Wikipedia editors allege bias and bigotry against AS

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Danielismyname
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28 Nov 2007, 2:14 am

VMSnith,

That article is specifically referring to autistic disorder, not Asperger's. There's a far greater cognitive pattern in those with autism than Asperger's, people with Asperger's are effectively "normal" cognitively compared to those with autism (it says so in the DSM-IV-TR).

Said link tells a good thing however, standard IQ tests don't tell the complete picture of those with autistic disorder; especially adults.



tortoise
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28 Nov 2007, 7:09 am

UncleBeer wrote:
Wasn't it alleged that the most active editor of the AS article worked for a pharmaceutical company (and was so brazen as to place a picture of her product on the page 'til someone removed it), and that she'd made thousands of edits to the page within the course of a year, and scores of changes within a 24 hour period? I seem to remember this from a previous WP thread.

Shameful if true.


Yeah this was alleged and it was even snidely alleged that since I questioned this premiss that I too was a big pharma representative. Simply when the logic of this premiss was questioned other members agreed that the premiss was mostly likely false.


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2ukenkerl
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28 Nov 2007, 8:41 am

SheDevil,

Your examples don't indicate AS.



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28 Nov 2007, 8:57 am

My examples? Are you referring to my boys? If so, I am not going to hijack another thread with my reasons to suspect AS.....I wanted to convey the stigma attached to the dx and the wish for a change.



Angelus-Mortis
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28 Nov 2007, 11:12 am

Which is why Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Although I expected people should already know that by now.


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28 Nov 2007, 11:18 am

Angelus-Mortis wrote:
Which is why Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Although I expected people should already know that by now.


most people don't even understand that anyone can edit wikipedia.


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Angelus-Mortis
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28 Nov 2007, 12:06 pm

Then perhaps we might have a better chance at discrediting Wikipedia than trying to change Wikipedia itself.


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28 Nov 2007, 12:09 pm

alex wrote:
Angelus-Mortis wrote:
Which is why Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Although I expected people should already know that by now.


most people don't even understand that anyone can edit wikipedia.


There's another side to that too. There's very few things that annoy me more than when I'm debating someone and use Wikipedia as a cite for something that I'm saying, and they respond with something along the lines of "lol, I dun trust wiki ne further than i can throw thm" without offering any source of their own (or acknowledging the source listed by Wiki). As if Wikipedia could state that "2 + 2 = 4" and it would then be acceptable or logical to say "lol, but that's Wiki, ne1 could have writun that! LOL!" and therefore conclude that 2 + 2 obviously equals anything besides 4.

It's something of a pet peeve of mine. :P



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28 Nov 2007, 12:17 pm

Angelus-Mortis wrote:
Then perhaps we might have a better chance at discrediting Wikipedia than trying to change Wikipedia itself.


You're saying that as if we could ever, ever do it as effectively as Stephen Colbert has.

/Wikiality!



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28 Nov 2007, 12:21 pm

Myrkabah wrote:
As if Wikipedia could state that "2 + 2 = 4" and it would then be acceptable or logical to say "lol, but that's Wiki, ne1 could have writun that! LOL!" and therefore conclude that 2 + 2 obviously equals anything besides 4.

Credibility's a touchy thing (much like trust); once it's gone, it's damn hard to earn back. Wiki's is pretty well shot.



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28 Nov 2007, 12:21 pm

can't help but wonder if our old friend John Best Jr is a wiki contributor...


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28 Nov 2007, 12:30 pm

UncleBeer wrote:
Credibility's a touchy thing (much like trust); once it's gone, it's damn hard to earn back. Wiki's is pretty well shot.


I'm not really disputing that at all. All I'm saying is that it's a really blatant logical fallacy to state that something is untrue or even very unlikely to be true simply because it appears on Wikipedia. And that a Wikipedia cite is better than no cite at all on any given day of the week.

In an academic or professional context, I could certainly see it not being suitable as a source. Without a doubt. However, for a casual debate on an internet message board, it is more than sufficient until a more reliable and conflicting source is cited.



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28 Nov 2007, 1:34 pm

Angelus-Mortis wrote:
Which is why Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Although I expected people should already know that by now.


It may well be more reliable then the sources ordinary people have access to, not everyone has (affordable) access to academic source material and beyond that ... well, libraries may offer some decent books (if you know which ones to pick), newspapers are plain crap on anything in-depth, general magazines are hardly better and specialized magazines are ... specialized.

Myrkabah wrote:
This is actually an instance of where people with our talents could excel at affecting change in the tone of the article.


Absolutely. Also help a hand with articles like
Sociological and cultural aspects of autism which is currently (re)written based on older articles and this time with an attempt to properly sources them. It's not a scientific article and as such so a bit more lenient on sources and it's at least as important to get these articles in a neutral tone.



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28 Nov 2007, 1:35 pm

Lemme reply real quick to two good points raised in this thread :

As for wiki-credibility, you can avoid the issue altogether by going straight to the sources. Wikipedia is a "tertiary source" which contains no original knowledge, instead it gives a summary of sources. You should be able to quickly reference anything said on wikipedia. (If you can't, the article isn't properly sourced.)

