Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jagged 85/Evidence

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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This is a page of evidence to support the RfC/U at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jagged 85.

Please note that although some of these diffs are two or more years old, a good deal of the material added by them is either still on Wikipedia or has only very recently been removed.

Please also note that almost every one of these problematic claims has been added to multiple articles here on Wikipedia, some of them on up to thirteen separate articles (for example, see "#Earliest psychiatric hospitals"). We have just picked a single article to show each problem: please do not assume that it is always the first instance of the claim or the worst or whatever.

Scope of these issues

The issues range over a vast array of articles concerning diverse topics such as the

Duration of these issues

The collected examples of misuse range from 2007 through to 2010.

The earliest issue listed here is from May 2007: #History of anthropology.

The most recent issues, which have occurred since 00:00, 1 March 2010 (UTC), are:

I have also collected four problematic edits from just the seven days from 11 April 2010, and mostly in current affairs and general history articles, at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jagged 85/Recent evidence.

Edit pattern[edit]

For those editors who do not know this editor, this section tries to give some introduction to the scope of their work here on Wikipedia.

Edit count[edit]

Jagged 85 – Edit Counter (as of 16 April 2010)

This editor's first edits were in October 2005, and since then they have made over 60,000 edits making them #209 on the List of Wikipedians by number of edits. The majority of their edits are in the article space (95.76%), with only a very small percentage of 1.46% for talk page edits, which gives some support to those who have complained about this editor's reluctance to engage in discussion of their edits.

Deleted articles[edit]

The editor has had two of their articles deleted for violating WP:SYN, WP:NPOV and WP:OR:

Top contributor on tagged articles[edit]

The user is the top contributor by a huge margin on six articles which have been tagged for up to two years for disputed neutrality, disputed factual accuracy, original research, unpublished synthesis of published material, inappropriate or misinterpreted citations which do not verify the text, and improper references to self-published sources. By date of tagging:

Major misuses of sources[edit]

PHILOSOPHY[edit]

Descartes and Al-Ghazālī[edit]

— 10:25, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that

Al-Ghazali also had an important influence on [...] René Descartes, who expressed similar ideas to that of al-Ghazali in Discourse on the Method

The source cited for this was:

Najm, Sami M. (October 1966). "The Place and Function of Doubt in the Philosophies of Descartes and Al-Ghazālī". Philosophy East and West. 16 (3/4): 133–141. doi:10.2307/1397536. ISSN 0031-8221. JSTOR 1397536.

But on the very first page of that article, we find the following explicit statement:

I do not wish to argue that al-Ghazali influenced the thinking of Descartes (a matter for which I have no evidence). (p. 133)

SCIENCE[edit]

Avicenna's mathematisation of medicine[edit]

— 02:28, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

This edit added the claim to the Scientific revolution article that:

though earlier Muslim scientists used [mathematisation] more broadly in other scientific fields as well (including [...] medicine and physiology).

In a footnote, the editor added the following quote from the source to support that claim:

Students of the history of medicine know him for his attempts to introduce systematic experimentation and quantification into the study of physiology.

The source cited was:

Park, Katharine (March 1990). "Review: Avicenna in Renaissance Italy: The Canon and Medical Teaching in Italian Universities after 1500 by Nancy G. Siraisi". The Journal of Modern History. 62 (1): 169–170. ISSN 0022-2801. JSTOR 1898788.

But the "him" in this quote does not refer to Avicenna or any other Islamic scientist but instead to the Italian physician, Sanctorius, as the preceding sentence in the source makes absolutely clear (with the editor's quotation in italics):

Santorio's work is a case in point. Students of the history of medicine know him for his attempts to introduce systematic experimentation and quantification into the study of physiology using a number of original scientific instruments. (p. 169)

So this editor has blatantly misrepresented the cited source.

Once this discrepancy was discovered in February 2008, it was pointed out on this editor's talk page and the article was corrected by another editor. Jagged 85 never replied to this notification and, as of the time of this writing, their use of Park's review to document an alleged association of Avicenna with quantification is still found in the articles The Canon of Medicine, Ancient Iranian Medicine, Avicenna, Medicine in medieval Islam, Science in the Middle Ages, Human subject research, and six other articles.

Theory of impetus[edit]

— 08:06, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that

[Avicenna] developed an early theory of impetus, which he referred to as being proportional to weight times velocity, which was similar to the modern theory of momentum.

In a footnote, the editor added the following quote from the source to support that claim:

"Thus he considered impetus as proportional to weight times velocity. In other words, his conception of impetus comes very close to the concept of momentum of Newtonian mechanics." (p. 280)

The source cited was:
Sayili, Aydin (1987). "Ibn Sīnā and Buridan on the Motion of the Projectile". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 500 (From Deferent to Equant: A Volume of Studies on the History of Science of the Ancient and Medieval Near East in Honor of ES Kennedy): 477–482. doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.1987.tb37219.x.

But the "he" in that quoted material doesn't refer to Avicenna but rather to Buridan, and it has been quoted utterly out of context, as it comes from a paragraph that discusses Buridan's theory of impetus, not Avicenna's. The editor has once again blatantly misrepresented the source.

Life expectancy[edit]

— 18:40, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

This edit added (amongst other things) the following claim about an increase in life expectancy due to improved medical care:

The average life expectancy in the lands under Islamic rule also experienced an increase, due to the Agricultural Revolution as well as improved medical care. In contrast to the average lifespan in the ancient Greco-Roman world (22-28 years), the average lifespan in the early Islamic Caliphate was more than 35 years.

The source cited for that last claim was:

Conrad, Lawrence I. (1995). "The Arab-Islamic medical tradition". In Lawrence I. Conrad; et al. (eds.). The Western Medical Tradition: 800 BC to AD 1800. Cambridge University Press. pp. 93–138 [137]. ISBN 9780521475648.

