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Examples of Bias in Wikipedia

7,570 bytes added, 02:55, March 18, 2011
Undo revision 857585 by [[Special:Contributions/Boriskrinkle|Boriskrinkle]] ([[User talk:Boriskrinkle|talk]])
=== General/Uncategorized ===
# Wikipedia does not mention until after 600 words that [[Jared Loughner]], like many Wikipedia editors, is an [[atheist]], and its entry initially failed to admit that he is also a [[nihilist]], an extreme form of atheism.<ref>When Wikipedia eventually added mention of Loughner's nihilism, its edit summary omitted reference to the term. [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jared_Lee_Loughner&action=historysubmit&diff=407362660&oldid=407358740].</ref>
# A Wikipedia editor going under the pseudonym ''Jagged85'' made 67,000 edits between 2007 and 2010 until it was demonstrated that he was systematically misrepresenting Islamic science, technology, and philosophy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Jagged_85/Evidence]
# A Wikipedia editor named "Pensacolian" inserted false information about Judge Roger Vinson, claiming he was a bear hunter who mounted several of his trophy bear heads above his courtroom door. [[Rush Limbaugh]] repeated the claims on his radio show, compelling the Judge to issue a statement denying the falsehoods. [http://www.tampabay.com/incoming/limbaugh-taken-in-pensacola-judge-loves-to-grow-camellias-not-shoot-bears/1122074]
# Wikipedia includes the margin of victory for a [[liberal]] politician, but omits or downplays the margin of defeat for the same politician. For example, Alan Mollohan lost in his own primary by 56-44% after voting for [[Obamacare]], but Wikipedia's entry about him includes only his margins of victory in prior elections. The margin of defeat for liberal [[Gordon Brown]] is obscured in his Wikipedia entry also.
# Wikipedia uses trivia to push its [[liberal]] icons on readers. In its first 200 words about [[conservative]] Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Wikipedia used to include the meaningless trivia that he was born on the same day as (liberal) [[Jimmy Carter]].<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rehnquist</ref> Yet nowhere in Carter's entry does it say he was born on the same day as Rehnquist.
# When someone goes to Wikipedia's "Constitutional Convention" page, users are taken to a general page about Constitutional conventions, instead of being taken right to the United States Constitutional Convention page. Since 2005, they have named the US page as the unheard of "Philadelphia Convention",[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Philadelphia_Convention&diff=31214002&oldid=31213911] diluting its significance. They have not even renamed it "U.S. Constitutional Convention" and Google mostly matches "Philadelphia Convention ''Center''" as a building. The US Convention is over 100-200 years older than the other conventions listed, and an Internet search confirms that "Constitutional Convention" is used more than ten times as often as "Philadelphia Convention," but the liberal and anti-American Wikipedia editors have insisted on redirecting visitors to the obscure term, for over 5 years.
#Wikipedia's article on engineering<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering</ref> features a photo of ... an offshore wind turbine, which is an inefficient [[liberal]] boondoggle and certainly not a representative example of engineering. None even exist off the shores of the [[United States]] because they are not competitive.
#[[Wikipedia]] bias against [[movement conservative]]s is intense. [[Michele Bachmann]] won reelection in 2008 by 3% in a state that went heavily [[Democratic]], but instead of crediting her [[conservative]] positions the biased Wikipedia entry states, "Despite fallout from controversial statements that she had made, Bachmann defeated her Democratic opponent Elwyn Tinklenberg in the 2008 election."<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michele_Bachmann#cite_ref-33</ref>
#In his article entitled ''Wikipedia lies, slander continue'', [[journalism|journalist]] [[Joseph Farah]] supports his observation that [[Wikipedia]] "is not only a provider of inaccuracy and bias. It is wholesale purveyor of lies and slander unlike any other the world has ever known."<ref>http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=83640</ref>
#Wikipedia's [[evolution]] article certainly does not have robust and relevant "Criticism and controversy" section, which is not surprising since [[Theory of evolution and liberalism|liberals are rather enamored of the evolutionary position]] despite the [[evolution|evolutionary view having a total lack of evidence supporting it]].
