Originally titled, “Wikipedia’s Strange Certainty about Edward Hooper, Brian Martin, and the OPV/AIDS Hypothesis”

On controversial issues Wikipedia can only be expected to lag behind rather than lead public discussion.  On issues like the origin of Aids debate, Wikipedia can only be expected to reflect those institutional interests.  Any headway against those interests would have to be gained elsewhere.

 

Author contact: <StrangeCertainty2015@gmail.com>

 

“To me, the line in the sand that divides science from what’s not science is—the way I think about it is, what makes me a scientist is—that I would much rather have questions I can’t answer than answers I can’t question.”

–Max Tegmark, Professor, Department of Physics, MIT (expanding a quote from Richard Feynman).

 

“If you thought that science was certain – well, that is just an error on your part.”

–Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1965.

 

Abstract:

The Wikipedia editors and administrators who control the Brian Martin (social scientist) and Edward Hooper Wikipedia pages, and also the OPV/AIDS Hypothesis Wikipedia page, differ from Tegmark and Feynman, and other philosophers of science.  These editors and administrators prefer answers that cannot be questioned.  They promote certainty and the suppression of contrary evidence.  They put Wikipedia on the wrong side of the line that divides science frompseudoscience.  This brief paper reports on some of the factors that allow biased editorial control to undermine science and biography at Wikipedia.

 

I.  Some background.

 

I have never met either Edward Hooper or Brian Martin.  I have read much of their published work, I have seen Hooper on camera in the Origin of Aids movie, and I have communicated with each of them individually.  Martin posted a paper I wrote called “A Strange Case of Certainty” at the Suppression of Dissent website he administers, http://www.bmartin.cc/dissent/.

 

Hooper has commented on my paper and has linked to it on his website, www.aidsorigins.com.

 

My Strange Case of Certainty paper used the origin of Aids debate as a case study making the point that institutional interests can powerfully influence the flow of ideas.

 

It was an odd chance that got me interested in the origin of Aids.  I saw a box of books called The River, by Edward Hooper, being unpacked and shelved at my local bookstore in 1999.  Thinking that it would be about water rights issues, a subject that was of interest to me, I looked through a copy.  Turned out it wasn’t what I was interested in, but it was so well written, and so thoroughly documented, that I bought it anyway.

 

The River is an investigation of how a chimpanzee virus jumped species to humans to cause the Aids pandemic.  The conclusions of The River supported what has come to be known as the OPV/AIDS hypothesis.

 

The OPV/AIDS hypothesis proposes that the Aids pandemic originated from the Wistar Institute’s experimental oral polio vaccine called CHAT that was administered in Africa in the late 1950s.  It is alleged, with supporting evidence, that batches of CHAT were prepared locally in Africa using tissue cultures made from sacrificed caged chimpanzees that were part of Wister’s vaccine program.  Wistar denies this use of chimpanzee tissues, but claims that records that might help their case have been lost.

 

An alternative theory, the bushmeat hypothesis, supported by Wistar and the medical industry, proposes that Africans started the pandemic by killing and eating wild chimpanzees.

 

At first the debate about the origin of Aids was covered by the news media.  But then  the media reporting about the debate became one sided.  Many “final” claimed refutations of the OPV/AIDS hypothesis were offered over the years since 1992 or earlier by Wistar and its supporters.  These were generally accepted by the media without questioning why every few years new final claims were necessary.

 

I found Hooper’s website for a different view.  The reason for the series of refutations was that one after another they were not holding up.  It became obvious that institutional interests were successfully controlling the public debate.

 

My Strange Case of Certainty paper takes no position on the outcome of the origin of Aids debate.  The debate is unresolved, and it is not my purview to resolve it.  My interest is in how institutional interest in suppressing the debate has been effective in foreclosing public discussion of the issue.

 

One section of Strange Case of Certainty analyzed the OPV/AIDS Hypothesis page at Wikipedia, finding it a travesty of errors and spin.

 

Each Wikipedia page (or article–the terms page and article seem to be interchangeable at Wikipedia) has a tab labeled Talk which accesses edit histories and discussions.  The history gets archived, although it is not clear whether all deletions and discussions remain accessible.  The OPV/AIDS Hypothesis Talk archive for years past revealed that much of my factual criticism was not new to the editors and administrators of the Wikipedia page.