But contrary to the claim about "improved medical care" being at least partly responsible for the claimed increase, the very line in that source where the "more than 35 years" claim is taken from, says:

They [that is, physicians] could do little, for example, to change the facts that life expectancy was not much above 35 years [...]

Risk factor analysis[edit]

— 08:40, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that:

[Avicenna] developed an early theory on hypothetical syllogism, which formed the basis of his early risk factor analysis

The source cited for this was:

Goodman, Lenn Evan (2003). Islamic humanism. Oxford University Press US. ISBN 9780195135800.

But the article simply says:

Indeed if we add modern notions about about the regression of multiple variables and quantified probability, we find in Avicenna's hypothetical syllogism a basis for risk factor analysis. (p. 155)

It is utter nonsense to have claimed on this (or any other) basis that Avicenna undertook risk factor analysis.

Parabolic mirrors[edit]

— 00:00, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that:

The refracting parabolic mirror was first described by Ibn Sahl in his On the Burning Instruments in the 10th century, and later described again in Ibn al-Haytham's On Burning Mirrors and Book of Optics (1021).

The source cited was:

Rashed, Roshdi (September 1990). "A Pioneer in Anaclastics: Ibn Sahl on Burning Mirrors and Lenses". Isis. 81 (3): 464–491. ISSN 0021-1753. JSTOR 233423.

Ignoring the problem that there is no such thing as a "refracting mirror", this source gives an explicit list of several authors who had studied this subject before ibn Sahl:

The study of the parabolic mirror had been undertaken long before Ibn Sahl by Diocles, Anthemius of Tralles, "Dtrūms" (author of a treatise on burning mirrors translated into Arabic from a now-lost Greek original), the author of the Bobbio fragment, and al-Kindi. (p. 468)

What is deeply sad is that this source lists an immense number of startling innovations that should be credited to ibn Sahl concerning lenses, which would have made marvellous additions to that Wikipedia article.

Discovery of gravity[edit]

— 19:26, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

This edit added the following exceptional claim:

During the 9th century, Muhammad ibn Musa (800-873) [...] discovered that there was a force of attraction between heavenly bodies.

The source cited was:

K. A. Waheed (1978). Islam and The Origins of Modern Science, p. 27. Islamic Publication Ltd., Lahore.

But the relevant text from this source is:

'According to the Historians' History [sic—the actual full title is The Historians' History of the World] it was from Ibn al-Haitham's Twilight that the illustrious Kepler took his ideas of atmospheric refraction: "and it may be that Newton himself owes to the Arabs rather than to the apple in his archarat [sic—the word in The Historians' History is "orchard"] at Woolsthorpe, the first apperception of the system of the universe, for Mohammed Ben Musa [sic—The Historians' History has "Muhammed bin Musa"] seems, when writing his book on the movement of the celestial bodies and on the Force of Attraction, to have had an inkling of the great law of general harmony". '

which comes nowhere near justifying the stated claim.

The claim itself is extremely implausible, not just for the reason that it is impossible that anyone in that period could have "discovered" such a thing. (As far as I understand the work of that philosopher, what he did was to suggest that the celestial bodies theoretically could be made of the same four elements as is true in the sublunar world, and if so they would have an inherent principle of movement towards the centre of the earth, i.e., they would act in exactly the same way as the other Aristotelian elements.)

Besides not actually supporting the claim, the cited reference could by no stretch of the imagination be considered a reliable source. It is not a work of history at all, but an obscure pamphlet of polemical Islamic apologetics devoted to arguing that it was the scholars of the so-called golden age of Islam rather than the ancient Greek philosophers and mathematicians who were responsible for laying the foundations of modern science. Thus, this incident could also be regarded as an instance of an unreliable source being used for an exceptional claim.

History of astrology[edit]

— 06:21, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that:

[t]he first semantic distinction between astrology and astronomy was given by the Persian Muslim astronomer Abu Rayhan al-Biruni in the 11th century.

The source cited for this was:

Pines, S. (September 1964). "The Semantic Distinction between the Terms Astronomy and Astrology according to al-Biruni". Isis. 55 (3): 343–349. doi:10.1086/349868. ISSN 0021-1753. JSTOR 228577.

But the article makes it clear that Bīrūnī was not responsible for this distinction and that he took it from an earlier source:

Al-Bīrūnī 's statement proves that examples of a semantic differentiation between the terms astronomia and astrologia approximating modern usage occurred among the Greeks not later than the first half of the eleventh century (p. 348)

TECHNOLOGY[edit]

Origin of the crank[edit]

— 22:52, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

This series of edits repeatedly added the claim that the origin of the crank dates back to an ancient Egyptian type of drill.

The source cited for this was:

Richard S. Hartenberg, John Schmidt, Jr. (April 1969), "The Egyptian Drill and the Origin of the Crank", Technology and Culture, 10 (2): 155–65{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
But the cited source arrives at the very opposite conclusion:

On the basis of our analysis and actual operating experience with a simulated artifact, we conclude that the Egyptian drill was not a crankdriven device at all but one of considerably more complexity, with a modern counterpart in an ill-equipped glass shop. This Egyptian drill, then, does not provide the first crank in machine or tool as has been surmised from time to time. (p. 165)

Note: I had to revert three times (01:49, 4 October 2009, 00:52, 5 October 2009, 15:50, 10 October 2009) and the user ignored a comment of mine on talk page in the process (01:49, 4 October 2009).

The Dardanelles Gun as an invention[edit]

— 02:00, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that the Turkish super-sized Dardanelles Gun represents a 'Muslim invention'.

