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Talk:Satanic panic/Archive 7

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Latest comment: 16 years ago by Cesar Tort in topic Find Articles
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Paucity of 21st century credulous academic sources

Latest comment: 16 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion
  • "There are comparatively fewer articles in the last decade, meaning this period is much less notable." —ResearchEditor

Actually, it means that SRA was discredited, since this century's scholarship is mainly skeptical. This is the main finding in the above exercise. —Cesar Tort 03:34, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

This is only an inference. It could mean that the topic simply dropped from the public eye for many reasons, like people got bored with it, or it no longer had shock value to attract readers, or there was a political period of repression where historically it has been found that child abuse issues have lost favor with public interest. All of these could be inferred from the data. Also, it could be seen that due to this loss of interest, only a couple of skeptical writers with academic publishers kept publishing about the topic, other than survivors and therapists, who kept publishing in primarily non-academic publishing houses. The only thing one can conclusively conclude from the exercise is that "there are comparatively fewer articles in the last decade, meaning this period is much less notable." ResearchEditor (talk) 03:43, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
If only you would use the correct terminology to describe exactly what you have just described--your basic facts are not necessarily incorrect. The "moral panic" is now over, so there is no more frenzy of therapy and child advocacy related publications and no reactionary frenzy of debunking skepticism. As you point out, "child abuse issues" (more accurately child abuse hysteria) "have lost favor with public interest." That does explain the lack of pro-SRA publication in peer-reviewed journals, but not why academic publications persist from the moral panic perspective. The fact that you refer to "shock value" as if that is the reason for advocacy, as opposed to "exposing the truth" is confusing but it does fit well with the moral panic explanation. What we now have are academic publishing houses publishing sober retrospective studies on the early days of a phenomena that is clearly consensed in the academy as having been a satanically oriented moral panic--abuse may very well have occurred in most or all patient histories but the "satanic", "cultic" and "ritual" aspects of this abuse are clearly not believed. Occam's razor my friend. The simplest explanation for the fact that virtually all recent academic publications about SRA come down on the side of moral panic is ... ta da ... because that's the current academic consensus. Sophistry never really makes as much sense as the obvious.PelleSmith (talk) 04:04, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Whatever simple explanation or opinion either of us may have cannot be used on the page. Since we need to accurately reflect the research, the bulk of the page should cover the majority of the research pro and con earlier, since this is the period most notable. There could be a section near the end covering the last ten years or so, including M, T, T and L and Noblitt's revisions and new chapter to his second edition as well as all of the peer reviewed sources and other decided upon reliable sources. ResearchEditor (talk) 03:19, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
Except that period is not "most notable" for research on the phenomenon of SRA. Please provide an RS stating that. Research on this phenomenon has been continuous. Your claim of "notability" is a violation of WP:NOR. There are, on the other hand, a slew of reliable sources stating that this period is the height of the "moral panic." Even if you do not you wish to agree with the expert conclusions of social scientists, and chose instead of "panic" or "hysteria" to say that child abuse issues were "in favor" at that time, this establishes nothing regarding the "notability" of research. Unless you are prepared to produce a reliable source I suggest you drop this red herring and scurry along to something else.PelleSmith (talk) 11:08, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Archiving

Latest comment: 16 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I've archive the page up to roughly July 23rd. I'd rather wait for longer before archiving, at least a month since the discussion died, but at 300K the page was hard to navigate. Any discussions that were not dead, please pull from the archive or restart here. WLU (talk) 13:02, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I've archived a bit more (36K more to be exact); I've taken out things that the last comment was the 29th of July, which was rather recent. Pull from the archive if desired or start over and re-state. WLU (talk) 01:51, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
Archiving that is OK with me. —Cesar Tort 02:20, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Ways to mediate editing

Latest comment: 16 years ago12 comments4 people in discussion

IMO, the editing on page is more contentious at times than it needs to be. I am wondering if the editors would agree to wait on further editing of the page, until we can develop a procedure that works better in terms of editing, such as WP:DR, WP:COOL and WP:M. ResearchEditor (talk) 00:28, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't see the need to further restrain us from editing it. There's no basic disagreement between most editors concerned. Even Jack would only object the tone of some of my previous posts. And I scarcely edit in SRA mainspace. —Cesar Tort 01:28, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
The editing on this page is contentious because some editors here fail to abide by WP:NPOV, WP:WEIGHT, and WP:FRINGE. RE if you simply abide by these fundamental principles here on Wikipedia then your edits wont meet the type of "heated" opposition you act so worried about. It gets more and more tiring to see you pretend in whatever way possible that there is a legitimate academic debate about SRA and that the various legitimate opponents in this debate, for instance, get all worked up about their positions. Nonesense. You're pushing a fringe POV. Its pretty simple. Hostility is a natural reaction to editors who are undermining the encyclopedic quality of entries, especially those who do it systematically and with great effort. Nevertheless hostility is not an ideal reaction, and I do agree that it should be avoided as much as possible, but I refuse to gloss over its cause.PelleSmith (talk) 12:23, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
Editing needs to include addition of reliable sources in a manner that is accurate to the letter and spirit of the source. If consensus determines an edit is a poor one, not in keeping with the policies and guidelines, it should be removed. If it is felt that the interpretation of the P&Gs is incorrect, then dispute resolution including the appropriate noticeboards, third opinion and requests for comments should be used. There is no need for a new procedure. So long as the page is not locked, I will add information from sources as I believe appropriate. WLU (talk) 17:58, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
IMO, there is no excuse for the violation of the guidelines of wikipedia, including those of WP:NPA and WP:CIVIL. I do abide by all of the guidelines of wikipedia, including those of WP:NPOV. The page is overrun by panic theories at this point, with Victor being given 17 citations. This violates WP:UNDUE. Adding more information on this topic only violates the guideline of WP:UNDUE more. There is definitely a legitimate academic debate about SRA, this is shown by the number of sources on both sides of the debate. It is a fringe POV to state and promote that there is only one side of the debate. It has been clearly shown that there is a need for a new procedure, based on the contentiousness of the talk page, the number of locks on the regular page and the violations of wikipedia guidelines on both pages. ResearchEditor (talk) 19:01, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
There "is" not. Not in the present tense. And the debate that "was", only existed within psychotherapy/child advocacy with sociologists and various other social scientists always being "skeptical" of what was clearly a moral panic. Now even that debate no longer exists. You represent a fringe view and pushing it unbalances the entry and violates WP:NPOV.PelleSmith (talk) 00:54, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
  • "I do abide by all of the guidelines of wikipedia, including those of WP:NPOV.."
That's exactly what you believed and stated when you were blocked a few months ago. But it's not the way that the blocking admins saw your SPA edits. —Cesar Tort 20:40, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
A conviction that there is only one person adhering to NPOV, and that you are it, is a problem that points to the truth. There was an academic debate about SRA. There are two sides and the credulous one is the fringe. There were two investigations that looked into actual allegations of SRA, one in England by LaFontaine. One in the United States of 12,000 allegations. Both found pseudosatanism, no real satanism. Those were the two actual investigations for actual satanic ritual abuse, and they found nothing. There was also a huge debate in the scientific investigation of memory on whether it was possible to create memories of events that didn't actually occur. There's a minor debate on whether SRA is used to create cult programming and pliant identities. There are citations for all of this, and it is the citations that determine page contents. So add citations, don't clog up the talk page. WLU (talk) 01:40, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
Having a different opinion on the research and its conclusions certainly is not a violation of any wikipedia guideline or the truth on either side of the line.
In reply to the above, there was only one blocking admin. There was no reference to SPA in the block.
Yet, the debate does continue. There are three peer reviewed journal articles and Noblitt's book (which does count since it was a second edition with a new chapter) in the last eight years. He has a new book out, continuing the debate, though it is self published. So whether it is an RS or not would have to be debated. Some of the court cases that were moved to the List of SRA allegations page also backed the existence of SRA, especially the very recent case in Hammond, LA. Even M, T, T and L, probably the most accurate, comprehensive and neutral source written on the topic states that some cases are genuine.
The debate on the scientific investigation showed that it has never been proven that traumatic memories can be created. Pezdek's study backs this conclusion. The skeptics debating theories of iatrogenesis and social construct theory have been answered by Gleaves; Brown, Frischholz and Scheflin; and Ross.
The idea of "moral panic" has only been backed by biased references that ignore data contrary to their opinion. The debate is indeed alive and well. ResearchEditor (talk) 03:25, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
The very very few pro-side therapists who have recently published in peer-reviewed journals are no match for criminologists and police investigators, sociologists, religion-studies professors and even lawmakers. Unlike psychotherapists, criminologists and the police deal with the hard evidence. Claims in the therapist's office without evidence have all the marks of bogus allegations. —Cesar Tort 05:39, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
RE, reality wont change just because you keep on vocally claiming an account of it that contradicts what can be empirically observed. The continual repetition of your mantra only provides the rest of us with more evidence of how entrenched you are in pushing your POV. Can you please provide some sourcing for you various claims about a there being a current academic debate?PelleSmith (talk) 12:25, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
We don't get to have an "opinion on the research and its conclusions". We get to cite what research says. Making our own conclusions is original research. MTT&L is hardly the last gasp in sources and itself concludes that the evidence for SRA is equivocal, taking the position that reports are mostly fictitious, but sometimes mostly genuine. Taking the position that MTT&L's overall conclusion is that SRA reports are mostly true completely misses that most of the chapter's conclusion is heavily weighted towards the idea that SRA can not be taken as literally and completely true, that events happened as explained by "survivors". WLU (talk) 13:58, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Minor observations

Latest comment: 16 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Today I printed the article to read it carefully and I have a few observations in mind. Both the sections labeled as "Research" and "Skepticism" look mislabeled to me. Therapies, mentioned in that section, are no research at all. The long Lanning citation seems middle ground, as well as the below sentence: "Lanning describes common dynamics of the use of fear to control multiple young victims." I am not taking issue with Lanning. I'm just saying that these quotations look more middle ground than outright skepticism (like the sort that one reads in the book Satan's Silence). It's the heading "Skepticism" what should be changed. Minor points: the British report that found 62 cases "of alleged ritual abuse" states that "all cases of organized [my emphasis] abuse represented..." I guess a better word is "ritual" since "organized" can be many other sorts of abuse. And in the section on "Court cases", does the phrase "throughout the world" is hyperbole? I mean, have SRAs been reported in China, Laos and other Buddhist countries? Finally, WLU, now that you've got the Ross/Loftus book, under the section "False memories" you might want to cite the main conclusions of these fairly notable authors from the pro and con side of the debate. —Cesar Tort 05:39, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

The whole page is due for a re-write, it's been cobbled together piecemeal for too long and now it needs reorganization. It would be easier to do so were the page unambiguously considered a moral panic, but an alternative is to reorganize it into sections titled "as a moral panic", "as real events", "as false memory", etc. I'm not sure how many headings there would be but I'm pretty sure it would be met with resistance. I'd actually use a level 2 heading of "Explanations" with each of the sub-headings beneath it.
Regards the 62 cases, organized is what the source used and it did not distinguish between organized groups (i.e. interlinked networks of pedophiles) and SRA; the book overall is called "organized abuse" and deals with more than just SRA.
Throughout the world is somewhat appropriate since they appeared in North America, Europe, New Zealand, Australia, and if we count all cases discussed in the list of allegations page, South Africa and South America. Obviously there's a huge overlap with SRA allegations and Christianity but I'm not sure what could be done with this without engaging in original research.
I've several other books and articles to get to before I get to Ross. I've also a large number of citations from Victor, LaFontaine, Frankfurter, Hammond et al. and other sources to integrate that I've not gotten around to. It'd be nice if someone else were also reading the books and adding information, real-life concerns soak up more of my time than in the past and I'm unable to contribute to the same degree I could in months past. This page alone is taking up 90% of my time on wikipedia, and it's a lot less time than it used to be. WLU (talk) 14:18, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
Right. I wish I could help you but in the country where I am living (just for the moment I hope!) it's impossible to get those books from a local library. However, I'll continue to read more of the Frankfurter book I purchased thru Amazon Books and see if there's any more relevant stuff to include it in the page. —Cesar Tort 15:20, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Re-writing

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Like Cesar, I've re-read the page a bit and I don't think it gives enough credit to the discreditation of the phenomenon. Here I have re-written the lead, and moved and expanded text now in History. There are three sources saying the phenomenon is no longer current. Faller I have read, and it is explicit. Clapton is also explicit, as is Jenkins. Faller and Jenkins in particular are the nails on the coffin as far as I am concerned. Both address the phenomenon as a whole, occur a decade after the demise of the phenomenon, are explicit, are meant to summarize, and are from the most reliable sources available. Faller states that the phenomenon is no longer mainstream, thus provides for the existence of Noblitt's fringe position. Unless there are other reliable sources saying that the SRA phenomenon is ongoing, explicitly says it, not just is published on the topic, the issue is dead. Three sources, all reliable, all explicit, all summarizing the phenomenon as a whole, all after the fact, all agreeing it's dead, means a very reliable and explicit source is required to say otherwise. WLU (talk) 14:18, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Incredibly POV edits - allowing only extremely skeptical points of view while deleting reliable sources

Latest comment: 16 years ago10 comments5 people in discussion

The deletion of this phrase (bold shows section deleted)


is IMO inexcusable. The reason is given only as "so what." The opinion comes from a reliable source. This is an incredibly POV edit.

The deletion of this line


is also inexcusable. This also comes from a reliable source. The excuse is given as "remove ... this has nothing to do with "research"... reporting on the claims of patients before anyone knew what was going on ... hardly accounts for research"

It appears the only "research" that will be allowed is that of extremely skeptical sociologists, ones who have had no real contact with either court cases or survivors of ritual abuse. Even sources published by the APA that differ from this extremist view will not be allowed. The page was once a balance of the research in the field. These POV pushing edits are making the page an extreme skeptical soapbox. ResearchEditor (talk) 06:19, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Again, your insistence that the NPOVing and mainstreaming of the entry is making into a POV soapbox is evidence of your own fringe editing. It isn't acceptable and we will continue to make sure it doesn't infect the page. Regarding your second point, please explain how anything about that information qualifies as "research". Until you do it doesn't belong in that section at the very least. Braun and Sachs have produced no "research" about this and the comment is completely anecdotal. Again, just because you say its so doesn't make it so. You can't just but your POVized head against consensus here and in the academy and expect its going to stick. You have not answered the questions we posed to you above either, about producing a reliable source that still claims there is a valid academic debate here in the first place.PelleSmith (talk) 11:10, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
Braun and Sachs have worked with specific cases, unlike Frankfurter, Victor and LaFontaine. Their data is published in an APA published book. If simply adding data contrary to the extreme skeptical POV is considered "infecting the page" then there is definitely a problem with the editing here. The extreme skeptical writers have been given far too much weight on the page, 3 authors getting nearly 38% of the 127 citations. And there is no consensus, because everyone needs to come to an agreement to have consensus. This has not happened. ResearchEditor (talk) 07:01, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
In the quote you wish to use Braun and Sachs provide NO data. Please review this simply fact and respond to it. You are quoting an anecdotal statement which cannot be considered "data". "Everyone" does not have to come to an agreement, especially not when an SPA pushing fringe theories is around. Those three authors represent the mainstream view and have written some of the most authoritative books on the subject matter. There is nothing UNDUE about using them so often. What is undue is selectively quoting sources that are now considered to back a fringe theory as if they are given equal weight in academia when they are clearly not. For the last time -- provide a recent reliable source that makes the case for there still being a controversy in the academy, because all of our sources say the opposite. It is becoming more clear now that you are editing against core Wikipedia policies, and the persistence of doing so will lead inevitably to more behavioral sanctions. Regards.PelleSmith (talk) 11:01, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
For the love of God, ResearchEditor, NPOV does not mean you get to push your favored sources with a specific POV into every section of the article. The POV you are tryng to represent is a minority one, and the existence of sources from the fringe minority does not mean that those sources are notable. Your whole strategy, as seen on this article and others you edit, is to hunt down sources to support your own view and overload the articles so that they essentially ONLY represent your view. That's a huge violation of WP:NPOV policy, and you know it is because you've been banned in the past for it. You can't just pick and choose sources and use them to advance whatever you want. DreamGuy (talk) 13:30, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
My edits add a balanced view to these article, one that counters the undue weight given the extreme skeptical view given by the editors here. Other editors should not delete or collapse data in an article, simply because it doesn't agree with an extremely skeptical perspective.ResearchEditor (talk) 07:01, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
FALSE. For the last time, what you call "extremely skeptical" is mainstream. Your edits actually violate UNDUE by pushing a fringe position. Simply claiming otherwise doesn't change facts. Provide us with a current source that says otherwise.PelleSmith (talk) 11:03, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

{undent}For one thing, Fraser's description is incorrect, or the version I have corrects this. They are now cited to pages 330-354. Victor only includes the rumours which are credible, in which a source can be identified. He gives the source, the date, the location, a brief summary and the evidence for the rumour. I've qualified more since these are rumours he is tracking down, and added court cases. I've also included allegations from Canada, which brings the total up to 67. The actual statement from P. 107-8 of Fraser is:

Please tell me how this paragraph can be interpreted as anything except "there has been no evidence of SRA found, but lots of rumors". The main thrust of that paragraph is not that Victor's discussion is not credible, it's found in the statement "Instead, they believe that SRA develops as a rumor or folk legend whose spread is feuled by media hype, Christian fundamentalism, mental health and law enforcement professionals, and child abuse advocates". Taking the point that Victor's review was cursory in the pejorative sense is the worst sort of quote mining, particularly since Fraser's summary of the evidence points towards an extremely skeptical approach. Fraser's statement that Victor is 'cursory' is regretful - Fraser wishes there were more details describing how the rumours started (BTW, I keep alternating "rumors" with "rumours". I'm not even sure which one is correct per WP:ENGVAR; for that matter, I'm not even sure if "-our" is a Canadianism in this case).

One thing became extremely apparent as I read that section of Fraser for a couple pages. It's an excellent skeptical source that should be represented more. ResearchEditor, I'll direct this one to you. Why, despite a rather lengthy and detailed skeptical section in Fraser, a reference I believe you added and respect, is your only use of the book to insert an illegitemate criticism of Victor's review? I can add probably three more citations about three different ways the SRA phenomenon is bunk from this book section alone, yet none of those are already in the page. Pelle, Cesar, DreamGuy, please review the pages available in the book as they are quite interesting and I've already added 14 revisions of expansion and have real-life stuff to get to.

So to directly reply, removing the criticism of Victor is not violating NPOV, it's a removal of a quote-mined selection which mis-interprets Fraser's analysis of Victor quite badly. I've already discussed this by the way (Talk:Satanic_ritual_abuse/Archive_6#more_POV_edits). In addition, it actually is possible to tell what happened from Victor's description - nothing. No charges were laid, no evidence found. I don't know what info Fraser is working off of, perhaps he missed appendix IV of Victor '93. My edit summary of "so what" is based on the analysis I made on June 27th, as well as a re-reading of Victor's summary of the 67 cases and Fraser's acutal intent in describing the review as "cursory". Braun and Sachs are probably the earliest discussions of SRA and DID, the date is from 1986, before any critical literature existed, and before any discussion of the potential for dissociation and leading therapy techniques to result in false allegations arose. There are many sources which discuss that testimony from patients is not evidence and are in fact discredited. Coming from a reliable source is not a reason to include every reference to SRA, particularly one this early - will we cite Michelle Remembers next? At best, AT BEST all the cases where there have been testimonials from patients could be combined into a single line stating "Several therapists have reported their patients alleging SRA". Which would lead into the several other researchers who have found that testimonials are often contaminated, patients are often dissociative and prone to fantasy, possibly Noblitt's reversal of cause and effect (i.e. DID and dissociation causes memories of SRA, SRA does not create DID), the lack of forensic evidence despite reports to police, etc. We could even feed in the fact that the believers are pretty much only religious fundamentalists, child advocates and therapists, and how the sources of the allegations are only coerced children and recovered memories.

