Ziyad Al-Aly, clinical epidemiologist from a Wikimedia perspective

 Ars Technica featured an article "Heart protection from COVID shots remains amid updates, study finds".  The article refers to multiple studies and mentions Ziyad Al-Aly, one of the authors of several of the studies. 

When you consider Dr Al-Aly as a Wikimedia consumer, then his Scholia produces the most entries into the Wikimedia rabbit hole like publications, co-authors and topics. Drilling down, a

Wikipedia article informs about his education and awards.

As a Wikimedia contributor, there is so much that can be done: attributing articles, adding missing articles thanks to the ORCiD-scraper, adding co-authors to papers.. And then there is the deep dive, adding for instance the awards known to the Wikipedia for instance.

Now for the Wikimedia perspective; it is losing its audience. Without an audience what motivates people to contribute? Without contributors, who maintains our content? Its main perspective for the future should be: how will we reach a public for the sum of all the knowledge we have on offer.

The essence of all that knowledge is in known references. The Ars Technica article could obviously serve as a reference for Wikimedia content. When the Wikimedia Foundation were to offer references and sources in a search engine, traditional Wikimedia content is available for a deep dive. When these sources are associated with topics that have a Wikipedia article, it also serves as a tool to update these articles.

A WMF search engine based on sources and references is not commercial, would provide a distinct service and will entice renewed interest in its projects.

Thanks,

       GerardM

#Accepting science; the solution is in the reading not the publishing

The most important thing religion has over science? Its papers can be read. Sources like the Bible, he Quran can be read for free. You can get *your* copy from many true believers. A copy is in your library. With science the papers that can prove to you that goldfish should be classified as endangered are behind a paywall. It is only your common sense that might say: "Hey, wait a minute.."

When Wikipedia insists on its sources, they are only functional when these sources can actually be read. This is why the Internet Archive plays such a vital role in maintaining the validity of stated facts.

Some scientists think that "the public" cannot read scientific papers. They forget that even for scientists a paper that cannot be read is a paper that does not exist in their contemplations. The public does read scientific papers. The Cochrane crowd for instance reads papers and checks particular premises for validity.. We know that scientific research of coronary disease was biased for males and as a consequence women still die. A bias like that is what they look for, it is why they reject many papers because they are basically *not* valid.

There is a lot to do about what scientific publishing should be. How it should be funded.. The base line is that when a publication is not available for anyone to read, the facts do not matter. Why believe vaccines are safe when the publications that prove it are behind a paywall?
Thanks,
       GerardM

#WikiCite: Edith Abbott; THE REAL JAIL PROBLEM

According to #Wikipedia, Edith Abbott was a pioneer in the profession of social work with an educational background in economics.She published, books and scholarly articles, and "The Real Jail Problem" was singled out in the article for special mention.

There is a link in the article, and I am happy to report that thanks to the Internet Archive, it and some 500.000 more scholarly articles may be found there. They are part of the early JSTOR papers and they are now freely available. It is however not the publication by Mrs Abbott, it is by a Robert H. Gault.

Having scientific papers available is wonderful. It is important and it is unlikely they will get lost. However, there is a difference between being lost and being findable. Mr Gault is notable, there was no mention of him in Wikidata, one of his publications was.. Mr Gault is findable when you look him up in VIAF.

However, the article you want to read, a pamphlet according to Mr Gault is where? A book with the same subject can be found at Open Library. The subject of the book is as potent as it was in the day. The arguments are not dissimilar.

Arguably, when you want to cite your sources, they first have to be knowable, then findable and finally readable. Wikidata is making more and more of a difference. When we collaborate with the Internet Archive, we can make those JSTOR papers findable as well. Slowly but surely all these sources becomes findable. Its authors become notable and we will free us from the curse of only reading the latest research.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikidata - Prix de Coincy and Raymond Benoist

The Prix Coincy is an award conferred by the French Botanical Society. The first time it was awarded was in 1904 according to the French article but the first botanist who is known to have received it, got it in 1906. He was Edmond Gustave Camus a red link in the French article but he has articles in several Wikipedias.

