesn't contain a single external citation.

kazinator 5y ago
> I have to exhaustively dismantle the entire Wikipedia article Oh, far from that. Just point out one thing, maybe two, that has struck you as being off or wrong that's all. > the section the user referenced doesn't contain a single external citation. That's not how the document structure works. That introductory section makes some general remarks like the one that was quoted: "the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a conservative non-profit association that promotes medical disinformation, HIV/AIDS denialism, the abortion-breast cancer hypothesis, vaccine and autism connections, and homosexuality reducing life expectancy." These claims are discussed in other sections below and those have citations. For instance, let's pick the abortion-breast cancer hypothesis topic. There is a section about that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Physicians_and_Surgeons#Abortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Physic... That has some remarks with citations: "In the fall 2007 Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Patrick Carroll hypothesized that abortion for women who have never previously given birth to a child is a risk factor that most predicts the likelihood of breast cancer. [19][20]" [19] https://www.aapsonline.org/nod/newsofday471.php https://www.aapsonline.org/nod/newsofday471.php (A link into the AAPS website itself!) [20] https://www.jpands.org/vol12no3/carroll.pdf https://www.jpands.org/vol12no3/carroll.pdf The article is just saying that the AAPS person wrote this and that, and here are the links. A document doesn't have to have citations in its paragraph. E.g. academic essay: 1. You tell them what you're gonna tell them. 2. Then you tell them (in more detail, with citations). 3. Then you tell them what you've told 'em. It doesn't make sense to find fault with 1 or 3 for not having citations. It's all dandy that the AAPS is made of doctors (appeal to authority). Well some doctors are idiots, and they are the ones who get the attention. Now, the article entirely negative; it provides no information about anything good having come from the AAPS or any of its members. It's just a laundry list of the controversies. So there is an obvious bias there; but the laundry list has external citations. The number of members is large, and the organization has a long history. There is no reason to believe, from that article, that it's entirely defined just by the controversies. You'd be a fool not to read the article with a critical mind, and just get the information from it, without forming some belief about the AAPS that may be distorted. Still, it doesn't look good. It looks like they don't care about the controversies; they don't see that as a blemish to clean up.

kazinator 5y ago

> I have to exhaustively dismantle the entire Wikipedia article Oh, far from that. Just point out one thing, maybe two, that has struck you as being off or wrong that's all. > the section the user referenced doesn't contain a single external citation. That's not how the document structure works. That introductory section makes some general remarks like the one that was quoted: "the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a conservative non-profit association that promotes medical disinformation, HIV/AIDS denialism, the abortion-breast cancer hypothesis, vaccine and autism connections, and homosexuality reducing life expectancy." These claims are discussed in other sections below and those have citations. For instance, let's pick the abortion-breast cancer hypothesis topic. There is a section about that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Physicians_and_Surgeons#Abortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Physic... That has some remarks with citations: "In the fall 2007 Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Patrick Carroll hypothesized that abortion for women who have never previously given birth to a child is a risk factor that most predicts the likelihood of breast cancer. [19][20]" [19] https://www.aapsonline.org/nod/newsofday471.php https://www.aapsonline.org/nod/newsofday471.php (A link into the AAPS website itself!) [20] https://www.jpands.org/vol12no3/carroll.pdf https://www.jpands.org/vol12no3/carroll.pdf The article is just saying that the AAPS person wrote this and that, and here are the links. A document doesn't have to have citations in its paragraph. E.g. academic essay: 1. You tell them what you're gonna tell them. 2. Then you tell them (in more detail, with citations). 3. Then you tell them what you've told 'em. It doesn't make sense to find fault with 1 or 3 for not having citations. It's all dandy that the AAPS is made of doctors (appeal to authority). Well some doctors are idiots, and they are the ones who get the attention. Now, the article entirely negative; it provides no information about anything good having come from the AAPS or any of its members. It's just a laundry list of the controversies. So there is an obvious bias there; but the laundry list has external citations. The number of members is large, and the organization has a long history. There is no reason to believe, from that article, that it's entirely defined just by the controversies. You'd be a fool not to read the article with a critical mind, and just get the information from it, without forming some belief about the AAPS that may be distorted. Still, it doesn't look good. It looks like they don't care about the controversies; they don't see that as a blemish to clean up.