Incidentally, RE if you are really dedicated to NPOV as you believe yourself to be, you can add the criticisms summarized by Fraser 107-111 (which covers Goodman's studies by the way, which are summarized in MTT&L, which are also critical, which are also not yet integrated). There is a very large volume of critical information which can still be integrated, which I have right now and have not added because of time limitations. I find less and less reason to be patient when you ResearchEditor, have access to the sources, which are indeed critical, but you are not adding them. I have avoided commenting for a long, long time on your own approach but now I am doing so - your use of sources misrepresents them, ignores those that have critical commentary (praising MTT&L and not using it's critical perspectives is particularly egregious) then proclaiming the page is POV would be laughable were it not so frustrating. You have no points in your section and are consistently shoehorning your own perspective on SRA in a way that abuses the sources. WLU (talk) 15:36, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

My edits of MTT&L's overall view were unbiased. I presented both sides of theirs as accurately as I could. Many parts of Fraser's book could be used. I was not the original editor that placed it in the article, but I believe the data replying to Victor should stay. If the article is basically going to be about "panic" then at least a couple of lines should be allowed to rebut this theory.
The edits lately to the article have only been to promote "panic" theory, yet there is a great deal of data that contradicts this theory and this data should be allowed to be presented and stay in the article. The slant and number of these extremely skeptical edits violates WP:UNDUE. ResearchEditor (talk) 07:01, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Research editor: I am truly amazed. After the long post by WLU demonstrating that the source has been abused, you simply restored your sentence—:

Yet this review has been described as cursory and it is impossible to tell from his description what actually occurred at the locations discussed.<ref. name = Fraser/>

—and your reason for doing it was: "but I believe the data replying to Victor should stay", totally ignoring the substance of WLU's argument!

There's no question about it: your multiple edits will be reverted. —Cesar Tort 08:06, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Lead

Latest comment: 16 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion

Regards this edit, LaFontaine backs this up, as does Lanning, MTT&L, Clapton, Putnam, Victor, Frankfurter in the most recent summary of SRA to date (2006), the report from Utah, Goleman citing Bottoms, Shaver and Goodman, and the report of the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (possibly BS&G). Since this is discussed at length in the body of the article, there is no requirement of a citation in the lead. The Hossana Church trial does not refute this because for one, I don't believe the charge was one of SRA, and for two, the trial is not done and the details sparse. I don't think the Hosanna case alone, reported in newspapers, can discredit all previous investigations. The edit summary was "court cases like the recent Hammond LA case show this to be false" - there are no other court cases "like" Hammond/Hosanna church. McMartin was thrown out, the other US allegations were also considered problematic, suspect, or simply pseudosatanism. An analysis by someone aware of the SRA phenomenon is required before we can put in the lead the idea that one case disproves all previous analysis, or remove a well-referenced statement from the lead based on this idea. The courts have yet to determine if Hosanna was the result of a lone nut, a satan-worshipping nut, a pedophile with a bunch of nut fullowers, or the result of an intergenerational satanic cult. Until it's reported in something better than newspapers, something that explicitly links it to the SRA phenomenon of the 90s, it's WP:UNDUE to say this one case discredits all the scholarly analysis to date. WLU (talk) 16:37, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Several trials have backed up the fact that this isn't true. IMO, the statement needs to be qualified.ResearchEditor (talk) 06:41, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm sorry, in which cases were the defendants prosecuted for satanic ritual abuse? WLU (talk) 16:38, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
I agree with your recent edit summary that "satanism has little to do with SRA." Take a look at my proposal to move the other article. —Cesar Tort 19:28, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
I already moved the article "Ritualized child abuse" to "Religious abuse": a far larger and, unlike the article I created, uncontested subject. —Cesar Tort 04:41, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Karnac books

Latest comment: 16 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion

Seeking an opinion on Karnac books. This is in regards to this reference, now moved here and collapsed with another reference to Sachs. This is yet another example of "patient testimonials = truth", which is inappropriate, particularly given the links between SRA and DID and dissociation and recovered memory and suggestability of DID patients. Surveys and statements by patients alleging SRA proves nothing. WLU (talk) 16:37, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Hard for me to give any advise here. I've only got a single Karnac book in my library (a deMause's one, BTW). —Cesar Tort 19:31, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
I've an inkling that it'll be reliable. It's basically a regurgitation of the old "believe the children/people in therapy", the only thing to distinguish it is its date and publisher. A new publication in a low-value publisher would be yet more evidence that the idea is fringe. WLU (talk) 20:51, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
Yet the "Satanic panic" idea is simply a repeat of the old 1990's idea. What the edit above fails to mention is that the DSM also states that reports of DID are often confirmed by objective evidence and people responsible for these acts might be prone to distort or deny their behavior." ResearchEditor (talk) 07:07, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Wrong. "Satanic panic" was a 90's idea. Now that it's not the 90's, it's a fringe position that only a minority have. WLU (talk) 11:01, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

recent edit

Latest comment: 16 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion

Hi WLU. I see that you removed a couple of phrases. Your edit summary: "just seems unnecessary and sets of OR alarm bells by reading it; wording adjustments, citation templates, adding Clapton." I think I can add Frankfurter citations to "...now permeating the American psyche" and to "Thus by the late 1980s the therapists' recognition of SRA lead to the acceptance of the phenomenon by a segment of the society" so that they won't look OR.

Also, why removing the title of Victor's chapter: "Construction of Satanic Ritual Abuse and the Creation of False Memories"? I've got a better template for an article in a book. As far as I understand, the title of articles ought to be mentioned. —Cesar Tort 15:28, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

If you can reference the "permeation", that's OK but I wonder how necessary it is, how much it adds, and how much it truly permeated the American psyche. Victor states that the SRA panics were not much attended to in the larger cities and I don't know how much McMartin was seen as a SRA case (Abuse of Innocence hasn't mentioned it much so far). Though much of my spare time and psyche invoves SRA, I think it's a bit strong to say it permeated. Though I'll be over-ruled if you can find a second citation. Also, watch the use of "Thus", which presents a conclusion. It looks like both a synthesis and an essay. It may be an artifact of the sentence or my own reading. It's not in words to avoid but I'd still be leery of using it.
For me the book that it is published in is the most important thing to make clear with page numbers a close second; find the book, know the page, and the chapter is more or less irrelevant in my opinion. I've always hated including chapter titles in the {{cite book}} and other templates - if the overall purpose of the reference is to provide the reader with an indication of where it came from, then a page numbers always made more sense to me. That being said, WP:CIT doesn't mention chapters but Template:Cite book does have an argument for it. After a bit of work, {{cite book}} with chapter = Chapter title and editor = Editor name produces the standard citation template with "Chapter title", in Editor name, so I guess I have no point. Citing chapters is always a pain in the ass. WLU (talk) 16:16, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
It looks that I misremembered what Frankfurter actually wrote (already corrected it in article).
What about this citation template?
| last = Victor
| first = Jeffrey 
 | author-link = 
 | contribution = Construction of Satanic Ritual Abuse and the Creation of False Memories
 | editor-last = De Rivera
 | editor-first = Joseph & Theodore Sarbin (eds.)
 | title = Believed-In-Imaginings: The Narrative Construction of Reality
 | volume = 
 | pages = 
 | publisher = American Psychological Association
 | place = Washington, D.C.
 | year = 1998}
—Cesar Tort 16:52, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
Meh, now that I'm aware of the chapter argument in {{cite book}} I'm inclined to just use that. The problem is a simple cite book requires editor/author, ISBN, title, publisher, and year, which are all generally easy to find. When adding a chapter, you need the chapter title, the chapter pages, the editor of the volume PLUS the author of the chapter, as well as all the above information; to enforce a universal standard makes it a lot harder to harmonize the citation templates and some of the info will be hard to get, without necessarily adding a lot of usefulness. Still, if you've got it you might as well put it in. The above template produces the following template:

Victor, Jeffrey (1998). "Construction of Satanic Ritual Abuse and the Creation of False Memories". In De Rivera, Joseph & Theodore Sarbin (eds.) (ed.). Believed-In-Imaginings: The Narrative Construction of Reality. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. {{cite book}}: |editor-first= has generic name (help)

You can see that the contribution (chapter) title, editors and location hasn't appeared. Change it to
| last = Victor
| first = Jeffrey 
 | author-link = 
 | chapter = Construction of Satanic Ritual Abuse and the Creation of False Memories
 | editor = De Rivera J & Sarbin T (eds.)
 | title = Believed-In-Imaginings: The Narrative Construction of Reality
 | volume = 
 | pages = 
 | publisher = American Psychological Association
 | location = Washington, D.C.
 | year = 1998
and you get:

Victor, Jeffrey (1998). "Construction of Satanic Ritual Abuse and the Creation of False Memories". In De Rivera J & Sarbin T (eds.) (ed.). Believed-In-Imaginings: The Narrative Construction of Reality. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)

Still missing page numbers and ISBN, but this way you can at least see the full author, chapter title, volume title, editors and location. I still argue that page numbers would be more useful, but if you're going to take this approach you might as well get the best out of it. ISBN and page nubmers strike me as more useful than chapter titles, and the cite book rather than {{citation}} (what I think you're trying to use) forces them as an argument (and diberri will generate the template for you with the ISBN). WLU (talk) 18:39, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
ok, I'll leave it as it is. It's not big deal after all. —Cesar Tort 19:29, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Obscure prose

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I made this section—:

Daycare cases reported as ritual abuse, when compared to those without allegations of ritual abuse, tend to have more perpetrators, sexual contact, a higher number of victims, greater severity of abuse, more types of abuse and greater impacts on the children's behavior;[1] in cases where SRA is alleged children and adults demonstrate high levels of traumatization and long-term behavioral effects.

—to look invisible for the moment since it needs rewriting in clearer prose. —Cesar Tort 03:04, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Undue weight given three extremely skeptical authors

Latest comment: 16 years ago16 comments5 people in discussion

Below see the data on this.

Frankfurter 11

Victor 24

LaFontaine 13

48 out of 127 citations (almost 38%) have been given to three authors, all extremely skeptical about the existence of SRA. This violates WP:UNDUE. If this extremely skeptical point of view is so popular in the field, then why does the article need to cite only three authors so many times. The answer could be that "panic theory" is being given undue weight in the article. ResearchEditor (talk) 07:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Again, you are the one who is not answering the question, asked several times to you, to provide sources of this century which say that the debate is going on in academic circles. Also, among your multiple edits, without requesting citation[citation needed] you have simply removed the sentence—:

During the height of the recovered memory controversy of the early 1990s, SRA figured as an example of the horrors that psychotherapists could retrieve through various techniques.

I recetly added that sentence and can source it.
Your edits will have to be reverted once more. You have been told several times to ask for comment before making multiple changes per the AT unblock. You must "discuss major changes before making them". —Cesar Tort 07:52, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia guidelines apply the same to me as they do to anyone else. As I have previously stated the unblock simply states to follow policy, which I have. If I need to ask for comment on my edits, then all editors do. The quote you mention above had no source. I deleted it as OR. Please provide a source for it. Many of my additions are simply deleted, even when they are from reliable sources. ResearchEditor (talk) 07:58, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
You are supposed to wait and see for, say, a couple of months after you add a citation tag before deleting the content. —Cesar Tort 08:04, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
I have never heard of the above. Please cite the wiki guideline. ResearchEditor (talk) 06:31, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Good God, RE, that's not how WP:UNDUE weight works. UNdue weight is for minority positions being advanced more than they should be. The cites you are complaining about is NOT the minority position. The crazy obscure sources from insignificant and highly disputed minor individuals you come up with are the ones pushing undue weight. DreamGuy (talk) 12:17, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

The policy of undue weight is much more complex than how DG describes it above. "NPOV says that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each." There has been no evidence presented that there is a majority position. Actually there are many peer reviewed journal articles on both sides of the issue. Victor's prominence is not equal to 1/5 of the field or more. He should not be cited that many times. And the refs I cite are often well known in the field. ResearchEditor (talk) 06:31, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
My comments are this:
  1. Asserting that there are 'too many' is stupid. If you are going to complain about citations form each scholar, look at each citation, what it is citing, what the text is saying, then make a case for why that citation is a) incorrect b) inadequate c) misrepresentive of the scholarly consensus or d) undue weight. Arguments based on pure number are STUPID AND NONSENSICAL so please stop making them. What would you have us do, remove a specific percent of them at random? Even if weight were given to the idea that there are just too many, that does not help us decide which should be removed.
  2. If it is undue weight, then per that policy, it should be easy to demonstrate that SRA as a moral panic is undue weight by adding references - balance the undue weight on skepticism by finding and sourcing a similar or greater number of reference of equal scholarly merit that indicate SRA is taken seriously as a current problem. If you can not do so, then that suggests quite clearly to me that skepticism is the majority opinion, not the minority. WP:UNDUE says "If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts". THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HAS HAPPENED ON THIS PAGE. I literally can not place more emphasis on that. If there are so many freaking great references that think kids are being killed, eaten and locked in boxes to produce dissociative alters for the purposes of murder and prostitution, put your sources where your mouth is and put them on the page. Not some crappy, wishy-washy BS about how one guy treated a bunch of people with DID who also alleged SRA. Statements where unequivocal proof has been found, where police officers have arrested people for actual intergenerational murder and cannibalism, scholars who have reviewed evidence other than testimony from children and patients. Even if a significant minority hold this viewpoint, it should be possible to find them published in mainstream sources. I don't think you will because I don't think they exist. I still have many sources that I could add to the page and each one I read adds more, and all of it is skeptical. If the credulous position has any weight, you should be able to do the same. If you can't, then that is very clearly an indication that the credulous position is shit and has been thoroughly rejected.
  3. Find me a policy that says there can only be a certain percentage, a certain number, a limitation in terms of quantity of the number of times a source can be cited. Sources are used as appropriate, not restricted for arbitrary reasons.
  4. My good faith is done and my civility is on the way out. I'm sick of repeating the same arguments and I'm sick of you recycling the same objections. They do not have weight, obviously. I was willing to give SRA some credibility until I actually started reading. If you have no new argument to present, if you're just going to insist on repeating "it's POV and undue weight", go to a message board. Go to Wikipedia Review. Go complain to Jimbo. File an arb complaint, post on a noticeboard, but just quit with the repetition. It wastes my time. WLU (talk) 14:42, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

You contradict yourself frequently in this melodramatic over-reaction, WLU.

If an "argument by numbers" is stupid, then why did you write a list of post-2000 publications, and then count them, as proof of academic consensus?

You demand that RE supply "unequivocal proof" of SRA, and yet two of your favorite sources (Victor and Frankfurter) are purely theoretical works. Why do you require such a low burden of proof from yourself, and such a high one from RE?

You call clinical accounts of treating RA patients "wishy-washy BS", and yet clinical accounts are a crucial part of psychological and psychiatric literature, and they always have been. Are you simply cleaving off a significant body of scientific literature because it contradicts your POV?

I would be crucified if I went through a select group of credible, peer-reviewed sources that took SRA seriously, and ammended this article accordingly, entrenching that POV in sentence by sentence. I would be flayed alive. And yet you've done exactly this for the sceptical team, and when RE raised his concerns quite validly, and politely, you flamed him.

You sound like a bully, WLU. If you can't work with other editors here, don't invent excuses. Take some time on the bench. And try putting into practice the same standards you demand of others. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 03:22, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

In reply to WLU, "in proportion to the prominence of each" basically states what I am saying. Using three authors (in this case skeptics) for over 1/3 of the citations in the article totally violates this principle. Argument on pure number are the whole point of the undue weight argument. The excuses in your edit for not wanting to follow AGF and WP:CIVIL are poor ones. The whole point of these policies to ensure an environment on wikipedia where people can work on editing without attack. If an editor read all of the sources on the SRA topic, then an editor would have a balanced view of the topic. ResearchEditor (talk) 06:31, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
As to civility, take a look at PS's posts below: I believe he hit the nail. And you still have not answered the thrust of WLU's argument. I'll merely paste here his above words: If it is undue weight, then per that policy, it should be easy to demonstrate that SRA as a moral panic is undue weight by adding references. Of course, we refer to this century's refs. —Cesar Tort 06:45, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
I have, and they were basically deleted. But yet many of the skeptical refs on the page are from the 90's. Should we delete those too? I counted 92. That's a lot. Perhaps a violation of WP:UNDUE. ResearchEditor (talk) 07:24, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
"If an "argument by numbers" is stupid, then why did you write a list of post-2000 publications, and then count them, as proof of academic consensus?" - I didn't, and the whole time that discussion has been ongoing I have said I thought it unhelpful.
"You demand that RE supply "unequivocal proof" of SRA, and yet two of your favorite sources (Victor and Frankfurter) are purely theoretical works." LaFontaine is not theoretical, and neither is Bottoms, Shaver & Goodman, 1996, both of which actually investigated SRA allegations and found only pseudosatanism. Coons investigated 29 cases reported in therapy and found nada, despite being reported to the police. Victor has a section in which he investigates 67 rumours of satanic ritual abuse and found them lacking. Frankfurter and Victor are useful because they are broad overviews of the topic, as is de Young, which I will add as soon as I've a chance to read it. La Fontaine is also a broad overview for the UK. Frankfurter is also the most recent broad overview, published in 2006.
"You call clinical accounts of treating RA patients "wishy-washy BS", and yet clinical accounts are a crucial part of psychological and psychiatric literature, and they always have been. Are you simply cleaving off a significant body of scientific literature because it contradicts your POV?" Clinical accounts prove that the therapists believe their clients, not that SRA exists. Further, surveys of said therapists indicate a skewed distribution of accounts - a minority find the majority. Accounts saying "my client was SRA (but never reported it to the police)" could at best be lumped into a single sentence. These accounts are not proof.
RE has raised the same concerns, again and again, and apparently refused to read my counter-points. Hence my "melodramatic over-reaction". RE has been broken-recording the same spurious objections, and apparently has not bothered to read or address the substance of my replies. I have politely been raising my objections for months, and RE has ignored them. So I'm done being polite. If there are credible references that address the SRA phenomenon in the same broad way as Frankfurter, Victor, deYoung, LaFontaine, Nathan and Snedeker (which I haven't even read yet), Edge and Clapton, I haven't seen them. If it's a minority position, it should be easy to produce works which are scholarly, and address the credulous position in a broad way. I've yet to see it. If you have some, produce them.
As to RE's point that there are 92 references from before 1990 - we could write the page purely on the basis of Frankfurter and De Young if you'd like. The credulous position of SRA is the minority fringe position, there are three references that explicitly state this and a whole bunch more that contributed towards this. WLU (talk) 10:59, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
The problem is that no matter how many nonskeptical sources are produced, your edits continue to ignore and delete them. It is incredible, but not surprising that your edit above would suggest writing the paper based on two authors, both extremely skeptical. It shows how weak the extreme skeptical position is. ResearchEditor (talk) 03:58, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

WLU, for all of the "sceptic" sources that you quote, there are critiques and other studies which dispute their findings. The article should accurately reflect this, but it does not, and your edits are primarily responsible. You told me once that we have to acknowledge the existence of other sources, even if we don't like them, but since then you've forgotten your own advice, and increasingly lost your cool.

Simply because you have them to hand, you have entrenched a narrow range of sources in this article, and you have frequently misrepresented that author's opinions as fact.

