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The People versus The Expert

tessa Written on April 6, 2008 – 12:45 pm
Tessa Sterkenburg,

On Friday afternoon The Next Web Conference hosted the world premiere of the documentary The truth according to Wikipedia from IJsbrand van Veelen. The leading questions in the documentary were: Should we let just anyone state his or her opinion or should we leave the publishing of information to the experts? Could the openness of the web be dangerous? Who has the right to establish truth?

the truth?

The people being interviewed are amongst others Jimmy Wales (co-founder of Wikipedia), Larry Sanger (the since-fired (Correction: Larry was not fired but laid off when Bomis needed to scale down from 12 to 4 employees.) co-founder of Wikipedia) and Andrew Keen (author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy).

Andrew Keen is against the openness on the web, and argues that we should give the right to publish back to the experts, so that we know that what we read on the web is actually the truth.

That is an interesting statement. If we draw a parallel to the description of World War II in the Netherlands then Andrew Keen wants us to read Lou de Jong only, even though many people want to hear the opinion of the famous 14-year old ‘blogger’ of those days: Anne Frank.

(Lou de Jong was the official Dutch historian during World War II and author of “The History of the Netherlands in the Second World War”. Later, this book series received a lot of criticism, as Lou de Jong was accused of misrepresenting the truth by being too favorable towards the role of the Dutch resistance during the German occupation.)

Rita Verdonk is a Dutch politician who recently set up a new political party in the Netherlands. During the launch of her party on April 3, she had lots of one-liners, but…no program! Rita is going to set up a Wiki and let the people, collectively, determine the program. Power to The People!

When I came home from The Next Web Conference and saw her on TV, my first reaction was: “Oh my God, we should really leave this to the experts”. I want someone who knows what he or she is talking about, studied it, balanced all the pros and cons of the problem, takes informed decisions. I want experts to do this! Not a crowd of uninformed civilians!

Similarly I have many American friends who are disgusted with the politics in their own country, and seem almost embarrassed about the fact that most people vote without really understanding the issues and the consequences.

In 1995, a poll on capital punishment in the UK showed us that 76% of British respondents supported the death penalty the UK. Yet, I am very glad that the British government then decided not to re-instate capital punishment.

At the same time I am very much in favor of democracy and freedom of speech. In 1994, I spent some time in Malaysia, a country that officially embraces democracy but didn’t always seemed to practice what they preach and, at the time heavily censored the media. I concluded after 5 months that I could never live there, because of the political system and their views on freedom of speech. However, my Malaysian colleagues insisted that you could just not let everyone say what they wanted. The government knows what’s best for you and you should let the government determine the truth… Hmm, doesn’t that sound like Andrew Keen?

Democracy is what everyone wants, but that doesn’t mean that every single decision should be made by the majority. A democracy means that we vote for someone who makes those balanced and informed decisions for us based on expert analysis. So when actual decisions are made we don’t want the people to be directly involved, but when it comes to information we do. What does this mean for our valuation of information? Do we take our information seriously enough?

Where do we draw the line? Obviously we value democracy highly. Wikipedia is a great resource as an instant and reasonably reliable reference. But do we want The People to determine our economic policies? Do we re-inforce the death penalty when the majority of people want this? Is the majority always right? And who are the Experts? The Malaysian government or the 14-year old blogger?

Considering that even scientific authors have to continuously revise what has been written: What is The Truth?

You can meet Andrew Keen personally during his European book promotion tour in April. Email him (ak@ajkeen.com) if you want to meet him in either Brussels, Amsterdam or Helsinki.

I hope you like that post!

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About the author: Tessa Sterkenburg has a background in scientific publishing and web technology and is the founder of The Next Speaker.

35 comments/trackbacks to “The People versus The Expert”

  1. Apr 8, 2008: Video: The Truth According To Wikipedia

    [...] even during the party afterwards people where still discussing the video. Tessa Sterkenburg posted a follow-up post here on Sunday which received 17 comments (so far) and even Larry Sanger, one of the people interviewed [...]