The source cited for this was: Schmidtchen, Volker (1977b), "Riesengeschütze des 15. Jahrhunderts. Technische Höchstleistungen ihrer Zeit", Technikgeschichte 44 (3): 213–237 (226–228)G
But Schmidtchen never made the claim that such superguns were a Turkish invention, but rather believes that the technology was adopted by the Ottoman army by a "sort of technological transfer from Europe", that is medieval Western Europe:

Das Dardanellengeschütz: Auch außerhalb Westeuropas, wenngleich vermutlich über eine Art von technologischem Transfer aus dem europäischen Raum bedingt, sind im 15. Jahrhundert Riesengeschütze gegossen worden. The Dardanelles Gun: outside of Western Europe, too, although presumably by some sort of technological transfer from Europe, superguns had been cast in the 15th century. (p. 226)

To make the claim, the editor used an old edit of mine (18:31, 15 June 2009), removed the essential qualification (01:46, 22 March 2010) that "such super-sized bombards had been employed in Western Europe" and then went on to add the gun as a genuine Islamic invention in Inventions in the Islamic world (02:00, 22 March 2010, link above).

Invention of copper pipes[edit]

— 21:53, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that:

The Jayrun Water Clock, built by Muhammad al-Sa'ati in the 12th century, employed the earliest known use of early copper pipes

The source cited for this was:

Donald Routledge Hill (1991), "Arabic Mechanical Engineering: Survey of the Historical Sources", Arabic Sciences and Philosophy: A Historical Journal, 1, Cambridge University Press: 167-186 [174], doi:10.1017/S0957423900001478

But Hill makes no such claim of this being the earliest known use, and in fact mentions the copper pipes only in passing. The relevant section of the passage runs (with the reference to copper pipes in bold):

Nevertheless, the work has certain features that enhance its value. In the first place, because of Ridwan's lack of technical training, he sometimes gives us details of manufacture that an engineer would regard as too mundane for comment. This applies, for example, to his meticulous instructions for the manufacture of copper pipes. (p. 174f.)

Invention of plated mail[edit]

— 20:01, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that:

In Kitab al-Durra al-Maknuna (The Book of the Hidden Pearl) written by Jābir ibn Hayyān, he invented plated mail for use in armours (jawasin), helmets (bid) and shields (daraq).

The (primary!) source cited for this was:

al-Hassan, Ahmad Y. "The Colouring of Gemstones, the Purifying and Making of Pearls and Other Useful Recipes". History of Science and Technology in Islam.

But that webpage mentions no act of invention whatsoever, but merely quotes Jābir as saying:

If you make from it mail-and-plate armours (jawasin), helmets (bid) and shields (daraq), they cannot be cut by iron.

Note: The claim has also been included by the user in

Chemical processes[edit]

— 15:43, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that:

Al-Razi invented the following chemical processes in the 9th century: [...] Solution (al-tahlil), sublimation (al-tas'id), amalgamation (al-talghim), ceration (al-tashmi), and a method of converting a substance into a thick paste or fusible solid.

The source cited for this was:

Anawati, Georges C. (1996). "Arabic Alchemy". In Roshdi Rashed (ed.). Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science. Vol. 3. Routledge. pp. 853–902. ISBN 9780415124102.

But that source goes no further than to say that:

As for the chemical operations indicated by al-Rāzī, they comprise distillation (al-taqṭīr), calcination (al-tasḥwiya), solution (al-taḥlīl), evaporation (tabkhīr), crystallization (al-tabalwur), sublimation (al-tas`īd), filtration (al-tarshīḥ), amalgamation (al-talghīm), ceration (al-tashmī`), this last consisting of converting the substance into a thick paste or fusible solid. (p. 868)

So yet again this editor has misrepresented a mere report of use by a given figure as an invention by that figure.

(For more details of this edit, see User:Spacepotato/Examples of original research in Wikipedia#Example 1.)

HISTORY[edit]

Academic degrees[edit]

— 16:47, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that the "origins of the degree dates back to the ijazah in the early Madrasah."

The main source cited for this was:

Makdisi, George (April–June 1989), "Scholasticism and Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 109 (2): 175–182 [175–77], doi:10.2307/604423

However, by including only a reference to Makdisi's 1989 paper, the editor willfully ignored a simultaneously ongoing discussion on Ijazah (21-23 March 2010), in which I have presented him evidence to the contrary, namely

  • that Makdisi stresses the "fundamental differences" between the Christian doctorate of the medieval university and the Islamic ijazah of the Madrasa in a 1970 paper (01:24, 21 March 2010)
  • that Huff (2003), in a discussion of Makdisi's later thesis, concludes that "it remains the case that no equivalent of the bachelor's degree, the licentia docendi, or higher degrees ever emerged in the medieval or early modern Islamic madrasas". (14:37, 23 March 2010)

Although the editor was made fully aware of these references, he completely ignored them, acting as if they did not exist in his subsequent edit on academic degree which only included Makdisi's 1989 hypothesis.

Islamic origins of capitalism[edit]

In this November 2007 edit, Jagged 85 claimed that the market societies began between the 8-12th century AD, and that the Muslims pioneered such business innovations of "startups". The claims were extensively critiqued by Dialectric (permalink). When I (User:ImperfectlyInformed) looked at one of the freely-available scholarly references supporting the Islamic origin of "startups", the article began by discussing Roman business innovations. In recent discussion with Jagged 85 on the issue (permalink), he said his edit preceded discussion of other cultures and market innovations, and that he didn't see much inaccurate with the edit besides language which was a little aggressive in stating how innovative and new the Islamic innovations were. However, the sources specifically discuss these business innovations in cultures prior to Islam, and so his statement of naivete does not really hold up. This is consistent with the general attitude of not really paying attention to evidence that certain historical achievements are not Muslim.

POLITICS[edit]

Islam in England[edit]

— 01:28, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that the British media has been criticized for

under-reporting hate crimes against Muslims.

The source cited for this was:

Jenny Bourne (4 February 2010). "Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate crime in London". Institute of Race Relations..

