User talk:Neil Brick/Sandbox/Hell Minus One

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Template as per talk below: I am the author of most of the text at the wikipedia article (there have been edits made by others).Neil Brick 21:32, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

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Serious neutrality problem

Until there is some community-agreed neutral article about the existence of satanic ritual abuse, I have a serious problem with articles talking about how individuals recounted it, reported it to uncontrolled surveys, etc. The existence of the phenomenon is certainly not generally accepted.

This took place in the United States. While a police detective may say he confirmed it, the U.S. legal system operates on the assumption of "innocent until proved guilty in a court of law." None of the citations refer to a court determination, only police statements and reports from news organizations.

The statement "Kimberly Perkins: “The lack of prosecution of such reports does not mean that the reports are fictitious.”[4]" is, in the legal system, does not mean anything.

There are statements that there is physical evidence, but no details from a neutral physician.

Presumably living people are the subject of these allegations. I'm really concerned about CZ's position here, both as a home for non-neutral statements, and, in the case of living people, liability. Howard C. Berkowitz 21:10, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

IMO, her story is presented neutrally in the article. There were confessions that were discussed in the print and television media. The article simply reports the data available about the book and her story. I don't see where there is a liability issue, since no one is named and there were written confessions with excerpts published in media outlets. Neil Brick 21:21, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Neil, I don't accept that satanic ritual itself is a neutral concept. Also, the article promotes her book. The article assumes satanic ritual abuse exists.

The lead, saying s "Anne’s story has been confirmed by physical evidence and by the written and verbal confessions of her mother and stepfather" is not neutral. It does not produce the physical evidence, either in details that could be interpreted by neutral medical personnel, or in the form of a report by a clearly neutral medical authority.

Again, in the American legal systems, confessions prove nothing unless they are stipulated in a court of law. Media are not a court of law, but recognized news media have a certain leeway that general publications do not.

Sorry, I can't support this article at all, especially if it is the harbinger of a series on allegations of satanic conspiracies, which don't even make sense in Church of Satan theology, silly as I find it.

It further disturbs me to find this is being propagated at Wikipedia as well, which gives me the impression of advocacy rather than contributing to a neutral body of knowledge. Howard C. Berkowitz 21:27, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

With all due respect, I don't see how this article does anything more than simply discuss her story. All statements are documented and back by sources. I am willing to compromise on certain statements in the article, but I do believe the article has a place in Citizendium. Neil Brick 21:37, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

No, I'm sorry. While there is documentation, they do not meet any reasonable test of authority. Police and prosecutors, in the American legal system, explicitly do not determine guilt; that is the job of the judiciary. While I can't speak to Utah, it can be surprisingly easy for an aggressive prosecutor to get an indictment from many state grand juries.

At least one of the journalists involved, Kimberly Perkins, is retired from active coverage, and has no national representation as an investigative reporter. It's sad to say, but television news no longer features the integrity of a Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite. Sensationalism is the order of the day; I'd ask any neutral party to read Perkins' summation and imply she is only reporting, not drawing conclusions and reporting them as fact.

"Discuss her story"? As the old TV show used to say, there were millions of stories in the Naked City. Why should this one get any more credence than any other random allegation, unless one is convinced there is a large scale coverup of Satanist ritual abuse, hidden better than virtually any government secret, and one must reveal it? You might start by presenting non-anecdotal evidence that satanist ritual abuse exists, and why, from any known Satanist theology, they would want to be doing it.

