Why Does Wikipedia Suck on Science?
Wikipedia is, by all measures, one of the great accomplishments of the Internet Age. I’m willing to say it stands alongside Google, eBay, GoogleMaps, IMDB and Wired.com as among the greatest resources on the Web (ok, that last one is self-serving).
But boy, does it suck when it comes to science topics.
Here’s my beef: Wikipedians are at their best when they are able to use their knowledge, be it bonafide expertise or particulates of trivia, to fill in the blanks for our collective intelligence. There’s nothing like needing to know who Henry V was (versus Henry IV) and being able to find the answer in less than 50 keystrokes. Or pinpointing just when the first Anthrax attack happened in 2001. Or getting a good sense of whether Francis Fukayama is a neocon or a brilliant maverick (mutually exclusive??).
But I find that when it comes to science topics, I often find Wikipedia more of a hinderance than a help. Curious about just what epigenetics is? Figure you really should know what mitochondria do? Don’t count on Wikipedia – odds are their analysis is too pedantic for you, as it is for me.
Now I’m no Wikipedian come lately. I wrote the first story in Wired Magazine on Wikipedia about four years ago, back when it had a paltry 150,000 entries in English (it boasts 1.8 million and climbing now). But it’s an interesting problem that seems to arise when you task experts to write on an expert topic. When you’re open sourcing Linux with programmers, the fact that they’re all speaking the same language – or writing in the same code – is a benefit. But when you’re creating a quasi-open-source project for, well, everyone, it may just happen that the expert langauge necessary to define a topic will progressively escape the comprehension of the non-experts who are the main audience for said project. It’s not quite forking, to use the open-source term for when a project gets split and “forks” into tangential projects. It’s more like oyster forking – the creation of a highly specialized tool that only some people can grasp.
Here’s what I think is going on: On Wikipedia, contributors are expected to contribute their knowledge. But on science, there’s a oneupmanship going on, and a topic will be honed to an ever-greater level of expertise. That’s great for precision and depth, but horrible for the general user, who is often brought to Wikipedia through a top hit on Google. Clay Shirky and others have written about the “the expert problem” on Wikipedia, usually meaning the lack of expertise and a need for experts. That may be true in some contexts, but that isn’t the problem I’m talking about. That complaint is that Wikipedia needs experts to bring entries up to snuff; I’m more concerned about bringing entries down to a level that’s actually clear and useful for the layman.
Look at that Epigenetics entry, for instance, which comes up first when you Google the term “epigenetics”. Here’s the first sentence:
In biology, while the subject of genetics focuses on how organisms can inherit traits by inheriting genes from their parent(s), which encode information for cell function as sequences of DNA, epigenetics is sometimes used to refer to additional methods of biological inheritance that do not directly relate to the inheritance of collections of genes, or soft inheritance.
Huh?
Now I’m sure that’s accurate, but it’s way too rich for my blood. A better primer can be found at the backgrounder from Johns Hopkins that ranks as the number three hit:
There is far more to genetics than the sequence of building blocks in the DNA molecules that make up our genes and chromosomes. The “more” is known as epigenetics. What is epigenetics? Epigenetics, literally “on” genes, refers to all modifications to genes other than changes in the DNA sequence itself. Epigenetic modifications include addition of molecules, like methyl groups, to the DNA backbone.
That, I get. It’s the same on so many other topics. Here’s the first line for the entry on fluid mechanics:
Fluid mechanics is the subdiscipline of continuum mechanics that studies fluids, that is, liquids and gases. It can be further subdivided into fluid statics, the study of fluids at rest, and fluid dynamics, the study of fluids in motion. Modern applications use the computational approach to develop solutions to fluid mechanics problems; the discipline concerned with this is the CFD, Computational Fluid Dynamics.
Sorry, you lost me at “continuum.”
And here’s the beginning of the Mitochondrial DNA entry:
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is DNA that is located in mitochondria. This is in contrast to most DNA of eukaryotic organisms, which is found in the nucleus. Nuclear and mtDNA are thought to be of separate evolutionary origin, with the mtDNA being derived from bacteria that were engulfed by early precursors of eukaryotic cells.
