Talk:Clarice Phelps/Archive 4

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Possible case of Wikipedia rewriting history

I invite Wikipedia editors to critically examine the circumstances around the supposed IUPAC recognition of Phelps as the first African-American woman to be involved in the discovery of an element, certainly now that it seems to have been used as the factoid to promote her and her laboratory on the Wikipedia front page.

As far as I can tell, the IUPAC "Periodic Table of Younger Chemists" initiative wasn't a rigorous academic exercise in the same sense as you would assume was the case in other work published by the IUPAC, such as their journals and books. I would have expected people might have spotted that in the context of sourcing and study, it isn't even possible to know from this supposed source, who submitted Phelps for this recognition (it doesn't appear that it is the IUPAC themselves who identified nominees), and therefore who at the IUPAC independently researched it. It certainly seems pertinent that it doesn't even seem to have been proof-read, as highlighted by the need for [sic] in Wikipedia's rendering of the citation.

This is important of course, because this whole issue was clouded from day one by people with agendas and interests other than the reliable documenting of history, be that African-American, women, or discovery of elements. If nobody can show any evidence that this IUPAC webpage making this claim has gone through rigorous fact-checking, then it is very dangerous for an independent encyclopedia to be giving it such prominence. Certainly it has to be assumed everyone making this claim after that date, without being explicit about their means of verification, is questionable, given what we know about how Wikipedia can influence the real world, specifically some people, even journalists and academics, assuming what is written in Wikipedia has already been fact checked.

Before it appeared in this IUPAC web page, as far as I can tell, the only person with any standing to be making this claim as a fact, was chemistry journalist/author Kit Chapman, and as has already been established, what he said on Twitter in the early days, didn't ultimately find its way into the book he wrote. And it appears nobody knows why, as he doesn't seem to have wanted to say anything else about it, even though he cannot have been unaware the controversy rolled on long after his book was published, in part because of people's inability to support this claim using his book.

When you look at the context of the early days of this controversy, who said what and why, when presented with the two scenarios, one where the people who pushed so hard for Phelps to be recognized on the basis of simply her employer's claims somehow simply got lucky and managed to get the claim published the IUPAC, and one where independent person/s at the IUPAC have verified this claim but have chosen to only speak about it on this one web page, it seems obvious which is more likely. Oak Ridge aren't the only laboratory involved in element discovery, and of course, the dropping of the early qualifier of discovery of superheavy elements is indicative of a lack of academic rigour all round. Although I suppose "African-American" does rather limit the claim to a few hundred years of chemistry history I guess.

I appreciate that the article does currently identify who is making the claim (IUPAC), and therefore Wikipedia isn't technically stating it as settled historical fact, but it does seem rather obvious the current text rather overplays the situation, perhaps in the hopes the casual reader won't do the sort of research I have done into the precise nature of the IUPAC statement, the who, what and where. In short, whatever it is, it is not a statement in an IUPAC journal/book with an identified author or traceable editorial oversight.

To be clear, I don't wish to deny Phelps her due credit if the claim can be stood up in the manner you would expect for such things (historical firsts), I'm just surprised she of all people has been so uninterested in the way and means it has been verified by Wikipedia (recognizing that verification by Wikipedia is limited to the consideration of who is saying what and why/when/how, not actual historical research).

As far as I can tell, the only sources whose independence and academic rigour in investigating this matter can be assured on reputation alone, and are therefore usable in Wikipedia in this context, have only been prepared to say she is probably the first. It is odd indeed that the existence of those sources has been overlooked in this article, in favour of including the only source that says it as a fact. Even the Physics Today piece used in the same sentence as the IUPAC claim, qualified it as "thought to be", and that isn't the only part of it that undermines the very sentence it ostensibly appears to be there to support (the part about IUPAC preferring to recognize institutions not individuals). That alone seems to show cherry picking is occurring in the manner this text has been constructed from available sources, which is always a red flag as far as bias or even reliability is concerned.

