553:, about a Canadian doctor who prescribed lethal drugs for his patients. I'm using a pro-life source to establish his prison sentence. Is this a big deal? Not at all. I'm not using the pro-life source to say that Généreux was an evil, kitten-eating monster, just to establish a fairly neutral fact. I'm not even mentioning that the pro-life community who run the site in question have a problem with what they believe to be a short prison sentence. It's an uncontroversial fact, it shouldn't have the appearance of a "put-up job" or POV pushing, and the facts in this source line up with reporting elsewhere.
203:
had a health column in their glossy supplement from
Stephen Russell aka. The Barefoot Doctor. In said column, he would answer readers advice questions with a truly bizarre range of crackpot, looney and wacko pseudoscientific solutions: stand on your head, chant the word "ummmmmmmmm" meditatively, use
578:
How should the community work on policy related to sourcing and the reliability thereof? We must keep in the front of our mind that coming up with a method to sort reliable sources from unreliable sources will never be simple or straightforward. Moses will not come down from the mountain with divine
469:
Could we apply these common sense reflections to current policy? Probably not directly. At best, we can use them to find some inconsistencies and problems with our current rules over sourcing and try to fix those. As we go forward, we can stumble into bad policy less often if we understand that the
238:
is an unreliable source because you think "weakened kidney energy" is a crackpot theory, that's fine, but the publication of our
Barefooted friend doesn't discount the good work done by reporters covering real stories. If the only question asked of a source is simply "Is this a reliable source, yes
221:
Press your thumbs into the ridges of muscle that run down either side of the spine around the kidney region (in the lower back) every day for a minute or so, especially in the late afternoon, when the kidneys are most susceptible. Also massage the ears themselves quite vigorously between thumb and
460:
has said of conceptions of free will that aren't contra-causal, "try the cheap substitute, it's pretty good!" For all but the easiest questions, the quest to find reliable sources will lead into murky hinterlands where one must simply cast one's bets and hope for the best. If you expect absolute
633:
You think heroin and alcohol screw people up? Try the hypothetical drugs epistemologists use in thought experiments and you won't even know you've tried the hypothetical drugs epistemologists use in thought experiments. The leading vendor of mind-bending epistemological narcotics is, of course,
54:
But, as philosophers throughout the ages have pointed out, the idea that testimony is a source of knowledge often has problems. Not insuperable ones, mind, but problems nonetheless. These problems all tend to be caused by an unfortunate fact about human beings: they lie, they misrepresent, they
579:
guidance on sourcing issues. All decisions about the reliability of sources will eventually end up being context-specific judgment calls. Trying to come up with a way of making those judgment calls in a neutral, consensus-driven manner may be more difficult than the content guidelines suggest.
59:
and they often just misremember and fail in other unfortunate ways. It is for this reason that we have to critically evaluate what people say. This applies to representations of what they say too: and it is from this that we need to try and evaluate sources of information for quality.
105:
Meet John. John is a human being and as such he likes to have beliefs about the world and occasionally he likes to make statements that reflect his beliefs. He is deeply committed to telling the truth and never knowingly lies with one very important exception: whenever he visits
251:, it is another way of saying that we consider that source unusable for anything. Let's take for the sake of argument that there are sources we consider unreliable for telling us the truth about most aspects of the world. And let's also take for the sake of argument that
158:), the person isn't aware of his knowledge basis for his belief or is unable to come to see his knowledge basis by a process of reflection (the various internalists), he has fallen short of his epistemic duties or failed to be an epistemically virtuous person etc. etc.
110:, he is unable to correctly identify the name of politicians. If you ask him who the President of the United States is when he is anywhere other than Chicago, he'll give you a good response, but you take him to Chicago and he'll tell you that Maurice Gibb from the
50:
principles (mathematics, logic, various branches of philosophy and much else) is to appeal to the testimony of others. And not just anybody, but testimony of people who can be relied on to give you something closely approximating reality to a close enough degree.
30:, a content guideline on Knowledge that we all consider pretty fundamentally important to Knowledge's mission. Finding reliable sources is a more fundamental research skill than just Knowledge though: in academia, in journalism, on the sister projects (
68:
Imagine you have two buckets before you. Every possible source you might use in a
Knowledge article (or an essay for school or university, or a news report, or a blog post or whatever) must be placed into one of two buckets. Bucket one has the word
409:
When someone follows the naĂŻve formulation of reliability, tell them: more context, more editorial judgment and more common sense can be achieved very easily by being more specific about the contexts and limitations of the reliability of a source.
