It might come as a surprise to you both that I have a page on Wikipedia. I didn’t create this page. Nobody told me it was being created, nor did they ask me for any input. They could have had the decency of waiting until I was dead.
But that’s OK, because we live in a freewheelin’ Web 2.0 society where I can edit the page without restraint, or so I thought. After my last ebullition on this subject, notwithstanding inasmuch as which I might possibly have suggested that people should feel free to edit my page in amusing and creative ways, Wikipedia blocked all further edits citing ‘vandalism’. I complained, saying that as it was a page all about me, with information about me on it, I was the best authority to judge the contents, irrespective of their verifiability. This cut no ice.
So I resorted to a more surreptitious strategy, just going in every now and then and altering a few items, all innocuous like, with the aim, eventually, of creating a complete work of fantasy (Dr R. P. G. of Rotherhithe did manage to get away with changing the picture.) But today on Facebook I invited the throng to let rip, and so they have. It’s all very satisfactory, though I have to admit, it’s a work in progress. Rather like life, in fact.
But enough of such japery.
As a journalist and as an editor at Your Favourite Weekly Etcetera Etcetera, I have long known that truth is a moving target, and in the science biz, we have to take everything we are given on trust. What do I mean by this? Well, when Professor Branestawm writes in with a manuscript about the release of calcium from intracellular stores (and, by the way, you can buy this on a T-shirt in the new cromercrox geekwear range), we – the editors – have to assume that the paper is submitted in good faith, and that the good Prof has indeed performed the experiments and obtained the results as described. The referees, too, labour under the same assumption.
To be sure, manuscripts can have tell-tale signs that all in the laboratory might not be rosy. An excessive use of autocitation often causes eyebrows to raise. We are particularly enjoined to look for the joins in gels. And we are preternaturally good at detecting plagiarism, duplicate submission and other such naughtinesses. Heavens to Betsy, we even look to see if the good Prof has done the appropriate controls (you don’t always need a referee to spot such things) and check if various methods, protocols, data repositories and so on are available for scrutiny.
But we are not a police force. We cannot afford to visit every laboratory and see the experiments for ourselves. This is why – especially for DrAust the more seasoned reader – the Benveniste Affair was so salutary, for that included the one occasion of which I am aware that an editorial team visited a laboratory in order to try and replicate unusual results. Some might say that the business was just showboating by my former boss, the late, great John Maddox – but I think differently.
Benveniste’s paper, in which he showed the degranulation of neutrophils when exposed to a bioactive agent diluted to beyond the Avogadro limit [are you sure you've got that right? -- Ed] – represented a result which, if true, was the sort of spectacular news that we at Your Favourite Etcetera are in the business of publishing, provided that in the opinion of our panel of referees the data supported the conclusions.
And there’s the rub. From what they were shown on paper, the referees had no qualms with the experimental protocols – yet they still could not believe the results. Something was clearly missing, or poorly explained, which prompted the inquiry.
Those of us at Your Favourite Etcetera, and other journals in which competition for space is especially fierce, are daily exposed to a rather nice problem, and that is this: we are presented with missives describing experiments or observations that teeter at the very edge of resolution, where the problems or wishful thinking or self-deception are magnified. We have to decide, given finite time and resources, and on the basis of insufficient information, whether the claim before us is either complete nonsense or the greatest advance since breakfast time. We do not have the luxury of apocryphal FBI slogan that said ‘In God We Trust – Everyone Else We Check Out’. But to question everything to such a degree – to look for fraud in every evasion, malfeasance in every sloppy protocol – is to invite madness.
We have to trust.
We have to have faith in the fundamental honesty of scientists.
And the fact is that scientists are honest. They are faithful, and they are trusting. Yes, there are occasional high-profile cases of fraud, leading to embarrassing retractions and ruined careers. I remain in a state of perpetual wonderment – and gratitude – that such cases are so few.
I have made a minor edit to a certain Wikipedia page. I trust that it will be reviewed with appropriate editorial rigour.
Aha! I see you have been paying attention.
Indeed I have. I even provided a reference to the facts* stated.
*disclaimer – reference may or may not actually contain all the information cited.
Well said!
Now that you’ve been Wikipeded, what’s next? Can I nominate you for Time Magazine’s person of the year?
You may – though this will of course mean that any manuscripts you might send to Your Favourite Etcetera will be read with especial care. We can’t play favorites, you know.
From my experience, if I can get your favorite etc. to even read it at all, that would be an improvement.
At a meeting a few years back, the editor of a prominent scientific monthly once told the story of a letter that he received from a disgruntled researcher whose ms had been promptly rejected.
The researcher wrote to the editor (and I paraphrase): “I am now sitting in the smallest room in my house, and these horrific reviews with your letter of rejection will soon be behind me…”
Ah, yes, the oldies are the best.
I was pleased to read of your support for the campaign to release calcium from intracellular stores, and wondered if you might also consider throwing your weight behind the campaign to release caged calcium. It is calcium’s unfortunate lot to be more or less permanently behind bars in view of its destructive tendencies. However, as president of the European Calcium Society I feel duty-bound to promote its liberation, and be liberal with its promotion, whenever the opportunity arises.
We shall stand shoulder to shoulder, brother.
At the bottom your wikipedia article (and other wikipedia articles) is a feedback box which allows the reader to rate the page on Trustworthiness, Objectivity and other attributes. How long before Your Favourite Weekly rolls out the same feature?
You can already append comments to papers published online…
Henry – There are special rules in the Wikipedia rulebook about Biographies of Living Persons. As Wikipedia strives for objectivity (dare I say ‘truth’?) it takes particular care when the subject of the objectivity (?) is also the author, as their object is likely to be rather subjective. Clear?
The essence is that Wikipedia is a secondary or tertiary source, so you must provide references for everything to back up what you say.
Yes, of course. But they should have asked me first, the impertinent whippersnappers. Does it not occur to people that Living Persons might not actually want to have an entry in an encyclopaedia that others can edit as they see fit?
The guidelines do have something to say about the right to privacy, and the need for sensitivity where living persons are concerned.
There should only be a Wikipedia article about a person if there is a body of already published information about that person. In a sense it is too late already by that point if the subject wants privacy. The wikipedia article just brings that information together and organises it, making it easier to locate. Your wikipedia page is the first one I see if I search Google for “Henry Gee”.
I’m not worried about privacy. I’d just like to be asked first, that’s all.
It looks like Wikipedia has taken down all the latest edits. Boo.
Yes, they’ve re-boringified it. Including removing your place of residence as Cromer, which I think was pretty mean-spirited, since it’s well-documented online (e.g., here).
They also wiped out my carefully-researched statement about your stable of musical instruments, lumping it all together with what whoever edited it referred to as “nonsense”. I am highly miffed.
How are your psaltery and crumhorn skills, anyway?
A bit rusty on those. I’m OK on the pandemonium and can make a pretty passable noise on the tantrums.
Is the full report of the Nature investigation of Benveniste’s lab online anywhere? I think someone found a link the last time we mentioned it. It is a good read, anyway.
Of course, there are some journals where there is a kind of organised (though largely tacit) agreement that they will constitutively suspend ALL the normal scepticism. These are the journals of alternative medicine, of course. The scary thing is that they are listed in Pubmed.
I know of at least one weekly professional medical journal that has shown a facultative suspension of normal scepticism on at least two occasions can think of *Wakefield* cough