The Philip Cross Affair

It seems that Wikipedia has degenerated, with Jimmy Wales' approval, into a propaganda arm for "neoconservative" pro-war fanatics.

The Philip Cross Affair

My Journey Through the Looking Glass

This article provides a detailed account of Wikipedia administrators colluding with biased editors to mangle the Rupert Sheldrake biography. We begin, however, with another example of suppression of science on the world's largest encyclopedia. 

On January 20^th, 2014, "Blippy" edited the Wikipedia entry on BlackLight Power and its founder Randell Mills, who claims to have developed a process of generating electricity at odds with standard physics. The entry quotes experts calling the proposed generator "extremely unlikely" and a "loser" technology. Citing an article in the Village Voice, Blippy added that "other scientists have expressed interest in exploring [Mills'] work further."

Nine minutes later "Noformation" reverted Blippy's edit, claiming that "other scientists" is vague. So Blippy restored the material with the phrase "several reputable scientists." Two minutes later "Alexbrn" reverted the edit on the grounds that it gave undue weight to a marginal viewpoint. After addressing this charge on the "talk page" discussion, Blippy once again restored the sentence. Six minutes later "AndyTheGrump" reverted the edit with the justification that no consensus for it had been established on the talk page.

"When editors do not reach agreement by editing," says Wikipedia, "discussion on the associated talk pages continues the process toward consensus." In this case, however, editors were actively blocking consensus with irrelevant commentary. Noformation, for instance, wrote that he was "uncomfortable with using the Village Voice as a source," attesting to its unreliability regarding science. According to Wikipedia policy on appropriate sources, "in the case of a scientific theory, there is a clear expectation that the sources for the theory itself are reputable textbooks or peer-reviewed journals." But the Voice article, far from trying to explain the theory behind the BlackLight technology, only presents the views, pro and con, of various physicists. So AndyTheGrump declared that the opinions of scientists sympathetic to Mills' work shouldn't be included in the article because a "viewpoint isn't 'significant' if it is held by a tiny minority, by definition."

Science, in other words, isn't about reason and observation and experimentation but the majority opinion of scientists. We can safely dismiss dissenting views while taking established belief on faith.

Aside from misconstruing the nature of science, the editors opposing Blippy were in clear violation of Wikipedia policy on achieving consensus. "After someone makes a change or addition to a page, others who read it can choose either to leave the page as it is or to change it." Instead of coming up with excuses to shoot down Blippy's contribution, the other editors should have been trying to improve it by, for instance, quoting the Voice article directly. "An edit which is not clearly an improvement may often be improved by rewording. If rewording does not salvage the edit, then it should be reverted." Simply reverting the edit right off the bat is not an option. First you've got to collaborate to improve it. Rather than a battle between two competing worldviews, editing Wikipedia means finding the best way to organize and express available information. If material is properly sourced and clearly relevant, the task at hand is to make it work on the page, not gang up on the editor and make accusations about not only the content of the edit but the conduct of the editor.

After giving up on establishing consensus, Blippy placed a tag on the article warning that its neutrality was in dispute. Alexbrn removed the tag, setting off another cycle of editing and reverting. On the basis of Blippy's actions -- first the attempt to add a sentence and then to attach a warning tag -- "TenOfAllTrades" filed a complaint of "edit warring" with Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement, an administrative panel empowered to ban editors from articles, topics or even the entire encyclopedia. Several editors uninvolved in the dispute testified to Blippy's allegedly bad practices on other articles. A coordinated attack was underway.

Despite the fact that Blippy had introduced accurately sourced material serving to balance an otherwise slanted article -- even patiently justifying the edit on the talk page -- three administrators agreed that Blippy was guilty as charged. Conspicuously absent from their ruling was any attempt to explain how the edit warring charge could be pinned on him and him alone. Yet he was banned from all "pseudoscience-related" articles for six months and warned that if he engaged in edit warring again, the ban would become permanent. In this context "pseudoscience" seems to be code for any controversial science-related article.

The editors opposed to Blippy's edit were motivated by skepticism, an admirable trait but only when applied universally. Limited to marginal beliefs, it ceases to be true skepticism and becomes an appeal to authority, the antithesis of the spirit of science. If something unexplained is indeed occurring in the BlackLight generator, as some observers claim, this could provide an opportunity to find out something new about nature. This is in fact how science progresses.