Thank god for the NIH, which helpfully has a page (the fifth result from Google when you search for “mitochondiral DNA”) that starts with this:
Mitochondria are structures within cells that convert the energy from food into a form that cells can use. Although most DNA is packaged in chromosomes within the nucleus, mitochondria also have a small amount of their own DNA. This genetic material is known as mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA.
Thank you, big sprawling federal bureaucracy!
Now given that there are, as I said, 1.8 million articles on Wikipedia, there are bound to be dozens – if not thousands – of exceptions. For instance, on the basic science entries – biology, cancer, volcanology – Wikipedians have created useful, thoughtful, and readable dispatches. And sometimes there’s been the laudable foresight to add “introduction to” pages, such as those for quantum mechanics and quantum physics. But increasingly, I find myself skipping over a Wikipedia result on Google not because I’m worried about the validity of the information there – I don’t share that concern and think it’s way overblown – but rather because I’m worried it’s just going to be a bunch of formulae I can’t parse and jargon I can’t unpack.
This is, in many ways, the opposite of the tragedy of the commons – it’s the tragedy of the uncommon, meaning topics that the common folk just don’t get – and thus can’t help in editing the entry on. What happens when you get something written by a bunch of geniuses? Well, something written by a bunch of geniuses.
If you think you could do better than click edit.
I love the science in Wikipediia. I was reading about “reentry”, and the article was just wonderfully detailed, arcane, and at-the-very-edge of intellegibility — but even the parts that were hard to understand were a challenge to learn more, in the best way of all science writing. I wouldn’t change a thing, certainly wouldn’t recommend dumbing it down.
That said, on my bedside table I have Van Nostrand’s scientific encyclopedia. I open it to any page, and am instantly fascinated.
That’s why there’s a whole world wide web. Don’t depend on wikipedia to be something it’s not, just use a different search result from your original Google search. I prefer to have free access to the unabridged articles in wikipedia, even if it means I need to do more work, or supplement with other results.
This article points out more of a problem with “journalism” than with wiki or science. You call yourself a writer but you don’t know what continuum means? You couldn’t even understand a lot of Star Trek episodes then I guess. Please don’t try to dumb everyone else down to your level. Smart people (i.e. Star Trek fans) like to look up stuff sometimes too.
there is a reason why there are interwiki links.
*intrawiki
maybe this could help
http://www.eol.org/home.html
When I first saw the slashdot summary referring to this article, I thought “oh no, Wikipedia is dumbing down”. Thankfully, the complaint was in the opposite direction.
I’ve always felt that an encylopaedia should be able tell you things directly (learning) rather than tell you about things (recognition). I had no trouble understanding the excerpts above.
Analogies and examples, introductory overiew articles and popularisations have there place, but this should never be at the expensive of the main encylopaedia content.
When I was still in [high] school (before the WWW existed), if I found something of interest in New Scientist (dumber than Scientific American for those unfamiliar with it) or in class, I could read up on the background in more detail in the school library’s Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Wikipedia needs to fullfil that same role – reference.
The examples provided seem to me to be completely understandable. I don’t know what the author’s problem seems to be, except that he could at least have been a bit more careful in not comparing entries regarding mitochondria with thiose regarding their DNA. Perhaps such care would be pedantic. Perhaps it is pedantic to expect him to actually make sense.
His other example is ludicrous:
>”Fluid mechanics is the subdiscipline of continuum mechanics that studies fluids, that is, liquids and gases.(…)”
>Sorry, you lost me at “continuum.â€
Did they? Then I see where the problem is located: somewhere between your chair and your laptop. If you can’t understand such a simple sentence then you should just go back to school. And I don’t mean college.
Not only is the sentence simple, it leads you to follow up on “continuum mechanics” if you don’t know what it it. And the ease with which you jump from a concept to another is one of the things that makes wikipedia great.
The entry was perfectly clear. What the author misses is not clarity, it is empty verbiage that makes him feel warm and fuzzy and actually bloats and obfuscates an article.