Botany is one of those subjects that have appeal; people care about plants, how they are named and consequently many botanists have articles in multiple Wikipedias. This became obvious when all the red links and black links in the article were entered in Wikidata. Like Mr Camus most already existed and just had to be associated with this award.

There are a few items that are not that obvious; Raymond Benoist is one. The French article has it that he received the award but there is no source and at that the only source for the award is the French article. Another issue is with the 1949 award; they are likely three people, one is Louis Quentin, the others Henri and Madeleine Stehlé. Nothing wrong with being bold I suppose..
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Wikipedia - there once was a lady from #Estonia

Once upon a time there was a Wikipedian from Estonia. He decided to write about a fellow countryman, Kersti Kaljulaid. When your Estonian is as good as mine, it is not a name you remember or a person you are likely to have come across.

At the time this was the same for the English Wikipedians; she could not be notable because there were not enough sources in English.. So for all the good reasons the article was in danger. Our Estonian Wikipedian said: "wait a week". A week later Mrs Kaljulaid was the president of Estonia.

I have taken the liberty to add additional data in Wikidata. Mrs Kaljulaid received two awards and others award winners have been added. No sources for them in English either. To be brutally honest, incidents like this prove why English Wikipedia is only a subset of the sum of all knowledge. Because of this insistence on English sources, English Wikipedia can not cover the sum of all knowledge. People who seek reputable information on foreign subjects will not find it.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#WhiteHouse Fellows - Mrs Margarita Colmenares

Mrs Margarita Colmenares is a White House Fellow. A message was posted on Twitter that her article had been created and to support the message, it was easy enough to add her on Wikidata as well. The article mentioned that she was a White House Fellow and adding one layer of additional information is one way of making a person more relevant.

Adding this fellowship and adding other people who were a fellow was easy enough. The Wikipedia article referred to the website of the White House for information and when you visit its website you will be thanked for having an interest in this subject.

At a time like this it is good to consider Archive.org.  Its crawler worked well at some dates for other dates the message you will see is: "Got an HTTP 301 response at crawl time".

Anyway.. Together, the information at whitehouse.gov and at archive.org provide enough of a reference.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Wikimedia and our #quality

In Berlin, the Wikimedia Foundation deliberated about the future. A lot of noble intentions were expressed. People went home glowing in the anticipation of all the good things they want. It is good to talk the talk and follow up and walk the walk.

A top priority for Wikidata is that it is used and useful. As it becomes more useful, quality becomes more of a priority for the people who use it. They will actively curate the data and remedy issues because they have a stake in the outcome.

So far Wikidata is largely filled with information from all the Wikipedias and this process can be improved substantially. For this to happen there is a need for more complete and up to date data. So what use can we give this data so that it gains use, and thereby gains value?

What if .. What if Wikidata could be used as an instrument to find the 4% of wiki links in Wikipedia that point to the wrong articles? With some minor changes to the MediaWiki software this can be done. This approach is described here for instance.. The beauty of this proposal is that not all the Wikipedians have to get involved, it is for those who care, for the rest it is mostly business as usual.

There are other benefits well. When it is "required" to add a source to a statement like "spouse of", it should be or is a requirement on the Wikipedia as well. When the source is associated with the Wiki link or red link for that matter, it should be possible for Wikidata to pick it up manually or with software.

When content of Wikidata more closely mirrors information of a Wikipedia in this way, it becomes easy and obvious to compare this information with other Wikipedias. Overall quality improves, but as relevant, the assurance we can give about our quality improves.

When we consider Wikimedia for the next 15 years, I expect that we will focus on quality and prevent bias not only by combining all our resources but also by reaching out to other trusted sources. By working together we will expose a lot more fake facts.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikidata - Gladys and Reginald Laubin

According to the documentation of the Capezio award, both Gladys and Reginald Laubin are awardees. The Capezio award is a dance award and it got some attention because a person of interest received the award in 2007. Wikipedia information was available until 2006.

Adding information for Mrs Laubin makes sense; she is as notable as her husband. She has her own VIAF registration and it completes the Capezio award information.

