Wikipedia Breeds Unwitting Trust (Says IT Professor) 441
kingston writes ""As I say to my students 'if you had to have brain surgery would you prefer someone who has been through medical school, trained and researched in the field, or the student next to you who has read Wikipedia'?"
So says Deakin University associate professor of information systems, Sharman Lichtenstein, who believes Wikipedia, where anyone can edit a page entry, is fostering a climate of blind trust among people seeking information.
Professor Lichtenstein says the reliance by students on Wikipedia for finding information, and acceptance of the practice by teachers and academics, was "crowding out" valuable knowledge and creating a generation unable to source "credible expert" views even if desired.
"People are unwittingly trusting the information they find on Wikipedia, yet experience has shown it can be wrong, incomplete, biased, or misleading," she said. "Parents and teachers think it is [okay], but it is a light-weight model of knowledge and people don't know about the underlying model of how it operates.""
Who is a "credible expert"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly, I find that individual experts make far more mistakes that Wiki, which is to a good degree peer reviewed.
The errors in school textbooks are well known and discussed; many still in existance after decades. So shy of hitting peer-reviewed in-field journals or, of course, doing your own research: whom, exactly, isn't "light-weight" knowledge... or, more to the point, who can be trusted more.
At least Wiki lets you go into the history and see all the editors, everythign else they've edited, what the differing opinions were, and a discussion on the topic at hand. I can't do that with my encylopedia.
More complicated (Score:4, Interesting)
However, with the advent of the internet, the same fads that would have come and gone in the real world, seem to have gained a staying power that is truly incredible to behold.
I think that part of the reason is that the Internet finally gave any individual the ability to distribute "media"... wherefore previously economic barriers would have prevented the dissemination of information by most independent individuals. With this barrier gone, any cook can make a claim, and as long as the claim is ridiculous enough to attract attention, it is also certain to attract a following.
For instance, how would one explain the "Autism/Vaccination" fiasco? Talking of blind trust, here we have literally hundreds of thousands of people, who willingly and knowingly ignore multiple large-scale peer-reviewed studies, only to put their faith into something that can only be described as an internet fad, started by some really sad an unfortunate parents, looking to place the blame for the tragic condition that befell their child.
The question is - what is there to be done about this. To be honest, I think that the situation can go both ways. We could slowly mature in our understanding of how the Internet works, and accept it as a public forum, with all the positive and negative implications that come with such a place. Or we could continue down into the rabbit hole of collective ignorance, into a future that I, for one, would not want to experience... a future where truth is no longer a function of fact, but a function of how many supporters an idea has.
Edumacated (Score:2, Interesting)
I encourage it. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the dismal tide, I tell ya. (Score:3, Interesting)
Wikipedia (or at the very least, open, collaborative knowledge) is not going away. It's stupid to keep complaining about how kids don't know how to use it properly, let's start teaching them the proper way to use it.
Here's an idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wikipedia doesn't thrive because we don't care about standards of evaluation; Wikipedia thrives because curious, thirsty minds seek answers they can afford and are available. I can, with my cell phone, answer just about any question I have, and Wikipedia is the easiest way to go about it.
If there's a tremendous worry that Wikipedia is somehow destroying academic integrity, I'm going to need a free, web-based solution, that has the support of a developer community that cares enough to write a website that formats the whole kit-and-caboodle for my iPhone (or for your Treo, or Blackberry for that matter) that allows me to, at a few concise clicks, satisfy my thirst for knowledge. I'm sick of hearing all the griping about Wikipedia, because it's whole purpose is to fulfill the job we're allegedly paying all this money at institutions for: procurement of knowledge. And these hooligans are trying to give it away for free... preposterous. Sometimes I don't want to know the nuances of the issue, I'm just trying to find who the NBA's scoring leader was, or what, for purposes of the article I'm reading, *is* a Boson Particle.
I can't read a book every time I've got a question, I'd literally do nothing at that point. Hell, I barely have the time to use Wikipedia to answer my question. I've got a lot of questions but having a phone on me with Wikipedia access means more of my questions get answered. Until there's a substitute that these people (charging thousands upon thousands for their answers in the form of collegiate education) can provide that helps me with that problem (my insatiable curiosity) Wikipedia's a gamble I'm willing to take. If something sounds unreasonable, I'll try and verify it elsewhere, but it doesn't particularly matter, it wasn't too long ago that Professors and Academics were up in arms about any internet sources; who knows who and what I can trust on the web.