Leave Wikipedia alone. Some of us like to go there to learn stuff, not to get talked to like we were brainless. If you don’t like it you can always go watch some soccer or something.
Wikipedia provides a great opportunity for people to expand their knowledge. In your example of being lost at the word continuum, if you were lost, they why not click the hyperlink and use it as an opportunity to expand your knowledge? That is after all what Wikipedia is about.
For those that are looking for technical information the level of detail on Wikipedia can often be invaluable due to most other sources on the internet being afraid to go into too much detail for fear of scaring off the masses. That’s what makes WIkiepedia great, it has enough information that if you are actually trying to learn something you can.
Why pander to laymen?
Hey, as an fyi, if you are interested in learning more about in depth topics (like those of the science-nature), http://www.answers.com is a good place to get more detail. It includes Wikipedia as part of its content, but it primarily includes topic-specific encyclopedias and dictionaries for those obscure science terms, business words, medical language, etc…
Disclaimer: Yes, I am an employee of Answers.com, but I thought this might be helpful to those in this discussion of Wikipedia’s depth.
Is this written using the worlds most unreadable font?
I disagreeI firmly disagree with this argument. I think that the depth of the information in a scientific Wikipedia article should be appropriate to the depth of understanding needed to grasp the topic. Without this correlation, you would have one of two problems: either every article would be so rudimentary that it would be entirely useless to anyone with more than a high school education in the particular field or each article on an advanced topic would be cluttered to the point of diminishing the accessibility of the details. It is not entirely unreasonable to hope a reader has some biochemical education before reading about Zif268 or some knowledge of quantum physics before delving into perturbation theory.
I am somewhere in the middle. Wikipedia functions best as a general resource, but it should not be trivialized. To some extent it depends on the topic as well. For example, take fluid science. While the main fluid science page should maintain a general level. so that someone wanting to find out what it is about can understand, what about someone who wants to understand subtopics in fluid science at a greater level of depth? Does that belong in Wikipedia or some form of sub-Wikipedia or a vertical fork of some sort, along the lines of Wikia?
When I was a child I began understanding none of what I heard. After learning some words,as a student I looked up words I was not clear about and sometimes found I had to look up some of the definition words. After college I still found myself researching word meanings to clarify my understanding of technical terms. Language is dynamic as is education. The response to this article is telling! We need to “smart up” not “dumb down” Certainly some are better wordsmiths and others may be improved better communition skills. Just remember, everything you know seems simple because you know it , Everything you don’t know seems complex until you know it. Read think reread think etc. …
Great article — and very true. Good science writing — both accurate and accessible — is hard to find. MSM is notorious for getting things wrong, and the general public has many misperceptions when it comes to science (Google “Bad Science” or “Bad Astronomy” and you’ll get an eyefull).
At least the science info is correct. Most of the law-related subjects on wikipedia are incorrect.
I use Wikipedia to start research. It’s been helpful to get ‘the Wikipedia’ definition and the references to find out more. The Wikipedia site lacks some useful features. One I’d like to see would be a search result of the relationshops between subjects. ‘Vocabulary Grapher’ is the sort of interface display that would best present this sort of information. I have no idea how that function could be added to Wikipedia.
I’m not sure I see what is so difficult to understand in the Wikipedia samples that you put forth here. They didn’t seem too bad to me, maybe you had to read them more than once to get all the info, but that’s how you learn science, or most any other subject for that matter. And the concept of a continuum is central to fluid mechanics, if you don’t have the time to look up the word ‘continuum’, you don’t have time to learn squat about fluids.
try “define:” on google.
While I don’t think the separate Simple English Wikipedia – or any kind of Qwikipedia – is a particularly good idea, it would still be good to have a quick overview of complex subjects in a box at the top of each Wikipedia page.
It looks as though a lot of people completely missed the author’s point, here. Nowhere do I see him arguing for “dumbing down” Wikipedia, but merely for professional-grade editing. Wikipedia should not be dumbed down, but it should definitely be accessible. The two concepts are not the same.
