Talk:Francisco Gil-White

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This article was nominated for deletion on 26/7/2006. The result of the discussion was keep.

Contents 1 Jared Israel's claim that he fired Gil-White from TENC 2 Jared Israel comments 3 Notability 4 Deletion discussion ends in decision to keep 5 Jared Israel and Gil-White's split + accusations related to Rabbi Wise. 6 Regarding the documentation of my (Jared Israel's) charge that Gil-White fabricated data slandering Rabbi Stephen Wise 7 Reply 8 Specious and misleading argument 9 Reply to Jared Israel...again 10 So now Ryan4 or '81.129.153.94' or whoever falsifies the text and switches the link to Gil-White's website 11 Partial list of works 12 Copyright violations 13 Need help to clean up article's flow

[edit] Jared Israel's claim that he fired Gil-White from TENC

After an email correspondance with Prof. Gil-White himself about this claim, I recieved the following response:

Dear Ryan,

In reply to your question concerning somebody's claim on my wiki page that I was fired by Jared Israel from Emperor's Clothes, this is false. I was never fired by Jared Israel because I was nevery in his employ. There was never a contract that made Jared Israel my employer. My work for Emperor's Clothes was volunteer work. Jared Israel and I had some differences and I quit. Moreover, since I was supporting Jared Israel and Emperor's Clothes financially, at the time, if anything it was I who employed Jared Israel. I have the email that I sent him, in which I quit, if Wikipedia needs to see it. But the whole thing seems rather irrelevant to me, and I doubt that every personal dispute a person has with another person needs to be on Wikipedia.

Best,

Francisco Gil-White

I have therefore removed all mention of such a firing, and I think it is best if the particular claims about Steven wise and the shoah, etc. be kept on the blog discussion pages they are on, as they don't seem too relevant to this biographical page.

As a further note, please keep all major edits on the discussion page before changing the bio. Ryan4^Talk 13:27, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jared Israel comments

Francisco Gil-White was deputy (i.e., assistant) editor at Emperor's Clothes (TENC) for two years. The 'firing' business is a straw man. I didn't fire Gil-White; I cancelled his posting privileges on TENC and removed his writing from the server because I found he had become demagogic, that he misrepresented his sources and that, while claiming he was more pro-Jewish than the Jews, his arguments sometimes mirrored those of Israel-baiters and antisemites. This was not a personal, in the sense of petty, dispute, but involved the core principles of TENC. Since setting up his own web site, Gil-White has unfortunately gone downhill. While claiming that he is continuing the work of TENC, he routinely violates scholarly ethics. He now not only misrepresents his data, but outright falsifies it. For example, in one text he took 9 words out of context from a thousand word 1938 article by Rabbi Stephen Wise, an article calling on Britain to provide sanctuary for the German Jews, and used this fragment as evidence that - in Gil-White's words - Rabbi Wise "got his wish" when the Holocaust took place. I traced Gil-White's falsified quotation to the actual article by Wise; I have posted my detective work here and Rabbi Wise's actual article here. I have checked other Gil-White documentation, and found that he frequently falsifies evidence, for example: misrepresenting the dates of quoted material; using ellipses in order to alter or reverse the thrust of quoted material; withholding vital information provided by his sources - and withholding important information about his sources - which information would contradict or undermine his arguments; and more.

Notably, it is four months since I publicly proved that Gil-White lied about what Rabbi Wise wrote but his libelous text remains unaltered on the Internet.