Maybe this is a trivial issue to be thinking about at this time during this global emergency, but it certainly seems to have been the case someone thought it important enough to highlight on Wikipedia at this time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Crash Dennis (talk • contribs) 09:02, 2 April 2020 (UTC) — Crash Dennis (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

We attribute the claim, so I see nothing wrong with it.Slatersteven (talk) 09:34, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

It's a question of progeny, prominence and status. How did it get to the IUPAC, and why focus on their one apparent decision to publish it, when nobody else has? And also, what is it? The wording implies more than what I think someone would conclude, once they have looked into what the page it was published on actually is. It's not a journal, for example, and its status as an honor roll is questionable. Crash Dennis (talk) 10:30, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Is it? [[1]], [[2]], [[3]]. This seems to get coverage.Slatersteven (talk) 10:36, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

It disturbs me that the very first link you provide, is written by the President of IUPAC. Did you even spot that? The other two don't go into any detail that we didn't already know, namely that the PTOYC is an initiative by IUPAC to recognize young chemists, part of a number of other things being done in the centenary year. There is certainly no evidence there to suggest the level of research and rigour involved in compiling the PTYOC should be assumed to be equivalent to any journal or book the IUPAC publish. The facts are obvious, for a start, there are no named authors, no specified review process or even details of any work done in terms of independent research to verify claims made in it, and no reason to believe the IUPAC itself would go to the extraordinary lengths of trying to disprove any claim made in a nomination, given the numbers involved. Everything about this coverage shows it is highly likely that all they might have done was accept for example that if, say, the nominee for Phelps was Kit Chapman, they could take his claim as read. I see no reason to believe they looked into this in as much detail as, ironically, even some Wikipedia editors did, and for example might have noticed that by publishing this factoid in their website, they were instantly becoming the very first organization considered reliable and independent of Phelps, to be stating the claim as a fact, with no qualifications whatsoever. Do you have any reason to believe the person who put it on their website on behalf of IUPAC, if you can ever even identify them, had any idea of the significance of their act, as far as Wikipedia apparently saw it, or indeed that anyone at the IUPAC wishes this form of publication to carry that level of academic/historical/encyclopedic significance? It is simply a part of their website, the usual disclaimers probably apply. If they have got it wrong, they can quietly correct the page and claim it was never meant to be seen as bulletproof. Wikipedia has no such luxury, it is presenting it as something it is not here, largely by not clarifying what it is. Crash Dennis (talk) 11:44, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Wording was discussed at Talk:Clarice_Phelps/Archive_3#Weighting_and_accuracy, where it wasn't "settled" in any way (that's fairly common). However, if you want to discuss stuff on WP, please don't include your guesses about other editors motivations, it's very unlikely to help your argument. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:39, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Noted. Crash Dennis (talk) 10:30, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

• The number of elements is quite limited and the number of women involved in their discovery is correspondingly limited too. Consider category:Discoverers of chemical elements which currently seems to contain just three women: Marie Curie; Lise Meitner; Ida Noddack. If there were other women involved in such activities, they would tend to stand out and so be identified. If Crash Dennis thinks that we're neglecting someone then they should please suggest where we will find them. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:43, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

I am not a chemistry historian, but I am qualified to assess whether the source given here is being used appropriately, by assessing things like what it is, what it says, who said it, and how much of an outlier it seems to be given the claim. These are the basic skills required of anyone wanting to write an encyclopedia, or defend what is written in it. You question of who might have been overlooked, and indeed the speculation in general about the history in question, is better directed to Kit Chapman, who claimed on Twitter that he wrote the book on this topic, a book which of course, doesn't support the claim. I am here to raise the possibility that the IUPAC have perhaps done nothing to independently fact check this claim before publishing it in this form for this reason, and have perhaps taken Chapman at his word. I invite others to give me some reason why that would not be the case. For those interested in the things you raise, the likelihood of errors of omission, it is sufficient to point out for the purposes of casting doubt on the level of confidence anyone can have as to what research underpins it, is how this issue has been somewhat of a moving target. It being difficult to even nail down from the evolution of the claim as it has percolated through the sources, whether it refers only to superheavy elements, black or African-American women, or even what it means to be part of a team involved in element discovery. So you have to go back to the original source that we know of, Chapman, and so you have to question his reliability. Are you confident, from what he has said, that he researched the entire history of element discovery, ensuring he left no woman overlooked? Or do you see once you look, that perhaps he only researched superheavy elements, perhaps only even American laboratories, and even there, hasn't chosen to commit to print what he says he "wrote the book on" about Phelp's claimed place in chemistry/black history? Crash Dennis (talk) 10:50, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