This source does mention "the problem of under-reporting" but this is nothing to do with media under-reporting but instead is about the under-reporting of hate crimes to the police by the Muslim community itself, as the (easily accessible) original source makes perfectly clear.[1]

Note: Even though his edit had been reverted within 24 hours on the grounds of being "dubious" (00:52, 6 April 2010), Jagged 85 still went on to add the very same claim in Islamophobia several days later (00:17, 11 April 2010).

LITERATURE[edit]

One Thousand and One Nights[edit]

— 08:41, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that:

The earliest occurrence of this device [that is, Leitwortstil] occurs in the One Thousand and One Nights

The source cited is:

Heath, Peter (May 1994). "Review: Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights by David Pinault". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 26 (2): 358–360. ISSN 0020-7438. JSTOR 164775.

But not only does that source not make any such claim for priority, after mentioning the use of the device in this work, it goes on to say that:

None of these techniques, one should note, is unique to the Arabian Nights. Pinault could have improved this conceptual scheme by noting that all are common narrative practices. (p. 360)

And as another editor notes at Talk:One Thousand and One Nights#Themes and techniques section:

Clearly the statement that 1001 nights was the first to use the techinique is ridiculous; the technique is littered through many other works of antiquity, including the torah and the iliad for pity's sake, predating nights by millenia.

Less major misuses of sources[edit]

SCIENCE[edit]

Elliptical orbits[edit]

— 05:31, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that:

[Jamshīd al-Kāshī] invented a mechanical 'planetary computer' which he called the Plate of Zones, which could graphically solve a number of planetary problems, including the prediction of the true positions in longitude of [...] the planets in terms of elliptical orbits

The source cited was:

Kennedy, E. S. (April 1952). "A Fifteenth-Century Planetary Computer: al-Kāshī's "Ṭabaq al-Manāṭeq". II. Longitudes, Distances, and Equations of the Planets". Isis. 43 (1): 42–50. ISSN 0021-1753. JSTOR 227133.

But this source makes no mention of elliptical orbits and is clear that the plate is Ptolemaic in its construction (and thus is based on circles, not ellipses).

Astronomical unit[edit]

— 09:43, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that

In 1030, Abu Rayhan Biruni quoted ibn Tāriq's estimate of the distance between the Earth and the Sun as 8,000 times the Earth radius, which was the largest known estimate for the astronomical unit up until that time.

The source cited was:

Biruni, Abu Rayhan (1888) [1030]. Alberuni's India. An Account of the Religion, Philosophy, Literature, Geography, Chronology, Astronomy, Customs, Laws and Astrology of India, About A.D. 1030. Oriental Series. Vol. 2. Eduard C. Sachau (trans.). London: Trübner.

But this (primary!) source gives the figures for the astronomical unit as varying from about 1,100 to some 2,100 times the Earth's radius (p. 68). Also, given that this is a translation of a primary source, it contains nothing to support the claim that this was "the largest known estimate for the astronomical unit up until that time".

Force[edit]

— 19:36, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

This edit added the claims that:

Averroes defined and measured force as "the rate at which work is done in changing the kinetic condition of a material body" and correctly theorized that "the effect and measure of force is change in the kinetic condition of a materially resistant mass."

The source cited was:

Moody, Ernest A. (June 1951). "Galileo and Avempace: The Dynamics of the Leaning Tower Experiment (II)". Journal of the History of Ideas. 12 (3): 375–422. ISSN 0022-5037. JSTOR 2707752.

But this source actually says:

Nevertheless, the positions which they defended were not without consequences of a scientific order, for they involved the basic issue of whether motion at uniform velocity, against no resistance, is the effect and measure of the action of a force, or whether force is to be defined and measured by the rate at which work is done in changing the kinetic condition of a material body. (p. 375)

From the standpoint of modern mechanics, Averroes' position contains an important truth—that the effect and measure of force is change in the kinetic condition of a materially resistant mass. (p. 380)

To attribute these modern paraphrases of the modern consequences of Averroes' writings to Averroes himself is not just deeply misleading and utterly anachronistic. On p. 380 the article continues to make it clear that Averroes did not believe that the power involved in moving a body was related to acceleration (as the editor's "quote" claims) but instead that it was related to its speed.

History of anthropology[edit]

— 16:52, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that:

Biruni and Ibn Khaldun have also been praised by several scholars for their Islamic anthropology.

The source cited is:

Tapper, Richard (July 1995). ""Islamic Anthropology" and the "Anthropology of Islam"". Anthropological Quarterly. 68 (3): 185–193. ISSN 0003-5491. JSTOR 3318074.

But that source actually says:

those Muslims he [that is, Ahmed] praises for their Islamic anthropology include the modern Yalman as well as the medieval al-Biruni and Ibn Khaldun, but as Wyn Davies points out, the former's Islamic background (if any) is not evident in his work, while the latter two hardly constitute anthropologists in the conventional sense accepted by Ahmed. (p. 190)

In other words, the source mentions a single scholar who has praised these two figures and a further two who have disagreed with that assessment, from which we get the extremely partial claim that they "have also been praised by several scholars". And this is from an editor who has signed up to Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias.

Abū Rayḥān Bīrūnī[edit]

Elliptical Orbits of planets

— 05:47, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that

In his sixth question, Biruni rejects Aristotle's view on the celestial spheres having circular orbits rather than elliptic orbits.

The source cited for this was:

Berjak, Rafik; Muzaffar Iqbal (Summer 2004). "Ibn Sina–Al-Biruni correspondence, pt. 3". Islam & Science. Archived from the original on 2011-06-16.

Setting aside the issue that the editor is basing their claim here on their own interpretation of primary source, the material cited is purely about the shape of the entire heavens and about the argument Aristotle gives for the heavens being spherical (so that it can rotate in place without needing an enclosing space within which to rotate). Bīrūnī is pointing out that Aristotle's argument works just as well for an ellipsoid of rotation (spheroid) rotating about the relevant axis. Note that this clearly implies that in the plane of rotation the heavens are still circular, just as for the standard Aristotelian account, since only a circular rotation avoids the need for an external space within which the rotation can occur. And as Bīrūnī himself says in this source, he is not even claiming that the heavens are not spherical:

I am not saying this with the belief that the celestial sphere is not spherical, but oval or lenticular

Heliocentrism[edit]

— 21:40, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

(For more background on this from someone originally involved in this, see this note on this editor's talk page.)

