Talk:List of topics characterized as pseudoscience/Archive 17

Archive 10

←

Archive 15

Archive 16

Archive 17

Archive 18

Archive 19

Arkeology (Searches for Noah's Ark)

Hello A Quest For Knowledge,
I noticed you reverted my previous edit about arkeology with the motivation "Not in referenced article and the link 3 cited sources apparently are not working". Did you mean by that first remark, that arkeology has not been characterised as "pseudoscience" inside the article Searches for Noah's Ark? You've got a point there, though it *is* listed "category:pseudoarchaeology", and Noah's Ark is listed in the article pseudoarchaeology as well. So basically, adding the characterisation of "pseudoscience" to Searches for Noah's Ark would satisfy you?
I don't understand your second remark; can't you access these URLs?:

• http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=E__dnnQwGDwC&pg=PA90 Alan Dundes, The Flood Myth (1988) 90.
• http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VICt1Bmq_eoC&pg=PA179 Rickard & Michell, Unexplained Phenomena (2000) 179-183.
• http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QeKWpRX77JgC&pg=PA73 Donald Prothero, Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters (2013) 73.

Or do you think they aren't sufficient to call arkeology "pseudoscience"? Btw I found another mention here:

• http://books.google.nl/books?id=_XpEAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT115 William F. Williams, Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience (2013) 115. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 14:30, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Note: "Arkeology" is a "mocking term" and the belief that they have found the Ark is "pseudoscience" but the "search" as such is not "pseudoscience." An assertion that Troy had been found would have been "pseudoscience" before Schliemann, but his "search" for a "mythical city" was not "pseudoscience." Collect (talk) 14:44, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm fine with calling it simply "Searches for Noah's Ark" if you think that's more neutral. The false claims to have found the Ark are obviously pseudoscientific, so if we rephrase it like that, I'm also fine with it. But I would argue that even the methods used to research the Ark's location are not science: there is no way of knowing where the alleged "Mountains of Ararat" lie, let alone the specific mountaintop where the supposed Ark came to rest, and the current "Mount Ararat" is only a later Western tradition. That combined with the obvious mythical nature of such flood stories (see also flood geology) and the impossibility of taking literally the account of global repopulation with flora and fauna in just a few thousand years before today, which contradictics all well-established evidence of how life diversified, has led mainstream scientists, as exampled by the sources mentioned above, to characterise searches for Noah's Ark as "pseudoarcheology" ("arkeology") and therefore "pseudoscience". That is quite different from the Iliad, that can and has been at least partially verified to contain historical as well as legendary material about the city of Troy. The Schliemann argument is a common variant of the Galileo fallacy for biblical archaeology among fundamentalists which I'm inclined not to take very seriously. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 20:40, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

I think there is a problem in the sense that calling "religious beliefs" "pseudoscience" has met with in the past for Scientology and other belief systems -- and there have been enough discoveries of place names which were once thought "mythical" in the Bible being verified as real places that I am uncomfortable assigning "pseudoscience" as a label to them all. If it is "fundamentalist religion" which you wish to label "pseudoscience" then there is the problem that religion per se is not claiming to be "science." Collect (talk) 03:19, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

<Placeholder> I do plan to respond, but it's the holidays where I am, so my time on Wikipedia is limited right now. Bare with me for the next day or so.A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 05:47, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

When I first tried those three links, none of them worked. I forget what the error message was exactly. It said something about that there were too many views. In any case, the pages now load, and I'll keep them open for the duration of this discussion (or as long as I can). I did a quick glance and did not see where they said that this was a pseudoscience (I'm sorry, this topic is too boring for me to look into extensively). But even still, how is looking for the Noah's Ark a pseudoscience? Just because something is foolish doesn't make it pseudoscience. Pseudoscience is something that purports to be a science but isn't. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 02:20, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

If sources call the 'search' itself pseudoscience, I can't see the problem. Even when done by Creationists it's usually seen by them as a scientific enterprise using scientific tools. Dougweller (talk) 17:10, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

