Who's an expert?

Couple of things in the media recently, along the general lines of who really should get to be heard, in the context of clue sufficiency. First, one of my long-standing betes noires, the wiki idea and Wikipedia in general, is getting some competition from what will amount to a real, as opposed to a fantasy, web encyclopedia, Citizendium.

Interestingly, one of the claims made for Wikipedia is its huge base of "contributors," cited as being 3 million accounts. In fact, though, few of those accounts actually do anything -- a Washington Post article says:

"Wikipedia's own statistics show that in September, the most recent month for such data, 43,000 people were considered "active" _ they each contributed to more than five articles for the English site. The category of "very active Wikipedians" _ those who worked on more than 100 items _ numbered 4,330."

So what Wikipedia actually consists of is a tiny number of people with too much time on their hands, joined by about ten times the number of occasional contributors, and a vast number of lurkers -- gosh, that sounds a lot like ... news groups! Yes, it's just alt.flame writ large and somewhat better looking on screen.

Whether Citizendium will be any more useful remains to be seen.

Elsewhere, Harry Collins writes in New Scientist about technological populism and a "periodic table" of expertise -- his example is the media frenzy that occurred when a small set of highly inexpert parents extrapolated from MMR vaccinations to autism, without any basis. He also cites the South African government's decision to withhold AZT from HIV patients, on the grounds that President Thabo Mbeki believed he'd seen a "controversy" over its effectiveness in scientific literature he wasn't qualified to interpret.

His real point is that only the people practicing a particular area of science know whether a dissenting position represents a valid, "we just don't know yet" situation or whether a small group is being subsidized by, say, the tobacco industry, the energy industry, a religious group, or someone else with an axe to grind. And since the popular media are neither themselves qualified or motivated to distinguish, it's frighteningly easy to create bad policy by whipping up technological populism.

And John Hritz has some points to make, in his blog.

Anyway, good stuff to look at on a Tuesday morning, as the coffee takes hold.

And by the way, I believe it's now possible for you to add comments to this blog, although they are going to be moderated, since as you can probably tell from the above, I believe firmly in the repression of dissent of any kind.

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An undated piece from the old WCA News Service, with an extremely tenuous connection to the foregoing:

THANKS FOR YOUR CONCERN

Ann Arbor: A Livingston County legislator is agitating to suspend some levels of state revenue to Ann Arbor unless the city brings its marijuana penalty into line with the state's. A tiny minority of his colleagues are pointing out that, while they fully agree with and support his courageous zeal in defense of our threatened children, his measure is illegal. But, hey, somebody's got to keep those lazy bums on the Supreme Court busy, huh? Actually, it seems like a good idea to us -- meddling in your neighbor's politics -- and so WCA has funded a massive lobbying effort to shut off all state and federal monies to Livingston County until:

- It brings its traffic enforcement into line with Ann Arbor's; the current disgracefully low level of parking citations written in most Livingston County municipalities sends a disastrous message to their kids -- "Hey, park anywhere man, it's cool."

- It ensures that each city and township has at least one International Center for Tibetan Buddhism, located no more than 30 feet from the Baptist Church and the VFW hall. Religious diversity is horribly threatened by the current, whitebread approach to faith in the County, and it seems only fair that if they're going to get any of our hard-earned tax money, a representative proportion of their population should be forced to convert to Roscicrucianism or the Arian Heresy.

- Stop endangering our children by electing morons to the legislature. Henceforward, an aggregate IQ score for all Livingston County lawmakers will be computed each year, and no revenues will be transferred in any year in which the score continues to be below 38, as it apparently is now.

ANN ARBOR CONDUCTS NUCLEAR TESTS

Ann Arbor: "We have to protect ourselves from Livingston County," said a spokesman. The CIA, which was taken completely by surprise ("Ann Harbour? Huh?" said a CIA spokespook), is reported to be monitoring the situation, having done a quick MapQuest search.

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The WCA News Service is brought to you by the Odd Town Tavern and its credible nuclear tempeh deterrent. "We have to protect ourselves from Andy Gulvezan," said a bartender who could hardly be heard above the Baby Elephant Walk, playing on the bar's sound system.

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Ain't this fun?

One of the things you discover when you're ailin' -- really took poorly, not just under the weather -- is that things tend to cascade in wierd ways. You take one drug to counteract the root problem, which brings with it a side effect like, say, water retention. Puffy feet. So a helpful doctor prescribes another drug to take care of that. Which just happens to flush out potassium. So you wake up at 4:00 AM with a calf cramping up like you'd just run a marathon. So you eat bananas. Not an anticipated aspect of this (as all the helpful types are so quick to call it) "journey."

Oh, well. Here's an old post from 2000, back when Pinochet was hiding out in the UK, dodging a Spanish Judge. Vaguely medical, I guess. I honestly don't remember what the reference to Mark Murray was about -- I suppose I was honked off at Engler again about something.

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20000121

GROUPS CALL FOR MORE PINOCHET TESTS

Ann Arbor: Although a team of government flacks in doctor suits ... that is, medical experts have ruled that former Chilean rap star Augusto Pinochet is "unfit" to stand trial, the Spanish judge who wants his (Pinochet's) wrinkled old ass on a platter has called for a second round of tests, administered by a team of his own choosing. Meanwhile, other groups interested in seeing something remotely resembling justice done are issuing their own demands for tests; a quick tabulation of the paperwork shows that if all the requests were complied with, Pinochet would be undergoing 324 treadmill stress exams, taking part in 37 clinical trials to determine the effect of prolonged spanking on elderly ex-dictators, and "several" rigid sigmoidoscopies.

British Home Secretary Jack Straw countered with a brief arguing that Pinochet should be allowed to return home, since being forced to remain in Britain throughout a Fall and Winter was "punishment enough."

Meanwhile, back in Chile, a Socialist presidential candidate was elected for the first time since the CIA ... that is, Chilean rightist elements ousted and murdered Salvador Allende in 1970. President Ricardo Lagos issued a statement shortly after the election results were known, enumerating the initiatives he had in mind, including a new presidential residence, 40 feet underground and hardened to resist a direct hit from a nuclear warhead. "Better safe than sorry," he is quoted as saying.

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The Wood-Charles News Service is brought to you by the Odd Town Tavern, at the corner of Full Employment and Tax Cut, in beautiful downtown Englerville, which used to be Ann Arbor, but the Governor's appointed member of the city council, Mark my-way-or-the-highway Murray vetoed the measure to defeat the proposal to rename the town after that fat hack in Lansing ... that is, the Governor, and by the Scandinavian Retro-ethnic Drug-crazed Dance Group, Berserk du Soleil, yeah, I know it's a stretch but I've been trying to work that into something since I thought it up over raw fish and sake last Sunday night.

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