After the Extreme Abuse Survey, I am very concerned that you may be bringing in a series of allegations of ritual abuse and mind control, none with strong evidence from neutral parties. It would comfort me if there was more contribution on the nature and rationale of the (using the legal term) conspiracy, not anecdotes, not self-selecting surveys that don't meet any reasonable social science criterion of validation. Howard C. Berkowitz 23:09, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I am more concerned that the article talks about "Jenny", Kim Perkins and Rachael and we have no idea who they are? It's also not clear who abused her (though I assume it was her parents) or what made it satanic or ritual or abuse? It needs work. D. Matt Innis 00:01, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Kimberley Perkins is the retired Utah TV journalist who made the flat statment that ritual abuse exists, but is hard to prosecute. I think Rachael is an alias used in some reports about Anne, but I'm not sure. Howard C. Berkowitz 00:10, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, that's the sort of problem I see with it, the story is told in the footnotes, not the article. D. Matt Innis 00:22, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

(undent) Unfortunately there are no neutral parties in the field. There is the FMSF, the Eberle's, Underwager and affiliated researchers to the FMSF (predominately those that defend alleged and convicted perpetrators) and survivors and therapists that claim ritual abuse exists that have published journal articles and have written books. The use of the word "conspiracy" in my opinion would be pejorative, since it connotates falsehood. The name "Rachel" was an alias used by Anne to protect her identity in 1995. This could be clarified in the article. Neil Brick 03:30, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

No neutral people? Are you seriously suggesting that the world is divided into perpetrators and their protectors, and the victims of the perpetrators? Anyone who doubts any allegations must be protecting? Does that make me a protector because I find some of the claims implausible? That has the flavor of what Wiccans call the times of the burnings; anyone suspected of witchcraft was guilty; anyone who questioned it also became guilty.

By saying "alleged and convicted", are you suggesting that all allegations are true, and just that some perpetrators get away with it? If not, what do you mean by that phrasing? Are there ever inaccurate accusations?

Sorry, if that's the case, it does meet my definition of a conspiracy: either you agree with the assertion, or you are denying it. There seems a basic question that never gets addressed: why are all these wildly varying accused groups abusing children? Do you really believe that intelligence agencies wait for graduates of lesser abuse to become operational trainees, rather than selecting adults with demonstrated potential? Howard C. Berkowitz 03:40, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, IMO, there are no neutral parties. It became a very emotional debate early on, with the media either strongly backing one side or the other. It is difficult to tell whether certain cases were false accusations or whether they were cover ups of data at times. And it appears that some of those promoting skeptical theories did have ideological leanings toward pro-incest philosophies (Underwager, Gardner) or were pornographers themselves (Eberle's). It would be nice if there was a neutral party to go through all of the cases and sort out of all the data from the last 25 years. Early on, there were a few attempts to do this (like Hechler's book). But even one that attempted to tell a neutral story (like Stanton from Newsweek 1997) was attacked by the FMSF and the story was never published.Neil Brick 04:14, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

If there are no neutral parties, and I doubt the truth of all allegations of child abuse, I don't particularly like the implications that I am pro-incest, pro-abuse, or anti-accusation-is-enough. That is, logically, what you are saying: either agree with you, or be counted as an abuser.

But, to take that out of personal terms, what you are saying is that it is impossible to write a neutral article on the subject. Since Citizendium has a basic principle of neutrality, are you saying that you want an exception, or that you are withdrawing the article because it cannot be neutral? Howard C. Berkowitz 04:22, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

No inference was made or meant about any of the contributors on this page. I do not understand why the story of a woman that is backed by reported confessions would be this controversial and would not be allowed to stay on the page as is. I think that the article should be her account of the story. If there are other published accounts of her story, then they should be included. I believe that the article is neutral now, as it uses the word alleged, etc. throughout and has been critiqued several times in the present article.Neil Brick 05:07, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

"Paul Murphy: One woman who came forward to tell about ritual abuse brought something no one else has - a confession from the perpetrators. “Jenny” (Jenny is an alias) was only three years old when her parents started sexually abusing her. The bruises in this picture show she was physically abused as well." Aside from Paul Murphy never being identified, but being a news reporter from context, the statement about bruises is unsubstantiated. Forensic pathologists, testifying under oath, often will say merely that a bruise would be consistent with being squeezed by a hand, or by being struck. They make such qualified statements even after examining the bruise on an autopsy table, under proper lighting, and quite possibly microscoping examination of the tissue under the bruise. This is a sweeping conclusion to make.