When you add an award and its awardees, some quality is expected. Adding what Wikipedia knows borrows from the sources at Wikipedia but new information is authoritative when it is from the associated website. When you then seek later information, it becomes more fuzzy; it becomes less obvious. It may not even be correct,

That is however how the cookie crumbles; like Wikipedia also relies on the interpretation of sources.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#USA - The Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights

Just to confuse you; there are two awards by that name. This is about the award that was established in 1998 by the President of the United States Bill Clinton, honouring outstanding American promoters of rights in the United States. In 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton revived the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights and presented the award on behalf of President Obama.

For whatever reason, this award was not very much on the radar of Wikipedians because like with so many awards, it was not well maintained. There are only people for 2010 and there is one person, and he should be on the list for the "other" award. That award is conferred by "Jobs with Justice".

What happened after 2010? Several more years of a United States with President Obama and now, four weeks in the reign of the present incumbent, the sources for the award are gone. They were at a US Government website. Luckily the disappearance of Internet Sources is a well known phenomena, Wikipedians know how to deal with them. The question is if this award is deemed notable enough and there is the rub. It is not obvious what went missing and when the Wikipedia article is not complete, the removal of the data on the web serves its purpose.
Thanks,
        GerardM

#Sources: the Charles S. Johnson Award

Awards honour both the recipients, the organisation that confers it and often the person the award is named for. The Charles S. Johnson Award is named after Charles S. Johnson. He is notable; has his own Wikipedia articles. The organisation that confers it is notable; the Southern Sociological Society has its own Wikipedia article.

The awardees, well that is a problem because there is only a partial list of people who received the award. There are many gaps in the list and sources are available to indicate why they think someone received the award.

The Wikimedia blog has a post that mentions Lillian Smith. It mentions that she gave an acceptance speech at Fisk University in 1966. But there is no source for it. This does not mean that she did not receive the award, it just means that there is no source in the article.

When sources are provided to the Sociological Society, Mrs Smith will be connected to a list of other remarkable people. All notable in their own way. It is just a matter of connecting the dots.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikidata - Who is Ann Dale

Ann Dale won the Molson Prize in 2013. In a rare twist, the English Wikipedia does not list the winners of this award but other Wikipedias do. It was therefore easy to import the list from the German Wikipedia into Wikidata.

As there is a link to the website of the award, it was easy to include the more recent winners of the award. Most of the recent winners already had a Wikipedia article so it was easy to add them.

When you disambiguate for Ann Dale using Reasonator, there was a Ann Marie Dale. There was not much known for her except for her publications. Given that it was possible to find out that she worked for the Washington University in St. Louis, it was a miss. The information on the Molson Prize website provided the answer; it was a different Mrs Ann Dale.

The research by Mrs Dale is on governance, innovation and community vitality and is designed to provide useful knowledge to Canadian decision-makers. There might be something in her work that is of interest to the Wikimedia Foundation as well.

NB Mrs Ann Dale is now registered in Wikidata. More information is left to other interested souls.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata - Anne Ridley and #AcademiaNet

AcademiaNet is a database of excellent female scientists. It has identifiers for all of them and thanks to the excellent Mix'n'Match tool by Magnus many of these notable scientists are now part of Wikidata.

Anne Ridley is one of them. What AcademiaNet provides is much more information. It would be good when we confirm information using the AcademiaNet database and when they are so inclined, we could use their information to populate information about these notable women, making it even easier to write articles about them in Wikipedia.

Mrs Ridley is the first winner of the Hooke medal. She did receive additional awards..
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Wikipedia - #Sources anyone?

Sources are important. They make it obvious what is correct and what is not. For content in Wikidata Wikipedia is an important source of information. It aims to be neutral and there are loads of sources.

When you bring the information together in a tree like the one to the right, it follows that all the information has to agree with that interpretation. It all starts with "Duqaq Temür Yalığ" but he is called "Toqaq" in the article on Seljuq.

The article on the Seljuk Empire is quite wonderful because it includes the spouses of the Sultans and their lineage. Really relevant to understand the politics of the time.

I do include information where I can find and understand it. Quite often, information is problematic. Sometimes it is obviously wrong as in attributing a person to a modern country. As more data is entered, the information becomes more complicated and coherent. Errors become more glaringly obvious. It becomes more and more a matter of adding individual statements that are the difference and not so much long lists of data.

