Talk:Suicide of Kurt Cobain/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

NPOV

This article appears slanted in the "Murder theory" presentation. The source Who Killed Kurt Cobain? The Mysterious Death of an Icon by Wallace Halperin is the lone source for much of it. Does anybody know if it's reliable? – Muboshgu (talk) 03:58, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

I haven't checked the credibility of the books you mentioned so I don't know about them but the Soaked in Bleach contents are surely reliable since it contains interviews, analyses & reviews of specialists, researchers, experts, and eyewitnesses. Bionic (talk) 18:04, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Surely! I'm not so sure. This film details the events... as seen through the perspective of Tom Grant. Not an editor or journalist, but Tom Grant. This film, a docudrama, features dramatized re-enactments. From, we know, the perspective of Tom Grant. Not a typical source here. Mcfnord (talk) 21:28, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Accused counter-claim

Nearly all claims in this article that the subject was murdered support the view that the subject's wife was the perpetrator. We quote a homocide detective who explicitly refutes the Grant thesis, but we don't have a citation. The article gives 3x the space to these discredited views vs. coverage of the death. That's probably a WP:UNDUE violation, but folk theories presenting alternative explanations of famous deaths aren't uncommon on Wikipedia (see folk theories claiming Suge Knight murdered Biggie and Tupac). We are not saying the claim in Wikivoice, but we are presenting it with incredible detail. Where that happens in coverage, the accused can speak. And Ms. Love has spoken clearly: Love says the claims are intended to distract from the fact that the CIA had been tracking Kurt Cobain for many years, and it was the stress of the CIA tracking the Nirvana front-man that led Kurt to committing suicide. The police don't think Love killed Cobain, but Grant clearly does, and we cover his claims in great detail. If a homicide investigator explicitly rejects an explanation, then it did not stand up to scrutiny of an NPOV-primary source. Some theory. So, where should we put the counter-claim by Love? 90% of the "evidence" implicates Love, so does she speak in the introduction to these folk theories? That seems like the only practical place to cover her counter-claims. Mcfnord (talk) 01:54, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

In a section accusing her of murder, she now addresses these accusations. Mcfnord (talk) 03:36, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Theories, speculations, and conspiracies

In a revert comment, an editor notes:

[Re]-Added "theories." Don't want to seem like we are giving these conspiracy theories any validity by calling them speculations. Also, it's common for singular style to be used in cases where multiple takes are included. It's a murder theory either way. But okay.

The word theory used popularly does differ from the word used within science, but let's pause to glorify the greatness that is theory in science.

I don't like implying that these theories do what theories do. Theories are usually strengthened by evidence. That's not the case here.

The editor called the explanations "conspiracy theories" which I do prefer, so I've set it there for now. But when you look into conspiracy theories, you realize they tend to have traits that aren't quite here: Conspiracy theories resist falsification and are reinforced by circular reasoning: both evidence against the conspiracy and an absence of evidence for it are re-interpreted as evidence of its truth,[5][6] whereby the conspiracy becomes a matter of faith rather than something that can be proved or disproved.[7][8].

I had high hopes for folk theories. Theories, sorta, but folk, as in people, popular, not scientific. I do see use of this phrase to describe this phenomenon. However, this phrasing also refers to research into tribal cognition, and the pseudoscience that governs how we think society works. In that sense, of pseudoscience, folk theory is correct. But not super-commonly used to describe this phenomenon.

A third option I considered is theory in popular culture. It just seems too generous to call it a theory. In the case of Biggie and Tupak, and the implausable speculations that Suge Knight murdered them, those speculations are very popular, and definitely permeate popular culture. Still reluctant to call them theories, tho.

Here we see speculations from about 6 individuals. That must be a strike against theory. Theories get passed around and proved... typically when you get more evidence, it supports the theory, because a theory is more than speculation. Even a conspiracy theory has elements of "perfect knowledge" that can't be refuted, and I don't see that here.

If we want to use a scientific term, why not use hypothesis? These 4 or 5 crackpots hypothesize. I'm not even sure they test their hypotheses much.

So all of these are better titling than murder theories:

• Murder hypotheses
• Murder speculations
• Murder folk theories
• Murder conspiracy theories

I went with the other editor's idea for now but perhaps there's a better option here. Mcfnord (talk) 02:08, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

"Murder conspiracy theories" looks best to me. "Hypotheses" sounds scientific, but these claims are not scientific. "Speculations" and "folk theories" are not as accurate as "conspiracy theories". Crossroads ^-talk- 03:30, 7 August 2020 (UTC)