[1] says it skirts the domain of pop pseudoscience and the paranormal,; and Questia finds no academic articles linking the Ark and pseudoscience. O found no academic source or book calling the search qua search "pseudoscience." The problem here is that almost all acts based on religion could be called "pseudoscience" by someone, but Wikipedia has generally viewed "religion" as not "pseudoscience" to prevent religion v. religion edits on Wikipedia. Collect (talk) 19:05, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that all religious claims are by definition pseudoscientific; of course Collect is right that, for example, several Biblical place names have been authenticated. But as the article pseudoscience defines it, I would argue that so far, searches for Noah's Ark have been "presented as scientific, but [not adhered] to a valid scientific method, [lack] supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise [lack] scientific status". According to Prothero (2013), "Pseudoscience tries to masquerade as science (knowing the prestige that we now attach to scientific things), but when you examine the claims closely, they don't hold up to scrutiny." (p.13), which is pretty much in line with the definition used here on Wikipedia. He then goes on: "Creationist books are full of incredible mental gyrations needed to make the Noah's ark story remotely believable. However, as I found out from my encounter with Gish, creationists will avoid discussing it if it is brought up in debate because it sounds foolish and ruins their credibility with most audiences. A number of expeditions have been sent to Mount Ararat in Turkey (the supposed landing site) and made fantastic claims that they have found evidence of the ark, but none of these have stood up to scrutiny, despite the claims made by some creationist books and TV shows." (p.73) Although A Quest For Knowledge is correct that Prothero doesn't mention "pseudoscience" and "searches for Noah's Ark" or a paraphrase thereof in the same sentence, there can be no doubt that he regards it as pseudoscience as defined on page 13. The wording is exactly the same, it's clear that these claims, purported by some creationists to be "scientific", don't hold up to scrutiny and are therefore pseudoscientific. Moreover, the practice as a whole "lacks plausibility" according to Prothero ("incredible mental gyrations needed to make [it] remotely believable"; "avoid discussing it [to not ruin] credibility"). Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 11:56, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Long exposition:: Total gist: Religious claims are "implausible", therefore they are ipso facto "pseudoscience." Problem: The "search" appears to be just that - a "search", and however implausible, as long as scientific determination of the truth is sought, such a search is not "pseudoscience."

Using Prothero: (page 13 does not mention Noah - so I am using what he writes about it) page 29 goes into depth about the various sources merged into the Bible, but does not call it "pseudoscience." Page 73 says searches have not found the ark, but does not call the search qua search "pseudoscience."

In short -- a "belief in the Ark" is religion, a search for anything, no matter how impossible to exist, is not "pseudoscience" here. Heck, I recall when a belief that the universe was created out of "nothing" was "pseudoscience" of the first water. As long as the searchers do not assert the impossible, then the search qua search is not pseudoscience - even per Prothero. Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:59, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

I thought that the modern searches claim to use scientific methods to determine the position? That would put them right in the realm of pseudoscience.

And archeology is a science, last I heard. If they claim to be using archaeological methods to help with the searches, they they are using science by definition. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:27, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

By that standard, anyone using even arithmetic when "counting books of the Bible" is doing "pseudoscience" <g>. Nope -- the issue would arise if they asserted that they found the ark, but the search is not "pseudoscience" AFAICT. Nor does Prothero in his 2013 works state that the search is "pseudoscience." The idea is that by avoiding "religion is pseudoscience" we can avoid a lot of useless disputation. Cheers. Collect (talk) 19:12, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

I find that comparison to be falacious. It's called arkeology = ark + archeology. If the search for Noah's Ark was strictly religious, it wouldn't be covered in archaeological books as an example of badly-done archaeology:

• Encyclopedia of Dubious Archaeology, ABC-CLIO, p. 195-196

and it's explicitly labeled pseudoarchaeology in RS (some editors insist in labeling everything "pseudoscience", when there are much more adequate categories, I wish they stopped doing that. Myself, I have fallen in that trap in my messages above):

• "Another subset of pseudo-archaeology includes the attempts to force the archaeological record to conform and provide support for a literal interpretation of the Bible, especially the Old Testament (...) It is also maintained that archaeological evidence supports the view that the world was all but destroyed by a universal flood, that just a handful of people survived that flood, and even that remnants of the boat that served as their refuge - the Ark - still exist on Mount Ararat in Turkey." The Oxford Companion to Archaeology Oxford University Press, p. 582ç