You have dismissed or minimised the range of views in the literature, labelling any source or editor that contridicts your preferred source (and POV) in a pejorative manner.

You have consistently applied a differentially high burden of proof for "non-sceptic" sources (e.g. "unequivocal") in comparison to sources that you agree with.

"Non-sceptic" sources are frequently being struck out, watered down or minimised on the most spurious of grounds (e.g. the publishing house, the age of the source, the findings have been questioned, etc) whilst "sceptic" sources that fail to meet the same criteria remain.

Your position on the value of clinical vignettes ("only proves that therapists belive their clients") is a personal one, and it is not WP policy. You have no basis on which to strike out such a significant body of work.

If there are credible references that address the SRA phenomenon in the same broad way as Frankfurter, Victor, deYoung, LaFontaine, Nathan and Snedeker (which I haven't even read yet), Edge and Clapton, I haven't seen them.

Actually WLU, you just haven't read them, even though you've been supplied with ample references, and where you have read empirically based accounts of ritual abuse (e.g. in Bibby 1996) you've forgotten them very quickly.

You asked RE for "unequivocal evidence" for his opinions, although you don't require such evidence for your own. I'll provide you with a quote from McLeod and Goddard (2005) that I think is relevant:

Perhaps the most damaging impact on the credibility of ritual abuse accounts was the growing pre-eminence of the legal perspective. Increasingly, accounts of organised ritual abuse were submitted to the proof requirements of criminal law and this was accepted as the measure of validity. The knowledge base of other professions was discounted as precedence was granted to the perspective of law enforcement. In consequence, professional assocations withdrew their support and workers in the field of organised ritual abuse were subject to professional opprobrium, media harrasment and the ever-present risk of legal reprisal. Where aspects of organised ritual abuse existed in criminal cases, these were not included in the prosecution case for fear of prejudicing the outcome (Goddard 1994, Ross 1995)> Where cases whcih contained most of the features of organised ritual abuse were successfully prosecuted, they were not reported as such (Tate 1994, Noblitt and Perskin 2000, Scott 2001).

As I mention below, McLeod and Goddard note their concern over "the lack of scholarship evident in much of the writing disputing the occurence of organised ritual abuse", which they describe as based upon an underlying assumption that "such accounts are unacceptable on prima faci grounds", and the "demonstratably false proposition" that no evidence of organied ritual practices have been uncovered in police investigations. They also note that that what they call the "oppositional literature" on ritual abuse has preferred to use the term "satanic ritual abuse" because it is emotive, narrow, and prone to misrepresentation.

Sadly, you've become so dogmatic that I don't expect you to take this on board. Your increasingly bullying and POV editing style has unfortunately emboldened some already problematic editors, and created an environment where only one POV is permitted, and it is an extreme and unrepresentative one at that. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 02:39, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Ritual abuse and satanic ritual abuse are different things. Ritual abuse has numerous meanings, including SRA, psychological pathological abuse, repetitive rituals which increase the sexual gratification of the abuser and abuse within non-satanic religious rituals (ie. exorcisms suffocating children) as well as pseudosatanism in which the supernatural is used to frighten children (LaFontaine found several examples, so did Finkelhor I believe, both of which were actual investigations rather than therapy sessions). Satanic ritual abuse, which is the title of the page, discusses extreme allegations in which baby-breeding, cannibalism, human sacrifice and copro/uro/haemophagia occured, generally allegations squeezed out of children by pathological questioning techniques, and also by believing psychotherapists using questionable, and now discredited "memory" recovery techniques. SRA has been discredited and the focus moved on to ritual abuse, for which there is actual proof. Ritual abuse continues to be a minority of allegations of child sexual abuse, with the majority being incestuous abuse of children by their adult, generally male relatives. Ritual abuse is not the focus of the page.
If there are criticisms of the skeptical literature published in reliable sources, present them. Kent was subjected to scathing rebuttals published in multiple journals, Noblitt and Perskin's efforts were also cuttingly reviewed and called out for ignoring all the skeptical literature. I don't believe a simlar criticism of Frankfurter, Victor, La Fontaine, de Young, Goodman, Qin, Bottoms & Shaver have been presented in reliable sources. I also don't believe I've seen any document published after 2003 which explicitly states that SRA is an ongiong concern (though there have been documents discussing ritual abuse). Definitions are important, very much so, and to claim that charges for pseudosatanic child abuse are proof of satanic ritual abuse (baby breeding and eating, etc) is incorrect.
Which part of Bibby am I mis-reading or mis-using? Please provide a page number and we can discuss. Bibby is frustratingly vague on satanic ritual abuse; La Fontaine is explicit about 3 cases of pseudosatanism. Gallageher, Hughes & Parker, chapter 16, defined ritual abuse as a case in which there have been allegations of ritual asociated with the abuse and did not analyze if the suspicions were taken to the legal system. "Ritual" is unrefined and per GH&P, could include ceremonies or trappings of the occult, witchcraft or satanism, could be part of a belief system or behavior designed to facilitate the abuse, some used the term in the psychological sense (i.e. OCD). These were 29% of a sample of 211 cases of organized abuse recorded, and by the definition, it's quite a grab bag, to the point of being useless for this article - I tried to integrate but couldn't think of a place to include "a mail survey in Britain found evidence of ritual abuse when ritual abuse is defined as involving ceremonies or trappings of the occult, witchcraft or satanism, or part of a belief system or behavior designed to facilitate the abuse or psychological-obsessive rituals" particularly when it does not break down how many are of each type. Many sources say "ritual" is a poor term because it is fuzzy (and because it is tainted with associations to SRA); I wouldn't mind that in the article.
I could see incorporating McLeod & Goddard into the article in a way that indicates cases successfully prosecuted often or downplayed the ritual abuse allegations, as well as statements that ritual abuse allegations were sidelined by mainstream organizations. Otherwise I read that paragraph as "when subject to the degree of proof required by the legal system and not simply assertions by clients and therapists, cases failed as there was insufficient proof." The mere claims of therapists and social workers that abuse occurs was not enough, and for any legal system this makes sense. To me M&G is yet more evidence that SRA is not taken seriously; they disagree, that's fine. There is a place for minority discussions, but it must be shown as the minority, because it is. M&G publishing in an obscure journal in Australia, Noblitt self-publishing his latest book, the most recent 'journal' discussing SRA being "Treating Abuse Today", this points to my belief that the mainstream discussion of SRA is over. There's nothing in high-impact journals, and the books by significant scholarly publishing houses are skeptical or historical. I've looked into sources provided, there's few and they're old. Having a couple sources published after the phenomenon has passed, published in low-impact journals and vanity press does not mean we use those to write the new article; it means the phenomenon is fringe and accordingly more weight should go towards what mainstream sources still exist - that would be Frankfurter, 2006, De YounG, 2004 and similar publications that approach it as a historical phenomenon. WLU (talk) 17:08, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Kent

Latest comment: 16 years ago11 comments6 people in discussion

In this edit RE removes criticisms of Kent. This is stupid. The majority position is that SRA is bunk, and here are two major authors in the field, specialists in the study of human historical behavior (religion and anthropology) addressing someone publishing outside of their specialty (Kent is a sociologist) on a fringe topic. As I said before (search for "zero"), if Kent is going to be cited, the rebuttals that are made in the same journal are required to balance out any weight given to his opinion. The replies to Kent are detailed, noteworthy, made by credible experts, and certainly require inclusion to demonstrate the absurdity of his position and to avoid undue weight. We could take Kent out, since really he adds nothing, but I would still include the idea that the material of the allegations are almost certainly easy to cobble together from a variety of sources. Kent is apparently an idiot and his arguments are obviously bad, and this is demonstrated. That the journals published rebuttals from two authors, and rebuttals of his rebuttal is an indication that Kent is in a minority position and the replies from recognized scholars should accordingly be given the appropriate weight. WLU (talk) 12:32, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Agree 100% with WLU above. Context is everything. Either don't include it at all, or put it in its context. If Kent is a reliable source worth mentioning, then the other sources disputing him are equally reliable and not including them totally slants the perspective. We can't have all these cites to extreme minority views masquerading as the only views out there. It's the complete opposite of what WP:NPOV policy is all about. DreamGuy (talk) 14:21, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

WLU's edit has an interesting argument above: "Kent is apparently an idiot." The Kent section as it stood was absurd. It had one line from him and then the entire section criticized him, obviously extremely unbalanced. Kent did publish at least three peer reviewed journal articles on the topic. And he is well known in Canada for his work. WLU's edits have set up a biased debate, making sure that every topic and every source that does not fit the extreme skeptical perspective are eliminated from the page and attacked on the talk page, while all of the extremely skeptical authors are perfect and cannot be questioned and can be cited up to as many times as his edits would like to cite them, violating the principle of WP:UNDUE.ResearchEditor (talk) 07:02, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Kent is well known in North America for pushing fringe positions about all kinds of alleged "cult" activity. Is that what you meant RE? Regards.PelleSmith (talk) 18:47, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Kent is known in North America for taking on the Scientologists. Is this what your edit above means by "alleged?" ResearchEditor (talk) 04:05, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
Don't bold-type us please: it makes for very bad reading. —Cesar Tort 06:49, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. I was just removing the bold as you mentioned this. ResearchEditor (talk) 07:02, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
You may notice that "Kent is an idiot" was not the entirety of my argument. Kent's assemblage of purported sources for the allegations by the people he interviews is absurd. What do Mormonism, Freemasonry, Ancient Egyptian religions, fertility rites and Christianity have to do with each other? Mormons and Christians both believe in Jesus, Freemasons have to be monotheistic, but that's about it. But I did not remove on the basis of that, I removed pending a better location. Also, I did not include in the main page the statement "Kent is an idiot" - my action was to find, and source, criticisms of Kent's assemblage of prima facie ridiculous cobbling together of completely unrelated rituals and belief systems. I didn't have to make the point because Frankfurter and La Fontaine do it. It is, in my experience, very easy to find criticisms of most of the arguments made by the credulous authors. For every point there seems to be a rebuttal from skeptical authors in reliable sources, and this is not matched by a rebuttal from the credulous side. Kent can go in the page, if an appropriate spot can be found, but he will be accompanied by the criticisms, of which there are many.
Also, you can question the skeptical sources, if you can provide good reason beyond "there's too many", which I have pointed out is not an argument. Either you are not looking for criticisms of the skeptical sources, or they do not exist. WLU (talk) 19:53, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
There are too many. Period. Your edits seem to not understand the basic concept of proportionality WP:UNDUE. In a field with hundreds of researchers, an encyclopedic version of an article should not be built on three extremist skeptical researchers (38% of the citations). Nor should 92 citations be from the 1990's skeptical authors, since skeptical editors have stated that we should focus on the last ten years. ResearchEditor (talk) 04:05, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
WLU, the only "credulous" sources that you are aware of are the ones that you've read about in the "incredulous" sources. Not exactly an objective overview.
As for your insistence that every "credulous" source must be critiqued by an "incredulous" source, I presume you won't object to the critiques of the "incredulous" sources provided by Noblitt and Perskin, Scott, McLeod and Goddard, et al? --Biaothanatoi (talk) 03:19, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

{undent} Who is the "et al." and should they be given due weight? What does N&P say about Victor, Frankfurter and Fontaine? Noblitt echoes ResearchEditor's mis-interpretation of Coons' "cursory" point. That's it. LaFontaine is mentioned once, with the statement "Neither found any evidence of such a satanic conspiracy." Scott is allowable, what do you want to say? She criticizes Victor for extrapolating from his study of Jamestown to a national scope, a wishy-washy statement about his failure to take into account different perspectives (why would he, he approaches it as a rumour panic) and for blaming the poor as well as the feminists and therapists which Scott sees as a contradiction. Scott doesn't mention Frankfurter at all. Scott talks about La Fontaine, and how she appropriately splits ritual abuse from SRA. Scott also points out that La Fontaine declares SRA by definition "unsubstantiated" - presumably because the SRA cases were, in fact, unsubstantiated as what La Fontaine refers to as SRA is cases of baby-eating, baby breeding satanic worship. I've read La Fontaine in part, and LF does discuss 3 substantiated cases of pseudosatanism, in which the abuse occurred, but the ritual was secondary to the abuse (a cover or intimidation) and per La Fontaine's discussion and definition, that is appropriate. Since I don't have McLeod & Goddard, I don't know what they say about Victor, Frankfurter or Fontaine. WLU (talk) 20:48, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

placing F's references in different format

Latest comment: 16 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I see that references of Frankfurter's book are being changed to a different format. Be careful to remove the "p. 2" which appears in ref. #9. Otherwise readers might believe that the whole dozen citations or so to Frankfurter's book refer to a single page! (when I added that page, I was referring only about TV broadcasts on SRA). —Cesar Tort 18:14, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm trying to keep them straight, but History is in dire need of a re-work followed by a proof-read. Please keep that in mind as a speicific concern, if I wasn't the one who added the ref I'm less certain (and if it was me and more than a week ago, I've probably forgotten where I got it and why I added it). WLU (talk) 18:20, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
I see. If you are going to place references in that way, we must do it properly. Take a look at this article I've been editing. Those guys on Mesoamerica subjects are really good and have already gotten several FA articles. They're a good example for referencing (Harvard style or whichever academic style). —Cesar Tort 18:27, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Well I'm exhausted

Latest comment: 16 years ago15 comments5 people in discussion

I've done a middling review, reorganization, rework and rewrite of much of the page. I haven't touched DID yet, my sources haven't really dealt with it in detail. The page places much more emphasis on skepticisms as is proper per WP:UNDUE. I tried to keep what I could but some stuff was dropped - my edit summaries usually indicate if I took something out outright. I expect ResearchEditor to complain. My response is - source it. Find a reliable source that verifies the credulous stuff.

What the hell is that section on Stephen Kent doing there? That's just his opinion and its way too long. I'm putting it here until we're decided.

Stephen Kent has attributed the alleged rituals reported by his patients to a religious, anti-Christian framework that could have been used by alleged intergenerational satanists to justify their actions.[2] Jean La Fontaine has criticized this approach for relying on the accounts of a small number of alleged survivors whose allegations have resulted in no prosecution despite the police being informed in the majority of the cases. La Fontaine goes on to state that there are numerous sources for the allegations besides scripture, including "fundamentalist literature or preaching, the mass media, horror films and magazines as well as the effects of certain forms of therapy or the stories of other survivors" and that it is not well founded to consider the statements by survivors as proof of SRA. The criticism goes on to state that Kent's failure to consider origins other than scripture was either "an academic weakness" or an indication that Kent had accepted the truth of the allegations in advance of a search for explanations.[3] La Fontaine has also pointed out that while ethically testimony from patient informants should be treated with respect, it should not be accepted as literal truth as the credibility of research in social sciences rests on intellectual probity and sound methods rather than an abdication of reasoning in favour of advocating for emotional testimonies of individuals percieved as credible. La Fontaine finishes his discussion with a belief that Kent's work was advocacy rather than research.[4] David Frankfurter also pointed out that Kent's approach is "simplistic" and fails to acknowledge the debate over recovered memory therapy and recovered memories in general within psychology, and as well as the skeptical arguments presented by law enforcement officials, journalists, and psychologists. Frankfurter goes on to state that Kent's process seemed to be assuming that the rituals alleged actually existed, then seeking any confirmation he could find within a variety of sources, including Freemasonry, Judaism, Mormonism, the writings of Aleister Crowley, fertility cults and ancient Egyptian religion. Frankfurter points out that the sources used by Kent regarding Freemasonry are outdated and sensationalistic and refers to the entire process as "an exercise of the imagination" rather than an academic discussion.[5] Frankfurter points out that a similar method was used to justify allegations of blood libel in Europe. Other failings pointed out by Frankfurter include a failure to acknowledge the nature or context of the SRA conspiracy theory writings, and a lack of a trained research psychologist's perspective on the function of a patient's stories.[5]

I managed to knock off 3k worth of text. I feel proud. WLU (talk) 20:01, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll read this edited version of article. My only objection for the moment is that it sells Loftus as "the scientific" pov in a hotly disputed academic topic. Make no mistakes. I've defended Loftus off the wiki. But here we need a bit more balance in a subject that is still unresolved in the academia. —Cesar Tort 20:16, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
I've already read it. It's good that the links to the main articles on Michele Remembers and McMartin are cited at the top of that section. Also, the fact that "SRA resulted in a large loss of credibility to the profession" (child rights advocates, as cited in the Legacy section) ought to be considered among those editors who want to push SRA as a genuine form of child abuse. —Cesar Tort 23:11, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
I don't recall adding Loftus, but that doesn't mean it's not there. I've read barely anything by Loftus so I haven't added anything by her; I know recovered memory isn't the be-all and end-all of SRA allegations, but I do think it needs to be expanded some more. The whole recovered memory debate is a mess and a minefield on wikipedia, unhelped by ResearchEditor's push. I've asked DreamGuy to assist if he can on that section. From my reading of the sources the history is something like this - recovered memory of Smith results in Michelle Remembers; increased awareness of child abuse produces allegations and workers unwilling to take no for an answer. This results in the McMartin trials and rumours (covered by Victor), and coerced testimonies from kids (covered by... this needs more detail and it'll have to come from someone who links McMartin with SRA; what I've read of McMartin so far has actually mentioned SRA very briefly, odd considering it does appear to be iconic). Therapists jump on the bandwagon and start to use suspect techniques on their patients with an expectation of finding SRA childhood memories. The susceptible ones who easily dissociate begin developing false memories, assisted by therapists who are assisted with memory-creating techniques like hypnosis and truth serum (Loftus, needs expansion). The the bubble bursts and skepticism sets in - techniques for interviewing kids change, major governing bodies start saying you shouldn't drug your patients. SRA drops off the face of interest and it starts to be analyzed by sociologists and anthropologists as a historical phenomenon (Frankfurter and de Young, which I got from the library today; oh, look, another skeptical source from a reliable publisher from my university library. Actually a pretty funny book, you should see what she says about Noblitt...). WLU (talk) 23:39, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
The whole SRA affair is but a displacement (psychology) in order not to touch the real perps: like the schizo mother of the first boy in McMartin who started everything displaced so as not to incriminate herself or her (presumably incestous) husband. The reason of this taboo (displacement among the rest of the hysterical parents who started the panic) has to do with the problem of attachment to the perpetrator. This is my own OR by synthesis of course; and unless I get my stuff published —a kind of middle ground between the pro and con sides (as can be seen in the "Walls of Silence" forum linked above)— we cannot add a single word of it here. Suffice it so say that RE, JAR and Biao are wrong when they state that my skeptcism is on the extreme side of the debate. —Cesar Tort 01:14, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
Cesar, that's an interesting and perceptive comment and I appreciate that you posted it. But you're wrong about me and what I think about you. I have never had any issue with what you call your "skepticism". The only complaint I've had with you is with your comments about two other editors. I perceive you to be an intelligent and deep person; but I've been surprised and saddened at the way you've chosen to treat your debate adversaries. That's not a wiki-policy comment, it's a personal observation; you can accept and learn from it, or ignore it, or repel it with arguments; your choice. Best wishes... --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 04:09, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
When people get fed up and start acting out of frustration it quite often has a legitimate cause. I'm all for suggestions that we be respectful of others, but when some people are completely disrespectful of basic Wikipedia policies and conventions the very worst thing we can possibly do is to let that fact slide simply because some "fed up" editor is less than civil. After all this isn't a retreat center where the goal is to live in harmony with one another, but an encyclopedia where the goal is the accurate representation of facts. I suggest protecting the encyclopedia from the abusive crimes perpetrated against it, instead of protecting the perpetrators just because the police are being a little rough with their handcuffs.PelleSmith (talk) 04:40, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
PelleSmith, my note to Cesar was in specific response to his mention of my name in his comment, not in general with regard to any issues you may be considering. Your feelings that there are or were any "abusive crimes" by any editor against the encyclopedia are just that: your feelings. None of the people working on this page are "police"; and none are "perpetrators." Disagreements about content are part of the process; the results will be determined by consensus and sources. I don't know where you got the "retreat center where the goal is to live in harmony with one another" idea - my view is simply that we're all better off with mutual respect than with emnity and bitterness. If you choose bitterness as your path, you are welcome to it. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 06:54, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
Oh please--that was just a colorful metaphor. If you don't like metaphors then so be it, but don't read nonsense into it--clearly I don't think anyone is the "police". If you want me to put it all in plain English I'll be happy to. This is NOT a "content dispute" and trying to make it sound like one is a detriment to progress here. RE is editing in violation of several core policies as he pushes a fringe POV with reckless abandon. I don't care what your particular "take" on SRA is, but that is a simple fact. What I don't appreciate is commentary that picks on someone like Cesar's reaction to something that in Wiki terms is egregiously against core policy and in human terms justifiably frustrating without in any way validating the causal facts of the reaction. I don't chose bitterness, nor am I bitter, I'm just not gonna beat around the bush here anymore (FYI the commentary on my mood is quite frankly ironic given your supposed interest in keeping things civil). If you do comment on civility while dancing around the other issues I will bluntly and frankly point them out. If you want to consider that bitter go right ahead, but I'm not gonna play that game. Regards.PelleSmith (talk) 13:02, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

