Talk:Linguistics and the Book of Mormon

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Should we identify self-published works?

Stubbs books seem self-published. Grover Publications, Provo, Utah may have more than one book and author, but I can find no information about it. His latest book is printed (I wouldn't say published) by FCCD, Four Corners Digital Design, who do "print work" of banners, brochures, billboards and books. Doug Weller talk 16:46, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Stubb's Uto-Aztecan work is, sadly, self-published. His work with UA is respected among his peers, but they also bemoan the self-published nature of it. His UA methodology is sound. However, there is a clear distinction made between his UA work and his attempts to link UA to the ancient Near East linguistic map. His methodology breaks apart and is unsound when making that connection. --Taivo (talk) 17:51, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Stubbs

The addition of material cited to Brian Stubbs is not reliably sourced. I can find no indication that anything published by this author is taken seriously by academic linguists, but more specifically, the three sources cited all fall short of WP:IRS. The two books are both published by incredibly small presses, and the paper hosted on the BYU website doesn't appear to have ever even been seen by the academic linguistics community, being published in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. This is not the first time this material has been challenged. Continuing to re-insert it without discussion is disruptive. Pinging @Doug Weller, TaivoLinguist, and RDWinmill:.

Re-inclusion may be appropriate if the author can be shown to be notable, and the passage is re-worded so that attribution is clearer. The final sentence, however, was WP:OR. The author only expressed their own views in the provided quote. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 22:52, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Stubbs' comparison of Uto-Aztecan with Near Eastern languages is not taken seriously by any academic linguist, either within or without the community of Uto-Aztecan specialists. His methodology is unsound for these comparisons and the places where he has published are highly unreliable since they exist for the express purpose of using science to support the claims of the Book of Mormon. This academic doubt does not apply to his book on comparative Uto-Aztecan, which is sound and regularly cited, only to his work comparing UA with Semitic and Egyptian languages which is never cited in scholarly works, only in LDS propaganda. It should be clear that just because a scholar has produced one work which is widely respected doesn't mean that everything else he or she ever produces is of equal quality. Stubbs uses different methodologies for his UA work and for his Mormon comparative work. They are apples and oranges as far as scholarly acceptance goes. --Taivo (talk) 01:44, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

The person citing the UA comparative dictionary as an example of Stubbs' scholarship doesn't seem to have ever seen it and may assume that it contains the comparisons between UA and the Semitic and Egyptian languages that are featured in his Mormon work. That is not the case. The UA comparative dictionary contains not a word of Egyptian or Semitic languages and not a single hint of the Mormon "science" which is found in the other works. That's why scholars respect it and not the Mormon publications. Most UA scholars who use the UA dictionary still bemoan the fact that he has never published it, or even offered it, to a solid academic press. He still feels like it is unfinished. --Taivo (talk) 01:56, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Not being familiar with the author, I'll take your word that's he's done some positive work, but as you said; there's nothing about the actual sources used that lend themselves to the notion of reliability. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 02:39, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Here is a book review of Stubbs 2012 work: Kenneth C. Hill, "Uto-aztecan: a comparative vocabulary. By Brian D. Stubbs," International Journal of American Linguistics 78, no. 4 (October 2012): 591-592.

() I think this qualifies. Alexis Manaster Ramer and Wick Miller encouraged Stubbs to complete a three decades efforts to produce a comprehensive reference book which became "Uto-Aztecan: A Comparative Vocabulary." — Preceding unsigned comment added by RDWinmill (talk • contribs) 14:15, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

That's what Taivo said. It's immaterial. His fringe work is not reliably published. Heck, I pointed out that one book of his could hardly be called published, it's printed by a printing company. But ok, we'll call it self-published. See WP:SPS. He is not an acknowledged exert in the field of Egyptian or Semitic languages let alone their relationship to US. Doug Weller talk 14:32, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Doug and Taivo. Having published one good work doesn't make all of his work reliable. The circumstances surrounding the publication of the cited works is incredibly suspicious, and in direct conflict with WP:IRS. And again, that last sentence was not what the source said. I understand that it was added to "balance out" the claims of Stubbs, but we can't balance out unreliable sources with OR. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:52, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Okay fair enough. Will you apply the same criteria to everything else on this page? Starting with foot note Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Mormonism-Shadow or Reality? (1972, Modern Microfilm Company) as historians. and Richard Packham as a linguist, A Linguist Looks at Mormonism http://enacademic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/1480167 RDWinmill (talk) 15:54, 25 January 2018 (UTC)RDWinmill talk