This edit added the claim that:

In the 10th century, the Brethren of Purity published the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity, in which a heliocentric view of the universe is expressed in a section on cosmology

The source cited was

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein (1993). An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines: Conceptions of Nature and Methods Used for Its Study by the Ikhwān Al-Ṣafāʼ, Al-Bīrūnī, and Ibn Sīnā (2 ed.). SUNY Press. p. 77. ISBN 9780791415160.

But as that source makes clear (on that page), the sun is in the "centre" in the sense that it is in the middle of the other spheres (i.e. above the Moon, Mercury and Venus; and below Mars, Jupiter and Saturn), its normal place in the Ptolemaic system, which is entirely geocentric, not heliocentric.

— 01:00, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

This edit was removed by another editor, who added a full explanation of the problem to the talk page, just as I have described it here (see Talk:Heliocentrism/Archive 1#Brotherhood of Purity). But two years later, the original editor puts a similar but still misleading claim back into the page, having never responded to the discussion on the talk page:

In the 10th century, the Brethren of Purity wrote the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity, in which some verses have been interpreted as implying a heliocentric model.

And this time the source cited is a non-scholarly article from a Theosophical journal of all places (which is not an obvious organization to look to for accurate historical information):

Eloise Hart (April–May 1973), "Pages of Medieval Mideastern History", Sunrise, 22, retrieved 2010-03-26

This illustrates a classic move on this editor's part: if it is pointed out to them that their source actually contradicts their position, they find another source, of whatever quality, and use that instead. It never seems to occur to them that their claim is false and therefore should simply not be in the article. (And before someone points out that the second edit only says that "some verses have been interpreted", then yes, true: but I don't think we should be adding claims that are only made by sources with no ability to read or understand a given source.)

TECHNOLOGY[edit]

Astrolabic clock[edit]

— 22:09, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that

Ibn al-Shatir constructed the earliest astrolabic clock.

The source cited for this was:

King, David A. (December 1983). "The Astronomy of the Mamluks". Isis. 74 (4): 531–555. ISSN 0021-1753. JSTOR 232211.

But that source just says:

He also made the large astrolabic clock described by the contemporary historian al-Safadi, who saw it in the astronomer's home (pp. 545–546)

There is no suggestion in the article that this was the first, or even an early, example of such a clock.

Invention of ventilators[edit]

— 05:13, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

This edit added the following claim for a medieval Islamic invention:

Ventilators were invented in Egypt

The source cited for this was:

David A. King (1984). "Architecture and Astronomy: The Ventilators of Medieval Cairo and Their Secrets", Journal of the American Oriental Society 104 (1), p. 97-133
But King in fact states very much the opposite:

The early history of the ventilators of medieval Cairo is still a matter of some speculation. It is well known that ventilators were featured in domestic architecture in ancient Egypt. However, the notion that the ventilators of medieval Cairo represent a purely Egyptian development of the ancient Egyptian ventilators is probably to be abandoned because of philological considerations. (p. 100)

Note: The claim has also been included by the user in

Invention of the matchlock[edit]

— 11:36, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

This edit added the following claim to the medieval Islamic inventions article:

The famous Janissary corps of the Ottoman army were using matchlock muskets as early as the 1440s."

The source cited for this was:

Nicolle, David (1995). The Janissaries. Osprey. p. 22. ISBN 1-85532-413-X.
By adding the claim in Inventions in the Islamic world, the editor credits the creation of the weapon mechanism to Islamic inventors. But in the cited passage, Nicolle is unambiguous about the matchlock having been adopted by the Janissaries from—non-Islamic—Hungary:

Yet it was the Janissaries' use of firearms that caught their enemies' attention. At first the soldiers, proud of their neat appearance, disliked dirty guns, but after witnessing their power in Hungary in 1440–43 the Janissaries gradually accepted the matchlock arquebus. (pp. 21f.)

Bomb vessel[edit]

Earliest bomb vessel

— 02:46, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that

the earliest known instance of a ship using a super-sized bombard was at the Battle of Zonchio in 1499 [by the Ottoman navy].

The source cited for this was:

John F. Guilmartin, Jr. (2007), "The Earliest Shipboard Gunpowder Ordnance: An Analysis of Its Technical Parameters and Tactical Capabilities", Journal of Military History, 71 (3): 649-669 [659]
But this is not what Guilmartin wrote, neither by intents nor contents. In a discussion about the Western European shift from wrought-iron to bronze-cast bombards in the late 15th century, he merely notes in a brief digression that

Guns of this type were used on shipboard on occasion: a Turkish carrack mounting a pair of huge bombards fought at the battle of Zonchio in 1499. But such cases were exceptional, and it is clear that the vast majority of bombards in fifteenth-century warship inventories were wrought-iron breech-loaders of modest dimensions. (p. 659)

Note: The claim has also been included by the user in

Invention of the navigational astrolabe[edit]

— 18:59, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that the "first navigational astrolabe was invented in the Islamic world".

The source cited for this was:

Robert Hannah (1997). "The Mapping of the Heavens by Peter Whitfield", Imago Mundi 49, p. 161-162

But Hannah makes no mention whatsoever of this being anyone's invention, and simply mentions the device:

Whitfield includes here as a map the stylized and ornate Islamic navigational astrolabe (whose polar projection system he explains further in a brief Appendix). (pp. 161–162)

Note: The claim has also been included by the user in

Compass rose[edit]

Invention of 32-point compass rose

— 11:27, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that the earliest 32-point compass rose was developed by Arab navigators seafarers.