I just want my questions answered people.
Re:Wikipedia and research papers. (Score:4, Interesting)
Besides, High School teachers have become so retarded over the years it's amazing that graduates know anything. My College Writing I professor was constantly complaining about the lack of grammar taught in lower grades (all my teachers taught was 'literature').
Re:Wikipedia and research papers. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not alone (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Everyone say it with me (Score:3, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citing_Wikipedia
The problem is as usual that people assume Wikipedia is more than it has ever claimed to be, which says something about its success.
Oh, really? (Score:3, Interesting)
John Kerry is a whole article. There are good sections of it, but more biased towards John than against. I dropped in to check it out and found 2 errors in the article. These were errors of fact, not opinions. The article is locked from edits, except by certain editors, so I went to the discussion page and entered the 2 errors there.
I was "told" by the editors that I was wrong, and that I had no place entering that data. I persisted, and then found and gave them a cite for one of the facts - John Kerry's own website and some of the few military documents he posted there. The second error was so damming to his campaign that he removed the documents from his site, and posted a restriction so that the documents in question were also purged from the wayback machine! (The misssing documents prove that he lied about his discharge status, but only if you know how to read them.)
It was after citing the website that the editors corrected one of the factual errors. The other is still wrong to this day, but there is no way to cite it to correct it until the day when John Kerry releases his full military records. (Don't hold your breath).
Creating trust vs. exposing trust (Score:2, Interesting)
Wikipedia is not "breeding" or creating blind trust. What it quite possibly does it exposing blind trust that already exists - trust in authority (or perceived authority), trust in encyclopedias, and so on.
It's not Wikipedia that's the problem, it's the lack of scepticism and media competence among students (and people in general). Wikipedia's just making it obvious that this problem exists, but if anything, we should be thankful for that, since you need to be aware that there is a problem before you can fix it.
Don't shoot the messenger.
Amen to that (Score:5, Interesting)
A few years ago I had a student turn in a paper arguing that the drinking age should be lowered to 18. One of the claims the paper raised was that drinking ages are lower in many European countries, and that they have healthier drinking cultures. That's probably true, but the source that the student cited to back up the point was totally inadequate. It was a two paragraph account of German drinking habits. The account was based on an interview with an unnamed exchange student. It was written down by an anonymous high school student. And it was put up on the web as a really badly designed web page. Let's see - anonymous author, anonymous interview subject, obviously done as part of a high school assignment, very short, no details, and badly presented. Not exactly the world's most credible source. I made the student go find a more thorough account of European drinking habits written by an identifiable human being and vetted by some kind of editor.
That's a fairly typical example. However, I don't think it's anything worth getting upset about. Students have long been overly credulous. Heck, people in general are overly credulous. It's always been possible to go out, find crappy information, and blindly accept it. Wikipedia (and more broadly the Internet) just make that easier. Yes, there's a lot of GOOD info out there on the web, too, but finding it can be very difficult.
That being the case, I try to integrate assignments about how you do research, and what constitutes a good source, what Internet sources are good for, and when you might want to hit the library and dig a little deeper. It's really a necessity. The students don't know how to do research; therefore, we need to teach them. Many schools are beginning to recognize this -- over the last ten years or so the number of positions at academic libraries for "instructional librarians" has skyrocketed. They visit other teachers' classes and teach lessons on search techniques, evaluation of sources, give tours of the specialized databases the university subscribes to, and so on. Some schools are even beginning to offer complete courses on information literacy [uri.edu]. I think we'll probably see a good bit more of this over the next few years.
Re:Yahoo answers is worse. (Score:2, Interesting)
Is there a demand for a moderated service? (Score:2, Interesting)
Or, more precisely put, there is a demand for a modern encyclopedia that actually has links to credible sources for its facts. By credible sources, we mean, people with some real expertise on the subject, not just some random dude.