{pretentious undent because I'm longwinded}JAR would perhaps best be described as "non-skeptical" rather than a "believer". This is not a "if he's not with us he is against us" case, which is how it is being set up. JAR has been flexible in his approach to sources and commented when he has felt it necessary. So please do not paint him with the same brush as RE. JAR has been on RE's side, but I believe it is only because RE has no-one else on his/her side and JAR firmly believes everyone deserves a fair hearing. Again, I believe this, I don't know if it's true, and JAR may dispute it. But please get off his back. JAR has never repeatedly brought up the same spurious points, repeatedly inserted or removed sources against consensus simply because he liked them, and he always seems to read and reply to comments in a thoughtful manner that indicates what he wants is what is best for wikipedia. I would guess JAR is taking a middle position that only looks extreme (to us) because the talk page has become polarized. Polarization is bad, and right now one side is pretty much controlling the page. I believe it is the correct side, but this is because I have read a lot of books, articles, chapters and webpages on this shitty, shitty topic. There still needs to be, per WP:UNDUE, discussion of the non-skeptical side, and I would much rather JAR, who understands sourcing and policies, be the one adding them. I very much doubt this is going to happen because he keeps getting shit on, on this talk page, for no. good. reason. A reminder that SRA was a witchunt in which you were either pro-child or anti-false accusation, and in that discussion the fact that children may have been non-satanically abused may have been lost. Let's not lose the fact that there are contributors who are interested in a fair case for both sides, and that the case for each side should be made through the sources, not through the talk page.

That being said, I'm still giving no credence to any of RE's arguments until a new one comes up. I picked up de Young yesterday. The title of the book calls SRA a moral panic. It was published after the fact in 2004. SRA is a moral panic, I think this has been clearly established. Let's move forward. WLU (talk) 12:35, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

WLU, I'm not interested in commenting on JAR, nor in painting him with the same brush as RE. The type of commentary he made above is not "what is best for Wikipedia." In fact it subtly validates RE's egregious policy violations by not recognizing the source of frustration here -- namely those policy violations. I don't agree with an approach that does this (and find its subtlety even less pleasing) and hence I will make comments about it. Sorry for sounding so terse about this, but that's how it is for this guy. JAR is free to criticize Cesar all he wants, but I'm also free to critique that criticism, and quite frankly find said critique to be necessary in this situation.PelleSmith (talk) 13:11, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
The policy violations have primarily been on the side of the extremely skeptical edits. The violations of WP:UNDUE are clearly shown by the overuse (38% of the refs) of three extremely skeptical authors. The problems with WP:NPA have also been with the extremely skeptical edits. The article is extremely unbalanced and needs to be written in line with all of the literature in the field, not simply written to validate three extremely skeptical authors while attacking 30 or 40 pro-SRA sources, several of which were written in the last ten years, if that really matters, since the major part of the debate took place in the early 90's. ResearchEditor (talk) 07:13, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
If skepticism is the norm, then it is a policy violation to place any emphasis on the credulous side. Since you have never responded to my criticism of the "38%" figure, I am getting more than a bit frustrated, to the point of ignoring your input, adding extra emphasis to try to get you to pay attention, and singling you out as a problem. I've yet to see anything that rebuts four sources explicitly stating the satanic panic is over, only original research attempts to state that the few, criticized, fringe believers continue to publish in third and fourth-rate journals and vanity press somehow represents an ongoing interest from the mainstream. The article is only imabalanced if it can be shown that there is an ongoing serious interest in the topic as a real phenomenon. To date, the big contemporary sources have approached it as a closed issue and topic of historical interest. You can take it to WP:NPOVN if you'd like.
Incidentally, if you state that the major part of the debate took place in the 90s, that means the issue is OVER. As a final point, and I can not emphasize this enough, it is absurdly easy to find skeptical sources. There are more, my limitation in adding them is in TIME, not quantity. I don't believe this is the case with credulous ones. WLU (talk) 15:06, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Skepticism is not the norm. You and other editors edits have over quoted three or four skeptics to make it look like the norm. "Singling you out as a problem" is a statement commenting on an editor and not their edits. Edits should comment on content, not the contributor. Both I and Bia have cited at least 8 peer reviewed and/or reliable sources from the last eight years, but your edits keep stating there aren't any. Your edit above states that the issue is over, yet previously your edits have stated that editors should focus on the last few years. This is a contradiction. ResearchEditor (talk) 04:12, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

{undent}I have three sources that unambiguously say SRA is over. You have none that address the issue in a broad stroke (perhaps McLeod and Goddard do, but even that says that the debate is over, even if they think it should not be). WLU (talk) 20:49, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Lack of balance

Latest comment: 16 years ago16 comments6 people in discussion

The only reason that RE is the only representative of the "other side" of this debate is because editors have shit on any non-sceptic on this page since it was first written. That's why, as Tort notes, "one side" is dominating this page. You've cleared out everyone else . This page does not reflect the variety of opinions on the subject of SRA. Far from being "outside the mainstream", SRA has been mainstreamed to the point where it is integrated into existing literature on sexual assault, domestic violence and child protection. See, for instance:

Joan C. Golston, "Ritual Abuse", in Schulz, W. (eds) The phenomenon of torture : readings and commentary, Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2007
Sarson, J. and L. McDonald "Ritual Abuse-Torture in Families", in Jackson, N. (ed) Encyclopedia of Domestic Violence, Routledge, 2007
McLeod, K. and Goddard, C. R. (2005) ‘The ritual abuse of children – A critical perspective’ Children Australia, 30 (1):27-34

For practitioners in the field of violence and abuse, ritual abuse is still a serious issue, and the literature reflects this. You've simply ignored this literature, or, when it's been cited, altered the criteria for inclusion and insulted those editors who sourced it. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 02:57, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

But do those refs. talk about satanic ritual abuse? I wrote most of the article Religious abuse in which ritualistic abuse of children is the main subject. But this is not SRA. That's the point. —Cesar Tort 03:09, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Yes, Tort. They do refer to satanic forms of ritual abuse. But don't worry, I'm not going to bother breaking up the self-congratulatory love-in that has developed on this page, as you and others have successively bullied every other viewpoint into silence.
I do look forward to hearing your excuse for excluding these sources. I presume: "Oh, satanic forms of ritual abuse, but not satanic ritual abuse, so it's completely different and unrelated! Let's accuse Biaothanatoi of breaching WP policy and wasting our time, and then suggest that he's a zealous idiot who is misrepresenting the facts!"
"And then, let's forget he ever mentioned these sources, because they are recent, published by reputable houses/journals, and therefore they directly contradict the POV that we've so lovingly entrenched in this article over the last six months!" --Biaothanatoi (talk) 03:31, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Re your first ref., Joan C. Golston, "Ritual Abuse", I could not find any reference to Satan or children in the index to that book.[1] For God’s sake: it includes part of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago (which by the way I am rereading after his death). Are you sure the other two refs. talk specifically of SRA? —Cesar Tort 03:51, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
And even in this PDF of the specific chapter by Joan C. Golston [2] I cannot find mention of SRA. It is very hard to look thru a long a PDF without proper searching devices anyway. Could you type an actual SRA quotation? —Cesar Tort 04:08, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Try reading the book, Tort. Bizarre idea, I know, but just, for once, pick up the book, and then you can invent specious objections.
Golston has been writing about ritual abuse (including satanic rituals) for over fifteen years.
e.g. Golston, J. "Ritual abuse: Raising hell in psychotherapy: Creation of cruelty: The political military and multigenerational training of torturers: Violent initiation and the role of traumatic dissociation," Treating Abuse Today Vol. 3, No. 6,1993, pp. 12-19, Golston, J.. "Raising hell in psychotherapy. Part II. Comparative abuse: Shedding light on ritual abuse through the study of torture methods in political repression, sexual sadism, and genocide." Treating Abuse Today Vol. 2 No. 6, 1992, pp. 5-16. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 05:20, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Don't worry I'll read your sources. FYI, you've been as welcome as anyone else to contribute to the editing and discussion here throughout. You didn't have to sacrifice poor RE just to prove some dramatic point about "bullying". While you're away from this page gathering sources and leaving RE to the proverbial wolves, I would suggest finding a source that actually substantiates your claim about SRA being mainstream--if those sources make such a claim please do quote them. In fact quoting them in general, to even substantiate that they are discussing SRA as you claim, would be a good faith way to keep me from wasting my time reading them. Regards.PelleSmith (talk) 14:31, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
The book you [Biao] first cited is 2007; the above refs. are 1992-1993: the time when several scholars swallowed the SRA claims. It'd be interesting to see an actual quotation of the 2007 book. Of course: you yourself can add it in mainspace if you wish. —Cesar Tort 05:32, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Even if the references did somehow make it on the page, more than likely they would later be deleted. The SRA page has become an extreme skeptical soapbox, where anyone editing for balance against this position has been reverted and called a POV pusher (one of the more polite terms used). Intentionally or unintentionally, the ad hominem attacks against anyone editing from a neutral or pro-SRA stance have been strong and have discouraged the creation of a balanced page of research. The page has turned into a non-encyclopedic opinion piece for extreme skepticism. Any attempt to change this and moderate it, even with sources from the APA, are reverted and the person who placed the edit is called a POV pusher. ResearchEditor (talk) 06:50, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Again, I think, RE, that you have a complete lack of understanding of what WP:NPOV policy is for. Wikipedia is not here to balance the sides, it's here to fairly represent the current expert thinking on the topic, which is exactly that people should be highly skeptical of these fantastic and bizarre claims of satanic ritual abuse. To give equal weight to the claims of the extreme minority that such activities are real would be a major violation of WP:UNDUE. It has been your edits that have been pushing an extreme soapboax view. Saying that your edits are pushing a POV is not a personal attack, it's simply explaining why your edits do not follow policy. You seem to think that anyone describing your edits as not meeting Wikipedia standards is somehow just a personal attack on you while you feel free to attack everyone else. You've got the situation exactly backwards. DreamGuy (talk) 15:37, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

The extreme soapbox view that has been pushed on the SRA has been one of extreme skepticism, which has been reinforced by the blanket deletion of sources contradicting this point and the deletion of my edits without comment repeatedly. The current expert thinking on the topic is varied and the page needs to show this. And BTW DG, your edits often delete or change reliable sources to follow an extremely skeptical POV. ResearchEditor (talk) 04:17, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Again, [ResearchEditor], don't use bold-type for entire paragraphs. It is difficult to read. —Cesar Tort 06:52, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for removing it. —Cesar Tort 07:04, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
To Biothanoi - Treating Abuse Today has been dealt with. It's a newsletter, not a peer-reviewed journal, and has pretty much no impact factor. It's not an appropriate source, but is more evidence that the only people who publish this bunk are those who can't find a real academic publisher. If TAT is the best that can be managed, the issue is dead. I wouldn't cite a college newspaper on this page, I wouldn't cite a blog, and I'm not going to cite TAT. Oh, and apparently it's on hiatus. And did I mention it's a news journal, not a scientific journal? WLU (talk) 15:34, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
That's great, WLU. I wasn't proposing we include TAT in the article, I was pointing to previous publications by an author. But great to read another sarcastic, pejorative response from you nonetheless. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 02:48, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
If TAT is the best place the author can publish, even when SRA was more mainstream, we certainly shouldn't be placing a lot of weight on him. WLU (talk) 10:49, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Tag

Latest comment: 16 years ago8 comments4 people in discussion

Now that the article has been rewritten and what remained of the fringe POV version removed I start to wonder for how long does the tag will have to remain at the top of the article? —Cesar Tort 00:03, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I have added a further tag as i have concerns that the article only covers this from a US perspective and doesn't provide a worldwide view. There is no mention of the major 2006 BBC documentary on the subject, When Satan Came To Town[3][4], which is an excellent source. --neon white talk 20:47, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
The article did include sections about the U.K. and Australia before the reorg, when they were shortened. Yes: I believe a section on both should be helpful. —Cesar Tort 04:39, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
repetition

The tags need to stay up there. The page does not represent the research fairly and there are numerous violations of WP:UNDUE. The most obvious one is the constant citing of three extremely skeptical authors, attacking the SRA argument with theory, having not worked with any victims of SRA.
I will repeat this phrase from WP:UNDUE. "NPOV says that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each." Below is a violation of "proportionality."
Two days ago, these three authors had over 1/3 of the citations on the page.
Frankfurter 11
Victor 24
LaFontaine 13
48 out of 127 citations (almost 38%) have been given to three authors, all extremely skeptical about the existence of SRA. If the skeptical argument is so popular in the research, then why do these three author need to be cited so much.
And also as cited above- "two of your favorite sources (Victor and Frankfurter) are purely theoretical works. Why do you require such a low burden of proof from yourself, and such a high one from RE?" Skeptical edits have set up a biased debate, making sure that every topic and every source that does not fit the extreme skeptical perspective are eliminated from the page and attacked on the talk page, while all of the extremely skeptical authors are perfect and cannot be questioned and be cited as many times as one would like. ResearchEditor (talk) 07:15, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Note - the edit above was hidden as "spurious" IMO, this is inappropriate. The comment above directly discusses the tag issue.ResearchEditor (talk) 04:19, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
I have hidden the above again - it is certainly spurious but beyond that it is repetition of the same argument. It was unconvincing before, it remains unconvincing now, so get a new one. WLU (talk) 13:42, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I believe that this info of SRA in Holland merits a place in this article. Thus we may remove the tag that it's US-centered. —Cesar Tort 02:52, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

There's a whole lot more to the world-wide impact than just Holland, but that's certainly one area. The problem is that allegations have appeared throughout the world in criminal trials, but scholarly interest is more limited. Jonker/Bakker published, which helps, and Putnam 1991 appears to discuss the Dutch allegations but I've yet to turn up an electronic version. There may be more info about the cases in Australia, De Young has several pages discussing it and I may be able to add more later. I don't mind leaving the US-centric tag up, it is a prompt for us and others to expand with worldwide impact. Most of the scholarly literature is in English though, and the larger part of the debate seems to have been in the US. WLU (talk) 13:59, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

prior revert of all my edits

Latest comment: 16 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion

This edit here reverted all of my changes three days ago without proper explanation. It could be seen as edit warring to simply revert all of another editors changes without explaining why each revert was made. An incorrect comment was made stating that this editor needs to discuss all changes, which is not true. This editor only needs to abide by the same policies as other editors. In the future, please do not simply revert all of my edits without reason. ResearchEditor (talk) 08:39, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I reverted your change for the same reason that CT did. It places undue weight on the credulous position and the idea that SRA is still taken seriously by the majority, as well as myriad flaws in sourcing. WLU (talk) 11:05, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
This does not surprize me. Does your comment above justify the deletion of reliable sources here? Did you check all of my edits? A couple of my edits were correcting source interpretations. Both your revert edit and CTs could be seen as edit warring. ResearchEditor (talk) 04:24, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm afraid we have to revert you again. You are the one who has a history of blocking for pov-pushing, not us. You have been told to discuss massive edits prior to doing them and have ignored the advise. Please follow it next time instead of plaeding "not revert; this is edit war" or something like that in edit summaries. —Cesar Tort 09:41, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
Having different standards for different editors is not in accordance with wikipedia policy. The edits of the editors above have promoted an extreme skeptical position on the page, without including the opinions of other reliable sources. ResearchEditor (talk) 03:41, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Content fork

Latest comment: 16 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion

Satanic ritual abuse in the Netherlands, which needs to be cleaned up and addressed at some point. I can't wait to get through a POV page that has sources I can't read. WLU (talk) 13:50, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, just forget it. I've redirected that back to here. Moreschi (talk) (debate) 14:00, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
I've temporarily reverted the redirect, I'd like to tease out the sources and clarify. Since the Netherlands case is held up as an example of a "proven" allegation, and Jonker-Bakker is stitting as an uncontested source right now, I'd like to see what there really is to see about the page. I may end up re-redirecting after I've done some clean-ups but it depends on if and when I can get to it. WLU (talk) 14:16, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Sure, no problem. Moreschi (talk) (debate) 14:18, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Note that the page has been redirected and the information merged into List of satanic ritual abuse allegations#The Netherlands. WLU (talk) 14:02, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Sources

Latest comment: 16 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I agree with both these edits - JAR removed the IPT forensics page. This is good because even though I think it makes good points, it's still not a reliable enough source. I appreciate that it was fact tagged rather than removed (removal would have been allowable given WP:PROVEIT). CT's use of a journal article instead means a more reliable source is used, which improves the page. So SRA got a bit better. Also, I added an article today, DeYoung, 2007, about McMartin. It's in the Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, which seems to get good Google Scholar hits [5] though I wish I had an impact factor. Note the following paragraph.