  2. Jul 10, 2008: Collective Stupidity: The Negative Externalities of Crowds and Why HyperLocal Could be Lame | Off the Map - Official Blog of FortiusOne

    [...] We see the negative externalities of crowds happening all the time whether it is in traffic congestion or financial markets. This made me wonder what the negative externalities of crowds were on the Web. Some have posited that the negativity comes in using crowds for prediction since it means the abandonment of the scientific method. Further, that innovation rarely comes from crowds but individuals (see Schumpeter) - crowds doom us to mediocrity. Keen and others have called this the “Cult of the Amateur” or “The People vs. the Expert“. [...]

  3. Nov 3, 2008: Nasz-parlament: Polish wisdom of the crowd exposed

    [...] like Nasz-parlament stir up discussions about the people versus the expert. Tessa Sterkenburg addressed this discussion on The Next Web earlier, asking whether the majority is always right, or that experts know better. [...]

  1. By Larry Sanger on Apr 6, 2008

    It’s not the people versus the expert. At least for things like encyclopedias, they work best together. The big mistake, made both by much of the Wikipedia crowd and by Andrew (sorry Andrew), is that there is some opposition. The Citizendium demonstrates that there need not be any such opposition.

    [Reply]

  2. By Robert-Reinder Nederhoed on Apr 6, 2008

    (Trusting Wikipedia on facts, Loe de Jong was an appointed historian for 34 years, after WWII.)

    We need a political system to outsource the decision making and to ensure decisions are made in an informed manner.

    I think we can conclude that the average citizen is rather badly informed. Could you predict the effects of the introduction of the Euro currency? I might have voted against that idea for sentimental reasons. Now I’m glad to be able to buy in France with “my own” currency.

    There should be some balance. Politics will follow the will of the people most of the times. For if politicians don’t, they will not get re-elected.

    There has been a tendency to “listen to the people”. Maybe it would be better to talk to the people. State a clear vision for the future. And they will have the confidence to let you, as a politician, make the decisions.

    I’ll follow Rita’s experiment with interest. She’ll undoubtedly run into the 1% most fanatic users who contribute over 50% of the content. Will the other 99% still feel represented? Will all followers be willing to get involved?

    I heard a rather interesting quote recently (roughly paraphrased):
    “Aim to distribute discontent evenly”.
    Rita followers seem to be more discontent with the political direction than average.

    I liked Iens’ remark on “fact” versus “opinion”, related to the Wikipedia documentary. Wikipedia is mostly about facts.
    Do experts on opinion exist? Aren’t we all?

    [Reply]

  3. By jansegers on Apr 6, 2008

    Theoretically, it’s nice to distinguish between facts and opinions but the problem is to establish what the facts are.

    Truth is indeed established on factuality, but facts are often just a reading of history in a certain way.

    Two persons in conflict often don’t agree about the history of their conflict, about the truth and facts the other one says.

    Princess Diana died in a tunnel in Paris. That seems to be a fact - nobody is suggesting the body was put there after she had already died.

    It seems to be a fact… I’m not quite sure, because some people mentionned she was still alive in the first moments after the collision of the car against a pillar.

    I do imagine she was transported to an hospital. Was she already dead before she was transported to the hospital ? Didn’t she during transport over there in the ambulance ?

    I believe that she was declared dead officially after the examination by specialists in the hospital. Let’s assume these specialists were wright. [That's an assumption, a high probable one, but an assumption. So not a certainty, therefore not a fact.] [99,9 % isn't 100 %]

    How was the princess identified ? by DNA ? in that case we arrive at a probability of some 97%; in all other case far less.

    OK, I know this all adds up to maybe some 5% of doubt about the fact Diana actually died in that tunnel in Paris that day.

    That isn’t important ? Probably not… but let’s assume just for one moment that she was still alive in that ambulance, let’s assume for one moment she was murdered in that ambulance. Impossible ? You’re sure ?

    Improbable ? Yep. But an other scenario is already less imporbable … let’s assume she died in that ambulance because the right equipment wasn’t available or the doctor not trained for this sort of emergencies.

    It’s a maybe. If we aren’t sure, she was already dead, we can’t possibly tell this scenario is excluded.

    It’s possible that it was just a human mistake that ambulance with that inexperiented crew and/or failing equipment was sent to the accident.

    Other possibility is that this ambulance was slowed down by people who didn’t want it to arrived at the scene or at the hospital in other to be quite sure Diana died most certainly.