I too am skeptical that the BlackLight generator will produce any current. But since I'm not a physicist, I'm only guessing. By contrast the pseudo-skeptics act as if they know it won't work, as if they're more knowledgeable than the sympathetic scientists quoted by the Voice. They don't seem to realize that they too are making a claim subject to skeptical scrutiny.

I know the pseudo-skeptics all too well. The day after Christmas I was banned from discussing the work of biologist Rupert Sheldrake, who questions the widely held belief that evolution and embryonic development are machine-like processes. My crime was to insist that the Cambridge-trained theorist and researcher be referred to as a biologist.

After several closed minded editors captured the Sheldrake biography and began slanting scientific and media coverage against his work -- minimizing explanation of his ideas while maximizing negative coverage -- other editors began working to restore a neutral point of view. Our efforts turned into a test of whether Wikipedia, in the face of intense ideological pressure, can remain true to its core principle of faithfully reflecting reliable source material. Needless to say, the "people's encyclopedia" failed the test.

Background

At the heart of the scientific project is the willingness to set aside pre-existing beliefs in favor of open-minded investigation. In the world of Wikipedia, however, science is confused with materialism, the unverifiable belief that matter is the entirety of existence and that all causation is mechanical.

The ironically religious-like quality of materialist faith was revealed by John Maddox during an interview with the BBC in which the former editor of Nature tried to justify his claim that Sheldrake's first book, A New Science of Life, was "the best candidate for burning there has been for many years.". As Maddox said, "Sheldrake is putting forward magic instead of science, and that can be condemned in exactly the language that the Pope used to condemn Galileo and for the same reasons: it is heresy."

How did Sheldrake become a lightning rod for the hostility of the high priests of materialism? At one time a traditional biochemist researching plant development and publishing his findings in peer reviewed journals -- Nature among them -- Sheldrake eventually concluded that organic development, whether from seed or egg, is inexplicable from a strictly materialist standpoint.

Sheldrake's argument boils down to a proposal over the nature of memory. For materialists, memory is stored information. Just as personal memories are believed to be inscribed in neural networks, the collective memory of how to develop from the egg is assumed to be encoded in every embryo's DNA. Though recognizing an important role for genes, Sheldrake disputed the untested idea that a kind of recipe for development is tucked away in our chromosomes.

Seeking guidance outside the echo chamber of orthodox biology, Sheldrake turned to the work of philosopher Henri Bergson, who denied a definite boundary between past and present. We have memory, he wrote, because "the past presses against the present." Sheldrake named his second book The Presence of the Past in honor of Bergson's insight.

The notion of natural memory independent of stored information is clearly at odds with materialist doctrine. But does it conflict with science? Does the continuing influence of the remote past defy any laws of nature? Not according to cosmologist Lee Smolin, who argues in his recent book, Time Reborn, that the "principle of precedence" accounts for stability of natural elements from leptons and quarks on up.

If a given organic process has always played out a particular way, it's likely to continue doing so now. This is the essence of Sheldrake's hypothesis of "morphic resonance." On the basis of its form, an organic system resonates with similar previous systems. An embryo, for instance, develops not on the basis of information encoded in its genes but by mimicking the actions of its ancestors at each developmental stage.

The reality of morphic resonance was never at issue in the Wikipedia dispute. Not a single editor sought to claim that organic memory, much less Sheldrake's proposed mechanism of it, was in any way proven. Nor did anyone attempt to remove sourced claims that Sheldrake's work amounts to pseudoscience. The sole issue of contention was how well the Sheldrake biography reflected the way his work was reported in the press and scientific journals. The overwhelming consensus from reliable secondary sources is that Sheldrake, right or wrong, is a scientist doing genuine research.

Yet whenever anyone sought to balance negative claims with sourced material favorable to Sheldrake, the edit was reverted, usually within minutes and often with no explanation. Pressed to explain their actions, the anti-Sheldrake editors eventually coalesced around the idea that his work had to be portrayed as pseudoscience due to a Wikipedia Arbitration Committee ruling that established three levels of pseudoscience: "obvious pseudoscience," "generally considered pseudoscience" and "questionable science" in addition to "alternative theoretical formulations." Though morphic resonance is nowhere mentioned in the ruling -- much less placed into a specific category -- in September of 2013 administrators began referencing the ruling in disputes over the Sheldrake biography. The first to do so, "EdJohnston," offered no rationale for his action.

