Talk:Our Political Nature

COI

One of 30+ articles created for pay. I have tagged this for COI; the tag can can come off after an independent editor reviews for NPOV and sourcing. Please leave a note here when you do that. Jytdog (talk) 04:11, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and reviewed it. Other than a few styling fixes, it looks fine. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 15:13, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

As the edit I made just shows, this editor's work requires very close examination to ensure that content is actually verifiable. Whether deliberately or not, they have a habit of embelleshing the truth to make articles more rosy. SmartSE (talk) 15:31, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

And also leaving out inconvienient parts: "Indeed, the author’s efforts to use “hard science” to illuminate partisanship often run aground. This book is long on juicy studies but short on insight." SmartSE (talk) 15:39, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

The problem has been brought to Dr. Tuschman's attention, and he feels the presence of the tag marks the article with a "badge of shame," which is contrary to the guideline for use of the template. See Template:COI#When_to_use. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 13:24, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

articles created for pay need to be reviewed for NPOV and sourcing by independent editors before the tag can be removed. That is simply a matter of fact. Arguing for the tag to be removed before the article is reviewed is pointless - you cannot wikilawyer around the need for independent review. You can remind the community of the tag and the need for review, but that is about it. The more time i or other editors spend dealing with wikilawyering arguments by paid editors, the less time we have to do things like actually review articles. This is a volunteer project, and people get to things, when they get to them. Jytdog (talk) 13:32, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Well, I don't intend to quarrel. I don't know what guideline states that "articles created for pay need to be reviewed for NPOV and sourcing by independent editors before the tag can be removed." Perhaps a knowledgeable editor can point it out. I did find this as part of the guideline I referred to above: "This tag may be removed by any editor after the problem is resolved, if the problem is not explained on the article's talk page, and/or if no current attempts to resolve the problem can be found." It seems to me that editors have been quite thorough in removing unsourced or badly sourced information. Are there any problems that remain? Can they be explained here? Sincerely, BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 02:44, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Alright I finished working this over and removed the tag. Previous editors had removed puffery and much of the material that explicitly violated WP:PROMO. The biggest remaining problem was that the paid editor left out anything negative and made this purely promotional. I balanced that by adding criticisms of the book. I also sourced that last remaining unsourced thing. With that, it is NPOV enough. Jytdog (talk) 13:06, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the economist review Jytdog. I've removed a couple of other poorly sourced and slightly promotional bits. I'm a bit unsure of sources 14 & 15 a little problematic as they are passing mentions. It would be much better to include any scholarly references rather than brief mentions in news articles. (I have looked, but can't find any commentary other than the PSQ review already cited). SmartSE (talk) 17:02, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

@Joseph2302: Can you give some examples of the content you're not happy with? Ta SmartSE (talk) 21:13, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

It's full of overly long quotes that IMO seek only to promote them- for example "explaining the now well-documented psychological, biological, and genetic differences between liberals and conservatives with reference to human evolution and the differential strategies of mate choice and resource allocation that have been forced on us by the pressures of surviving and reproducing on a quite dangerous planet", ""makes a unique and important contribution to the field" and noted that with regard to its discussion of evolution in the context of politics, "as selection pressures are relaxed, it may be possible to push it too far." Basically the whole article is person/company/newspaper X said Y. Along with stuff like "In The Huffington Post, David Miles said that Tuschman's book speaks directly to the forces at play in the Scottish independence referendum."- The Huffington Post is not a reliable source. Joseph2302 (talk) 21:18, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

I see your point. Having looked more closely as well those are very selective quotes. Sigh. Seems that there are still NPOV issues. SmartSE (talk) 21:36, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

I meant to say before that the selective quoting was from Washington Monthly - it's not all so rosy. Prospect (magazine) also needs including [1], but we may as well await the outcome of the AFD first. SmartSE (talk) 21:55, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

First book to do X

was sourced to Tuschman himself. ugh. removed that here. Jytdog (talk) 15:32, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Notification

Hello, I’m BeenAroundAWhile (talk). I have been retained by Dr. Tuschman as a paid consultant to assist him in answering questions that the Wikipedia community might have as it considers the editing and presentation of this article concerning him and his work. I will be speaking for him in the discussions on this article’s Talk page. I will be speaking for myself if there are any questions for me on my own Talk page at User talk:BeenAroundAWhile, Of course Dr. Tuschman will have questions of his own for the community, and I will ask them for him. My first contribution to the discussion will be a posting at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Avi Tuschman, Sincerely, BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 05:26, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for disclosing. Feel free to suggest changes using the "edit request" function, which you can do easily by clicking where it says "click here" in the bottom-most section of the beige box above.Jytdog (talk) 12:02, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Introduction from Subject of the Article