#The Wikipedia page for Republican Mark Kirk<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mark_Kirk&oldid=263357766</ref> made no mention of the widely-reported and significant fact that, as a Navy reservist, he is the first U.S. Representative since WWII to make an overseas deployment to an imminent danger area (Afghanistan).<ref>http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/il10_kirk/Kirk_Completes_Reserve_Tour.html</ref> Instead, the Wikipedia page devotes an entire section titled "contributors" that attempts to smear Kirk with tenuous associations to controversial figures because of relatively small campaign donations. A grammatically-incorrect acknowledgment of Kirk's deployment eventually appeared.<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mark_Kirk&oldid=263472629</ref> Kirk's wikipedia page mentioned a $1,000 donation from Tony Rezko <ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mark_Kirk&oldid=268845790</ref>, but Obama's page does not mention the $54,416 <ref>http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/353782,CST-NWS-rezpols23.article</ref> Rezko donation. <ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barack_Obama&oldid=272320979</ref> Only after this issue was brought up were issues corrected.<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mark_Kirk&oldid=274813568</ref>
#Wikipedia smears [[conservative]] groups with prominent "Criticism and controversy" sections,<ref>See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Family_Association#Criticism_and_controversy</ref> usually featuring name-calling by obscure groups, but Wikipedia flatters [[liberal]] groups by downplaying what it euphemistically entitles as "Controversial stances."<ref>See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACLU#Controversial_stances</ref>
#Wikipedia's entry on the [[Scopes trial]] downplays the fact that Darrow cowardly reneged in his agreement to take the witness stand, and pled his client guilty in order to avoid it. Instead, Wikipedia deceptively claims that "Darrow asked the judge to bring in the jury '''only''' to have them come to a guilty verdict."<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial (emphasis added)</ref><ref>Thanks much to a student in our [[American_History_Lectures|American History course]] for pointing this out.</ref>
#[[California]]'s Proposition 8 states that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." The Wikipedia article<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8_(2008)</ref> does not mention that only those marriages are recognized under federal law anyway, and editors have removed any mention of the federal [[Defense of Marriage Act]].<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:California_Proposition_8_(2008)#DOMA</ref>
#The articles on both [[Saul Alinsky]] and his book, ''Rules for Radicals'' make no mention of his dedication to "the original radical&mdash;Lucifer."<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals</ref><ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Alinsky</ref>
#[[Augusto Pinochet]], who overthrew [[communism]] in [[Chile]] and then restored democracy before voluntarily giving up power himself, is called a "dictator" by [[Wikipedia]],<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinochet</ref> but [[Fidel Castro]], the communist dictator of [[Cuba]] for four decades, is instead called a "leader" or even a "president".<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel_Castro</ref><ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fidel_Castro&oldid=235182888</ref>
# Wikipedia's entry on [[Gardasil]], an [[HPV Vaccine]] promoted by [[liberals]] and Merck, is filled with falsehoods and omits key facts. As of Aug. 9, 2008, Wikipedia's entry claimed that cervical cancer was "the second leading cause of death from cancer in women world-wide"<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardasil</ref> (which is nonsense), and that the "HPV types 16 and 18 '''cause''' about 70% of cervical cancer cases" (not even Merck claims that); the entry downplays how the vaccine loses its effectiveness in a few years, and only about 3% of teenage recipients are likely to be exposed to the strains of HPV that the vaccine targets - at a cost of about $13,000 per child to possibly protect her against a cancer that does not arise until 30 years in the future.<ref>See [[HPV Vaccine]]</ref>
# The Wikipedia entry on [[baraminology]] (a form of taxonomy) describes it as "pseudoscience" and "unrelated to science" simply because it is based on the Holy Bible.<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/baraminology</ref>
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