The source cited for this was:

G. R. Tibbetts (1973), "Comparisons between Arab and Chinese Navigational Techniques", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 36 (1), p. 97-108 [105-106].
But Tibbetts mentions no act of invention whatsoever, but merely contrasts the Arab 32-point compass rose with the different Chinese one:

The Arabs had a compass rose of 32 points and their normal method of indicating these points used the rising and setting of 15 prominent star groups together with the Pole star to indicate the pole. Other groups were also occasionally used by the Arabs in this way. The Chinese had a completely different rose based on 24 points, described in full by Needham.

Comment: To credit the Arabs flat out with the invention, it would have obviously needed a reference explicitly saying so, in particular with a view to the numerous other medieval seafaring peoples using various types of compass roses, too (Europeans, Persians, Indians etc.).

Note: The claim has also been included by the user in

Short-hemmed and short-sleeved hauberk[edit]

— 18:29, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that the "short-hemmed and short-sleeved hauberk is thought to be of Islamic origin".

The source cited for this was:

David Nicolle (1994), Saracen faris 1050-1250 A.D., Osprey Publishing, p. 58, ISBN 1855324539

But this claim was utterly taken out of context. What Nicolle does in the relevant passage is talk the reader through a modern coloured plate (no. K) depicting several types of amour which were typical of the crusader's period. In this context, his phrase "of Islamic origin" just refers to the origin of that particular hauberk shown, not to the origin of this type of armour (which actually dates back to the Celtic period).

Next comes the first layer of mail - in this instance a long-hemmed long-sleeved hauberk captured from the Crusaders, then a layer of quilted cotton filled with silk waste. This kazaghand is based on one described in Usama's Memoires. The second layer of mail has a short-hemmed short-sleeved mail hauberk of Islamic origin. Over this was the outer layer of silk brocade. The kazaghand opened fully down the front where there was an overlap. A slit at the back of the garment went from hem to crotch. (p. 58)

Note: The claim has also been included by the user in

Abbas Ibn Firnas[edit]

al-Maqqari's account of Ibn Firnas

— 14:50, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that the Moroccan historian Ahmed Mohammed al-Maqqari used many early sources no longer extant in his account of Ibn Firnas' gliding attempt.

The source cited for this was:

Lynn Townsend White, Jr. (Spring, 1961). "Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition", Technology and Culture 2 (2), p. 97-111 [100f.]
But White makes it clear that, in the case of Ibn Firnas, al-Maqqari cited only one contemporary source:

No modern historian can be satisfied with a source written 750 years after the event, and it is astonishing that, if indeed several eye-witnesses recorded b. Firnas's flight, no mention of it independent of al-Maqqari has survived. Yet al-Maqqari cites a contemporary poem by Mu'min b. Said, a minor court poet of Cordoba under Muhammad I (d. 886 A. D.), which appears to refer to this flight... (p. 101)

Unreliable sources for exceptional claims[edit]

SCIENCE[edit]

Darwin and Arabic[edit]

— 23:27, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that:

Arabic manuscripts of the al-Fawz al-Asghar were available in European universities by the 19th century. This work is believed to have been studied by Charles Darwin, who was a student of Arabic, and it is thought to have had an influence on his inception of Darwinism.

The source cited was:

Hamidullah, Muhammad (1993) [1980]. Afzal Iqbal (ed.). The Emergence of Islam: Lectures on the Development of Islamic World-View, Intellectual Tradition and Polity. Islamic Research Institute (Pakistan). Islamic Research Institute in collaboration with Da'wah Academy, International Islamic University. pp. 143–144. ISBN 9789694081373.

This seems to be referring to the following quote from Hamidullah:

Darwin also learned Arabic in order to understand Islam. In the collection of his letters that have been published, a number of them are addressed to his Arabic teacher. They are couched in extremely reverent and respectful language. [1]

It takes thirty minutes at The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online (for example) to show that this is utter nonsense. This entire source cannot be trusted for any such information (though may be a good source for other material as Hamidullah is a renowned Islamic scholar, as I understand it).

This same source has been used to support various other bad claims on Wikipedia: for example, this edit uses it to support the claim that "Ibn Miskawayh was one of the first to clearly describe the idea of evolution". The claim is problematic not least because Miskawayh did no such thing (despite the out-of-context quote that was also added to the article); see this analysis of Hamidullah's claims, or else just read up on early Islamic Neoplatonic cosmology.

Heliocentrism; Chemical elements; Physics[edit]

— 05:23, September 16, 2007 (UTC)

This edit added the claim:

"Ja'far al-Sadiq refuted the geocentric model in the 8th century, as well as Ptolemy's explanations for the movements of the Sun and the causes of day and night. Al-Sadiq suggested a heliocentric theory in which the Earth rotates on its axis and around the Sun as an explanation and based on his view that every object in the universe is always in motion."

to the Heliocentrism article.

— 04:23, September 15, 2007 (UTC) This edit added a claim similar to the one above to the article Ja'far al-Sadiq, along with the following claim:

'In physics, al-Sadiq refuted Aristotle's theory of the four classical elements and discovered that each one is made up of different chemical elements:
"I wonder how a man like Aristotle could say that in the world there are only four elements - Earth, Water, Fire, and Air. The Earth is not an element. It contains many elements. Each metal, which is in the earth, is an element." '

— 05:47, September 15, 2007 (UTC) This edit added the following claim (amongst others) to the article Ja'far al-Sadiq:

'In physics, al-Sadiq wrote the following on his particle theory:
"The universe was born out of a tiny particle, which had two opposite poles. That particle produced an atom. In this way matter came into being. Then the matter diversified. This diversification was caused by the density or rarity of the atoms." '

The source given for all these claims (without any page numbers) was:

"Reseach Committee of Strasburg University, Imam Jafar Ibn Muhammad As-Sadiq A.S. The Great Muslim Scientist and Philosopher, translated by Kaukab Ali Mirza, 2000. Willowdale Ont. ISBN 0969949014."

