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.'"
Perhaps untrue in this case but not a bad policy (Score:4, Interesting)
If the only citation you can come up with is Wikipedia then either you aren't doing your job or the citation is suspect. I find no issue with the court's decision, I'd be more inclined to beat the prosecutor with a wet noodle for failing to find a more reliable source.
If it was printed? (Score:2, Interesting)
To exactly what about Wikipedia did the judge object? If the attorney had cited a print edition of Wikipedia, would his argument sudenly be more persuasive?
It seems to me that Wikipedia was just being more honest than most other sources in terms of its disclaimer.
Re:If it was printed? (Score:3, Interesting)
If that print edition is vetted by experts, yes. Otherwise no. Citing an encyclopedia is a bad idea. Citing a project like Wikipedia that isn't exactly an encyclopedia is worse. Wikipedia is great for a lot of things and the articles that get enough eyes usually coalesce into something that's reasonably reliable, but it's not as good as traditional research and education.
See this for a bit of humour on the topic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaADQTeZRCY [youtube.com]
I work at an international litigation consulting.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure what's sadder, that someone I work with has done this, or that the other side doesn't even understand how bad it is...
Re:It's in your courts, it's in your schools (Score:3, Interesting)
Most academics love Wikipedia because it provides an easy introduction to topics, and includes references to original source materials. That doesn't mean you can cite Wikipedia in a paper; just like you can't cite any other encyclopedia.
Re:Confused (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, the wording is confusing.
"In her brief, the ex-wife 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.”"
It makes it sound as though the DSM only exists in the fairytale land of Wikipedia. Unless he SAID "from this article about the DSM on wikipedia", in which case he's just a dumbass
Re:Why even appeal a marriage annulment? (Score:3, Interesting)
It might be advantageous to BOTH of them to declare the marriage invalid as opposed to a divorce. I'm not sure what circumstances might cause this, I imagine there might be some crazy loophole in tax laws, or if they're abusing marriage to get people overseas a visa or something like that.
Re:so... (Score:5, Interesting)
Because nobody cares about the path to the answer, it's not important. Nobody cares that you started with Wikipedia to get the real reference to a reliable source. You cite the original source of a fact.
Exactly. It is also important to actually read the original source for yourself. It's been known to happen that some Wikipedia editor cites a source and then completely makes up what it says. It can take a long time for someone to notice this, if ever.
In this example [wikipedia.org] someone eventually did notice, after several years of tendencious unsupportable "facts" being "backed up by citations" in the article.
Re:so... (Score:4, Interesting)
Almost certainly and generally - very nice weasel words that hide stark reality, which is that you can't tell which articles were written by experts and which were written by 'experts'.
And that's generally my problem with Wikipedia. Folks like you say "this group is generally written by experts" or "that group is usually written by experts", and imply that those articles are thus extremely trustworthy. But it never, ever, occurs to you to ask why in hell isn't the entire Wikipedia written by experts then?". Reviewing articles in fields that I am expert on, I routinely see errors of fact, of omission, of inference... How then am I supposed to trust the balance?
Using the cited sources isn't much help - because if an article is flawed as outlined above, how are the sources going to be any better? GIGO.
Re:Wikipedia is useful... (Score:2, Interesting)
Why? Unless the people making up the "crowd" are experts in the area the entry is discussing, the entry is not valid.
The moron is the person who believes wiki-pedia is valid.
Re:Wikipedia is useful... (Score:2, Interesting)
Errors will eventually be corrected; however, it's not like a court can reverse its verdict next week because someone corrected the cited WP article.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. There's at least one page I know of that was edited with incorrect information (someone trying to prove a point) about three years ago that still has that incorrect information on it. It's not an important article, but assuming that Wikipedia is somehow "self correcting" is making exactly the same mistake as people who rely on Wikipedia being "correct" and/or "authoratiative"--Wikipedia is often factually wrong.
Re:so... (Score:3, Interesting)
It doesn't matter which was right, what matters is you don't use an encyclopedia, any encyclopedia as a source to cite
This, to me, seems arbitrary and stupid. I realize that we prefer original knowledge in our sources, but there are many, many areas of study where such a thing simply does not exist. If I were writing a paper on the Battle of the Little Bighorn [wikipedia.org], for example, I'd be hard pressed to find anyone alive that would be eligible as an 'expert witness' to that event. Any hope of original research died with the last survivor - quite a while ago.
And if you're not aware, the official account is all kinds of messed up, and even the Natives had dissenting versions of what actually happened. Various parties had a hand in screwing with the forensics of it, and much of the actual property remained privately owned after the battle. The actual events of the it will likely never, ever be discerned.
Back to the point, who's to say one hearsay source is any better or worse than the other? This is but a single example...
I think the more reasonable position, still valid in this situation, would be:
...you should never use an encyclopedia, any encyclopedia when there is a better source to cite
Re:Wikipedia is useful... (Score:3, Interesting)
Wiki entries take a lot of work to create. My experience in reading entries that I am personally an expert in leads me to believe that in many cases the wiki entries are in fact written by experts or pseudo-experts. The abuse seems to occur on topics that encourage more bias, such as topics about specific laws, corporations, products or people.
Entries on hard sciences seem to garner a lot less abuse, probably because the errors would be so much easier to spot. For instance, Lindsay Lohan's wiki entry is frequently edited and those edits are often reversed for lack of citations.
Is her wiki entry accurate? Probably only as accurate as reports from AP, which is to say it is only as accurate as her publicist(or the courts lol) deems willing to share.
In contrast, the edits on the topic "Numerical Control" are rarely reversed and occur somewhat less frequently. That wiki entry is quite accurate.
So I don't think you have to be a moron to accept what Wikipedia says. But you do need a discerning mind and a willingness to fact check citations.
Re:so... (Score:4, Interesting)
Otherwise were does it end?
You cite wikipedia, and seeing that you cited wikipedia, a few blogs mention it without citing anyone. Then some small newspapers quote them as "experts say", and finally it lands in a reputable newspaper, and then journals cite the newspapers, until a good journal cites the journals. And wikipedia finally cites the journal.
It ends with consensus!