We all have those quantification's, and it seems you are in a minority. We do not second guess sources, we report what they say. This we have done, we have attributed the claim not stated it is a fact. Please drop this now.Slatersteven (talk) 11:07, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Look, this isn't going to go away just because you want it to. It is a fact Wikipedia does not simply report what sources say, otherwise this article would still contain the tweet from Kit Chapman claiming he wrote the book on this topic and he says it's a fact. You can attribute that, you know who said it. If you don't second guess sources, then why was that removed? Hopefully it was because you correctly surmised that even if Chapman is a recognized chemistry journalist/author, a reliable source for Wikipedia, when you actually got his book you found he was at best, mistaken about his recollection of what his book contained, that meant that for this specific claim he could not be used as a source, and because there was no other source stating it as fact, you had to stop stating it as fact too, attributed or not. What disturbs me is that it seems far more likely he was dropped simply because you realised that with this IUPAC website claim emerging, you could use that instead. Whatever you believe, it is not good practice for Wikipedia editors to pretend there isn't the very real possibility that the only reason that IUPAC source exists now, standing alone as the only presumed reliable independent source making this claim as a fact, is because Chapman or his associates somehow managed to do it, pissed off as they are at Wikipedia or the media or the world at large. It takes no leap of imagination to realize they likely knew, even if Wikipedia editors here did not, that the rigour probably applied to the claims made in submissions for nominees to the PTOYC, would be less than say, an academic journal or history book published by IUPAC. This is not second guessing, this is logical deduction in the face of zero evidence to the contrary, and lots of evidence supporting the narrative I have outlined. Attribution is for cases of legitimate dispute, and to a lesser extent, lack of research all round. It does not exist to hide basic and obvious errors in due diligence, such as a blind assumption anything written on the IUPAC website carries the gravitas of an organization involved in element discovery, when concerning an extraordinary claim about element discovery, in furtherance of a clear and obvious agenda. Attribution is frankly worthless when you're deliberately giving prominence to a potentially mistaken IUPAC source, when there is ample proof other scholarly institutions involved in the field, either don't believe it, or don't care enough to contradict it (so why do you, if Wikipedia is an unbiased recorder of history?). Attribution is also rather worthless when you're apparently ignoring that even though you apparently want to believe the IUPAC wants this to carry the gravitas of their name, you won't actually find this claim anywhere else in their own website, or in any other of their publications, such as, for example, a published history of women in chemistry. This is not second guessing, these are the sort of questions you should be asking for any source and any claim, but particularly ones as supposedly controversial as this. You patently do far more than simply publish what sources say, with attribution, or at least that is what even the most cynical of people would assume is the Wikipedia editorial process. Crash Dennis (talk) 12:17, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Article talk pages are not generally a forum to air personal views, but particularly ones that contain absurd statements like: ... then it is very dangerous for an independent encyclopedia to be giving it such prominence (emphasis added). The greatest danger here is the possibility of the article containing a false statement. No more, no less. Employing content void rhetoric does not grant additional weight. Wikipedia is based on verifiability, not truth. As to history and its writing, the taint of people with agendas and interests is ineradicable from the field. Mr rnddude (talk) 09:55, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

That last sentence is wholly the point. Who here can tell me, based on the details available about that IUPAC web page where this claim appears, the biases and probably motives of whoever submitted Phelps as a nominee to that initiative, and who at the IUPAC may have reviewed it? You can't, because they're not even identified. What I can tell you, as indisputable fact, that it wasn't even proof read before being published (or was, but poorly). This is entirely about verifiability not truth, and what you examine about sources to ensure you're doing one and not the other, and it concerns me that the tiny few people involved here, certainly those arguing that Phelps has been done some great wrong, don't even seem to be aware that it was Wikipedia who first published Kit Chapman's claim as fact, without any verification at all. And when asked for, a Tweet by Chapman was all that could be found. And we only later realized that, in this case at least, it seems Chapman had no issue with saying something on Twitter that ultimately wasn't found to be true. What he said was in his book, apparently isn't in his book. Agendas matter, because it is obvious what agenda Chapman and associates had, and what those who have been fighting to have his unpublished history accepted as the truth via Wikipedia have. Agendas matter, because I see no reason to believe Chapman or those with his same motives/beliefs, aren't ultimately behind his claim somehow making its way into the IUPAC website in the manner and for the reason it has. I'm not hiding my agenda here, which is why I'm not changing the article directly based on what I know is true and can actually verify. If only those who were editing it all those times simply based on what they hoped in their hearts was true, had been stopped before they manufactured a controversy where there arguable never should have been one Crash Dennis (talk) 11:09, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

