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Latest comment: 2 years ago by Amadeus1999 in topic Xi Jinping Strengthens His Grip Over Chinese Media
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Ukrainian Pravda (Ukrayinska Pravda)

Latest comment: 2 years ago7 comments4 people in discussion

I have been working on Russian–Ukrainian information war, which came into my hands tagged as “needing cleanup after translation” and while the mangled machine translation is now approaching readability, it had a host of other content problems that I am now beginning to try to address. So please don’t write me letters; I know and am working on it. There is currently however no dispute or edit war on this page.

My specific question relates to the Ukrainian-language version of Pravda, which is frequently cited as a reference and which the original author appears to believe. I did not see a discussion of it at Pravda and the archives here heap scorn on Pravda in general, but archive 114 apparently contains a comment from somebody who thinks the Ukrainian version is “definitely reliable”. I may have some other source questions shortly, but that one comes up quite a bit. Btw, if anyone can point me to a list of Ukrainian sources that are reliable for the topic, that would be useful.

I am primarily working on the theory that most of these events probably have English-language sources, but as part of that I am also attempting to verify the existing sources, which are almost all in Russian or Ukrainian, and tagging the dead links or RS questions that I encounter Elinruby (talk) 08:20, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

PS - Before somebody gives me the speech on context - it is used at least a dozen times for different statements. Granted that the whole article is about different versions of the truth, my question is whether statements of fact in a news story, claiming that Politician X says Y on date Z, for example, are likely to be accurate. Elinruby (talk) 08:29, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
Elinruby, just to clarify. Do you mean Pravda as in the CPRF controlled one or Pravda.ru or Ukrayinska Pravda (pravda.com.ua    )? The latter is not a version or edition but an unrelated organisation. It was founded in Ukraine in 2000 whereas the other two are splits from the original Pravda. Tayi Arajakate Talk 10:20, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
Ukrayinska Pravda is the one I am asking about. The article also uses the Russian one as a reference but looks like this is usually as an example of something “Russian media” were saying about something. Since that one *is* Russian media, ignoring those citations for the moment. So does the fact that the ua publication is different than the Russian Pravda mean it is ok as a reference for uncontested news events? Elinruby (talk) 10:28, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
I'm going to research this source and report back. The new page patrol source guide (WP:NPPSG) lists only 3 sources based in Ukraine at the moment, not including Ukrayinska Pravda, so you may have to fall back on the WP:NEWSORG guideline, which states that "News reporting from well-established news outlets is generally considered to be reliable for statements of fact", if there is no evidence that the source has significant reliability issues. — Newslinger talk 15:14, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
Ukrainska Pravda, as a lot of sources in the conflict, even including TASS, RIA Novosti or Ukrinform, will be reliable for "Politician X says Y on date Z" statements, though it is better to use Russian sources for Russian politicians and Ukrainian sources for statements by Ukrainian politicians (or, better still if available, use non-Ukrainian and non-Russian sources if possible). This is quite a low bar and a lot of marginally reliable sources are OK for direct quotes of politicians, as it is usually uncontroversial info.
In general, Ukrainska Pravda is a Ukrainian RS. The media watchdogs have generally uncovered few problems with the source: [1] [2] [3] [4], and the ownership transparency for the media outlet was OK but not brilliant (may be outdated, as the outlet was sold in 2021 to some other company, though I did not see any signs of deterioration of coverage since Ukrainska Pravda changed hands).* I occasionally notice typos à la Grauniad but they do not influence the quality of coverage, which is generally fine. They also have a forum, which obviously is unreliable per WP:USERGEN, as well as blogs, whose reliability depend on authorship. ТАБЛОІD section is, as the name suggests, tabloid-like, which is OK but won't be usable in vast majority of circumstances.
Istorychna Pravda (історична правда) publishes history-related pieces, which will have to be attributed to the author, as it publishes historians' pieces but also those who don't necessarily have relevant expertise; DUE concerns have to be taken into account (for example, Volodymyr Viatrovych, former head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, is a nationalist historian and has been accused of whitewashing UA's history. You know, Eastern Europe seems to love to toy with its past - see the more (in)famous example of the Institute of National Remembrance in Poland. So it will depend from article to article, and it's best to use scholarly sources anyway whenever possible.
Tl;dr: yes, it is generally fine, at least the news you read on the front page (pravda.com.ua) are perfectly fine for our purposes. Most of the news on the front page will also be translated into English, though they don't seem to update the news afterwards as they do in the Ukrainian and Russian versions.
*All links in Ukrainian, sorry. I hope Google Translate will help you. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 20:42, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
Thank you very much Elinruby (talk) 23:16, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Xi Jinping Strengthens His Grip Over Chinese Media

Latest comment: 2 years ago297 comments56 people in discussion

The Dispatch – Xi Jinping Strengthens His Grip Over Chinese Media

What are the implications of the CCP exercising increased control over Chinese media on Wikipedia coverage of Chinese topics? Does it contribute to increased systemic bias against topics local to China, and if so, how can we mitigate this? feminist (talk) 14:41, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, and yes. It will increase problems with using Chinese sources because those Chinese sources will have an increased Systemic bias. And there is no way to mitigate this, we cannot weaken our sourcing rules to allow outright propaganda sources to be used for statements of fact.Slatersteven (talk) 14:50, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
We can mitigate it by not using sources that are under the grip of Xi Jinping. We do this to some degree, but nowhere near enough. See WP:XINHUA for example. We try to distinguish areas where China "may have a reason to use it for propaganda or disinformation." News flash: we are not omniscient. Also, see WP:SCMP. The South China Morning Post was once a terrific source, but Hong Kong's freedom is rapidly coming to an end. See Jimmy Lai.
There is also the problem of academic "research" that is under Xi's thumb. In that area, we haven't done anything. We should. Adoring nanny (talk) 02:46, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
We already have a strong systemic bias in Chinese-related topics, in the opposite direction from what you're suggesting. Ruling out Chinese sources will only make that systemic bias even worse.
Ruling out high-quality sources like Caixin, which is an excellent finance and investigative journalism outlet, would leave Wikipedia in a worse position. Caixin's reporting on China is often of a much higher quality than that of major Western outlets, and Western outlets often rely on Caixin for basic reporting. The same goes for SCMP. -Thucydides411 (talk) 03:10, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
I see Caixin has been gagged.[5] Being excellent is apparently not allowed. As a general matter, I agree that sources that have been banned by Beijing have a better chance of being reliable. Apple Daily is another example. Adoring nanny (talk) 06:00, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
The article you linked does not indicate that there's any problem with Caixin's reporting. In fact, it says that Caixin has reported critically on issues inside China.
If we go along with what you're proposing and ban all Chinese sources, we'll lose Caixin's excellent, well informed reporting. We'll end up relying heavily on outlets that often have less informed coverage, and which have their own strong biases.
See, for example, Bloomberg's irresponsible reporting back in March 2020 on conspiracy theories about vastly inflated death tolls in China. Bloomberg took an accurate, non-sensationalist report from Caixin, mixed it with conspiracy theories from Chinese social media, and uncritically presented crazy death tolls. And it's not just Bloomberg that did this. A bunch of outlets did it too: [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]. Scientific research into both excess mortality and seroprevalence ([11] [12]) in China has debunked these conspiracy theories. Why did these outlandish conspiracy theories get such wide play in the media in the first place? Because they played to the biases that these outlets have. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:17, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
The vast majority of domestic Chinese topics are mundane, which Chinese state media is still reliable for. The topics where CCP have a reason for misinformation are generally already widely covered by Western sources so we would already typically be using them instead. Jumpytoo Talk 04:10, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
Yes, —PaleoNeonate – 23:59, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
The South China Morning Post is no better than the rest of Chinese propaganda media outlets and is arguably more sinister because it is tailored to a broader, more international audience. The recent decision by their *newsroom* chief to publish a bizarre video comparing press freedom in China/HK — i.e. the lack thereof — to the Assange case says a lot about the decline of HK media in general and this newspaper in particular. Normchou 💬 01:34, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
I would not write off the SCMP just yet. Comparing China/HK's press freedom to US press freedom is certainly bizarre, but less so in the context of the Assange case, and I think newspaper editors should be allowed to express their own opinions on Twitter. It was SCMP that reported that secret Chinese government documents put November 17 as the date of the first confirmed COVID case, even though the Chinese government claims it was December 19. Of course, I do wonder why they haven't released the Chinese government documents to the public, in the way AP have (see below). We will just have to watch them very closely. LondonIP (talk) 01:01, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
The implications are that Chinese journalism is biased towards a Chinese government's position on the issues by virtue of the fact that they exist in a state that has heavy media censorship. This has always been the case in mainland China and is also now starting to become the case in Hong Kong/Macau. No offence, but this article demonstrates no meaningful change in Chinese press freedom. The WSJ article the linked piece is based on explains it pretty well as "Many of the restrictions described in Friday’s draft have existed in some form for years, according to media scholars, but China’s large internet companies have long operated in a legal gray area when it comes to online news content." This isn't a radical change in the Chinese media environment, but a further clamping down over dissent.
All this being said, I do believe we have a heavy pro-Western bias and we should not rule out Chinese sources by virtue of the fact they're Chinese. Like WP:XINHUA, China Daily, or whatever else, it's possible for us to take a middle ground on these issues. Mitigating systemic bias would mean that we can use these sources to present China's position on many issues while clarifying that these sources are state-run or potentially biased. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 03:28, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
Mitigating systemic bias would mean that we can use these sources to present China's position on many issues while clarifying that these sources are state-run or potentially biased
I 100% agree with this view. We should A) describe the controversy, but also B) fairly represent the Chinese academic view as the scientific view given that the academic sources and the government sources help us frame the current scientific consensus. We can then describe the fact that many outlets find these sources questionable given the risk of government censorship. All of this is fair game, and none of it should be entirely excluded, but rather proportionally represented. This is also what WP:BESTSOURCES tells us to do. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 14:24, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Chinese media is generally unreliable (prime example being Global Times). Media like SCMP is as of now more or less reliable, but its quality is rapidly deteriorating and this statement may not be true a year or two from now.

Best practice would be to not use state media as a RS unless it is absolutely necessary.Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 14:00, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

So I assume you and some other editors are fine with a ban on Chinese state media? Per similar rankings on Freedom House should we also ban media from Cuba (like Radio Havana), Venezuela (like Televen), Laos (like Vientiane Times), North Korea (like KCNA), Saudi Arabia (like Al Arabiya), UAE (like Gulf News), Iran (like Tehran Times), Russia, Ethiopia, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Vietnam and several other 'low press freedom' countries no matter what? No, it'd very much be censorship & sytemic bias.
These outlets are good for non-controversial claims supported by Western media & should esp. be allowed for articles where such countries are in dispute with another (often 'more free') country to represent their own viewpoint. Attribution is ofc necessary but they should def. be used in some instances. Donkey Hot-day (talk) 05:26, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

AP: Xi Jinping restricts publishing of COVID-19 data and research

According to internal documents obtained by the AP, any data or research on COVID-19 must be approved by a new task force managed by China’s cabinet, under direct orders from President Xi Jinping. These orders affect the Chinese CDC, as well as independent scientists, both of whom have published papers in international journals, some of which are being cited to argue that contentious claims. We may need to discuss this gag order and how it effects the reliability of Chinese scholarship on COVID-19, just as we would with its reliability for Traditional Chinese medicine and The Three Ts. LondonIP (talk) 00:46, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

This may affect some studies but if a study is peer-reviewed, including by non-chinese scientists, then the study is as good as any other peer-reviewed study. also please do not duplicate discussions. Xoltered (talk) 08:10, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
No. It does not make sense to expect them to present a neutral and fact-based summary of the events but rather a pro-Chinese government view that will deflect from reality. NavjotSR (talk) 04:22, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
You provide no justification for this ridiculous view, as previously stated, peer review is a process that prevents this. Xoltered (talk) 12:05, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
Except that peer reviewers wouldn't be able to tell if data has been completely misrepresented, so long as the data is internally consistent as if it was actually collected that way. So a paper being peer reviewed in such a case doesn't mean the data or results are inherently reliable. SilverserenC 04:26, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
You do not seem to understand how peer-review works, if this was actually the case, it would be a common issue throughout science, but it is not. It would be helpful for you to think through your points and see if they immediately fall flat before making them. Xoltered (talk) 12:05, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
  • I consider this remark to be complacent. Peer review can work well, with referees taking a sufficiently broad perspective to recognise all the reasons why the data might not be representative, but it often doesn't and this should not be surprising. The Chinese government putting their thumbs on the scales in this way is something we should take into account in evaluating research that depends on data coming from China. Cf. the remarks of Michael Eisen, First, and foremost, we need to get past the antiquated idea that the singular act of publication – or publication in a particular journal – should signal for all eternity that a paper is valid, let alone important. Even when people take peer review seriously, it is still just represents the views of 2 or 3 people at a fixed point in time. To invest the judgment of these people with so much meaning is nuts. [13].— Charles Stewart (talk) 13:39, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
  • it would be a common issue throughout science, but it is not
  • Except it is. Elizabeth Bik's entire (recent) career is based around calling out the numerous cases of bad and outright falsified data that was published and went through peer review. It happens all the time and, in most cases, the journals refuse to retract or do anything about the studies even when the falsification is pointed out. SilverserenC 18:31, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

