[Taxacom] Wikipedia vs. science [some wider issues]

[Roger Burks]

This brings up some thoughts: "he who is convinced against his will,
holds his old opinion still" is an old saying that comes to bear here.
We live in a culture where corrections of mistakes are largely frowned
upon, because correction carries with it connotations of disrespect
for the resource and its personnel. Probably we would all like this to
be otherwise, but many of us reinforce this reality daily. What's
worse, is that public corrections are even more frowned upon, because
then every concerned party will know of the original inaccuracy and
its negative connotation against the entire resource.

Authority is often seen as preferably unassailable, and if it is ever
successfully assailed, then the authority becomes deprecated in some
people's eyes. This practice strikes me as contrary to the best
principles of science, but adherence to these principles is possibly
beyond the capabilities of general human nature. Rising above that
might be too much to ask or expect.

Instead, it would be an improvement to many systems if we could
correct an authority, resource, or editor without earning its eternal
enmity or creating a situation where the truth is repressed just to
save face.

Roger

On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 9:29 PM, Stephen Thorpe
<stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> wrote:
> The good Doug Yanega, in his attempts to reason with the immoveable mountain currently lodged at Wikipedia, argued, I suggest, something along these lines:
>
> scientists don't consider online databases to be reliable sources, and will never bother to publish corrections to the inevitable mistakes that such databases contain
>
> I do not dispute this, it is spot on, but it does rather raise some wider issues:
>
> So, why do scientists create and maintain online databases (e.g. WoRMS, etc.)? Who are they for? Other scientists, or general public? What do other scientists use them for (particularly since they seem not to consider them to be reliable sources)? How should others, like Wikipedia, use these online databases appropriately?
>
> My initial, and someone bluntly suggested answers are as follows: Scientists create and maintain online databases primarily because they can get funding to do so. I do not know if?such databases are used much by the scientific community for anything (except perhaps unfortunate guesstimations of global biodiversity!), but, if they are, then scientists?are at least better placed to?notice and ignore errors than the general public are. Perhaps, some such databases need to be reminded that they have a duty to take care and try to make the data as accurate and error free as they possibly can, since others may be relying on it for various purposes?
>
> Just a thought, but it could perhaps make for a useful publication if some of us got together and wrote a formal paper outlining how general purpose users, like Wikipedia, of such online taxonomic databases should use such databases, i.e. detail what sort of information/reliability such databases are offering, and what is unrealistic to expect from them. This would include such guidelines as this:
>
> the database itself should not be considered to be a reliable source, but merely a pointer to reliable sources. The onus is on the user to verify the offered information against the primary sources. All data offered by the database is, trivially, verifiable against the database itself, but this means little or nothing since the database itself doesn't claim to be a reliable source.
>
> Unfortunately, however, I cannot see too many online biodiversity databases being so?modest about what they realistically can or cannot offer. Ironically, it is the bigger aggregators of individual databses that tend to be the ones promising the most, even when many of?their source databases might be more inclined towards modesty ...
>
> Stephen