Simply sprinkling an article with "alleged" does not make it neutral. To take the example of the bruises, at the very least, references to the difficulty, in forensic pathology, of determining the cause of a bruise, would be a step toward neutrality. This detail-free allegation would be thrown out of any court. Howard C. Berkowitz 06:19, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia issue -- please take the necessary steps

Hi, Neil, I see that this article is 100% the same as a recently created one at Wikipedia, and yet you have not said that it is a copy of a Wikipedia article. This raises a whole separate issue. You can check off the Wikipedia box at the bottom of the article, and then put a template on the talk page saying that you yourself are the 100% author of the Wikipedia article. If you do those things, I'll bow out and let others discuss. Otherwise, acting as a Constable, I will delete the article. Hayford Peirce 21:25, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

WP template

Here's the template you should use, either using all the present text within it, or modifying that text as needed. Please move it to the top of the page, under the Subpage template. Thanks! Hayford Peirce 21:49, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

{{WPauthor}}

Put in nowiki to show what actually needs to be coded. Howard C. Berkowitz 21:51, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Constable action

Hello all, I did move the majority of the article to User talk:Neil Brick/Hell minus one. While the memoir may or may not be something to write about, it wasn't clear that the remainder of the text was talking about the memoir, which I believe is what the article is about. Regardless, Neil, clean it up and put something together that is neutral (meaning covers all competing perspectives more thoroughly) and we'll go from there. D. Matt Innis 23:30, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Also, surely this article would fall under other workgroups besides psychology. D. Matt Innis 23:33, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, for social science, sociology may be more relevant than psychology, with due regard that there is such a discipline as social psychology. Nevertheless, if one assumes these abusing groups exist, then the behavior of a group within a society seems much closer to sociology. If one assumes they do not exist, sociology still applies, as it addresses why a group would have such intensive beliefs. Psychology could be relevant in discussing her reactions as a person.

Things get blurry between law and media, since the claims of proof seem to be in law enforcement and media, not the courts. If Satanism is involved, one might want input from Religion. Howard C. Berkowitz 23:45, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Do any of those fields make regular scholarly study of claims of satanic ritual abuse enough to be a reasonable voice concerning that subject? D. Matt Innis 23:52, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

The only thing that makes this title workable is that it is the title of a book, so that is what the article should be about. Unless someone can convince me otherwise, to write articles about everyone who claims to be subjected to abuse doesn't seem to be reasonably maintainable. What about the literature workgroup? D. Matt Innis 00:26, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

It's more the negative assertion. See, for example, the National Academy of Science [1], Understanding Child Abuse and Neglect (1993), Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (CBASSE). The term "ritual abuse" appears once in the book and never "Satanic". Look at our article Pseudoscience#Other. I've never seen a serious scientific source suggest it is other than a conspiracy theory. addition See one Distinguished Professor, Psychology and Social Behavior at Stanford: http://socialecology.uci.edu/faculty/eloftus/ (and I'm not related to the Berkowitz in the paper she cites)

The maintainability point is well taken. I've published engineering books, but don't necessarily try to keep them updated once some of the technologies became obsolete. Even if literature were to take it, is it rational to offer a policy that any book can have its own article? Matt, I used to work for the Library of Congress, which has the right to accession any book copyrighted in the U.S. At most, it took in 20 percent of them. Howard C. Berkowitz 00:37, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

As a one-time writer myself, I am firmly of the belief that CZ ought to have an article about each and every book ever published in the world. As long as someone else writes them! Just because the LoC doesn't have enough space to take in every *physical* book, what does that have to do with CZ not having articles about even the most trivial books -- *as long as they're written in an encyclopedic way*? That's what we're here for, remember? Hayford Peirce 01:09, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll leave that up to the literature workgroup! I think we should leave the satanic ritual abuse to the experts in psychology, sociology and religion. I bet they have lots to say, too, but I don't think it should be on an article titled Hell Minus One. That should be reserved for the book. I suggest remove psychology and replace it with literature and make this article about the book only. I will leave that to those who decide content, though and back out of here. D. Matt Innis 01:27, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