WLU (talk) 18:45, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

But after the removal of the IPT reference I found a magnificent source which we can use a lot in this article: {cite journal | last = Schreiber| first = Nadja| authorlink = | coauthors = Lisa Bellah, Yolanda Martinez, Kristin McLaurin, Renata Stok, Sena Garven and James Wood| title = Suggestive interviewing in the McMartin Preschool and Kelly Michaels daycare abuse cases: A case study| journal =Social Influence | volume = 1| issue = 1| pages = 16-46| publisher = Psychology Press| location = | date = 2006| url = [6]} —Cesar Tort 19:00, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Yup, that's what I meant when I said a more reliable source is used - sorry I wasn't more clear. WLU (talk) 19:41, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Lack of Balance Continued

Latest comment: 16 years ago24 comments6 people in discussion

copied from above:

The only reason that RE is the only representative of the "other side" of this debate is because editors have shit on any non-sceptic on this page since it was first written. That's why, as Tort notes, "one side" is dominating this page. You've cleared out everyone else . This page does not reflect the variety of opinions on the subject of SRA. Far from being "outside the mainstream", SRA has been mainstreamed to the point where it is integrated into existing literature on sexual assault, domestic violence and child protection. See, for instance:

  • Joan C. Golston, "Ritual Abuse", in Schulz, W. (eds) The phenomenon of torture : readings and commentary, Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2007
  • Sarson, J. and L. McDonald "Ritual Abuse-Torture in Families", in Jackson, N. (ed) Encyclopedia of Domestic Violence, Routledge, 2007
  • McLeod, K. and Goddard, C. R. (2005) ‘The ritual abuse of children – A critical perspective’ Children Australia, 30 (1):27-34

For practitioners in the field of violence and abuse, ritual abuse is still a serious issue, and the literature reflects this. You've simply ignored this literature, or, when it's been cited, altered the criteria for inclusion and insulted those editors who sourced it. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 02:57, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Why claims of mainstreaming are completely spurious

I copied the above text here so that I could respond to it with clarity. Biaothanatoi claimed that "'SRA has been mainstreamed to the point where it is integrated into existing literature on sexual assault, domestic violence and child protection." Then s/he listed three sources, that s/he probably has spent the last month finding--and trust me it would take that long. I took this as a challenge so I went to the library of a large American research University and looked through every relevant encyclopedia in the reference section, as well as the main sections for child abuse and domestic violence/family abuse. As would be expected I did not find anything remotely resembling Biaothanatoi's spurious claim. The Sarson source above, btw, is in my library and it does mention something they call RAT--"ritual abuse-torture." Satanic aspects play very little to no role in there presentation, and none of the SRA literature is mentioned in what is a rather lengthy bibliography. So that's a pretty big red herring. For other sources from 2000 and later here is exactly what I found in regards to any mention of SRA in any of its various synonymous forms including of course "ritual abuse":

Reference

  1. No mention -- Clark, Clark and Ademec. (2000) The Encyclopedia of Child Abuse.
  2. No mention -- Henderson. (2000). Domestic Violence and Child Abuse Source Book.
  3. No mention -- Matthews. (2004). Child Abuse Sourcebook
  4. Skeptical mention -- Kinnear. (2007). Child Sexual Abuse

Main Sections

  1. No Mention -- Dubowitz and DePanfilis. (2000) Handbook for child protection practice
  2. No Mention -- Tower. (2002) When children are abused: an educator's guide to intervention
  3. No Mention -- Gelles, Loseke and Cavanaugh. (2003) Current controversies on family violence -- not mentioned in 1993 edition either
  4. No Mention -- Schwartz-Kenney, McCauley and Epstien (intro by Finkelhor). (2001) Child abuse: a global view
  5. No Mention -- Browne. (2002). Early prediction and prevention of child abuse: a handbook
  6. No Mention -- Fontes. (2005). Child abuse and culture: working with diverse families
  7. Skeptical Mention -- Moffatt. (2003). Wounded innocents and fallen angels: Child abuse and child aggression
  8. Non-Skeptical Mention -- (2005) Child abuse and neglect: attachment, development, and intervention -- mentions Sinason 2002 in non-skeptical fashion

As you can see this was a wild goose chase of epic proportions. JAR, this is why people around here are fed up, and why I don't take your chiding of the frustrated among us lightly. Biathanatoi it seems that you are just as capable as RE to sling around utter BS in order to support completely unsupported points. This isn't mainstream AT ALL. Please provide one simply reference to prove this. Clearly what you claimed about SRA making its way into the mainstream literature is completely false. Thanks for wasting my time. At least now I know how utterly untrue your statement was.PelleSmith (talk) 22:40, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Please try to be more civil (and this goes for Biaothanatoi as well, with his "shit on" claims and other ranting). I do not know how exactly "mainstreaming" is being used here, but on my first reading I thought it just meant that current sources have heard of the claims and dispensed with them, and that mainstream sources have mentioned them. It appears Biaothanatoi means that SRA is believed in by mainstream experts, which of course is not true, as your references show. Mainstreaming as far as knowledge of and so forth has been done. DreamGuy (talk) 23:17, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
I don't see PS's breaching civility seriously. Take a look at comment #42 in these Requests for comment. On the contrary: I believe we have been reasonably civil with this sort of fringe pushing. —Cesar Tort 00:05, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
I think a lot of people on this talk page need to be more civil. Certainly a coordinated effort of pushing fringe theories can make someone justifiably angry, but we need to tone the level of nastiness down here, especially when the people pushing the finrge view are trying to use lapses in vcivility against them as an excuse to justify their actions. They seem to be using a standard tactic: bait others with outrageous comments and actions, then run off and report the other side while ignoring that they themselves have been just as uncivil and have violated far more important policies. Tone it down, or you're doing their job for them. DreamGuy (talk) 14:21, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
I reviewed the google books link for one of the books Bio posted, and could find nothing substantial on ritual abuse (though GB always limits what you can preview. I've also made a point of, when I visit the library to pick up a book, pulling out some of the more recent ones from the same shelf and looking for ritual abuse, satanic ritual abuse, Victor, Noblitt, and a couple other notable names in the index. I must agree with PS' comments - they're generally not there. It's not really citeable, and not really necessary to explore since there are explicit references saying the debate is dead, but it's one more straw on the camel's back. I posted something on fringe theories noticeboard, so perhaps we'll get a comment. The discussion here is getting a bit stale and some new eyes might have some welcome insight.
Incidentally, here is what the page looked like after my first ever edit to it, nearly a year ago to the day. I may be patting my own ass (akin to tooting my own horn, but smellier), but I think the page is much improved and am taking some credit for it. Not all the credit, but some. Thanks to all others, even the credulous - opposition often forces the page to improve unwillingly. That being said, I'm not going to put up with a whole bunch of spurious complaints about undue weight. WLU (talk) 01:10, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
Well, if you look at how the article appeared at the end of 2006 before Abuse truth/Research Editor and the others took over and turned it into a POVpushapalooza festival I think the lead back then and so forth is far more accurate and helpful to an average reader than the current one. You can certainly pat yourself on the back, but this and many other articles RE has gotten involved in would be better served by a wholesale revert to back before the nonsense started, with some of the new sources tacked onto the old language for the best of both worlds. DreamGuy (talk) 14:21, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
God forbid that you should endure the indignity of anybody questioning all your hard work, WLU. Must be hard to type and pack yourself on the back all at once.
Kay McLeod and Chris Goddard, "The Ritual Abuse of Children: A Critical Perspective", Children Australia, Volume 30, No 1, 2005, p 27 - 34
(p 30) "It is to be expected that there will be vigorous debate in an area as controversial as the organised ritual abuse of children. Academic writing on the topic has reflected both the complexity of the topic and it's complex nature. The literature is diverse and quality and needs to be studies with care.
Of particular concern is the lack of scholarship evident in much of the writing disputing the occurence of organsied ritual abuse. The advocacy literature can also be non-scholarly in its approach, perhas most notably when written from a fundamentalist and evangelical viewpoint. Interestingly, both this evangelical advocacy literature and the hostile oppositional literature consistently replace the generic term "ritual abuse" with the much narrower and much more emotive term "satanic ritual abuse" and in doing so distort the discussion of the topic. The more recent reserach moves beyond the "discourse of disbelief" about organised ritual abuse to the study of the topic itself (Scott 2001, Faller 2003, Beardsley 2003, Graham 2003)."
McLeod and Goddard describe WLU's fave sources (Victor, Frankfurter, et al) in the following terms: "In this literature, accounts of organised ritual abuse are frequently attributed to some form of hysteria - favoured explanations include epidemics of moral panic; rampant evangelical fundamentalism; overzealous child protection workers and police officers; incompentent therapists; unrelaiable children; and suggestible adults (Tate 1991, Scott 2001; Faller 2004). The underlying assumption in this literature is that such accounts are unacceptable on prima faci grounds and the effect of such an emphasis is to render invalid all accounts of organised ritual abuse."
McLeod and Goddard provide evidence that allegations of RA are taken seriously by researchers, policy makers and law enforcement: "... Elsewhere, ongoing professional reserach and interest suggests that fundamental disbelif is not the position of Scotland Yard (McVeigh 2002), the UK Department of Health (2000) and professionals in the fields of trauma and dissociation (van der hart, Boon and Jansen 1997, Sauer 2002, Graham 2003, Faller 2003) ... Despite a strong oppositiona; environment, research into organised ritual abuse has continued and some new research directly addressing the issue is being published (Noblitt and Perskin; Scott 2001; Faller 2003; Beardsley 2003).
The knowledge base is multidisciplinary and the literature has drawn on research findings from several fields of reserach. The relevance of the trauma literature is weel documented (Herman 1992, Goodwin 1994, Ross 1995, van der Kolk et al 1996, Cassidy 2002, Achimov and Ferrari 2003). The pertinence of the literature on killing and warfare, on terrorism and hostage experience is being increasingly identified (Herman 1992, Ross 2000, Stanley and Goddard 2002, Cassidy 2002, Kraft 2002). the literature on memory and dissociation continues to inform research into organised ritual abuse (van der Kolk 1996, Ross 1997, Goodwin and Attias 1999, Ross 2000, Kraft 2002, Delphie Centre and Cannon Institute 2003).
A relationship between organised ritual abuse and other forms of organised child abuse is now suggested (Bright and McVeigh 2001, Scott 2001). Other research is providing evidence in support of some of the mots shocking claims relating to the practice of organised ritual abuse (Laurance 2000, McVeigh 2002, Wilson 2004).
OK, folks. This is the point where you invent a random new rule to strike out this source. What will it be this time? I can't wait. And then you can get back to your favorite activity of congratulating each other for your collective efforts in erasing any source, and driving out any editor, that contradicts your preferred POV. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 01:45, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
NO, this is the point where you send me the PDF of that source since you clearly have it. Just send me an email through wiki and I'll respond and you can forward the PDF. Thanks for the selective quotes though. Your quotes explicitly make a distinction between "satanic ritual abuse" and some more general "ritual abuse." That alone is reason enough to have a good look at the entire source and not your cherry picked quotes. Also, you may wish to actually answer the criticism I leveled against your spurious claims instead of trying to erect yourself as a straw man victim. SRA has not made its way into mainstream literature on the subject matters you profess. My wasted hour in the library clearly shows this. Do you have a response?PelleSmith (talk) 02:16, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't believe we've met, but let me ask you a question: Are you even capable of engaging editors you disagree with in a manner in accordance with WP policy? --Biaothanatoi (talk) 02:46, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
Really, what policy is that? You still haven't answered my criticism. I went through all that trouble and you're simply going to be evasive. You think that's in the spirit of the Wiki do you? Stating falsehoods and then acting like a victim when someone wastes hours finding out that you were wrong. Sure, I'm violating all kinds of policy, you caught me.PelleSmith (talk) 03:07, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
What criticism? You came to my discussion page, and asked me to provide some quotes, and I did, and now you accuse me of being evasive? I would have thought I was being quite cooperative.
Meanwhile, you are having a tantrum because you read a random assortment of books, and they don't mention ritual abuse. Boo hoo. What about the "Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Work" from 2000, which states on p 303 - 304:
"Scepticism about the existence of ritual abuse has become difficult to maintain in the face of documentation of sexual violence in religious cults, the conviction of perpetrators in the UK, and the revelations of children being held in cages and being filmed for pornography in the Belgium case by Marc Dutroux."
My argument is not that every book on child abuse refers to SRA, but rather that a number of them do, and therefore it is incorrect to characterise "non-sceptics" as marginal, or to claim that "scepticism" is the majority viewpiont. That is demonstratably false. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 03:14, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
That's completely false. I didn't read a "random assortment of books" I systematically went through every book published from 2000 on in the reference section on child abuse/family abuse as well as the main library sections on child abuse/family abuse at the library of a large American research university. I'm sure that doing so in any other academic library will replicate these findings. My criticism, which you clearly understood given that you proceeded to try to answer it (so asking "what criticism" is simply obnoxious), was that given the fact that these books have no reference to SRA your claim that it is a mainstream phenomena in such literature is completely spurious. The fact that you have 2 cherry picked sources in which it appears (out of how many others hundreds?) is completely meaningless. The vast majority clearly do not contain any mention of SRA ... you are clearly incorrect in your claim. Also note that my experiment does not pretend to deal with any question but this one: "Has SRA been incorporated into mainstream literature on a select number of topics (named by you)?" -- the answer seems clearly to be no. This does not prove that skepticism is the majority viewpoint, it simply adds support to the point that SRA is out of the mainstream -- the point you claimed was false. Please stick to the issue at at hand. Other facts support the former claim but we were not discussing those here.PelleSmith (talk) 10:59, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll leave a reply to others. Just curious: since you [Biao] live in Australia, do you personally know the Australian authors of the above text, Kay McLeod and Chris Goddard? —or perhaps... Cesar Tort 01:51, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

No, Tort, why don't you try to reply to these quotes? You've spent so much time insulting and belittling other editors, not to mention inventing random new reasons to ignore sources that challenge your POV ("Satanism doesn't appear in the index!" is my favorite to date). Surely you could take some time to consider what's actually been written here, and respond. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 02:01, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
There's no need to reply. It clearly states there's no such thing as SRA. Can't we take them at their word? If you want to write an article on organized ritual abuse, that would be different. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:17, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
You are wrong, Tort. The article refers to satanic rituals and the "occult ritual aspect" as part of the "defining aspects" of ritual abuse.
Your argument that "satanic ritual abuse" and "ritual abuse" have nothing to do with one is your personal conviction, and it is directly contradicted by this article, and the literature on ritual abuse as a whole. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 02:42, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
The only quotes you've provided which mention "satanic" say that the term is pejoritive or incorrect. Unless you can do better, it doesn't belong in this article. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:47, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
And I don't know if you're quoting the material correctly. A certain editor (AT) (RE) has been known to fabricate quotes, and, considering the emotional content of the subject, I don't know if I would be above the temptation. Please send CT or me the PDF. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:49, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
So let's summarise. The two excuses that have been invented to ignore this source are "ritual abuse in satanic rituals is a completely different subject to satanic ritual abuse, therefore this source is irrelevant" followed by "I don't believe you".
I always knew this would be fun. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 03:09, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
Can't you read your own quotes? Your source does not believe that satanic ritual abuse (or "ritual abuse in satanic rituals") exists. It does, apparently, believe that organized ritual abuse exists, which may be contrary to the sources WLU and CT have found. But those quotes are not not really convincing.
And I don't believe you. You just made a serious factual mistake in McMartin; why should we trust your interpretations here, even if your selected quotes are accurate? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 05:06, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
Your source does seem to indicate that mainstream sources deny the existance of organized ritual abuse, which might be relevant, after all. But....I think the odds are against it. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 05:07, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
I don't really see a claim of reliability here, either, although you may have made it elsewhere. http://www.ozchild.org.au/ doesn't mention "peer review", merely "well respected". — Arthur Rubin (talk) 05:12, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
I should withdraw that last, I think. The Australian government's definition of well-respected includes peer-reviewed, although they allow it being indexed as evidence of that, and we know of some indexed journals which are not peer reviewed, don't we? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 05:26, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

{undent}"The underlying assumption in this literature is that such accounts are unacceptable on prima faci grounds and the effect of such an emphasis is to render invalid all accounts of organised ritual abuse." - this is the comment that McLeod and Goddard have about Victor and Frankfurter? It doesn't mention them by name, it doesn't contest the assertion, at best it's an opinion. I'd be open to integrating McLeod and Goddard in the page as a minority position. WLU (talk) 20:56, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

NPOV notice board

The NPOV debate on WP:UNDUE has been put on the NPOV noticeboard here.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by ResearchEditor (talk • contribs)

Straw poll

Latest comment: 16 years ago9 comments9 people in discussion

My attention was directed here by the message on the NPOV noticeboard. It's difficult to get a fix on all the back-and-forth here, so if it isn't too objectionable, I would like to try a straw poll that ought to extract the opinions of the people participating here on what seems to me to be the critical question.

Assertion: The current mainstream view is that Satanic Ritual Abuse was/is a moral panic, and that there are no well-documented cases of such abuse actually occurring. Therefore the claim that SRA is a form of abuse that really occurs is a fringe theory, as per wp:fringe.

Do you agree or disagree? No long answers here, please. If you feel an absolutely irresistable need to give a long answer, please start a new topic below this one. Looie496 (talk) 17:58, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

  • Disagree - please see a list of my sources below this section for evidence and many sources that disprove this claim, pre and post 2000. ResearchEditor (talk) 03:10, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Abstain. I appreciate the formulation of the straw poll to help focus the issues in the discussion, but the way they question was stated does not encompass the full extent of the questions. I've entered a detailed comment in the follow-up section below. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 04:59, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

List of pro-SRA sources

This list clearly shows there is a lot of academic disagreement with the view of SRA as panic.

pro SRA articles pre and post 2000

SRA as a Real Form of Abuse

Latest comment: 16 years ago12 comments2 people in discussion

post 2000

  1. Joan C. Golston, "Ritual Abuse", in Schulz, W. (eds) The phenomenon of torture : readings and commentary, Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2007 p. 124-6.
This is a section three pages long. It discusses how torturers are trained, by being tortured. It talks about mostly unnamed "organized groups" trying to create torturers, mentioning the US Marine Corps and abusive families. It talks about volunteers or draftees, the Nazi SS, Viet Nam, PTSD, dissociation, "personality destruction", "group rituals" with no mention of who the "group" is. There is absolutely nothing to connect this book to the satanic ritual abuse page. Integrating this into the page would be a gross violation of WP:OR.WLU (talk) 13:14, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  1. Sarson, J. and L. McDonald "Ritual Abuse-Torture in Families", in Jackson, N. (ed) Encyclopedia of Domestic Violence, Routledge, 2007
I can get this from my library and will try to do so. WLU (talk) 14:04, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  1. Noblitt, James Randall, and Perskin Pamela Sue. (2000). Cult and Ritual Abuse: Its History, Anthropology, and Recent Discovery in Contemporary America. New York: Praeger
This book is already mentioned on the page and referenced several times. It's also been heavily criticized for ignoring any skepticism about SRA (Best's review). WLU (talk) 14:04, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  1. Noblitt, James Randall and Perskin, Pamela Sue (eds). (2008) Ritual Abuse in the Twenty-first Century: Psychological, Forensic, Social and Political Considerations Robert Reed Publishers - popular and self published - but may be RS
This is self-published, meaning it's not a reliable source to compare to de Young, Jenkins or the other academic publications that declare SRA a moral panic. It's beyond popular, it's vanity press. WLU (talk) 14:04, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Non-Academic

I consider non-academic books to be essentially worthless on this page when there is so much discussion of it in reliable sources and non-academic books started the whole thing (Michelle Remembers, Satan's Underground). Non-academic books tend towards sensationalism and can't be used to justify much; that there is so many non-academic and so few academic books that are credulous is further justification that the controversy is over. WLU (talk) 14:04, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  1. Hersha, Cheryl; Hersha, Lynn; Schwartz, Ted; Griffis, Ph.D., Dale (2001). Secret Weapons. Far Hills, NJ: New Horizon Press. ISBN 0-88282-196-2.
  2. Karriker, Wanda (2003). Morning, Come Quickly. Catawba, NC: Sandime, LTD. ISBN 0-9717171-0-9.
  3. Lacter, E. (2008). "Guidelines to Diagnosis of Ritual Abuse/Mind Control Traumatic Stress" (PDF). {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  4. Oksana, Chrystine (2001). Safe Passage to Healing - A Guide for Survivors of Ritual Abuse. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse.com. ISBN 0-595-201000-8. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: length (help) - self-published, out. [7] The 1994 version of the book was published by HarperPerennial.
The 1994 version was published by HarperPerennial, but the current version is not - which again suggests a lack of interest from the mainstream. WLU (talk) 14:04, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

peer reviewed

  1. Pepinsky, Hal. "A struggle to inquire without becoming an un-critical non-criminologist." Critical Criminology 11(1) 2002 pp. 61-73
  2. Pepinsky, Hal. "Sharing and responding to memories." American Behavioral Scientist Vol 48(10), Jun 2005. pp. 1360-1374.
This does not discuss SRA explicitly, it's about designing a college seminar. The ritual aspects are not the main thrust of the paper. WLU (talk) 14:04, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  1. McLeod, K. and Goddard, C. R. (2005) ‘The ritual abuse of children – A critical perspective’ Children Australia, 30 (1):27-34
  2. Pepinsky, H. (2005). "A criminologist's quest for peace". Critical Justice. 1 (1).
[8] - there does not seem to be an editorial or review team and the journal gets a tiny number of hits on google scholar [9]. Hal Pepinsky seems to be the only author of this particular volume. Only one issue was ever published [10]. Ritual is mentioned twice in the context of ritual abuse and the mention is passing. WLU (talk) 14:04, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  1. Valente S (2000). "Controversies and challenges of ritual abuse". J Psychosoc Nurs Ment Health Serv. 38 (11): 8–17. PMID 11105292. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
Is this satanic ritual abuse? WLU (talk) 14:04, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Book reviews

  1. Psychiatr Serv 52:978-979, July 2001 © 2001 American Psychiatric Association [11] for Noblitt, JR; Perskin PS (2000). Cult and ritual abuse: its history, anthropology, and recent discovery in contemporary America. New York: Praeger.

articles

  1. "The Satanism and Ritual Abuse Archive", by Diana Napolis, is published on the world-wide web at: This archive contains 92 cases as of February 12, 2008.
This is a personal web-page, it's not an article. Someone compiled a list of court cases, with no links to documents. From the bottom of the web page, "ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Diana Napolis has a Masters Degree in Transpersonal Psychology and was a licensed therapist in the State of California. Between the years 1990-2000 she worked as a Court Intervention Child Abuse Investigator at Child Protective Services in San Diego County, California, and as a Supervisor of Court ordered visitations for Family Court. Her specialty was investigating allegations of ritual abuse. Ms. Napolis has been collecting court documents in attempts to prove the reality of ritual abuse since 1991 after witnessing what she believes was a coverup of ritual abuse in San Diego County which has been widely publicized. She believes the documentation in this archive proves without doubt that this type of abuse occurs." This is not a reliable source. WLU (talk) 14:04, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

pre 2000

Books

Academic

  1. Sinason, V (1994). Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-10543-9.
  2. Waterman, Jill (1993). Behind the Playground Walls -Sexual Abuse in Preschools. New York, London: The Guilford Press. pp. 284–8. ISBN 0-89862-523-8. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

Non-Academic

  1. Hudson, Pamela S. (1991). Ritual Child Abuse: Discovery, Diagnosis, and Treatment. Saratoga, Calif: R&E Publishers. ISBN 0882478672.
  2. Johnston, Jerry (1989). The Edge of Evil - The Rise of Satanism in North America. Dallas: Word Publishing. ISBN 0-8499-0668-7.