• "Already, educated laypeople are making spurious claimsof archaeology discovery from space (Taylor, 2007), such as the so-called "discovery" of Noah's Ark, to which the press and reputable publications gave sserious consideration. (...) One again, hype and the "story" triumphed over archeological method. Only making the science of satellite archaeology more acesible to the general public can prevent pseudoarchaeology from triumphing over good practice." Satellite Remote Sensing for Archaeology, Routledge, p.227

• "A good example of the difficulties involved in finding archaeological evidence for events depicted in the early portions of the Hebrew Bible, and for the opportunities that this provides to the pseudo-archaeologists is that of the Flood and Noah's Ark, as described in the book of Genesis" Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, p 73

• "Modern archaeology is highly technical and - let us be honest - sometimes rather dull. n contrast, the "pseudoarchaeologies" that have appeared in recent years (...) The Lost Continent of atlantis, the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, expeditions in search of Noah's Ark - all provide superb raw material for the armchair adventurer (Feder, 1996)" In the Beginning: An Introduction to Archaeology, Prentice Hall, p. 17

--Enric Naval (talk) 20:52, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

(od) "Arkeology" has been labeled a "mocking term" thus using it to establish that it is ipso facto "pseudoscience" fails. In fact, it is not found even in the Oxford book cited from the Spanish Google search <g>. So we might as well drop that term here -- it is improper to use a dysphemism to show how much one wishes to deride anything. BTW, googlemining for "pseudoarcheology + noah's ark" will generally find sources which use both terms <g> (first page asserting 122 hits ... actual total 65 hits in all og googlebooks ... using "archaeology + noah's ark" gets more than 9000 book hits) where the gist of the entire chapter is not about a topic tends to get interesting results -- one of the cites in fact is more about "commercial exploitation" of archeology than much else. What we are left with is the fact that the ark story is one of religion and thus not one of pseudoscience in itself, and second that archaeologists have frequently sought things everyone knew did not exist -- I rather think that where religion is concerned, it is best to consider tenets as being religion and not pseudoscience, and that where scientists seek facts to prove or disprove anything, that the process of so doing is not "pseudoscience". Cheers. Collect (talk) 04:05, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

First of all, I agree with not using "Arkeology", "Searches for Noah's Ark" is enough.

Second, you say that the story about the ark is about religion, but above we have several archaeology books saying it's pseudoarchaeology, and explaining why it doesn't qualify as "good" archaeology. Of course, you are free to have your own definitions for what can be considered as archaeology. But your definition seems to be at odds with the definitions held by reliable sources in the field of archaeology.

Third, the criteria for inclusion on this list is characterisation in RS. The search of Noah's Ark is characterised by several good-quality RS as pseudoarchaeology (a subset of pseudoscience).

--Enric Naval (talk) 14:51, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

A claim that the ark "has been discovered" (positing, of course, that it has not been discovered, of course) would appear to fall into that area possibly (and noting the actual wording of the sources you cite), but the actual scientific "search qua search" does not fall into that category. And to the extent that this is a religious issue and not one of science qua science, the ArbCom decisions on religious movements etc. would appear to delimit what it proper here. The safest course per those decisions is simply not to embroil this article in those decisions and sanctions. Your Oxford source does not specify that the search is "pseudoarchaeology" by the way - your Routledge cite specifies "spurious claims or archaeological discovery from space", the Cline cite deals with a possibility that devastating floods had occurred, but that charlatans did not use actual science and archaeological principles -- Cline thus does not support the claim you wish to cite him for. The EDS cite refers to hoaxes (page 54)(which clearly are not the topic at hand), "pieces of Noah's ark" (page 113) (also not pertinent), a specific dig (page 194) also not usable here, a debunking because of impossibility of an ark (page 195) which does not deal with archaeology or the possibility that the story referred to a local flood of immense proportions etc. and does not deal with any actual archaeological search for evidence of any such flood, and so on. In short - it rather specifies that hoaxes are "pseudoarchaeology" and that is reasonable. What we are left with is "The Finding of Noah's Ark" is likely pseudoscience - but that is not what you seem to wish. Cheers. Collect (talk) 15:13, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I am starting to find your interpretation of sources to be very troubling. You seem to be twisting the context of every source to fit your preconceived idea that this is a religious topic. You are only seeing what you want to see.

