Encouraging professional physicists to engage in outreach on Wikipedia
- This article was originally published at WikiEdu.org on April 21, 2021. Evan Monk is an intern at Wiki Education. CC BY-SA. For a similar article about psychologist Benjamin Karney, please see Informing the public about psychological science: Ben Karney
Dr. Bill Phillips is a physicist with an extensive background in the field that spans decades. As a 1997 Nobel prize winner, Phillips has been at the helm of groundbreaking scientific discoveries. His affiliations with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, as well as the American Physical Society, reflect his continued dedication to both the discovery and dissemination of physics knowledge.
Phillips participated in one of Wiki Education’s Wiki Scientists courses sponsored by the American Physical Society. Encouraged by colleagues at APS, and intrigued by the scope of Wikipedia, Phillips decided to enroll in the course to learn more about the platform.
"When you make a proposal to the National Science Foundation to study something, there’s generally requirements that you do some outreach – that you have broader impacts in the scientific or more general community," Phillips says. "I thought that learning something about writing, or editing quantum articles for Wikipedia would be one way of reaching the public."
Phillips considered several aspects of the Wiki Scientists course to be useful, first noting the foundational skills he learned about how to effectively navigate Wikipedia.
"The course gave me the toolbox or at the very least, the references to the toolbox. It’s not like I’m going to remember everything I learned, but now I know where to go to look certain things up – I know that this knowledge exists, and I know where to find it," Phillips says.
Phillips also spoke about the ways in which the course informed his understanding of referencing on Wikipedia. He considered this to be an aspect of "Wikipedia Culture," one in which he had not understood prior to taking the course.
Phillips tied his knowledge about referencing to the issue of representation on Wikipedia, noting that Donna Strickland, a 2018 recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics, did not have a Wikipedia article until winning the prize. This issue, Phillips discovered, came down to referencing.
"Understanding the difference between original research as opposed to properly referenced articles is one of the things that I learned that I would classify as being part of Wikipedia culture." Phillips says.
Phillips also spoke candidly about bias and conflict-of-interest on Wikipedia, as someone with a personal Wikipedia page.
"Another thing that’s part of Wikipedia culture, I would say would be the kinds of articles that you yourself, should or should not edit,” Phillips says. "You have to ask yourself: am I in a position to edit an article in a way that is free of bias? And obviously, editing an article about yourself is not the right thing to do under those circumstances, and so one should ask yourself equivalent questions about other kinds of articles."
Adding his expertise onto the platform in a way that was accessible was a significant component of Phillips’s Wikipedia experience.
"I’m an expert on some rather small areas of physics. But for those areas of physics, I can bring clarity and in some cases, either correct mistakes or bring a more complete discussion to a subject," Phillips says.
Furthermore, Phillips encourages other professional physicists to contribute to Wikipedia in a similar way.
"On Wikipedia you have the opportunity to bring an expert’s perspective to something that might not have been treated expertly. Everyone who finds Wikipedia to be a good resource ought to contribute in one way or another, to the ongoing value of Wikipedia. One way of doing that, of course, is to act as an editor," Phillips says.
The work of professionals like Dr. Phillips reinforce Wiki Education’s core values, establishing a mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge.
To take a course like the one Bill took, visit learn.wikiedu.org.
Discuss this story
I am a physicist myself, and, while I never got a Nobel prize, I am recognized as the top expert in a couple of fields, and there is also a Wikipedia article about me. It is REALLY difficult to edit Wikipedia in your field of research, because (i) you are likely to be biased towards your own work; (ii) you are likely to come across the colleagues you know in real life (see multiple times per year on conferences, or even work at the same institution) who try to promote their own work, and you can not do anything about it because you may face real-life consequences - and I know pretty much everybody in the field. What is much easier is to do is to write something outside of my field, which I only know from textbooks. The ideal situation is when I need to study a new field and read textbooks - and this happens every few years. Even then, I had negative experience when I was in a situation where I had to fight with ignorant users not willing to have a scientific discussion at an appropriate level. It is so much easier to write about Russian railway stations, where I am likely the only person on the English Wikipedia in years to have access to sources and to have some general understanding of the subject.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:40, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]