Funny, I was under the impression that the far right and scientists were both of the opinion that truth is objective and fixed.
It seems that we lowly social scientist finally have company (even if questionable) in promoting the "harmful attitude about science and truth... who seem to think facts are malleable." Could it be the far right is reading Foucault?
From the article sent by Sara Fregonese:
"Joshua Rosenau, a graduate student in evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas and contributor to Science Blogs <http://www.scienceblogs.com/> claims the site has a darker side. "On some level it's also reflective of a harmful attitude that some people - especially those on the far right - tend to have about science and truth," he told me. "They are re-defining their own truth and seem to think facts are malleable."
MB
------------------------------
Mieka Brand
Visiting Assistant Professor
The College of Wooster
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
[log in to unmask]
>>> SARA FREGONESE <[log in to unmask]> 3/6/2007 9:14 AM >>>
Positionality, please!?
It is not a spoof for sure because the project exists for real, but I'd be also skeptical about the quality of the entries.
What I made of it from the information I read about conservapedia is that it looks like a messy mix of a home school project done by 58 pupils in the US, and the result of continuous attacks by users that mock the website by adding in the most hilarious stuff in the original entries, upsetting the project founders so much that they started banning more and more users everyday.
In other words: it is up to you to distinguish what is "real" from what is added in and therefore "spoof". And, besides, what is actually originarily present in the website is written by the 58 home school pupils of this specific project, so next time let's keep this in mind and let's not claim to read something looking like a peer reviewed paper in Progress in Human Geography. :)
For more info:
Monday, February 26, 2007
A conservative rival for Wikipedia? Celeste Biever - technology reporter, New Scientist.
Earlier this week I stumbled across something called Conservapedia <http://www.conservapedia.com/> , which, at first glance resembles Wikipedia <http://www.wikipedia.org/> . It is laid out exactly the same way and uses similar fonts and colours. Furthermore, just like Wikipedia, anyone can add and edit entries after registering with the site.
But that's about as far as the similarity goes. On its home page, Conservapedia claims to be "a much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American". Conservapedia contains entries that reflect creationist thinking on evolution and lend support to critics of global warming.
Shortly after I found the site it was also discovered by a group of anti-Intelligent Design bloggers <http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/02/ladies_and_gentlemen_conservap.php> . They took it upon themselves to poke fun at the entries and correct much of the science. "Most of the science on the site is either shallow and useless or downright wrong," says Paul Myers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota in Morris who runs the popular blog Pharyngula <http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/> .
This flurry of activity lead the site's administrators to change the edits back and also to ban over 60 IP addresses and users from the site <http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Special:Ipblocklist&limit=500> (compared to just 6 before it was discovered). The reasons given by the administrators included "obscenity", "vandalism", "violation of the rules", and ''inappropriate disparagement of God''.
Conservapedia was created by one Andy Schlafly, attorney and son of the prominent conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_Schlafly> . I contacted him to ask about removing the posts. "I was very upset," he said. "The level of vandalism and obscenity was shocking."
Schafly describes the site as "a new way of learning about history and science". He originally created it together with the 58 students that he teaches at a home school and he suggests it could ultimately be used by teachers to as a reference point, because of effort to keep it clear of "obscenity". But another reason for creating it was what Schlafly calls the "dissatisfaction and bias" in Wikipedia. "The administrators are overwhelmingly liberal on Wikipedia," he says.
Joshua Rosenau, a graduate student in evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas and contributor to Science Blogs <http://www.scienceblogs.com/> claims the site has a darker side. "On some level it's also reflective of a harmful attitude that some people - especially those on the far right - tend to have about science and truth," he told me. "They are re-defining their own truth and seem to think facts are malleable."
Jimmy Wales, creator of Wikipedia, is more philosophical about the affair. "Free culture knows no bounds," he told me in an email. "We welcome the reuse of our work to build variants. That's directly in line with our mission."
Sara Fregonese
School of Geography,
Newcastle University
Daysh Building
NE1 7RU, UK
Tel. 0044 (0)191 2228510
E-mail [log in to unmask]
________________________________
From: A forum for critical and radical geographers on behalf of D F J Wood
Sent: Tue 06/03/2007 13:55
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Conservapedia.com - A conservative encyclopedia you can trust
Yes, I read it too. It's hardly a serious source of academic evidence
regarding a terrible threat. The Guardian only quotes the site itself
and takes the word of the supposed founder as the truth... At least it
seems to be high-school level project (which could explain the level of
naivety) which has undergone the usual viral fashionability which
affects anything on the Net, and at most the whole thing is a spoof
deliberately propagated. Perhaps it's a mixture of the two.