You know what, I'm done with endlessly arguing in circles. I don't come to wikipedia to waste my time. I'll restore the search for Noah's Ark, with the RS that clearly support its inclusion. You are an experienced wikipedian. If you have doubts, you can go to WP:RSN is. If you remove again the entry, It you or A Quest For Knowledge remove again the entry, I'll just ask that your topic-banned from this page for tendentious editing. Idem for removing other sourced entries with convoluted arguments about them being religious beliefs. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:36, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

No, wait, first I'll see if other editors agree with Collect's assessment of the sources. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:32, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Considering that Mt. Ararat is a volcano which has erupted at least once in antiquity covering the flanks of the mountain in pyroclastic flows, events which "arkeologists" blithely ignore when assuming a wooden object would survive on its slopes for thousands of years, renders any alleged scientific attempts to find the apocryphal ark pseudoscience. (And, really, why are we even discussing this at all when we had a pretty solid understanding of how sea-levels actually work these days. No boat is going be left 9,000ft up the slopes of some mountain by means of having floated there.)--Froglich (talk) 09:09, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

I didn't even know about those scientific impossibilities, Froglich, thanks for mentioning them. I think Collect tried to take Prothero's remarks out of context to deny he characterised searches for the Ark as pseudoscience, and like the previous Schliemann argument, I agree with Enric Naval that the comparison between ark searchers and theoretical physicists researching the origins of the universe is fallacious. Moreover Enric has delivered even better sources that quite unambiguously label it pseudoscience. Finally, I personally labeled "arkeology" to be a 'mocking' term, because that is how I assessed the way Dundes ("Sometimes archaeology becomes "arkeology" (...) instigated by dedicated amateurs"), Rickard & Michell ("Such breakthroughs [referring to false and hoax findings] have now become regular events in arkeology, each new discovery upstaging the last.") and Prothero ("Ship or Foolishness? (...) "[Let's] delve into the world of arkeology.") used the term, and I've not seen any people supporting the notion that searching for Noah's Ark is genuine science using it, but I could be wrong. Dundes claims the term "arkeology" was invented in 1971, but doesn't clarify by whom and in what fashion. Just to be on the safe side, I'll repeat that "Searches for Noah's Ark" will do fine for me. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 13:36, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

I grant the finding or assertions thereof are pretty much "pseudoscience", but it is also clear that there are "real scientists" examining a great many theories and postulates to account for the flood traditions found in almost every culture -- their work should not be so likely dissed here. Why not use "assertions of finding Noah's Ark" as being "pseudoscience", rather than lumping everything in together? Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:18, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, can you name a "real scientist" with scientific expertise in relevant scientific fields that have done research by following scientific methods? 94.215.26.254 (talk) 03:06, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Major scientist expecting to find a wooden boat? Or scientists who routinely dig in the mid-East and finding "mythical cities" and names of Biblical figures who were deemed mythical? The latter has large numbers of "real scientists" and, in some cases, surprising results. Scientists working on ancient major floods? Scads. What exactly is your point? A decade ago would you have believed in asymmetrical crystals? Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:09, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

No need to beat around the bush, I think the question was clear enough. Just give us an example. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 01:03, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

See [2] for a very short list of recent articles thereon. I suggest at least one of them is "real" <g>. As I said before, the finding or assertions thereof might well be pseudoscience, but the study of ancient archaeology including strong evidence that pretty big floods did occur in a number of places is not "pseudoscience." Cheers. Collect (talk) 01:18, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

None of the articles there is about Noah's Ark; it's all about Biblical archaeology in Israel. Also, flood geology (which, by the way, has been thoroughly refuted and is already considered pseodoscience) is not what we're discussing here. You're dodging the question and trying distractive manoeuvres. Where is your "real scientist"? Give us a name. Honestly I don't think you really have one, or you'd given us one by now, and I'm starting to lose my patience. I invite Enric Naval to restore searches for Noah's Ark to the list, including the RS we've found. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 11:01, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

For everyone's information, discussion has continued on Enric's talk page. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 22:32, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

And has now degenerated from any pretense of collegial discussion, alas. Collect (talk) 22:41, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

On the contrary, I think we've been reasonable. All you need to do is provide evidence for your claims, Collect, otherwise you have no case. If you want to discontinue our discussion, fine, but then I suppose you will not object when we restore Searches for Noah's Ark to the List. Greetings, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 22:59, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

I suggest your mode of debate has been less than collegial, and indeed if oft sarcastic and dismissive.

