Anybody who puts together any bit of research whether it be academic, scientific or otherwise is told not to use Wikipedia as a primary source. Yes, Wikipedia is reliable for things like the names of capital cities or other information that is plainly not falsifiable but that’s about it. An information professional of my acquaintance tells me that Wikipedia should not be used as a primary source and any information on Wikipedia should be checked either against other sources or by drilling down into the references that Wikipedia themselves give to ascertain whether they are not reliable. The open source nature of Wikipedia whilst flexible creates a major hole in it as regards accuracy.
Unfortunately it seems that this sensible advice to not treat Wikipedia as a source on which big decisions are made seems to have been ignored or disregarded by the British government. It’s bad enough that there are people advising the government that seem to have no concept of how epidemics work but that these advisors treat Wikipedia as reliable source to bounce Britain into the first lockdown is unforgivable.
The Daily Mail is reporting the latest scandal regarding the government’s handling of covid and it is based on a BBC documentary about the decisions made by the government that was put out a few days ago.
The Daily Mail said:
No10’s scientific advisers relied on dubious data from Wikipedia to help steer Britain through the spring’s coronavirus crisis and wrongly predicted the peak of the first wave by two months, an explosive new documentary has claimed.
Members of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) admitted early virus modelling was based on unverified figures from the online encyclopedia, which can be edited and managed by members of the public.
Tory MP Steve Baker, who has refused to support the Prime Minister’s second lockdown, told MailOnline: ‘Some of those claiming to be “following the science” seem not to understand the meaning of the word. SAGE has been put on a pedestal as if they are able to produce a single version of the truth. It’s not possible.
Are there on individuals with any information science or data integrity skills working for the government? It seems not.
Even basic data and information integrity seems to have been disregarded by unelected scientific advisors in their quest to manipulate a democratically elected government. This raises the question: If the first lockdown was based on shonky and unreliable information from Wikipedia how much other similar such dodgy information has been informing government policy on covid later in the year? Are things like social distancing, masks and the tiered lockdown policy also based on data that has been pulled out of Wikipedia or worse just someone’s arse?
