Talk:John Lauritsen

Removal of bibliography

MastCell removed the list of Lauritsen's books with the comment, "we don't generally include long bibliographies of non-notable works". The edit removed clearly relevant information and the reason given was unconvincing. In articles about authors, it is absolutely standard to include a list of the author's books, and indeed it is bizarre not to include such information. If we were dealing with someone like Isaac Asimov, who produced a vast number of books, it would not make sense to list them all, but in this case we are dealing with only some nine works, so the suggestion that the list is too long has no merit. There is no evidence that the works concerned are "non-notable"; in fact there are good reasons to think that some of the books are, in fact, notable. Finally, it is simply not true that only notable works would merit inclusion in the article. Per WP:NOTE: "On Wikipedia, notability is a test used by editors to decide whether a given topic warrants its own article." Even if some of the books don't merit their own articles, that is not a reason for not mentioning them here. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 06:49, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia is WP:NOT a vehicle for novel lists of junky books. No other respectable publication of the planet would carry a "bibliography" of this guy. Why should Wikipedia? In general for fringe figures like Deepak Chopra community practice is to lists works which have attracted notice in WP:RS. Alexbrn (talk) 06:54, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Whether the books are junk or not is irrelevant. The policy you linked to says nothing about "junk". Essentially you are saying that because you don't like the books, mention of them should be removed. That is completely bizarre and has no basis in Wikipedia's policies. As WP:IDONTLIKEIT, which I'm aware is an essay, suggests, the kind of reasons you've given carry no weight in discussions here. If someone is an author, of course we can include a short list of their books in an article. Not doing so excludes obviously relevant information and lowers the quality of the article. The Deepak Chopra article actually disproves your point, since it includes a quite lengthy list of his works. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 07:01, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Because, for better or worse, a lot of Chopra's work gets attention in RS. Lauritsen isn't at that level even. Alexbrn (talk) 07:01, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Lauritsen's book on Frankenstein attracted widespread attention. There may be sources to show that some of his other books are notable as well. MastCell's claim that Lauritsen's books are all not notable is simply wrong, and his claim that we can mention only notable books is wrong also. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 07:04, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

BLP issues

This edit by PaleoNeonate added the statement that Lauritsen promoted "promoting conspiracy theories and HIV/AIDS denialism" in his book The AIDS War. I checked the source. As far as I can see, it does support the statement that Lauritsen promoted "HIV/AIDS denialism", but unless I am missing something, there is nothing supporting the statement about Lauritsen supporting "conspiracy theories". That part should be removed if it cannot be properly cited. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 04:49, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

The statement seemed obvious to me considering the context and book's title, but you're right that there's no direct citation. There is material in the book about HIV denialism including conspiracy theories like "big pharma", so an alternative would be to mention that AIDS denialism is considered conspiracy theory (with source). —PaleoNeonate – 05:20, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Sigh. The whole point of BLP is to ensure that information about living people conforms very very strictly to what reliable sources support, above all and in particular when the information is negative or controversial. So let's leave out "obvious" things that sources don't actually state. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 05:24, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

My aim was in the spirit of WP:PSCI (fringe views should be explained), but I'll actually leave it as-is for now, as the article link seems sufficient. Here's another source: —PaleoNeonate – 05:30, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

References