You asked for scientists - I gave you scientists. A boatload of them. I gave you one acclaimed scientist who searched for Atlantis and the Loch Ness Monster -- and all you can say is "well you didn't give me someone I accept and since you didn't than clearly you can raise no objections when we add the material back unchanged."

I suggest in fact that this is not what WP:CONSENSUS contemplates, is not civil, and is an improper mode of "debate." Is this quite sufficiently clear?

And your discussion is quite clear -- you sarcastically posted So? What about Noah's Ark? Stop throwing in red herrings, please.' , and Collect? and Ok, in that case I suppose you will not object when we restore Searches for Noah's Ark to the List. Greetings.

I suggest that no editor should ever expect such "posts" to be considered as actually seeking agreement on wording -- and (expletive of your choice) I provided you with lots of proposals and all you can do is insist in using the exact wording which was problematic in the first place. Cheers. Collect (talk) 00:03, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Enric and I have been very patient with you, trying to get you to do some hard work, too, to find RS on searches for Noah's Ark, and not just reject whatever RS we *do* come up with; I may have used some sarcasm to entice you come up with RS, but apparently that did not work. Where is your "boatload" of scientists who have expertise in relevant scientific fields and done searches for Noah's Ark? Though a genuine scientist, Edgerton simply does not qualify as such because he hasn't studied the Ark, and Livingstone et al. merely confirmed the dubious nature of the practice. We have clearly defined who would qualify and requested several times to name such a person to cite his/her work, but you've thrown in all kinds of red herrings, ranging from "only claimed findings are pseudoscience/"biblical archaeology" is genuine science" to "Schliemann found Troy/Edgerton searched for Atlantis and the Loch Ness Monster", all of which are irrelevant and we've explained why. Your previous move has been to personally attack me as if I'm less than collegial, not serious, as if I degenerated the debate, thereby indicating you no longer wished to participate. Fine, go ahead, you don't have to (even though I specifically asked you to), but that means this round of discussion is over and WP:BRD moves into the next phase, which is WP:BOLD, so that's what I did. You moved to the next phase –which is fine– by reverting my edit and removing all RS Enric and I have collected and adding your own unsubstantiated claims –which is not fine: a violation of the "NOTE ON SOURCES" stated above: "UNSOURCED entries WILL BE REMOVED in order to keep this list clear of original research and possible NPOV violations." You go on here with personal attacks against me, trying to play the victim; you're fortunate I've got a thick skin, and I could parry it and counter, but I will have none of it, no more unproductive distractions. This round will be brief: I will restore my previous edit, include your claim "Some scientists have searched for the ark without expecting success, using scientific methods", and until you can substantiate that with evidence from reliable sources from genuine scientists with expertise in relevant scientific fields who have specifically set out to find Noah's Ark, I'll give it a {{Citation needed}} template. I'm willing giving you a chance, but don't hold me responsible if someone else removes your claim again. So, good luck with finding those RS, colleague. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 01:50, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

(od) Your "patience" seems odd in its form. Other discussions pretty much decided "arkeology" is not a general term, and is dysphemistic. Sources will be forthcoming on some who have searched, albeit I suspect none expected to find the ark - but use of radar etc. is a scientific process and is not like using an E-meter. As for threats sabout unilateral action - that is not how WP:CONSENSUS works, and is unlikely to have a bemneficial effect on collegiality here. Cheers. Collect (talk) 02:19, 17 January 2014 (UTC) BTW, you set an absurd bar -- to find a scientist in your accepted list of fields who expects to find the ark when I specified that they did not generally expect to find any ark at all. Perhaps you should reread the claim as stated? Cheers -- but this is a fool's errand when two folks assert control to such an extent on any article. Cheers again - and please understand and deal with what my actual statements are and not what you wish to assert they are. Collect (talk) 02:37, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