122:, he'll get the answer right, but not because he is giving you an accurate testimony to a successfully attained instance of knowledge under, well, pretty much any epistemological theory you choose to mention: it hasn't been reliably produced (per
638:. The most potent drug Sosa offers is DISABLEX which "terminally disables one's cognitive faculties, so that none is any longer reliable. How can you right now be sure that you have never taken any such pill?" - see p. 104 of Deane-Peter Baker's
161:
You have to forgive poor John. It's just a strange little quirk: poor John, let's hope his health insurance covers the promising neural implant various philosophers hint might be available to fix his highly context-specific epistemic errings.
281:
reliable to tell us, and we should accept those things as reliable unless we have good reason to see a conflict, in exactly the same way that if you ask me while I am walking along the street in London to tell you where
514:
were to use blogging software, it's still crazy, and the material on OUPblog should still be considered pretty reliable even if they decide to change what type of software they use to publish that material on the web.
321:
Individuals vary in what kind of knowledge they have access to. They have different background knowledge, different experiences, different capabilities, different biases. This is reflected in the sources they produce.
46:). If you want to say something is a fact, one good way of doing so beyond direct empirical observation, the scientific method (direct observation's older, wiser, more self-critical sibling), or logical deduction from
556:
If you are only able to think "reliable or unreliable", a self-published source from an advocacy group would fall into the "unreliable" category even though the job it is serving in this article is just fine.
420:
is in general a reliable source for news and current affairs, but the presence of the
Barefoot Doctor column means that we can't trust the health advice in the glossy supplement magazine that comes with the
436:
Indeed, this is the message
Wikipedians frequently try and point out to people who use Knowledge and people who refuse to use Knowledge because of concerns about it being "unreliable". Well, reliability
204:
a homeopathic suppository while pouring vegan soy gravy in your left ear and all your woes will be cured. Even by the incredibly low standard of alternative medical advice, it's pretty damn strange.
190:, and as newspapers go, I consider them pretty reliable. But if we are using the naĂŻve view of reliable sources, I would be unprepared to put them into either the reliable or unreliable bin.
449:
is, Knowledge's failure to live up to Truth With A Capital T-levels of perfection—or indeed, some arbitrary and ad hoc standard established for what is reliable–shouldn't bother you, and
478:
Knowledge has a rule against using blogs as well as other social media sites as sources. This strikes me as irrational. Blogs are just a type of content management system, like wikis or
523:
We try hard to avoid using "POV" sources: in general, we would rather use sources that present a neutral reporting of the facts rather than an opinion piece. If it's a choice between
269:
The
Answers in Genesis website is a reliable source for telling us what the people at Answers in Genesis believe. Furthermore, it is a reliable source for telling us that the
589:
and ask if the source would be considered by a reasonable person trained in the field of life to be an appropriate, useful and interesting contribution? Try to balance
445:
pretty damn good—maybe not perfect, but perfection is a fool's errand anyway. If you wake up in the middle of the night and you want to what the atomic number for
215:
Tinnitus, unless caused by physical damage to the eardrum by loud noise, originates from low kidney energy, as the ears are said to be the flower of the kidneys.
85:
In the above scenario, we end up believing that there is a binary or at best simple, unary property of reliability. This analysis gives us sentences of the form:
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429:
is a reliable source or not as it tells you exactly the limitations and reasoning that goes into making a decision about any particular use of
286:
is, you should probably trust me unless you have reasons to doubt what I say—if I tell you to get on the train to
Heathrow Airport and fly to
651:
An example: that the social process of a busy newsroom is somehow magically more capable of sorting the truth than a
Knowledge talk page.
453:, a source doesn't have to be perfectly reliable for it to be pretty damn useful. This requires little more than applying common sense.
546:
by POV-pushing supporters or opponents using the article to push their politics. Secondly, the POV sources may get the facts wrong.
298:
27:
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It is customary to end essays of this sort with some practical, uplifting advice. I should probably adhere to that custom.
