Talk:Paul R. Ehrlich

message: As of December 2005 this biography is still slanted against this great ecologist.  Dr. Paul Ehrlich has been a respected Senior Professor of Population Studies at Stanford University for over three decades.  This bio makes him sound like some weird insect specialist shouting "Everyone will die at age 42...."  
I tried several times to edit this article with a more accurate biography, and each time, the same neocon extremist blogger reverted article to his own hateful inaccurate version.  This ability to distort biography is a flaw of Wikipedia.  
I have reviewed WikiQuote page, and these quotes are accurate as of December 2005-- I have tapes of these lectures from PBS and National Public Radio.  Problem is prose of main article.  Part of problem is Ehrlich's famous big-mouth.  In heat of debate he often says deliberately alarming things for dramatic effect.  Such alarmist claims should not be mistaken for scholarship.  He is an easy target because it is easy to quote him out of context in such debates.  I could write a more accurate article myself but I know that same neocon extremist would just vandalize it again.
To get a better definitive biography and meaning of his work I would say Ehrlich himself or his wife or staff should write it or approve it-- then Wikipedia should lock it to prevent further neocon anti-ecology vandalism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.37.39.176 (talk • contribs) 
:Your comments are not based in reality. First, this article has rarely been edited since the summer. Second, I don't see who this "neo-con blogger" is or where he has made a habit of reverting your edits. Third, I don't see where yo've ever edited this article. Fourth, your suggestion for moving forward is entirely inappropriate and violates everything that Wikipedia stands for. -Willmcw 22:19, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Reading this discussion in September 2022 and especially the voice of the unsigned "neocons are everywhere" detector while proclaiming "Ehrlich is a genius" and brilliant entomologist seems so far removed from reality even more than it seemed to be 17 years ago. This emotional state expressed here is very strange, to say the least; in support of Ehrlich, a "scientist" who most likely was and continues to be one of the most failed scientists whose "scientific" predictions were wrong more than any other scientist's yet, who's highly regarded and described as brilliant and a scientist. By the way, I wonder, if Ehrlich is so good entomologist, why there are so few words about his achievements in this field of research. 24.225.161.193 (talk) 04:02, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biography needs Wikipedia Webmaster/ Moderator Lockdown 

message: You might consider it "not the most encyclopedic" to call it "wildly inaccurate" but I don't think anyone calls it dubious, especially not our sources Red Slash 19:26, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  And it's certainly not dubious 

message: So, I'm a little confused. If someone comes to this article for the first time and they read this:
Don't you think that it might be... just a little bit of interest to the reader... to know whether or not this predictions were true or not? Did hundreds of millions of people starve to death in the 1970s? Don't you think that just might be relevant? Red Slash 20:47, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: You need to take a break from this article.  Take this article off your watchlist, stop repeating the same thing over and over on the talk page, and go do something else for a while. Viriditas (talk) 20:48, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Erroneously 

message: I came across this page and have wanted to adopt it because I think it's in a terrible state. There is a lot of disjointed editorialising, which apart from not being encyclopedic, makes it hard to read. So I've started trying to rehabilitate bits of it, but wanted to leave a note here in case anyone is concerned or just wants to know the general gist of where my edits are going.
Firstly, I'm not here to get rid of criticisms of Paul Ehrlich. Not only does he richly deserve some criticism, but much of that criticism appears copiously in published reliable sources. However, not every iteration of every failed prediction needs to be reported and refuted here. Moreover, 90% of the time it's the same prediction - the rising population will kill us all, very soon, mainly through famine. So this page could and should be considerably shorter.
Secondly, criticisms (and support, which unfortunately also exists in copious quantities) need to be attributed. Wikipedia's voice doesn't need to point out that a prediction was failed, even when it's an obvious truth (we didn't all die of famine in the 1970s). 
Thirdly, my proposal is largely to get rid of the "After 2000s" section and to narrowly tailor the writings section to talk about the reception of the books (and not so much of the ideas in the books), while merging all the support and criticism of his views and predictions into the "Reception" section which I think should be re-named - maybe to "Views & Activism". 
Of course anyone else is free to edit at any time in any way they like, but I put this here in the hope that if anyone has alternative directions or suggestions, we can do this collaboratively. Samuelshraga (talk) 13:04, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re-editing this page