Jared Israel Exato 09:12, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I have deleted the external link you added per Wikipedia:External links guideline policies. Please do not add external links that are hosted on a site that you own or maintain. Cmart 22:15, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Notability

As written, this bio makes little claim to the subject's notability. Searching on Google I see some disputes, but those aren't mentioned here. Either this article should be expanded to include the reasons for the subject's notability, or it should be nominated for deletion. -Will Beback 20:31, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I'm not at all convinced that he meets the standard of notability set out in Wikipedia:Notability (academics). -- ChrisO 20:20, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Speaking as a Briton, I'd say that he's one of the few U.S. academics that people over here might have heard of, even if he is usually referred to as "that guy who got fired by the University of Pensyllvania". 85.210.206.175 16:07, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Where do you hear about him? I checked the Guardian and the BBC, and neither had any record of him. -Will Beback 01:58, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

As a UPenn alum who was an undergraduate there throughout this whole saga and who had friends in his department, I agree. He is certainly not notable on the basis of his academic work. His crackpot views are extreme but not particularly odd; granted it is odd for an Ivy League faculty member, even one only briefly a assistant professor, to espouse such views but there are plenty of other crackpots who make it onto the roster at top schools. It's only the fact that he used his position to trumpet these views, was let go once his contract expired, and then tried to get publicity by attacking and suing the school that this kerfuffle has gotten attention outside the UPenn community. I don't know if he deserves a whole article for that, but if he does, then that should be the extent of it. NTK (talk) 19:16, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

User NTK, please explain how Gil-White's theories on ethnicity and prestige (which have been published by and cited in many refereed journals with high impact factors) are "crackpot". The theory on the evolution of prestige in particular has garnered considerable attention in the academic literature, and establishes his notability per criteria 1, 2, and 5 of wikipedia's notability guidelines for academics. It appears you are confusing his political writings (for which he was fired from Penn) with his work on evolutionary psychology (for which he was hired to Penn and for which he continues to be well-cited and respected within research circles). In any case, I have reverted your edit. Please clarify your position. You must give a better reason for deleting besides your personal opinion of his academic work. Cmart (talk) 09:35, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree that Gil-White's academic work is sufficiently notable for inclusion (coincidentally, I was reading a book the other day that cited him in several instances). However, I think it's also true that it's covered at far too much length. The article needs to be cut down significantly to make it more concise and less of an attempt to flatter Gil-White. On the other hand his political writings, which NTK rightly describes as being crackpot, aren't notable and don't need to be covered. -- ChrisO (talk) 08:45, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I did not say that his work in anthropology is crackpot, only that it is not sufficiently notable in its own right under Wikipedia standards for academics. There are easily tens of thousands of academics who are more notable. My point is that he is most NOTABLE for his political writings, which I do characterize as crackpot, and have gotten him far wider attention than his academic publications. I do not argue that his papers have been cited a number of times. I do argue that they are not so notable that they deserve an article-length exposition on Wikipedia; there are thousands of refereed papers on anthropology alone published each year. Remember that his only academic post was an assistant professorship at UPenn, which was not renewed. It seems that since then he has not published since he left Penn and he is now employed only as editor of his own journal. NTK (talk) 09:15, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

User NTK, I'm not sure where you got the idea that his notability comes primarily from his politics, but lets put that aside for a moment and discuss his impact on academia, which is is the primary reason why he belongs on wikipedia. Gil-White is the originator of new important concepts within the fields of cultural anthropology and evolutionary psychology. The concepts i am referring to are 1) the evolutionary importance of prestige in human society and 2) the idea that humans process ethnic categories with the same mechanisms that evolved to process biological species. Both of these ideas have led to multiple studies which meet the standards of reliable sources. So yes, he is notable as an academic. Also, the fact that he hasn't published articles recently is irrelevant. Cat Stevens stopped making music, does that mean we should declare his career as a musician non-notable and delete it from his wikipedia article? No, that would be ridiculous. Let's return to Gil-White's politics. You say they get 'far wider attention' than his academic research. This is simply not true. The extent of the attention you speak of- as far as i can tell- is a few editorials in a college newspaper, one story in the philadelphia inquirer, and a brief appearance on a cable news show. In terms of wikipedia notability, this is of less importance than the impact he has had on human psychological research. Cmart (talk) 10:06, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

If you google him and review the results, you will find much more crackpot than academic, from a wide variety of sources. If you look at the history of this article, as well as the original AfD discussion, you will find that at that time the entire original basis of this article was the political flap. The exposition of his academic theories was appended later. I don't doubt that he has made contributions within the field of anthropology. I do think that some citations do not justify an article-length exposition that would suggest that he has founded an entire school of thought and which seem to be intended to bolster his own "prestige" and color his wacky political beliefs with legitimacy.