In case others were not aware, 'Crash Dennis' has made the account just to make these posts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Crash_Dennis). It's a remarkably similar turn of phrase to the last Wikipedia user ('Alex Dunbarton' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Alex_Dunbarton) who made an account to make almost identical comments. If 'Agendas matter' Crash Dennis, why not focus on improving the encyclopaedia, rather than creating new Wikipedia accounts every couple of months in an attempt to get pages that you don't like taken down?Jesswade88 (talk) 19:16, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Comment on content not users, if you think there is socking going on report otherwise this is irrelevant.Slatersteven (talk) 19:20, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

I think it is relevant. They've made two Wikipedia accounts and a Twitter account to do this. Jesswade88 (talk) 19:46, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

The report it an wp:spi, it is not relevant here. People are allowed more than one account as long as they do not use it to pretnd two people who a view or block evade.Slatersteven (talk) 19:48, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

With respect, one of you has added maybe a thousand new articles to the Wikipedia, and been written about in multiple major newspapers. The other has posted maybe a dozen tweets and messages on an article talk page. I think the relative impact is pretty clear, and recommend not worrying a great deal. --GRuban (talk) 20:32, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Describing her in those terms, only makes it clear why she needs to be worried, and instead of giving me advice on what I should be doing with my life, she should start offering explanations for what she did. This is perhaps her most (in)famous article creation for Wikipedia, certainly according to her media profile, and yet when she created it way back on 31 August 2018 (which is over a year since she first joined Wikipedia, meaning she presumably had hundreds of article creations behind her already), she hadn't provided a source for the claim "first African-American woman to identify an element". Worse, there was a source, it just didn't say what she claimed it did. Ordinarily you might assume a simple mistake, even competent editors will make them sometimes, but the way she has acted since, turning it into an issue of racism/sexism rather than her own proven failings as an encyclopedist, there really is no option but to assume a deliberate deception. It is worth noting that even now, as she nears almost a thousand articles on supposedly overlooked women, she still apparently has a habit of adding information about them to Wikipedia that doesn't have a source, either not at all, but also often looking like it has been sourced. It is clear nobody is checking her work even for these major issue, either because it would be such a time consuming job, or because they have assumed nobody could get this much media coverage as a Wikipedia editor if they were that bad at it. But clearly they can, and clearly she knows it, and so she merely concentrates her efforts on trying to shut people like me up. Perhaps it is the kind of fraud that doesn't have absolutely malicious intent, she does sometimes seem like a nice person with a good heart, she just perhaps thinks the ends (promoting these women via Wikipedia) justify the means (ignoring the core principles of Wikipedia). Now, if I really wanted to make an impact on her personally, I could take this to a British newspaper, perhaps one that is looking for any sort of dirt on Wikipedia, such as the Daily Mail. That couldn't be used as a source here, but you can imagine say the Daily Telegraph extracting the factual details, fact checking it, and putting their own byline to it, an expose of a high profile activist Wikipedian as a deliberate flouter of core Wikipedia principles, including the ones that ask its people to look inward and reflect on their own behaviour. That's the sort of coverage that could really interfere with both her Wikipedia activism, and indeed her actual job. It is already pretty clear that it she were asked for comment, unless she has some kind of epiphany, she wouldn't do herself any favours. But I'm a reasonable guy, I wouldn't do that, not while the door remains open to me to resolve these issues by directly engaging with the Wikipedia community. Crash Dennis (talk) 10:07, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

If you continue to write screeds like this about other WP-editors on-WP, you will probably be blocked. This talkpage is for discussing improvements to the WP-article about Clarice Phelps. Try to be succinct if you have such suggestions, it increases the chance that other people will read them. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:35, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

If you would like to propose a specific change to the article, please specify which change to make, providing sufficient high-quality sourcing to justify it. If you would like to challenge the reliability of a source, there is the reliable sources noticeboard. Otherwise, talk pages are not a forum to discuss the subject generally. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 20:19, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

I have blocked Crash Dennis indefinitely for harassment and making implicit threats against a specific editor. Newyorkbrad (talk) 11:15, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Crash Dennis, you are of course free to say whatever you want to journalists or anyone else, regardless of what happens with this article or the conversation around it. But by mentioning it as an option juxtaposed with engagement here, it functions as an exercise of leverage, and I think it's reasonable to call that a threat. Threatening to go around the community procedure undermines the community procedure. Again, tell journalists whatever you want, but keep that separate from how other people here should behave. Acone (talk) 20:07, 5 April 2020 (UTC)