Prosecutor Loses Case For Citing Wikipedia 315
Hugh Pickens writes "The Philippine Daily Inquirer reports on a recent case where the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) lost an appeal after seeking to impeach the testimony of a defendant's expert witness by citing an article from Wikipedia. In her brief, the defendant said 'the authority, alluded to by oppositor-appellant, the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders DSM-IV-TR," was taken from an Internet website commonly known as Wikipedia,' and argued that Wikipedia itself contains a disclaimer saying it 'makes no guarantee of validity.' The court in finding for the defendant said in its decision that it found 'incredible ... if not a haphazard attempt, on the part of the (OSG) to impeach an expert witness, with, as pointed out by (the defendant) unreliable information. This is certainly unacceptable evidence, nothing short of a mere allegation totally unsupported by authority.'"
Re:so... (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't matter which was right, what matters is you don't use an encyclopedia, any encyclopedia as a source to cite. If you try to cite wikipedia (or Britannica) in a college class, you'll flunk your paper.
I don't see how anybody who's ever been to college (including someone like me who was in college long before the internet existed) could be ignorant of this. Encyclopedias are only a starting point; you don't cite them in your paper, or in court. You go for their sources for your real research.
Re:If it was printed? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why even appeal a marriage annulment? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:so... (Score:5, Informative)
I tell people to don't bother citing the Wikipedia article, but go to the sources listed in the article, read those and the citations those articles have, then go from there, or even check those articles and their references out as well. At least with 1-2 layers of articles gleaned from citations, that might be enough for most references.
Caveat: A lot of papers require peer reviewed academic journal citations, so this does not replace going to the library and digging through for relevant academic items.
Re:This would be a correct ruling... (Score:5, Informative)
It's even simpler than that, Wikipedia is the site that anyone can edit. That means that it's entirely possible for the prosecutor to log into Wikipedia, change an article so that it supports his arguments, add fakes cites out to hard to verify material, then take his research from there. Why any educated lawyer would think that you could use Wikipedia for anything more than the most basic of a starting point for research is beyond me.
Re:This would be a correct ruling... (Score:1, Informative)
It is certainly NOT likely to have been written by an expert or authority in the subject (at least from the perspective of anyone other than the author). In the areas in which I have true knowledge of a field (PhD in the area) the wikipedia page reads like it was written by someone with little to no knowledge.
Re:Ha (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, but citing the source generally means you go out and read the source to base your claim on, or at least to verify that the summary is valid. The GP (based on the smiley), is speaking about cheating the system by citing the wikipedia source, without taking that extra step to actually verify for himself that the source validates the article (which isn't always the case on wikipedia, though they try).
Wikipedia has versioning. . . (Score:3, Informative)
When a wiki page is changed, Wikipedia automatically generates a new 'version' of the page. You can cite a specific version of the page instead of the 'current'. Not sure many people know about that, but for any page, there is a 'history' link, and you can get a url from that page to access any specific version. As far as I know, that version link should remain valid and unchanged forever (or until Wikipedia shuts down, at least).
Re:so... (Score:3, Informative)
IMPORTANT NOTE: Most educators and professionals do not consider it appropriate to use tertiary sources [wikipedia.org] such as encyclopedias as a sole source for any information—citing an encyclopedia as an important reference in footnotes or bibliographies may result in censure or a failing grade. Wikipedia articles should be used for background information, as a reference for correct terminology and search terms, and as a starting point for further research.
As with any community-built [wikipedia.org] reference, there is a possibility for error in Wikipedia's content—please check your facts against multiple sources and read our disclaimers [wikipedia.org] for more information.
Re:Why even appeal a marriage annulment? (Score:3, Informative)
the cricumstance that caused this is the fact that divorce is illegal in the philippines. So you either get an anulment or stay married.
Summary not so clear (Score:5, Informative)
The summary is clear as mud, but it sounds like the prosecutors made reference to the DSM. Why refer to the wikipedia article on it? The DSM itself is the authority on psychological disorders. If wiki quoted the DSM correctly, then it is likely correct on the matter. So why did the prosecutor cite wiki, and not the actual authoritative source that wiki cites? Stupid.
Re:Summary not so clear (Score:5, Informative)
The court is dumb by design. We (common law countries) have an adversarial system, wherein it is up to the prosecution and the defense to do all the legwork of proving their cases. If a source is unreliable, it gets thrown out, and it's the fault of the prosecution for not doing the work of following the citation chain themselves to cite the correct source.
In a civil law countries (most non-English-speaking countries), the situation may be different.