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I feel that Neil deGrasse Tyson's view on Atheists strongly applies here. [0]

[0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzSMC5rWvos&t=2m25s

I find Neil deGrasse Tyson's case is particularly amusing, where he himself corrected it multiple times only to find it changed back to "atheist" (from "agnostic").

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzSMC5rWvos around 1:31.

⬐ acqq

At the moment it's much worse: the opening statement about his view in Wikipedia is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Tyson#Views

"Tyson has argued that the concept of intelligent design thwarts the advance of scientific knowledge."

Which as far as I see he didn't say in that specific form and which can even be interpreted by ID followers as "so he said that ID is stronger than scientific knowledge" (using the meaning 2 of thwart: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/thwart "To oppose and defeat the efforts, plans, or ambitions of").

Try to change that to his message that "ID is stupid" which would be less manipulative recapitulation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEl9kVl6KPc

With false first presentations of Einstein as "a pantheist" and Tyson as somebody who appears to acknowledge the strength of "ID"(!) at this moment religious fanatics obviously succeeded in their manipulative influence to Wikipedia articles.

⬐ judk

No idea if the quote is accurate, but it makes sense to me. Consider the analogue: "the concept of Magick thwarts scientific progress." Or "pop culture celebtration of ignorance thwarts scientiofc progress."

⬐ acqq

It seems you're also trying to muddy the waters: a) It's not the quote (i.e. what somebody actually said or written) we discuss but the "interpretation" written by unknown or known Wikipedia troll b) The mentioned interpretation uses "the advance of scientific knowledge" not "scientific progress." Public is trained to recognize that being against the progress is bad, but the same detectors aren't triggered by "scientific knowledge" against which ID explicitly fights.

The only quote that can be properly written there in Wikipedia citing the video linked would be "Intelligent Design is philosophy of ignorance." That's what he actually said there.

The actual quote and the manipulative interpretation are by no means interchangeable.

⬐ judk

I wasn't trying to muddy waters, I was trying to type on a phone, so I paraphrased from memory. The terms I switched are interchangable to me (anecdata).

ID absolutely does not vilify "scientific knowledge" per se. The whole point of ID is that it is a pseudoscientific rebranding of creationism, run by "Discovery Institute" that purports to find evidence for God.

⬐ dkarl

To be fair, in that video he rejects the label purely on pragmatic grounds, because he doesn't have "the time, the energy" to deal with the "baggage" associated with it. His explanation of why he is not an atheist consists almost entirely of a description of the social stigma and unpleasant stereotypes associated with the word "atheist." It makes sense that people would challenge his self-labeling when he explains it in terms of a desire to avoid social bother.

⬐ dthunt

I find the labeling of people very frustrating.

People often have very good reasons to pick the labels they do, but those reasons are often fairly nuanced. The only way to respect that nuance is to honor the label. And you don't even have to be Neil deGrasse Tyson to run into relabelling.

Whether that relabeling is done by a Pew poll that labels you as a religious person because you attended a single religious service one year because you were curious about an unknown slice of culture, or by a friend trying to soften your image by labeling you as something they think is less offensive, it's infuriating.

I can't imagine how frustrating this has to be for someone who actually has the burden of having a voice that people are interested in hearing; when someone reduces a careful and intimate response to a fairly personal question to not only a single word, but the wrong word.

It makes me sick.

⬐ acqq

Still, the subject here isn't the labeling and certainly not the emotional response to it, the subject is intentional manipulation of the articles where instead of using exact quotes of people and presenting the context something opposite is written as "interpretations" which are claimed to mean "the same" by the trolls who introduce them.

It's absurd that Neil DeGrasse Tyson's (or Einstein's) full exact sentences can't be quoted in the Wikipedia article about him exactly only when it's about the contested topics.

⬐ tommorris

The general thrust of Wikipedia policy is that on religion, sexuality and other similar issues, self-identity trumps all.

We've had all sorts of problems with this: there was an actor a few years ago who gave an interview to a British gay magazine talking about how he was out as gay. But then the prospect of him becoming big in Hollywood came along and his agent wanted to erase this, or sort of have it fade away into ambiguity. What do you do in those kinds of circumstances?

The flip side of that is I've cleaned up horrible biographies written by people who absolutely loathe particular people without even a faint hint of neutrality.

⬐ acqq

Why can't the people be simply exactly and fully quoted instead of having something else put in their mouth?

Why can't we see Einsteins quote from 1954 in the main article about him

"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text"

instead of referring to "pantheistic" "Spinoza's God" out of his letter 1929 to interpretations of which he referred also in 1954:

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

Even where the quotes exist (the separate article) they are intentionally shuffled to appear that he at the end it's important that he believed in "Spinoza's God" (by placing that quote after the later ones and hiding the context).

The answer is: those that win edit wars are religious, and they try to obscure his words "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses." If the "smartest man" says that, and they do believe in God, they feel "stupid," and they simply can't accept that, facts be damned.

⬐ zw123456

Smart scientist know all to well to be very very careful in this country (US) when using one of the "A" words. You may find yourself having difficulty in finding a job or funding if you ever admit to it in an out right way. But let's face it, 99% of scientist understand that an invisible man in the sky did not create the universe.