It may not be a fair comparison, but I would liken this to Rafael Robb, who until recently was a long-time, tenured professor of economics at the Wharton school at Penn, certainly a more prestigious position in the university. He has many more publications and citations in his field than Gil-White, but doesn't have an article. To write one now and claim that he is notable primarily for his academic work and not bludgeoning his wife to death would be disingenuous at best. NTK (talk) 20:31, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

There isn't a limited amount of space on wikipedia for academics to compete for, as you seem to believe. The rule is: if an academic fulfills at least one of the criteria on Wikipedia:Notability (academics), then he or she is notable. Gil-White fulfills multiple criteria. It appears that you are taking isssue not necessarily with Gil-White but rather with the Wikipedia Notability Guidlines in general . My suggestion is that you take it up on on the talk page at that article: [[Wikipedia:Notability (academics). Also, I do not see how comparing Gil-White to a murderer furthers this discussion. If the murderer you mentioned fulfills the criteria of academic notability, please feel free to add an article about him. Cmart (talk) 01:04, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I noticed you seem to place a lot of importance on a professor's position at a university, as if thats a kind of yardstick for measuring notability. It is not. Again, please refer to Wikipedia:Notability (academics). University position (be it tenured or assistant, at ivy league or other) is not listed under criteria. As for your assertion that his "google results" make him a notable crackpot, I would urge you to check to see how many of them constitute reliable sources. It is my understanding that the vast majority of them are not reliable sources, and as such they do not contribute to his wikipedia notability. Cmart (talk) 01:25, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I did a quick search on google scholar to check your claim that rafael robb has more citations than Gil-White. Sorry buddy, but your murderer has no citations at all. Compare this to Gil-White's impressive numbers. So much for your own crackpot theory. I see no reason to continue this dialogue. Gil-White's notability has been established. If you still disagree please request mediation. Cmart (talk) 04:07, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't want to belabor the point, but it seems that almost all media reports including the Daily Pennsylvanian have been misspelling his last name as Rafael Robb instead of the correct Rafael Rob. He has 764 results to Gil-White's 147. I don't think either result demands an article, or is more reliable at establishing notability than a Google search. As mentioned Gil-White has appeared on Hannity & Colmes and attracted some well-documented if brief national/international attention for his political views and activism, which were the original basis of this article as well as the justification for keeping it on AfD; whereas his anthropology publications are known only within some small segment of the academic anthropology community. I also see little value in continuing this dialog. NTK (talk) 06:57, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion discussion ends in decision to keep

Furthermore, now that a first section describing his theories and why he is notable has been added, it seems like we can remove the "article nominated for deletion banner" at the top, yes? 24.188.92.147 21:29, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jared Israel and Gil-White's split + accusations related to Rabbi Wise.

I have changed the link that Jared Israel added to footnote this assertion from a link to Israel's own page to a neutral page, Israpundit, on which the a debate between the two ocurred. I think it is unfair for one side of the debate to be able to bias it by linking the claim to their own page, and I think adding the neutral link is the most unbiased and fair thing to do. I would ask that Mr. Israel please refrain from changing this link back again to his own page, as per the wikipedia guidelines on multiple reverts and linking to your own page. Ryan4^Talk 20:05, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding the documentation of my (Jared Israel's) charge that Gil-White fabricated data slandering Rabbi Stephen Wise