Hello, I'm Avi Tuschman (talk), the subject of this article. I'm completely new to editing Wikipedia, although I've used and admired the Encyclopedia for years and have donated to the WikiMedia Foundation on different occasions. When I realized that a Wikipedia page would go up on this topic, I thought that the most accurate and objective way would be to provide all of the potentially relevant sources to someone other than myself who had a lot of experience with Wikipedia guidelines and coding, rather than writing an article myself. The person who did this told me that the correct thing to do was to follow the rules and acknowledge the relationship, which she did. But some of the sources she used were later considered less solid than others, and also there seems to be an outside issue about editing that I didn't know anything about. So then I thought that the best thing to do would be to find the most senior and decorated Wikipedian I could find, with deep understanding of proper citations, to clear up the issues. At this point, I still see a lot of inaccuracies and misunderstandings and gaps, as well as solid sources that aren't being cited, and I thought it may be best to collaborate directly, although I'd still prefer not to make any direct changes myself. I know that we all want Wikipedia to be a complete and carefully sourced record of both old and new knowledge. And it's important to me that our emerging field on the science on human political orientation, as well as my small contributions to this field, be accurately represented here. I'm willing to work with anyone in good faith who cares about accurately citing relevant information here, and I'd like to be helpful. I deeply regret that I unknowingly wandering into an editing conflict that I didn't understand, and I hope that the editors participating here understand that I did so in good faith, and that they can overlook this and collaborate on the production of new knowledge. As a scientist, I have the greatest respect for objectivity and data, and I know that Wikipedians do too. I'm not sure how to request specific changes, but perhaps someone could let me know. In the meantime, I'm going to write some words on the deletion page explaining the reasons why I believe the page should be kept and not renamed. Many thanks for your patience with a new user and for your objectivity and collaboration. Yours sincerely, Avi Tuschman (talk)

Thanks for writing here, Avi. I left some information on your Talk page, about Wikipedia and working here with a conflict of interest. Responding to what you write above... while there is a marketplace for writers and they can deliver an article (like you can expect in any market-driven industry), once the article is posted, it is part of Wikipedia. Wikipedia itself is not a marketplace and you cannot expect it to function like one. The problem with hiring someone to write an article about you, is that they want to please you. The article was full of puffery and offered only glowing reviews of your book. That fails our WP:NPOV policy. Wikipedia, as a community of volunteers, works slowly. The article is slowly being worked over. It will eventually either be found acceptable or will be deleted. As I noted on your talk page, you are free to suggest content here on the Talk page, if you have ideas about how to improve the article. Jytdog (talk) 12:47, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi Jytdog, thank you very much for helping me understand better how Wikipedia works and for explaining how I can make suggestions to improve the article here and through the "click here" link. I'll use that link going forward. I'd like to quickly point out here a recently added sentence that I think is problematic, which is the one about Cedric Muhammad's piece. As it currently reads, the new sentence makes it sound as though Muhammad is saying that the book has a partisan bias. This is not at all the spirit of what Muhammad actually wrote in his article, where he states: "I came back to this depressing realization after reading Avi Tuschman’s informative book, Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us and observing some of the reaction to it from liberals and conservatives (both of whom I am convinced have not read the entire book). Generally speaking my take so far is that conservatives dismiss the book because it is critical of their worldview and liberals embrace the book because, well, it is critical of conservatives (never mind that it is critical of them too). So liberals uncritically run excerpts of the book that they like and conservatives construct a Liberal strawman to argue against rather than the book’s scholarship which is far more formidable. Both sides miss the greater utility of the book – it explains why they are so narrow-minded at times and the rest of us for that matter." Also, the sentence makes it sound as though Muhammad is generally critical of the book. In fact, Muhammad writes in the same article that "it is the first book that I’ve read which credibly attempts to present a unified view of political science, anthropology, genetics, neuroscience and primatology, making a compelling case that we are hard-wired to be liberal or conservative by nature, environment and adaptation" and that the book offers "a penetrating explanation for why Americans (and the rest of the world) vote on a Left-Right spectrum, even against self and economic interest." I think the fair thing to do would be either to add these much more representative quotes, or, to avoid getting into an edit war, to simply delete this new part about the Forbes piece. -- Avi Tuschman (talk) 21:36, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