538:
Well, there are two possible issues: one, it may give the appearance of impropriety. If you go to the article on, say,
259:
six to ten thousand years old. The jury really is in on this. What possible use could there ever be for the website of
290:, that is a pretty good reason to doubt what I say and go find someone who isn't crazy and ask them for directions!
263:
as a source for anything given this fundamental reality-denying premise upon which everything they do is based?
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It is my firm belief that if we had a more mature way of talking about sources, we would have fewer problems.
222:
finger to increase circulation. Consider visiting an acupuncturist, as tinnitus responds well to acupuncture.
441:? For the sort of disputes you might use a general encyclopedia to determine the answer for, Knowledge
239:
or no?" then we actually aren't doing nearly enough in working out whether the source is appropriate.
672:
490:). Some blogs are run by very reputable sources and can be pretty trustworthy. Are we saying that
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But if we started introducing some other variables into those sentences, we could do much better:
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depends on context; common sense and editorial judgment are an indispensable part of the process.
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Allow instead the use of POV sources to establish facts in minor cases. I created the article
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etc.), it hasn't been the result of a causal process, it doesn't "track truth" such that if
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When we communicate about sources at the moment, we use sentences that are of the form:
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207:
A famous example of a bizarre
Barefoot Doctor remedy suggested to a woman asking about
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is a reliable source, do you want the above material being included in the article on
535:, we'll use CNN, right? But what is wrong with using POV sources to establish facts?
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The trauma of your son's death must have significantly weakened the kidney energy.
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is
President of the group. There are countless other things that their website
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and it's all citations from sources pushing the same POV, it may feel like a
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doesn't because at least the TimeCube's brand of crazy isn't delivered using
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is not a reliable source for most claims but they are good enough for claim
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they run is indeed located in Petersburg, Kentucky, and it tells us that
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When faced with a question of whether a source is or is not reliable,
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sources count for that. Scientists rightly believe that the world is
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Internalist vs. Externalist Conceptions of Epistemic Justification
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perfection from sources, you'll end up having very few sources.
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Is this a reliable source? Again, pick your bucket: if you say
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This is far more helpful than simply trying to determine if
118:. Very occasionally, just by accident, or by some kind of
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Okay, let's take a source many people consider reliable:
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with common sense, and with other content policies like
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has an oft-overlooked statement worth reflecting upon:
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reliability of sources isn't a simple binary matter.
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book if you are worried you may have taken DISABLEX.
182:. As a British left-wing type, I'm a big fan of the
73:printed on the side, and bucket two has the words
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388:is a reliable source for most things but not
102:There is something fundamentally wrong here.
353:is a reliable source for material of genre
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395:where it is frequently unreliable.
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413:To give the example from above:
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343:is a reliable source on topic
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601:. If in doubt, try and get a
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486:or Slash (the engine used by
247:When we say that a source is
114:is the president rather than
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98:is not a reliable source.
519:POV sources aren't evil
465:Practical applicability
451:in exactly the same way
243:Works the other way too
199:. For a long time, the
294:Back to the guidelines
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166:You just made that up!
332:is a reliable source.
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124:David Malet Armstrong
92:is a reliable source.
26:Let us meditate upon
587:evaluate the context
317:Context sensitivity
197:The Barefoot Doctor
361:but not for topic
261:Answers in Genesis
150:believes that not
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474:Blogs aren't evil
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81:An objection
75:not reliable
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636:Ernest Sosa
565:to prove a
253:creationist
142:and if not
44:Wikispecies
662:Categories
609:References
574:Where now?
544:put-up job
510:? Even if
249:unreliable
40:Wiktionary
599:WP:FRINGE
504:WordPress
357:on topic
288:Las Vegas
36:Wikiquote
595:WP:UNDUE
529:RedState
525:Alternet
512:TimeCube
500:TimeCube
488:Slashdot
439:for what
266:Simple.
232:tinnitus
209:tinnitus
201:Observer
188:Observer
186:and the
184:Grauniad
112:Bee Gees
71:reliable
57:bullshit
48:a priori
32:Wikinews
496:OUPblog
447:Rhenium
275:Ken Ham
108:Chicago
484:Joomla
480:Drupal
421:paper.
307:always
591:WP:RS
567:point
193:Why?
154:(per
16:<
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