 

My Strange Case of Certainty is now being discussed on the OPV/AIDS Hypothesis Talk page.  But, although the many errors have again come to the attention of the active Wikipedia editors and administrators, it seems unlikely that this attention will result in any substantive change to the OPV/AIDS Hypothesis page.  The archive shows a consistent policy of ignoring the substance of criticism over the past many years.

 

I recently received an email from Edward Hooper asking me to look into what is going on at Wikipedia regarding references both to him and to Brian Martin.  Hooper had been alerted by a third party that he and Martin should be prepared for some sort of new campaign against them at Wikipedia.

 

II. What I have found.

 

A. Wikipedia editing.

 

I do use Wikipedia.  It is a convenient free source for information.  The day I began this essay I was also writing about the Bronte sisters (18th century English novelists) and wanted to say something about their early deaths.  Wikipedia is reasonably vague given the state of medicine at the time, but suggests the three sisters died of tuberculosis, possibly complicated by typhoid fever.  I accepted that as sufficiently reliable and non-controversial, and I used it in my text.

 

I began with the idea that entries such as on the Bronte sisters would be reliable because of the absence of institutional interests vested in the outcome of the postings.  After all, the sisters’ books are out of copyright and can be read without charge over the internet.  Checking the edit history of the Bronte page disabused me of my confidence.

 

The Bronte family Wikipedia page cites to a 1995 biography by Juliet Barker for the tuberculosis cause of death.  In the associated Talk page the editors request information about a Scientific American story on tuberculosis as their cause of death.  There was no followup.  In 2012 an editor requested that the page be “semi-protected due to the recent multiple attempts of vandalism from unregistered users”.  An anonymous editor, Brownbearwolf, on February 19, 2015, argued on the Talk page that two of the sisters were suicides.

 

Wikipedia relies on mostly anonymous editors for its quality control.  The Talk pages are full of much nonsense, bickering, and power plays, even when the subject is as innocuous as 18th century literature.

 

Lawyers know that there are many ways to obscure facts.  One is with stonewalling and suppression.  Another is to overwhelm with volume.  Wikipedia’s transparency is overwhelming.  There are over 5 million Wikipedia subject articles, each with its own Talk pages and archives.

Wikipedia presently has over 30,000 editors, about 1300 of whom have additional powers and are called administrators.  Around 5500 of the regular editors, as well as the administrators, have what are called rollback powers.  There are also small numbers of Wikipedia editors called bureaucrats and Wikimedia global editors called stewards, each with additional powers and somewhat vague duties.

Wikipedia protocols are extensive, flexible, much subject to debate and revision, and uncertain in effect.  Undermining the protocols is the directive, “If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it.”

Wikipedia is one of the internet sites owned and facilitated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization.  The Foundation has control over the Wikipedia software, and has provided software, Huggle, Winkle, and Rollback among them, that enables administrators and experienced editors with rollback power to quickly monitor and reverse page edits.  The full scope of Wikimedia oversight of Wikipedia is not clear.

Wikipedia is also governed by a plethora of committees.  Much of Wikipedia governance is duplicative (or more) with contrary positions frequently argued or posted on governance issues.  There is also very extensive commentary and criticism outside of Wikipedia, much of it also reposted or discussed on Wikipedia pages.

An investigation of Wikipedia could become a bottomless never ending project.  What I write herein can be documented using Wikipedia sources, but some of it can also be contradicted from other Wikipedia sources.  I have given up on footnoting the present paper; readers with questions are advised to check for themselves–everything written here has been found using internet searches.

Wikipedia’s anonymous editing and administrating is open to abuse.  Paid editors are supposed to declare payments and conflicts of interest.  It is suspected that there is much more paid editing than is disclosed.  Disclosure is self monitored, except in cases where there has been public exposure.  An internet search for “paid editing at Wikipedia” produced over 10 million hits, including recent articles at Time and The Atlantic.

Many critics conclude that paid editing at Wikipedia is common.  Most editing is done by anonymous users with such tags as Guy, SmithBlue, Seabreezes1, Gongwool, Harrald88, and Mastcell.  Other editors are identified only by an IP address.