I read the source and you don't have to quote it to me. It is best to talk about one thing at a time and to keep comments brief. Reception first, then. My take on Muhammad is that he thinks liberals like the book and conservatives don't like it. Has nothing to do with the book per se. Is that an accurate depiction of Muhammad's take on the reception? fwiw, do you think his depiction of the reception is inaccurate? Jytdog (talk) 00:02, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi Jytdog (talk), Muhammad wrote this just after the book came out, and he was referring to a single instance of controversy in which one blogger (who admitted she hadn't even read the book) reacted against an excerpt published in Salon.com. In the past year and a half, the book has been well received by both liberals and conservatives in many countries (with the one exception of the Economist, which was almost as critical as Wikipedia but much less diligent on checking sources :) So I think this summary of Muhammad is unrepresentative of the reception and unrepresentative of the point he was making about the book in the context of his article. Moreover, Muhammad himself is conservative and writing in a conservative media outlet and he liked the book as much as Salon and liberal outlets have. Our Political Nature is not a political book, but rather a science book about political orientation, which is why I've tried so hard to keep it neutral, and why this comment about bias shouldn't be taken lightly. On another note, I noticed that the Advertisement tag just went up on the article. I'm totally perplexed about what that could possibly refer to at this point. Could it be either justified or removed? Many thanks, Avi Tuschman (talk) 01:30, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Do you know a better source about the reception among political camps than Muhammad? Please don't worry about tags. They will come and go as long as the article is still being worked over. It will eventually become stable. There is WP:NODEADLINE here. Jytdog (talk) 01:35, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't recall too many people commenting on the reception, but it's easy to see the positive reception from media outlets across the spectrum from different countries here http://ourpoliticalnature.com/#reviews. Also, if you scroll down to the very bottom there, you can see that author and journalist Paul Chutkow wrote: "Political pundits on the left and right are rushing to grab pieces of Our Political Nature to substantiate their own biases, and this is understandable enough: this is a book of stunning scope and importance. The canvas here is global, and to put it bluntly I've never read anything this fascinating or compelling. I suspect this book will be a cause for heated debate in political and intellectual circles for a long time to come." I know this probably isn't the best source, but it's an independent person who's read the book and followed the coverage and confirms the symmetrical coverage it's received. It seems like the fairest thing, considering the context of the Muhammad piece, and that both he and the outlet he's writing in are conservative and received the book as well as liberal ones have, would be to remove the sentence about Muhammad entirely, or to add in the quotes from him I put in above. Avi Tuschman (talk) 01:54, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

seems to me that commentary from a black guy on your book's discussion of ethnocentrism is relevant. and no, we are not using a blurb. is Chutkow's quote from some longer piece? Jytdog (talk) 02:07, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't think the color of someone's skin makes their commentary on scientific studies (all of the research in Our Political Nature comes from quantitative scientific studies in peer-reviewed journals, including the research on ethnocentrism from neuroscience and other fields) more or less valuable. What's important is their credentials and the source, and we're talking about an unedited Forbes blog by someone with only an interest in the topic. One of the problems with the science of political biases is that everyone thinks they know about them and should be able to write about them, which they're allowed to write about. But imagine what would happen on Wikipedia if everyone who published anything about health or medicine were considered an equally good source for an article. It's especially important when there is real science about a controversial topic to take the quality of sources into consideration. On this topic, the only three people who have written about the book with expertise in the area other than myself are Michael Shermer, Chris Mooney, and John Hibbing (none of whom I have any connection with). If you'd like to keep the part about Muhammad's personal opinion on ethnocentrism in there, that's fine, but would you please consider removing the other part? Hardly fair to make a broad generalization on two years of reception in 19 countries based on one person's opinion of one incident right after publication. Avi Tuschman (talk) 06:28, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

wikipedia works by sources, not by anyone's personal authority. are you aware of any other source talking about reception among liberals and conservatives? Thanks Jytdog (talk) 11:34, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

