Wikipedia is not an Encyclopedia
By Neal S. Greenfield, Esq.
What if there were ways for people to live happier and healthy lives that would enrich the lives of millions? What is there was valuable information about the dangers of putting toxic substances into your body that appear all around us, in our environment and even in our foods that if you knew would allow you to make better health choices? And what if access to all of this information was hidden from you and other members of the public due to the actions of a few individuals with no qualifications? This is what is happening due to the dominance of Wikipedia, a pretend authority in the largest public forum ever created, the World Wide Web.
The health information people so urgently seek online is being provided not by medical professionals but by those with no medical credentials, or at least none related to the areas in which they rule. No legitimate scientist, physician or public health experts. In essence, completely unqualified. These online gods of medical knowledge see no patients and only understand health and sickness from an isolated and unrealistic so called “scientific” view spoon fed to them by the pharmaceutical companies and those who have the most to gain from the status quo. None of the uncredentialed and mostly anonymous editors of Wikipedia articles on health and nutrition have backgrounds as dieticians, research fellows or clinicians. None of them have Ph. Ds. in the subjects they rule and none have had decades of experience conducting studies, researching and writing scholarly articles, books or producing documentaries in which these subjects are truly studied. Yet these same people are universally ready to condemn such people who have, including Dr. Gary Null.
It is Dr. Null, not anyone ever associated with Wikipedia who long ago warned about the dangers of genetically modified foods, DDT, Trans fats, sugars and hundreds of other topics. Yet Wikipedia will have none of that. Its editors and administrators have nothing good to say about Gary Null or the numerous others who have made positive contributions to the health and well being of this planet through honest scholarship and clinical work.
What if you wanted to have your day in court, only to be told that there is no need to even show up and present a defense as you have already been found guilty? This is exactly how Wikipedia has condemned not only innumerable individuals but also entire professions, putting the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people in peril. All holistic physicians, homeopaths and others, regardless of clinical experience and regardless of how many peer reviewed studies have been published in pub med, the U.S. Government’s database of health and medical studies.
Wikipedia has also seen fit to decide that only an orthodox neoliberal point of view is acceptable in describing political and social issues. Conservative points of view are attacked, with an attempt to discredit them without any dialogue or fairness. Discredited, along with all those who espouse them.
Image now that we are in Stalinist Russia, where after a show trial you are sent to a gulag for life, simply because you are not liked by the controlling authority. Imagine you live in the Middle Ages and upon excommunication you are shunned and treated as a pariah. Come to the present day and our modern day judge, jury and executioner is Wikipedia, the web’s ultimate determiner of what is fact, what is true, as stated by persons with no credentials, no experience in the subjects they control and often completely anonymous. Wikipedia gives these controllers of truth, who when exposed to the light would be worthy of little respect the one thing they have always craved and felt deprived of: power, specifically the power to cause harm, to hate with impunity and to bear the pretense of authority, all in the name of editing a collaboration of such persons that dares to besmirch the good name of “encyclopedia” by pretending to be one.
In the normal course of civil debate both sides present their arguments and the public decides which, if either, is plausible and acceptable. And if one of those sides becomes demeaning to the level of libel or slander or character assassination, American jurisprudence allows the person who has been wrongfully attacked to sue to correct the slander.
Google, Wikipedia and Facebook insulated themselves, with Congress passing an act that they have used to destroy innocent people’s reputations with no fear of being held accountable. And even after each of these social platforms have been found to be in egregious violation of community or legal standards, they laugh, pay a $5 billion fine and continue business as usual. Is this what Congress intended? To have thousands of innocent people subjected to a trial and convicted to life in an internet gulag without any due process?
I have personally, as have other attorneys and scholars showed in detail the gross inaccuracies, libelous statements, and out and out character assassination in Wikipedia’s Gary Null’s biography. I have pinpointed, with detailed documentation that people, including Stephen Barrett and his discredited Quackwatch organization were the sources of this character assassination and they refused to make any changes. And this has gone on for years. But our in-depth two year investigation has shown that they have done the same to conservative politicians and spokespersons, journalists and virtually every single alternative health movement from chiropractic to complementary and alternative medicine. And this is in violation of their own supposed ethics to not allow biased sources to be the basis of a living person’s biography.
In summation, we accuse Jimmy Wales, the executives running Wikipedia and its editors of gross libel, character assassination and dishonoring its stated principals. So what is their target, since it’s not just Gary Null? It’s virtually every healing profession and everyone associated with it, meaning hundreds of thousands of highly qualified and credentialed clinicians. We must then believe that the motive is ideological, political, financial and much of it done at the behest of the hidden hand of the pharmaceutical industry.
Wikipedia, Google and Facebook, in our opinion are nothing more than modern day cults controlled by people whom we believe are sociopaths, narcissists, egotistical. They know they can buy politicians in Washington, democrats and republicans alike. With their legions of lobbyists they have captured the government’s regulatory agencies and hence can do anything they want with impunity. Otherwise, why put up a completely false and fraudulent bio of Gary Null up? He didn’t do it himself. The only reason is to try to destroy his reputation and by extension stop the movement towards a healthier way of living that Gary has represented for fifty years.