@Thucydides411, Mx. Granger, and Novem Linguae: Also pinging some people who this was linked to by another editor Xoltered (talk) 12:05, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Quick tip: A good neutral way to alert both sides to discussions like these is to leave a {{Please see}} on a relevant talk page.
This is like the 5th page I've seen this "is China fudging their COVID statistics" debate overflow to, and it must be a bit exhausting for the participants to keep making the same arguments over and over. Would be nice if editors would stop WP:FORUMSHOPping this and just hold a proper RFC somewhere, such as at Talk:Chinese government response to COVID-19.
In case anybody is curious, I still 100% agree with Thucydides411. He has read the scientific papers, understands them, and makes convincing arguments that they are trustworthy (e.g. international peer review, the various types of data agreeing and supporting each other), despite the Chinese government's attempts to influence the media. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:24, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
e.g. international peer review, the various types of data agreeing and supporting each other
That is a meaningless statement. Chinese researchers were already caught falsifying data and publishing in international journals and getting through peer review just fine. Over 400 papers published in a wide variety of journals and scientific fields. Here's the full list and you'll note that only about half had any sort of "expression of concern" or retraction done about them. And that's just from one paper mill. SilverserenC 18:37, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
To paraphrase: Some scientists from country X did this bad thing, so we should disregard all research done by scientists from country X.
I'm sure everyone sees what the problem with that sort of thinking is. We're talking about peer-reviewed research in leading journals like The BMJ, The Lancet and Nature, and ruling out these sources when the authors have a certain nationality would be repugnant. I'm surprised and disappointed that we're even having this conversation. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:55, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
  • I think you're making a straw man. I don't think we are at the point where the evidence of interference is of the sort that would justify 'ruling out these sources when the authors have a certain nationality' although I can conceive of interference that would lead me to recommend exactly that. What I am saying and I take Silver seren to be saying as well, is that there is evidence of interference and this does justify caution. I think we should generally be a bit more cautious about trusting the imprimatur of publication in empirical fields where replication rates are not high, although that's another kettle of fish. — Charles Stewart (talk) 21:01, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Yes. Additionally, this isn't just "some scientists", this is hundreds of scientists. As the article from Science that I linked noted, there are no common authors between these papers. They're all "independent" groups of scientists across all the hospitals in China. It encompasses most of the top level physicians who work in hospitals in the country. Furthermore, the bigger point I was making is that this directly shows that peer review in international journals doesn't mean anything at all in terms of inherent reliability of the data. Because peer review can't see through completely fabricated data, as the consistency in the data is only within itself. Saying that the data is consistent between the different papers put out from these research groups, as Thucydides411 has been using as an argument, means nothing if that data is wholesale fabricated and distributed to be consistent between them on purpose. SilverserenC 00:41, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
    It's a pretty serious claim you're making here, that the data in all these papers in leading international scientific journals is faked. That's the kind of claim you should either justify or retract. Better yet, you should call up the editors at Nature, The Lancet, The BMJ and all the other journals and tell them about your startling revelations. Once you get the journals to retract these papers, as I'm sure they will if there's any basis to your claims, then come back and let us know. Until then, however, everyone here should disregard your speculation about mass data-faking in leading scientific journals. -Thucydides411 (talk) 04:39, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
    UPE farms have been discovered and dealt with on Wikipedia. Does the discovery of one UPE farm invalidate our entire encyclopedia? Also, the fact that these fake papers were discovered is actually a strong argument that fake papers WOULD be caught. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:50, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the tip, and I strongly agree, this discussion should be at one page, and not 5 different ones. Xoltered (talk) 12:48, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
Because of this order, I would treat all such sources as having a severe conflict of interest. According to the order, people who don't comply will be "held accountable". The unfortunate fact is that for the authors, disclosure of information the CCP wants to hide would come at tremendous personal risk. Adoring nanny (talk) 12:55, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
Or maybe China's zero-COVID policy worked, just like it worked for Australia, eastern Canada, New Zealand, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam, and China isn't hiding anything. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:11, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
Are you implying that the AP's document is not genuine? Or that it's not a smoking gun of hiding information? If they "aren't hiding anything", why did the WHO say China didn't release the list of early patients, Wuhan blood samples, and swabs? And why do I get a 404 at [14]? Adoring nanny (talk) 14:52, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
It sounds like 1) the Chinese government ordered its media and scientists to present information a positive light, and 2) China had an excellent response to COVID-19. Believe it or not, these two things can occur simultaneously. I understand that #2 is suspicious due to #1, but if upon examination no evidence emerges that #2 is fake (and no evidence has emerged, as Thucydides and the scientific papers he quotes indicate), then this hypothesis that #2 is fake due to #1 should be dropped. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:05, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
Yes, it sounds very much like #2 is due to #1. We know from this AP report that Xi ordered these restrictions and we know from Bloomberg why he might be doing this, so we should not be naive about Chinese "scientific" publications. I made a list of sources questioning China statistics on the China Government Response page and I would like to see how scholarly sources contradict them. Can you make the list? ScrumptiousFood (talk) 17:24, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
Many of the citations from Chinese government response to COVID-19#Case and death count statistics likely fit your criteria. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:54, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
An "excellent response" like silencing doctors who knew by New Years' day that it could be transmitted from person to person, forbidding said doctors from wearing PPE in the early weeks, reporting a disease of "unknown cause" when they had the viral DNA sequence, delaying the release of the viral DNA sequence, going ahead with their 40,000 person gathering on Jan. 20, 2020?, without warning people that they could get the pandemic, which they were still pretending was unlikely to be spread from person to person.[15] Adoring nanny (talk) 18:22, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
China can both, make mistakes very early on in the pandemic and do a very good joh controlling the pandemic in the months after, again these statements, like the ones previously made, are not in contradiction. It's also irrelevent to this discussion, which is about if the sources are reliable, which we already explained how they are. This is why we should not have 5 different pages to discuss one thing. Xoltered (talk) 00:23, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
From my perspective, it seems as though the view broadly expressed here is China's government did bad things, so we should not believe they were good at controlling COVID-19 and getting low case counts. This is not how Wikipedia works. We do not care how moral or ethical the actions of governments are (the Chinese government was neither in this instance, imo). We only care about what the sources say, and fairly summarizing those sources in our articles. Sometimes that means wikipedia is wrong. But we are not trying to tell the truth, we are trying to summarize the state of existing knowledge through a very particular lens. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 14:30, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
The sources are not reliable. The CCP document obtained by the AP is perfectly clear on this.[16] The order said communication and publication of research had to be orchestrated like “a game of chess” under instructions from Xi, and propaganda and public opinion teams were to “guide publication.” Adoring nanny (talk) 03:59, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Nature, The Lancet and The BMJ are some of the most highly respected and competitive scientific journals. Just blanket saying "The sources are not reliable" is unserious. You're essentially arguing that we should throw out virtually all scientific research on the infection rate and mortality in China, because Chinese scientists have done most of that research.
The scientific sources are extremely clear on the extent of infection and mortality in China during the pandemic. If the scientific sources clash with your perception, that's not a reason to rule out the sources. -Thucydides411 (talk) 04:32, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Have you actually read the responses to what you've said Adoring nanny? This has already been addressed countless times, please stop taking the discussion in circles. Xoltered (talk) 07:47, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
  • It's worth recalling that The Lancet published Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent research suggesting a link between autism and the MMR vaccine. Although the GMC found problems with Wakefield's work quickly and Brian Deer published evidence of fraud five years later, it took the editors another seven years before they retracted the study, waiting until after the GMC found Wakefield guilty of malpractice. We can't avoid taking account of reputation, given how the publication game works at present, but that doesn't justify having illusions about the fallibility of peer review even at the best journals and the reluctance of most editors to admit and correct errors. — Charles Stewart (talk) 15:40, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Perfectly serious. If an order said that Propaganda and public opinion teams were to “guide publication.”, I believe the order. To answer a question above, I routinely read the responses. The issue is not the prestige of the journals, it is the accuracy. There is a long history of prestigious sources publishing lies in situations where accuracy might offend powerful governments, i.e. Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda, published in the NYT in 1933. And here we have the smoking gun. Adoring nanny (talk) 17:59, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
  • I would say the big difference is that Wakefield's study had high profile rebuttals ALSO published in academic venues. It was a primary source. And the secondary source response from scientists in academic journals was swift, concise, and disastrous. It does not take one long to find secondary MEDRS reviews which discuss how wrong the Wakefield paper was. [17] [18] [19] [20] Large scale studies were conducted showing the link between vaccination and autism was spurious: [21] [22]. In this case, like many others, Science was self-correcting. Sometimes it takes a year (or several) to really get that conversation going, but it does happen. And that is part of why Wikipedia's work is never done. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 14:37, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Apologies for the late reply, Shibboleth, I missed this at the time. I think this substantially misrepresents what happened. While the BMC and scholars quickly pushed back against the wider conclusions Wakefield was drawing from his study, far from the reaction being "swift, concise and disastrous", the three articles you cite that were published before 2004 did not claim there were problems with Wakefield's study and instead 'taught the controversy' and increased his bibliometrics. Instead, the fraud was uncovered by a Sunday Times journalist, Brian Deer, who was driven to do actual investigative reporting because of his interest in Wakefield's anti-vax activity. Sometimes scholars are driven to do effective investigations in this vein, but it seems likely to me that without the spadework of this journalist, the full truth would not have been revealed. I think a little less faith in the self-correcting nature of science is called for: eventually, if scientists sustain their attention to a question, they tend to cast off illusions, but if the institutions are not working well, lies can thrive for a generation or more. Ignoring what investigators say out of overzealous faith in some hierarchy of reliability of sources hinders us in creating Wikipedia. — Charles Stewart (talk) 16:27, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
  • @Chalst: I think you meant to ping @Shibbolethink: here. Regarding if the institutions are not working well, lies can thrive for a generation or more, I think we need to be careful to remember not to try and WP:RGW. WP:PAGs tend to favor the institutional mainstream for good reason, even when they're wrong. If they're wrong, then investigative journalism can and should be welcomed to correct it. But Wikipedia should be following those corrections, not leading them (again, WP:RGW). Bakkster Man (talk) 17:26, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Thanks, Bakkster Man for fixing my ping. Personally, my editing on the lab-leak hypothesis has been cautious reflecting my own uncertainty about the evidence and the awareness that, to the extent that there are biases, they cut both ways; it's pretty clear that there are a lot of people out there who want to use the pandemic as an opportunity for propaganda in their campaign against China. Because our ability as WPians to do original research is for most of us necessarily limited to understanding existing sources, we are forced into a certain amount of conservatism with regards to sourcing; what I'm attacking isn't this, but instead a few more subtle issues, including less awareness than we should have that rules that attempt to ensure that we use only the best sources can reduce the quality of the judgements we make about sourcing and a tendency not to treat 'good' sources with appropriate caution. I think MEDRS suffers from both problems, but I'm struggling to come up with proposals for improvement. — Charles Stewart (talk) 23:24, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
@Xoltered: please be mindful of WP:CANVASS. You should have pinged all participants from the China COVID-19 pandemic discussion . CutePeach (talk) 15:06, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
No, given the amount of pressure exerted by the chinese government to ensure the compliance with their POV.Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 14:00, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

RFC: Can Chinese academic publications be considered independent on subjects censored by the Chinese government?

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
RfC inconclusive, no action.

According to the definition of independent sources, independent sources have editorial independence [...] and no conflicts of interest (there is no potential for personal, financial, or political gain to be made from the existence of the publication). The explanatory page also says that what matters for independence is whether [e.g. academic journals] stand to gain from it. There is also a relevant essay that might be of interest to users.

There were a few problems with this RfC, one of the main being that independence was conflated with reliability. The "no" side frequently cited the gag order that Xi Jinping imposed on COVID-19-related topics and the general deterioration of already feeble academic freedom in [mainland] China and therefore asserted they are not reliable, to which it was pointed out that there will be a paradox of elevating news reports above scholarship if the "no" answer is decided to be the consensus, and also that we shouldn't be overriding the peer review process of scientific papers that accepted the Chinese scientists' work. That's not a matter of "independence", however, but of reliability, or, in the last argument, of original research.

The RfC is unfortunately more problematic than that. Some of the editors pointed to the vagueness of "Chinese" in this proposal (origin, nationality or just Chinese-sounding names) and that this debate is a proxy argument for whether the Chinese mess with the COVID statistics. Finally, the question concerned all Chinese publications on subjects that the Chinese government has vested interest in, but it was only focusing on one subset of topics that the Chinese government censors. COVID-19, however, is only a small group of these contentious topics - the Three Ts are barely discussed here, although they would absolutely qualify under the RfC question; neither were the history of China topics that the censors quite like to meddle with, too. This discussion has only touched the tip of the iceberg, and in order to make a proper close on the question as asked, hundreds of voices about all topics liable to censorship would have to be solicited with showing of how the censorship impacts the reliability of the academic works. This has not happened here, and I hardly imagine it happening anywhere.

Therefore, my determination, based on this discussion, is that the RfC question is overbroad and a much narrower question must be designed to resolve the underlying content dispute. Closing with no action. (non-admin closure) Szmenderowiecki (talk) 13:25, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Editors above dispute the reliability of Chinese academic publications on subjects censored by the Chinese government. Does the community think Chinese academic publications are WP:INDEPENDENT on subjects censored by the Chinese government?

  • Option 1: Yes
  • Option 2: No

CutePeach (talk) 16:05, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Survey: Can Chinese academic publications be considered independent on subjects censored by the Chinese government?

