The Wikipedia entry for "neuroscience" looks all right at first glance, but after attending a session on Monday, I knew otherwise. Two enthusiastic scientists turned Wikipedia Academy volunteers, Bill Wedemeyer and Tim Vickers, explained that Wikipedia articles get grades for completeness and readability and that the "neuroscience" article earns only a middling grade.
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The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) thinks Wikipedia neuroscience ought to be better and has called for its members to edit Wikipedia, working on the premise that the more the public knows about neuroscience, the more votes and dollar support they'll throw behind research and the more bright people will want to work in the field. Vickers said that as the Internet's seventh most visited site and most people's first stop for information, Wikipedia is a public outreach powerhouse.
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But even if editing Wikipedia is the right thing to do, scientists may have good reasons for not wanting to get involved. Neuroscientist Chris Lossin of UC Davis pointed out that editing a Wikipedia article is time-consuming, and young scientists need to spend their time publishing articles for their tenure files. And until there's a way to give scientists legitimate credit for their work, editing Wikipedia may seem like charity.
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