User talk:Benjaminbruheim

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[edit] Welcome! (We can't say that loudly enough!)

Hello, Benjaminbruheim, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages you might find helpful:

Please sign your name on talk pages and votes by typing ~~~~; our software automatically converts it to your username and the date.

If you have any questions or problems, no matter what they are, leave me a message on my talk page. Or, please come to the new contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}} on your user page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions.


We're so glad you're here! Rockpocket 09:12, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hi!

Thanks for your message. Its great you have decided to get involved, and I was pleased to note your area of interest. What we really need is solid contributors that are interested in the fringes of science, as too many get marginalized as kooks and advocates with an point-of-view agenda (and, to be fair, many are).

I have been watching then psychiatry/anti-psychiatry editing battles for a long time now, and occasionally getting involved in a minor way. Its a difficult situation. I feel Hrafn is a skilled editor and certainly knows his policy (almost to the point of wonkery, actually), and generally has the right idea about this article, but with things like this it is always good to have people editing collegiately and from different viewpoints. As someone involved in biomedicine myself, professionally, I've see how easy it is to introduce one POV unintentionally, especially when it is the established position. I fell the article has gone a little the other way now, and doesn't even do a particularly good job at describing the controversy. What this article needs is Hrafn and other editors working together in a slightly less hostile way. I have asked him if he would try and tone down the confrontational language and drop the accusations, but I'm not sure how well it will be received.

The major anti-psychiatry players are not on the ball at the moment, but they will pick up on this before too long and then we are going to see some fun and games. In the meantime I think you are doing fine, and as long as you stay polite there is no reason you shouldn't work on this article. There is a danger of over-talking about policy, rather than actually putting it into action. I would suggest using WP:BRD on this. Be bold, and if Hrafn or someone else reverts then discuss it and work it out. He is very sure of his interpretation of policy, but I don't always think it is correct. We work on consensus here, so don't feel intimidated by policy being quoted at you.

I'm going to stay out of this slightly. Hrafn is already convinced I have some Machiavellian agenda to use him to get this article deleted (which makes little sense, but there you go), so I'll just keep an eye on this from afar for now.

Happy editing, and good to have you on board. Rockpocket 09:12, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Richard Wiseman

Hi. Umm, you might want to re-read the comments on Talk:Richard Wiseman. 88.111.109.155 said "self-publicist", not self publicised. Richard Wiseman has been published in very serious journals, such as the British Journal of Psychology, by the way. Regards, and welcome to Wikipedia. — BillC talk 00:43, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Catastrophic wiki flaw

Hi Benjaminbruheim,

I am really busy in real life. I don’t think the admins are helping us here, even though Hrafn was rude with Rockpocket (he even deleted Rockpocket’s last message in Hrafn’s talk page). The admins themselves might be biased toward the psychiatric profession.

As to Hrafn himself, arguing ad infinitum in Wikipedia with such people is for those who are either very rich and can afford an all-time consuming hobby, or for those who have an empty life in real world and use it like a sort of drug or Nintendo game to kill their time.

I am neither and really think that reverting the article to the incarnation of it prior to the vandalizing action took place was the best thing to do. But since the admins won’t help us in this, I must quit. In fact, I don’t want to talk to Hrafn the rest of my life (though I will certainly write about him outside Wikipedia in the future).

Nonetheless, I do want to help you in finding the proper sources. I will unwatch the Biopsychiatry controversy article now but feel free to ask whatever question you may want to ask with regard to my relatively small psychiatric library. But be warned: my field of interest is not antipsychiatry, it is child abuse. I became interested in biopsych criticism only because I have seen how many parents use psychiatry to subdue the will of their children. You won’t believe it: but I myself was a victim of such abuse thirty years ago.

Let me make a little personal confession. In 1975 I didn’t want to go to Mass and to comply with other parental stuff and neurotic parental demands. Because of that, in 1976-1977 a shrink advised my mother to pour anti-psychotics in my orange juice. Believe it or not! My sisters and a brother know all too well that the disturbed person was my mother. But she got the money to hire the shrink. I was only an underage teen... As Peter Breggin wrote:

“ Modern psychiatry pushes us in one direction — toward blaming the victim and exonerating the adult authorities. It’s the easy way out for all of the adults, including the child abuser; but it’s a disaster for the child... Psychiatrists continually fail to connect [the abuse] with the patients they see in their offices from day to day. Child after child, woman after woman, appears before them with all the stigmata of abuse — only to be further abused with medical diagnosis and physical treatments. ”

If you read the letter I wrote to Jimbo in my user page you will see why it makes no sense at all (at least not to me) to waste precious time in a wiki that has a real flaw in its system. Scientific paradigms come and go, and the heresy of today is the orthodoxy of tomorrow. In other words, if there was a wiki some decades ago, when the eugenics movement was considered scientific in many countries, the critics of that biological pseudoscience would be censored by many Hrafns invoking WP:undue. The pseudoscientific eugenics establishment would have reigned in that hypothetical Wikiland.

I doubt that this catastrophic wiki flaw will be corrected in the near future. A good article has just been butchered because of stupid wikilawyering. In order to rescue it, it’s necessary the presence of courageous and energetic individuals who are rich enough to work full-time to negotiate with [blip] like Hrafn. As I said in the article’s talk page, I don’t have the patience to do it: I would destroy my liver in trying to argue with him.