Re:Wikipedia and research papers. (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok, eventually someone will spot the error and will correct it, but between the edit and the correction, the information is wrong. Ad I can edit it again. And again. Point is: There's a chance that Wikipedia's information is not correct, at any given time, and if you don't cross check it with other sources, you might not be able to tell whether the entry is correct or not.
On Brittanica, after an entry is corrected, it stays corrected, because Britannica's editors don't keep editing the entries over and over again. Any coder knows that editing working code is poison, same thing here.
So, Wikipedia is nice for fun articles, and a great reference for a lot of things. But you CAN'T trust it and SHOULD cross-reference it with other works. As you should do with any other reference, even Brittanica.
Newspaper sure as heck is untrustworthy... (Score:3, Interesting)
Still, I've become a bit jaded with all the mistakes I see in the paper. Stuff like '.9 caliber revolver', '10 12 gauge magazines' that were associated with a ruger 10-22, automatic revolver, Etc...
I think it's breeding a wide-ranging skepticism (Score:3, Interesting)
ie, the undergrads I see to day are fully aware that wiki is 85% BS. They've also gone on to assume most other sources are 85% BS.
Re:More complicated (Score:3, Interesting)
This should be within the grasp of all /.ers:
The media are, by enlarge, run by people who had "arts degrees" - ie a very limited grasp of reality, but endorsed by "experts" - unlike Wikipedia readers, who do atleast understand that the way to knowledge is to look for yourself.
These people realise that science does not agree with them, but have no grasp of "science" or, in fact, logic. They have limited means to establish a concept of reality, since they do not have any grasp of "scientific method", and assume that he who shouts loudest must be right, like the people on the Maury show (but, at least in some cases, with a larger vocabulary). They need to promote the idea that if they and science disagree, then science must be wrong. The great unwashed plebean masses are quite happy to go along with "he who shouts loudest is right", and shouting with the support of daytime TV is quite loud.
The message that "science is wrong" appears pretty well supported by people who actually have not the slightest idea what science is. many of them claim to be Christians too, despite a complete lack of understanding of what the Bible actually means:
John's Gospel beings "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God" This gospel was originally written in Greek (no, not King James' English, but the language spoken in Greece). The Greek word used for word here is logos, which also means logic and this piece of text actually means, in modern language, "Right from the start, The laws of physics (and maths) are the one aspect of God, and indivisible from God. In other words, the new testament teaching is that the laws of the universe were created at or before the physical creation of the universe, and extend to the ends of the universe, both knowable and beyond". While not all cosmologists agree with this, very few dispute it in public. Any dispute between "Christians" and "science" is there because if ignorance of the Bible is merged with ignorance of science.
In short, there is a major problem of ignorance. The cure is education - and Wikipedia is more likely to achieve that than daytime TV.
Who would you perfer to amputate your limb? the person who read "how to amputate a limb" in Wikipedia, or the person who watched an amputaion on daytime TV?.
Re:Oh, really? (Score:3, Interesting)
I know that records can be fiddled with, there's plenty of evidence that this sort of thing was done with Bush. I know that you can have two versions of a story when talking about a combat action where there are a limited number of witnesses and the brass can massage things of a politically sensitive nature. But a discharge date and status should be one of those cold, hard, immutable records.
But back to your original point, Wikipedia is not editable by everyone, it's editable by everyone until a topic becomes so contentious that edit wars will render the article unusable. Kerry was a flawed candidate, not because of his war record but because he was not leadership material. He brought no new ideas to the table, his public persona was dull and wooden, and he simply was not the kind of person people would go out to vote for, at best they would vote against Bush and he'd win by default. That's a terrible platform to run on. The 2004 election should have been the kind of textbook perfect example campaigners dream of getting, an opponent who is so obviously wrong for America that the contrast should be blinding. They augered the campaign straight into the ground, a smoking crater. Now when it was a matter of pitting war record against war record, Bush didn't have a leg to stand on but Kerry lost his due to the swift-boating. So much smoke and dander was blown up, reasonable people became unsure of the truth. Total FUD. With that kind of shitstorm going on, I think many people would be suspicious of claims that Kerry really is lying about his war record, just the same as I am skeptical about claims that Obama is a crypto-muslim who attends an America-hating Christian church, that he has ties to the Chicago mob and is plotting to open the borders to illegals. Each one of those points has been debunked but many people don't go with the facts, they just go with what they've heard. The propagandists don't have to convince the intelligent, a moron's vote counts just as much as a smartie's.