  • No since Chinese scientists are restricted by the Chinese government on what they can publish and must "coordinate" with a special task force to make sure anything they publish suits their narrative. Some Chinese scientists have even promoted Chinese traditional medicines as a treatment for COVID-19, which suits their narrative. Those who dissent face harsh punitive measures. CutePeach (talk) 16:11, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
  • No relative to "on subjects censored by the Chinese government." On other subjects these sources might be used. Jehochman Talk 16:26, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Loaded question. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:28, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Indeed an incredibly loaded question, as it implies the publications are all censored despite discussion above. CutePeach is also forumshopping by posting this same thing on multiple pages, I believe in an attempt to find editors who have not fully looked into the discussion to read the loaded question and say no. Xoltered (talk) 16:33, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
  • I can't give either a yes or no answer here. Either would be a problematic oversimplification. Many academics outside China lack the kind of integrity and willingness to put questions of career aside needed to be truly regarded as independent and many scientists in China clearly have remarkable integrity. "Independent" is too tricky a concept for this RfC question to be useful. — Charles Stewart (talk) 16:43, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Postscript: It is both the case that high quality research on Covid-19 has been done in China that does not raise alarm bells and there is evidence of pressure from the government that does. I think there is a need for increased caution, but sources need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. I don't regard this RfC as helpful because I think it discourages looking at sources on this case-by-case basis. — Charles Stewart (talk) 00:23, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
@Chalst: I agree with you on a meta level, but this RfC was born out of a discussion where editors decided to delete a section in Chinese government response to COVID-19 about the accuracy of China's COVID statistics, citing studies from Chinese scientists and even reports from Chinese government websites. That discussion and the The “2021 academic study are what precipitated this RfC. The only caveat that can be added is whether Chinese scientific publications can be used as WP:BALANCE reports like this one from the SCMP on the first confirmed case being traced back to Nov 17, or the reports of excess deaths in the early outbreak [23] [24] [25]. LondonIP (talk) 02:49, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
Alexbrn Do they have TBAN regarding this? If so that is very concerning as they have been making extensive edits on numerous pages regarding this topic for quite some time now. Xoltered (talk) 17:03, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Yes, they have an indefinite topic ban from the Origins of COVID-19, broadly construed.. [26] Jehochman Talk 17:05, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Xoltered they have a TBAN with Origins of COVID-19, see editor's talk page notice. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 17:06, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Yeah... their !vote is a clear violation EvergreenFir (talk) 17:08, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
I see, it seems they are not heading the warning provided with their notice. Xoltered (talk) 17:09, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Okay, so the t-ban is on the origins of COVID-19. This is not a violation of that. EvergreenFir (talk) 17:23, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
WP:BROADLY construed being the key. At least one admin determined this got close enough and placed a temporary ban. With the source of the sanctions revolving around a lab-leak (and subsequent cover-up by China), it's not a stretch to say "Chinese censorship of COVID" is the kind of 'edge nibbling' broadly construed topics are meant to cover. Or at least, close enough to seek clarification prior to editing on the topic, as WP:BROADLY recommends. Bakkster Man (talk) 17:45, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
@EvergreenFir: I suppose I would ask you: "Does this RfC also affect the TBAN'd area?" I think its up to interpretation, and the "broadly construed" is very clearly debatable. If this RfC passes, then many many publications on covid-19 origins pages would be affected. Does that not implicate CutePeach in violation of their TBAN? — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 21:33, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
@Shibboleth: Fair question. In my view, the outcome of the RfC possibly affecting origin-related sources is not a t-ban violation here because all of CutePeach's recent edits suggest the impetus for the RfC is about COVID-19 treatments. Further, I don't think a hypothetical removal of Chinese scientist authored publications on the origins of SARS CoV2 would substantially change the descriptions about its origin (assuming that the "lab leak" theory is what CutePeach was promoting/being tendentious about). EvergreenFir (talk) 21:38, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
It would preclude the future use of any publications about the origin which are based on mainland Chinese scientists who find closely related coronaviruses in the wild, further drawing a taxonomy in support of a natural origin. Because these publications would be "tainted." I agree that the impetus probably comes from a combination of COVID treatments and national death statistics in this case. But I wouldn't call the implication on origins papers to be a "happy accident." I don't know if CP has considered the implications, but the implications clearly are not good. In the end, though, I trust your judgment, EvergreenFir. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 21:58, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
@EvergreenFir: Many of the highest-impact papers on SARS-CoV-2 have been authored by Chinese scientists. Here are two, just off the top of my head:
  • Shi et al., Nature, 2020, "A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin". This paper has nearly 16,000 citations. It's the paper that first described RaTG13, which was, until recently, the closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2.
  • Huang et al., The Lancet, 2020, "Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China". This paper has nearly 39,000 citations.
Ruling out these seminal papers, because of the nationalities of the authors, would definitely impact Wikipedia. These papers have been judged important enough by the scientific community that they've been cited tens of thousands of times. We Wikipedia editors really have no business overruling that judgment, especially on broad arguments about certain nationalities of scientists being compromised. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:12, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
What an elaborate straw man. No one has a problem citing Shi et al. or Huang et al for non contentious claims. The problem is citing low quality primary sources to counter reports from high quality RS like the BBC, Foreign Policy and Bloomberg. LondonIP (talk) 03:04, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
@LondonIP: Correct me if I'm wrong, but the original dispute (and wording of the RfC) appears to be broader than just low-quality sources and contentious claims. The RfC refers to "Chinese academic publications", but the dispute seems to revolve around mainland Chinese authors publishing in English-language international journals like BMJ. And that's the line where I think we disagree. In principle yes, Chinese sources subject to a gag order or government interference should not be considered independent. My disagreement is over whether this makes peer-reviewed research in major non-Chinese journals (not subject to Chinese oversight) unreliable, or if it's attempting to use wiki to WP:RGW. Bakkster Man (talk) 16:00, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
@Bakkster Man: I don't know why LondonIP didn't answer, so I will. Please don't make this about Chinese authors publishing in English-language international journals like BMJ, because as others here have said, those journals are not under the jurisdiction of the Chinese government, while Chinese nationals - including those abroad - very much are. The Chinese government response to COVID-19, COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China, and zero COVID are full of primary sources supporting a Chinese nationalist POV, like "China contained the crisis reasonably swiftly", which is just absurd. The BMJ, Nature and Lancet articles do not even claim what Thucydides411 says they do, so this discussion would be just as home on WP:OR/N. There are multiple problems here, with WP:INDEPENDENT being the main one, followed by WP:PRIMARY and WP:OR. Perhaps an ArbCom case would be a better solution. CutePeach (talk) 14:20, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
@LondonIP and Bakkster Man: The Foreign Policy article does not draw any conclusions, and actually begins by acknowledging that the official death toll from China could be correct: Those numbers could be roughly accurate. The Foreign Policy article merely says that it has obtained a database that might, with further analysis, shed light on the question. As far as I can tell, in the 21 months since Foreign Policy published this initial article saying they had obtained the database, they have never published any follow-up. You're free to draw what conclusions you'd like from that, but my suspicion is that Foreign Policy never found anything particularly newsworthy in the database.
I'll add that Foreign Policy is not even a reliable source for this sort of information. It's a lay publication, written by people without any training in the relevant fields: epidemiology and public health. We have far stronger sources to go on, like peer-reviewed scientific papers in The BMJ, The Lancet and Nature. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:21, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
@Thucydides411: no one cited it anything other than questioning the accuracy of China's statistics, and it can and should be used for just that. LondonIP (talk) 00:49, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Let's be absolutely clear about what CutePeach is proposing here. CutePeach is proposing that before we cite papers from leading scientific journals with peer-review and rigorous scientific editing, such as Nature, The Lancet or The BMJ, we should look at the nationalities of the authors, and if they appear to be Chinese, that we should reject them. CutePeach wants us to overrule the scientific editors (normally senior scientists in a related field) and peer reviewers (normally leading international experts in the given scientific subfield that the paper deals with), because we supposedly know better than them. It's worthwhile looking at what motivated this proposal from CutePeach. A number of editors have expressed their personal belief that China must be hiding its true death toll. When confronted with the fact that their personal belief is contradicted by a mass of scientific research into excess mortality and serology in China (and among people evacuated from China), they've gone over to arguing that we should ignore virtually all the scientific literature on the subject. Instead, they'd rather we relied on news articles published nearly two years ago that discussed conspiracy theories about massively larger death tolls (e.g., the infamous "urns" conspiracy theory from March 2020). It's getting tiring trying to explain the scientific literature on every single talk page on which the same group of editors bring this subject up, so please take a look at this for more details. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:22, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
If what is meant by "Chinese academic publications" includes Nature, The Lancet or The BMJ because the author is Chinese, then gtfo yes. nableezy - 17:27, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
I read the proposal to mean Chinese publications, as in publications that are controlled by the Chinese government because they are located in China and subject to Chinese censorship. I agree that nationality of an author publishing in The Lancet is totally irrelevant. Jehochman Talk 17:30, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
This is what i meant when i said above "CutePeach is also forumshopping by posting this same thing on multiple pages, I believe in an attempt to find editors who have not fully looked into the discussion to read the loaded question and say no." Xoltered (talk) 17:39, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
  • No They inherently can't be. And it's a major problem. Thucydides411 above is trying to just claim that they would all be reliable no matter what because they're peer reviewed papers. But that is an inherently self-defeating claim, as all of the journals (and many others besides) have published studies with falsified data before. And sometimes it took years to find out about the falsification. What makes it more difficult in this case is that the already verifiable crackdown by the Chinese government on what sort of information gets released about Covid, including what sort of scientific data is published, means they could quite easily control the very basis of what data is collected. They could ensure any actual case numbers are not recorded properly, that any deaths are not included in the data, ect. And that sort of data collection would not be something peer reviewers in the journals would be able to determine is incorrect. Because the falsification is happening on the very collection of data level. SilverserenC 17:28, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Claiming that peer-reviewed scientific sources are unreliable just because they might later be falsified is ridiculous, Wikipedia is not a crystal ball and what you are saying could be applied to all peer-reviewed studies as the studies in question are no different than any other peer reviewed studies and are published in reliable sources. Xoltered (talk) 17:35, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
  • If we have a reliable source that the results of major studies were censored, let's cite them. If reliable peer-reviewed sources publish studies, it's up to them to retract them if they're faulty, not up to us to WP:RGW. Bakkster Man (talk) 17:45, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Here are two such sources [27] [28]. The problem is we don't know which sources are being censored, and the AP report says it goes beyond censorship. Publications must be "orchestrated" like a "game of chase". ScrumptiousFood (talk) 17:57, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
I'm referring to reliable sources disputing peer-reviewed studies in generally reliable journals. My interpretation of WP:RGW and WP:V places the benefit of the doubt on a journal like Nature or Science not accepting studies if their results were subject to faulty collection methods, and we should be incredibly cautious in second-guessing their publishing. So caveat these studies with other WP:RS pointing to potential flaws, rather than marking these Science/Nature studies themselves as unreliable. Seems worryingly close to WP:OR. Bakkster Man (talk) 18:15, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Check my list of RS questioning the accuracy of China's statistics. There isn't anything in Nature of Magazine articles that invalidate these RS, so that's just a giant red herring that has been used a lot in those discussions. We should take care of the WP:INDEPENDENT problem first. ScrumptiousFood (talk) 18:29, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
As stated probably over 100 times now, popular media speculation does not overide reliable peer-reviewed scientific studies published by reliable sources, and representing the scientific consensus. Simply mentioning that some popular media have questioned it is not the (original) thing in dispute. Xoltered (talk) 18:33, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Loaded question, and too broad. This RFC is the culmination of the dispute "Is China fudging their COVID-19 statistics?" Recommend closing this RFC and crafting a more specific question that is directly applicable to that dispute. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:53, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
How would you frame the question? Haven't editors on your side cited Chinese academic sources to put down a question that Chinese censors don't like? ScrumptiousFood (talk) 18:01, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
At a minimum, a new RFC question should be more specific. "Are Chinese academic papers on the topic of COVID-19 statistics in China reliable?" But even that has issues. How do we define a Chinese academic paper? Is a paper published by The Lancet a Chinese academic paper? Seeing as the Lancet isn't Chinese, I think there's a strong argument that a paper published in the Lancet isn't Chinese. Or if we don't go by the nationality of the journal, what do we go by? Our original research on the nationality of the paper's authors? Honestly I think the difficulty crafting a good question here shows the weakness of the argument. But assuming good faith, some workshopping of the question beforehand could likely lead to a better RFC question. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:20, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae: if narrowing the question down to COVID-19 still isn't narrow enough, then the !votes calling this question to broad may just look like a certain other WP:STONEWALLING operation in this topic area, which was ultimately unsuccessful. If this discussion isn't closed with a clear consensus on what to do with the Accuracy of COVID statistics section that was deleted by FormalDude [29], who also called for this RSN discussion [30] (which he has yet to participate in), then an ARBCOM case would be in order. I think it'll be an open and shut case, with what RS like The Times say [31], and with what the academic sources don't say. LondonIP (talk) 02:37, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
Hi @ScrumptiousFood you appear to be new around here. Editors don't have "sides" and to say that they do is truly edging towards "us" and "them" territory in a very unhealthy way. We are all guilty of this, but I would urge you to avoid such arguments in the future. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 21:36, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
  • No. I watched the discussions on Talk:Chinese government response to COVID-19 and COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China where two completely different sets of editors suggested including significant views from reliable sources questioning the accuracy of China's statistics. In both discussions, the same group of editors are claiming that Chinese academic papers "prove" that the Chinese government is right, and ignore/deflect when asked about President Xi's gag order on Chinese scientists publishing COVID-19 data and research. When I posted a list of RS that question the accuracy of China's statistics, they counter with citations to Chinese scientific publications. Earlier in the discussion they even cited a Chinese government website to disprove something the BBC says! ScrumptiousFood (talk) 18:05, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
The gag order does not make peer-reviewed studies published in reliable sources such as Nature, The Lancet or The BMJ unreliable, also your claim that the discussions had "two completely different sets of editors" is not true at all, many editors on both sides of the discussion participated in both articles, though those who oppose the overwhelming scientific consensus and instead support popular media speculation have repeatedly brought the discussion to page after page, perhaps in search of editors who will agree with them. Xoltered (talk) 18:24, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Its a loaded question but as stated the answer is clearly "No" the problem comes with ascertaining what is and what isn't a subject censored by the Chinese government as there is some level of censorship in *every* subject in China even if some are censored to the point of the entire subject being censored (for example history and international relations). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:11, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
The stated answer is not "clearly no" as nearly all editors who responded but did not give an answer disagree with the implications of a simple "no" answer Xoltered (talk) 18:17, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Too vague to be answerable in an RfC. I suggest a speedy close and starting a new RfC with a clear question. What is meant by a "Chinese academic publication"? An academic publication published in China? An academic publication published outside of China where some of the contributors are in China? Where some contributors are Chinese citizens? Chinese government officials? Overseas Chinese? The RfC is impossible to answer in its current form. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 18:24, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
  • I also suggest a speedy close for the reasons above, I also suggest those who agree make their agreement explicitly known, as Granger and I have, to avoid some users mistakenly thinking the consensus is no. Xoltered (talk) 18:34, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Xoltered please stop WP:BLUDGEONING. I see no good reason to close this RFC with any consensus. Most RFCs run for at least a month. ScrumptiousFood (talk) 18:37, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
The reasons are stated above by many editors, including quite clearly by Mx Granger. Xoltered (talk) 18:39, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Loaded question and Poorly formed RfC. - Recommend speedy close. We have plenty of examples of mainland chinese citizens courageously speaking out in ways that the Chinese Government would find counter-productive. Li Wenliang [32], Shi Zhengli [33], Zhang Yongzhen [34]. and others. If this RfC were decided as "no," then publications by these individuals would be considered unreliable. Many mainland chinese scientists, if not most, do their jobs for the sake of scientific progress and bold inquiry. Scientists are, by and large, loyal to the scientific process above and beyond the influence of any government actors. This is part of why Mao's cultural revolution targeted scientists, engineers, journalists, etc. Because their loyalty to their craft superseded that of the party. Why would we buy into any narrative that paints Chinese scientists with such a broad brush? — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 21:29, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
None of the people you've listed seem relevant to the issue at hand? I had thought they were going to be examples of Chinese scientists speaking out against the censorship of their government against publishing negative news regarding Covid, but none of them are that. So they don't seem relevant to the current issue as noted by the Associated Press that the Chinese government is directly controlling what data and studies can be published and what information is allowed to be included in them when published. It is the reliability of this data that is of concern here, since if the data is manipulated from the very point of collection of it, then there's no way peer reviews even in international journals can tell that the data isn't accurate. The verified control over that data that the AP has notified on is the problem here. Because it brings into question whether the scientific data on Covid, particularly on Covid numbers and deaths, coming out of China is actually the true data. The government there could even do it in a blinded way and prevent even the Chinese scientists from accessing the accurate data and so they are only publishing on what they have been allowed to access, which is a biased data set. The scientists themselves could think they're doing proper science and be unaware of the selective data the government is letting them access. Since, again, we have verifiable reports that the Chinese government is controlling what data is allowed to go out. SilverserenC 21:38, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I had thought they were going to be examples of Chinese scientists speaking out against the censorship of their government against publishing negative news regarding Covid, but none of them are that. They are scientists who spoke out about COVID in ways the government didn't like. Li Wenliang spoke out about COVID-19 and death tolls in Wuhan and human-to-human transmission when the government was very quiet about the issue. Shi Zhengli spoke out about the coronavirus' origins in Hubei province when the government wanted no one to talk about it at all, and instead support the idea that it originated in the US. Zhang Yngzhen's lab published the genome of the virus when the government wanted everyone to coordinate and publish together in support of a specific government-favored narrative. They did so in a way that benefited the world and put the needs of the many (7 billion) over the few (Chinese government's image). How is that not relevant? — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 21:41, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Why do you think the only way to obtain death data in China is to go through the government? Do you understand how deaths are counted in America? It very often isn't done through the government. (E.g. see the public health whistleblower in Florida who was harassed by state officials when her counts didn't match up [35] [36]) There are many ways to estimate covid deaths with varying involvement from government data resources (from complete to very little), and not all of them are equally accurate either: (such as excess death estimates [37], machine learning using GIS data [38], [39]). It's bizarre to hoist these criticisms on China while not looking inward. I would actually call it xenophobic. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 21:44, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
But, again, we know that they're actively clamping down on the information right now, as reported:
The government is handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to scientists researching the virus’ origins in southern China and affiliated with the military, the AP has found. But it is monitoring their findings and mandating that the publication of any data or research must be approved by a new task force managed by China’s cabinet, under direct orders from President Xi Jinping
The Chinese government, because of their societal structure, is much more capable of actively silencing dissent and controlling information reaching outside or even having it be obtainable by scientists there. It isn't comparable to Florida whatsoever. And, also, the situation in Florida did make us here on Wikipedia have to re-evaluate how we included information on Covid in the US and regarding Florida because of that. Shouldn't we similarly change how we cover information on China when we have verifiable information that the data is being suppressed and controlled for review by the Chinese government? SilverserenC 22:00, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Not if the conclusion is "we shouldn't trust any publications which come out of China." If the conclusion is "we should be careful and only use publications which are peer reviewed and edited by international scientists who are experts in these fields" then yes, I would support that. Otherwise our answer is not only xenophobic, it is short sighted and frankly wrong-headed. It will not help us more accurately cover anything, or be closer in line to the scientific consensus. It will drive us further from it. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 22:02, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Shouldn't we similarly change how we cover information on China when we have verifiable information that the data is being suppressed and controlled for review by the Chinese government? We should document the controversy, that these accusations exist in RSes. But we should not ignore things that Chinese scientists publish simply because of this suspicion. To do so would be ignorant, xenophobic, and wrong. It ignores the very fundamental reasons why we value academic research publications: their peer review and editorial processes. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 22:06, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
How is peer review by others going to properly deal with the situation? If the data being allowed for release by the cabinet task force is purposefully biased, peer reviewers aren't going to be able to detect that. Since the issue isn't internal to the studies, but due to the data being collected from the beginning. I already noted a similar issue earlier in the thread above where it took years to identify that hundreds of papers being published by hundreds of top level physicians in China in every major hospital in the country were using falsified data. It was only identified as a problem in 2020 and some of the studies dated back to 2016. Worse still, the majority of them haven't even been retracted from the top level journals in question or even given a notice of concern on them. If that sort of thing can get by these peer reviewed international journals and take years to discover and that was just the medical researchers themselves working together to falsify the data, what sort of level of misuse can be done when the Chinese government is involved in controlling the data released? SilverserenC 22:10, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
So what you're saying is, it only took 4 years to figure out the problem? Wow, that's pretty fast. I'm glad science is such a self-correcting process with international input from a wide variety of contributors, peer reviewers, post-reviewers, and editors. Wikipedia as a project is never "done" so I'm not sure why that is an issue of enough importance to greenlight systematic bias against any laboratory that happens to be located in China. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 22:17, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Also, your examples are from early 2020, whereas we're discussing government control of data that is being reported on right now, in addition to a government crackdown on news organizations and what they're allowed to report on, which is also happening right now and in the past 6 months especially. SilverserenC 21:39, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
I'm unclear why you think the timing matters. Scientists who felt that way about the government in 2020 are very likely to still feel that way today. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 21:43, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
The situation is very different now than it was in early 2020. The Chinese government has spent that time period ensuring greater control over what information gets distributed and who has access to it. SilverserenC 22:00, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
This is the kind of argument which fuels conspiracy theories. It is non-falsifiable. Not saying it is a conspiracy theory, only that it is the sort of circular logic which can lead us in that direction. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 22:04, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
There's no conspiracy theory here. Just direct reporting from the Associated Press on the cabinet task force being set up to control what data and studies are allowed to be published. Unless you think the AP journalists are lying and making it up? SilverserenC 22:10, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
No, I think they're acting in good faith, just like I think most Chinese scientists are acting in good faith. I'm trying to be very cautious before we institute a consensus which perpetuates a systematic bias, and actually institutionalizes and codifies it. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 22:19, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Bad question with worse implications. Context, the specific source, and the specific material being supported all still matter. VQuakr (talk) 23:13, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Yes: Per responses from Chalstnableezy, Jumpytoo, VQuakr, and shibbolethink. How is even thinkable to ban sources from a country? Of course we still have to take into account the context, background etc. of a source, but that's not new. If the consensus on this question was to be yes, than what would happen? Would every single source originating from the PRoC have to have proof it's not censored? There is an extreme amount of anti-China bias in the US and west in general, and generally reliable sources publish articles on how China is generally censoring free speech. One result on this would be extreme PoV pushing in articles against the Chinese government as a lot of sources with info that might make the PRoC seem good would simply be unable to be used. bop34 • talk • contribs 18:53, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
  • No: China is noted for exercising top level censorship. Any publication that is related to them or went through their inspection should not be considered reliable or independent. --1990'sguy (talk) 20:07, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
  • No. Reasons have been provided by editors above-Note that this refers to Chinese publications, not authors. That would be xenophobic.Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 14:00, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Yes, though it may often be reasonable to consider them WP:BIASED in places where the Chinese government has an active stake and is known to exert control. I think BIASED is what many of the no voices above are actually thinking of - WP:INDEPENDENT is much stronger and requires a financial or legal relationship to the topic and which is directly analogous to having a COI. Going down this road would lead to a situation where we consider eg. Israeli sources non-independent on Israel / Palestinian issues (they have obvious legal and financial relationships to their own country!) - and of course Palestinian sources would be as well, and from there it's really only a short step to considering all Jewish and Muslim sources (or any competing faiths!) non-independent on anything to do with either nation or either faith, and since the United States has a heavy political and financial investment in Israel all sources from there cannot really be considered independent and the next thing you know no sources can be used for anything. Being subject to potential state coercion is a reason to be cautious and a potential source of bias to take into consideration, but independence is about a much much closer relationship than that - writing about yourself, your family, or a product that is made or sold by your company or employer or owning or working for a company that represents a competing product's article. Extending that to every single scholar in an entire country of 1.4 billion people subject to the coercive power of its state is wildly beyond those definitions and far outside of anything WP:INDEPENDENT is supposed to govern. --Aquillion (talk) 08:40, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Bad question with worse implications There's no evidence that those scholars has fabricated scientific data or fact in large. Any publicaion is open to public for review. No scholar wants to ruin reputation. B.T.W. if Wikipedia decides to censor scientific publications, then it's not wikipedia anymore. --Kethyga (talk) 16:08, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