Enter the Ideologues

The chief tactic of pseudo-skeptics is to block consensus on controversial scientific topics and then, when an exasperated editor repeatedly restores reverted material, launch an accusation of edit warring. I fell into this trap on October 15^th while trying to create a new section of the Sheldrake article called "Testing morphic resonance." I'd moved a discussion of a test already in the article to the new section and added a description of another test by restoring a passage that had been deleted by one of the anti-Sheldrake editors. Because a testable hypothesis is by definition scientific, the last thing they wanted was a section devoted to tests that have been carried out on morphic resonance.

The passage concerned a 1990 experiment conducted by neuroscientist Steven Rose on whether day-old chicks would be influenced by the experience of previous day-old chicks that became mildly ill after pecking at a yellow diode. While any chicks that got sick after pecking the diode would naturally refrain from pecking it again, to Rose's surprise the conditioned association extended to successive batches of day-old chicks. Just as Sheldrake predicted, the chicks seemed to be "resonating" with their predecessors.

Two minutes after I added the section, "Barney the barney barney" deleted it without the summary that usually accompanies edits. Three minutes after I restored the material, another editor, "The Red Pen of Doom" deleted it again, claiming I had not established consensus for the change on the talk page. So I initiated a discussion in which I justified the edit and pointed out that Wikipedia does not require editors to establish consensus before introducing new material. Two minutes later it was reverted again, this time by "Roxy the Dog," who echoed Doom's spurious demand that I achieve consensus on the talk page before editing the article. By this point several people had commented on the talk page, but none of them offered any explanation as to why the added material didn't belong in the article or how it violated Wikipedia policy.

After another edit and revert, Barney lodged a complaint against me for edit warring. In response EdJohnston blocked me from editing the article for 31 hours. Though the pseudo-skeptics were promoting their point of view by trying to diminish the scientific credibility of Sheldrake's hypothesis, instead of reasoning through the dispute or even applying Wikipedia policy on the consensus-forming process, Johnston simply noted that I had made more than three edits to the article and had therefore violated the "three-revert" rule. The others weren't in violation because they'd taken turns making reverts. His ruling was strictly mechanical, devoid of any effort at understanding.

Two weeks later I corrected a section of the article concerning an experiment conducted by Sheldrake and replicated by psychologist Richard Wiseman. The section was (and remains) problematic because anyone reading it would think Wiseman refuted Sheldrake's finding when in fact Wiseman's results, by his own admission, matched Sheldrake's.

Implicit in the action of morphic resonance is the coordination of disparate organic systems in resonance with the same previous systems. Comparing this effect to iron filings in a magnetic field, Sheldrake argues that telepathy follows from a "morphic field," which can emerge between any individuals with a shared history, even across species boundaries. Thus a dog might develop, over time, a sense of when its owner intends to return home from a distant location.

Sheldrake tested this ability on a dog, Jaytee, whose owner claimed it went to the window whenever she was on her way home. Sheldrake's video logs of both the window and the owner demonstrate that Jaytee did indeed wait at the window far more often when its owner was returning home than otherwise. This finding, as Wiseman discovered in his attempted refutation, held true regardless of how long the owner had been away.

My edit, which originated with another participant who'd given up on trying to get it to stick, in no way implied that telepathy had actually been demonstrated or that the apparent bond depended on a kind of memory field built up from the shared history of owner and pet. As I explained on the talk page, the edit served only to correct the mistaken view that Wiseman had refuted Sheldrake's finding. In the course of trying to reach consensus, I modified the new sentence to read as follows:

In a subsequent interview, Wiseman stated that his experiment generated the same pattern of data as Sheldrake's and that more experiments were needed to definitively overturn Sheldrake's conclusion that Jaytee had a psychic link with its owner.

In the talk page discussion, Roxy claimed I was distorting Wiseman's views. When I asked how so, Barney jumped in with a classic display of psychological projection. "Looks like a pretty clear case of competence issues leading to POV pushing. This is fairly typical of Sheldrake's fans who want to whitewash the article as much as possible."