First: Will you please be sure to sign your comments? Use four tildes's (~) to generate a signature at the end of your comments, like this: ~~~~

I'll take a look at that reference later, but in general: yes, the same standard applies to all sources for this article. However, please don't make any pointy edits. If you disagree with the standard the other three of us agree on, don't make an edit to show how you think applying that standard to a different source would harm the article. If, however, you see a reference that legitimately falls afoul of WP:IRS, then by all means, remove it and the claim it's attached to, and post a diff here (see WP:D&L for how to do this). ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:40, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your help, MPants at work. I am new at this as you can plainly see and need the help. I do appreciate and regularly donated to Misplaced Pages. I have made few random changes when NPOV is clearly lacking in other areas. This is my first foray into Misplaced Pages religious entries. This is inherently fraught with opportunity for bias and difficult to remain objective. Any suggestions on where to go to better understand how to be helpful to Misplaced Pages and not make more work for moderators? RDWinmill (talk) 15:54, 25 January 2018 (UTC)RDWinmill

Well, your missteps haven't really been all that bad, so I don't think I'm ready to suggest you shy away from religious articles. As long as you're willing to work with others who have different points of view than yours, any topic is germane. And let me offer you one bit of advice: always use the talk page when there's any disagreement. It's possible to discuss things with edit summaries, but when the disagreement is over whether or not to include something, that usually results in an edit war, which is something we tend to take a very dim view of.

But if you want to avoid in-depth discussions and frequent disagreements, you can always go to WP:TAFI, which lists articles for improvement. Many of those articles will be relatively uncontroversial. And feel free to use my talk page (the text "Tell me all about it" in my signature is a link to it) to ask any questions or for input in any discussions. I'm always happy to help. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:03, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

OK, what I'm about to point out is a long-standing problem with articles about religions, especially the pseudo-science that many of the devout think passes for proof of their unfounded beliefs. (According to the Apostle Paul, "belief" is, by definition, unfounded, but few devout are willing to live with that simple fact.) What I write may sound contradictory, but it's not really.

Pseudo articles on religions, like this one, rely on two things to exist. First, the false claims of historical fact to substantiate religious fiction. Second, the pseudo-scientific works published in the religion's propaganda outlets that support the false claims with misrepresentation of facts. On the "pro" side of the argument, that's what passes for reliable sources. They are reliable sources according to the devout and baloney according to everyone else.
Real scientists don't waste their valuable research time and money studying the pseudo-science of religious devotion because it does nothing to promote their careers.
Real research presses and the publishers of that which we at Misplaced Pages consider to be the most reliable sources don't waste their scarce production money on works that are good science, but devoted to destroying the pseudo-science that might prop up the devotion of a segment of their customer base. They avoid religion like the plague unless they are scientific studies about theology, history, etc. They don't publish on the details of the pseudo-science that props up the belief of the devout. (And see the point above, that real scientists aren't writing about the pseudo-science anyway.)
So the "con" side of the arguments are based on works by experts in the con side, not necessarily the best scientists.
So there you have it. These articles have no reliable sources. They are pseudo-science from beginning to end.
If we exclude all the "con" sources, then we have an article that becomes nothing more than a missionary tract for conversion--a mirror to lds.org. Converting people to a religion is not a function of Misplaced Pages.
If we exclude all the "pro" sources, then we have an LDS-bashing page, which isn't the function of Misplaced Pages either.
If we exclude both the "pro" and the "con" sources, then we have nothing and the page has no reason to exist. It's a desperate balancing act.