Ryan4's argument is specious. First, I was not the one who added footnote 7 linking to [1] As can be seen from History, it was added as footnote 1, and then changed to footnote 7, in neither case by me. (The first insertion was 15 September: "16:06, 15 September 2006 85.210.206.175") It has been kept through many text edits by a number of people until Franciso Gil-White's associates tried to remove it a few weeks ago. I have merely put it back. The footnote relates specifically to the "Francisco Gil-White" article's assertion that "Jared Israel...recently charged that Gil-White falsified documentation to support his accusation that the main US Zionist leader, Rabbi Steven Wise, 'got his wish" when the holocaust took place." My accusation that Gil-White slandered Rabbi Wise, and Gil-White's reply, initally appeared as part of a 63-comment-long thread on the Israpundit website. That thread was 35,739 words long. The most relevant comments are, obviously, mine accusing Gil-White, and his, replying to the accusation. Ryan4 writes that linking to the full 35,739 word discussion, which covered many points, and which included endless hot air, is "fair." The reality is, people would get lost in the 35,739 words. What is fair is to hear my charge, and Gil-White's reply. Gil-White doesn't want this to happen, because anyone with a pulse can see that I do indeed prove that he fabricated his horrific charge against Rabbi Wise. Exato^Talk 6:00, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reply

I disagree. My fairness criterion has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of words people need to read in order to gain a grasp of the debate. I doubt very much that anyone would suggest that it is better for people to read a 10,000 word *biased* viewpoint than a 30,000 *balanced view*. If this debate is to be mentioned at all in a biography about a person, then the link should not be to an attack page written by someone with whom he fell out. I remind you that one could make the argument that the link should instead be to Gil-White's own piece in which he makes the accusation, but for fairness sake to both sides, I instead added the Israpundit page. As usual, this is a classic case of someone inserting links to their own work, which is why their is a policy against that on wikipedia. It seems most people cannot think straight when their own ideas/prejudices are at stake. Ryan4^Talk 13:55, 31 December 2006 (UTC) p.s. why have you copied my username style exactly?

[edit] Specious and misleading argument

Again, the argument made by "Ryan4" is specious:

1) Again, I did not add the footnote with the link to the exchange between me and Gil-White. It was inserted by others (as I showed, two comments above) and remained there for several months until Gil-White et al replaced it with a link to a book-length Israpundit thread that discusses many issues, and where my charge and Gil-White's answer, relevant to the Wikipedia article, are buried. I merely restored the original link. Of course, I could have asked someone else - perhaps, a "Ryan100" – to restore it, but I dislike childish games.

2) The reason the footnote links to a page on the Emperor's Clothes server is that this page contains the relevant material – my accusation that Gil-White falsified data in accusing the leader of the American Jews of wanting the Holocaust, and Gil-White’s defense – every word. The Israpundit thread that Gil-White et al are trying to put in its place is just under 40,000 words, compared to the 5400 words in the original link, but more important, the Israpundit thread is overwhelmingly irrelevant, whereas the link to the exchange between me and Gil-White concerning his Rabbi Wise accusation is 100% relevant.

3) On his website, on Wikipedia, and elsewhere, Gil-White, using his own name and various aliases, routinely presents himself as the continuer of Emperor’s Clothes (TENC). The link which Gil-White is trying to remove makes clear why I would want to cancel Gil-White’s posting privileges at TENC, even though he said he agreed with TENC 110%, praised me to the skies, etc. – the reason being that I, who had spent much time editing his writing, had concluded that Gil-White has a flexible view towards data: he invents it. The link "Ryan4" wants removed raises the issue of Gil-White's attitude towards facts in the context of his claim that Rabbi Wise, a leading American Jew, wanted the European Jews murdered. I present my charges with data that can be checked using a free internet resource; Gil-White’s refutation is posted in full. Thus a reader can assess the accuracy of Gil-White’s ubiquitous self-presentation as a reliable reporter of sensational research discoveries.

If the link featuring the exchange between me and Gil-White concerning the charge that he is a fabricator, which, once again, I did not add, is removed, the Wikipedia article on Gil-White will become what Gil-White apparently intended it to be: a promotion piece. Doesn't maneuvering to use Wikipedia for self-promotion constitute a core violation of Wikipedia's philosophy? Exato 16:00, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reply to Jared Israel...again

1) It doesn't matter who put the link up *first*. The fact is that YOU are now adding links to your own website, which violates the WP:EL rules on external linking to one's own personal website. What is childish about editing a wikipedia page to conform to accepted standards?