    None of these scenarios have been investigated upon…

    Facts aren’t that well established as they seem to be, it’s still quite possible Diana did die in France, but in that tunnel ? Not so sure…

    [Reply]

  4. By Steven Carroll on Apr 6, 2008

    Tessa Sterkenburg, this is an extremely interesting topic that I have been thinking about for the last 9 years. As a result I have explored many authorities in various aspects of academia and my considered opinion boils down to the solution that will eventually replace democracy as we know it.

    At it’s most simple, Google built their algorithm on the same authorities concepts that will also lay the foundations of the said solution.

    To explain it in detail is best done so by understanding the concept of the Erdos Number, this was inspired by mathematician Paul Erdos. He co wrote more papers than any other academic and as a result now anyone else who co writes a paper will also have an Erdos number, (depending upon the connectivity they have with Erdos) (Erdos No:1). In Hollywood we find the concept of the Bacon Number (as in the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon).

    Moving on Stanley Milgram’s 2 concepts, Six Degrees of separation and “obedience to authority” experiment. Both teach us separate parts in understanding the solution.

    Then onto the scale-free_network and Albert-László Barabási, who’s in depth book Linked details many of the essential elements of the said concept. Gaining an understanding of the many concepts, power laws etc.

    There we move onto the concept of the Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS) by JMS coupled with the Prisoners Dilemma and game theory, and you are starting to gain an understanding of the solution.

    One other author Fritjof Capra is also a heavy weight in this arena and worthy your full attention.

    You will find after absorbing the above you will no longer have any need for the concept of ‘trust’ or ‘democracy’ but instead will have a fundemental understanding of how to determine any authority given the required criteria, and some bright spark will have developed an ebay feedback style, market, somewhat like the stock markets with buyers and sellers being replaced with competing authorities and investments being replaced with links or affiliations by the specualtors (those interested in the stocks->subject).

    Make sense?

    [Reply]

  5. By Steven Carroll on Apr 6, 2008

    oh what an interesting subject, I will add my thesis tomorrow.

    [Reply]

  6. By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Apr 6, 2008

    Whoah! These aren’t just comments! These are guest posts!!! ;-) I will have to read them again just to make sure I understand. Diana in a tunnel, Erdos and Bacon numbers, evenly distributed discontent? Even Larry Sanger pitches in?!? Tessa should blog more often!

    [Reply]

  7. By Robert-Reinder Nederhoed on Apr 6, 2008

    Steven, you’ve lost me. Looking forward to your thesis :)

    If you’re not stating a parody, you probably refer to some inversed pyramid, networked model as a solution for decision making. A transition from regional layers of authority to networked groups of individuals.

    I highly recommend “Linked” by Albert-László Barabási to anyone. As well as “Emergence” by Steven Johnson. Those books changed my view on the world.

    [Reply]

  8. By Tessa on Apr 6, 2008

    Hi all, thanks for the comments! Here are some replies:

    @Larry Sanger In 2005 a study was done by Nature, indicating that Wikipedia was as accurate as Encyclopedia Brittanica (it actually showed that Encyclopedia Brittanica had quite some mistakes as well). I would be interested to see Citizendium included in this study!

    @Robert-Reinder Nederhoed Agreed! It is better (with everything) to give people an informed choice rather than ask them what they want. As Henry Ford famously said: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” I understand that Rita’s followers already want more 6-lane highways, and lower taxes. How are they going to finance those highways?

    @jansegers your comment shows that it is important that experts (or those who give you the information) are criticized, both by experts as by non-experts.

    [Reply]

  9. By Steven Carroll on Apr 6, 2008

    Emergence will be ordered. I have not read that yet.

    No parody. I have named it The Creatocracy. A self organizing self regulating system founded on feedback, history, and emulating examples of authority as found in naturally occurring systems.

    The title ‘The People versus The Expert’ does not assert the foundation of the expert. That’s where I start.

    [Reply]

  10. By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Apr 7, 2008

    @steven Carroll: “The Creatocracy. A self organizing self regulating system founded on feedback, history, and emulating examples of authority as found in naturally occurring systems.”

