Internal:Scientific claim wiki

It would be good if there were a searchable location to check whether the conclusions of published scientific work has been disputed -- because its data turned out to be wrong, or interpretation turned out to be wrong, or it was overwhelmed by counter-evidence.

One proposal (from Otto Yang)

Set up a wiki-type database could be established where experts rate papers on points such as:

• 1. Reproducibility of data (with links to subsequent papers)
• 2. Correctness of interpretation of data (since the data could be correct but misinterpreted in retrospect after future data on the topic, requiring revision of interpretation)
• 3. Acceptance of results/conclusions in the field
• 4. Listing of papers on the same topic that agree/disagree

Example issues

• Autism-vaccine claims
• RV 144 vaccine -- see on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RV_144
• Rogoff and Reinhardt on whether there is a threshold of govt debt at 90% of GDP causing loss of trust in financial markets (they found YES but it was shown later that they had left out five key observations by mistake and the conclusion was therefore not justified)
• Levitt on whether abortions reduced crime rates 20 years later, state by state (econ) (methods shown to be incorrect, apparently by mistake ; conclusion is unsettled)

Existing scientific/expert/dispute summary sites

• Citizendium
• Scholarpedia
• WetWare
• discoursedb
• sciencegist.com
• acawiki
• reffit.com
• others listed at http://acawiki.org/AcaWiki:Similar_projects). I'd like to figure out whether anybody's marking what's been debunked. I'm not seeing it, and I'd like to figure out why not.

• observation: NONE of these smart sites, so far as I can tell, has a simple category for "disputed" or "debunked." I'm not sure why. Calls for research. The service of identifying disputed/debunked would plainly be useful. Need to summarize what these sites do and how it relates to this project/mission. Econterms (talk) 14:18, 25 March 2014 (EDT)
• observation: If this were a wiki doing this it would not generally identify TRUTH but rather identify whether a conclusion were disputed, and why.
• Issue: what expertise level is required to contribute? MediaWiki is not ideal platform for careful management of access control and rights. We can manage clear misbehavior, but not content disputes, or not real well.

Support for project

• Dr. Otto Yang says there is probably funding for this and identifies important examples of dispute-worthy science in vaccine realm
• Wiki DC could help, manage, work it.
• Platform, design, and structure is not clear/agreed on.
• Where is the community to support the effort? Can we put that together?

To do

• Peter to try out an example, perhaps on acawiki.org, for discussion.
• Peter to post on IdeaLab, when we have more of an agreed-on proposal.
• Many experts to consult: Daniel Mietchen, Yaron Koren