(undent)I have made some major changes to the article, attributing statements to the media, using more neutral terminology and changing cquotes to blockquotes. I agree that it should be in the literature section and will work on this next.Neil Brick 04:02, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry Neil, but that wasn't much better. Let's work on it in you talk space and when you are done, ask me on my talk page and I will be glad to come take a look and even help. You might consider asking for some help from others in the Literature workgroup as well. Until then, don't put the article back in mainspace. D. Matt Innis 04:36, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

In all honesty, I am not happy about this. The article at this point uses neutral language throughout and clearly attributes sources showing that the statements made belong either to Anne or some other source. I am willing to see some additional minor changes, but I don't see how it could be more neutral in terms of terminology or source attribution.

I would like to move this issue to a mediation process.Neil Brick 05:14, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

The sources themselves are nonauthoritative and present one point of view. You yourself say it is impossible to be neutral on the subject, which, in my opinion, makes the subject, as you define it, to be inappropriate for CZ under the Neutrality Policy.

Nevertheless, if the article were merely to speak of her book and her statements, that could qualify it as literature. Your inclusion of police and journalistic allegations, to support her story, take the article from literary description into advocacy of a position.

The article, in my opinion, is neutral only to someone who is convinced that widespread ritual abuse exists and is being covered up. It does not remotely consider the possibility police or journalists might have their own agendas. It speaks of physical evidence but gives none. The reporter's statement that "ritual abuse exists" is not supported by anything but her opinion, yet it is stated as fact.

There is no "mediation process", until an Editor for the appropriate workgroup makes a determination. There seems considerable debate on which workgroups should be applied, and no Editor has been involved. The role of the Editorial Council is unclear in such matters. Howard C. Berkowitz 05:28, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

On her specific story, there is only one point of view. No one has denied her story. According to her and the media, her perpetrators admit they did it. There is no evidence of anyone having an agenda. If there was, it could be reported. I will edit the story further to make it even more neutral.Neil Brick 05:35, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I have made further edits to the article, deleting several quotes, changing the language to make it even more neutral. I hope that the article can stay in main space while it is worked on further, until all editors are satisfied that it complies with all policies.Neil Brick 05:49, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Since you yourself have said the subject cannot be discussed neutrally, how can it possibly comply with the neutrality policy?

Further, a Constable instructed you not to move the article to mainspace until there was agreement that it was ready. You apparently are not accepting that directive.

There can be more than one point of view. Simply because no one has denied it does not mean that legal or moral proof exists. News media have a frequent agenda called "ratings", or, "if it bleeds, it leads". I don't regard a local TV station or a local mid-level detective as authoritative on anything; there are courts that do such adjudications. Police never, ever, make mistakes or even...gasp...exaggerate for status?

The statement "The Ritual Abuse Task Force of the Utah State Attorney General’s Office investigating ritual abuse 59 page report found that ritual abuse existed in Utah, but it was difficult to prosecute" is not about her story, but about Utah in general.

I believe that she believes that her story is true. We do not have transcripts or context to indicate under what circumstances the confessions were made. It is increasingly standard for police departments to video-tape interrogations and confessions, and have them available for independent review. I personally do not find her specific allegations of abuse especially plausible; there is no explanation for why anyone would perform those specific acts — give some plausible theology and there might be a better case.