But feel free to leave me notes in my talk page. Or if I become even more upset with the wiki system and its gatekeepers and I leave, contact me thru email. I am very sorry that I cannot help you anymore in talk:Biopsychiatry controversy. But far more important publishing writing is just awaiting at my desk.

As a parting word I would like to tell you that I believe that Nordic people belong to a superior psychoclass than some Americans, as you can see in the forums linked to my web page.

—Cesar Tort 06:35, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] sources! sources!

Hi again,

Take a look to this and, if you want me to cite in my subpage some paragraph of that book, leave me a note here :)

Cesar Tort 23:19, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I've just replied there. Put that page in your watchlist please: it makes it easier to work in a single page. Cesar Tort 01:04, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
There were actually 4 indented replies within your text. Cesar Tort 01:51, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] UFO Watchdog mess...

....is still there. I have been trying to get wikipedians to look past a bathroom joke to see the proof about Philip Klass and CSICOP. that is on www.ufowatchdog.com , Hall of Shame 1, 7th on that list. My terminal is really fucking up really bad. I'm on a Wi-Fi system, made by the Cisco Company. 65.173.105.225 (talk) 07:00, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

The matter is underlined on that location on that website. 65.173.105.225 (talk) 07:01, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
You click on that as well. 65.173.105.225 (talk) 07:01, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Source Bias

You asked if UFO Watchdog is used as a source to present evidence criticising "believers" and paranormal investigators, is not permitted to be used as evidence that it also crriticises skeptics. It IS. See Linda Howe and Richard C. Hoagland, two of many criticised by UFO Watchdog, yet when evidence is found indicating that it also criticises skeptics, it violates Wikipedia guidelines, thus is the

{POV|Date= January, 12, 2008}

Template seen here needs to be placed.

  • Wikipedia on UFO Watchdog: Can be used as evidence of criticisim of "believers", paranormal investigators, violates Wikipedia guidelines when evidence about skeptics, especially Philip Klass is found in the SAME source (Hall of shame, 7th on that list, on ufowatchdog.com)
  • UFO Watchdog: Site criticises both sides. 65.173.105.225 (talk) 06:00, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Also note that the org. CSICOP is also criticised, same listings with Philip Klass. On the UFO Watchdog site, on the listing for Klass and CSICOP, click on the underlined matter as well. these provide more on why UFO Watchdog has criticises Philip Klass. I will also need a gross Censorship template as well. Evidence regarding Klass and other skeptics HAS BEEN FOUND. 65.173.105.225 (talk) 06:06, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
"Evidence regarding Klass and other skeptics HAS BEEN FOUND" (red in the original)?? I don’t know what this discussion is about. Just want to say that I have some books of Klass with me and have met him personally in CSICOP's 1994 Seattle conference. Oh, yes: I removed 65.173.105.225's template above since talk pages are not supposed to be tagged :) —Cesar Tort 06:25, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] I have read...

your comment in my main talk page. Thanks.

Could we better discuss all of these issues here?

I have already replied there.

Cesar Tort 19:58, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Please watch the above page so that all of our friendly discussions may appear in a single place (I've just replied to your last comment there). Cesar Tort 01:56, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Curious

The problem is that it takes work to keep things factual. An editor that adds pseudoscience to an article should be blocked immediately, with no recourse. Constantly having to negotiate with people that are simply miseducated and wrong gets tiring.Kww (talk) 02:13, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Use of pseudoscience in other encyclopedias

I appreciate your comments on Bleep. Please consider commenting here. [1] Antelan believes the discussion should be closed. Anthon01 (talk) 02:42, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Any links that discuss the issue of pseudoscience as you have presented it on the Bleep page, including the caution you mentioned that skeptics originally express early on? Anthon01 (talk) 16:37, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree with your comments on the Bleep article and have had experience with some of the doubtful sources mentioned ie Skeptics Dictionary ... give me a break.... However we have been hashing this out for so long, I feel I could compromise unless something better comes along. Hope that doesn't sound spineless. (olive (talk) 17:29, 17 January 2008 (UTC))
I'm not sure I get your meaning here. "... Give me a break ..." Is this sarcasm directed at the Skeptics Dictionary or me? Are you agreeing with Benjaminbruheim comments or mine? Anthon01 (talk) 17:36, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Please see your talk page. Give me a break, not in any way directed at you or at anyone.(olive (talk) 19:20, 17 January 2008 (UTC))
I think this issue needs to be addressed perhaps by the comunity at large. A policy needs to be set that acts as a guide for non-mainstream science. Perhaps the only way this will come about is with repeated impasse and long or indefinite page protections that is occuring on these articles. Alot of energy is being wasted on these pages (Quackwatch, Homeopathy, Bleep etc ...); an arbcom decision might be the best thing. Anthon01 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 17:50, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Check out if you want to see the kind of policy we might end up if we let the dogmatic skepticism rule wikipedia: User talk:ScienceApologist Benjaminbruheim (talk) 17:59, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
That is why we need community-wide input regarding this issue. This cannot be left to the fringe on either side of the issue. Anthon01 (talk) 18:22, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the link. I'll let you know once I read it. Anthon01 (talk) 15:13, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Arbitration notice

This is to inform you that you have been included as a party in a request for Arbitration here ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 05:23, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bleep

I'd like to direct your attention to comments made in this section by slrubinstein on ScienceApologist talk page. [2] Thanks for taking a look. Anthon01 (talk) 04:20, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Martin Tajmar

Has that been relisted? What happened the first time around? Anthon01 (talk) 21:51, 23 January 2008 (UTC)