Talk:Great Ape Project

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Great Ape Project is part of WikiProject Animal rights, a project to create and improve articles related to animal rights. If you would like to help, please consider joining the project. All interested editors are welcome.

Make up your mind(s): is it a legal or a mammalian article? :-) I vote legal. --Ihope127 03:33, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Original research

The support and criticism sections look a bit like personal essays as they stand. Please see Wikipedia:No original research. They should probably be rewritten with good sources, or deleted. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:13, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Images

The images seem rather irrelevant to the topic at hand. They look more like propaganda than illustrations. We need a log or something of the sort instead. Ingoolemo ^talk 09:25, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] One-sided

Is it stands now, this article seems very one-sided, only presenting the opinions of those involved in the Great Ape Project. I wouldn't mind seeing a "criticism" section added. (Note that I'm not necessarily saying I agree or disagree with the GAP; I'm just saying there's bound to be a great deal of criticism towards a movement like this and such criticism would certainly warrant mention here.) Jeff Silvers 06:21, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Given how short the article is, a full criticism section would seem heavy weight. Perhaps a link could be added at the bottom to an external site that opposes GAP. There are several primate research labs in the US. Maybe one of them have a website that argues in favor of using apes for experiments.

The article does seem devoid of information on the supporters of GAP. It just states that "thirty-four recognized authors" contributed to the original book and that GAP is an "organization of primatologists, psychologists, ethicists, and other experts". Would it make it more one-sided to include a short list of some of the more noteworthy (especially scientific) contributors to the Great Ape Project book (Jane Goodall and Richard Dawkins) and subsequent supporters (Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan)? AstroVegan 19:11, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

By all means, go ahead. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 23:24, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Added links to Goodall and Dawkins as contributors to the book, but cannot find any online reference to Sagan (or anyone else) publicly endorsing GAP. Sagan learned of GAP shortly before his death and spoke with Singer, wishing he could have contributed to the book. I know this only from my personal contact with Sagan and cannot cite a source, so I have left it out for now. AstroVegan 01:33, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Also it's worth noting here on the talk page that one could object to the GAP project when taken literally, while still being sympathetic to their aim. It's not the case that being against the GAP means you must be in favor of primate experimentation. For example, one might take the view that extending the concept of 'rights' to animals doesn't really make sense, because you then get into a messy rights-and-responsibilities problem. If a chimp kills another chimp, do you put him on trial and lock him up in prison, or do you just accept that "that's what chimps do"? If the latter, then it's not clear what it meant to say that the chimps have rights. But one still might believe that we should treat apes with the same kind of respect we give to humans, just that we shouldn't lump such respect in with 'rights'.

Although I've seen such arguments discussed loosely (in not much more detail than I've just used), I've not found a decent reference for such an argument. So until such a reference appears, NOR implies that it can't go on the main article page. But it's worth bearing in mind if someone does put together a balanced criticism section. --DudeGalea 06:37, 1 September 2006 (UTC)