2) This link is not to any relevant data. This page is a biased attack on Gil-White, and his wiki entry should not be a place where any detractor can come and add links to their attacks on him. Were there a wiki entry on you, I doubt you'd want links to attacks on yourself and you work placed by someone with whom you had had a dispute.

3) Gil-White has never made any claims about continuing TENC. TENC is a completely separate website with which he is now completely unaffiliated. He uses no aliases, and I can assure you that I am not him. My name is Ryan Victor, I go to UPenn, and having studied under Gil-White and admiring his work, I have helped, along with others, to write and maintain this entry about him. Gil-White has never edited this page, and thus it cannot be said to be a piece of self-promotion.

If we can't agree on the use of a proper link, then I will simply remove the claim about Wise, since it isn't really necessary anyway. If you continue to keep reverting over and over, I will recommend arbitration. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.129.153.94 (talk) 15:11, 2 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] So now Ryan4 or '81.129.153.94' or whoever falsifies the text and switches the link to Gil-White's website

Having staged a conflict, Gil-White and/or his supporters use it as a cover to remove the point they don't want people to see: that Gil-White has falsified data (and justified the falsification!) to support his accusation – the same as what is claimed by the worst antisemites – that Rabbi Wise, the main leader of American Jews prior to World War II, wanted the Holocaust. 81.129.153.94’s or whoever's altered text presents Gil-White as having left TENC over disagreements about Rabbi Wise. This is false. Gil-White wrote his slanderous attack on Rabbi Wise many months after I took away his posting privileges at TENC. I have put the text in question back exactly the way it was, prior to the staged conflict, with footnote 7 as Ryan4 insisted on altering it – linking to the Israpundit thread. So Gil-White or whoever now has no excuse to falsify the text, which falsificaton was, I guess, the intended purpose of this little staged provocation.

The problem with the Israpundit thread is that it is so long, and so diverse, it is hard to locate the material relevant to the Wikipedia article. If people read it, they will find my documentation of the charge that Gil-White fabricated data to attack Rabbi Wise in Comment #31 and Gil-White’s revealing defense in Comment #55. I would also suggest reading my Comment #16 and Gil-White’s reply #19, which began the argument. Exato 19:00, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Partial list of works

There's no reason to have this section. Scholars do not have a list of journal papers and online books(!) listed in their article unless they are particularly notable, and I don't think this is the case here. Whoever is interested in this guy's CV can refer to his webpage.--Doron 20:59, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Can you provide a wikipedia guideline that specifically states this? I see no reason to remove it since it's already been put up save a violation of a rule e.g. copyright, etc. Ryan4^Talk 00:34, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

So anything that doesn't specifically violate a Wikipedia rule can be added? Should we also write what's his sign, his favorite color, his shoe size and his height? No. You have to have a positive reason to include material -- while this section is harmless, this still doesn't make it noteble. I have no objection to mentioning anything notable he wrote, but just a list of publications doesn't seem appropriate. See WP:N.--Doron 09:11, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I've just been to Google Scholar and the vast majority of those papers have been cited between 25-100 times each, so I think they're notable enough. If you want to go decide on some kind of citation cutoff point below which something isn't notable, trawl google scholar, and then delete the entries that fall below that limit, then be my guest. I, however, think it's just easier to leave them all up now that they're there. The online books have also been cited on wikipedia itself as sources, so they're notable too. Ryan4^Talk 17:56, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

25 times isn't much, papers with that many cites are a dozen a dime, even I have a published paper that got cited 38 times, there must be thousands of papers around with that many cites, the vast majority are not worth mentioning in an encyclopedic article. He has one paper with 57 cites and one with 98 cites, the rest have far less. And the online books being cited on Wikipedia hardly contributes to their notability, as it is not clear that they are notable enough to be cited in the first place! Well, the list is harmless, really, but it just makes the whole article look like this guy's CV. If you want it to look like an encyclopedic article, you should distinguish between notable and obscure. Can you explain the impact of any of these papers on the academic community, apart from the cite count? Does any of these papers introduce novel approaches to the field, or are they merely incremental? Do you know anything about these papers or did you just copy the list from his webpage?--Doron 01:12, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