  • If the authors are under the physical control of the People's Republic of China, no. First of all, we need to be clear about what is and is not a problem. No problem with Taiwanese authors, for example, or ethnically Chinese authors who live in the USA. The issue comes with authors who are under the physical control of the PRC. At that point, we can't rely on them. It sucks, but it is what it is. Peng Shuai now says she was not sexually assaulted. Right. Adoring nanny (talk) 00:02, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    • If Nature (journal) says X article by Y Chinese scientist meets our standard for publication then it meets our standard for use as a reliable source. Israel has a military censor. Does that mean that any Israeli newspaper or scholar writing in a non-Israeli journal, as being subject to that censorship, is unreliable? Of course not. And that isnt even addressing the issue of ruling out highly regarded publishers on the basis of the location and/or ethnicity of the author. nableezy - 00:09, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    @Nableezy: you're assuming that we're talking about a Nature (journal) article that actually says X. I've asked Thucydides411 to quote the exact text from the Nature, BMJ and Lancet articles that they claim counter reports from the BBC, SCMP and Caixin about how China tallies COVID infections and fatalities [40] [41], but so far they haven't been able (or willing) to do that. Since you're taking a stand here, perhaps you can read the discussion and the Nature article in question. LondonIP (talk) 01:32, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    No, Im not, Im basing my view of this off of the RFC question that is so insanely broad as to be meaningless, and the claims above and below. AN is arguing that even sources that cite Chinese sources should not be usable. You finding fault with my argument is because the RFC question is faulty. nableezy - 01:44, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    You are taking a stand and you are holding up a source which doesn't even exist. The question of this RfC came up when editors brought up sources from Chinese scientists that even WP:FT/N put down as WP:PRIMARY and not WP:MEDRS [42]. Please read the sources that are being discussed here. LondonIP (talk) 01:59, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    No, I am answering the RFC question as asked. But as far as your request, The BMJ. When presented with this and other sources, the response was You need to find independent western sources which lacks a WP:COI in the study and debunks these sources. If there is some specific source youd like to discuss then you should bring that. The problem with this RFC, and many RFCs at RSN tbh, is that it makes such a gross generalization that you have to consider the consequences of that question. If you see my initial answer I said I have no idea what a Chinese academic publication means. Down below you have a user complaining that when we cited Western sources that relied on Chinese data that we were VeryWrong™. You may be arguing something else entirely, but the question as posed is wide that it invites such answers. Make a better RFC question and you may get a different answer. nableezy - 02:14, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
@Nableezy: my question focuses very narrowly on 1) Chinese academic publications and whether they can be considered 2) independent sources on 3) censored subjects. Granted 1 and 2 can be narrowed down further, but taking these three criteria, my question is not insanely broad. I modeled this question on the one directly below #Are student newspapers considered independent RS when assessing notability of fellow students at the same university?. I don't see anyone there refusing to answer that question and attempting to speedy close it with spurious reasons. CutePeach (talk) 15:21, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
What exactly is a "Chinese academic publication". Everybody understands what a student newspaper is, it is a newspaper staffed by students at a university or college that largely focuses on campus matters. There is not any ambiguity there. What exactly do you mean by a "Chinese academic publication"? nableezy - 16:17, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
@Nableezy:, a "Chinese academic publication" in the context of my RFC question is any paper published by any Chinese academic on any subject censored by the Chinese government, and my question is narrowed down further asking if they should be considered WP:INDEPENDANT. Taken alone, "Chinese academic publications" may seem broad, but as Silver seren explains above, international journals are not able to check if a submission has been censored in some way, and as I told to AlexEng above, these journals have collaborated with the Chinese government's 中共中央宣传部 office to censor politically sensitive subjects. Taking all three criteria of my question, this RFC would affect only a handful of papers and how they are used, such as the BMJ article - discussed below - which was used to counterbalance reports from the Financial Times and other HQRS, and even WP:POVDELETE them [43] [44] [45]. Please don’t break the criteria of my RFC question to make it broader than it actually is, or that it would affect any more than a handful of papers, which are being used in the wrong way. CutePeach (talk) 14:47, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
"... any paper published by any Chinese academic ..." ← right, well we can close this now because papers published by an academic are self-published and not reliable. I thought you were talking about papers published by publishers (academic presses and the like) which were authored by chinese academics. Alexbrn (talk) 14:56, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
No I am obviously not referring to self published papers, as those were not even proposed. Hopefully the closer of this RFC will read the WP:RFCBEFORE discussions and understand which papers are being referred to. They are the papers published in BMJ, Nature and the Lancet, are all primary, and not usable for refuting high-quality secondary sources. CutePeach (talk) 15:30, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
It's not obvious at all, because you haven't said what you mean and when you try, you write nonsense. Alexbrn (talk) 15:50, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
You are the only editor to ask about self published sources, even though they have never been proposed, and you just got your answer. Please strike your uncivil comment. ScrumptiousFood (talk) 18:22, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
Wrong. The OP referred to "any paper published by any Chinese academic". It seems now they didn't actually mean that, but this is part of the problem: incompetence and imprecision. This is why this RfC is such a fucking mess. Alexbrn (talk) 18:34, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
I will say, "published by any Chinese academics" is ambiguous, and I too interpreted it as referring to WP:SPS. The process of editorial oversight and peer-review is very key to this question, and it's important to note that the OP is referring to articles which are not SPS, but in fact have been peer-reviewed and editorially reviewed before publication by an independent international journal. These papers are authored by Chinese academics. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 18:56, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
I think what the OP might mean is "Any paper where any of the authors has a Chinese-sounding name". Alexbrn (talk) 05:29, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
Does your definition of "Chinese academics" include Chinese citizens who are working as academics abroad? Does it include non-Chinese citizen authors who are working in China? Does it include journals which are run by non-Chinese citizens? Does it include non-Chinese citizen authors who live abroad, are ethnically Chinese, and have immediate family in China? These are just a few of the many many questions that are raised by your broadly phrased RfC. At this point, so many editors have responded to the vague wording, and different interpretations have sprung up, that there is probably very little we can do to narrow the scope. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 19:13, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
@Shibbolethink: the "Chinese academic publications" part of my question is broadly phrased, and it can be applied to any subject to the Chinese government censorship, which obviously includes Haiwai Huaren - and justly so. Overall, it is not as broadly phrased as some would make it out to be - including yourself - as it is one of three criteria and the outcome of this discussion would only restrict the use of primary sources to refute and delete claims found in high-quality secondary sources. This has very little to do with COVID-19 origins as you said above, and I doubt any research from Chinese academics on that subject as the CCP would prefer for this ambiguity to remain. There is no ambiguity with the CCP's failure to contain the virus at its source and prevent it from becoming a pandemic. CutePeach (talk) 13:39, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Poor question The standard for determining whether a source is reliable is its acceptance in reliable sources. If other academic publications use its facts and findings,then it's reliable. What do we do if the information works its way into a textbook? Are we going to reject new discoveries on the far side of the moon because the Chinese found them? TFD (talk) 00:13, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
  • No, as Academic freedom in China is severely limited, and even more restricted for COVID-19 research. I would have preferred an RfC in WP:OR/N as the BMJ, Nature and Lancet articles that are being tirelessly flashed around do not counter the claims of the BBC, SCMP, Caixin and the many other high-quality sources questioning the accuracy of China's COVID statistics. To address the question of this RfC, Chinese scientists cannot be considered independent, and I do not agree with Adoring nanny's point directly above, as Chinese scientists with family in the mainland may even be under duress when abroad, or they may choosing to self censor (as is common in China). Case in point: Shan-Lu Liu. LondonIP (talk) 02:26, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Bad RfC, suggest speedy close with no action This is getting into very dangerous territory here, where we are starting to discount sources just because of the authors nationality, regardless of all other circumstances. Florida has been accused of censoring COVID data (source), so does that mean all Floridan COVID academic studies are unreliable? No, that's ridiculous. If one wants to counter the sources by Chinese scientists, then they should provide other high quality academic sources with an opposing viewpoint. Not go make an RfC to try to get what you don't like blocked from Wikipedia. Jumpytoo Talk 02:35, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    No one suggested sources should be discounted for the nationality of the authors. To do so would be xenophobia and I would strongly condemn such a motion. The problem here is that some scientists are subject to a special gag order on a specific subject (COVID-19) in their country (China). LondonIP (talk) 02:52, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    Without a clear definition of "Chinese academic publications", I have to go with the broadest possible meaning, because people will definitely use a "No" consensus to discount anything associated to a Chinese scientist, even if they are not in China (for example, to quote yourself: I do not agree with Adoring nanny's point directly above, as Chinese scientists with family in the mainland may even be under duress when abroad, or they may choosing to self censor). This alone makes a bad RfC. Jumpytoo Talk 03:42, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    If we follow the logic in the quote you've given from LondonIP, we'll have to discount any work by anyone who even has family in China. That would rule out a very large fraction of ethnically Chinese scientists around the world. This is just such a toxic proposal, and I'm a bit ashamed that we're even discussing it. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:55, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    we'll have to discount any work by anyone who even has family in China. Don't you get tired of this straw man argument? I didn't propose discounting sources wholesale. I don't consider these sources to be independent, and I think we need to exercise caution with them, and use attribution. Please don't put words in my mouth. LondonIP (talk) 00:06, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
    You just said that everyone with family in China is suspect: Chinese scientists with family in the mainland may even be under duress when abroad, or they may choosing to self censor How am I supposed to interpret that? You can't write things like that and then claim that No one suggested sources should be discounted for the nationality of the authors. You're going beyond arguing for discounting sources based on the nationalities of the authors. You're saying we should take the nationalities of their family members into account as well. -Thucydides411 (talk) 03:20, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
  • No Least trustable sources as history has repeatedly proven. TolWol56 (talk) 15:30, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
  • NO: Chinese academics are restricted from publishing data on COVID-19 and must "orchestrate" their publishing "like a game of Chess", according to government documents leaked to AP [46]. CNN and SCMP also reported leaked documents showing that the Chinese government concealed information about the disease and suppresses the freedom of Chinese academics. We should also not consider Chinese academics as independent source on Xi Jinping Thought. Dhuh! Francesco espo (talk) 20:45, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Bad (loaded and too broad) question with worse implications, poorly formed RfC, and suggest speedy close with no action per Bop34, Jumpytoo, Mx. Granger, Nableezy, Novem Linguae, TFD, Thucydides411, Shibbolethink, Xoltored, et al. — of course, censorship must be taken seriously and in account per Jehochman, though such sources may still be usable in context and with attribution, but this is not the way to do. As things stand, there are way better ways to improve things like attributing the studies, find better or equally reliable academic studies, and include the societal context, rather than dismissing the relevant and cited academic studies without no evidence yet they have been falsified (if they have been, I am sure it will come out but we should not right great wrongs until academia does it for us) because they are Chinese. Chalst and Xoltered have it right that both things can be true but it does not justify outright removal, rather than simply being more cautious or use attribution, and adding the societal context.
Davide King (talk) 20:54, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Not Wikipedia's role - The suggestion goes beyond normal source evaluation expectations. WP already avoids obviously unreliable sources and retracted articles and it is careful with the use of primary sources. It also cares about higher quality sources where relevant like WP:MEDRS. Not about the origin of the participants in normally high quality sources, on the assumption of a conspiracy. The current Indian government is known to promote AYUSH but that's not a valid reason to reject reliable sources with Indian participants. The US government also filters academic publishing to some point for national security concerns. —PaleoNeonate – 23:51, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
  • No, at least for any publications related to politics, history and COVID-19. Speaking about publications in natural sciences though, this is not so simple. For example, First Departments in the former USSR did not allow certain works to be published, but they did not modify any content of specific scientific publications, simply because KGB censors did not understand any science, unlike politics, history and fiction. So, whatever passed through their filter and was published in natural sciences was generally an independent publication. But the censorship in China with regard to COVID-19 was too serious to ignore [47]. My very best wishes (talk) 00:13, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
  • No Especially after this whole Covid episode it would be unwise to say otherwise. NavjotSR (talk) 11:38, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Far too broad "Chinese academic publications" is so open to interpretation as to render any close to this RfC worthless. Recommend speedy close and specification of question per above. BSMRD (talk) 05:36, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Running tally/summary: As of right now, we have 12 "no" and ~16 "too broad/speedy close" comments. This thread, like many in the lab leak/COVID-19 FRINGE space, has become bloated with multiple concurrent running threads and discussions which become small battle-grounds for various disagreements. The more this happens, the less and less likely a succinct/effective closure becomes. I would suggest to everyone that they take this thread as a lesson in how not to write an RfC that you actually want closed. Narrow questions get narrow responses get effective closures. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 14:20, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
@Shibbolethink: please leave the job of closing to the closer, and remember WP:NOTDEMOCRACY and that closing is not just about tallying. Rushing to close this RFC on the claim that my question is too broad smacks of WP:STONEWALLING and even WP:POVRAILROADING. When taking all three criteria of my question together, it is not broad at all. There are only two editors who are not involved in this topic who say it is broad, and I have just answered them. By involved, I mean in Chinese politics, including Uyghur genocide, where the same tactics have been employed. CutePeach (talk) 15:06, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
I would take this accusation as an avoidance of the substantive questions and concerns that many many editors have expressed here. I count many more than 2 “uninvolved” editors who have expressed those same concerns, but as you’ve said, this is not a vote. And it is absolutely appropriate to summarize the current state of the discussion and to have a running tally. Many editors have invented add-ons and scripts to do just that. Would you suggest all those scripts should be deleted? The important part is that votes/tallies should not be the ‘’only’’ factor in a close. I have no intention of closing and have not suggested I would close, as I am certainly “involved.” You have not provided a “neutrally worded” summary that includes all the relevant facts of the situation, which is required when starting an RFC. Particularly with regards to which disputes are involved, how this dispute developed, etc. When asked to do so, you have not complied. It’s entirely appropriate, then, to dispute this RFC as malformed. As many “uninvolved” and “involved” editors have done. Many editors have suggested the negative implications of a broad RFC question which is not neutrally worded. You have yet to address these concerns. At this point, there’s no going back. Too many people have responded to your prompt. We’re now stuck waiting for this RFC to either somehow be closed (by some brave soul) or (more likely) to expire and be archived. My suggestion would be to withdraw the RFC and ask a truly neutral entirely uninvolved 3rd party to step in and write a more narrowly phrased RFC. Good luck… — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 18:43, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
@Shibbolethink: you didn't participate in the discussions that precipitated this RfC, so let me summarise them for you. In the "Alleged under-counting of cases and deaths" and "2021 academic study" discussions, the independence of Chinese academics sources was rejected by some editors due to China's gag order on them publishing their COVID data and research (which includes the Chinese CDC). In this diff an editor suggested we discuss it here on RSN, worded very closely to the question of this RfC, but with specificity to international journals. In both these discussions, editors elevated primary sources from Chinese academics to refute claims from secondary sources like the Financial Times, The Economist and Time Magazine, and another 20 sources that ScrumptiousFood kindly listed. The only comment you made in any of those discussions is to say Scrumptious's sources are not reliable for analysis of epidemiological data, without commenting on any of the sources offered in their stead. Your only participation in this RfC has been to put it down, and you haven't even commented on the primary source being discussed below, or suggested better wording for the RfC. Please don't talk about avoidance. LondonIP (talk) 01:03, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
The difference is that no one was asking me to do those things, and I never started any RfCs that required me to do those things. If CutePeach had provided this amount of background at the beginning of the RfC, and had done so in a more neutrally-worded manner (such as describing the primary sources as peer-reviewed, etc), then we wouldn't have this problem. I assess your summary here as biased as well. You neglect to say the primary sources are peer reviewed and published in international journals. You neglect to mention the MEDRS-compliant government body sources. You emphasize the number of sources and the venues of the sources that you prefer, and do not mention the number or venues of the sources that you do not prefer. All of this creates a biased picture in favor of your view. It's also a biased summary of my participation. First you say I have not participated, and then you describe comments I made in the aforementioned discussions. Which is it? — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 13:49, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
I'll add that the "20 sources" being touted here are almost all of very low quality.
The only scientific source in the list does not support the claim that China covered up its case or death count. It's a paper that tries to estimate the total number of infections in Wuhan, by applying an epidemiological model to Chinese data from outside Wuhan. The authors do not accuse anyone of deception, and state right at the outset,

For quite a bit of time, the current number of people infected was unknown. In fact, e.g., authorities in China found severe uncertainties regarding the dynamics and spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes COVID-19.

The authors actually assume that official data from other parts of China outside of Wuhan is accurate (presumably because those regions were not overwhelmed by cases). In virtually every country on Earth, official case counts are only a fraction of the total number of infections, because in general, most people who get infected do not get PCR tested (this problem was particularly acute during the initial outbreak in Wuhan in January-February 2020, when PCR testing capacity was extremely limited). It's entirely expected that far more people were infected in Wuhan than were diagnosed, and even the China CDC has published an estimate that is a few times the official case count.
The rest of the sources on the list are from the popular media. Some of them are from March/April 2020, and describe a conspiracy theory from Chinese social media about the number of urns supposedly delivered to crematoria in Wuhan (there are many things wrong with this theory: it ignores the fact that people die of causes other than COVID-19, and it contradicts virtually all scientific studies into mortality and seroprevalence in Wuhan). Some of the sources are just pure speculation, some are opinion pieces, many are of the "We're just asking questions" variety. These are the sorts of sources that we're being asked to use in place of scientific sources. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:56, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
@Thucydides411:, you haven't shown how these sources are contradicted by scientific sources, and I haven't seen where it was asked that they be used in place​​ of scientific sources, so that appears to be mistruth. In the case of the story about the urns, it is in at least four high quality sources [48] [49] [50] [51], and it is well known that China covered up the early outbreak of the virus, a fact which is not contradicted by any scientific sources. If you have any sources contradicting these sources, please provide them here, so we can see what they say and if they are WP:INDEPENDENT. CutePeach (talk) 13:47, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
I've already explained to you several times that the scientific mortality and seroprevalence studies are wildly inconsistent with the urns conspiracy theory from Chinese social media. None of the four sources you link to above is a reliable source for any claim about epidemiology: they're all popular media. Even still, the Caixin article does not advocate or even mention the conspiracy theory. The other three news articles discuss the conspiracy theory, but the fact that a conspiracy theory was discussed in the media does not mean that it should be included in the article, especially when the theory is at odds with scientific publications. Why are you trying to insert a random, 2-year-old, incorrect conspiracy theory from social media into the article? -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:54, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
Instead of explaining​​ things in your own words, pelase provide the sources​​ and text you say refute these RS so that we can discuss them here. The original Caixin article, including the original in Chinese, [52], gives figures cited by Bloomberg, SCMP and Time in their reports about those questioning the accuracy of the Chinese government's figures. For the benefit of the closer, please keep your response short and to the point. CutePeach (talk) 14:54, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment do any of the editors saying this RFC is too broad have any suggestions about narrowing it down? The AP reported that the Chinese government ordered CDC staff not to share any data, specimens or other information related to the coronavirus with outside institutions or individuals [53]. How exactly do you want to narrow down "Chinese academic publications" when the Chinese government censorship on publishing COVID data is this expansive? LondonIP (talk) 01:09, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
    Sure. Pick a diff that was being edit warred and caused COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China to get full protected, then start an RFC where folks are asked to pick version 1 or version 2 of the text being edit warred. Not saying we should start yet another RFC, since RFCs use a lot of community time and this one is not even closed yet, but after reflection, if I was given a time machine and able to redo this particular RFC, a narrow question like that is how we should have approached this. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:56, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
    Describe in detail which sources are being used, and have editors pick between the versions relying on Source A or Source B. Pick a particular source and ask: "Is this reliable for this content?" Those are the narrow sort of RfC questions that actually get answered. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 13:53, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
  • "Subjects censored by the Chinese government" is way too broad to be useful. That could stretch from almost anything (Great Firewall) to much less depending on one's interpretation. I do not share the concerns of other editors about clarity in terms of nationality; as I see it, any academic publication published in China would be covered, and any academic publication not published in China, even by Chinese authors, would not be (though the very fact there is debate on this means it can't really be considered clear). That being said, such a blanket ban is just wrong, even ignoring the absence of clarity. The Chinese government is not omnipotent, and editors are responsible enough to evaluate the extent to which a source is influenced by the Chinese government. The vast majority of sources may in fact be influenced by the Chinese government in a way that compromises their reliability, but a blanket ban across a country of 1.4 billion people is just too draconian. Zoozaz1 (talk) 03:09, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
  • No, but we're going to need a much better standard for determining what constitutes a Chinese publication than just: "do these names look Chinese?" Probably going to need a separate RfC to tackle that issue given how heated this one has become. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 20:24, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Bad question — Here's a specific example of why this RfC in its current wording would harm otherwise useful editing, from someone who frequently uses Chinese research in articles. In my current overhaul of the Taiwanese Mandarin article, I make use of plenty of mainland Chinese sources that discuss the differences between that dialect and standard mainland Chinese, (Putonghua). These sources invariably toe the party line on Taiwan, calling it 台湾地区 'the Taiwan area/region'; none ever say that it is, for example, the "national language" of Taiwan, even though it is, because that would imply Taiwan is independent. Saying so would absolutely get them in trouble and would never make it into publication. So there's an example of a specific form of censorship with a pervasive impact in mainland scholarship that should unquestionably not be excluded from articles but very well could be under the wording of this RfC. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 23:19, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
  • No — Chinese academic sources can be very reliable but they are never independent from the Chinese government censorship. It is a feature of the Chinese publication systems that "All the examinations and approvals from the different administrative levels ensure that journals comply with the national ideology."[54]. China was known to even pressure foreign journals to censor articles. [55] Sgnpkd (talk) 16:46, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
  • No — per Sgnpkd's sources, and:
  1. ""China denounced over 'grave threat to academic freedom'"", The Times, 29 March 2021
  2. ""They Don't Understand the Fear We Have"", Human Rights Watch, 6 June 2021
  3. ""How Academic Freedom Ends"", The Atlantic, 6 June 2021
  4. ""Chinese Censors Shut Down Popular Science Social Media Accounts"", Radio Free Asia, 16 July 2021
  5. ""Chinese Universities Are Enshrining Communist Party Control In Their Charters"", NPR, 20 January 2021
  6. ""Hong Kong's Contested Academic Freedom"", The Diplomat, 27 January 2022
Pious Brother (talk) 04:53, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment:since it was asked by an editor in the ongoing RFCBEFORE discussion [56], I would like to clarify that "Chinese academic publications" does not include off the record statements made by confidential sources who we would have no reason to suspect of tugging the government line. There is a big difference between government officials talking in confidence to journalists about COVID-19 and Chinese academics who are subject to censorship on COVID-19. CutePeach (talk) 15:42, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

The problem runs deep. Here is an example where we got pretty much everything wrong, not by relying on sources that are under Xi's control, but by using sources that used sources that are under Xi's control. It is a paragraph from the article that eventually became COVID-19 pandemic, from a version[57] dated January 8, 2019: As of 5 January 2020, 59 cases have occurred with seven in a critical condition, 163 contacts commenced monitoring and there were no reported cases of human-to-human transmission or presentations in healthcare workers.[6][8] Affected people have presented with fever and sometimes difficulty breathing, common to several respiratory illnesses at this time of year. X-rays of the chest have revealed signs in both lungs.[6][7] The cause of the pneumonia is currently unknown; however, viruses like seasonal flu, SARS, MERS and bird flu had been ruled out.[8][7][9] No new cases have been reported since 5 January 2020.[10] The outbreak has not shown signs of escalation.[6][7].