    That must be the power of Twitter and its 140 characters limit. I didn’t understand your story until you brought it back to one sentence! :-) Very cool…

    [Reply]

  11. By Tessa Sterkenburg on Apr 7, 2008

    Steven Carroll, thanks for this, I now understand your comments better. The interesting thing about the Nature research I mentioned in my comment above, is that they used the scientific peer review process to check on the quality of the articles posted on Wikipedia and those in Encyclopedia Brittannica.

    The peer review process is one method to establish expertise, but is certainly not infallible. Think about Dr. Hwang-Woo Suk from Seoul University, who got his paper published in the journal Science - not the easiest journal to get your paper accepted by! In this paper he claimed that his team had successfully obtained stem cells from cloned human embryos. Later, it turned out that he had falsified his data.

    Peer reviewers focus on the research itself, and whether the author of the article used sound scientific research principles, but they can’t check everything. Therefore, designing a method to establish expertise, focused on more than one method is a very interesting development! I am looking forward to your thesis!

    [Reply]

  12. By Steven C on Apr 7, 2008

    I have always struggled to explain to others the essence of my Creatocracy because it relies upon an understanding of at least the authors / scientists mentioned and their concepts are not simple to explain.

    Alas I am aware of the power of explaining things simply in one sentence if possible, the problem is that leaves much room for ambiguity and distortion.

    The best way (I suspect) is to apply my logic to your argument / problem and relate specifically to this, however I believe the logic could be applied to any such similar problem, that being, one of finding the best answer for a given problem. Including organizing the people of the world to solve and manage our pending crisis.

    In the spirit of boiling it down to its bones,

    The arguments asserted:
    1) “Democracy is what everyone wants”
    2) “Do we want the people to determine our economic policies?”
    3) “Do we re-inforce the death penalty when the majority of people want this?”
    4) “Is the majority always right?”
    5) “Who are the Experts?”
    6) “What is The Truth?”

    My arguments:
    1) “Democracy is what everyone wants” :
    1) Our current manifestation of ‘democracy’ is very far from the true essence of the original meaning of democracy. A more sincere application of democracy would be brought about a continuos right to choose and change one allegiances to an authority. Thus the link would not be a contract for 5 years with terms and conditions to be made up along the way, but by retaining the power to choose according to an individuals particular circumstances. This would provide a feedback loop that reached every part of the organism (the community) with no one left out, and all able and responsible to affect the best direction or choice chosen for their particular circumstances. This would be coupled with ‘once size dose NOT fit all’ as in each voter would have gained a different level of authority and thus effect change ‘more’ or ‘less’ accordingly.

    Further, there would be many competing authorities who in their own fields of expertise would be offering solutions or services and by joining a collection of these one would make apportion a part of their taxed contributions.

    Most alarming such a setup would lack the winner takes all ’star model’ whereby one dictator or one inland revenue department had sole control and responsibility for the entire state. I am not describing anarchy but rather a system of real competition for our collective resources to be managed effectively.

    2) “Do we want the people to determine our economic policies?”:
    2) In a Creatocracy anyone could compete with a solution for a problem, they could convince their own networks of the merits of their case (and gain authority with the help of lots of links from little nodes), or they would have to gain the support from just a few of the established authorities (who are also always competing) to be able to compete against the status quo. (Google like).

    3) “Do we re-inforce the death penalty when the majority of people want this?”:
    3) The law would be based on just a few essential and fundamental laws, only about 10 in total. The most important being: a) thou shall not levy distress on another or nature. b) thou shall not exploit another’s distress. c) The law is not cast in stone but rather is decided upon given the circumstances of the case and the decisions of the jury.

    But these do not answer the complex question, only the jury could do that, who would be assembled from authorities specifically for such cases, but there would be one essential understanding. The best strategy to gain symbiosis (or a healthy ecosystem) is well understood to be known as ‘Tit for Tat’. This is derived from an understanding of the Prisoners Dilemma (game theory) and in trying to achieve a Power Law (the 80 - 20 rule) of Nice vs Nasty players, this is where an understand the ESS by JMS would be useful.

    4) “Is the majority always right?”
    4) No. Hardly ever in fact. For evidence see the Obedience to authorities experiments.