ResearchEditor (talk) 03:17, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

  1. Lockwood, C. (1993) Other altars: Roots and Realities of Cultic and Satanic Ritual Abuse and Multiple Personality Disorder. Minneapolis, MN: Compcare.
  2. Raschke, Carl A. (1990). Painted Black. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-104080-0.
  3. Rutz, Carol (2001). A Nation Betrayed. Grass Lake, MI: Fidelity Publishing. ISBN 0-9710102-0-X.
  4. Ryder, Daniel. (1992). Breaking the Circle of Satanic Ritual Abuse: Recognizing and Recovering CompCare Pub.
  5. Smith, Margaret. (1993). Ritual Abuse: What it Is, why it Happens, and how to Help by Margaret - HarperCollins ResearchEditor (talk) 03:17, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  6. Woodsum, Gayle M. (1998). The Ultimate Challenge. Laramie, WY: ARI Books. ISBN 0-9665974-0-0.

Peer Reviewed Journals

  1. Cozolino, L.J. (1989). "The ritual abuse of children: Implications for clinical practice and research." Journal of Sex Research 26(1), 131-138.
  2. Edwards, Louise M."Differentiating between ritual assault and sexual abuse," J Child and Youth Care 6(4) 1991 pp. 169-88.
  3. Gould, Catherine. "Ritual abuse, multiplicity, and mind-control." Special Issue: "Satanic ritual abuse: The current state of knowledge." Journal of Psychology and Theology 20(3) 1992 pp. 194-6
  4. Jenkins, Carol A. "Sociological argument applied to a historical example of deviance: A response to Professor Victor." Special Issue: "Satanic ritual abuse: The current state of knowledge, "Psychology and Theology 20(3) 1992 pp. 254-6
  5. Jonker, F and Jonker-Bakker, I. (1997). "Effects of Ritual Abuse: The results of three surveys in the Netherlands." Child Abuse & Neglect 21(6):541-556
  6. Kelley, Susan J. "Parental stress response to sexual abuse and ritualistic abuse of children in day-care centers." Nursing Research 39(1) 1990 pp. 25-9
  7. Kelley, Susan J. (1988). "Ritualistic Abuse: Dynamics and Impact." Cultic Studies Journal, 5(2) pp. 228-36
  8. Kelley, S.J. (1989). "Stress responses of children to sexual abuse and ritualistic abuse in day care centers." Journal of Interpersonal Violence 4(4), 502-513.
  9. Kent, Stephen. (1993). "Deviant Scripturalism and Ritual Satanic Abuse Part One: Possible Judeo-Christian Influences". Religion 23(23):229–241.
  10. Kent, Stephen. (1993). "Deviant Scripturalism and Ritual Satanic Abuse. II: Possible Masonic, Mormon, Magick, and Pagan influences". Religion 23(4):355–367
  11. Kent, Stephen. (1994). "Diabolic Debates: A Reply to David Frankfurter and J. S. La Fontaine," Religion 24: 135-188.
  12. McCulley, Dale. "Satanic ritual abuse: A question of memory," Psychology and Theology . 22(3) 1994, pp. 167-72
  13. Rogers, Martha L. "The Oude Pekela incident: A case study of alleged SRA from the Netherlands." Psychology and Theology, 20(3) 1992 pp. 257-59
  14. Schumacher, R.B. (1999). "Variables and risk factors associated with child abuse in daycare settings". Child Abuse & Neglect. 23 (9). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier Science Inc.: 891–8. doi:10.1016/S0145-2134(99)00057-5. ISSN 0145-2134. PMID 10505902. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  15. Snow B. & Sorensen (1990). "Ritualistic child abuse in a neighborhood setting." Journal of Interpersonal Violence 5(4):474-487.
  16. Young WC, Sachs RG, Braun BG, Watkins RT (1991). "Patients reporting ritual abuse in childhood: a clinical syndrome. Report of 37 cases". Child Abuse Negl. 15 (3): 181–9. PMID 2043970.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  17. Leavitt, F. (1994). "Clinical Correlates of Alleged Satanic Abuse and Less Controversial Sexual Molestation". Child Abuse and Neglect: The International Journal. 18 (4): 387–92. doi:10.1016/0145-2134(94)90041-8. Retrieved 2008-06-15.
  18. Jonker, F. (1991). "Experiences with ritualist child sexual abuse: a case study from the Netherlands". Child Abuse and Neglect. 15: 191–196. doi:10.1016/0145-2134(91)90064-K. PMID 2043971. Retrieved 2007-10-20. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  19. Schmuttermaier, J (1999). "Counselors' beliefs about ritual abuse: An Australian Study". Journal of Child Sexual Abuse. 8 (3): 45–63. doi:10.1300/J070v08n03_03. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  20. Gould, C., & Cozolino, L. (1992). Ritual abuse, multiplicity, and mind-control. Journal of Psychology and Theology. 20(3): 194-196.
  21. Hudson, P.S. (1990). Ritual child abuse: A survey of symptoms and allegations. Special issue: In the shadow of Satan: The ritual abuse of children. Journal of Child and Youth Care, 27-54.
  22. Noblitt, J.R. (1995). Psychometric measures of trauma among psychiatric patients reporting ritual abuse. Psychological Reports, 77(3), 743-747.
  23. Sachs, R.G. (1990). The role of sex and pregnancy in Satanic cults. Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health, 5 (2), 105-114
  24. Wong, B., & McKeen, J. (1990). A case of multiple life-threatening illnesses related to early ritual abuse. Special Issue: In the shadow of Satan: The ritual abuse of children. Journal of Child and Youth Care, 1-26.
  25. Cozolino, L.J. (1990). Ritual child abuse, psychopathology, and evil. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 18(3), 218-227
  26. Fraser, G. A. Satanic ritual abuse: A cause of multiple personality disorder. Journal of Child and Youth Care, Special Edition, pp. 55-60
  27. Hudson, P. S. (1991). Ritual child abuse: A survey of symptoms and allegations. Journal of Child and Youth Care, Special Edition, pp. 27-54
  28. Boat, B.W. (1991). Caregivers as surrogate therapists in treatment of a ritualistically abused child. In W.N. Friedrich (Ed.) , Casebook of sexual abuse treatment., (pp. 1-26). New York: Norton.
  29. Coleman, J. (1994). Presenting features in adult victims of Satanist ritual abuse. Child Abuse Review, 3: 83-92.
  30. King, G. F.; Yorker, B. (1996). Case studies of children presenting with a history of ritualistic abuse. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, 9(2), pp.18-26
  31. Leavitt F, & Labott, S. M.(1998). Revision of the Word Association Test for assessing associations of patients reporting Satanic ritual abuse in childhood. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 54(7), 933-943.
  32. Valente, S. (2000). "Controversies and challenges of ritual abuse". J Psychosoc Nurs Ment Health Serv. 38 (11): 8–17.
  33. Valente SM. (1992) The challenge of ritualistic child abuse. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing, 5(2):37-46.
  34. Young, Walter C., Sachs, Roberta G., Braun, Bennett G., and Watkins, R. T. "Patients reporting ritual abuse in childhood: A clinical syndrome. Report of 37 cases." [see comments] Child Abuse and Neglect 15(3) 1991 pp. 181-9
  35. Young, W. C. (1993). Sadistic ritual abuse. An overview in detection and management. Primary Care, 20(2), 447-58.
  36. Van Benschoten, Susan C. (1990). "Multiple Personality Disorder and Satanic Ritual Abuse: the Issue Of Credibility" Dissociation Vol. III, No. 1

Book section

  1. American Journal of Psychotherapy" (Summer 1996; 50(3) p383) for Noblitt, JR; Perskin PS (2000). Cult and ritual abuse: its history, anthropology, and recent discovery in contemporary America. New York: Praeger.
  2. Sakheim, D.K. (1996). Clinical aspects of sadistic ritual abuse. In L.K. Michelson & W.J. Ray (Eds), Handbook of dissociation: Theoretical, empirical, and clinical perspectives, (pp. 569-863). New York: Plenum Press.
  3. Gould, C. (1992) Diagnosis and treatment of ritually abused children in Sakheim, D.K. (1992). Out of Darkness: Exploring Satanism and Ritual Abuse. Lexington Books. ISBN 0-669-26962-X.
  4. Mangen, R. (1992). Psychological testing and ritual abuse. In D.K. Sakheim & S.E. Devine (Eds.), Out of darkness: Exploring Satanism and ritual abuse (pp. 147-173). New York: Lexington.
  5. Young, W.C. (1992). Recognition and treatment of survivors reporting ritual abuse. In D.K. Sakheim & S.E. Devine (Eds.), Out of darkness: Exploring Satanism and ritual abuse (pp. 249-278). New York: Lexington.
  6. Uherek, A.M. (1991). Treatment of a ritually abused preschooler. In W.N. Friedrich (Ed.) Casebook of sexual abuse treatment. (pp. 70-92). New York: Norton.
  7. Young, W.C. & Young, L.J. (1997). Recognition and special treatment issues in patients reporting childhood sadistic ritual abuse. In G.A. Fraser (Ed.), The dilemma of ritual abuse: Cautions and guides for therapists (pp. 65-103). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.
  8. Gallagher, B (1996), The nature and extent of known cases of organised child sexual abuse in England and Wales {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) in Bibby, P. (ed.). Organised Abuse: The Current Debate. Arena. ISBN 1857422848. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)
  9. Sachs, R. (1987). "Issues in treating MPD patients with satanic cult involvement". Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Multiple Personality/ Dissociative States. Fourth International Conference on Multiple Personality/ Dissociative States. Chicago: Rush-Presbyterian-St.Luke's Medical Center. pp. 383–87. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) as cited in Sakheim, D.K. (1992). Out of Darkness: Exploring Satanism and Ritual Abuse. Lexington Books. ISBN 0-669-26962-X.

Articles

  1. Summit, R.C. (1994). [[12] "The dark tunnels of McMartin"]. Journal of Psychohistory. 21 (4): 397–416. {{cite journal}}: Check |url= value (help)
  2. "Why Cults Terrorize and Kill Children" Lloyd deMause The Journal of Psychohistory 21 (4) 1994 [13]
  3. An Empirical Look at the Ritual Abuse Controversy - Randy Noblitt, PhD - [14]
  4. Karriker, Wanda (November, 2007). Helpful healing methods: As rated by approximately 900 respondents to the "International Survey for Adult Survivors of Extreme Abuse (EAS)." (PDF). Philadelphia, PA. {{cite conference}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. Gould, C. (1995). Denying ritual abuse of children. Journal of Psychohistory, 22(3), 329-339.
  6. Ireland, S.J. & Ireland, M..J. (1994). A case history of family and cult abuse. The Journal of Psychohistory, 21(4), 417-428.
  7. Macfarland, R.B.,& Lockerbie, G. (1994). Difficulties in treating ritually abused children. Journal of Psychohistory, 21(4), 429-434.
  8. Rockwell, R.B. (1994). One psychiatrists view of Satanic ritual abuse. The Journal of Psychohistory, 21(4), 443-460.
  9. "Report of Utah State Task Force on Ritual Abuse" (PDF). Utah Governor's Commission for Women and Families. 1992-05-01. Retrieved 2007-11-26.

Followup to straw poll

Latest comment: 16 years ago7 comments6 people in discussion

Okay, so it seems that everybody participating here (with the probable exception of ResearchEditor, who didn't respond) agrees that wp:fringe applies here. That means there can't be an issue of the mainstream view being overweighted, or of the references that document the mainstream view being overused.

Concerning the overall structure of the article, it seems to me that the lead is pretty good. I suggest, though, that it ought to be directly followed by the History section -- since we're talking about a historical phenemenon, that's where most of the interest lies. The Overview section is very problematic: it isn't an overview as written, but rather an analysis that attempts to make categorizations and fine distinctions about a thing that doesn't actually even exist, according to the consensus opinion here. On the whole, this article would benefit, I think, from a narrative structure, in which the main content is organized on the basis of time: onset of the phenomenon, development, skeptical reactions, waning, current status, analysis. Looie496 (talk) 17:55, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. I've already relocated the History section. —Cesar Tort 18:45, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
Sometimes Biao and RE do not edit for a couple of days; to be fair we should wait a bit longer before considering this finalized. That being said, the suggestion to reorg seems fine to me. "Overview" used to be called "Definitions" - there could probably be a whole section on the various definitions and uses of SRA, and how the definitions and focus changed over time, but that'd take a lot of revisiting of sources.
We should also indicate that there is some lingering interest in the area from a minority - hard to do without original research; possibly McLeod & Goddard would be useful here if used judiciously and if the article were available. I doubt we're going to get an explicit statement from somewhere reliable that belief in SRA lingers like the scent of a dead woodchuck under a porch. WLU (talk) 18:54, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
My list above shows that there is more than "a lingering interest...from a minority." The pro side of the argument needs to be fairly cited in the article and extreme statements about panic need to be adequately qualified. ResearchEditor (talk) 03:19, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I didn't vote in the straw pole because it seemed to me to be a false dichotomy. (No complaint to the editor who posted it - the poll was a worthy attempt, thanks for formulating it). Certainly, I do not assert there is prevalent mutligeneraltional pure-religious Satanic abuse. However, the fringe theory guideline does not apply. SRA is not a binary question on any of the dimensions - it's not proven to be either prevalent or non-existent; neither "real" Satanism or no-Satanism. What is it when a criminal case documents confessions of group abuse, and there is forensic evidence of pentagrams, etc, that can be seen with ultraviolet light? Is it it "real" Satanic abuse? Or is it the use of Satanic symbolism to frighten the children? Or, is it non-Satanic, religious abuse? Those questions have not been conclusively answered by science, but they have been documented. I do not support the idea that SRA should be presented as prevalent "real" Satanic-based cultic abuse. But also, I don't support the idea that it's only a moral panic.

There is a continuum of possible explanations that have been discussed in reliable sources (ie, Ross), and at least one legal case with forensic evidence (maybe more; I only read about one). I do accept that the skeptical view has much weight and that it is appropriate to present that skeptical view with preponderance in the article. However, the use of the fringe theory guideline to exclude all non-skpetical views is not appropriate. The continuum of possible explanations should be presented and explored, based on reliable sources; and among those possible explanations, there is some small chance that some of the reported SRA actually might be the result of Satanic cults doing their thing. It's unlikely, but lack of evidence is not the same thing as disproof. This is not the Flat Earth theory that can be disproven beyond doubt by science. The idea of Satanic abuse does have some traction in social groups, and while that's not science, it is notable and verifiable. There are still unresolved questions about the source of those concerns; it's a stretch to consider that all of that is the result of one or two books in the 1980s.

I must repeat, I am not a "believer"; more accurately, I'm a "skeptic" (though some editors here might think it's funny I describe myself that way); the way I see skepticism is that I'm as skeptical of disbelieving as I am of believing. When hard science can't answer a question, it's OK for it to remain a question. That said, there certainly was a moral panic about SRA that went beyond its actual prevalence (that could have ranged from none, to some few cases, or maybe a few more than a few - but not to "many"); so the emphasis on the moral panic is appropriate in the article, though that does not mean that the still-open question of what really happened need be relegated to fringe status. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 04:56, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

JAR, the ideas that the moon landing was faked, that the Loch Ness Monster exists, and that Shakespeare didn't write his plays have "traction in some social groups, and while that's not science, it is notable and verifiable." Yet just like the belief in satanic ritual abuse, which as you state yourself is unlikely and without proof, these are all fringe theories. The social scientific position on SRA as a dated moral panic, accounts for exactly the facts of traction without evidence, and very much so in a scientific manner. The fact that "believers" refuse to accept the methods of sociologists, anthropologists, folklorists and historians as "scientific" does not invalidate those methods. Believers assert on this talk page that the explanations of moral panic, social problem and/or mass hysteria just scholarly guesses devoid of evidence, but this couldn't be further from the truth. And no JAR, this "evidence" does not not just amount to "two books" either. Have you read Victor? LaFontaine? Frankfurter? DeYoung? etc. Have you read the various mentions SRA gets as the prime example of contemporary panic in all the literature about "moral panic"? Early artifacts of mediated culture, like Michele Remembers are certainly very important parts of the puzzle but what developed is much greater, and encompasses the documented activities of various social networks of therapists, social workers and law enforcement personnel, not to mention an onslaught of later books, television programs and other media all of which added immense amounts of social capital to a basic belief that has yet to be corroborated. This belief also verifiably mobilized false allegations of SRA in numerous cases. This belief also verifiably grew into a larger conspiracy theory about intergenerational networks of satanic cults -- an aspect of the belief that developed in no small part because the lack of forensic evidence had to be explained in some way, and what better explanation than a well organized group covering it all up? Historical and cross cultural data has allowed scholars to compare what transpired here in the United States, and in the UK with other social phenomena and the similarities are more than striking. To date the best explanatory model for the data which is available is something like moral panic. Even if there were/are one or two cases of real SRA (which still has not been proven), what happened in the 80s-90s would still be best described as a moral panic. Such hypothetical cases of SRA would not have involved intergenerational and organized cults but would instead have been random outliers in the world of child abuse. As such they would warrant no special attention whatsoever. This is like finding that two unrelated child abusers dressed up like clowns when they perpetrated their abuse and claiming a special category of child abuse called "Clown Abuse". The only reason why SRA warrants any attention -- the only reason why its a notable social phenomenon -- is because of its existence as a social epidemic, as a moral panic. In other words because of all the claims that even you can admit were clearly fabricated, exaggerated and without any proof. Social scientists have arrived at this conclusion by studying the available social data. That is a fact and belief in SRA is still a fringe theory. What is sad about this fringe theory is that some form of abuse very probably occurred in a wide variety of supposed SRA cases, and that this real abuse has been obscured by the fantastical elements of SRA promoted by the enacters of panic.PelleSmith (talk) 11:44, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia reports primarily the mainstream position, and the fringe or minority position to the proportion that it exists in the outside world. Accordingly, if most scholars believe SRA has been discredited, and I believe they do and there are sources for this, then we should report it as such. We can report continuing interest in the phenomenon, to the proportion that it exists, but the page should not present this as the main idea; it should be clear that belief in SRA is the minority position and we shouldn't blow that minority up to occupy a significant portion of the page. The few credulous sources that exist after 2000 in self-published press and low impact journals should not occupy half the page or even a significant part of a section (possibly in a sub-section).
My take is that the idea that SRA is a real phenomenon related to actual abuse of children by satanists is a fringe topic. The idea that the amount of time, money and interest paid to SRA in the 80s and 90s was excessive (i.e. was a moral panic) is not a fringe topic and should be the major contents of the page. Ongoing interest in the minority of child abuse cases that are organized (i.e. pedophile rings) is certainly something that came out of the satanic panic, and are certainly real (and a tiny majority of the child sexual abuse cases) but they are not the topic of this page. WLU (talk) 15:00, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

recent edits

Latest comment: 16 years ago8 comments2 people in discussion

I have added a few short lines to the article to attempt to balance the page.