Initiating another complaint, Barney accused me of "deliberately misrepresenting the opinions of a living person, in this case a distinguished professor Richard Wiseman, that make Wiseman look like he is endorsing pseudoscience." By pointing out that Wiseman reproduced Sheldrake's experimental results, I was somehow accusing Wiseman of supporting Sheldrake's interpretation of those results. Never mind that I made abundantly clear that Wiseman denies any psychic link between Jaytee and its owner. Despite Barney's bizarre misreading of my edit, an administrator with the suitably robotic title of Bbb23 issued a warning that I could be banned from the Sheldrake article for even a single edit.

Another editor, "Liz," who'd been observing the Sheldrake page, summed up the impossibility of restoring a neutral biography under these conditions. "There are probably less than half a dozen Editors who are allowed to edit the main article. Anyone else who tries to edit the article, like Alfonzo, will find themselves in an edit war or be resigned to being reverted."

With consensus beyond reach, I posted a request for a ruling on whether the characterization of the Sheldrake-Wiseman experiment was slanted against Sheldrake. I waited for my request to arrive at the top of the list, at which point the list stopped moving. Later my request was archived despite the fact that no administrator ever took up the case, not surprising since the anti-Sheldrake brigade showed up in full force to turn a short and easily resolvable complaint into a multi-page debate, virtually none of which had any bearing on the issue at hand.

Before long another complaint was lodged against me, this time by "Mangoe." Accusing me of "belaboring discussion of Rupert Sheldrake in order to push undue claims for Sheldrake's eccentric ideas," Mangoe requested my banishment not only from the article but the talk page. In his statement of support, Barney wrote that "it is impossible to reach consensus with those who cannot think logically and with any understanding. I think that Alfonzo Green is the tip of the iceberg and that others will have to follow." Fortunately "Sandstein" rejected the complaint for "lack of actionable evidence," the only time I witnessed an administrator act according to reason.

Turning the Tables

Since Wikipedia can't verify the credentials of contributors, its content depends exclusively on reliable source material. So the situation seemed to be improving in November when one of the neutral editors, "Iantresman," began compiling sources supportive of Sheldrake, demonstrating that they vastly outweigh sources questioning his credibility. Ian dug up material from numerous universities, media outlets, textbooks and peer reviewed journals, all of which referred to Sheldrake as a scientist or biologist or biochemist. Ignoring the Wikipedia injunction against promoting personal belief over reliable source material, Barney claimed Sheldrake couldn't possibly be a real scientist because "it is clear that he isn't doing science."

After "Barleybannocks" introduced a list of scientists and other academics who've publically attested to the scientific legitimacy of Sheldrake's work, Barney cited Wikipedia fringe policy as to why we couldn't use these sources. "To maintain a neutral point of view, an idea that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight in an article about a mainstream idea." To discuss Sheldrake's work at length in an article about embryonic development would therefore violate the fringe policy. But the Sheldrake biography is about his life and his hypothesis, clearly not a mainstream idea. Since the scientific status of his work is broadly supported -- with only a few sources referring to it as pseudoscience -- Barney was the one promoting a fringe view.

At this point a pair of biased administrators entered the fray. "Guy" repeated the already refuted claims that secondary sources generally portray Sheldrake's work as pseudoscience and that the attempt to include material supportive of Sheldrake violated policy on fringe beliefs. "Callanecc" then arbitrarily imposed a new rule that any editor reverting more than a single edit in one day was subject to sanctions.

My next move was to correct the claim that Sheldrake disputes the fact of energy conservation, which seems to have been inserted so as to make Sheldrake seem crazy. After all, how could any rational person dispute a fact? Since the source of the claim was Sheldrake's latest book, Science Set Free, I replaced "fact" with "law." Sheldrake doesn't dispute the fact of any given observation of energy conservation but its lawfulness, the idea that energy must be conserved in every possible circumstance from now till kingdom come. I also inserted the statement that Sheldrake "enjoys some academic support" and included references, dug up by Barleybannocks, to a book and a pair of articles attesting to such support. By reverting my edit, Doom restored inaccurate, unsourced material and eliminated accurate, sourced material.