The viewpoint expressed in the main body of the article is a significantly novel approach to evolutionary psychology, and the papers taken together articulate that approach. Of course I know about the papers, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to write about the view of evolutionary psychology that they express. I fail to see why obtaining the information from his website would be a bad thing? Ryan4^Talk 18:21, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

The list looks like an almost exact copy of a list in this guy's personal website ([2]). This list contains mostly secondary or obscure papers, evident by an unimpressive Google Scholar cite count, with perhaps a couple of moderately significant papers. I don't know what you know or what you read, I can just tell you what it looks like to the reader that is not familiar with this guy. It looks like a CV. It looks like an indiscriminate list, it doesn't look like someone took the time to select what really is notable. This reflects on the seriousness of the entire article. You may as well throw in his junior high school grades.--Doron 21:26, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I deleted the ones with the fewest citations. OK now? Ryan4^Talk 22:51, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Well, I think only "The evolution of prestige" and "Are ethnic groups biological 'species' to the human brain?" really get a reasonable cite count to be considered somewhat notable, but I can live with others on the list. Surely "Ultimatum game with an ethnicity manipulation", "How conformism creates ethnicity creates conformism" and "Common misunderstandings of memes" should be removed with their poor cite count. I find the "Economic Man" entry especially astonishing, since it says "forthcoming 2005", which means the list is a cut-and-past and out-of-date! And the "online books" are nothing more than some more webpages, they ought to be removed until this guy finds someone willing to publish them; including personal webpages really devalues the term "works", doesn't it.--Doron 23:12, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I changed the forthcoming entry to reflect the correct edition in which it was published. I would say that anything published by MIT, Oxford, Cambridge Univ. press and respected journals are notable, even if they're not cited enormously often. The Monist is a well respected philosophy journal, and he guest edited it, which also is a sign of notability. A lot of people self-publish and this is not a bad thing - as I've said I've seen quite a few pages on race & IQ cite the Resurrecting Racism book on wiki, so surely if it's notable enough to be included in a wiki entry is notable enough to include in a list of works? Ryan4^Talk 17:36, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Certainly not, I don't think it is notable enough to be cited, and citation on a wiki is certainly no indication of notability. Anyone can set up a website like that and then anybody can add references to that website. These so-called "online books" are little more than a blog in that respect. If it was published after peer-review (like his journal papers), or at least it was extensively cited by peer-reviewed publications by others, that would make it worth mentioning, otherwise his "books" are as good as anybody's really.--Doron 20:55, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright violations

I've found that chunks of this article are copied verbatim from Gil-White's website, specifically http://www.hirhome.com/bio.htm . This is a blatant copyright violation, most of which seems to have been added in this edit by User:Ryan4. The entire Ethnicity section and, as far as I can tell, the entire Summary of prestige theory subsection appear to be copy-and-paste jobs. Needless to say this will have to come out - I don't have time to do it now, but will sort it out later today. -- ChrisO 02:24, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I removed a section that was copied from [3], which may constitute a copyright violation, and another one that was copied from J. Henrich and F. J. Gil-White, "The evolution of prestige: Freely conferred deference as a mechanism for enhancing the benefits of cultural transmission", Evolution and Human Behavior 22 (2001) 165-196, which is most certainly a copyright violation (copyright by Elsevier).--Doron 12:51, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Re-written, no longer any copyright issues. 141.158.238.144 17:00, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Need help to clean up article's flow

The article is a basically a bunch of clumps of words making it difficult to follow (long paragraphs). Thus, not interesting nor informative in the current style, IMO. Perhaps some culling and re-structuring would help? -but am not sure where to begin. Any suggestions? Thanks Gee Alice ^[Talk] 22:01, 3 January 2008 (UTC)