I added short two lines about McMartin from LA Times with a neutral view. The case was hotly debated then and this should be shown at least a bit in the article.

That blurb is from the first trial of Peggy & Ray Buckey, and contains the jurors opinion that the kids were molested but there wasn't evidence that it was Ray. How does this help? The statement about Ray was that the charges were dropped after a second trial, which was after the article you refer to was published. WLU (talk) 16:20, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
The Abuse of Innocence, Prometheus Books, p. 354. "What saved Ray and Peggy was the presence, on the jury, of several exceptionally intelligent people. One of them was a Ph.D. Another was a scientist who apparently knew something about logic. Another was the black woman who laughed at the prosecutors and her witnesses. Apparently they were able to convince the others that the evidence required to find the defendants guilty beyond a reasonable doubt did not exist. The media generally ignored these jurors and focused on the minority, the two who voted to convict Ray, even though, on the thirteen deadlocked counts, the overwhelming majority of the jurors voted to acquit him."
The verdict has produced a self-examination by the media, most notably a four-part series in the Los Angeles Times in which David Shaw, who covers the news media for the newspaper, asserted that his own newspaper consistently favored the prosecution and failed to scrutinize its charges. (referring to "Where was skepticism in media's coverage" by David Shaw published in the Los Angeles Times, January 19th, 1990.
Perhaps there should not be much emphasis on either the Los Angeles Times coverage of the McMartin trial and the two individuals who were in the minority. WLU (talk) 23:18, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I added one short line to the therapist's section. With 30 to 40 peer reviewed journal articles about therapist's accounts, I believe that a brief mention is deserved of this issue.

Why does Braun & Sachs opinion count so much, particularly when it's 22 years old and from before significant skepticism about both DID and SRA? If this type of information should be included, it should be in the DID section. 59 patients also isn't a lot, and the studies cited in that section above covers this far more comprehensively than the experience of two clinicians. What does this add that isn't already there? WLU (talk) 16:20, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I fixed spelling and added two short lines with important recent study with several thousand alleged victims under allegations. Since this is a very recent and important study, I believe that two short lines are appropriate.

Added to the history section to indicate ongoing interest. Important to who? It's still yet more "Lots of DID patients (of particular clinicians) allege SRA and there's still no forensic evidence". And the survey mixes ritual abuse with mind control, whatever that is. I understand it's the secular reincarnation to explain the motivation of alleged abusers, but it's poorly defined and on the wrong page. WLU (talk) 16:20, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I added a short part to childrens' allegation section about the day care cases, since this was an important part of the literature.

Why is it important? It blurs the definitions of SRA, concerns only allegations of SRA in day care, Bibby is quoting only 2 studies, not a vast survey of all literature, the studies were in the middle of the coercive questioning fad, and findings of the case are circular to the classifications for what makes a day care case SRA (costumes, drugs, magic threats). Bibby also cites La Fontaine regarding ritual abuse cases, when La Fontaine excludes satanic ritual abuse as factual events in her survey. The statement you added just makes the point that those who allege severe abuse appear damaged. WLU (talk) 16:38, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I re-wrote the Van B. line. Somehow this was changed and IMO didn't correctly reflect the source.

Van B very scrupulously does not say if the majority is skepticism or belief from practitioners, and details the problems with both sides. She also points out that some of the stuff that many DID patients say is impossible and shouldn't be taken literally. She's also from 1990. How much weight should we put on it? Van B also doesn't say that individuals always remembered their memories continuously from childhood (the impression given by "A wide number of MPD adult patients in therapy have reported SRA memories that began in childhood"), only that the memories of abuse they had were of childhood abuse. Doesn't say if memories were recovered during therapy or not. WLU (talk) 16:38, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I added a short part from Coleman with a balancing phrase from LaFontaine.

La Fontaine investigated, Coleman treated some patients. Which should get more weight? Coleman also apparently had a client that murdered 6 people who she did not report. Reports on the testimony of individual clients without investigation is undue weight given the controversy over false memory. WLU (talk) 16:38, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I did not change any of the intro or add any attribtions, though I believe these statements should be more balanced to represent all of the literature. I am hoping this can be discussed and consensus reached. ResearchEditor (talk) 03:53, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Time to present a complaint in the boards

Latest comment: 16 years ago7 comments4 people in discussion

I had to revert once more ResearchEditor's various interpolations. The reverted phrase on McMartin is misleading and the talk-page discussion does not even belong here but in that page. Here are three of the reverted sentences interpolated in several places of the article—:

  • "Five hundred and forty-three responded that that they had been ritually abused in a satanic cult"
  • "Braun and Sachs stated that they worked with nine patients from different parts of the US (and knew of 50 others) involved as children in the forced participation of satanic cult worship involving cannibalism, human sacrifice and ritualistic sex"
  • "When day care cases are reported as ritual abuse as compared to those without allegations of ritual abuse, they tend to have more perpetrators, sexual contact, a higher number of victims, a greater severity of abuse, and more types of abuse and a greater impact on children's behavior"

I have requested ResearchEditor to ask for comment in talk page prior to make this kind of povish multiple edits. He replied in his talk page: "My edits will follow wikipedia policy. Please do not make any changes without adequate explanation when making the edits. Otherwise your reverts will simply be edit warring" ignoring my advise to request counsel from the boards to ascertain whether or not his interpretation of NPOV is the right one.

I have copied and pasted the following from the collapsed section in this board:

It'd be nice if we could get ResearchEditor to shut up about it and stop inserting "skeptics who believe SRA has been discredited think... " into the lead and half the paragraphs. Jack, much as there needs to be balance in the article, and much as the minority position needs to be portrayed, ResearchEditor is a problem, not a contributor. What is needed in the lead is not "skeptics consider SRA to have been discredited"; what is needed is "SRA has been discredited in the mainstrea, though interest still lingers from a minority." This needs to be reflected in a realistic appraisal of what exists in contemporary reliable sources, which should be a minority on the page. What is not needed are weasel words that give the impression that only dedicated sketpics believe SRA has been discredited, when it is the opposite; only dedicated believers think that there's still a problem. [...] ResearchEditor is engaging in a slow edit war, very carefully reverting only once per day but doing so every day, with no reason aside from his/her assertion that we are placing undue weight on skepticism. [...] To date, ResearchEditor has not provided any new information or sources for the discussion that support his position, yet reverts anyways. Suggestions have been offered for moving forward and s/he has not taken them, but insists on repeating the same arguments as if it would convince other editors through simple repetition. It has not, but it is interfering with the page being edited. WLU (talk) 13:55, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

In his most recent post ResearchEditor added once more (!) his list when in fact user:PelleSmith demonstrated that he had abused the list.

I think it is time to present again a complaint in the boards about this sort of behavior. Here is the link to the previous incident when ResearchEditor (then known as Abuse truth) was blocked.

—Cesar Tort 09:46, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

This could (and should) be as simple as WP:DUE. We've been through all the motions several times over. The relevant literature has been presented and reviewed several times over. It is unlikely that any new aspects will be brought up any time soon. It is time that ResearchEditor is recognized as the WP:FRINGE pusher they are and that we move on. --dab (𒁳) 08:33, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Agree 100%.PelleSmith (talk) 19:27, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
The list I presented is a valid list of the peer reviewed journals and reliable sources. I have presented my reasoning several times for the inclusion of the above edits. The McMartin case was controversial, to present only one side of it does not properly represent the literature. The Braun article was in a book published by the APA and should have some weight. The research study I gave two short lines is recent and should be properly cited, not marginalized or deleted. The day care cases section I restored was deleted without comment. I have always backed my edits up with reasons and comments. At times, CTs have simply deleted my edits en bloc. ResearchEditor (talk) 03:13, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
And I gave my reasons for doing so: in this very thread for example (above), and in edit summaries and even in your talk page. I pointed out to you in talk:McMartin that two admins (including a member of ArbCom) suggested you to ask for comment before doing multiple, pov edits. You ignored the advise. I reverted. —Cesar Tort 03:24, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
The above is inaccurate as well. It was suggested that I make individual edits one at a time per edit page and not all at once. So I did. The actual quote of the member of ArbCom was "Then make your changes one by one, and they'll get judged one by one." This was explained to CT before on the talk page there. ResearchEditor (talk) 03:29, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
However, the other admin did say "CT is not required to ask for comment before making changes. RE is, per the AT unblock". —Cesar Tort 03:40, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Find Articles

Latest comment: 16 years ago6 comments4 people in discussion

Anyone have a Find Articles subscription? [15] Is the article by Sue Headley, is it a reprint of McLeod & Goddard, a review or reply? I've added McLeod and Goddard to the skepticism section of history to indicate minority ongoing interest, something I think even M&G would agree with ("In consequence, professional assocations withdrew their support and workers in the field of organised ritual abuse were subject to professional opprobrium, media harrasment and the ever-present risk of legal reprisal.") WLU (talk) 14:44, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Fascinating who you define as a "minority", WLU.
Professor Chris Goddard is the head of "Child Abuse Research Australia" and the founder of the "Australian Childhood Foundation". He's the pre-eminent spokesperson on child abuse in Australia.
Wow. What a "minority" viewpoint. How "marginal" he must be. Clearly, a "conspiracy theorist".
And just to show you how "crazy" all those people who believe in ritual abuse must be, the founders of "Persons Against Ritual Abuse Torture" have just had their first peer-reviewed publication.
Sarson, J. & MacDonald, L. (2008). Ritual Abuse-Torture within Families/Groups. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 16(4), pp. 419-438.
Yup. "The debate on SRA is over", like you say. No one is interested anymore. Case closed. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 00:51, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
The handful of contemporary references you gave us a while ago relating to "ritual abuse" mostly turned out to have little to nothing to do with satanic ritual abuse. "Ritual Abuse-Torture" certainly has little to nothing to do with satanic ritual abuse ... and it should be noted that even so it is a relatively new and unknown concept. What exactly is your point?PelleSmith (talk) 01:54, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
I would add that two of the foremost writers on child abuse, Alice Miller (psychologist) and Lloyd deMause, swallowed the SRA claims in the 1980s and 1990s. Since then Miller has not written anymore on the subject (and deMause doesn't mention it as much as he did in the last century). "Minority" should be understood in contrast to the accepted view nowadays. Unlike ResearchEditor, I find WLU's argument compelling: that some RS say explicitly that the game is over. —Cesar Tort 21:15, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
Google scholar turns up nothing for that title when in quotes [16], and a series of unreliable sources without [17]. This appears to be yet more evidence that only a tiny fringe are actually interested in this. WLU (talk) 12:58, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps the way to disambiguate once and for all this persistent issue is to expand the article that I started, Religious abuse, which covers the subject of ritualistic abuse in real life? However, I don't have the sources to do it. —Cesar Tort 16:04, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

move?

Latest comment: 16 years ago15 comments4 people in discussion

reviewing the more "academic" sources presented, I find that even the conspiracy theorists have moved away from calling this "Satanic". Perhaps we should reflect this by moving the article to ritual abuse (google), with a historical note that during the heyday of the moral panic, "Satanic" used to be thrown in for added chills? There is the coinage "ritual abuse-torture" now, coined by the Canadian "Persons Against Ritual Abuse-Torture" [18][19], the group that managed to get their own chapter into the Routledge-published Encylopedia on Domestice Violence. Their definition of their field of interest is:

"Ritual abuse-torture is one form of non-state actor torture and is about pedophilic parents, families, guardians, and like-minded adults who abuse, torture, and traffic children using organizing ritualisms." (emphasis mine)

Their Routledge success probably makes them notable enough to make ritual abuse-torture a redirect here and refer to their definition. Now, it is undisputed that there are sickening depths to domestic violence without requiring "organizing ritualisms", and it is perfectly unclear why these groups should insist so much on the "ritual" part. That's probably a leftover from the 1980s panic. If everyone could sober up, forces could be joined to combat the actual abuse going on without this silly debate about "ritual", let alone "Satanic ritual". Sure, pretty much every bit of human behaviour is ritualistic in the wider sense, but we don't qualify bank robbery, politics or warfare as involving "organizing ritualisms". Fwiiw, religioustolerance.org gives Ritual Abuse (RA) as the main heading, listing as "also called": Cult Related Abuse, Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA), Ritualized Abuse, Occult Ritual Abuse (ORA), Sadistic Ritual Abuse (SRA), etc. Their bow to the "ritualisms" quirk (sigh) is phrased as the perpetrators' primary motive being "to fulfill a prescribed ritual in order to achieve a specific goal or satisfy the perceived needs of their deity." dab (𒁳) 08:49, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I would not recommend moving the page. I created Ritualized child abuse in order to add there the non-lunatic aspect of ritual abuse. Satanic ritual abuse has been, on the other hand, a pretty handy term for what the page already describes here, whether with conspiratorial claims, like those of Alex Constantine on McMartin or not. Frankfurter's study, the most recent scholarly book on SRA, specifically uses the term SRA throughout the 2006 book. We must make the distinction between ritual abuse and the panic which, by sending innocent adults to jail, bankrupted the legal system in English-speaking countries in the 1980s and ‘90s. —Cesar Tort 11:47, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Ceasar, religious abuse, which is what you have linked just above is not the same as ritual abuse. Dab is right, the most obviously fantastical aspects of SRA are the "satanic" ones but the "ritualistic" ones are not far behind. The abuse of children, cross culturally and historically, as part of sanctioned ritual activity, is also a far cry from the fantastical perversions of satanic ritual abuse (and/or later "ritual abuse") claims. The two are related mostly in how our cultural imagination to some degree uses the former as a warrant in the social construction of the latter. That said I do believe that this entry should address the moral panic and not actual forms of abuse, which are rarely ever actually "satanic" or "ritualistic" is nature.PelleSmith (talk) 12:24, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
  • "religious abuse, which is what you have linked just above is not the same as ritual abuse".
Ditto. Since I've recently moved "Ritualized child abuse" to the much broader topic "Religious abuse" I have not yet added the new data into the article. As it standas today, the content is basically about ritualistic child abuse. A major editing in that article is needed (alas, I have no time at present to do it). —Cesar Tort 12:46, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

hm. I am not sure ritualized child abuse should redirect to "religious abuse". Alleged "ritualized child abuse" is exactly the scope of this article, while "religious abuse" can mean pretty much anything. Are you sure "religious abuse" is even a term? dab (𒁳) 15:49, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes: it's a term (see that talk page and also the SRA article). I moved the article because it was considered ORish by another editor. Maybe he changed his mind by now? —Cesar Tort 16:13, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I've googled the term. It has a variety of applications, the most prominent of which have nothing to do with "ritual abuse". In fact, I failed to find a quotable source thac conflates "ritual abuse" and "religious abuse". "religious abuse" is either abuse aiming to humiliate the victim by abusing their (the victim's!) religion, or abuse carried out under the guise of religion (not actually motivated by religion, i.e. abusing a religion to perpetrate abuse, as in the Catholic sex abuse cases). I don't think anyone would claim the Catholic sex abuse cases are "ritualized abuse". They're just priests abusing their clerical position for selfish (pedophiliac) ends. --dab (𒁳) 16:36, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

In order not to fork discussion, I'd recommend to discuss it in the other article's talk. —Cesar Tort 16:43, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Talk:religious abuse is about the term "religious abuse". This section remains to be about the question of whether this article should be moved to ritual abuse (or Ritual Abuse). dab (𒁳) 17:02, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

in reply to PelleSmith, it is most interesting that actuall and known instances of "the abuse of children, cross culturally and historically, as part of sanctioned ritual activity" are never even brought up in the context of RA. Such topics include [20]

initiation rites are related, but technically do not really concern children since they are precisely about marking the end of childhood. dab (𒁳) 17:08, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

For the most part I agree, with the exception of imagined versions of child sacrifice which have been a major component of alleged SRA in the United States. I believe, imagined versions of child marriage (in this case to Satan) have also appeared in allegations, though much much more rarely. For the sake of clarity -- my point wasn't that something like child sacrifice in SRA allegations resembles known versions of child sacrifice, historically and cross-culturally, but instead that a long history of the popular and scholarly fascination with more or less exaggerated accounts of various forms of ritual atrocity certainly plays a significant role in the cultural imagination that underlies various fantastical accounts of ritualized violence in the name of evil bogeymen like "Satan." David Frankfurter makes this point in a much more in depth and articulate manner in his book. These variably exaggerated accounts of ritual atrocity are not always of violence directed towards children of course. Also, in terms of "religious abuse", I agree that it is by no means an exact term. In the child abuse/family abuse arena, however, I believe it does more specifically refer to the abuse (of children) in the name of religion, a phenomenon that does not need to be "imagined". In the relevant scholarship it is also quite explicitly seperate from "ritual abuse", as I understand it (no matter what stance the scholar takes on the latter).PelleSmith (talk) 19:21, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
I don't agree with the moving. In the archived talk pages you'd see that it's like moving UFO abduction to the main article abduction. This blurs the matters of reality vs. lunatic claims. Pages which deal with reality such as ritualized child abuse should be clearly separated from the fringe, loony topics. —Cesar Tort 17:13, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
SRA was a coherent phenomenon for several years, and lots of sources discuss how the 'satanic' part was an aspect of the controversy because of the implied Christian focus. Later the focus shifted to non-satanic 'cult' abuse, then 'ritual' abuse, and I read somewhere that this was a more-or-less irrelevant change since all the terms were seen and used as code words for the allegations of SRA. The focus gradually bleeds into the idea of there being simply ritual abuse, promoted by Noblitt, that's designed to create alters and mind control. It'd be nice to document this in the history section but the sources I've read to date don't really cover it (De Young, 2004, might do so, and it's been a while since I read Frankfurter who's another good candidate). Anyway, my overall comment is that I think the rumour-panic has always been a separate phenomenon from ritual abuse within mainstream religions (the list provided by Dab) but coherent enough even now to remain a separate article. At best a see also in the mainstream page. The names have changed, but the authors haven't. I'd say leave the page as it is because any discussion of the rumour panic after the "satanic" was dropped would be crippled and stubby.
Overall - if we do decide to tweak the redirects, I'd suggest waiting until the current page is more 'done' or the destination page is in better shape. The term 'religious abuse' is a very relative one - one culture's religious abuse is another culture's rite of passage. Not an easy topic and I'm really not sure how much coherent discussion there is of it. WLU (talk) 18:22, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
yes, it's important to show how it was "SRA" at first and then gradually became "RA" as it became clear that it was all so much hot air. Cesar, try to understand the (admittedly paradoxical) fact that "RA" does not refer to actual "ritualized child abuse" of the kind I list above, but is instead a toned down term for the "SRA" phenomenon. Fwiiw, actual child sacrifice is extremely rare these days, if at all occurring in the context of tribal African religions. We collect such cases as are reported at Human_sacrifice#Contemporary_human_sacrifice and medicine murder. Adam (unsolved Thames murder case) is a dedicated article about a 2001 case. This has little or nothing to do with "SRA" except, as PelleSmith notes, providing a "popular and scholarly fascination" which in turn forms the patterns of how "evil" is imagined in the minds of USian Christian fundamentalists. Rather ironically, here we have an identification of African medicine murders as "rituals by fundamentalist Christian sects" :o) dab (𒁳) 20:23, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
That's exactly my point in starting "Ritualized child abuse/Religious abuse". As can be seen in Frankfurter's Evil Incarnate, real abuse doesn't come from the purported satanists, but from fanatic religionists in their efforts to cleanse the world from evil. —Cesar Tort 21:28, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