When some editors have been identified as having made hundreds of edits over short periods of time, paid editing has been suspected.  Especially when those editors have industry connections and their point of view has favored their employers.

Powerful editors and administrators (power editors) are able to effectively control Wikipedia pages they are interested in using their enhanced editing powers, their insider knowledge, their rollback powers, and their selective use of protocols.

The use of Wikipedia protocols on reliable sources is especially interesting, and explains much about Wikipedia power editor control.  Sometimes a protocol is cited that only peer reviewed articles can be used.  Sometime a protocol requiring only secondary sources is cited.  Original research is barred, except when it is not.

An example from the analysis of the Wikipedia OPV/AIDS Hypothesis page in my Strange Case of Certainty paper is illustrative.  I criticized Wikipedia for relying on secondary sources making claims about a scientific paper rather than using the paper itself.  The original paper did not support all of the claims being made about it.  Why not use the original source? I asked.  It appears that the secondary claims were preferred over the more moderate claims in the original because they better supported the point of view of Wikipedia power editors.

The Talk page and archive for the OPV/AIDS Hypothesis page shows that various editors brought up factual deficiencies in the page and argued for changes.  Suggested changes were rejected on the grounds of being original research not backed by secondary sources.

One editor, Harald88, consistently argued for a more balanced presentation of Hooper and the OPV/AIDS Hypothesis, noting the supposed Wikipedia policy of neutral point of view.  He was not successful.

 

Harald88 retired from editing in September 2013, stating, “This user is tired of silly drama on Wikipedia.”

 

My Strange Case of Certainty paper has been discussed in Talk, but will not be cited because it is not peer reviewed (a flexible term easily abused–my paper has been reviewed by experts, but not by outside referees), but a recent textbook, Tools for Critical Thinking in Biology, by Stephen H. Jenkins, Oxford: 2015, is regarded as an ideal source in Wikipedia Talk.  Although it also has not gone through outside referees, it is regarded as a secondary (or tertiary) source and therefore accepted without further analysis as reliable.

 

Jenkins is not only cited for the OPV/AIDS Hypothesis page, the textbook is quoted in a footnote to the Brian Martin (social scientist) Wikipedia page for its erroneous conclusion that Martin has been promoting the OPV/AIDS hypothesis.

 

The OPV/AIDS Hypothesis page and the Brian Martin and Edward Hooper Wikipedia pages have all come under the attention of an overlapping set of editors and administrators.  These editors and administrators evince strong medical industry biases.  They are clearly determined that Wikipedia shall not in any way undermine public confidence in vaccination.

 

B. The Wikipedia Brian Martin (social scientist) page.

 

Brian Martin is a professor of social science at the University of Wollongong in Australia.  He has a distinguished career and an extensive academic publishing history.  He maintains a very useful website on the Suppression of Dissent.  He is not popular with those who wish to suppress dissent.

 

The Brian Martin Wikipedia page was once nominated for deletion, but Talk states that after discussion the decision in 2010 was to keep it.  Martin has his Talk defenders, who point out among other things that Martin has consistently maintained neutrality on vaccination issues and the OPV/AIDS hypothesis.

 

One of Martin’s defenders has been SmithBlue, with support from Seabreezes and sometimes Bibby.  An ardent adversary has been GongWool, supported by Guy, an administrator.  Gong Wool Station is an historic location in Australia, about 400 miles from Wollongong University.  GongWool’s pseudonym  seems an unlikely coincidence.  GongWool has suggested that SmithBlue has a personal interest in his proposed edits, but GongWool may be the one on a personal campaign.

 

Guy, the administrator, has threatened to have SmithBlue barred from editing.

 

The Wikipedia editing of the Martin page has proceeded this way: Newspaper articles (secondary sources) have made allegations about Martin opposing vaccination and supporting the OPV/AIDS hypothesis.  The allegations are made the basis of the Martin page.  SmithBlue submits that nothing in Martin’s writing supports this view, and he cites possible violations of the Wikipedia protocol for biographies of living persons.

 

SmithBlue’s edits are rejected on the grounds that they violate protocols against original research or because they are based on primary rather than secondary sources.