In posting a GQ question about language in primates I ran across this wiki about Washoe the Chimp. The results of the project in the scientific literature are quite controversial, but the wiki states the conclusion that apes can use complex language more or less as a fact, and dismisses other studies (to the extent they are even mentioned) as irrelevant.
Where are the people with opposing views? Are they just not posting to wiki?
Pretty much. One sign you can look at is the talk page. Hotly debated topics have astonishingly long talk pages, revealing some of the arguments behind what ultimately ends up on the article page. On this page there are a handful of short comments that criticize the article. But on a page where there are multiple people with opposing stakes, the talk page will be full of many paragraphs of impassioned arguments. Here nobody has bothered to put in that much effort.
I always look at the talk page if there’s any possibility of contention on any issue. For my money, that’s one thing you get from Wiki that you don’t really get from a hard-copy publication on your library’s shelves.
Sorry… wiki link in my OP in this thread was to my SDMB QG OP thread about chimp language not a direct link to the Washoe Page. Here is the Washoe wiki page I was referring to.
The link in the OP is wrong. Instead of going to the Wikipedia entry on Washoe, it goes to the previous thread about ape language. I presume that it meant to link to this:
Washoe (chimpanzee) - Wikipedia)
This entry does not exactly state that Washoe used complex language. It states that she learned 350 words of ASL. This was the amount of ASL she had learned by the time she died at age 42. A human being who never learned more than 350 words would be considered severely retarded. It also says that some other chimpanzees had learned more than 150 signs.
The entry is quite vague about how close Washoe came to learning a language in any ordinary human sense. It doesn’t say that she ever used grammar in any ordinary sense, although it talks about “complex messages” and “novel combinations” in some places. To make what Washoe did in any sense comparable to human language, she would have had to learn grammar. This entry is pretty vague about everything, and you are reading more into it than is there if you think that it’s claiming that Washoe used anything close to language in the sense of a normal human adult. I’m not blaming your reading skills here. This is simply a badly written entry.
In that other thread that you link to in the OP, you ask if the failure of ape language experiments proves that Chomsky is right about human language acquisition. Surely you realize that experiments about one aspect of a theory failing to prove a counter-example don’t thereby prove that the theory is correct? The whole matter of how human language acquisition works is extremely complicated, and many books have been written on the subject. I really, really, really don’t want to get into a discussion about Chomsky’s theories about language acquisition, since they (and the controversies about them) are extremely confused. Let’s just say that there many issues about them that have nothing to do with ape language experiments.
The main issue I had with wiki was not the assertions it made, it’s expected that scientists will pimp their POV, it was surprise that no one had posted a comprehensive counter to leaven these statements given how controversial the subject is.
Yes, that’s why I asked those in the know for the latest take on where this issue stood and whether there was any conclusion on this topic given the decades that have passed since those experiments were done WRT more recent research done in the interim.
Were not so much of the internet filled one sided material, perhaps SD would be less popular.
Because someone like yourself hasn’t written it yet. A lot of Wikipedia articles come from the more popular sources. If nobody who is more knowledgeable about the subject has stumbled upon it and corrected it, that’s the way the article will stay.
Remember, Wikipedia is written by its users. So if you see problems, go fix them. As someone already pointed out, this page has not engendered much controversy on its talk page, which means its ripe for extra information.
Let me note that it’s somewhat deceptive to call the experiments with Washoe (and other apes taught language) a failure. O.K., this is my fault, since I used the word in my post, and it wasn’t in the OP. In some ways, Washoe learned more than many people expected. She was able to use consistently 350 signs. On occasion, she combined signs to describe something new in her experience. She didn’t ever seem to use anything that resembled grammar in her use of signs. It was very important to learn that a chimpanzee could even learn this much though.
This Wikipedia entry is much better:
If Washoe’s so smart, let her write her own wiki entry.
Long before there was a Wikipedia, a Chicago newspaper columnist said that “reading something on the internet is like reading something on the bathroom wall.” I subscribe to that view wholeheartedly.
Long before there was an internet my father told me: “Don’t believe anything you hear. And only half of what you see.” He was wise.
Pretty hard, as she died 4 years ago.
Would that be a zombie-ape wiki entry?