Let us count the ways in which this was wrong:

  1. The case counts were suspect
  2. there were sick healthcare workers by then
  3. the cause was known
  4. it was a SARS-like virus whose DNA had been sequenced
  5. new cases were occurring daily
  6. the outbreak was escalating.

Adoring nanny (talk) 00:26, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

1) Please provide an RS demonstrating those case counts are suspect, from that time. We cannot judge what they knew then with what we know now. Because much of what we know now, the Chinese govt also would not have known then.
2) I'm not sure any sources anywhere exist to demonstrate this point as true. AFAIK, Liang Wudong was the first HCWer to die of COVID, period And he died on Jan 29. Li Wenliang may have been one of the first HCWers to get infected, and he got infected on Jan 8th. Where do we have sources showing there were already sick HCWers at that time? And do you have any proof the Chinese govt was actively censoring that fact?
3) We had sources showing this from Chinese nationals by then, they just weren't used [58] [59] (and various WeChat posts which would not qualify as RSes). And much of this delay is due to the fact that we didn't have a MEDRS showing this, we didn't have any "true" RSes showing this, which makes sense because it takes time to show the modified Rivers' criteria for a novel virus [60]. It took time for SARS too [61]. I'm not sure I want to be using lower quality faster sourcing for something like that.
4) It's RNA, and the sequence was only verified by Jan 10th [62]. They were still vetting its accuracy with independent samples, a common practice. We actually know there were errors in that original sequence because they rushed it a little too much. [63] (there's actually been 3 revisions)
I don't understand what point you're trying to make. An outdated paragraph with outdated sourcing (and lacks the really really low quality sourcing that would be needed to show the other things you've indicated) is not indicative of any cover-up. It just means someone needed to update it with the sources that were out there, if any. The sources from Chinese nationals existed already which would have proven some of these points. And most of all, most of these "false" facts weren't sourced from scientific publications, were they? So would this RfC really have solved anything back then? — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 00:40, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
You seem to mistake our purpose here with being correct as opposed to documenting what other sources say is correct. We were wrong because the sources were wrong? Yeah, sounds about right. If there are better sources they should of course be used, but the idea that because a source uses information from China that makes it unusable is nonsensical, mostly because we rely on those sources to decide what is accurate, and if they are wrong then so to will we be. nableezy - 01:16, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
We're an encyclopedia. Breaking news stories are frequently inaccurate, which means that our articles on breaking news will be frequently inaccurate and is an excellent argument against rushing to create or update articles in response to breaking news events. Conversely, we're a volunteer encyclopedia and sometimes verifiably dated information will persist for a while. None of this is novel, unique to China or COVID, or warranting of changes or exceptions to our policies. VQuakr (talk) 01:39, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
Quite right. If anything, this example illustrates why we should cite retrospective studies in high-quality journals like The BMJ, when available. They are likely to be more accurate than early news reports. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 17:57, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Sounds like you all want a focus on academic sources. Fine. Behold "The fight against fake-paper factories that churn out sham science". The title doesn't say "China", but the content is about Chinese academic fraud mills. And this is before the additional layer of lying imposed by Government authorities. [64] But Nature has tallied 370 articles retracted since January 2020, all from authors at Chinese hospitals, that either publishers or independent sleuths have alleged to come from paper mills (see ‘Fraud allegations’). Most were published in the past three years (see ‘Chinese hospital papers on the rise’). Publishers have added expressions of concern to another 45 such articles. Adoring nanny (talk) 14:20, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

And here are some Western examples of fake papers: The Atlantic: wrote 20 fake papers using fashionable jargon to argue for ridiculous conclusions, and tried to get them placed in high-profile journals in fields including gender studies, queer studies, and fat studies. Their success rate was remarkable: By the time they took their experiment public late on Tuesday, seven of their articles had been accepted for publication by ostensibly serious peer-reviewed journals The Guardian The researchers say some of her work is still being cited and accessed, even though she was barely literate in science and unable to recognise basic formulas taught to first-year chemistry students., The MMR & autism study It is intensely sceptical about the possibility of error, but totally trusting about the possibility of fraud.”1 Never has this been truer than of the 1998 Lancet paper that implied a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and a “new syndrome” of autism and bowel disease
There are many papers that are fraudulent, but we should not be trying to WP:RGW ourselves here by (quoting Thucydides here): look[ing] at the nationalities of the authors, and if they appear to be Chinese, that we should reject them. As people noted below, we can try to use review and secondary sources over primary academic sources when available. And if you have true concerns about a paper, go to the journal and make your appeal. This is disregarding how poor this RfC question is, as I've said before, how is "Chinese academic publications" defined? Is just having one Chinese author "too Chinese"? If there is even just one international author, does that make the paper "not Chinese"? Jumpytoo Talk 19:34, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
The state of this RfC is deplorable. People are talking past each other, and there are numerous complaints about the formulation of the original question. @CutePeach: please immediately clarify what you mean by "Chinese academic publications". Please give examples. You have been asked numerous times, often directly, to elaborate on the question, and you have not done so. As evidenced by the above survey responses, many editors take this to mean "Chinese journals", while many others take it to mean "contributions by Chinese scientists to any journal". Whatever the result of this RfC, it should ultimately be considered invalid unless there is actual consensus on what we are even talking about. AlexEng(TALK) 17:28, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
You can find an example directly below. It's one of three papers cited to refute allegations from high quality secondary sources. The accuracy sections of the China government response page was deleted to make way for praise and pomp. ScrumptiousFood (talk) 00:16, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
The state of this RfC is deplorable. People are talking past each other it's indeed invalid yet a successful attempt to make noise... Both sections have had their reasonable answers and should probably be closed to prevent more disruption and waste of community time. —PaleoNeonate – 01:14, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
@AlexEng: it is very hard to WP:AGF with some of the editors questioning the definition of "Chinese academic publications", when they use the same tactics to argue that the Uyghur genocide can’t be defined as a genocide. The Chinese government has complete control over all publishing, so it would not be hard for them to control academic publishing, and they can now even censor Western academic journals publishing in China [65]. This RFC affects only a handful of papers that were debated in the WP:RFCBEFORE] discussions, which I mentioned in my answer to Nableezy below. This is a very unique case, because few countries invest as much as China does in censorship, and according to this report [66], they invest anywhere between $6.6B and $13B in internet censorship alone. We cannot ignore the effects of this censorship on the coverage of censored topics here on Wikipedia. CutePeach (talk) 14:54, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
Hi, I'm an editor who is very unclear about your definition of "Chinese academic publications" but I would simultaneously emphatically agree that the Uyghur genocide is clearly defined as a genocide. Please don't create strawman arguments that those who disagree with you are being unreasonable. There is good reason for confusion with the phrasing of your question, and how others are interpreting it to mean different things. E.g. above, londonIP broadens it to include people who are living abroad but have family in Mainland China. Do you intend it to be interpreted this way?
That link you provide to the case of China Quarterly has very little, if any, bearing on this discussion. China requested certain articles be inaccessible when surfing the internet in China, behind the Great Firewall. No actual edits were made to any articles. Since all of the English Wikipedia is already blocked in China, the horse has kind of already left the barn on that one. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 18:47, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
@CutePeach: I don't know why you're raising the article Uyghur genocide in a discussion of reliable sourcing on COVID-19 mortality. It seems to me that you're bringing in an unrelated political issue, simply because it involves China. Is every discussion about China-related sourcing going to end with a litmus test on participants' views on Xi Jinping, Xinjiang, Tibet and the Opium Wars? -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:34, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

The Chinese Wikipedia community has been informed of this RfC. Milky·Defer >Please use ping 15:27, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Is the specific study this discussion originated with (BMJ) reliable?

NOT TO BE INCLUDED
Substantial majority consensus has been established that the article does not meet the inclusion standards per WP:MEDRS, as it is established to be a primary source (by biomedical standards). Additionally there is a smaller consensus that WP:MEDRS applies to the article and its inclusion. There is also an agreement that the source is normally reliable but there are some concerns about conflict of interest, and this is self-declared in part by the study authors. It is noted that there are (potentially) dissenting secondary sources, but there is no consensus for their relevance in comparison to the source of the article. I make the prudential judgment (along with consensus) that comments regarding the ethnicity or nationality of the scientists in question shall not be included on grounds of discrimination. Having summed up the large discussion my conclusion is that the majority of the participants is against including the article on its own, but there is no observed representative consensus either for or against the reliability of the source per se, and as such there is a potential future if backed up by reputable secondary/tertiary sources. Lastly, there is a consensus against including the listed secondary sources as a reinforcement for the primary source. I am uninvolved and unbiased in the discussion and have given my best view on the subject matter. Of course, since I'm writing this, I am willing to discuss the consensus and will respond to calls for argumentation. ★Ama TALK CONTRIBS 05:04, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


The discussion on this page has been confused, with poorly phrased and biased RfC's regarding this, so I created this section to simplify it, hopefully we will find consensus and the original page will be unlocked. Xoltered (talk) 05:04, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  • Yes It is peer-reviewed and published in the BMJ, a reliable journal. Xoltered (talk) 05:04, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Yes, it's as reliable as any other peer-reviewed primary study in a high-quality journal. Which doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be incorrect or refuted/challenged by other sources (as a result of potential source data issues cited above, part of the reason any primary study has limits to its use), but we shouldn't be in the habit of second-guessing the reliability of peer-reviewed studies per WP:RGW and WP:OR. Bakkster Man (talk) 16:45, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
@Bakkster Man: you say this source can be refuted/challenged by other sources but do you think it can be used to refute/challenge secondary sources and even omit them? I'm not sure if you read the discussion in the China COVID-19 pandemic page, but that is what this dispute is about. Here are the omissions from Mx. Granger [67] and Thucydides411 [68] and restoration by Encyclopedia Lu [69]. Do you agree with these omissions and use of primary sources, or would you like to change your mind - and your !vote? CutePeach (talk) 15:03, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
@CutePeach: I got here through FTN, and the entire extent of the dispute is just not something I want to devote time to diving deep enough to weigh in on the original dispute. I'd prefer to weigh in specifically on the source question, which I'm concerned might be trying to make too-broad conclusions in the context of a too-narrow dispute. Bakkster Man (talk) 15:19, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
@CutePeach: You're not providing reliable secondary sources on epidemiology. You're providing popular magazine and news articles written by non-experts, and not subject to any kind of peer-review or rigorous scientific editing. Many of these articles are just discussing the urns conspiracy theory, which comes from social media.
The sources that I and other editors are pointing to are peer-reviewed papers on mortality and serology in China, published in leading international journals.
These two classes of sources are not even remotely on the same level. The popular media articles are junk in comparison to the peer-reviewed scientific literature. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:34, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Fails MEDRS so not reliable for any claim in the realm of WP:Biomedical information, and while it may be "reliable" for other kinds of claim, as a primary source these would almost certainly be POV/UNDUE. Alexbrn (talk) 16:49, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    It's a peer-reviewed study in one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world. In what world does it fail WP:MEDRS? This is the single best source available on mortality during the outbreak in China, by a very wide margin. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:00, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    It's primary research. Wikipedia generally wants secondary sources for biomedical material. Alexbrn (talk) 19:03, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    I dont think thats true, the raw data in the mortality registries is the primary source there, the analysis of it is secondary. nableezy - 19:07, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    It's true. From the data the authors selected the method and produced a novel result ("research"). For medical secondary sources in journals we typically want review articles, meta-analyses or systematic reviews. These all offer overviews of multiple pieces of primary research. Alexbrn (talk) 19:11, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    Whether or not you consider this "primary" or "secondary" research, it's clearly the highest quality source available today on the subject of the death toll in China's initial COVID-19 outbreak. The question being discussed in this thread essentially boils down to: should we throw out this peer-reviewed study because of the nationalities of the authors, and replace it news articles from March/April 2020 that discuss social media speculation about vastly larger death tolls? This study is clearly on an entirely different level of reliability than those news articles, when it comes to making statements about the actual death toll. It would be great if we had a meta-analysis or review article of different mortality estimates, but what we have now is a peer-reviewed paper in a highly prestigious medical journal, and that's pretty darn good. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:45, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    95% of peer-reviewed content in medical journals is research and completely unsuitable for Wikipedia, which is meant to be a reflection of "accepted knowledge". Once research has been validated by additional layers of verification (review article, etc.) it becomes eligible for our use. The problem with nearly all of this discussion about author nationality etc. is that it's irrelevant. A lot of research is just wrong so editors here deciding to use it are in effect indulging in WP:OR by deciding for themselves it's correct. Wait for truly reliable sources: there is no deadline. Alexbrn (talk) 19:52, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    This is throwing out the baby with the bath water. In an attempt to improve source quality, you're arguing against using the highest-quality source available. The consequence will be that absolute junk (news articles discussing a social media conspiracy theory that is wildly inconsistent with all research on the subject) will be substituted in its place. Review articles are preferable to research articles, but research articles are still high-quality sources. In this case, this is clearly the highest-quality source available, by a wide margin. Not every scientific subject gets its own dedicated review article, and sources of this high caliber are used regularly in MEDRS articles. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:06, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    This is what we call POV-pushing. You've decided some claim needs to be included, and then (despite the lack of RS) try to find a way to include it. NPOV means representing what reliable sources say, not adding stuff to articles editors want. Alexbrn (talk) 20:10, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    That's an absurd allegation, Alex. I'm just arguing that we use the highest-quality available sources. You should try to understand what the context of this discussion actually is before you wade into it. This discussion is about whether or not we will rule out peer-reviewed scientific papers on the basis of the nationalities of the authors and replace them with news articles that discuss social media speculation. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:38, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    If the "highest quality" is an unreliable source, stay silent. Silence is better than misinformation. As to the question, I do understand it. I have answered the (stupid) RfC question; and now this just-as-stupid question about whether a source (without context) is "reliable". I also appreciate the political shadow-boxing taking place. Alexbrn (talk) 20:47, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    In this case, the highest-quality available source is not unreliable. You can argue about whether to classify it as primary or secondary, and what amount of attribution to use (e.g., "According to a study published in The BMJ, ..."), but this is not some speculative paper based on in vitro experiments that makes wild claims. It's a standard analysis of mortality data done by a third party, which has been subjected to rigorous peer review (5 reviewers, in fact, whose reports you can read on The BMJ's website) and published in a highly prestigious journal. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:14, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    You need to read WP:MEDRS. For background, WP:WHYMEDRS and WP:MEDFAQ are useful. This is just a replay of the same arguments the "lab leak" proponents tried to push to get their favoured research in. You either follow the WP:PAGs, or you don't. Alexbrn (talk) 07:30, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
    I'm already familiar with WP:MEDRS, and I don't agree with your interpretation of it. If we follow your interpretation, we will have to remove virtually all mortality estimates for all countries, including the CDC's estimate of COVID-19 mortality in the US. I think it's entirely reasonable, based on WP:MEDRS, to attribute the excess mortality estimates (to the CDC, to a paper in The BMJ, etc.), but policy does not require us to remove them entirely, nor would doing so be reasonable. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:13, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
    As a major medical body, the CDC's position would meet MEDRS. Different thing entirely. Alexbrn (talk) 16:26, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
    The CDC's analysis is exactly analogous to the BMJ paper we're discussing. Scientists from the CDC published their methodology for determining excess mortality from available data in The Lancet Regional Health - Americas. That's primary research, according to the definition you're advancing (which I do not agree with). We're now citing that mortality estimate on Wikipedia. The analysis published in The BMJ is entirely analogous. Scientists from the major public health institution in China, the China CDC, publish an analysis of available disease surveillance data in a journal with very rigorous standards of peer review (5 reviewers in this case). We're discussing two exactly analogous situations. It's obvious that we wouldn't remove the most reliable estimate of COVID-19 mortality in the US, but if we follow your logic here, we'll have to do so. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:23, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
    No its not, the Chinese CDC is restricted from publishing any COVID data or research without approval from the Chinese State Council and CCP propaganda office [70]. LondonIP (talk) 01:12, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
    China CDC is a reliable source for medical statistics in China, and the study we're discussing was published in The BMJ, which is a highly reputable medical journal. If you have concerns about the data being fake, then I suggest you take that up with the editors at The BMJ. They take allegations of data faking very seriously, and they will certainly issue a correction or retraction should there turn out to be problems with the data. Until that happens, however, this is an analysis by a highly competent medical authority, published in one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, after peer-review by five experts in the field and with oversight by scientific editors at the journal. Your vague claims that the data is questionable are irrelevant - go to The BMJ with your concerns. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:59, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
    If we follow WP:MEDRS to the letter as advocated above, the Chinese CDC is the most reliable source available and is the only MEDRS source of all the sources presented, since it is a position statements from national or international expert bodies. Interesting. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:01, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
    Yes I would agree with Novem and Alexbrn here, it's a MEDRS because it's a position statement from a government body, even though it's technically a primary source. Different from academic journal articles of course. Primary sources CAN be used per MEDRS, but there should not be valid alternatives. See WP:MEDANIMAL and WP:MEDASSESS. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 13:54, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
    Novem Linguae and Shibbolethink, I believe Alexbrn was referring to the US CDC, and as LondonIP says, the Chinese CDC is bound by the gag order too. If we believe the Chinese CDC, China’s COVID-19 deaths have been stuck at 4,636 for nearly two years, and zero new deaths in a nation of 1.4B. Do you see the problem here or will we need a new RFC with a question in specific to the Chinese CDC? I personally don't think such an RFC is necessary, but if you are agreeing with a Thucydides411 that the Chinese CDC trumps RS then we may have no choice but to post one here. CutePeach (talk) 14:34, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
    Chinese CDC trumps RS: The "RS" you're raising are not reliable sources for this sort of information. You keep saying that we should rely on random popular news articles from nearly two years ago, which discuss a social media conspiracy theory about the number of urns supposedly delivered to Wuhan. These conspiracy theories were never sound to begin with, but they've been completely ruled out by what we've learned since: there were only about 4,600 excess pneumonia deaths in Wuhan, and seroprevalence is around 4% in the city (it would have to be essentially 100% in order to arrive any anything close to the death toll the urns conspiracy theory claims). What I and others here are saying is that we should use actual reliable sources, like peer-reviewed studies of mortality and seroprevalence, and national statistics.
    stuck at 4,636 for nearly two years: China has followed a zero-COVID strategy. The virus was entirely eliminated from China (at least from circulation in the human population) in April 2020. There are extremely strict quarantine measures at the border, and every new outbreak is met with mass testing, extensive contact tracing, quarantine and isolation, and targeted lockdowns. These measures have been successful in ending the few dozen new outbreaks that have occurred in various places in China since April 2020. The largest outbreak since April 2020 (the recent one in Xi'an, which took place in December 2021 - January 2022) involved only about 2000 people in total. The fact that China has pursued a zero-COVID policy has been extremely widely reported on in the media and in the medical literature. In fact, there is an entire issue of The BMJ devoted to discussing the zero-COVID policy in China. I would assume that a basic awareness of this policy would be a pre-requisite for editing articles related to the pandemic in China, because I'm not sure how an editor who is unaware of the policy could meaningfully contribute. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:43, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
    @Thucydides411: I agree with Alexbrn. The best source doesn't always clear the threshold for reliability here. If WP:MEDRS standards apply here (and I believe they probably do), then we can't use primary sources. It would, however, also mean that the "absolute junk" sources couldn't be used either. Whatever the decision (I don't think RSN is the right place), it should be applied consistently. If BMJ can't be used because the information is WP:BMI, then the information might need to be left as unknown. Bakkster Man (talk) 21:11, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    @Bakkster Man: If I go look at COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the second sentence gives a death toll drawn from the website, Our World in Data, along with a statement about per capita mortality sourced to a Johns Hopkins University tracker, and the sidebar gives estimates of the death toll from the CDC (there's an associated peer-reviewed paper, which under the definition advanced above would be primary research) and a black-box machine learning model published by a popular magazine, The Economist (obviously not peer-reviewed, not necessarily even created by experts in the field, and which spits out absurd, impossible results for some countries). The paper we're discussing, published in The BMJ, is of far higher quality than any of those sources. In other words, the paper in The BMJ is of much higher quality than the references we're currently using to source similar information in analogous (and much more prominent) articles on Wikipedia. It's highly valuable to not just give government numbers, but to also give scientific estimates of death tolls and infection rates. The BMJ provides a much better source for doing so than is available for other articles. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:44, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    @Thucydides411: I think that could be a thread worth pulling on (is collating and republishing official data reasonable or not, and are case counts BMI), but I think it probably needs to happen in a better venue (WP:BMI for instance) out of the shadow of this "but China" RfC to give it a chance of actual consensus. Bakkster Man (talk) 22:36, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    I think the relevant discussion is that this study's reliability will depend on WP:BMI and WP:MEDRS and whether we consider it primary or secondary (arguably a different noticeboard), not on whether or not the authors are Chinese. Bakkster Man (talk) 19:13, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    Note to closer: the authors are Chinese has not been presented by any editors as the sole criterion for considering the reliability of this source. CutePeach (talk) 17:42, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
    @Alexbrn @VQuakr Here is where the paper is currently used, if you want to give your opinion: [71] [72]. Jumpytoo Talk 19:59, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    I'll pass. The COVID-19 articles generally are a morass of poorly-sourced content. In years to come they'll get cleaned up. Maybe. All I can do now is try to explain what our sourcing guidelines actually say - though as we can see it's not what some editors want to hear, as this discussion is really just another proxy politics battleground, now isn't it. Alexbrn (talk) 20:05, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
@Jumpytoo: it's cited three times in a short paragraph, which is ugly (just cite it at the end of that para), but the info it's used to support isn't a MEDRS issue (it talks about mortality numbers, doesn't give medical advice) and isn't a red flag either: it's consistent with other reliable sources about total COVID deaths in China. Reasonable editors may disagree, but I'm not seeing any issue here and "because it's from China" is a non-starter of a reason to exclude. VQuakr (talk) 21:16, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Reliable to support what information? "is X reliable" is not a question that can be answered in the affirmative without context. It's a primary medical article, so as Alexbrn notes is fails MEDRS. It's a year old, so the information in it may be dated. BMJ is reliable in most contexts, though. VQuakr (talk) 16:53, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
  • No per Alexbrn. Fails WP:RS when we use it on any COVID-19 page. TolWol56 (talk) 18:59, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Yes, the study in question is inarguably the best available source on mortality during the outbreak in China, by a very wide margin. It's a peer-reviewed study in one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, The BMJ (formerly known as "The British Medical Journal"). It provides a detailed analysis of excess mortality due to a whole number of different causes in Wuhan, Hubei province (excluding Wuhan) and China (excluding Hubei province). Of particular interest, it calculates excess pneumonia mortality, which is attributable to COVID-19. Here is its bottom line:

    In Wuhan city (13 districts), 5954 additional (4573 pneumonia) deaths occurred in 2020 compared with 2019, with excess risks greater in central than in suburban districts (50% v 15%). In other parts of Hubei province (19 DSP areas), the observed mortality rates from pneumonia and chronic respiratory diseases were non-significantly 28% and 23% lower than the predicted rates, despite excess deaths from covid-19 related pneumonia. Outside Hubei (583 DSP areas), the observed total mortality rate was non-significantly lower than the predicted rate (675 v 715 per 100000), with significantly lower death rates from pneumonia (0.53, 0.46 to 0.63), chronic respiratory diseases (0.82, 0.71 to 0.96), and road traffic incidents (0.77, 0.68 to 0.88).

    Except in Wuhan, no increase in overall mortality was found during the three months of the covid-19 outbreak in other parts of China. The lower death rates from certain non-covid-19 related diseases might be attributable to the associated behaviour changes during lockdown.

The authors speculate that the slight decrease in pneumonia deaths outside Wuhan is due to a decrease in flu transmission during the lockdowns.
The findings of this study have proved to be consistent with a whole number of serology studies published in highly reputable international journals (such as Nature Medicine, The Lancet Regional Health Western Pacific and The Lancet Microbe) that look at infection rates in various regions of China.
The alternative to this study in The BMJ that some editors are proposing we use is literally a conspiracy theory from Chinese social media about the supposed number of urns delivered to Wuhan after the lockdown, which was briefly discussed in some news articles all the way back in March/April 2020 (see more here). The idea that we would run with that social media conspiracy theory but rule out peer-reviewed research in one of the world's top medical journals is laughable.
The fact that this source has even been called into question (purely on the basis of the nationalities of the authors) just goes to show how absurd this entire discussion is. We have to decide whether or not Wikipedia is a place that discriminates on the basis of nationality. I think it shouldn't. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:32, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Yes, in context of this RfC, if this is a suitable article per WP:MEDRS and the primary/secondary argument is something that could be discussed, but the fact the authors are Chinese does not impact the reliability of this piece. Jumpytoo Talk 19:50, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
  • No per Alexbrn and Xi's "Game of Chess". LondonIP (talk) 00:08, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
  • No, in context of this RfC and also per Alexbrn who says it is WP:PRIMARY. Francesco espo (talk) 00:09, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
  • No because it fails WP:MEDRS, and this is the case when WP:MEDRS does apply. My very best wishes (talk) 00:35, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
  • NOTE If the consensus is that the study is reliable but fails MEDRS because it is a primary source, then that means reliable secondary sources refrencing the study ARE reliable. Also as previously noted above, other articles regarding COVID have primary sources for the claims of deaths and cases as typically they are the best source for this, should this also be changed? Xoltered (talk) 01:03, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
    Yes, secondary sources citing this study would likely meet MEDRS and therefore be the best available sources on this topic. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 14:11, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
  • No Not reliable due to pro-fringe background. NavjotSR (talk) 11:36, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
  • WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. If this WP:PRIMARY source was being cited for ordinary non contentious claims, then perhaps YES​​. However, since it is being used to refute/challenge claims from high quality WP:SECONDARY sources like the Financial Times and the Economist [73], it's a NO. The applicable policy here is WP:BALANCE, which requires secondary or tertiary sources to describe the disagreement from a disinterested viewpoint. CutePeach (talk) 13:45, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
    The idea that popular media like The Financial Times or The Economist are reliable sources for epidemiological information - but that a peer-reviewed paper on excess mortality in one of the world's most prestigious medical journals isn't - is simply laughable. The Financial Times and The Economist aren't even remotely reliable for this sort of information. They're okay for current events. They have near-zero expertise in epidemiology. -Thucydides411 (talk) 14:46, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
    I'm inclined to agree. The Financial Times and The Economist are HQRS, but I feel like there's a problem if we rate them as better than a peer reviewed publication in an esteemed publication like The BMJ, on a issue in the journal's expertise. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:59, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
    I was about to make the very same argument. The Economist and FT are not "High quality" epidemiology journals. They are media outlets which are respected on matters of politics and economics.
    ' — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 14:15, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
    ProcrastinatingReader and Shibbolethink, contrary to what Thucydides411 claims, the "Alleged under-counting of cases and deaths" is not "epidemiological information", and the BMJ article does not even refute the claims of Foreign Policy, Financial Times and the Economist. I don't think the community has the patience for another massive throwdown at WP:BMI and I don't think your arguments here will persuade any admin to unblock the page. CutePeach (talk) 17:01, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
    @CutePeach, ProcrastinatingReader, and Shibbolethink: CutePeach, you keep claiming the Foreign Policy article supports the contention that China deliberately under-counted cases and deaths. It doesn't. In fact, the article begins by acknowledging that China's numbers may be accurate. I've responded to you at another location where you made this same argument, so see this diff for a fuller explanation. In any case, we're talking about epidemiology here, and speculation in popular media is not reliable when it comes to questions like: how many people in China have been infected or died of COVID-19? -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:09, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
    @Thucydides411: you keep giving us your opinion instead of reliable sources, or showing us where your reliable sources contradict what Foreign Policy, Financial Times, the Economist, and others say. Please don't single out the Foreign Policy, as that is just one aspect of the story, and please don't WP:CHERRYPICK one sentence from the article, as the sentence you are referring to is immediately followed by another saying But it’s also possible that the numbers presented to the rest of the world are vastly understated compared to Beijing’s private figures. CutePeach (talk) 14:37, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
    You keep claiming that the Foreign Policy article supports your claim that China undercounted deaths and cases. It doesn't. I quoted the first sentence because it makes clear that Foreign Policy is not making the claim that you're attributing to it. In fact, the Foreign Policy article does not make any firm claims about China's figures. It simply says that there is a new database that could shed light on the issue. There has been no follow-up from Foreign Policy, which strongly implies that this database did not actually contradict China's official numbers - if it did, FP would have written an article on it at some point in the last 20 months.
    On the other hand, there are actual scientific studies of mortality and seroprevalence in Wuhan and China, which have been raised may times in this discussion. For example, this study in The BMJ finds that there were approximately 4,600 excess pneumonia deaths in Wuhan, and net zero outside of Hubei province (there were small numbers of COVID-19 deaths, but there was a reduction in flu deaths that balanced them out). This is consistent with the official death toll. There are also numerous seroprevalence studies (just a few: [74] [75]), all of which find similar rates of infection (a few percent in Wuhan, virtually zero outside of Hubei province), which are consistent with the official death toll. These are actual reliable sources for epidemiological claims. Popular media, such as Foreign Policy, are not reliable sources for this sort of information.
    Honestly, claims that China had far more deaths than reported are in fringe conspiracy-theory territory. The death toll and level of infection in China are fairly well understood, and have been for a long time now. Adding erroneous speculation from two-year-old popular media articles adds nothing of value to this subject. -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:14, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Claims that China had far more deaths than reported, which is just what they are - claims - have been made by multiple RS, and not just the Foreign Policy, which focuses on a leaked Chinese database. The studies that you have been raised "many times" in the discussion cannot be used to refute these claims, for multiple reasons explained to you here. Between the three discussions on the topic of RS questioning the accuracy of China's statistics, there is no consensus that your primary sources trump these secondary RS, so neither you or FormalDude should be deleting the POV tag. CutePeach (talk) 13:25, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Um no, CP didn't claim that China undercounted deaths and cases. It is the sources that claim it, as a probability, because it is censored. There is consensus here your primary sources don't refute these claims. Francesco espo (talk) 00:09, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
  • No because this fails MEDRS per Alexbrn, the problem here is of course that MEDRS prohibits peer reviewed studies in publications like the BMJ, but thats a known issue with MEDRS. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:58, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
  • To those saying this is a primary source, genuine question, what's the difference between this discussion and a recent discussion here at RSN involving analysis of population data, where it was said that novel analysis of results to reach a novel conclusion is considered secondary if the authors didn't obtain the data? (I can't find the discussion at a skim but it was quite well attended IIRC). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:56, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
@ProcrastinatingReader: the requirement for the use of WP:PRIMARY sources is that one cannot analyse or interpret them, which is clearly the case here. There is also WP:BALANCE which requires contradictory sources to be relatively equal in prominence and secondary or tertiary by type. CutePeach (talk) 15:55, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
The requirement is that editors don't analyse or interpret the results/contents of the primary source. As far as I can tell, the source obtained data from "China's Disease Surveillance Points" and the source analysed this data. I'm not entirely sure the 'primary source'/'secondary source' classification is ideal for this case, but IIRC previous RSN discussions covering similar situations have held that such cases are considered secondary sources. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:33, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
@ProcrastinatingReader: It's also worth noting that the BMJ paper on excess mortality in China is analogous to the CDC estimate of excess mortality in the US, which is considered the standard estimate for the US. Both are published in very similar ways: they're peer-reviewed analyses of data gathered by various disease surveillance networks. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:47, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
  • ProcrastinatingReader it's not just a primary source, it's primary research. If China is undercounting cases, then it's true figures would be a state secret, and all epidemiology submissions would be thoroughly vetted by a censor, and some papers would be commissioned by propagandists for… propaganda. This BMJ paper does not refute or even challenge the widely varied allegations of many HQRS that question the accuracy of China's statistics, so it's a giant red herring. The Nature and Lancet articles are also primary and don't refute anything. ScrumptiousFood (talk) 18:50, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
    @ScrumptiousFood: If you believe the data on which the paper in The BMJ is based is faked, then please take your concerns to the editors at The BMJ. Five expert peer-reviewers (who deal regularly with this sort of data) and the scientific editors at The BMJ vetted this paper. I'm sure they'll be interested to hear any evidence you have of data-faking, and if there's any merit to your claims, I'm sure they'll retract the paper. We are, after all, talking about one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world. But as things stand, this is a peer-reviewed paper in a leading journal, and there's absolutely no indication that the data is faked. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:11, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
    @ProcrastinatingReader: you said The requirement is that editors don't analyse or interpret the results/contents of the primary source but that is exactly what editors are doing [76] [77] [78]. CutePeach (talk) 15:21, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
    Those edits you linked don't analyse or interpret the results but simply mention the findings of the study, what are you claiming is user analysis? Xoltered (talk) 09:06, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
@Xoltered: the edit summaries in the three edits I showed ProcrastinatingReader's point give an analysis of this WP:PRIMARY source, as if they are WP:SECONDARY sources describing opposing views clearly as per WP:BALANCE. They are not, and those edits are WP:POVDELETIONS. CutePeach (talk) 16:25, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
You are simply stating this, if you look at the edits you linked they simply mention the findings of the study, and do not present them as a secondary source. Xoltered (talk) 18:09, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
In the three diffs links above, you and two other editors removed content sourced to RS [79], due to this BMJ article supposedly refuting claims of China underreporting the extent of infections and deaths. Do you understand the problem with your edit and why we are here on RSN discussing this BMJ article and other sources brought to refute widely reported claims? CutePeach (talk) 14:04, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
@Shibbolethink: this discussion is about a BMJ paper which supposedly refutes the claims of RS which you say aren't reliable [80]. Its really not clear from your answer here why you think these RS aren't reliable if the BMJ isn't a secondary academic journal article. WP:BALANCE requires that sources be relatively equal in prominence, and a primary source is never going to be as prominent as a secondary one. Please can you clarify for the benefit of the closer? CutePeach (talk) 17:17, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
Here are several secondary academic sources which support the conclusions drawn from the original paper in this discussion: [81] [82] [83] [84] That is also a misreading of BALANCE, which actually requires us to write our articles based on the proportion of those views in our WP:BESTSOURCES. The sources you provide do not trump scholarly work, which is what sets the tone here on Wikipedia. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 00:28, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
Those sources, secondary as they are, have absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand. They may perhaps support the conclusion of this BMJ paper - whatever it is - but they absolutely do not refute or challenge the claims found in over 20 RS about China allegedly underreporting the extent of COVID-19 infections and deaths. Looking at the dataset leaked to the Foreign Policy [85], I do not see where your secondary sources refute this report. There are hundreds of reports in RS that China underreported cases from the very start. It is a fact we can put in Wikivoice. CutePeach (talk) 14:16, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
@CutePeach and Shibbolethink: The Foreign Policy article does not claim that China under-reported cases or deaths. In fact, the article begins by stating, Beijing claims that since the coronavirus pandemic began at the end of last year, there have been only 82,919 confirmed cases and 4,633 deaths in mainland China. Those numbers could be roughly accurate... The article says that FP has obtained a leaked database, and will analyze it. In the 18 months since this FP article came out, there has been no follow-up reporting from FP on this database, as far as I can tell (I've searched and come up empty). That leads me to believe that FP found nothing newsworthy in the database. At the very least, you can't keep waving around this source and claiming it supports your contention that China deliberately under-reported cases or deaths. If anything, this source undermines your contention. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:52, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
  • No In particular, I would note their conflicts statement: Competing interests: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf and declare: funding for the project through a grant (No 82073675) from the National Natural Science Foundation of China; no financial relationships with any organisations that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous three years; no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work. The portion about "no other relationships or activities" contradicts the document released by the AP. The authors all have a relationship with the Government of China. The AP document states that the Government of China must approve all publications in this area. This is a conflict, and a true conflicts statement would have mentioned it. Of course this sucks for the authors, who would likely not have been allowed by the Government of China to mention this particular conflict. But for our purposes, the bottom line is that because of the AP's document, the conflicts statement is verifiably false. Therefore, the source is not reliable. Adoring nanny (talk) 04:11, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment A further problem with the source, which I did not mention in my !vote above, is that it describes Chinese Government publications on the topic of mortality as "data". However, there is a slam-dunk case that certain deaths are deliberately not reported by their actual cause. See the article Organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China. China does report some executions, but not enough to account for the timely availability of human organs compatible with such a large number of recipients. The upshot is that the publications which the source describes as "data" must either exclude or misclassify some deaths where the cause of death is execution by the Government. Perhaps a user who reads Chinese can confirm this. Adoring nanny (talk) 11:27, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
This is completely unrelated to the topic being discussed, this is about COVID deaths and linking to an unrelated article which "The neutrality of this article is disputed" does not improve your point. Xoltered (talk)
@Xoltered: While it proves nothing on its own, I think the fact that the CCP has been known to fabricate death statistics in other politically sensitive areas gives reason to be suspicious that they may also be doing so here. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 20:39, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
See WP:OR Xoltered (talk) 20:41, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
  • While WP:CONTEXTMATTERS is relevant, I am in agreement with what Adoring nanny said. Azuredivay (talk) 08:01, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
    Slam-dunk case: Where have I heard that before? You're pointing to completely unrelated - and extremely suspect - accusations of organ harvesting of Falun Gong prisoners to argue that essentially all scientific study on COVID-19 mortality in China is wrong. If you believe that the paper in The BMJ that we're discussing is based on faked data, then you should bring that to the attention of the editors of The BMJ. If you have any credible evidence, I'm sure they will take your complaint very seriously and will publish any needed retractions or corrections. Until you've convinced The BMJ to do so, however, we are all free to reject your suggestion of faked data out-of-hand. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:09, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
  • No, per Adoring nanny. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 20:21, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Yes, in the context of this RfC, per Bakkster Man and Jumpytoo, as a paper published by the academic press, and the authors being Chinese does not change this. I prefer a case-by-case analysis — we can include the study, while also using the best news sources, though I do agree with ProcrastinatingReader's comments. As for 'refuting', we need reliable sources saying that to avoid OR/SYNTH, so we should use careful wording, rather than decide for ourself such sources, especially if they are those,12 refuted this paper. As for primary/secondary, WP:PRIMARY notes: "A source may be considered primary for one statement but secondary for a different one." As written by Shibbolethink, it should be a no brainer "if there are no good secondary academic journal article sources available per WP:MEDRS, particularly WP:MEDANIMAL and WP:MEDASSESS. If there are secondary MEDRS-compliant sources available which cite these studies, those secondary sources should be used instead." Davide King (talk) 23:49, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Yes its a reliable source, published in a prestigious journal and extensively reacted to. However, Alexbrn is right to call it a primary source. Secondary sources would include things like the peer reports that the BMJ, like most but not all journals, does not publish and the literature that comments on this study. The editors who think that the fact that the article interprets its own data makes it a secondary source are confused. If MEDRS considers primary sources of this quality to be unusable, so much the worse for MEDRS. — Charles Stewart (talk) 12:03, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Postscript - to be clear, the article is a secondary source with respect to its discussion of prior literature. I'm only arguing that it is not a secondary source with respect to its own claims. — Charles Stewart (talk) 12:06, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
  • No. Fails MEDRS, per Alexbrn and others. MEDRS requires we use more than just primary source research papers like this one, even though they might otherwise be individually reliable research. MEDRS requires we use reviews and meta-analyses based on analysis of LOTS OF such papers, otherwise OR use of primary sources would rule our medical articles. Editors would (and do) pick and choose which research papers they wish in support of any type of agenda they're pushing. MEDRS blocks such efforts. -- Valjean (talk) 16:01, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
  • No fails WP:MEDRS per others above, Adoring nanny has a good explanation. -Roxy the dog. wooF 16:29, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
  • I'm at a loss to explain the "fails WP:MEDRS" !votes. What exactly is the medical information being cited here? It makes no comment on treatment, causes, mechanism of infection, course of disease. A statistical analysis of excess mortality is not medical information, and no just using the word COVID does not make something medical information. So yes, I think this is a clearly reliable source on excess mortality in Wuhan and other parts of China covered for the early stages of the pandemic. If other sources dispute its findings then that should be presented. Some amorphous claim that anything from a Chinese author is irretrievably tainted seems objectionable on any number of grounds. Least of which is the B in BMJ is "British". nableezy - 23:39, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
@Nableezy: actually, the case here is that this source was used to refute claims in secondary sources in a way that is WP:OR [86] [87] [88], and similar content was removed from two other pages for the same reason. Overall, there are three issues here:
  1. Does this primary source even refute the claims in the secondary sources provided. Perhaps this should be posted WP:OR/N, but the other two issues belong here.
  2. Can Chinese academic publications be considered independent on subjects censored by the Chinese government? Note the three criteria in this question, and that it pertains to WP:INDEPENDENT, an explanatory supplement to the multiple policies and guidelines, including WP:RS.
  3. Should sourcing on epidemiology and public health topics be governed by WP:MEDRS. In the WP:BMI RFC last year, I put it that epidemiology does not draw only from biological sciences, citing a policy paper from Harvey V. Fineberg in AJPM [89]. This is a question of science policy, health policy, and more specifically, ​​International Health Regulations - which require WHO member states to report cases in a timely and accurate manner. Therefore, I think epidemiology and public health topics should not always be governed by WP:MEDRS, and I didn't cite it in my No !vote. If these disputes keep on erupting, we may need to create WP:PHRS to cover public health.
That there is B in BMJ is really not relevant as the Chinese government gag order affects Chinese academic publications, and not the publishers which are obviously not under their jurisdiction. This was explained by Silver seren and Jehochman in the RFC above, and there are plenty of examples of Chinese Ministry of Public Security involuntarily repatriating citizens for thinking and saying the wrong thing [90] [91] [92]. CutePeach (talk) 15:17, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Yes but not usable. It is published in a reliable source but as a primary research paper, it cannot be used where there is disagreement or incoherence with other WP:RS. WP:SCHOLARSHIP prefers secondary sources and advises extreme caution with primary sources. Pious Brother (talk) 05:24, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Use with qualification. While MEDRS, it's primary. While mostly based from China, there's one author based in the UK. Publisher is also outside China. Xi's coordination of publications warrants caution, but it's premature to equate it with unreliability of papers, especially by WP editors without evidence. CurryCity (talk) 06:34, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Are these sources usable for balancing these allegations?