According to a Wikipedia policy called Ignore all rules, if defending the integrity of the encyclopedia requires breaking a rule -- in this case the ban on more than one revert in a day -- the rule should be set aside. On this basis I re-inserted my edit. After Doom pointed out on my personal talk page that I'd made two reverts that day, Callanecc blocked me from editing for three days. In a private email to him, I explained how my edit had restored accuracy to the Sheldrake entry. Though he said he could see where I was coming from, he refused to budge.

Perhaps realizing administration was wholly complicit with the anti-Sheldrake editors, Doom filed a blatantly frivolous request with Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement to expel Barleybannocks for denying that Sheldrake's work is generally considered pseudoscience. Doom quoted Barley stating, "It's not my position, it's what the sources say." The fact that Barley's assessment was clearly correct, backed up by dozens of sources cited on the talk page, didn't seem to bother Doom. Nor did it catch the attention of the administrators hearing the request, who banned Barley from not only editing the biography but participating in the discussion on the talk page. Barley was censored for speaking truth to people who preferred to remain comfortably ignorant. Not exactly what you'd expect from administrators of an encyclopedia.

Though a huge amount of work on the article remained, I decided to limit myself to a single edit so simple and so obviously correct that no one in their right mind would dispute it. During his defense, Barley had brought up four sources from the New York Times that referred to Sheldrake as a biologist. Given Wikipedia's strict reliance on secondary sources, if the "newspaper of record" refers to you as a biologist, that's what you are. Case closed.

So I inserted the forbidden word into the lead sentence of the biography. A few hours later Roxy the Dog reverted it on the grounds that it was a "POV edit." Since the edit was based on a reliable source, not a personal opinion, another editor restored it. Eventually Roxy, claiming to fix a POV edit, inserted "former" in front of "biologist" despite the fact that the sources didn't refer to Sheldrake as a former biologist, not surprising since he's never stopped publicly explaining and occasionally testing his hypothesis. Like many scientifically illiterate people, Roxy seems to think you're not a scientist unless you're in a lab looking through a microscope.

Along with my edit, I opened a new topic on the talk page called Reality and Wikipediality. I explained that our job was not to express our view of reality but to present the subject matter according to reliable sources. Whatever the sources say, that's "Wikipediality." Yet Roxy, tossing aside the sources, "reasoned" that Sheldrake couldn't possibly be a real scientist because his peers disagreed with him, he didn't have a long list of recent articles in mainstream peer-reviewed journals, he wasn't besieged by fellow scientists begging to collaborate with him and he hadn't won any awards. What kind of scientist hasn't won any awards?

Clearly Roxy had dismissed Wikipediality in favor of POV. "Articles in peer reviewed journals demonstrating morphic resonance," as Barney added, "would establish his status as a biologist." In other words, you're not a real scientist until your theory has been proven correct. Until then you're a pseudoscientist. Barney might as well have said, "Science is a religion, and if you defy the reigning dogma, you're not a scientist but a heretic."

At this point Guy attempted to prevent any further discussion by removing my topic from the talk page and replacing it with a tag: "Nothing to see here, move along please." Turns out anyone, not just administrators, can close and reopen topics, so I restored it, after which Guy closed it again and tried to intimidate me. "One of us is an admin. It's not you." After I opened the discussion again, he accused me of trying to treat Sheldrake as an actual scientist, to which I responded, "Instead of repeatedly attempting to block discussion, why don't you explain why we can't refer to Sheldrake as a biologist when that's how virtually all sources refer to him?" He replied, "we have had the discussion, dozens of times, Your POV lost [sic]."

It's POV, in other words, to refrain from editorializing and simply present what the sources say. This is from someone who's been selected by Wikipedia to enforce its policies. Referring to Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales, Guy even bragged that "Jimbo bought me a beer" on the strength of his previous work. Yet here he was turning Wikipedia on its head.

Guy left a warning on my personal talk page that if I continued advocating for "anti-science views," I would be forbidden from writing anything related to Sheldrake's work anywhere in the encyclopedia. He claimed I was promoting "unverified conjectures," overlooking the fact that my final edit consisted solely of labeling Sheldrake a biologist in accord with secondary sources. He let me know that if he launched a complaint, I was certain to be banned. "This is a judgment from long experience," he wrote, "not a threat." On Christmas Eve he filed his complaint, noting on my talk page, "I thik the time has come to stop playing games [sic]."

