Brainwashing cult and James R Lewis On the question of whether to take this to the WP RS N notice board I don t think that s the right place for it Lewis uses the word stereotyped so I think it s pretty clear that he doesn t agree with this idea But the dispute here is about whether reliable sources are being used responsibly and that s not what WP RS N is about Personally I don t think brainwashing cult belongs in the article at all much less the lead Following are some reasons Improper use of the source Suppose a climate scientist wrote a paper that begins Many climate scientists have been accused of manipulating their data And then he devotes the rest of the paper to showing why those accusations are false The paper is about the falsity of the accusations not the fact that accusations have been made If we quote only the first sentence and ignore the rest of the paper the result would be to sow doubt in the reader s mind about the integrity of climate science Unfortunately this is more or less what we are doing here We are planting the word brainwashing in the reader s mind despite the fact that the author doesn t believe it Doesn t say what we say it does We cite Lewis as evidence that SG grapples with a stereotype of being a brainwashing cult In Japan today But the quote doesn t say that Dubiousness of the concept itself According to the relevant section in our article on Anti cult movement a long list of scientists have argued and established to the satisfaction of courts of relevant professional associations and of scientific communities that there exists no scientific theory generally accepted and based upon methodologically sound research that supports the brainwashing theories as advanced by the anti cult movement Who are making these accusations Is it just fundamentalist Christians who are horrified that their daughter has become a Buddhist Given that the idea itself is dubious it needs extraordinary evidence We offer no evidence Offensiveness People have repeatedly asked that this word be removed If this was a cooperative endeavor like it s supposed to be those requests should at least be considered and some attempt made to compromise Influence of Wikipedia Many of the references on the net that connect SG and brainwashing can be traced back to this article The word is incendiary and we should make very sure that it is being used responsibly Doesn t belong in the lead This word was inserted on 04 54 2 December 2013 by who apparently wanted to get it into the lead But it doesn t appear in the rest of the article If you ask me the entire paragraph starting The organization has been the subject of substantial criticism should be moved down to the Public perception and criticism section We should have at least one sentence for each cite and each topic should be critically examined Then we can consider putting it in the lead Isn t true Basically the idea that SG is regarded by the general public as a cult much less a brainwashing cult just isn t true Aum yes SG no As I said above they are no more regarded as a dangerous cult than the Mormons are in the US This is just one example The same goes for the cite to The Encyclopedia of Cults Sects and New Religions which BTW is by Lewis not Zonta We seem to be implying that a respected scholar describes SG as a cult Is that true If not then all of the same objections apply