Talk:Bruce L. Gordon

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An individual covered by or significantly related to this article, Bruce L. Gordon, has edited Wikipedia as Bruce Gordon (talk · contribs)

[edit] Needs more updating

Not sure this is current. FloNight ^talk 02:35, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Recent edits

Since this article was just christened with it's first ever round of tendentious editing, let's go ahead and list out the issues with the widely rejected edits.

Our anon friend here attempted to change the following:

"intelligent design creationism, a form of apologetic pseudoscience claiming to use mathematical tools from probability theory, information theory, optimization theory, logic and causal analysis"

To:

"intelligent design theory, an alternative to neo-Darwinian and self-organization accounts of the origin and development of life that applies mathematical tools from probability theory, information theory, optimization theory, logic and causal analysis to candidate systems across the spectrum of the sciences from molecular biology and genetics to cosmology to ascertain whether these systems are the result of intelligent causation or undirected natural processes."

The problems with this are:

1. Intelligent design is not a theory, and Kitzmiller ruling says it is indeed a form for creationism as does the majority of the scientific community, which also says ID is pseudoscience;
2. "neo-Darwinian" and "self-organization" are both neologisims used by the Discovery Institute to promote it's agenda, no need to help them promote their pov here;
3. That intelligent design actually applies mathematical tools is far from certain, that the Discovery Institute claims it does is, though.

Since the attempted edits are parroting the line of the highly partisan Discovery Institute, which has a proven problem with neutrality and credibility, we need to be circumspect here. I also suggest changing the original description of ID here to be in line with those found in the other ID-related articles, for tone and consistency's sake. FeloniousMonk 20:31, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

The case could be made that academics are competent to characterize their own work. — goethean ॐ 20:37, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Not on such a controversial issue, which must clearly follow WP:NPOV#pseudoscience. — Dunc|☺ 21:03, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, also as a matter of precedent, pseudoscience "academics" editing their own articles has been considered to be bad (see for example what happened with Jonathan Sarfati editing his own article. JoshuaZ 23:40, 16 May 2006 (UTC)