At some stage the puzzles will be left and sources will need to be sought to make the right statements, not the obvious statements.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikimedia - the need for #sceptism

It is all over the news; another psychology study debunked. With two thirds of the repeated studies being debunked, there is a lot in the literature of psychology no longer valid. The source for the article I read is Mr Eric-Jan Wagenmakers professor at the university of Amsterdam.

The NWO, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, is funding 3 million Euro to repeat key research. The problem is that science is in love with what is new and quick results. Three million is at best a start.

When science cannot be relied on, collaboration with scientists and universities easily becomes controversial. The programs taught are inherently point of view and often a conflict of interest is easily established. Consider; when doctors prescribe substances that are FDA approved, it seems obvious that these substances have a positive effect on patients. Then consider that we have a Wikipedian in Residence at Cochrane, they make a reputation from debunking much of the use of such substances. We provide end user information and it seems obvious that just repeating the list of FDA approved substances without further information is not at all in our users best interest. It is even likely that we are liable for misinformation under several legislatures.

There is a need to be sceptical about sources. It is important that we not only improve the technology behind our sources, we also need an ability to mark information as debunked and have that information filter through our projects and in the information we provide. Remember, debunked is not a POV it comes with sources of its own.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikipedia #citations - LibraryBase

The general idea is that if Wikipedia articles are to be believed, citations ensure the quality of the statements made. The quality of the sources is therefore important. When a specific publication has a problem, a problem like reproducibility or a known conflict of interest of the author or the organisation he stands for, it follows that the publication as a source becomes problematic.

The problem with sources in Wikipedia is that like all the rest they are buried in the articles. As sources are typically known in the text through templates, it becomes possible to harvest all this and put it in a database. When things get into a database it becomes possible to analyse the data and find the authors that are problematic, refer back to the articles and remedy the inherent conflict in the article.

Take Mr Ray Hilborn for instance. He is under attack for his conflict of interest by Greenpeace. Consequently his POV needs to be collaborated by independent sources and all his science is suspect. It is wonderful to harvest all the data about sources from all the Wikipedias but there is no point to it when it does not lead to something useful.

There is a lot of money going around to confuse issues and serve specific interests. When sources are available to us all, it becomes possible to mark publications for the quality that they have. When sources are not reproducible, it follows that you can not build arguments on top of those. It then becomes possible to consider basic stuff and no longer confuse a Neutral Point of View with what is patently false.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikimedia - [[citation needed]]

Our articles in any #Wikipedia can be trusted when an effort has gone into providing sources. Sources or citations are very much needed because help us distinguish fact from fiction. Finding sources exposes an origin and it helps us debunk fiction. The result of this continued effort is content that can be trusted as a sincere attempt to achieve a neutral point of view.

There are very practical problems. Sources are not always easy to find and they do not exist in every language. Sources are often behind a "pay wall” making access to the body of knowledge is very much restricted. Sources, particularly sources on the web do not exist forever. The consequence is that sources are problematic and, not everybody is equally able to help us with sources for the content we have.

When we are to improve the current, unsatisfactory situation we have to address multiple problems.

• Once sources are lost we rely on the internet archive for an historic view. It has policies that allow for the removal of content and this is often the content that is controversial and removal is often intended to rewrite history. What to do?
• Access to restricted sources is provided to the privileged few who have access to libraries. The WMF has a program that enables some of our editors access to a few pay-walled sources.
• When this proves insufficient, it is great to know that  Sci-hub among others provides “illegal” access to any and all sources.

Open access to sources is very much what we as a community care for. One of our own died in the struggle for this access so I do not think we should be deferential to an industry that is despicable. We should teach people how to find sources and ignore licensing as much as possible.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikipedia - Naomi Ellemers and sources

Mrs Ellemers is a professor in social psychology. Her work has been recognised by many awards and the English Wikipedia does report about this correctly. The European Association of Experimental Social Psychology recognised her twice; once with the Kurt Lewin medal and once with the Jos Jaspars Medal.

Recognising people for their achievements is relevant because it indicates how peers appreciate one of their own. It is also a way to establish notability. Like so many topics for credibility sources are important. They are however susceptible to "bit rot". The EAESP changed its website and all the Wikipedia links are dead.

