User:LuckyLouie/sandbox

"But reliable sources say..."

We're all familiar with over-the-top tabloid sensationalism such as "Hillary Clinton Adopts Alien Baby" and "Elvis Alive On Mars". Of course, tabloid media isn't ever a reliable source for encyclopedic content. But even serious journalistic outlets recognized as WP:RS can contain subtly ironic coverage of fringe ideas, bizarre claims presented at face value in "News Of The Weird" sections, or articles written by "guest writers" who are fringe science advocates or paranormal enthusiasts. If content significantly departs from a source's normal editorial standards, it's worth taking a closer look to determine why, especially if such content is proposed to support encyclopedic statements of fact in Wikipedia articles.

Sensational claims are occasionally confined to regional sources. Let's say Freedonia's equivalent of The New York Times publishes reports that pigs have been proven to have the ability to fly. Even if a majority of otherwise sedate Freedonian media have reported these claims without comment, or concluded that spaceships from another planet, ghosts, psychics, cryptids, wizards, etc. were likely responsible, Wikipedia is still bound by WP:EXTRAORDINARY and WP:FRINGE. The national media of Freedonia is, after all, a minority opinion within the context of the larger world. The same applies to stories found in local newspapers and regional media. Extraordinary claims always require serious, widespread coverage in reliable sources.

Detecting it

We know that pressure to increase readership and revenue can influence even the most reliable and established sources. UFO topics are often sensationalized in media, and paranormal, supernatural, and other fringe topics typically get treated with some degree of hype, which can usually be identified by the following attributes:

• Headline hype: for example, "US Has No Explanation for UFOs, Does Not Rule Out Aliens" was an actual New York Times story headline. However if you read the body of the story you find that there are a great number of explanations for UFOs, some more plausible than others, and naturally, no single explanation can cover every case. (But that would make a very dull headline wouldn't it?)
• Dramatic presentation: emotionally immersive, chronological narrative of “the incident” or “the events” (often with ridiculously exact times, e.g. “at 12:47 PM…”) told from the claimants point of view. (Newspapers and book publishers know they need to grab the reader right from the start, and an immersive style can help do that.) Sometimes seemingly corroborating anecdotes from people unrelated to the claimant are featured.
• Over-emphasis on anecdotal evidence: lengthy “eyewitness testimony” with lots of compelling detail. Often 2/3 of the article is devoted to this.
• Conspiracy as a tantalizing option: official statements that contradict claimant narratives are subtly or overtly framed as “denials”, e.g. “the Freedonian government denies…”.
• Token skepticism, sometimes omitted or rebutted: if experts offer alternative views, they are immediately followed by anecdotes from “eyewitnesses”, e.g. “I know what I saw”.
• Open-ended conclusion: i.e. “nobody can know for sure what happened”. There are many variations of this closer, e.g.“…the only thing we can know for certain is that on (date) John Doe’s life changed forever”. Or, “….today, twenty one years after the incident, 69-year-old John Doe is still convinced he experienced something extraordinary that day in June”.

You can’t blame Wikipedia editors for following that same structure when summarizing what these sources say — we are taught that if something is WP:RS sourced then it must be given due weight. However that doesn’t mean we must be an echo chamber for sensationalism.

Example

This fictional example uses a news story about a UFO sighting, but it can be applied to most any story involving fringe claims like hauntings, psychic powers, time travel, etc.

On the morning of April 1, Anytown resident John Doe, 32 was walking with his dog Skipper in a part of the deep woods of Anytown, Pennsylvania that has long been associated with frightening tales of inexplicable paranormal occurrences. The area, approximately 3 miles north of town, is a dense wooded tract that old time residents avoid after dark. At 8:47 AM, Skipper began barking excitedly at something in the woods. "He's always been a very mellow dog" recalls Doe, "so I knew something serious had got his attention". Doe says that Skipper ran off into the woods, but reappeared a moment later suspended a few feet above the ground in a beam of pulsating light. "It was a greenish-purple light, and I could see that Skipper was trying to get away from it, but it held onto him". Doe unsuccessfully struggled to free his dog, despite sustaining painful injuries to his arms. It was then that Doe realized he was not alone. A dozen or more 3 foot tall creatures appeared from the woods, that Doe says looked like "munchkins wearing silver, hooded jumpsuits" with glowing red eyes. One of the bizarre creatures held a black tube from which the tractor beam emanated. "I was terrified", recounts Doe, "I ran as fast as I could back to the road, and kept running until I got to the town police". Anytown Police said Doe appeared at the station in an excited state exhibiting a number of scratches on his forearms. "They're not from this earth", he told officers, "and they took my dog". Police investigated the scene of the strange encounter related to them by Doe, but reported that nothing was found. (5 more paragraphs of emotional statements by Doe, followed by an open-ended conclusion)

Addressing it

Some editors might use the example story above to construct an "Events" or "Incident" section of the article where the extraordinary claims above are simply narrated in Wikipedia's voice. A more NPOV approach is to clearly distinguish claims from verifiable events. In other words, we can verify that John Doe made certain claims, but not that what he claims is what actually happened. The only verifiable events are that Doe showed up at the police station on a certain date with a certain story and the police responded with certain actions/conclusions. So the best approach is to construct a "Claims" section along these lines:

On April 1, 2022, 32-year old Anytown resident John Doe appeared at the local police station, where he told police that he had been fighting to free his dog Skipper from abduction by alien creatures he described as "munchkins wearing silver, hooded jumpsuits". Doe claimed the incident occurred in a wooded area approximately 3 miles north of town where he had been walking that morning. Police said Doe was "in an excited state" and had "a number of scratches on his forearms". Doe claimed the creatures had "glowing red eyes" and he unsuccessfully tried to free his dog, which he claimed had been immobilized in a beam of "greenish-purple light". According to Doe, "They're not from this earth", and "they took my dog". (Additional claims by Doe are treated similarly.) Police later investigated the wooded area where Doe claimed he encountered the creatures, but could find nothing.

The idea is to report the essentials of who claimed what, report events where Doe interacted with authorities, and report authorities statements and actions concerning Doe's claims.

Conflicting statements and criticism

Sometimes sources will contain statements by authorities that critique or conflict with the claimant's story. Rather than have competing “he said/she said” sections, it's best to weave these into the same section containing the claims, for example:

According to Doe, "They're not from this earth", and "they took my dog". Anytown Animal Control officer Sam Smith told reporters that Doe's dog "had a habit of running away" and that Doe had contacted them "several times in the past month" requesting help locating his dog, who always returned home by itself within 24 hours. Police later investigated the wooded area where Doe claimed he encountered the creatures, but could find nothing.

Or:

According to Doe, "They're not from this earth", and "they took my dog". Astronomer and science educator Edward Expert said, "the possibility of alien life in our galaxy is very likely", however, "it's unlikely a race advanced enough to travel many light years to earth would hide in the woods abducting animals". Police later investigated the wooded area where Doe claimed he encountered the creatures, but could find nothing.

This kind of treatment works best for short statements of the kind typically featured in news stories. If there are more in-depth critiques, or critiques from multiple sources, it may then be appropriate to cover these in a separate "Criticism" section.