QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Thu 28th May 2009, 1:30am)
The Häggström thing has now begun inflitrating basic chemistry articles with self-images, starting with adding a helpful carbon cycle one to element
carbon, featuring himself. I want to know if we can add him to cat:
Invasive plant species like Kudzu.
I don't see any reason why he couldn't be added to the more generalized
Invasive species category, but I wouldn't want to categorize him as a plant, or plant-like. That would be unfair - plants don't produce as much waste!
Still, this is a rather interesting conundrum. Technically, there's no reason why someone shouldn't be allowed to do something like this - it's really the fact that Wikipedia is practically the only publication (or whatever you want to call it) in the world where you can do it
with this level of impact that makes it disturbing. Then again, WP
has been lacking in low-level medical illustrations, and there
are a fair number of WP'ers who fuss about things like "model's consent" and "rights to one's personal likeness" - and for good reason, too, because there's been plenty of abuse related to those things in the past. If the easiest way around that is to use your own likeness, well then... this sort of thing is probably inevitable, really.
I looked through his
contribs a bit, and to be honest, I'm not seeing the usual hallmarks of pathological narcissism. There's some presumption of acceptance for his own expertise, but that might actually be justified, and there's little of the usual pre-emptive blaming, trumpeting of one's favors-to-humanity (as such), and self-righteous indignation over objections to his own assertions. Then again, he claims to have authored "numerous books," including one entitled
The Meaningation of Life, except that these aren't books you can actually buy in stores (online or off), apparently. Maybe someday...
So... IMO this is more likely a relatively-innocent case of simple egotism, and possibly opportunism to some degree, rather than narcissism - at least as I understand the distinction. (Note that I'm not a professional psychologist, I just play one on WR.)