Wikipedia:Mandy Rice-Davies applies

This is an essay on the neutral point of view policy.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

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This page in a nutshell: The mere fact that someone has denied unsavory allegations does not automatically merit inclusion in an article, especially if that allegation is very well sourced. The subject of an article is not exempt from the ordinary rules of reliability as a source on themselves.

Mandy Rice-Davies was a key figure in the Profumo affair, a notorious British political scandal of the 1960s.

While giving evidence at the trial of Stephen Ward, charged with living off the immoral earnings of Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, Rice-Davies (18 years old at that time) made the remark for which she is now best remembered: when the defence counsel, James Burge, pointed out that Lord Astor denied an affair or having even met her, she retorted "Well, he would, wouldn't he?"

This became immortalized as "Mandy Rice-Davies applies" or MRDA. It's used to point out that the subject of an accusation has essentially no credibility (what we here on Wikipedia would call "is not a reliable source") when denying the accusation, because it's obviously in their own interests to deny it regardless of whether that denial is true.

On Wikipedia, many articles cover criticism of a subject. Editors are often tempted to close these sections with denials in the form of "X denies the allegations", based either on the subject's own self-published source or on a press release repeated in a newspaper story. Newspapers typically give the subject the last word. This may be false balance, for example when people are credibly identified as espousing a position that is known to be unpopular. Very few anti-vaccinationists, white nationalists or anti-semites are prepared to go on record and own their positions, and very few pyramid schemes, fake universities or predatory journals will own up to what they do.

Wikipedia is not a newspaper. We do not need to give the subject the last word. We include credible allegations from credible sources, we attribute them when they are the work or opinion of small numbers of individuals and we state them in Wiki-voice when the consensus is overwhelming.

"X is a white nationalist" does not need the qualifier "X denies being a white nationalist" because, well, he would, wouldn't he?

If X is accused of being a white nationalist, and investigation has shown that X publishes white nationalist talking points but has not self-identified as a white nationalist, then the fix is not to add a self-sourced denial, it's to frame the statement as an accusation and establish the basis for it and the error bars around it: "X is described by multiple sources as a white nationalist". Most importantly, if the allegation is widely supported by reliable sources but the denial exists only in X's own words, then the denial is not compelling or significant per Hitchens' razor.

When a living person is involved, WP:BLP matters but so does WP:NPOV. We don't legitimize fringe views just because they are asserted by an article subject. And the same would apply to content about any other controversial subject. Company Y has been successfully prosecuted for fraud. We don't need to say that the company denies wrongdoing.

If reliable sources have checked the denial and confirmed its basis in fact or discussed its credibility, we can certainly say so, but if the only statement is that "X denies the accusations" then we don't need to include it because, well, he would, wouldn't he?

See also