    5) “Who are the Experts?”
    5) They emerge organically, given their history (feedback and data is an essential part of any self organizing / regulating system), ideas, solutions, and attractiveness (to the idea or meme).

    6) “What is The Truth?”
    6) The truth is that the world is not ready for a Creatocracy just yet, however when I developed the concept 3 years ago it was even worse. But as time goes on and we get ever closer to witnessing more of the predictions laid out in the Club of Rome’s infamous Limits to Growth Report in the late sixties, (the first academic doomsday prophecy), warning that fundamental changes were needed within our global systems or else. However the chance of such a bifurcation is not totally outlandish. Crazier things have happened, life for one.

    I have left the Creatocracy project to dwell for a few more years until I feel the conditions on the ground are more accepting to the wide economic, political, and legal changes that would be entailed. In the mean time you can read a rough draft at the curtsy of the Wayback machine:

    http://web.archive.org/web/200.....cracy.org/

    [Reply]

  13. By Larry Sanger on Apr 7, 2008

    Tessa, I am surprised that you mention that Nature study. It indicated no such thing (that Wikipedia “was as accurate as Encyclopedia Brittanica”). It barely deserves the name “study”; it was an investigative news report by a Nature journalist, not a peer-reviewed scientific study. It is well-known that it has serious problems, which I will not bother listing; you can find relevant discussions (by me and others) in many other places. In short, if you think that Nature report proves that we cannot do better than Wikipedia, suffice it to say that your standards are not very high.

    [Reply]

  14. By Larry Sanger on Apr 7, 2008

    Tessa, one other thing: I was not fired. To say so borders on libel. I was laid off. When the Internet bubble burst, Bomis lost the ability to pay me and its other employees, and was reduced from about 12 to 4 employees in late 2001/early 2002. I would appreciate a correction.

    [Reply]

  15. By Tessa Sterkenburg on Apr 7, 2008

    Larry, the study was conducted by the Nature news staff, and it consisted of asking independent scholars to review 50 pairs of articles from the Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica websites. The reviewers were not informed which of their pair of articles came from which source.

    At the time Encyclopedia Britannica has responded to this article, accusing Nature of misrepresentation,
    sloppiness and indifference to scholarly standards, and called on them to retract the article. In an answer on 23 March 2006, Nature rejects those accusations, as they are confident that their comparison is fair. See http://www.nature.com/nature/britannica/index.html for Nature’s response.

    I do not think that the Nature report proves that we cannot do better than Wikipedia. Therefore, I welcome your initiative. My point is that we can only find out what the quality of the different encyclopedias is, if we have the content compared by independent experts.

    [Reply]

  16. By Tessa Sterkenburg on Apr 7, 2008

    Larry, as for your other comment: my apologies, the correction has been made.

    [Reply]

  17. By Anne Helmond on Apr 7, 2008

    I would also like to suggest Cass R. Sunstein’s interesting book “Infotopia. How Many Minds Produce Knowledge” regarding this debate.

    One issue that Sunstein deals with is how the production of knowledge through deliberation Habermas-style is flawed in four ways:

    1. The amplification of group errors
    2. Information is not elicited
    3. Cascading effects
    4. Group polarization

    Sunstein then sees prediction markets as a way to avoid herd behavior in order to collectively build knowledge. Excellent read.

    [Reply]

  18. By Chris D on Apr 8, 2008

    Tessa, you wrote:
    “The peer review process is one method to establish expertise, but is certainly not infallible. Think about Dr. Hwang-Woo Suk from Seoul University, who got his paper published in the journal Science - not the easiest journal to get your paper accepted by! In this paper he claimed that his team had successfully obtained stem cells from cloned human embryos. Later, it turned out that he had falsified his data.”

    Peer review will always fail if data is falsified. How can a reviewer judge anything but the data presented by the scientists? Reviewing an overview of the literature is a very different thing to reviewing original data.

    [Reply]

  19. By Steven C on Apr 8, 2008

    I just watched the full documentary:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMSinyx_Ab0
    Very interesting.

    I totally disagree with the skeptics who argue the expertise of knowledge presented within the Wikipedia.

    I think the argument was best summed up, at the end by the guy who said the Wikipedia should be considered as the sum of ‘all’ knowledge not just the sum of all expert knowledge.