Many of the news dialogues are full of suppositions, such as what she could or could not have imagined. This sort of matter is bad enough between dueling expert witnesses in a courtroom, with a presumably neutral judge involved. The television transcript is full of supposition, but no actual evidence. Howard C. Berkowitz 05:57, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

(undent) I have deleted the Perkins statement and have clearly attributed that the source for the report's information was a TV broadcast. The way to make it neutral is to report as clearly as possible the data we have, in as fair a manner as possible. I believe that we are working toward this.Neil Brick 06:01, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

As a further compromise, I have deleted the report information above.Neil Brick 06:08, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I have moved the page back to User talk:Neil Brick/Hell minus one.Neil Brick 06:21, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Neil, I have just a few things to say, briefly. No editors have weighed in on this article--only constables and a fellow author--and so please don't give up hope. No final decisions about various editorial/content issues raised above have been made. As I'm sure you know, not everything that others say may, in fact, be CZ policy. If you have some question about our policy, or wish to dispute something someone says, for now (I mean, in lieu of anything better), you can come to me. I wish I could direct you to an expert psychology or sociology editor, but they're pretty scant these days. But User:Roger Lohmann is a sociology editor and User:Daniel Mietchen an active psychology editor; I don't know if either of them have expertise on this topic. User:Charles Peyser, a psychology professor I have known since Nupedia days, is very smart, may know something about the subject, and might be willing to help. In any event, I want to commend you for keeping your cool under fire very remarkably well, and welcome you to the project. --Larry Sanger 05:32, 11 February 2009 (UTC) - Writing as Editor-in-Chief.

Mr. Sanger, thank you for your comment above. We are working on an acceptable version for main space. I appreciate your offer to help and will come to you as needed. Neil Brick 06:02, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

New edits attempting to make writing more objective and less dramatic

First, first names are endearing but really not appropriate for a serious writing. While I don't necessarily endorse the New York Times style, which would use "Ms. Davis" and "Mr. Bern", either last names or, when appropriate to clarify, full names are appropriate.

I attempted to clean up the citations but had an edit conflict. A technical point: CZ is different from WP, in that you must define the full <ref name=xxx> before you use <name=xxx />. If you use the latter form first, it will just show up as an unexplained number in the notes.

It isn't necessary to have multiple citations for essentially the same content from the same webpage. After I went through the citations in detail, almost all are from different sections, often on the same page, of Davis' website.

It isn't necessary to put four citations for essentially the same material on the same text. Howard C. Berkowitz 05:44, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Next, I went through and made the citations easier to review in edit mode, deleting blank fields in the template.

On checking, the majority of the citations are either from the book webpage, or the book author's personal/professional webpage. How about direct citations rather than the publicity page for the book?

Searching on Paul Murphy, I kept coming back to the same quote, saying he had been a reporter for an unnamed television station when he interviewed her. Eventually, on Davis' speaker webpage, I found it was an ABC station. Different than the other ABC station? Different interview? Date, please. That he is now an investigator for the Utah AG isn't really relevant if he wasn't in that role when he interviewed her. Further, I cleaned up the multiple blockquotes with multiple repetitions of his name, which look more like a television transcript.

Some content questions:

• This has been described as ritual abuse. For what purpose was the ritual performed? Was this not in the confessions?
• Under what circumstances were the confessions made? I'd like to rule out the types of confessions described by Contil:<ref name=Contil>{{citation | journal=The Journal of Credibility Assessment and Witness Psychology | url = http://truth.boisestate.edu/jcaawp/9901/9901.pdf | year = 1999 | volume= 2 | issue = 1 | publisher = Department of Psychology of Boise State University | title =The Psychology of False Confessions | author = Richard P. Conti }}, p. 20-23</ref>

I haven't yet figured out what is producing blank footnote 10.Howard C. Berkowitz 06:10, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I found the blank footnote and added the station name. Murphy's interview was on ABC station KTVX on 4-25-1995. I fixed the Carlisle reference by changing a field from "contribution" to "publisher" and this should clarify this. The confessions were made first in letters to Davis. Then her parents' confessed to the Bishop and the stake president. Davis' parents confirmed in person the content of the letters to Davis to Lieutenant Detective Matt Jacobson - Utah Attorney General's Office and his detective partner Mike King. One of the quotes is from the TV interview. Neil Brick 05:07, 13 February 2009 (UTC)