The Wikipedia Inquisition

Oddly enough Guy ignored my actual edit and based his request entirely on the discussion in which I pointed out that Wikipedia is supposed to be based on reliable sources instead of the opinions of editors. He falsely claimed consensus had already been established against me and that I was "rehashing a debate that is so very unlikely to result in a consensus to change the article." In fact the debate was evenly split and clearly far from over. Yet he presented his premature closure of my discussion and my reopening of it as evidence of my malfeasance.

Before I'd even had a chance to respond, five administrators weighed in to support the proposed topic ban. As "Georgewilliamherbert" wrote, "If we are to see a succession of editors behaving this way on this article, I am prepared to article-ban until we run out of problem editors." He didn't specify what my problematic behavior was. In classic blame-the-victim fashion, he added, "Picking a fight going into Christmas when many people are away or busy seems poorly timed for a sympathetic hearing." As "NuclearWarfare" wrote, "He has had plenty of chances already." Not sure what he meant by that, but clearly I was the bad guy. Ignoring Guy's actual complaint, Tznkai wrote, "What is demonstrated is edit warring." He offered no explanation as to how the charge of edit warring applied to me but not the ones striking the sourced material I was attempting to add. "MastCell" justified a ban on the grounds of "multiple blocks for edit warring in service of his agenda." And what agenda was that? Insisting that the article abide by Wikipedia standards?

Dismissing an objection by a sympathetic editor who'd stood up in my defense, Sandstein wrote, "we don't need to make a content decision about whether something is pseudoscience... We only need to determine whether it is related to pseudoscience." Because someone somewhere at some time called Sheldrake's work pseudoscience, anyone referring to him as a scientist could be barred from editing the article. Though this is how he's labeled by virtually all sources, even highly critical ones, Sandstein claimed I was "dedicated to promoting a point of view" and, worse, that I was doing so "with respect to a single article," which he considered reason enough by itself to ban me, though focusing on one article in no way violates Wikipedia policy. Once you're the bad guy, the facts simply don't matter.

Sandstein rationalized his decision by pointing out that I'd been notified, along with all the other active editors, that the article was under "discretionary sanctions" related to pseudoscience. "Discretionary sanctions can be used against an editor who repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia" and its fundamental policies of neutrality, verifiability, etc., precisely the policies I was trying to implement in the article. Missing was a warning that I could be banned over talk page contributions or restoring, after 48 hours, a single sourced edit.

Once I'd made my statement of defense, only Tznkai bothered to respond. "This is not a project," he wrote, "where being right excuses you from having to do it right," meaning that my edit was accurately sourced, but I was wrong to fight for it. "Wikipedia is not a place to exercise your moral principles." So it's okay to have principles; just don't act on them.

Tznkai later expanded on his charge of edit warring, which he defined as "any short circuiting or depreciation of discussion by using article edits to override the contributions of others," precisely what the other editors and especially Guy were doing to me. Since it's impossible to pin edit warring on only one side of a conflict, the only resolution is to look more deeply into the matter and see who's really trying to portray the subject neutrally, that is, according to reliable source material. Yet no one was willing to do that.

Finally another administrator, "Zad68," stepped in to close the proceedings. "In Alfonzo's statement here, I don't see any indication that the tendentious edit-warring behavior will stop; in fact all I see is a justification for it." In other words, when the Wikipedia Inquisition shows up, repent. Don't even think about trying to refute the charge. But the real kicker for Zad was that I'd previously invoked the policy to ignore all rules "as a justification for breaking the rules against edit warring." On the contrary, I set aside the one-revert rule to protect the integrity of the encyclopedia, just as the policy states.

Still under the impression that morphic resonance was identified somewhere in the Arbitration Committee's report on pseudoscience, I wanted to see if this decision was based on reliable sources or just someone's random opinion. Unable to find anything relevant in the committee's report, I asked Sandstein if he knew where the decision was located. Instead of admitting that no such decision ever took place, sourced or otherwise, he blocked me from the encyclopedia for two days on the grounds that I'd violated my ban by uttering the term "morphic resonance" in my request for assistance.

