Michael "Mike" Sutton (born 1959) is a Reader in Criminology at Nottingham Trent University.
This userspace page serves two purposes. Firstly, it is a place in which I might draft a revision of the main article, which has been tagged as having multiple issues (six tags dating from mid-2010, still present as of February 2015). First, however, it is also a place for me ( Perey), to collect links and content that I believe are important in . As a result, much of this content will not be suitable for the main article, for reasons including being original research.
My interest in Mike Sutton's work began in February 2015, when I was trying to unravel the myth of the iron content in spinach. It seemed on the one hand, that "everyone knew" that it was a myth that spinach has an extraordinarily large amount of iron. Yet on the other hand, it seemed that "everyone knew" that it was a myth that someone had caused this misconception when they misplaced a decimal point (and that nobody had thought to verify the measurements since). Sutton's explanation of the matter clarified that both were myths, one compounded upon another—what Sutton calls a "supermyth". [1] (I put the preceding reference into the " Spinach" article, where it had previously languished as "Further Reading"; edit #645101190.)
Reading more about Sutton's work, I was intrigued by his claims that Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace had "stolen" Patrick Matthew's work on evolution. However, this interest was quickly matched by bemusement at Sutton's attitudes to Wikipedia, and at the behaviour of editors citing his work here.
Let it be said at the outset that I am not a "powerful Darwinian interest". The reason for this disclaimer will, I hope, be clear shortly.
Sutton has published several academic papers and blog articles in which he seeks to debunk myths in science, particularly cases where scientific priority may be misattributed. These cases include:
In April 2013, Sutton published allegations that Wikipedia had an official policy of not citing published experts, because "experts are scum". [7] The "official policy" in question was this paragraph, written by humorist Lore Sjöberg as a criticism of Wikipedia:
The Wikipedia philosophy can be summed up thusly: "Experts are scum." For some reason people who spend 40 years learning everything they can about, say, the Peloponnesian War—and indeed, advancing the body of human knowledge—get all pissy when their contributions are edited away by Randy in Boise who heard somewhere that sword-wielding skeletons were involved. And they get downright irate when asked politely to engage in discourse with Randy until the sword-skeleton theory can be incorporated into the article without passing judgment. [8]
The paragraph was quoted on the user page of Wikipedia editor " DreamGuy", who had previously removed a citation of Sutton's work from the article " Moral panic", with the explanation that "bestthinking.com does not count as a reliable source per WP:RS [NB 1] rules". [9] Sutton alleged that "DreamGuy" had committed plagiarism by deleting the citation of his (Sutton's) work while also relying on his conclusions, which Sutton called "unique" (and so unable to be substantiated by reference to any other author). He further inferred that as "DreamGuy" was a "master editor", [NB 2] the passage that "DreamGuy" quoted represented "his, and presumably Wikipedia's, stealth-plagiarism philosophy". [7]
Sutton also cited the example of an author editing the article " The Selfish Gene", replacing the word "coined" with "used" in the following sentence:
Dawkins coined the term "selfish gene" as a way of expressing the gene-centred view of evolution... [10]
The author of that edit, " Scientificradical", explained the edit thus:
Dawkins popularized - rather than "coined" - the term "selfish gene". Strictly speaking the term selfish gene had been "coined" previously by W.D. Hamilton and used by others.
However, "Scientificradical" did not cite Sutton as the source of this information. Again, Sutton characterised his work as "unique", [7] and so claimed that "Scientificradical" had used his work without acknowledgement. "Scientificradical" has not made any other edits to Wikipedia before or since. [11]
To be continued! [12]
Official website (At least, it seems to be where Sutton does most of his blogging!)