At 03:45 PM 6/16/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Alan J Fletcher <<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:
I recently collected some obsidian .. and cut my hand while doing
so. It's reportedly still used for ultra-sharp scalpels.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian
As much as I hate to admit there is something of value on Wikipedia,
that article has a fascinating detail:
"Obsidian has been used for blades in surgery, as well-crafted
obsidian blades have a cutting edge many times sharper than
high-quality steel surgical scalpels, the cutting edge of the blade
being only about 3 nano meters thick. Even the sharpest metal knife
has a jagged, irregular blade when viewed under a strong enough
microscope; when examined even under an electron microscope an
obsidian blade is still smooth and even."
So here is a stone-age technology with a pronounced advantage over
the best modern technology. Wow!
Wikipedia is great for certain kinds of things. If there is no
serious controversy, articles tend to improve over time. When there
is controversy, though, Wikipedia supposedly has a neutrality policy,
but they never figured out how to find true neutrality, instead they
decided to ban "POV-pushers." I.e., one side or sometimes both sides.
Where one side engages a faction of editors, Wikipedia becomes
hopeless, as you know. As few as two or three can wreak havoc. When
there are two dozen -- for prespective, there are about 1800
administrators and the active core is a few hundred editors and
administrators, but many thousands are reasonably active -- it's
nearly impossible for Wikipedia to even recognize the problem,
because it typically takes expertise to understand bias, other than
the use of "peacock words," which is pretty simple. And experts get
banned first, since experts have a strong point of view and a
tendency to dismiss others as ignorant of their field, because ... they are!
Instead of recognizing the problem and providing support for experts
(which would include expecting civility, by the way), Wikipedia took
the easy way out: just ban "troublemakers." On controversial
articles, that would mean anyone whose position is perceived as being
fringe or minority. And there goes neutrality, right out the door.
I was just going over the Cold fusion article, and the text about
"rejection by most scientists" and "pathological science." While I
know the text in the article to be more-or-less true, on this point,
it hardly tells the whole story, and, much to my surprise, the
sources cited completely fail to support the text.
The "most scientists" phrase was sourced to a report of the 1989 APS
catastrophe, and doesn't support "scientists." It was about most who
attended that meeting, mostly physicists. "Pathological science"
wasn't mentioned, and, later in the article, Morrison was supposedly
the first to term cold fusion "pathological science." Might be true,
but it's completely missing from the source.
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/physics/Cold-fusion/vince-cate/aps.ascii
Very sloppy, indeed. Weak sources (that source is truly weak: who was
the author?) are used to make claims that aren't even supported by
the source cited! And then strong sources, in peer-reviewed
mainstream journals, are rejected as "fringe," based on ... editor
point-of-view, I'm sure. Not the Wikipedia guidelines and standards
which, as far as they go, are pretty decent. That, in fact, misleads
many, who expect that the policies and guidelines will be enforced.
No, they aren't, they are routinely flouted by those with political
clout on the project.