The examples provided? Some, I understood quite well, while others left me sharing the author’s befuddlement. The fact that you (general you, aimed at the commentators so far) have no trouble with a certain piece doesn’t mean those that do are “dumb”, or want to see Wikipedia be “dumbed down”. If anything, the hostile respondents are confirming Mr. Goetz’s thesis: Scientific oneupmanship means fewer and fewer people are likely to be able to delve into a particular topic, leaving an even smaller group to virtually pat each other’s backs.
Wikipedia needs not become “The Encyclopedia for Dummies”, but it does need to be able to inform its readers, of whatever stripe those readers might be. Poorly communicated knowledge is worthless.
It’s not just science that is sucks on. I’ve been embroiled in a little battle over an article on the Indo-Greeks that has been absolutely, mind-boggling in how absurd the claims put forward by the opposition is. Once a “respected” member comes in with an agenda the entire clique circles the wagons to pat each other’s backs. Anyone with a contrary opinion is just bullied out.
And of course, it leans heavily in favour of people with far too much time on their hands to be making edits and reverts. Wikipedia’s own regulations are selectively enforced and generally only done in favor of the one with seniority. Most of the problems come in articles that are obscure enough that people can’t make error corrections. A handful of pseudo-experts come in and have a run of the place.
The obvious solution is to have links at the bottom of the wiki entry to the “dumbed down” explanation.
That and to make sure the summaries at the top of the entry are good.
and what the HELL is up with your comment field? i can barely read what i’m typing, because its 1) tiny and 2) a light grey on white. seirously, this blog theme blows.
Great Article! I completely agree. Wikipedia should include primers or intro’s for topics that have become two advanced. They should also consider a grading system for reader (not publishers) of the topics, so that editors can prioritize which articles are most in need of a primer.
Also, I’m not to keen on google pulling up Wikipedia for everything I search for. I realize they have a lot of content, but if I wanted to find a wikipedia article on something, I’d go to wikipedia. Perhaps google should make it easier to unselect certain web sites from searches.
I agree with Michael, your comments system is WAY to small to read. I actually wrote this in a text editor and pasted it into your comments field, just so I could read what I was typing.
In addition to any potential one-upmanship by wikipedia writers (which i don’t doubt exists), there are two causes that i think have more to do with why wikipedia science entries are less than elucidating to the general reader:
1) As opposed to an article on history or politics, an article on science will on average have far more new vocabulary words for the layman. In a traditional text article, there are two ways of dealing with this – you can either assume that your audience understands all your jargon (which is absolutely the case in most specialized scientific journals, where most scientific articles are published), or you can try to take a more conversational tone and drop the specialized vocabulary, which is something that writers will typically only go to the trouble of doing for an article meant for the general audience. I think most people who are knowledgeable about science tend towards the first unless there is sufficient reason (and enough editors) to help them translate their usual manner of describing concepts into something that the average person will understand. Wikipedia editors don’t have sufficient motivation to go out of their way to explain what they’re saying, especially since, if someone doesn’t understand a phrase, they can usually click on a link within the article that will take them to a more detailed explanation of that phrase. The thing that I love most about Wikipedia is that for me, it enables a totally different kind of reading experience than reading an average article – one where I’m led from one concept and definition to another and have the potential for far deeper understanding.
(2) Writing about scientific topics in a way that is both accurate and engaging is just hard. I didn’t find that the examples you put were necessarily inaccessible (especially once you realize that you can click on links and get more info), but they were pretty damn boring. Once again, I challenge you to read the average article in any of the tons of specialized scientific joyrnals that are published and try to get through two paragraphs without taking a nap. Call this my totally unscientific hypothesis – Most people who are really interested in science and understand scientific topics, whether it’s mitochondrial DNA or collusion dynamics, with the degree of confidence necessary to write about it, are probably not engaging writers. Most people who can write in a way that is interesting and accessible, even ifi they do understand scientific concepts in a broad way, do not have sufficient confidence that they accurately understand scientific concepts to do something so bold as to edit a perfectly accurate and sufficiently understandable but boring article on a scientific topic just to make it more engaging. And if they do, there’s a decent chance that someone whose concern for accuracy is greater than their concern for accessibility may find flaw with their reinterpretation and edit it back to something boring but correct.
