Talk:Michael Fumento

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V, I don't see any bias in this article. It's just not well-written. What do you suggest? --user:Ed Poor (deep or sour) 13:13, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

It lacks any detail on the serious criticisms of Fumento. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by AaronSw (talk • contribs) .

Contents 1 Edits made by Michael Fumento 2 Monstanto Kerfuffle 2.1 The book grant 2.2 Book Grant Redux 2.3 Okay, Now I'll Tell it the Right Way... 2.4 Monsanto Controversy 2.5 Re: Monsanto Controversy 3 Article needs work ... badly 4 Tim Lambert blog

[edit] Edits made by Michael Fumento

I've reverted edits made by Michael Fumento. See WP:AUTO. If you are wondering how I know that 69.143.188.141 is Fumento, see here. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by TimLambert (talk • contribs) .

[edit] Monstanto Kerfuffle

[edit] The book grant

From the Fumento column 71.226.45.87 linked to: "Javers asked if I had EVER received money from Monsanto. Sure, I said. It was a $60,000 book grant to my employer, solicited back in 1999, which was applied to pre-established salary and benefits." Emphasis mine. This was a grant solicited by Fumento himself for a book (BioEvolution) to be written by Fumento, not generic funding tossed in the general direction of the Hudson Institute. --Lanius 13:50, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Book Grant Redux

From the Fumento column 71.226.45.87 linked to: "Javers asked if I had EVER received money from Monsanto. Sure, I said. It was a $60,000 book grant to my employer, solicited back in 1999, which was applied to pre-established salary and benefits." New emphasis mine. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.226.45.87 (talk • contribs) .

So the Hudson Institute received it, they passed it on to Fumento, and he received it (as was Monsanto's intent all along). That's what routinely happens with grants, and we always speak of them as being to the person the money is meant for. If you want to write up a more detailed, NPOV account of what happened then go ahead, but it's disingenuous to imply that Fumento didn't benefit personally from Monsanto's largesse. --Lanius 05:28, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Okay, Now I'll Tell it the Right Way...

Wrong on all counts.

1) The Hudson Institute did not pass along the grant to Fumento. His salary was unaffected by the grant.

2) Members/fellows of a think tanks are expected to solicit grants from corporations and philanthropies for the good of their institution. These grants are put into a general fund used to pay pre-established salaries and benefits for all members. There is no quid pro quo.

3) I've maintained a NPOV in my description of events. If there's been a breach of NPOV, it's from those who disingenuously accuse Fumento of being paid off via Monsanto's "largesse." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.226.45.87 (talk • contribs) .

[edit] Monsanto Controversy

I'd tried to rewrite the section avoiding questionable issues and sticking just to the facts. Comments? --Pierremenard 03:38, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Monsanto Controversy

I like it. Well done! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.226.45.87 (talk • contribs) .

[edit] Article needs work ... badly

(I may have played Gauntlet a little too much.)

This article is badly out of date, reflecting none of Fumento's recent activities as a war reporter. It is out of date in another way as well: it arguably violates WP:BLP, a newish policy. (Also, the link to Tim Lambert's attack blog, now deleted, clearly violated WP:EL as it now stands.) Furthermore, it comes close to violating WP:OR and the coverage of the Monsanto kerfuffle probably needs to be trimmed down per the "undue weight" provisions of WP:NPOV and WP:BLP.

I've made a start on reducing these problems, but lots more work needs to be done. We probably should have a paragraph or two about his reporting from Iraq under a new "==" heading. Any volunteers? Please? CWC(talk) 13:54, 26 October 2006 (UTC) who also refactored Monsanto-related comments down one level

[edit] Tim Lambert blog

Blogs are generally not good things to link to (except for blogs by the subject of an article). There's an exception for experts, but isn't Lambert's day job is computer science. Andjam 15:26, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

It depends on the blog. In this case, the blog isn't just offering opinions on F, but sources. For eaxmple: Fumento argues: the researchers didn’t feel themselves bound by anything official, like death certificates... Unfortunately, Fumento seems to have missed the immediately preceding sentences in the Lancet paper, where they noted that, when asked, 81% confirmed with death certificates. And Fumento’s “killer” argument is: “Two-thirds of all violent deaths were reported in one cluster in the city of Falluja,” the journal reported. That’s it; game over; report worthless... Here are the two sentences in the report that follow the one he quoted: If we exclude the Falluja data, the risk of death is 1.5-fold (1.1-2.3) higher after the invasion. We estimate that 98 000 more deaths than expected (8000-194 000) happened after the invasion outside of Falluja. This is useful well sourced information. It doesn't matter if it comes from a blog William M. Connolley 16:24, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Lambert may be using sources, but he draws conclusions from them. That's clearly original research. Unless that original research has been verified (very unlikely!), the "contains factually inaccurate material or unverified original research" part of WP:EL clearly applies. Note that containing sources does not cancell out containing unverified original research; a page that contains the latter is disallowed by WP:EL no matter what else it contains. (Note also that the link contains all Dr Lambert's posts about Fumento, even ones he has not made yet. Hmm.)

WMC, I'm suprised to see you write that whether we should link to a blog "depends on the blog". I thought it only depended on whether the blog was run by the subject of the article (or an ally), at least for polemical blogs like Dr Lambert's.

(I vaguely recall Fumento writing something about Dr Lambert somewhere. If their dispute reached notability, maybe we could summarise it in the article and use Dr Lambert as a citation (only for what Dr Lambert wrote, of course)? That would dodge the whole WP:EL issue.)

I see the skimpy coverage of Fumento's recent career shift to Embedded blogging as a more important defect in the article, but I'm not volunteering to fix it myself. Cheers, CWC(talk) 02:55, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand:

If an article presents multiple points of view, it is useful to provide a link to prominent sites dedicated to each point of view. The number of links dedicated to one point of view should not overwhelm the number dedicated to any other. Each link should be accompanied by a detailed explanation informing the reader which point of view it presents. If one particular point of view dominates informed opinion, that should be represented first. (For more information, see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view – in particular, Wikipedia's guidelines on undue weight.)

Gzuckier 18:10, 30 October 2006 (UTC)