This makes it easy to see if something on wikipedia is wrong. What is more insidious is when an article is incomplete or worse - biased - where only legitimate sources which back a certain view are represented. The reader can't deduce this by simply checking the sources.

Which is why I am rilly, rilly glad to see Myrkabah and Zwerfbeertje advocating to improve these articles in the spirit of James "Jimbo" Wales decree, "Neutral Point of View is non-negotiable."

The other point has to do with terminology in the research. Many researchers consider Asperger's a point on the larger Autistic Spectrum, and call it "AS/HFA" (High Functioning Autism) or simply lump Asperger's and Autism together into ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorder.) The Dawson group that wrote "The Nature and Level of Autistic Intelligence" were discussing Autism proper, not AS - so yes, this source is probably properl excluded.

The other studies use a mix of terminology. Simon Baron-Cohen (director of Cambridge's Centre for Autism Research, the birthplace of the AS category) refers to AS in his first study linking scientific talent; in his more recent "Mathematical Talent is linked to Autism" he refers to ASD. This was a study of mathematics students at the University of Cambridge diagnosed with an "ASD", so it's a fair bet these are very high functioning ppl and that their "ASD" is Asperger's. But this is admittedly a sticky point, one that perhaps deserves mention in the article. Increasingly, researchers appear to be avoiding the term AS and preferring ASD to avoid the risk of making a distinction without a difference.

One of Baron Cohen's result is absolutely amazing. He tested the 11 Mathematical Olympiad Winners (an intense competition of mathematical creativity and talent in which ninety nations compete). He found 7 of them met the DSM criteria for AS, and all 11 of them met 3 out of 4 criteria. Most of the most talented math students were AS. If one allows a generous 2% incidence of AS in the general population, this means that any given child meeting the AS criteria is 50 times more likely to win the Olympiad than an NT. Wow.

Baron Cohen is now in search of the "math/autism gene." Also, his first cousin is Sascha Baron Cohen, better known as Borat. How cool is that?

The third point I wish to make is I was up all night performing double-blind, randomizing testing and have concluded that both 'Zwerfbeertje' and 'Myrkabah' are beyond human capacity to spell without cutting-and-pasting. Which, now that I think about it, makes for an amazingly effective google search :) ....



KBABZ
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28 Nov 2007, 9:29 pm

VMSnith wrote:
One of Baron Cohen's result is absolutely amazing. He tested the 11 Mathematical Olympiad Winners (an intense competition of mathematical creativity and talent in which ninety nations compete). He found 7 of them met the DSM criteria for AS, and all 11 of them met 3 out of 4 criteria. Most of the most talented math students were AS. If one allows a generous 2% incidence of AS in the general population, this means that any given child meeting the AS criteria is 50 times more likely to win the Olympiad than an NT. Wow.

Baron Cohen is now in search of the "math/autism gene." Also, his first cousin is Sascha Baron Cohen, better known as Borat. How cool is that?

The third point I wish to make is I was up all night performing double-blind, randomizing testing and have concluded that both 'Zwerfbeertje' and 'Myrkabah' are beyond human capacity to spell without cutting-and-pasting. Which, now that I think about it, makes for an amazingly effective google search :) ....

Heheh, wow that's cool!

I'll take this point now to say that you're a unique person yourself. You're more than just someone who comes on the site every so often and says "I could really use some help in this survey for a University no-one's heard of!". You actually made yourself a member, and I feel glad that you chose WP as the site to come to, rather than, say, CAN.

Speaking of which, I'm sure the WPteers would have a few things to say on the CAN and Autism Speaks wiki pages that'd get taken off because they're more opinion than fact! I'm wondering what your stance is on the matter, if you have one...

Or am I being too nosy?


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VMSnith
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28 Nov 2007, 10:06 pm

KBABZ wrote:
I'll take this point now to say that you're a unique person yourself. You're more than just someone who comes on the site every so often and says "I could really use some help in this survey for a University no-one's heard of!". You actually made yourself a member, and I feel glad that you chose WP as the site to come to, rather than, say, CAN.

Speaking of which, I'm sure the WPteers would have a few things to say on the CAN and Autism Speaks wiki pages that'd get taken off because they're more opinion than fact! I'm wondering what your stance is on the matter, if you have one...

Or am I being too nosy?


Thanks to KBABZ for the warm welcome, and to WP at large for their energetic response.

My stance on CAN and Autism Speaks is that while both organizations have done some good for some people, the advertisements I've seen produced by both are reprehensible beyond words. Non-autistic aspirants to the role of Autistic Spokesman, and what they say is dehumanizing in the extreme. (Not that I have any strong opinions on the matter :)

Fortunately, neurodiversity is evolving from opinion to scientific fact, thanks in large part to people like Simon Baron-Cohen.

Now getting people to listen is ... an open problem :)