EUROPE: Many people, students in particular, use the online encyclopedia Wikipedia to look for information on a range of subjects, but findings of a new research found that politically controversial scientific topics such as evolution, global warming and acid rain on the site may actually contain egregious errors.
Authors of the new study, which was published in the Public Library of Science(PLOS) Journal One on Aug. 14, said that such science topics are at risk of information sabotage on Wikipedia. Researchers found that entries on these subjects are being ransacked, which could be detrimental to scientific accuracy.
For their study, scientists from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies tracked Wikipedia entries on topics that are considered to be politically controversial and then compared these with others topics that are not such as the likes of the theory of general relativity, standard model in physics and continental drift.
By looking at the edit histories of the topics spanning 10 years to look for the mean size of edits, daily edit rates and daily page views, the researchers found that scientific topics that are politically controversial were edited more often than topics that are generally accepted. The controversial topics also have more views.
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