    I would agree that the model is open to abuse however, that abuse or openness is one of the most essential ingredients and strengths also found in symbiosis. By chance?

    Power laws (80-20 rule) appear in many natural systems and without the openness or the 20% of ‘rogues’ that continuously challenge the status quo, the status quo becomes dominated by a single strategy or breed if you like (game theory again) and is subject to a catastrophic weakness as a result.

    Sure, it is also true that there is room for improvement in the Wikipedia model but to attack Wikipedia at this moment in time is IMO motivated by an elitist bias attitude which assumes one knows better simply because they have spent their lives as an academic, yet they obviously lack an understanding of some of the most essential laws found endlessly in nature and need to get out a bit more.

    [Reply]

  20. By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Apr 9, 2008

    @Chris D: “Peer review will always fail if data is falsified”. Now you assume that the peer reviewers are extremely dumb individuals who do nothing more than read what is presented to them? You know that isn’t true. These reviewers are often THE experts in the subject that is being reviewed and thoroughly investigate all data. That is why it is considered world news if something goes wrong…

    [Reply]

  21. By Chris D. on Apr 9, 2008

    It does not matter if you are an expert in the field. If the data is fraudulent peer review cannot work. Only after publication when other request the resources and try to repeat the results can the fraud be exposed. All a reviewer could do would be to say I highly doubt this result? BHut if it is backed up with data what is the editor supposed to do? Go into the lab and check it out? That would never happen.

    The reason fraud is rare is that the chances od being caught AFTER publication are probable. It has nothing to do with the peer review.

    [Reply]

  22. By Steven C on Apr 9, 2008

    Chrisd there are many other examples or problems with the peer review process, one example that springs to mind was that of the discovery that the bacteria H.pylori was the cause of ulcers, the pharmaceuticals did a splendid job (for over 12 years) of keeping Barry Marshals discovery out of mainstream publications, until his stunt that is. In 2006 BM received the noble price for his quest (and rightly so).

    Other such examples are abundant. But a major scientific cover up by almost the entire the community (the royal society at least) who carried out the whitewash upon the hypothesis that AIDS was spread to man during the OPV trials in the late 50s by Koprowski. I could go on but my point I believe has been established.

    http://www.documentary-film.ne.....gs.php?e=5

    [Reply]

  23. By Chris D. on Apr 10, 2008

    Hi Steven, I’m not defending peer review, clearly there can be problems. The one issue I was addressing was peer review and fraud. I don’t think peer review is the reason that fraud in science is relatively rare. And certainly I do not believe that the reviewers who OK’d Hwang-Woo Suk’s cloning paper “are extremely dumb individuals”.

    [Reply]

  24. By Steven on Apr 15, 2008

    Chris D. Excerpt from one of Ed Hoppers (controversial proponent of the OPV - Aids Hypothesis) latest papers.


    In short, despite the two very different scenarios for first transfer proposed by the bushmeat and OPV hypotheses, the epidemiological (and phylogenetic) patterns from the late 1950s onwards would be exactly the same.

    Has there been a cover-up?

    Major scientific journals such as Science, Nature, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences continue to publish the impressive-sounding (but ill-supported) scientific research of researchers such as Bette Korber and Michael Worobey, while refusing all submissions that contain material or analysis supportive of the OPV hypothesis, even submissions from men as eminent as Bill Hamilton.

    Why are these leading scientific journals showing such apparent bias? I believe that the reasons are partly financial and political, and partly ideological.

    The Belgian Congo vaccination campaign was master-minded by American and Belgian scientists, and they and their successors can be imagined to be far from happy at the prospect of being sued for billions by large numbers of AIDS patients, for instance in a class action suit.

    The governments of the USA and Belgium, both of which backed the trials financially and administratively, may feel very much the same way, and be every bit as defensive.

    As for the ideological reasons, vaccination is the Holy Grail of Modern Medicine, and is the process on which most public health interventions are based. It is therefore also the process that can never be allowed to be seriously questioned or criticised in the public domain.