Re:Wikipedia and research papers. (Score:2, Interesting)
A math professor pal of mine is always delighted with the students who turn in obviously shoddy stuff, as then he can quickly and easily give them bad grades. Wouldn't citing Wikipedia (or obviously cribbing from it) serve that purpose for you?
Re:Wikipedia and research papers. (Score:2, Interesting)
Without fail, professors and instructors at each place have taught that Wikipedia is not to be used because it is editable by anyone. One even argued that it was because you could not verify the information would be available to someone reading your paper, since it could be edited away. Nevermind that if you are clueless enough to be citing it as an authoritative source in a serious paper you should at least be citing a specific version of the entry.
That said, I've used it as a source a few times. There have been a few instructors in boring required 101 classes that have allowed its use as one of the required sources. Why wouldn't I take advantage of that for a useless class where I'm just going through the motions to get my A?
Re:Wikipedia and research papers. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I encourage it. (Score:1, Interesting)
The other thing its good for is when your professor makes you look up a list of terms and explain them in your own words... Just look them up in Wikipedia and read the first 1/2 of the screen. I know this method is the lazy way out, but come on, those assignments aren't really meant to be too mentally challenging. They're just there to give you a basic working knowledge of the subject. (Which is Wikipedia's best use, if you ask me.)
Re:Wikipedia and research papers. (Score:3, Interesting)
The OP you responded to gave an 8 year education for $400k as an example.
You considered an example where income is $45k without education, $85k with.
I realize this is incredibly oversimplified, but I'm just going to take 25% off for tax. I'm too lazy to look up the real numbers.
So given that, it becomes $33.75k, increasing to $63.75. Increase of $30k a year.
But, you ignored the fact the the person who doesn't go to school for 8 years is working that entire time.
Given that, we can construct an equation to determine how many years it would take to make up the difference.
X+8(33.75)+400 = x(63.75)
33.75X+670=63.75X
33.75+(670/X)=63.75
670/X=30
670=30X
22.3=X
So in 22.3 years you will break even. This 22.3 years of work after your 8 years of education, so you are nearly 50. And you just broke even. Doesn't seem like such a great deal to me.
Re:Wikipedia and research papers. (Score:3, Interesting)
My own slightly jaded take on this: finishing high school shows that you have a long attention span, or to put it another way, a high boredom threshold. Finishing college shows that you have a very high boredom threshold. Finishing a PhD shows that you have an astonishingly high boredom threshold - you can spend three years obsessively focused on a single obscure problem that almost nobody else in the world gives a damn about! Why is that a skill worth having? Society has been growing increasingly specialised ever since the industrial revolution, which means the ability to focus on a very narrow task and develop a highly specialised skill set is increasingly valuable. But long-term dedication is something that's rather difficult to test at interview, which makes it an ideal candidate for certification. A bachelor's, a master's and a doctorate are essentially bronze, silver and gold medals for tolerating boredom. Of course the knowledge you acquire while studying isn't completely irrelevant, but it's secondary - why else would Google prefer someone with a PhD in astrophysics to someone with a bachelor's in CS? Because they know the person with the PhD is methodical and tenacious to an extent that would have made them unfit for life in any preindustrial society, but makes them perfectly suited to a technical job in the 21st century.
(Disclaimer: I've spent the last five years studying for my gold medal in tolerating boredom, so my perspective might be slightly myopic and/or bitter. Just in case you didn't spot that.)
The irony of my bio prof... (Score:2, Interesting)
Over the past year she's spread more misinformation and misguided more people than any wikipedia article, mainly because of "blind trust" on the part of the students. When she doesn't know the answer to a question, she puts on her thoughtful face and just makes something up or takes a guess to maintain her appearance as an expert.
Not everyone eats the BS. She's been corrected a couple of times by students that could cite reliable sources for their own information and she doesn't take it gracefully.