Here is a nice little article on Pierre Curie, the co-discoverer of radioactivity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Curie

There is a short summary of his education, discoveries and career. Basically, a nice stub article but by no means a full article.

And then it launches into a hugely detailed description of his experiences with a medium. Quite bizarre. And the experiences he describes are such basic magic tricks it really is quite illuminating about the man and/or his times i.e what people were willing to believe then because "science" had yet to catch-up.

I wonder how a one-line edit to the article saying "This shows that he had a good sense of humour" would be taken? :-)

Now that's when the principle of undue weight needs to be invoked.

"Pierre died as a result of a carriage accident in a snow storm while crossing the Rue Dauphine in Paris on April 19, 1906. His head having been crushed under the carriage wheel, he avoided probable death by the radiation exposure that later killed his wife."

Boy, that's OR. It's by no means sure that radiation exposure from joint work with her husband ultimately killed Madame Curie, since her bones had very little radium and polonium in them. She probably got her dose working with unsheilded X-rays in WW I.

"Both Pierre and Marie were enshrined in the crypt of the Panthéon in Paris in April 1995."

Which is when we found out about Marie.

If you want OR, about about "After Pierre's death, Marie spent some time wearing his brains on her coat, and refusing to wash it, thus anticipating the style-setting trend of Jackie Kennedy by more than 57 years..."

Nah, although perfectly true, I don't think they'd allow it.

A true encyclopaedia style biography on him would be boring and few people would either want to read or write it. The Wikipedia biography is much more interesting. What most people want is a National Enquirer style biography. If someone wants a biography they can rely on, they can just go to the library. If Wikipedia wants to be popular they should stick to writing biographies as if they are to appear in the National Enquirer.

...no, they shouldn't. Wikipedia is popular enough as it is, the last thing we need is to try and raise this by writing crap, like that bio.

There are people who have access to WP but not libraries. How are they supposed to get access to a real biography?

By looking one entry below on a google search

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics...-curie-bio.html

Not even being used as a source. Horrible irony, ain't it?

Note to self; Improve that article.

Sorry, my comment was meant to be snarky. The National Enquirer is a very popular magazine. It is the National Enquirer which is found at supermarket checkout counters and not Scientific America. Even though the National Enquirer has the number one position at the supermarket counter it is harmless because people don't take it seriously.

Similarly, the problem with Wikipedia is not that it comes first in Google search but rather that people take it seriously.

In Wikipedia you will find many biographies of historical figures where undo weigh is given to scandals. If the person was homosexual or had extra marital affairs these subjects will be discussed in detail, while other encyclopaedias may ignore these topics. i.e. the biographies are being written in a National Enquirer style. Many people would rather read a National Enquirer style biography than the type of biography found in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Thanks for that. All of the medium stuff was made by a single contributor 201.17.66.208 here

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=184725053

it has the interesting word 'legitimated' which is not in any dictionary as far as I know. This editor's contributions are of the sort that drives our friend ScienceApologist mad. E.g.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=167131278

which claims some astronaut saw a UFO, or this

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=185418090

about the medium herself, which now includes the Curie incident. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusapia_Palladino is typical of the nonsense you get when pro-science and paranormal editors working together. There are sections like the one added by our friend. Then there are other long sections (e.g. 'Controls and Trickery') which show the whole thing is a fraud.

Some of these edits have been reverted. But not the Curie ones.

It makes it sound like that was a good thing.

The American Heritage Dictionary (not my reference of choice, but certainly a dictionary) has "legitimated" as the inflected form of the transitive verb "legitimate", just as you would expect. Now you know.

Thus is legitimated validated.