Even if the committee's report had in fact classified morphic resonance as pseudoscience, sanctions weren't supposed to kick in without specific policy violations, though edit warring was never demonstrated or even mentioned in Guy's complaint, to say nothing of the systematic violations by the anti-Sheldrake editors. Like amino acid chains twisted into three levels of protein structure, the ironies were built one atop the other.

Given how clear-cut my case was, Zad's response to my appeal was odd. "I fully expect this appeal to be declined without any need for comment from me." Later he explained why I couldn't possibly win. It turns out Wikipedia doesn't have a legitimate appeal process. Instead of simply demonstrating that the original ruling was invalid, first you have to spend six months proving you can responsibly edit Wikipedia in areas where you haven't been banned. As I wrote, "a true appeal implies the possibility that no actual wrongdoing took place. If the 'appeal' can't even be heard until penitence has been amply demonstrated by the disgraced sinner, clearly there's no assumption of innocence." Worse, the same administrators who misruled in the original case were weighing in on this one. By definition an appeal is heard by parties not involved in the original decision.

When I pointed out that it wasn't a real appeal, Zad twisted my words around to give the impression that I wasn't there to appeal his ruling so much as to use the arbitration venue to attack Wikipedia. For Zad it all came down to a question of loyalty. Was I there to help build a better encyclopedia, or was I pursuing my own nefarious ends? Regardless of whatever policy violations he or the others accused me of, the only real crime in their eyes was insubordination. I was insufficiently subservient to the great and mighty Wiki.

An uninvolved administrator then stepped in to say that "the matter is being handled appropriately." I responded by highlighting the absurdity of being banned from the biography of a famous biologist for inserting the word "biologist" into the opening sentence, to which Zad retorted, "if that's truly Alfonzo's honest-to-goodness understanding of what happened... [he] is far, far away from having this topic ban lifted."

So I asked Zad why I was banned if it wasn't over my final edit and the associated talk page discussion. He wrote, "I am unwilling to engage in the general re-hashing" of the case. Another administrator, Ymblanter, stepped in to reject my appeal. "It is clear from the edit history of the article and its talk page that Alfonzo Green was edit-warring despite the fact that the consensus has been achieved." Worst of all I'd revealed the thought crime of "battleground mentality."

I assume these people are capable of rational thought in their day to day lives. But when they put on their Wiki-caps, they're fully in the grip of groupthink. In such a mindset any hint of disloyalty to the group is intolerable. Already in 2005 the cultish aura of Wikipedia was noted by British journalist Andrew Orlowski. Pointing to blatant favoritism in its biography pages, he wrote, "Where faith triumphs rationality, it isn't unusual to see cult-like characteristics emerge." The problem here is faith in the unerring wisdom of the world's most commonly accessed source of information. Wikipedia has indeed done great things. So long as no controversy is involved, its articles are mostly accurate. But its achievement has generated a sense of itself so pathologically narcissistic that evidence of abuse on the part of favored editors is dismissed without a second thought.

Wikipedia is toxic with taboo, conformity, demonization, projection and the anal-retentive need to provide an image of order and cleanliness even if the result is inaccuracy and alienation. Given the fear-driven hostility permeating the project, it's no surprise that not a single administrator has stepped forward to denounce the ongoing witch hunt against defenders of reason and neutrality in the Sheldrake dispute.

At bottom Wikipedia is an elaborate, self-operated torture device. Knowledgeable people who invest significant time clarifying controversial issues are liable to see their work deleted by ignorant ideologues who then attack them both on talk pages and noticeboards. To get an idea of just how hellish it is down there, check out the Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents, 837 interminable pages of complaints and counterattacks, an endless war made inevitable by a capricious and unreliable administration that rewards subservience and punishes dedication to accuracy. In such a pathological environment, the only option is to go nuclear, to relentlessly attack until exhausted editors either give up or get forced out by complicit administrators.

The Encyclopedia Anyone Can Edit

As a witness to systematic abuse of policy, I was obligated to share my story with other editors. Within 24 hours after I posted most of the above account on my user page, Barney proved my point by reaching for the red button, nominating my user page for deletion. I argued that since my intention was to "educate Wikipedians about the potential for abuse of the editing process," my statement ought to remain.