Seriously, here's what it says about the Patriot Act - tell me this is
not satire:
"The Patriot Act (formally, the `Uniting and Strengthening America by
Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism
(USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001') was an act passed by the Republican
congress following the 2001 attacks on World Trade Center. It removed a
certain number of liberties from American citizens, including such
things as the right of habeas corpus and the requirement for a search
warrent, since of course freedom might be used by terrorists against
America, and hence freedom is the enemy of security.
Long ago patriots said things like "Give me liberty, or give me death",
but today we say "take away my liberties, that's ok, patriotism means
security not liberty.""
Hmmm...
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Carl Griffin [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent: 06 March 2007 13:46
>To: D F J Wood; [log in to unmask]
>Subject: RE: Conservapedia.com - A conservative encyclopedia
>you can trust
>
>
>David,
>
>
>I first read about Conservapedia in an article in last
>Friday's Guardian. It's real, not a spoof, and it's coming at
>you like a plague of neo-cons...
>
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2024724,00.html
>
>
>Carl.
>
>_________________________________
>
>Dr. Carl J. Griffin,
>Lecturer in Human Geography,
>Queen's University, Belfast
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: A forum for critical and radical geographers
>[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of D F J Wood
>Sent: 06 March 2007 13:35
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Conservapedia.com - A conservative encyclopedia
>you can trust
>
>Are you lot quite sure about the pedigree of conservapedia?
>Despite most people's acceptance of it at face value, a lot of
>it reads like a clever spoof, and some of it is rather more
>obviously so... Take a look at the entry for 'Patriot Act' for
>example...
>
>David.
>
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: A forum for critical and radical geographers
>>[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jon Cloke
>>Sent: 06 March 2007 13:22
>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>Subject: Re: Conservapedia.com - A conservative encyclopedia
>>you can trust
>>
>>
>>Agreed. It's a bit like '1066 and all that' except.... they
>>really mean it!
>>
>>
>>From: "Canning J." <[log in to unmask]>
>>Reply-To: "Canning J." <[log in to unmask]>
>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>Subject: Re: Conservapedia.com - A conservative encyclopedia
>>you can trust
>>Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 12:30:00 -0000
>>
>>Sorry, I can't resist. These are entries in full:
>>
>>France: A country in Europe. Thrived during the middle ages.
>>The capitol is Paris, France, which was founded in the Middle Ages.
>>
>>Spain:Country located on the Iberian Penninsula. Borderd by
>>the Alantic Ocean to the west and the Mediterranean on the
>>east. Portuagal is located on the same penninsuala. Is the
>>same country as was in the medieval times. And known for its
>>famous explorers
>>
>>Japan: Group of islands of the western coast of Asia
>><http://www.conservapedia.com/Asia> .
>>
>>________________________________
>>
>>From: A forum for critical and radical geographers
>>[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Becky Morris
>>Sent: 06 March 2007 12:09
>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>Subject: Re: Conservapedia.com - A conservative encyclopedia
>>you can trust
>>
>>
>>I quite like commandments myself....and the entries for both
>>World Wars...and that the entry for 'Church of England'
>>includes this: 'In the late 1800s, there was a movement to
>>disestablish the Church of England. It failed, but it had the
>>incidental effect of giving the English language one of its
>>longest words, "antidisestablishmentarianism." ' Retrieved
>>from "http://www.conservapedia.com/Church_of_England" (Don't
>>ask how I got here...the journey to the Cof E reaped far more
>>nuggets than I have time and/or space to fill here! Magic!
>>
>>"Canning J." <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Some good historical entries here.
>>
>>
>> Queen Elizabeth I
>> Queen Elizabeth I was succeed by her cousin, James Earl of
>> Scotland(James I).
>>
>> Oliver Cromwell
>> Cromwell is perhaps the person other than Jesus who
>>declined enormous
>> worldly power, in Cromwell's case by voluntarily
>>refusing the crown of
>> England.