What do we think about these sources added by Karl Krafft [93] to WP:BALANCE the well-founded allegations that the Chinese government deliberately under-reported the extent of infections and deaths in COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China?

  1. Koch, Christoffer; Okamura, Ken (2020-11-01). "Benford's Law and COVID-19 reporting". Economics Letters. 196: 1. doi:10.1016/j.econlet.2020.109573. ISSN 0165-1765. We find no evidence of manipulation of Chinese COVID-19 data using Benford's Law. [...] Media and politicians have cast doubt on Chinese reported data on COVID-19 cases. We find Chinese confirmed infections match the distribution expected in Benford's Law and are similar to that seen in the U.S. and Italy. [...] Contrary to popular speculation, we find no evidence that the Chinese massaged their COVID-19 statistics.
  2. Isea, Raul (May 2020). "How Valid are the Reported Cases of People Infected with Covid-19 in the World?". International Journal of Coronaviruses. 1: 53–56. doi:10.14302/issn.2692-1537.ijcv-20-3376. The results obtained from the analysis based on Benford's Law of infected cases with Covid-19 obtained that China, Germany, Brazil, Venezuela, Norway, South Africa, Singapore, Ecuador, Egypt, Ireland, France, Australia, Colombia, India, Russia, Croatia don't manipulate the information register in the John Hopkins dataset.
  3. Zhang, Junyi (2020-02-13). "Testing Case Number of Coronavirus Disease 2019 in China with Newcomb-Benford Law". arXiv. In this article, we propose a test of the reported case number of coronavirus disease 2019 in China with Newcomb-Benford law. We find a p-value of 92.8% in favour that the cumulative case numbers abide by the Newcomb-Benford law. Even though the reported case number can be lower than the real number of affected people due to various reasons, this test does not seem to indicate the detection of frauds.
  4. Kolias, Pavlos (1 January 2022). "Applying Benford's law to COVID-19 data: The case of the European Union". MedRxiv: 2. doi:10.1101/2021.12.24.21268373v4.full. Previous studies, in different fields, have applied Benford's distribution (or law) analysis to detect fraudulent and manipulated data. Specifically, for COVID-19, it was found that deaths were underreported in the USA (Campolieti, 2021), while in China no manipulation was found (Koch & Okamura, 2020).
  5. Idrovo, Alvaro Javier; Manrique-Hernández, Edgar Fabián (May 2020). "Data Quality of Chinese Surveillance of COVID-19: Objective Analysis Based on WHO's Situation Reports". Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health. 32 (4): 165–167. doi:10.1177/1010539520927265. ISSN 1010-5395. PMC 7231903. PMID 32408808. Was there quality in the Chinese epidemiological surveillance system during the COVID-19 pandemic? Using data of World World Health Organization's situation reports (until situation report 55), an objective analysis was realized to answer this important question. Fulfillment of Benford's law (first digit law) is a rapid tool to suggest good data quality. Results suggest that China had an acceptable quality in its epidemiological surveillance system. Furthermore, more detailed and complete analyses could complement the evaluation of the Chinese surveillance system.

ScrumptiousFood (talk) 18:37, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Are studies from 2020 even relevant to the discussion going on? Since we're discussing concerns of data manipulation in the past 6 months or so specifically? SilverserenC 22:06, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
@Silver seren: most sources questioning the accuracy of China's statistics focus on the initial outbreak, and the Dec 2020 Associated Press investigation cited by The Times doesn't give dates. I would suggest to replace these sources with this source, but it doesn't counter all the allegations so it shouldn't be given too much weight. ScrumptiousFood (talk) 19:10, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
Do you have any objections about the sources in particular? Sources 3 and 4 are pre-prints, but the other 3 look fine to me. Jumpytoo Talk 22:41, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
My objection about these sources is that they are primary and cannot be used to balance claims made in secondary sources and that they may not be independent due to the Chinese government COVID-19 gag order. The NYTimes opinion piece is a secondary source and more usable. ScrumptiousFood (talk) 17:10, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
Fair enough, though I don't see any independence issues here (the 3 non-preprints are all non-Chinese authors and use the public data provided by the government). They could be usable to support something saying like "Applications of Benford's Law onto the case numbers found no abnormalities" somewhere in body, but for lede wikivoice would need some secondary research. Jumpytoo Talk 06:18, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Not usable - WP:BALANCE says when reputable sources contradict one another and are relatively equal in prominence, describe both points of view and work for balance. I don't consider a WP:PRIMARY sources like these to be equal in prominence relative to the secondary sources alleging deliberate under-reporting of infections and deaths. There is also an WP:OR concern here, as the studies don't contradict the claims as they are made, and the NYTIMES article is an WP:RSOPINION - so also not of equal prominence. CutePeach (talk) 12:18, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
    These are not primary sources. The primary data, in this case, are the Chinese statistics. Published, peer-reviewed work based on that data is secondary. WP:PRIMARY: Primary sources are original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved. They offer an insider's view of an event, a period of history, a work of art, a political decision, and so on. A secondary source is characterized by an author's analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources. ... They rely on primary sources for their material, making analytic or evaluative claims about them. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 16:06, 6 March 2022 (UTC) Struckthrough per MEDRS WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 18:52, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
    per WP:MEDPRIMARY, they are primary. 1 and 5 are peer-reviewed original research articles. Findings are often touted in the popular press as soon as primary research is reported, before the scientific community has analyzed and commented on the results. Therefore, such sources should generally be omitted (see recentism). Determining weight of studies requires reliable secondary sources (not press releases or newspaper articles based on such sources). If conclusions are worth mentioning (such as large randomized clinical trials with surprising results), they should be described appropriately as from a single study.
    We need secondary review articles which further critique this content and can help us understand the scientific consensus view on these original research interpretations. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 18:14, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Sometimes Maybe not in intro. Qualified use in body. Although these sources are primary, there are quite a number of them and appear MEDRS. On the other side, sources in intro that speculate government undercounting in one sense or another, while all secondary, are not MEDRS. CurryCity (talk) 06:28, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Very low quality sources which should not be used. 1) is primary, and we should instead use a secondary source which covers this content. Such papers are, unfortunately, forthcoming. It might be permissible to use this primary source in the meantime, really depends on the context and if we have other RSes to back this up. 2) I believe this is a non-peer-reviewed preprint, or if it is published, the IJCV is not a well-regarded outlet and should not be used. 3) WP:PREPRINT. 4) preprint. 5) Same cautions apply as 1. It's primary, so we probably need a secondary source to bolster. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 18:14, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This Trafford-published book

Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Would this source be considered reliable? Shahid • Talk2me 22:08, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

To quote the Trafford Publishing article: Trafford Publishing is a company for self-publishing using print-on-demand technology, so this is a WP:SPS and not reliable. The author also doesn't seem to be a subject matter expert from a quick Google. Jumpytoo Talk 06:21, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

The Grayzone

Latest comment: 2 years ago6 comments4 people in discussion

Thoughts on this? It is interesting though idk how much to believe it. Purpose would be for use in articles related to current events in Ukraine, if I dare try to edit those, and also for use in further research outside of mainspace. Thanks. 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:C115 (talk) 21:18, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Please see WP:RSP. The Grayzone was deprecated in the 2020 RfC. There is consensus that The Grayzone publishes false or fabricated information. Some editors describe The Grayzone as Max Blumenthal's blog, and question the website's editorial oversight. Renat 21:52, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
Ah, thanks. I wasn't familiar with the Greyzone or Max Blumenthal. I tend to want to use stuff if knowledgeable editors think it looks credible or if it has secondary RS attention, but for something like this, yeah, more confirmation is needed. 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:C115 (talk) 22:28, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
The piece cites and links many non-deprecated sources and other sources covering this area can be found, e.g. [94]. --Andreas JN466 11:25, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
@2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:C115: Grey zone is a term used in Russian disinformation, incidentally. I am not personally familiar with the source, but from what I am reading about it I would not accept anything it says as truthful. If it is deprecated Wikipedia won’t let you use it as a reference anyway. You should probably look into disinformation if you are interested in current events there, as disinformation plays a very important part in them Elinruby (talk) 23:10, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

to whom it may concern: Grey-zone (international relations) Elinruby (talk) 06:22, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Pak (creator)

Latest comment: 2 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion

Source: "The Crypto Times"

Article: Pak (creator)

Content: On September 3, 2021, Pak launched the Lost Poets project and NFT strategy game which sold out in 2 hours and generated $70 million in sales by selling approximately 58,000 NFTs. Lost Poets consists of 65,536 NFTs available for sale and a further 1024 Origin NFTs given away during the project. Lost Poets was planned as a year-long project and consists of four acts, Act 1: The Sale, Act II: The Reveal, Act III: The Explorer, and Act IV: The Twist. Pak partnered with Manifold, a smart contract developer, to launch the project.[1][2]

Another editor has been persistently adding this content to Pak (creator), and is specifically keen to have the $70mil figure added in. I find that "The Crypto Times" is not WP:RELIABLE and that "a16z" is not WP:INDEPENDENT, and suggest removing the $70mil figure until better citations are found -- I have been unable to find any other articles which include the $70mil figure beyond these two. Cheers, and thanks for a second opinion. SiliconRed (talk) 08:14, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "The New LostPoets Project by Pak Gained $70 Million in 2 Hours". The Crypto Times. 2021-09-06. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
  2. ^ "Investing in Manifold". Investing in Manifold. 2021-09-06. Retrieved 2021-12-07.

SiliconRed (talk) 08:14, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Cryptotimes has all the hallmarks of a press release regurgitated as an article especially the about statement often attached to press releases. 2nd source is not independent.Slywriter (talk) 20:46, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
You are correct @Siliconred. JBchrch talk 18:51, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
Thanks both for the input & edit! Cheers, SiliconRed (he/him) (talk) 14:34, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

RfC- Sky News Australia

Latest comment: 2 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion
The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Procedural close: as a couple of editors have noted, this does not meet the requirements at WP:RFCNEUTRAL and any result to regard this source as unfavorable or deprecate it would be unactionable. Before any more time is wasted, I am closing this. The original proposer is encouraged to try again with a neutral statement; most of the content in the first paragraph should instead appear in the survey or discussion sections. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 15:40, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Sky News Australia is a conservative news outlet from Australia. They have in the past made numerous misleading claims, especially their opinions and all talk shows, but the news content also had numerous failed fact-checks and being stated as a partisan, inaccurate source. For example, it cites numerous views clearly not adhering to the IPCC consensus for climate change as straight news. Furthermore, Sky uses sensationalist headlines for politics (with unreliable opinion cited directly from the editorial board) and publishes inaccurate information on the coronavirus both for opinion and news (publishing fringe views from its editor quoting that the coronavirus was 'not a pandemic' despite WHO suggesting otherwise). There were also numerous additional incidents in the past for its opinion sections. Please also refer to WP: Sky News Australia for a more detailed list of criticism. Nevertheless, this is a popular source frequently cited in WP. VickKiang (talk) 08:57, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Which of these best describes the reliability of Sky News Australia?