I conceded about "arkeology" and have removed this redundant remnant of the original version. I'm curious about your RS and will comment once you've found them, I will not comment on other issues. Good luck. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 02:55, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

RfC - Should we change the focus & title of this article?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Should this article be "List of pseudosciences"? (Note that this is not just a title change proposal - the content would need to change also). SteveBaker (talk) 04:00, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Survey

• Support (Nominator). SteveBaker (talk) 04:00, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

(Nominator:) I believe that the present title is a cop-out. Many people seem to think that the article is a list of pseudosciences - which elicits complaints that certain topics that are clearly NOT pseudosciences are listed here. However, the way this page is named (and the way we currently provide content for it) is such that non-pseudosciences may perfectly legitimately belong in this list. The present title essentially says: "If you can find a reliable source that says that someone characterized a topic as a pseudoscience, then it belongs in this list.". What I think we should have is "If there are reliable sources that say that some topic is a pseudoscience, then it belongs in this list.". The difference seems subtle - but it's really not.

I understand that changing the article to be a true list of actual pseudosciences will result in a much shorter list - and possibly we'll find ourselves unable to find WP:RS that say that some obviously pseudoscientific topics are indeed pseudosciences. However, I think that's a legitimate cost of making ourselves more honest.

It will certainly be more work to maintain this article should this change be approved - but it would be a vastly more useful article as a result.

From an encyclopedic standpoint, nobody really cares if Senator Joe Blow who knows nothing about (say) Climate Change or "The Scientific Method" happens to say to a reputable journalist that Climate Change science is really a pseudoscience. The Senator's opinion would not pass as a reliable scientific source within Wikipedia - but the fact of his comment, being reported in a reputable newspaper does constitutes a reliable source that someone characterized the subject thusly. Which is what makes many of the entries in this list be acceptable to Wikipedia even though they are not what we seem to be saying they are.

What readers really need to know is whether a particular topic is indeed a pseudoscience - and for that we really should be demanding reputable scientific sources that say "X is a pseudoscience" rather than "unqualified idiot Y says that X is a pseudoscience" (or worse still "Here is concrete proof that X is not a pseudoscience even though unqualified idiot Y says it is!" - which would still land a perfectly serious, respectable science on this list!).

So I strongly believe that we should retitle the article and ruthlessly prune entries that rely on "heresay" evidence or lack of scientific rigor.

SteveBaker (talk) 04:00, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

• Disagree. The current article under its more inclusive title is satisfying in that it allows WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV to bring some significant criticism down on certain topics that are borderline. The reader will want to know what is borderline and what is not. As well, the discussions here will get much more partisan and ugly if the label "pseudoscience" is given in Wikipedia's voice rather than in the voice of some observers. Binksternet (talk) 04:19, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

  It allows people who are sufficiently notable to be reported in the press - yet who are completely inexpert in both the subject and the scientific method to label things as pseudosciences and thereby place them on this list. That is a perversion of the WP:RS rules which would normally require reliable scientific sources to state as a fact that some topic is not following the scientific method.

• Keep current title. I see that SteveBaker is playing WP:IDHT by ignoring my warning in the previous section that an RfC on this subject would be disruptive:

1. I obviously think the current title is fine. The only ones who consider it problematic are usually those who object to their favorite delusion's inclusion. They refuse to understand the purpose of the list. The lead makes it plain. Don't overinterpret.
2. We are deliberately and carefully treading a fine line between no list at all (which would leave a big hole in Wikipedia's goal of documenting the sum total of human knowledge) and violating the PSI ArbCom ruling. Push it too far one way and it gives pseudoskeptics and pseudoscientists an excuse to delete the whole list. We don't want that. Wikipedia's goal must be served. Push it too far the other way and we're violating the ruling by definitively categorizing in Wikipedia's voice many subjects which are borderline pseudoscientific. We shouldn't do that. That's why we limit content to "characterizations" found in RS. The source obviously believes it is pseudoscience, and so do we, but that's our own opinion as editors. We can't write that, except in obvious cases (see groups 1 & 2 above). We don't take a position as to whether a subject absolutely IS pseudoscience here, even if it really is, but we definitely do that in some of the articles. Here we abide by the ArbCom decision and limit content to the first three groupings seen at the top of this page.
3. We have had many RfCs on this matter, and this title has always been the best solution. Since nothing has changed, and no new arguments for change have been brought forth, such an RfC would be disruptive. If you don't like the list, no one is forcing you to play here. Of course there is a better option. Instead of creating disruption, how about abiding by the inclusion criteria and improving it?
4. His desire to have a different list does not require any change to this one. What he's proposing here would totally gut this one, to the great pleasure of myriad pushers of woo who have tried.
5. SteveBaker's concern could still be met by creating a different list besides this one which only covers items in groups 1 & 2. Go for it., and withdraw this RfC. It's a disruptive waste of time already. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:11, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