The key, IMHO, is to not overstress either the arguments or the qualifications of the devout or the critic. Describe what they have produced, but don't try to win either the pro or the con argument. Statements like "Mormon linguist Stubbs compared Uto-Aztecan with ancient Near Eastern languages in X, Y publications, but his conclusions are not accepted by mainstream linguists" are perfectly valid. Statements like "Mormon scholars have proposed that X is proof, but critics like the Tanners counterargue that Y." are perfectly valid. The Tanners are, indeed, reliable sources for criticism of Mormonism because that's what they do professionally and they are recognized in the critical community as the foremost critics of LDS belief and practice. Are they scientists? No, but they are expert critics.

So there you have it. I don't oppose using Stubbs or others on this page, but I do oppose verbiage that exaggerates the importance of what they have produced. --Taivo (talk) 16:32, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Statements like "Mormon linguist Stubbs compared Uto-Aztecan with ancient Near Eastern languages in X, Y publications, but his conclusions are not accepted by mainstream linguists" are perfectly valid. The problem there is that we need an RS that says that, and we didn't have that. Instead, we had Stubbs' primary sources and WP:SELFPUB work, used to support a statement similar to that one, but which avoided identifying Stubbs. It became an issue of due weight. Do Stubbs' self-published works deserve mention? Well, if they've made a big impact on the Mormon community, then yeah. So we need a reliable source that says that Stubbs' works have made such an impact. Incidentally, such a source would almost certain support the example text you gave.

As to the rest of your post: I agree completely, except to say that we would probably find one or two sources for most of these pages. Just enough to make a stub (no pun intended), but nowhere near enough for a real article. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:46, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Actually, Stubbs' works as they relate to this article are not self-published, they are found in the Journal of Mormon Studies and FARMS publications. It's the one work that linguists actually value--the comparative UA dictionary--that is self-published, but that is irrelevant to this article. --Taivo (talk) 17:10, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Actually, Stubbs' works as they relate to this article are not self-published, they are found in the Journal of Mormon Studies and FARMS publications. One of them was, yes. The other two were published by outfits which are apparently too small to even have a web presence (aside from a facebook page in one case). And while that one is a perfectly acceptable source for Stubbs' views, we still haven't established that his views are WP:DUE. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:17, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

I came here just now to remind others that earlier we had two self-published works used as sources, but you beat me to it. Doug Weller talk 17:33, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

ha HA! My cat-like, ninja reflexes strike again! ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:39, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree about the self-published sources. The only works related to this topic that I even think about are the Journal of Mormon Studies and FARMS works. Neither are self-published. --Taivo (talk) 20:17, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

You have given me a lot to think about. I am studying Misplaced Pages:Identifying reliable sources Back later. Thanks to you all. RDWinmill (talk) 21:12, 25 January 2018 (UTC)RDWinmill

Okay, I am back after some study. I would like to stay with this topic for a while to help me get some experience in Misplaced Pages commenting and discussing Misplaced Pages articles. I have lately come to understand that more is edits are better for wikipedia. from Forbes JAN 20, 2015: Misplaced Pages Or Encyclopædia Britannica: Which Has More Bias? "The number of revisions required to start showing this effect...is quite large—at least 2,000 edits—and the articles most read by users aren't necessarily those most revised by editors. "To some extent, we are not seeing the scenario where too many cooks spoil the broth, we are mostly seeing an insufficient number of cooks." re: Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu wrote in "Do Experts or Collective Intelligence Write with More Bias? Evidence from Encyclopædia Britannica and Misplaced Pages." Still studying this... Thanks for your patience and willingness to help a newbie. RDWinmill (talk) 13:56, 26 January 2018 (UTC)RDWinmill

False balance

This post is concerning this edit. It reintroduces WP:FALSEBALANCE and WP:YESPOV issues by misrepresenting scientific consensus as the opinion of particular critics and suggesting that some legitimate science is apparently being done on the topic by "Mormon scientists and historians": ("rejected by non-Latter Day Saint historians and scientists", "Critics of the Book of Mormon"), etc. —Paleo Neonate – 14:21, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

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