  • Option 1: Generally reliable for facts
  • Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
  • Option 3: Generally unreliable for facts
  • Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information and should be deprecated

Survey (Sky News Australia)

  • Bad RfC. Per WP:RFC, the RfC prompt should be composed of a neutrally worded, short and simple statement. Unfortunately, we don’t get that from OP. Alan Jones, whose very article notes his status as a commentator, is an opinion talk show host for Sky News Australia. OP, of course, misconstrues the videos of Alan Jones’s shows as being attempts at straight news—proper context indicates that this is not the case. The OP also hand-waived about various incidents in the past for its opinion sections, which is a bit of an aspersion that also falls into the classic blunder of treating WP:RSOPINION as reflective of a news organization’s editorial standards for news reporting. The OP also makes an argument about sensationalist headlines, while we already treat all news headlines as unreliable per WP:RSHEADLINE. In short, OP above has clearly mis-used the RfC prompt as a thinly-veiled and poorly constructed argument that the source’s news reporting is prone to error more than an ordinary WP:NEWSORG. This RfC should be procedurally closed. — Mhawk10 (talk) 15:23, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Discussion (Sky News Australia)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Fred Eugene Ray, Jr.

Latest comment: 2 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion
  • Ray Fred Eugene, Jr. (2012). Greek and Macedonian Land Battles of the 4th Century B.C.: A History and Analysis of 187 Engagements. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. p. 123. ISBN 978-0-7864-6973-4.

I found this about Ray Fred Eugene, Jr. Fred Eugene Ray (1949-) was born and grew up in Omaha, NE. In 1972, he graduated with a B.S. in geology from the University of Nebraska, minoring in mathematics, chemistry and English. He went on to graduate studies at the Univeristy of Oklahoma and, in 1975, began a very rewarding career in the petroleum business, working first as an exploration geologist and then as a manager and executive on domestic and international operations. He retired from Occidental Petroleum in 2001 after serving that corporation as its worldwide Director of Exploration.[95]

Can anything Ray Fred Eugene, Jr, writes about ancient history be considered a reliable source? --Kansas Bear (talk) 16:21, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Well, he was published by a major academic book publisher, which suggests there were no obvious problems with his work. Still, want are you intending to use him for? My first guess would be that anything he says has already been said by a subject-matter expert who we can cite instead. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 17:28, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
Oh no. I will not be using this source. I just wanted to know if this is considered a reliable source. --Kansas Bear (talk) 21:02, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
Probably for anything uncontroversial. I wouldn't prefer him over a subject-matter expert, though. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 23:42, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
Along with being published by a reputable publisher, Ray gets a review (for his book on Greek land battles of the fifth century, the companion volume to this one) in The Bryn Mawr Classical Review – I suspect that Maher's criticisms are applicable to both works. Based on that, I would suggest that we shouldn't cite the hard numbers given by Ray except when attributing them as his opinion, but he's probably reliable for e.g. dates, locations, and outcomes of battles. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 18:04, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Thought you meant Gene Ray for a minute there...

Discussion on Xinhua for adding any news articles relating to the 2022 Olympics and Paralympics

Latest comment: 2 years ago20 comments13 people in discussion

In the light of the ongoing 2022 Olympics and Paralympics, do we think we should add sources from Xinhua that were related to the 2022 Games? To understand why I opened this is because of dispute between me and Horse Eye's Jack over sources from Xinhua. I tried to find some sources that were not Xinhua or any other websites such as Sina. SpinnerLaserzthe2nd (talk) 20:26, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Definitely a no for me. Per the previous RFC, Xinhua can't be used for topics where the Chinese government is a stakeholder. That definitely applies to olympic games held there. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 20:33, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
I would say no as well… if the only source to report on something Olympics related is Xinhua, I would be skeptical. At a minimum, I would want to wait for a second source to confirm the report (and if a second source does confirm it, we can cite that source instead). Blueboar (talk) 21:31, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
  • I think it could be used for trivial statements (ie. stuff with no propaganda value like who won what), but the definition of trivial generally means that anything like that could easily be cited elsewhere. If you're having trouble finding other sources then that's an indication that something is probably amiss and it shouldn't be used. --Aquillion (talk) 21:46, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
  • See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Horse Eye's Back for the background, explains why this was opened. We have a clear consensus on this issue, "There is consensus that Xinhua is generally reliable for factual reporting except in areas where the government of China may have a reason to use it for propaganda or disinformation." and no reason to doubt the numerous WP:RS reporting that the Olympics are an area where the government of China is actively engaged in propaganda *and* disinformation. See for example yesterday's New York Times[96]. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:32, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
    That NYT piece is pretty damning about the sheer range of different tactics used for propaganda pushing in Chinese media during Olympics coverage, and if that is where media resources are being directed, it does not bode at all well for the overall factualness and thoroughness of the reporting. Iskandar323 (talk) 02:39, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Curious: What is the text it is going to reference? CaribDigita (talk) 02:43, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Please take caution that there are times where all news outlets in China are only allowed (by gov) to copy-paste what Xinhua writes. In such cases, banning Xinhua equals to banning every Chinese media outlet. Milky·Defer >Please use ping 02:57, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
    • In cases where what Xinhua is writing is deliberately incorrect, such as when the government co-opts the press agency to spread comically bad disinformation as a "fact-check", there are very real reasons to not cite Xinhua. If the government bans mainland China publications from publishing anything other than the Xinhua line, and we know that the Xinhua line is not reliable, then why would we cite other sources that are required to say the same thing as if they are somehow reliable news organizations with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy? — Mhawk10 (talk) 04:41, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Most information about the Olympics is routine and uncontroversial. For example this article about Britain's gold medal in the women's curling event is currently on the front page of english.news.cn: https://english.news.cn/20220220/b4ed80fc9cc04d20baa232269157f6da/c.html. Is there seriously any information in there that anyone here would find concerning if added to a Wikipedia article? Endwise (talk) 09:31, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
    But then, the question might be with material as well covered as the Olympics, why not just play it say and use one of the no-doubt countless reliable, secondary sources that will have reported on all of the events and covered the victories of gold, silver and bronze medalist winners? What's the benefit? Iskandar323 (talk) 11:22, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
    The problem with sophisticated state disinformation operations like the ones Xinhua is continually a part of is that we generally can't identify what information would be concerning. Thats why we don't use those sources in areas in which disinformation/propaganda operations are believed to be active. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:48, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
  • I agree with Blueboar, in that the Olympics is so widely covered if any fact is solely reported by one source, I would be skeptical. Even if that "one source" was something like NY Times, let alone something controversial like Xinhua. Jumpytoo Talk 18:19, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
    But to add to my initial comment, Xinhua would be suitable on an WP:ABOUTSELF basis (for example, for the diff Whiny posted below (to be exact, the diff before it as that has Xinhua removal), Xinhua is fine to cite the claimed meaning behind the mascots) Jumpytoo Talk 22:38, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
  • This is a bit of a confusing conflict, but what appears to be the core contention is Special:Diff/1071849149 and similar behavior. I have no opinion on the suitability of Olympic sponsorship information or the behavior of editors involved, but from an RS standpoint, I strongly object to the expansive notion of "topics where the Chinese government is a stakeholder" such that coverage by Xinhua is excluded from seemingly any major Chinese event. Xinhua is a completely acceptable and even reliable source for information about things like the mascot of the Beijing Olympics. The 2020 RfC discussion highlights things like COVID disinformation, Tibet, crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, etc., as areas where there is a clear, unambiguous reason to reject it as a source. Horse Eye's Back was a part of that RfC as well. Deleting citations to Xinhua for basic factual information as was done in the above diff seems to be a backdoor way to reach their preferred outcome that discussion — categorizing Xinhua as generally unreliable for factual reporting, period — which did not materialize. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 19:16, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
I think that might be the wrong diff, thats a failed verification on an Axios (website) article. It has nothing to do with Xinhua. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:03, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Noted; fixed, thank you. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 18:07, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
Just FYI if you read the linked NYT piece you will see that the mascot is actually a specific issue that the Chinese government is using state media to spread disinformation about... "Even the Games’ official mascot, Bing Dwen Dwen, a cuddly panda in a suit of ice, has been the subject of an organized campaign on Twitter, according to Albert Zhang, a researcher at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Center. Thousands of new or previously inactive accounts have helped the mascot go viral, he said — which China’s state media presented as evidence of the mascot’s popularity and, by extension, that of the Games." If thats not enough what would be? I really fail to see how that isn't a clear unambiguous reason. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:59, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
Because none of the text in that diff says anything about popularity, and none of the Xinhua article (archive here) has anything to do with that, either. It's literally just a description of the mascots, why they were chosen, and what they're supposed to symbolize. Where, specifically, is the disinformation? WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 18:07, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

PopCulture.com

Latest comment: 2 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion

On the talkpage JudgeJudyCourthouse25 has asked for us to review PopCulture.com. It looks to be a sibling site of ComicBook.com --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 14:58, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

@Emir of Wikipedia: I cannot seem to find the discussion you are asking about, could you please link to it? —Compassionate727 (T·C) 18:26, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
It was not a discussion, they just asked for it be be reviewed. You could not find it because it was actually on Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Perennial sources#Request for the article reliability review to be added, apologies. -- Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 18:40, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
No worries. Popculture.com has never been discussed here before; comicbook.com has only been discussed once, and that discussion had only one substantial participant apart from the OP. I have utterly no experience in assessing pop culture media sources. However, although their self-hyping in their "About" sections is excessive, they both seem (to me at least) to have solid editorial boards, identify the authors of and date-stamp articles, and otherwise behave how you would expect a reputable newspaper to behave. They maybe should not be regarded as independent sources when discussing things of interest to Paramount Global (including CBS), though. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 19:17, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Pink News

Latest comment: 2 years ago9 comments9 people in discussion

Pink News is a British online newspaper. There have been previous discussion relating to to the reliability of their reporting.[1][2] Previous mentions include their reporting on Anne Franks suggested bisexuality[3], an article about a 'sex-crazed gay tortoise'[4], an article about a singer holding a funeral for her music[5], an article about a 'gay penguin power couple'[6], celebrity gossip[7]. Forgive me but this doesn't suggest reliable and responsible journalism to me. There are many more examples of this style of tabloid journalism on their homepage as I write this.

On a more serious note, they, Pink News, have been subjected to various scandals over the past couple of years. Their inaccurate and damaging reporting has been the subject of lawsuits and public apologies by Pink News. They claimed that Joanna Cherry MP, a respected human rights lawyer and lesbian, was homophobic[8] and issued an apology[9] after Cherry instructed her lawyer to send them a formal letter. This again does not suggest reliability to me. Another example of their unreliability is found in their apology to Julie Bindel[10]. They strongly suggested that Ms Bindel was a cult leader who was grooming young women, with zero evidence of such, and had to issue an apology. The article was so badly written that Ms Bindel was identifiable. For anyone unfamiliar with Julie Bindel, she is a feminist campaigner and life-long campaigner against male violence and abuse of women. So the suggestion that Pink News made is unspeakably false.

Pink News has also reported many inaccuracies. One of the latest being that a block on under-18s accessing porn would be be 'damaging to LGBT people'. They published the article suggesting that it would take away from "pleasure focused inclusivity"[11].

While the more serious side of their reporting should be cause for concern. I believe that they meet the standard of tabloid journalism and should not be seen as a reliable source. The Daily Mail is considered an unreliable source and I struggle to see any differences between the styles of reporting, with the only thing of note being that Pink News issues apologies and retraction more than the Daily Mail.

I cannot in good conscience see why Pink News would be considered reliable while the Daily Mail, for example, would not.Samcowie (talk) 16:08, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't believe they meet standard of tabloid journalism. The fact they've made retractions and apologies for inaccurate stories in the past is evidence that they are more reliable than a tabloid like the Daily Mail that gives no consideration to accuracy at all. I also don't really understand the significance of the example articles you've linked to. Celebrity gossip doesn't inherently make a source unreliable, those articles are just quotes and retellings of social media posts from celebrities themselves. The silly entertainment stories about animals are harmless compilations of information from original source websites and videos. The under-18 porn block article contains a direct quote from an actor - it's just a quoted opinion, not an inaccurate claim. All these examples are simply PinkNews acting as a secondary source, which is what news providers are expected to be here.
In contrast, the Daily Mail's unreliability comes from its total lack of reference to any primary sources. Stories are often completely fabricated with absolutely no external information to confirm them. I don't see PinkNews doing that.
PinkNews should be used with caution like many news sources. As with any source, the specific context and the specific claim being cited are central to the decision on whether it's reliable. So it might be easier to get a solid consensus opinion if you have a specific case in mind. Averixus (talk) 18:27, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
I was following you up until "Pink News has also reported many inaccuracies. One of the latest being that a block on under-18s accessing porn would be be 'damaging to LGBT people'. They published the article suggesting that it would take away from "pleasure focused inclusivity"" and now I'm lost. Where is the inaccuracy? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:42, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
I don't see any evidence of the source being misused on Wikipedia. Are there specific on-wiki issues? Otherwise, this seems to be a pointless discussion.Slywriter (talk) 20:05, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
  • The bulk of your links are just a bunch of cases where you personally disagree with their conclusions. That's not something that affects a source's reputation for fact-checking and accuracy - RS isn't about what you personally think of their reporting, it's about their broad reputation as a whole. And the one example you cited that went beyond "here's a PinkNews article I disagree with" is a situation where they issued an apology and a retraction, which is something we expect good sources to do - WP:RS isn't about a source never making mistakes ever. In terms of WP:USEBYOTHERS, there is substantial scholarly use of PinkNews as a source, which shows that your opinion on it probably isn't widely-held. (eg. [12][13][14][15][16]) If you want to overcome that, you'll need to actually show that it has a bad reputation, ie. sources of comparable weight specifically criticizing it - not just a list of articles whose conclusions you personally dislike. --Aquillion (talk) 21:01, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
  • An account that's here to push defenses of known transphobes, I guess, and attacking Pink News because they accurately report on and call out such people. Reminds me of several of the past discussions in this regard. There's no indication that this has anything to do with their reliability as a news source and, as others have noted, actual retractions are an indication of actual reliability instead of the opposite. SilverserenC 23:12, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
  • While I think a case was well enough made against using British libel suit threats as an inherently good indication of reliability here in November. I have spotted another recent illustration of just that, since then: "UK wants to stop Russians using its courts to silence critics", Reuters.--Chillabit (talk) 09:41, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Perhaps claims that we should treat PinkNews as unreliable would be more convincing if they were themselves not incorrectly reporting concerns! PinkNews did not apologise for calling Cherry a homophobe; they apologised for reporting that Cherry was being investigated for homophobia, according to the source you yourself cite. Retracting stories when they are in error is not itself a sign of unreliability - rather the reverse. As for their other "misdeeds" cited in the original post, at leas some of them are stories which are... true. e.g. Anne Frank's diary did contain entries discussing her attraction to other girls. As far as I know, that's not in dispute - modern editions of the diary contain some of them! Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 18:15, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Noting that the latest discussion on PinkNews was as recent as November of last year, in which the result was that it is generally reliable. See here. OP doesn't bring any new or relevant news on the subject, and sentences such as Pink News has also reported many inaccuracies. One of the latest being that a block on under-18s accessing porn would be be 'damaging to LGBT people'. They published the article suggesting that it would take away from "pleasure focused inclusivity" show some lack of understanding. I think an early close to avoid wasting any more time would be for the best. Isabelle 🔔 03:48, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 305".
  2. ^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_359https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_292
  3. ^ "Anne Frank was attracted to girls". 7 September 2017.
  4. ^ "Jonathan the blind, gay, sex-crazed tortoise is now the oldest to have ever lived". 28 January 2022.
  5. ^ "Demi Lovato holds 'funeral' for their pop music". 22 January 2022.
  6. ^ "Gay penguin 'power couple' celebrate milestone and maybe true love does exist". 11 January 2022.
  7. ^ "Charlize Theron shares rare picture of trans daughter in tender message to her mum". 28 January 2022.
  8. ^ "Cherry appeals for GRA 'respect' after false homophobia probe claim".
  9. ^ "Correction".
  10. ^ "Joint statement: PinkNews and Julie Bindel". 25 October 2021.
  11. ^ "Tory bid to revive failed 'porn-block' could put LGBT users at risk". 8 February 2022.
  12. ^ Newman, Hannah J. H.; Peel, Elizabeth (8 February 2022). "'An impossible dream'? Non-binary people's perceptions of legal gender status and reform in the UK". Psychology & Sexuality: 1–15. doi:10.1080/19419899.2022.2039753. ISSN 1941-9899.
  13. ^ McClure, Robert C., et al. "Gender harmony: improved standards to support affirmative care of gender-marginalized people through inclusive gender and sex representation." Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 29.2 (2022): 354-363.
  14. ^ Foster, Russell David; Kirke, Xander (24 January 2022). "'Straighten Up and Fly Right': Radical right attempts to appeal to the British LGBTQ community". The British Journal of Politics and International Relations. doi:10.1177/13691481211069346. ISSN 1369-1481. S2CID 246346359.
  15. ^ Harper, Joanna. "Transgender Athletes and International Sports Policy." Law and Contemporary Problems 85.1 (2022): 151-165.
  16. ^ Crowter, Jay (8 February 2022). "'To Be That Self Which One Truly Is': Trans Experiences and Rogers' Theory of Personality". Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies: 1–16. doi:10.1080/14779757.2022.2028665. ISSN 1477-9757. S2CID 246713791.
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