I don’t necessarily think this is a huge problem, but I think what it does do is point to the need for more translators in the world. As mentioned in a prevoius comment, there are more experts than communicators. In rapidly advancing and increasingly specialized knowledge is growing in science and technology, the need for people are able to talk the talk of the specialist but synthesize for the general public has increased.
My next totally unscientific hypothesis is that since science and technology are traditionally male dominated fields, and women tend to have stronger connections between their brain hemispheres than men, we will see women increasingly filling these gaps in scientifiic communication.
I think that the oneupmanship exhibited in most Wiki articles is very apparent in most of the comments here. People just at any opportunities to make evident their level of intelligence. They do this to validate themselves and to feel good. If someone says that a book is hard to read, don’t be surprise if a crapload of people then smirk and claim it was easy for them. That kind of reaction is expected, and it’s often mendacious. I think your examples weren’t the best you could have used; however, I agree with you that many articles on Wiki are too technical. I am by no means an expert when it comes to science, but I took several years of physics in high school, and I always got solid A’s in my science and math classes. And I honestly have trouble with many Wiki articles, especially when half of them are concerned with complex calculus. You go to a page to learn about a subject, and it’s obvious someone who already knows a lot about it wrote it for similar people. It’s like a journal for graduate students.
p.s. Anyone here who claims to have learned a whole subject just from Wiki articles is lying through his/her keyboard (teeth).
Science Articles on Wiki might be pedantic but they are far from sucking. As an undergraduate computer science-major i frequently use it as a resource which, in the field of CSCI, has thus far been infallible. Animations generally clarify extremely abstract material. This is also the case for many biology articles.
To Meme: Anyone who makes sweeping generalizations about anything is an ass.
Hello! Good Site! Thanks you! qzdhcjyqbaqj
This one makes sence “One’s first step in wisdom is to kuesstion everything – and one’s last is to come to terms with everything.”
I love wikipedia when it comes to science srouces. Anybody with the most basic scienc eknowledge can understand what you can’t seem to understand. I think some science classes are in order.
Hi,
When searching for information on tensors, I found the existing four Wikipedia entries on the subject to be well thought-out and clearly written on each of their four different levels. In every field there is some need to reflect the complexity of what is presently known so that we know what there is left to discover; the layered structure does great at its job of communication while preserving the marvellous intricacy and slight aura of challenge of the field or subject.
I got here through a Google 5th-page hit for ‘tensors “for dummies”‘, so I’m late for this discussion
I enjoy some Wikipedia entries because they push me to learn what I didn’t know I didn’t know. The variety of comments here show two mutually exclusive attitudes towards difficult things: 1. Run, to another resource you can more easily understand, 2. Stand still at the article that originally shocked you, and weep and protest that it is beyond your understanding, and demand that it be changed. Clearly I prefer 1. because I get the knowledge I need (that caters to my level) in a much shorter time.
In the pursuit of knowledge, Wikipedia might have grand aims to cater to the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people but that (utilitarian) philosophy has never been successful anywhere in practice. As with all “repositories” of knowledge, use/leave at your discretion.
is politics a science?what are the approaches to the study of politics?David easton’s view of the political system[1965]
Whew, thanks to all who objected to the proposal to make Wikipedia less technical and less deep. Everytime I read a science article in Time or Newsweek I shudder at the oversimplifications, questionable generalizations, and downright erroneous information therein. I like a chatty style, but there are some subjects that can’t be adequately explained in simple everyday language.. If people are interested in these topics, they’re just going to have to do the work and acquire the background and vocabulary necessary to the subject. There are plenty of oversimplified popular science resources for those who want them – please let Wikipedia be as excellent and thorough as it can be.
Sorry if there are typos, I can’t read this as I’m typing it.