La Fontaine removed

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

In this edit, a citation to La Fontaine, page 5 was removed. Here is the relevant text from La Fontaine, 1998:


The page doesn't include the word "coercive", but it reads like coercive to me. But should it be replaced? There are two other citations to the statement, so there is no chance it will be removed. Is there a better use of it? Much of the content from that and other sections have been cut and pasted, so there's a danger of the wording being inappropriate, poor, or irrelevant because it's a legacy of the editing history. WLU (talk) 15:19, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Another source

Latest comment: 16 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion

Check out the google books link for Child Maltreatment by Perrin & Perrin, p. 321 [22]:

I'm not even trying, and here's a FIFTH EXPLICIT STATEMENT THAT SRA IS OVER and a second one that says the believers are the minority. I have yet to see anything comparable in explicitness and reliability from the 'believer' side. ResearchEditor, Biaothanoi, do you have anything that's verifiable and comparable? Jack, given this verifiable statement, do you see any reason to give weight to the non-skeptical side? Seriously, five sources, explicit in saying a) it was a panic, and b) the panic is over, two explicitly saying the remaining believers are the minority. This could be written for settling a dispute on this page. Based on what I've seen of the minority position, there's no question of interpretation, quote mining, unreliable sourcing or anything else that I can think of that could possibly indicate that SRA is still taken seriously. WLU (talk) 16:09, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

My reply would be that page at this point basically ignores a large subset of data on the field. This subset includes 40 or more peer reviewed articles, as well as many books on the topic, some even published by university presses. In my opinion, the proper way to write the article would be to represent the main debate from the 80's and 90's where by far most of the literature was published, as well as most of the notability around the topic occurred, fairly representing all sources and then comment on this with the last eight years or so studies in a final section. ResearchEditor (talk) 23:24, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Do any of them say that the debate is ongoing? The whole point of these references is to justify the statement and idea that SRA is no longer considered credible among mainstream scholars. None of your references do that. Your argument that they do is original research, which I do not have to use because I have sources that explicitly call it a moral panic and historical over-reaction. That "some" were published by university press means that most are not, while all of mine are. The proper way to write the article is not as if it were 1992 and we were in the middle of the debate, it's to draw on the most recent sources whenever possible that address the majority opinion, which is that SRA was a moral panic and gross over-reaction. We should be drawing on the sources that examine the overall position as a historical event. Stop pointing to "forty sources". Point to one that explicitly says scholars are still debating the point. I don't think you can. WLU (talk) 00:49, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
The sources you have used to promote this argument are extremely biased and were always so. They do not present a balanced view of the research. Your rewriting of the article has ignored the actual debate and uses the leverage of a couple of newer and extremely biased sources, presents the debate an extremely biased manner. It would be much more accurate to emphasize the more notable period of the debate and close the article with the few articles written once the debate was over in the media.ResearchEditor (talk) 01:12, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
There is no debate.PelleSmith (talk) 01:44, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
I had a funny reply where the judicious use of strike-through greatly increased the accuracy of RE's reply, but that's probably prohibited by CIVIL. WLU (talk) 14:21, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

ResearchEditor

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Please see here for a proposed topic ban. Moreschi (talk) (debate) 16:25, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Next steps

Latest comment: 16 years ago20 comments6 people in discussion

OK, based on NPOVN and AN, SRA is bunk. That's it, it's over, skepticism is the norm and Dr. Noblitt's personal beliefs are his and his alone. Great! Now, there is still things to be done - references should be added to the page, and the stubby sections expanded. I'll try to keep doing so over the coming weeks, I would particularly need assistance with the DID and false memory sections, as my readings have to date not covered that area.

Anyone want the unenviable task of rooting through the list of satanic ritual abuse allegations? My last peruse indicated lots of entries that needed to be expanded or culled - much like the Matamoros murders, it's not SRA, it's ritual murders or ambiguous at best. WLU (talk) 12:12, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Before working on the List I'd like to bring again the issue of incorporating some of the material about the U.K., Australia and the Netherlands into this article so that the part of the tag saying that this article focuses on the US may be removed. Remember in a previous incarnation of this article the sections of said countries? Even short re-insertions of such sections will do it. —Cesar Tort 01:22, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
What has actually happened is that all those disagreeing with the fact that "skepticism is the norm" have been in essence bullied or attacked into not posting or editing the page. All research disagreeing with this position has been ignored, and the extreme skeptical position held by a couple of sociologists writing only based on theory and not on evidence or work with actual SRA victims is considered to be the only position to be represented on the page. The NPOVN debate did not contain a neutral party, nor did the AN discussion up to this point. So the idea of "bunk" has been manufactured and does not represent the research. ResearchEditor (talk) 01:19, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
"All those disagreeing" is you and one other editor. It's possible that you're the only ones with an accurate interpretation, but those sources (which I've been able to find) which you find to be believers, I find to be neutral or skeptical, so the odds are against it. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:22, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
RE everything you just wrote is a complete distortion of reality. The stubborn continuance of pushing this distortion is exactly why you're about to be topic banned. Sociologists do not write only based on theory, but based upon a preponderance of social evidence. What you call "research" is nothing of the sort, just the opinions of some therapists -- who for the most part are not research psychologists. Not to mention how dated these opinions are. FYI, what you call "a couple of sociologists" is actually clear consensus amongst sociologists, anthropologists, folklorists and historians. Anyone who disagrees with you must of course not be "neutral". I'm glad to see the system work in this case, since you so clearly are incapable of accepting basic facts in order to push your POV.PelleSmith (talk) 01:41, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
The system appears to be failing up until this point. It is being used to silence those that disagree with the theory of "panic." How can one measure "social evidence?" The measurement used by the few sources cited to back the panic theory ignores a large portion of the research in the field. Hardly an unbiased measurement. The peer reviewed opinions written by therapist and legal authorities that actually have direct experience with the victims should have at least as much weight as those writing theories based on their interpretations of the "social evidence." ResearchEditor (talk) 01:55, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
You either do not understand the nature of social scientific research or you are purposefully misconstruing it. Either way its hopeless. Good luck taking a break from this entry when the community decision becomes final. I'm not going to humor your false reality any longer.PelleSmith (talk) 02:00, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

(undent) Though I disagree with your opinion, I respect it and would not want to silence it. Hopefully the decision at WP:AN will not silence mine, but will respect it as well. ResearchEditor (talk) 03:02, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Ditto with PS. Like him I wouldn't like to humor your false reality. I wish you good luck convincing the admins in the AN board that Michelle Remembers, which claims that Satan wounded her and the virgin Mary healed the wound, is a good scientific source. And good luck too with Jimbo! —Cesar Tort 03:12, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Once again CT's edit above has falsely attributed to me an argument I did not make. I never said the above. What I did say was that a personal web page and the Fortean Times should not be used as sources in wikipedia pages. The argument made by 40 or more reliable sources and peer reviewed journals is a reality that needs to be represented in the SRA article. ResearchEditor (talk) 03:18, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
I didn't say that you claimed Satan or Mary stuff; merely that in your edits you try to push the idea that some credibility still lingers in Michelle Remembers, when in fact it's a totally discredited book. WP:FRINGE states that skeptical literature, even magazines like Skeptical Inquirer, are ok to debunk these fringe claims. That's the main point in your ongoing discussion with WLU (but this is a subject for that page; not here). —Cesar Tort 03:31, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
The above is not true either. I wanted reliable sources to present the debate there accurately as per wikipedia policy. ResearchEditor (talk) 03:36, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
There is no "debate".PelleSmith (talk) 04:30, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
well, there is "debate", it's just a debate where it is impossible to remain agnostic as to who is correct. Note that there is also "debate" over "Intelligent Design" even long after it has become clear the topic is pure bogus. The debate doesn't just go away, it just gradually shifts ever further towards the lunatic fringe. --dab (𒁳) 13:08, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
Actually, there's no ongoing debate about SRA in academic circles. The debate is over. —Cesar Tort 17:20, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

splitting?

WLU: On July 30 you stated in this talk that, if the article gets too long because there are too many sources, this can be dealt with by splitting it to appropriate sub-pages (just as you did with the SRA List). As you know, I have read printed versions of the reorg article several times. The last sections about DID and false memories struck me as pretty boring. I would recommend splitting the page into Ritual abuse and dissociation or something like that. At any event, since we will center our efforts in removing the US-centric tag —and this means adding other countries to the main article—, there will be no reasonable space for the DID and false memories' rather academic discussions in the present main-space. Further, I liked user:Looie496's advice. He wrote that the lead and the History section were good, and that the article would benefit from a narrative structure in which the content is organized on the basis of time. I agree and believe this would strike the readers as a truly readable article only if the more technical, ritual abuse and dissociation section, is split off from this page.

Thoughts?

—Cesar Tort 02:56, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

My short answer is WP:LENGTH if I preview the page without the sources, the length seems to be around 36 K (see here) which is within the realm of reasonable and right on the borderline - 11 pages when printed, not including sources (see here). It's not critical to me to split the page right now, but I totally admit it's a judgement call. Oh, and 6 pages of sources? Kudos to us!
The DID/false memories might be boring, but I think that's because we haven't sufficiently expanded and contextualized it - if SRA isn't coming from a vast evil conspiracy, then where did it come from? That's a pretty interesting question if you ask me... I also think it's more than a little under-attended to - the sections should be expanded with skeptical sources. Check out Loftus & Ketcham that I added yesterday - I think it's fascinating, but I've weird hobbies. Read the discussion between Loftus (or Ketcham?) and the skeptical conference presenter - p. 85, check the google books preview. That's just the start, and a more popular source, imagine what scholarly sources must be out there that we're missing!
Were I to split it, what I see as reasonable now is actually somewhat the opposite - keep DID/FM, and split off to "history of the satanic ritual abuse moral panic." While the history stands alone, the DID/FM requires more context and having a separate page would be hard to title, and possibly look an awful lot like WP:OR, but fits quite nicely on this page. A lot of this is also an artefact of the extremely poor quality of the DID and false memory pages on wikipedia in general, which is itself a legacy of RE's POV push. If we put our efforts into improving those pages, along with these sections, it might more organically become apparent how SRA and DID/FM are related. I've mostly focussed on the moral panic angle, the FM angle is probably as interesting but sorely needs attending to. But you could always try it and see what it looks like, either with sub-pages or with the option to revert. WLU (talk) 13:32, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
I would never split off the historical part. For Frankfurter, it's the main stuff. He for example can answer your question "where did it come from?" Do you know that the Salem witch trials started with claims by children? Really, history is important —and even more so if we take care of the real witch hunts in Europe. That's why the article needs a bit expansion beyond its US-centric limits. —Cesar Tort 17:13, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
Anything done on wikipedia can be undone, so I really don't feel strongly enough to object vigorously. A centralized discussion and edit history on this page makes it easier to get the whole picture and update accordingly, but again I can't say I'm in love with it. I've no objection to you adjusting as you think best and at least that way we'll have an idea of what your text would look like. Note however, that a page dedicated to the history of SRA could probably expand with Frankfurter a lot more to link much more explicitly and in more detail to the witch trials; we could also split off both sections and leave only the relevant summaries. They're ideas, I'm not saying mine are right or the best, I'm only really saying to inform the discussion from my end. Give 'er a whirl and see what comes out. WLU (talk) 19:28, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
With the exception of the academic DID/FM discussion, I'm satisfied with the present page. Perhaps a brief mention to Salem is in order due to the fact that children allegations were involved in the Salem panic, but it's not necessary to delve into the European witch hunt. What I tried to say in my first post above is that interest wanes completely when reaching the DID section. —Cesar Tort 20:25, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Latest Forum

Latest comment: 16 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

ResearchEditor has now appealed to Jimbo directly about this entry and the topic ban looming over his/her head.PelleSmith (talk) 01:52, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Hopefully I will find a neutral party to examine all of the evidence fully. ResearchEditor (talk) 01:55, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
I've already added my comment about it in the AN board. —Cesar Tort 02:29, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
I've commented on Jimbo's page; Jimbo himself usually doesn't comment on most posts, but the editors who monitor his page may. Jimbo's page is usually the last gasp of axe-grinding COI and POV pushers who are convinced that the cabal (presumably satanic in this case) have taken over wikipedia to prevent the TRUTH from getting out. Generally the comments I've read by him were to say "trust the admins you are working with"; for all that he is the boss of wiki, he's pretty hands-off and doesn't actually edit mainspace that much (see here and here; when he does, he often catches shit from other editors...) I'm more irritated by the recent comment at Talk:McMartin and Talk:Michelle Remembers and have posted on the AN in reply (here). WLU (talk) 14:01, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

WP:SHUN

Latest comment: 16 years ago10 comments3 people in discussion

OK, it's gotten to the point where people are making personal attacks and are singling out editors way too much, myself included. This is not an environment we should encourage. We can keep shooting down credulous editors, but it won't serve any good and it wastes server space. Accordingly, since RE's position has been effectively eliminated as something we should pay attention to, RE's posts are more repetitive than helpful, and despite thousands of K spent on this we've not managed to convince him/her of the weight of our position, I've a solution. WP:SHUN. No replies unless there is a reason to discuss. Any edits to mainspace get reported to WP:AN for a block. Any repeat of previous discussion is removed or hidden using {{divhide}}. This is the opposite of Wikipedia:Silence and consensus - silence implies disagreement. If anyone sees any reason to edit the main page based on a comment, do so without fanfare; suggestions and sources should speak for themselves.

Though actually, given the comment by East718, RE shouldn't even be here. East718 has posed a notice on RE's talk page. So any further posts by RE should be reported. WLU (talk) 14:32, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes: And East718 has amended the topic ban to include "closely related articles, and their respective talkpages". However, we should keep in mind WP:SHUN since besides RE other editors, including probable meat-puppets, have dumped their own lists several times in this page. Next time I won't collapse a forthcoming list. I'll simply delete it. —Cesar Tort 16:37, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Do so once only, past once you'd be considered edit-warring no matter how stupid the argument. Of course, if others wish to delete the list as well, that would be evidence of consensus. But deleting talk page comments is something that should be done on an exception basis and with care; SHUN-ing the contributor, depending on the contribution, would also be an option. WLU (talk) 17:25, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
I had in mind what you wrote here: "Yich this is getting long. I don't see Lacter's addition as helpful simply because it's a massive dump". Do you mean it's better to just collapse the next dump? —Cesar Tort 20:28, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm really just hoping against hope that it won't come to that... I generally don't like deleting or collapsing because it leads to acrimony and edit warring over stupid things. That being said, everyone has their breaking point. Hopefully with a topic ban and several noticeboards on the books, there won't be much call for similar POV "SRA is really-really-real-and-super-serious" talk page flotsum. What on earth is that in the picture? Toilets? I think we'll be able to handle it. WLU (talk) 20:46, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Don't really know, but I was tempted to add the entire photo in this page with the footnote: WLU trying to figure out which of these is a RS. LOL :) Cesar Tort 20:55, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
More like WLU trying to figure out which shitty broken source gets thrown out first and/or which shitty source could possibly be reliable. WLU (talk) 01:12, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

well, seeing that we agree that this is inherently a fringy topic, WP:DUE says it's ok to discuss fringy sources. Come on, it would be difficult to discuss flood archaeology purely by relying on academic archaeological literature, no? --dab (𒁳) 11:41, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Of course it's ok to discuss fringy sources. But to get the humurous point of posting here (I refrained to do so) the above-linked image of the dump you'd have to see the archived talks where several posters dumped far more large lists of references than the ones discussed recently. —Cesar Tort 13:53, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
This was the first of about five dumps. —Cesar Tort 15:53, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Archiving

Latest comment: 16 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion

Archived, with the usual caveats. There's still more to remove to result in a talk page of reasonable length, but I'm already cutting into the 14th, which is only 4 days ago. WLU (talk) 14:41, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

RE is still complaining to the AN board, Jimbo, the present banning admin, and the admin who unblocked him some months ago after his February block. Just in case that other editors start to peek into this talk page —one of the best places to show the substance of the later debate—, threads up to the middle of the page ("La Fontaine removed") could be archived as well. —Cesar Tort 03:53, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
WP:SHUN - if we need to, the archive is there. Until then I'm content with monitoring and only intervening if some fatal mis-conception arises. If we're lucky, RE will be hoisted upon his own petard by being sufficiently vocal to be actually blocked. Letting AN deal with what we've been dealing with for months now will only serve to reinforce our point and best of all we don't have to do anything about it. WLU (talk) 13:09, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
How machiavelic... (BTW, I said archived, not retrieved). —Cesar Tort 17:00, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
Hey, all RE has to do to avoid having his/her block extended is stop complaining. It's actually rather transparent : )
One of these days I should read instead of scan the talk pages. My apologies CT, I am in far too much of a hurry these days and you spend far too much time correcting my many errors. I don't think I'll archive just because the page is manageable right now, and the comments still are not very old. It's quite rare in my experience for a talk page to get archived as often as this one does. It's a combination of lots of posting, loooooong posts and lots of repetitious posts; much of the stuff in the archive is more than a little useless. WLU (talk) 19:33, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
  1. ^ Bibby, 1996, p. 19.
  2. ^ Kent, S.A. (1993). "Deviant scripturalism and ritual satanic abuse. II: Possible Masonic, Mormon, Magick, and Pagan influences". Religion. 23 (4): 355–367. doi:10.1006/reli.1993.1029.
  3. ^ La Fontaine, JS (1994). "Allegations of Sexual Abuse in Satanic rituals". Religion. 24: 181–4.
  4. ^ La Fontaine, JS (1995). "Discussion - Diabolic Debates: Replies to Stephen Kent". Religion. 25: 91–2.
  5. ^ a b Frankfurter, D (1993). "Religious studies and claims of satanic ritual abuse: A rejoinder to Stephen Kent". Religion. 24: 353–60.
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