The WP article on Conservapedia contains this paragraph, which accuses the creator of Conservapedia-criticism site Rational Wiki, Dr. Peter Lipson, of "engaging in cyber vandalism with fellow Rational Wiki editors against Conservapedia".

Here is the section from the article:

RationalWiki

In April 2007, Peter Lipson, a doctor of internal medicine, attempted to edit the article on breast cancer to include evidence against Conservapedia's statement naming abortion as a major cause of the disease, but found his medical credentials being questioned by Schlafly and other Conservapedia administrators, all of whom ended the debate by deleting Lipson's edits and blocking Lipson's account.[15] Several editors, including Lipson, started another website, RationalWiki, to analyze and refute "pseudoscience", the "anti-science movement", and "crank ideas," as well as conduct "explorations of authoritarianism and fundamentalism."[69] According to an article published in the LA Times in 2007, "From there, [Lipson and his fellow editors] monitor Conservapedia. And—by their own admission—engage in acts of cyber-vandalism."[15]

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The only source for this allegation is a 2007 LA Times blog entry by Stephanie Simon, which contains this claim but provides no details or evidence for it:

After administrators blocked their accounts, Lipson and several other editors quit trying to moderate the articles and instead started their own website, RationalWiki.com. From there, they monitor Conservapedia.

And -- by their own admission -- engage in acts of cyber-vandalism.


Who is "they" anyway? And where did Dr. Lipson "admit" that he vandalizes Conservapedia. This has been in the Conservapedia article for years and is completely unsubstantiated. Just pathetic...

I think whoever would go to Conservapedia for Breast Cancer information should be banned from humanity.

Seriously, why would anyone even do that? And why would Conservapedia even have such stupidity except to make themselves look like raving loonies? Maybe they are just imposters trying to really mock the idea like Stephen Colbert.

Well you're right about that. This was an actual headline from CP for example:

"Ravaged by socialism and gay marriage, Spain loses in the 2010 Winter Olympics".

But back on topic, it looks to me like a Consevrapedia editor inserted that smear against Lipson into the WP article (and apparently it's been either unnoticed or OKed for at least 2 years). Sad.

Well, the gay marriage could have hurt Spain as all of the figure skaters were off on their honeymoons?

There are half a dozen retrospective case-control studies looking at induced abortion and later breast cancer and finding an association, but the problem with these is that they're subject to "recall bias" since obviously you're asking women about their histories, and they may well be more likely to give you a different history if they have cancer than if they don't, and how are you going to check? Also, some don't control for already known associations. Example: There are also known ethnic differences in breast cancer risk and induced abortion incidence. Consider Roman Catholics and non-orthodox Jews. How are you going to sort out cause and effect when it comes to induced abortion and breast cancer? Non-orthodox Jewish women have more breast cancer, but they also have fewer children and Roman Catholics, and have their first pregnancy later. These are already known risk factors.

In fact, this whole argument tends to be one more example of a proxy culture-war thing between conservative Christians (who would really like to see a link), and non-orthodox Jews (some of whom have MD degrees, like Lipson) and who have very different views of abortion, and would NOT like to see such a link.

For examples of people listing studies (including bad ones) to support the association:

http://www.abortionfacts.com/online_books/...hem_both_23.asp

Wikipedia actually has a pretty good article, explaining the problems with the earlier small and bad studies:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion%E2%8...ncer_hypothesis

The official ACS article is better:

http://www.cancer.org/docroot/CRI/content/...east_Cancer.asp

Here's another:
http://www.fwhc.org/abortion/abcancer.htm

They both highlight the very best study available, which is of 1.5 million Danish women, though records of induced legal abortion (government funded) and cancer treatment (government funded). After adjusting for known risk factors (like number of children) no link.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8988884

The conservative answer to this would be: is it fair to adjust for number of live births? Shouldn't women be having as many kids as possible, to decrease later risk of breast cancer as much as possible? Doesn't contraception have as much to do with the actual scientific debate as abortion does?

That's where the argument gets sticky and philosophical.

I was just commenting on it in the view that Conservapedia is a shitty encyclopedia, not what its perspective may be. : )

Look at the Samuel Johnson page there. He should appeal to Conservatives yet they don't even have the decency to steal the Wikipedia page.

First off, it's not a blog entry.

Stephanie Simon is cited over and over again as a reliable source, except on the issue of Peter Lipson founding RW.

By WP:CONSENSUS Stephanie Simon was regarded as reliable, except on this one point. My argument has been on three points, (1) Lispon was not the founder (maybe he put some
money up, but User:ColinLR founded it, and User:Tmtoulouse merged his disasterbate.com idea into Rationalwiki 2.0 and took it over); (2) Lispon lied about when he joined RW; (3) Lipson & others lied about when they began cybervandalism.

Further, Lipson's arguement with Andy Schlafly was over inserting sex eduaction material on a website founded as a homeschooling project -- homeschoolers are homeschooled because some parents are reluctant to send their kids to public schools with sex education and contraception classes. Lipson kept creating articles on things like genital warts and gonorrhea and Andy asked him to stop and keep it "family friendly."

There is no question Lipson targetted Andy for harassment, engaged in cyber-vandalism prior to the time he told Stephanie Simon he did, and lied to Stephanie Simon about the exact circumstance under which he was permabanned.

So at this point, Simon is regarded as reliable source on somethings, but by WP:CON Simon's been deemed to have been in error as to who the founder of Rationwiki is.

I intend to show not only was she unwittingly decieved by Rationalwiki founders, they stand by the ruse today and are decieving Wikipedia, and to the end of self-promotion and inflicting harm and distress on other persons.