    Never mind that I repeatedly emphasise in my writings that most vaccination campaigns are safe, and that I am simply questioning the safety of one experimental campaign conducted in the 1950s. From the perspective of many (far too many) of those in the public health fraternity, it’s a case of never mind what happened in the past: OPV/AIDS is a “dangerous theory” that could adversely affect popular confidence in the vaccination campaigns of the future.

    I believe that the bias, as evidenced in part by the censored coverage in major scientific journals, is so extensive that it amounts to an implicit cover-up. Unfortunately, many scientists do not have the time or inclination to investigate these matters themselves, and they therefore tend to accept what Nature and Science have already pronounced on the subject. In practice, this means accepting the assurances of well-known scientists such as British retrovirologist Robin Weiss, who is, I believe, one of the principal architects and promulgators of the “official” bushmeat version of how AIDS began.

    In response to my book The River in 1999, Professor Weiss wrote a cautious, but basically positive, review in Science, and then helped organise the Royal Society meeting on “Origins of HIV and the AIDS Epidemic” in September 2000. He skilfully arranged and co-ordinated that meeting so that it highlighted the establishment response to the OPV hypothesis, a response that was based on (a) the bushmeat hypothesis, (b) phylogenetic dating analysis, and (c) the testing of samples of CHAT vaccines obtained in the US and UK.

    The latter samples of vaccine had never themselves been used for vaccination in Africa, and they clearly represented different batches of vaccine from those used in Africa (although Weiss and others tried to argue otherwise, mainly by obfuscating the issue). Of course, all these vaccine samples from the US and UK tested negative for SIVs and for chimpanzee DNA.

    Apart from promoting and favouring such misleading research, several speakers at the Royal Society meeting deliberately tried to confuse and obfuscate the history of what had actually happened during the OPV campaigns in Africa. And then came the coup de grace in the form of Professor Weiss’s closing speech. His comments were quite blatantly biased, favouring only the bushmeat theory, and these were the comments that got reported in the press and in scientific journals the world over.

    Weiss was also present at the second major origins of AIDS conference, held at the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome in September 2001, where, strangely, he was once again appointed to deliver the final summing-up. This time he was even more flagrantly biased, in that he managed to ignore virtually every bit of the new evidence that I and others (such as Luisa Bozzi and Mikkel Schierup) had presented. This time I was so disgusted that I surprised myself by getting up and walking out, shouting at the podium as I did so: “This speech is a disgrace.”

    [Reply]

  25. By Chris D on Apr 15, 2008

    Steven, is above for my information or a rebuttal to the point I made. If the latter I don’t understand your point. If the former thanks, interesting.

    [Reply]

  26. By Steven on Apr 15, 2008

    Chris I’m just further endorsing your point, that there are problems with peer review. Not least the examples you mention and I.

    Steve

    [Reply]

  27. By Chris D on Apr 15, 2008

    Got you. Yes, there are many issues. One can only hope that everything good floats to the top eventually. There are many examples of ideas taking much longer than expected to rise. One has to wonder how many didn’t make it, hopefully it is just a matter of time rather than never.

    [Reply]

  28. By Steven on Apr 15, 2008

    On the contrary, I can point to many examples where the truth has been quashed for the sake of existing profits, mostly by the medical scientific establishment. I have little faith that the cream is rising to the top.

    [Reply]

  29. By Simone Brummelhuis on Apr 24, 2008

    Here are some examples of ‘what people learned from Wikipedia’, following a request from one of the founders.
    http://www.linkedin.com/answer.....9071177166

    [Reply]

  30. By jansegers on Apr 30, 2008

    Fact or fiction ?

    It isn’t as easy as it seems…

    What laptop does Steve Ballmer use for his presentations?

    Very nice posting ! it’s a real discussion about what a fact is.

    The only thing that appears to be certain is that there is in the picture like we see it an MacBook with a nice Microsoft sign in front of it.

    See also the discussion about <a href=”http://thenextweb.org/2008/04/06/the-people-versus-the-expert/”">Wikipedia and truth.

    Pieter Jansegers
    webosophy.ning.com

    [Reply]

  31. By stacy on Aug 19, 2008

    good article…very informative!

    [Reply]

  32. By Jermy Kyle on Nov 12, 2008

    Good Blog , I am very much appreciate to read this

    [Reply]

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