Barney said I'd made false claims against other editors but of course failed to provide examples. He also charged that I'd violated my topic ban, though topic bans apply to articles, not user pages. If, for instance, you've been banned from the topic of weather, you're forbidden to post material not only on the "Weather" article but weather-related articles and their talk pages, weather-related project pages and weather-related parts of other pages. It also covers "discussions or suggestions about weather-related topics anywhere on Wikipedia (including edit-summaries), for instance a deletion discussion concerning an article about a meteorologist."

Since my user page isn't a Sheldrake-related article or project, and it's not a site of administrative discussion, clearly I hadn't violated my ban. But Zad68, when informed by Doom of the latest development, permanently blocked me from editing Wikipedia. As he claimed on my personal talk page, this action was justified by my "clear understanding" that my topic ban extended to my own user page. Yet the statement he was referring to, also on my talk page, made no mention of user pages. In response to a questioner, I'd stated that "I can't discuss Sheldrake or any of his ideas, not only on the Sheldrake biography page but in any other article in the encyclopedia." To this Zad had added, "the topic ban applies to all pages in Wikipedia-space, so that would include User Talk pages."

Here he was referring to the question I'd placed on Sandstein's talk page requesting assistance regarding the Arbitration Committee's pseudoscience decision. Setting aside the fact that Zad was simply making up policy on the spot -- the topic ban was clearly intended to prevent disruption of articles and projects and administrative discussions -- I'd assumed he was referring to other people's talk pages, not my own. After all, I'd invoked the dreaded word "Sheldrake" right there on my talk page, and he hadn't charged me with violating my ban. His real problem with me was that I'd used my personal page to air grievances about widespread refusal to adhere to policy. Only in a pathological environment is legitimate criticism unacceptable.

Projecting his failing onto me, Zad claimed my "screed" indicated I was "significantly at odds with Wikipedia policies." By blocking me, he prevented me from defending myself against false statements in the ongoing discussion about deleting my main user page along with my statement. On May 5th another administrator stepped in to do just that. Zad therefore assisted in the effort to repress a detailed account of his own corruption when he topic banned me in the first place.

In my appeal to the "Ban Appeals Subcommittee" I quoted from Wikipedia's blocking policy: "Blocks are used to prevent damage or disruption to Wikipedia, not to punish users." Since Zad's action was clearly punitive, the subcommittee's sole policy-based course of action was to lift the block. Failure to do so could only mean the subcommittee was as corrupt as Zad. "By failing to unblock me, you reveal that the problem here is systemic and not just a rogue administrator."

Once again I'd found myself going to elaborate lengths to defend the proposition that 2 + 2 = 4 to the incredulous incomprehension of Wikipedia administrators. Faceless behind computer monitors not only to me but each other -- a crucial component of the world's first major cybercult -- they share with the anti-Sheldrake fanatics a complete failure of self awareness. The capacity to deny one's own mistake, even when it's explained in perfect clarity, seems only to deepen as the mistakes get bigger and more insane. Chiming in to support Zad's move to block me forevermore from the proceedings of the great Wiki, EdJohnston claimed I'd broken my ban by turning my user page into a Sheldrake-related article. As goofy as their pretend rationales are, these people see themselves as defenders of reason and science, proud adjudicators of the world's chief source of encyclopedic information. Some, like Barney, appear to be truly nuts, while others are merely swept up in the psychic vortices of ritual-expulsion hysteria.

Predictably the subcommittee denied my appeal. According to "Dave Worm That Turned," my topic ban "followed process, involved significant discussion and was otherwise correct. As such, the blocking administrator's actions to enforce the topic ban were also correct. As such, I am summarily declining your appeal." Arrogant in their power and wholly lacking empathy for their sacrificial victims, these people have no idea they're building the case on which the prosecution rests.

Open minded pursuit of knowledge is incompatible with the craving for certainty and control that characterizes the primitive psyche. From the thuggishness of Barney the barney barney to the self-satisfied thoughtlessness of Zad68 to a totalitarian system that deals with dissidents by disappearing them, Wikipedia is just another brick in the Great Wall of Stupid.