This is a self-published work purporting to be an English translation of a Persian translation of a French original, claimed to have been a "thesis" published by a "Research Committee", variously described as being either "of Strasbourg" or "of Strasbourg University". The numerous problems with it are described in more detail here. When the editor concerned was contacted on his talk page for help in tracking down the supposed French thesis on which the cited source claimed to have been based, he stated that he did not have a copy of the source. Although he did not explicitly admit that he had not actually consulted the source itself, neither did he contradict that assumption on the part the editor who advised him on his talk page that he should not have cited it unless he had actually checked it personally.

The material added to these articles with these edits appears to have been taken instead from this website which had previously been added as an external link to the article Ja'far al-Sadiq by another editor.

The verge of relativity[edit]

— 05:16, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that:

His times for the new moon, lengths for the solar year and sidereal year, prediction of eclipses, and work on the phenomenon of parallax, carried astronomers 'to the verge of relativity and the space age.'

The source cited for this was:

Wickens, G. M. (1976). "The Middle East as world centre of science and medicine". In R. M. Savory (ed.). Introduction to Islamic civilisation. Cambridge University Press. pp. 111–119. ISBN 9780521099486.

But the complete quote from that source reads as follows:

Battani worked on such matters as the timing of new moons, the length of the solar and the sidereal year, the prediction of eclipses, and the phenomenon of parallax. The latter is of fundamental concern for astronomers; it also brings us to the verge of relativity and the space-age. (pp. 117–118)

It turns out that the claim added to Wikipedia was not taken from the original source (despite the citation) but was instead taken from:

Zaimeche, Salah (August 2002), A Cursory Review of Muslim Observatories (PDF), Foundation for Science Technology and Civilization

Note that the Foundation for Science Technology and Civilization website (www.muslimheritage.com) is unreliable according to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 18#History of Science. So this is a problem of WP:RS combined with a misleading citation, rather than a simple misuse of a source.

TECHNOLOGY[edit]

Invention of howitzer[edit]

— 00:23, 12 October 2009

This edit added the claim that the howitzer was an Islamic invention because the Ottoman Abus gun was "an early form of howitzer" and "no other civilization used a gun quite like this gun up until this time".

The source cited for this was: William Johnson, "The Sultan's Big Guns." Dragoman, vol.1, no.2 [2]
But Johnson, apart from being a source of doubtful reliability, does not make such a claim of invention or uniqueness, but merely writes that

The Abus guns were a form of howitzer and came in 10- and 7centimeter diameter bores.

MEDICINE[edit]

al-Sadiq[edit]

— 15:22, September 15, 2007 (UTC) This edit added the following claim to the article "Ja'far al-Sadiq":

'In medicine, al-Sadiq theorized that disease can be caused by certain forms of light:
"There are some lights which, if thrown from a sick person to a healthy person, can possibly make that healthy person sick." '

The citation given was:

"Light and Disease", The Minister 11 (10), p. 5-7, 1984. (cf. Hwaa Irfan, Vibrational Medicine And The Human Energy Field, IslamOnline.net)

Since another editor was unable to find any information at all about the first source cited he contacted the editor concerned for further information. The latter acknowledged that he had never seen that source, but had relied entirely on the web-site cited as an alternative. The problems with both of these sources are outlined here.

Earliest psychiatric hospitals[edit]

— 05:20, 23 January 2008, expanded to 21:55, 5 August 2008

These edits added the claim that "the first psychiatric hospitals were built in the medieval Islamic world."

The source cited for this was: Ibrahim B. Syed PhD, "Islamic Medicine: 1000 years ahead of its times", Journal of the Islamic Medical Association, 2002 (2), p. 2-9 [7-8]

But, while Syed lists "asylums for the mentally ill" in a number of medieval Islamic cities, the cited source falls short of claiming psychatric hospitals to be a Muslim invention. More importantly, the editor should have been aware that the plain Muslim manifest at the end of the article makes Syed's article a partisan source which complies neither to WP:Reliable nor Wikipedia:Neutral point of view:

Conclusion: 1,000 years ago Islamic medicine was the most advanced in the world at that time. Even after ten centuries, the achievements of Islamic medicine look amazingly modern. 1,000 years ago the Muslims were the great torchbearers of international scientific research. Every student and professional from each country outside the Islamic Empire, aspired, yearned, dreamed to go to the Islamic universities to learn, to work, to live and to lead a comfortable life in an affluent and civilized society. Today, in this twentieth century, the United States of America has achieved such a position. The pendulum can swing back. Fortunately, Allah has given a bounty to many Islamic countries – an income over 100 billion dollars per year. Hence Islamic countries have the opportunity and resources to make Islamic science and medicine number one in the world, once again. (p. 9)

Note: The biased claim has been included by the user over the course of almost two years in (ordered by date)

Inappropriate sources[edit]

Law of sines[edit]

— 22:17, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

This sequence of edits (all by the same editor) makes the claim that:

This was the earliest known use of dip angle and the earliest practical use of the law of sines.

The sources cited for this are:

Lumpkin, Beatrice (January 1997). Geometry Activities from Many Cultures. Walch Publishing. ISBN 9780825132858.
Savizi, Behnaz (2007-03-01). "Applicable problems in the history of mathematics: practical examples for the classroom". Teaching Mathematics Applications. 26 (1): 45–50. doi:10.1093/teamat/hrl009.

But one of these is a mathematics textbook aimed at high school students, and the other a discussion about teaching high school mathematics. These are utterly inappropriate references for an article in the history of science. (I am aware that Beatrice Lumpkin is a renowned scholar in the history of mathematics, but this does not make such a work an appropriate source.)

At this point it seems almost churlish to point out that of course the claim itself is not in either source.