Wikidata knows about these awards as well and, each has a link to the URL for "official website". On it you find all recipients of the award. Mrs Ellemers is good; the new sources provide the needed confirmation.

Awards for a person can be a list generated by Wikidata. Associated sources can be as well. With Wikidata as the source for lists and sources, Wikipedians are free to provide the textual content about a subject and Wikidata would be the place to store sources and lists. In this way information will be maintained in one place and quality for all articles will improve.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikipedia - Peter Breggin, the power of an argument, a source

Mr Breggin is in / has been a rather controversial person in psychiatry. The point he makes is that the use of medicine is vastly overrated. He has been at pain to make this point, he has been court and brought to court over this opinion.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness took him to court because of a remark on Oprah:

"mental health clients should judge their clinicians in terms of their empathy and support; if they failed to show interest in them and tried to prescribe drugs during the first session, he advised such clients to seek assistance elsewhere."

This may be or may have been controversial, but it is certainly not controversial in the Netherlands. The notion that a psychiatrist should be empathic and supportive is essential for quality care that is to be given. The points Mr Breggin makes about psychiatric drugs are seen as mostly valid and, there is enough scientific evidence to support the notion that oversubscription is happening widely and, it has been sufficiently proven that NAMI was/is largely funded by pharmaceutical companies.

The point is that many sources exist that 'prove' a point. At what point can a point be accepted as valid or more precisely when is a point no longer acceptable in Wikipedia? We do agree that drapetomania has been a fabrication right?
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Drapetomania is in other forms alive and well

A #scientist by the name of Samuel A. Cartwright wrote a paper defining a mental disorder called drapetomania. The suggested treatment was that "they should be punished until they fall into that submissive state which was intended for them to occupy. They have only to be kept in that state, and treated like children to prevent and cure them from running away". The mental disorder described slaves that run away. Drapetomania is no longer believed to be a mental disorder.

In the twenty first century, professor Jonathan Metzl wrote a book called The Protest Psychosis, it describes how schizophrenia was used to define people who had notions about their civil rights. The book describes an era where the DSM-2 was the latest and greatest to define mental health.

It is all too easy to welcome the publication of Mr Metzl as an important work as has been done by leading psychological institutions. Both Mr Cartwright and the DSM-2 have already been shown to be obsolete.

What the aftermath of the DSM-2 and Mr Cartwright prove is that papers on psychiatry cannot be relied on because current approaches to psychiatry are equally problematic. A recent publication (in Dutch) provides many arguments. One of the more relevant arguments is that many of the current studies are not reproducible and what they describe are based on theoretical constructs that are not universally agreed upon.

The book argues that publications about subjects that are fashionable have a better chance of being published over publications that expose methodological weaknesses (Delespaul, Milo, Schalken, Boevink & Os, 2015 p31,32).

Given that there is enough literature to support this point of view, what does it mean for a Wikipedia where sources are a holy grail that is to be ingested without all too much salt? What sources can be relied on and why and how do we recognise official pot quackery?
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikipedia: R. Kerry Rowe - #Sources may stink

For whatever reason I stumbled upon the Miroslow Romamowski medal. It is a Canadian medal named after a Polish scientist. When I add people to a medal, I make sure that the medal is at least an award and typically I add the person the award was named after. Searching for Mr Romanowski, a Portuguese article on the award proved to exist as well and it was merged.

The Wikipedia article is well maintained; this is assured by the date when the official website was last retrieved; "Retrieved 22 November 2015" and this source shows that the award has not been conferred after 2012. Mr R. Kerry Rowe however has been awarded the medal in 2015 and this can be sourced to this.

For Mr Rowe there is a German article, It indicates that he won the Legett award, its source is a dead link but hey, there is enough information to find the society that conferred it, and finally a functional source for the award.

This award is in and of itself not that relevant. When you combine the links to articles as can be found in the "Concept cloud" and Reasonator for Mr Rowe, it becomes interesting, Combined they show the known relations for an article, an item. It would be cool when the two could be merged. When a link in a Wikipedia article is known as a Wikidata statement, it would become interesting to make the statement that Mr Rowe gave the Rankine Lecture.
Thanks,
     GerardM