In the Palo Alto Weekly article about Our Political Nature, a journalist wrote, "Tuschman bookends his thesis with pleas for people to understand the roots of political polarization. Liberals and conservatives are literally different people and, if we are to believe Tuschman, ineradicably so. Yet, he calls for people to "transcend the attitudes that still divide us" and for political moderation to triumph." And in the Washington Monthly, science writer Chris Mooney writes: "To see politics as Hibbing, Smith, Alford, and Tuschman see it, by contrast, is inevitably to want to stop fighting so much and strive for some form of acceptance of political difference." I think these sources and others show that the book was not received or perceived to have any partisan point of view. Also, since Wikipedia is about sources, and this Forbes piece is essentially an unedited blog, I think it should be removed, just as it was originally removed on those grounds from the original piece for those same reasons. But I leave the final decision up to you. Avi Tuschman (talk) 17:36, 21 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.5.152.125 (talk)

i understand that you don't like the Forbes review but WP:IDONTLIKEIT is not valid grounds to exclude a source in WP. I didn't ask what the book says about liberals and conservatives; i asked about reception by liberals and conservatives. That is the third time I have asked you the question. If you don't know of any, please say "I don't know." Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 19:37, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Actually, I do like the Forbes review very much. I just think the way it is described here does not very accurately describe what he said, and there are other points and quotes in Muhammad's review that are much more representative. Also, it seems unfair that the source was criticized and deleted when it was directly quoted before, and now it's okay to cite it when the summary -- and not even direct quotes -- is mostly negative. I still think the most fair thing is to delete it as a source since it's an unedited blog. I don't know of any other source that explicitly comments on reception by people's political orientation, although, as pointed out above, there are several that stress that the tone and content are scientific, nonpartisan, and conciliatory. The final choice is yours. -- Avi Tuschman (talk) 20:43, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

I've asked you a question three times and you have not addressed it. Not answering a good faith question looking for information is one of the signs of what we call "tendentious editing", and I have no interest in that, so am backing out of this discussion. I will answer questions briefly but please don't expect further extended engagement from me. Jytdog (talk) 21:25, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Request edit on 20 May 2015

This article about the evolutionary anthropologist and writer Avi Tuschman is incomplete because it only describes one publication of his, the book Our Political Nature. He written numerous other publications that have been published in important media. The original version of this page contained an "Other Writings" section, which was deleted unfairly. This content should be added back in:

Tuschman has written and spoken about numerous topics related to political orientation, including why this phenomenon shifts over the lifespan, why gender inequality changes over the course of history, how economics and demographics affect political spectrums, how the heritability of political orientation has been determined, how birth order affects political attitudes, and how assortative mating in the US contributes to political polarization. He has also commented on evolutionary approaches to history.

The article about the age-related shift in political orientation from Bloomberg was republished in Chinese, Greek, Arabic, Russian, and discussed in Spanish (happy to provide links upon request). So the list above only contains the most important publications in English, and it excludes less significant publications in English and important ones written in other languages. This reincorporation request is especially important because there are some people saying that the subject of the article has written only one publication, and that the article should be retitled after this publication. That would arbitrarily exclude from Wikipedia the new knowledge produced in the publications mentioned above. Many thanks for your fair and balanced consideration, Avi Tuschman (talk) 20:54, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Avi Tuschman (talk) 20:55, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

References

That's a synthesis of those sources. We'd require articles not written by yourself that discuss your other writings in order to mention them. SmartSE (talk) 21:19, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

I agree, a mixture of synthesis and primary sources, this is not good enough sourcing for an already promotional article. Joseph2302 (talk) 21:23, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Could you include other writings in an External links page? Also, could you please restore the first part of the Mooney quote that reads "a feat that those of us monitoring the emerging science of politics have long been waiting for—explaining..."? By removing this context, you cannot see that Mooney is referring to himself and others with expertise in the field, and you also cannot see the implication that the book in question was the first to do this -- both very important points. Many thanks, Avi Tuschman (talk) 21:31, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

This article needs fewer quotes in it, not more. Joseph2302 (talk) 21:32, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

I feel like I'm being treated unfairly. That was the most important quote about the book by a person with great expertise on the topic, and now it's totally taken out of context so it doesn't seem like the book was the first to do what it did -- which is the whole reason the book is notable at all. In addition, someone removed the fact that I earned a PhD in Evolutionary Anthropology at Stanford from my education section, which I worked very hard to attain over many years, and which are part of my legitimate credentials and belong on any Wikipedia bio. I'm only asking for fairness and good will. I'm following all the rules, only commenting in a special section here on the talk page, and not touching the page myself, and I'm relying entirely on your collaboration to improve the accuracy and completeness of the page for Wikipedia's sake. I know we both want this page to be objective and complete. Many thanks, Avi Tuschman (talk) 21:47, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Avi, Wikipedia is governed by policies and guidelines. Nothing you have written shows that you are aware of them nor that you understand them. So it is not clear to me, at least, on what basis you are judging "fair" or "unfair" and I suggest you back off these claims before you understand Wikipedia better. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 22:19, 21 May 2015 (UTC)