WP:OR[edit]

Life expectancy WP:OR and WP:SYNTH[edit]

In addition to the problems mentioned above in #Muslim Agricultural Revolution about life expectancy, that same edit has multiple other problems of WP:OR and {{Rs}}. See Talk:Islamic Golden Age#Claims on life expectancy for some discussion of this.

Fallacies & exaggerated claims[edit]

Presentism / Whig history[edit]

Jagged has been repeatedly cautioned to avoid Presentism -- the tendency to discuss historical actions in modern terms and Whig history -- which leads to a presentist principle of selection in which the editor selects topics to discuss because they can be interpreted as anticipations of modern discoveries.

Despite these repeated discussions, Jagged closed the most recent discussion as if the concept were new to him and took refuge in the notion that he "largely attempted to avoid making claims about medieval scholars that go beyond what the sources suggest." Even if he were citing his sources accurately, which in many cases it has been shown that he did not, he actively chose to select those topics from the many in his sources precisely because they were the ones that made his medieval Islamic scholars sound modern.

Father complex[edit]

The editor shows a marked propensity to call – almost exclusively Islamic – scientists the father of their respective discipline and that at every opportunity (even repeatedly in one and the same article). This designation may or may not be found in the cited references (which are often themselves liable to WP:POV). But the sheer scale of the practice of attributing the establishment of entire scientific disciplines to individuals is unheard of and uncalled for in WP, and demonstrates a tendentious edit pattern.

  • "Abu al-Qasim (Abulcasis), regarded as the father of modern surgery..." (02:39, 14 May 2007)
  • "Avicenna, considered the father of modern medicine..." (01:30, 9 October 2007)
  • "Ibn al-Nafis was the first to describe pulmonary circulation and coronary circulation, which form the basis of the circulatory system, for which he is considered the father of the theory of circulation..." (10:52, 28 November 2007)
  • "Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (Abulcasis), regarded as the father of modern surgery..." (02:33, 14 May 2007)
  • "In al-Andalus, Abu al-Qasim (Abulcasis), the father of modern surgery..." (17:50, 19 July 2007)
  • "Avicenna (Ibn Sina), a Hanbali and Mu'tazili philosopher and doctor in the early 11th century, was another influential figure. He is regarded as the father of modern medicine..." (17:54, 19 July 2007)
  • "Avicenna (Ibn Sina) is considered the father of modern medicine..." (06:31, 20 September 2007)
  • "...Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar), who introduced the experimental method into surgery, for which he is considered the father of experimental surgery..." (13:17, 7 January 2008)
  • "Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar) is considered the father of experimental surgery..." (13:17, 7 January 2008)
  • "Ibn al-Nafis, the father of circulatory physiology..." (23:43, 13 December 2007)
  • "His student Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi (Rhazes) is considered the father of pediatrics..." (22:36, 2 November 2007 )

The above is only a small selection. By his usual copy & paste multiplication method, the editor has introduced his exaggerated father claims all over WP's science and technology articles.

References[edit]

  1. ^ Githens-Mazer, Jonathan; Robert Lambert (2010), Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: a London Case Study (PDF), European Muslim Research Centre at the University of Essex, p. 42
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The content of the above archive was cited as evidence in a request for comment on a user. I believe it should be left in the same state it was in at the conclusion of that request for comment.
David Wilson (talk · cont) 12:35, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Further evidence collected after the closure of the RFC/U[edit]

"Founding" of psychophysics and experimental psychology[edit]

In this edit, Jagged85 cited a paper by Omar Khaleefa that claims that Alhazen invented both psychophysics and experimental psychology 800 years before any Europeans got there:

Psychophysics was first studied by Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen) in his Book of Optics in the 1010s.[g1 1] Further progress was not made until Gustav Theodor Fechner in 1860 with the publication of Elemente der Psychophysik. He coined the term "psychophysics", and described research relating physical stimuli with how they are perceived and set out the philosophical foundations of the field.

I later added a paper that argues that Khaleefa's claim for psychophyics is patently false. The claim for experimental psychology is easily rebuffed as well, but nobody has yet bothered to do so in print yet.

This claim has been repeated by the user at Psychology in medieval Islam, Ophthalmology in medieval Islam, Visual perception, and the like. Famousdog (talk) 13:11, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Reference
  1. ^ Omar Khaleefa (Summer 1999). "Who Is the Founder of Psychophysics and Experimental Psychology?", American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 16 (2).
Comment: This doesn't appear to me to be a clear cut case of abuse of a source. The source cited would appear to satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for reliability, so if the editor's account of what it says is accurate, the worst that can be said of it is that it doesn't represent a neutral point of view. Unless it can be shown that the editor was aware of this, and deliberately ignored it, the edit wouldn't seem to me to constitute evidence of the source's being misused. Of course—assuming the above account is accurate—it would still be an instance of the editor's making detrimental edits to Wikipedia, in this case possibly through ignorance, though, rather than outright misrepresentation.
David Wilson (talk · cont) 12:35, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Mathematics in medieval Islam[edit]

— 22:58 4 June 2007 (UTC)

The stubbing of Mathematics in medieval Islam was discussed at Talk:Mathematics in medieval Islam. One issue concerned this change by Jagged 85 which introduced text including:

In the 12th century, the Persian mathematician Sharaf al-Din al-Tusi was the first to discover the derivative of cubic polynomials, an important result in differential calculus.[g2 1]

That claim was investigated in the discussion (permalink) and the text was shown to be a blatant misrepresentation of the source. Two additional sources were provided on the talk page: those sources were also shown to not verify the claim. One source was Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt by MobileReference, but that source appears to be an aggregation of Wikipedia articles and is not a reliable source.

Reference
  1. ^ J. L. Berggren (1990). "Innovation and Tradition in Sharaf al-Din al-Tusi's Muadalat", Journal of the American Oriental Society 110 (2), p. 304-309.
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