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: A forum for critical and radical geographers
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jon Cloke
>> Sent: 06 March 2007 10:30
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Conservapedia.com - A conservative
>>encyclopedia you can trust
>>
>> Any of the rest of you come across this extraordinarily
>>useful teaching
>> tool? Given the disputes about student use of Wikipedia
>>this couldn't
>> have come at a better time, although it is admittedly a work in
>> progress. No more 'grey areas' or subjectivity, just
>>hard facts! As an
>> example, here's the page on Ancient History...
>>
>> Introduction to Ancient History
>>
>> Ancient history, which is everything before about A.D.
>>600, created or
>> discovered all the major religions today except Islam.
>>Ancient history
>> created civilization and achieved many of the greatest
>>intellectual
>> breakthroughs of all time. Literature, drama,
>>mathematics, philosophy,
>> language, etc., were all created in ancient history.
>>
>> When did mankind first begin? There is no reliable
>>evidence of man
>> existing before 3500 B.C. The oldest writing is a
>>pictographic tablet
>> called a "cuneiform" dated to about 3400 B.C. from Sumer
>>(SOO-mur) in
>> Southern Mesopotamia (where Iraq is today). These
>>cuneiforms look like
>> chicken-scratches featuring wedge-like or arrow-shaped
>>characters. The
>> oldest western-style script is from the Indo-Aryan
>>language, and one
>> dated to 1550 B.C. was found in the Sinai. The oldest verified
>> civilization dates to about 3000 B.C. We can also
>>extrapolate backwards
>> from modern populations to estimate that only about 300
>>million people
>> existed in the world at the time of Christ, and
>>extrapolating backwards
>> further yields only one family in the year 3300 B.C.
>>Languages can be
>> traced backwards to about 3000 B.C., and some experts
>>reconstruct a
>> point of origin in southeastern Europe near the Baltic,
>>not far from the
>> Ararat mountain range cited in the Bible in connection
>>with Noah. Old
>> trees never predate this time either; the oldest
>>sequoias, which never
>> die of old age, are only 4000 years old.
>>
>> No "civilization" has been found that is older than
>>about 3000 B.C. By
>> "civilization" we mean order and hierarchy in the way
>>of life. Some type
>> of political system or government is usually necessary to have a
>> civilization.
>> A structure similar to a city or town is necessary to
>>bring together
>> people, jobs, buildings or religious centers. Usually there are
>> different classes of people, such as rich and poor.
>>Some historians say
>> there must be an agricultural surplus also: enough food
>>to feed the
>> people so that some workers could spend time in jobs
>>other than farming.
>> In a nutshell, a civilization must have cities, skilled
>>(non-farming)
>> workers, social and government institutions, writing to
>>maintain records
>> such as property ownership, and advanced technology.
>>Memorize the oldest
>> dates for the ancient civilizations:
>>
>> Mesopotamia (Mes-uh-puh-tay-mee-uh): 3500 - 500 B.C.,
>>when conquered by
>> Persia Egypt: 3100 - 525 B.C., when conquered by the Hyksos
>>(HIK-sohs)
>> Indus
>> (IN-dus) Valley: beginning in 2900 B.C. China:
>>beginning in 2200 B.C.
>> Mexican Olmec (AWL-mek): 1200 - 300 B.C., the earliest
>>known American
>> civilization Peru (South America): 900 B.C.
>>
>> History books speculate at length about "prehistory",
>>which predates
>> writing. But there is no reliable evidence to support
>>this speculation,
>> and not worth spending time on. There is no reason to
>>think that man
>> existed for thousands of years without ever expressing
>>himself in
>> written form. But in case you are asked, historians
>>describe the period
>> of time known as "prehistory" as the "Stone Age." They
>>divide the Stone
>> Age into two time
>> periods: "Paleolithic" and "Neolithic". The Paleolithic
>>Age is older,
>> when man relied mostly on hunting and picking nuts and fruit to
>> supplement his diet. The Paleolithic Age was followed
>>by the Neolithic
>> Age, which consisted of the rise of agriculture. The "Neolithic
>> Revolution" means the "Agricultural Revolution," when
>>farming became
>> dominant. The dates of these ages are controversial,
>>and historians have
>> a bias for giving them older dates than proven by archaeology.
>>
>>
>>
>>________________________________
>>
>>The all-new Yahoo! Mail
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