• Your accusation of IDHT is unfounded - I launched this RfC before you responded (or possibly at the same time as you were responding - it took a while for me to rally my thoughts and type all of this stuff in). But in any case, I disagree with your assessment. SteveBaker (talk) 13:55, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

• I then retract the IDHT. I can see how that might have happened. I'll take your word for it. That doesn't make this RfC any less disruptive and a waste of time. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:41, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• Your accusation that "The only ones who consider it problematic are usually those who object to their favorite delusion's inclusion." is personally insulting to me - and I challenge you to tell me which topic is the one that I'm POV pushing or withdraw this personal attack (per WP:NPA). I assure you that there is none. My main concern here is to avoid having a rambling list that includes both legitimate pseudosciences and non-pseudosciences in order that editors can get away with reliable reports of unreliable people to (in effect) mislabel a topic. SteveBaker (talk) 13:55, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

• I made no accusation or personal attack against you. I was referring to the many attacks we have had. "...usually..." is the key word here. There are exceptions, and I'm glad you are one. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:41, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
• You keep mentioning non-pseudosciences which are included. Which ones are there? Oops! That's not for this thread. We need to stay on topic, but you're welcome to mention them on my talk page. I am curious and would like to fix that if necessary and proper. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:41, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• There has not been a recent RfC and the fact that people are still very unhappy with the list should be evident. No consensus is ever permanent and, IMHO, it's time to re-assess this one. I do not choose to close this RfC without adequate discussion. SteveBaker (talk) 14:04, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

• The list has been quite stable, but it does get attacked, and that quite aside from the title. The attackers really want to do what you want to do....get rid of it. You'll find that your proposed list will also get attacked. That's the nature of anything using the words "pseudoscience" and "quackery". They will always get attacked. We can't change that, and your proposal won't change that. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:41, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• Disagree. In a list article the inclusion criteria need to be set very carefully (as here) to avoid disputes about neutrailty and verifiability; the thought that we could change this article into being some kind of true judge about what "is indeed a pseudoscience" misses a central point about what Wiipedia does for non-trivial statements - it reports what others have said, and does not say things itself. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 07:34, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

  Your assessment falls short of what Wikipedia demands. It doesn't just "report what others have said". It repeats what experts in the field say. That's the core principle - and your misapprehension of how Wikipedia works is precisely the problem with this list. The way the list is named means that all that is required is to find a reliable source that says that someone, anyone, expert or non-expert, neutral enquirer or rabid rabble rouser - said that they consider the topic to be pseudoscience. If the person making the characterization is indeed an expert, making a fact-based appraisal, then their original statement is a reliable source for the list that I propose we should have in place of this one and nothing is lost. In effect, what I'm saying is that "List of topics characterized as pseudoscience by just about anyone" (which is what we have) is useless compared to "List of topics characterized as pseudoscience by experts in the field" (which is what Wikipedia demands of us). SteveBaker (talk) 13:55, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

  Wow, that strawman was soundly beaten there!! Obviously what we include needs to be reliable, but WP:PARITY is an important guideline for us here in choosing sources. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 14:28, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

• Support - I spent a long time trying to get a very well-referenced entry added to this article; a topic which was historically characterized as pseudoscience. It was positively undeniable that the entry belonged on this list (even though it is no longer considered a pseudoscience). Yet, a few vocal hardliners here just didn't want the entry here because, in the end, it just offended their sensibilities. In my limited experience here, what I've found this article to truly be is a list of items which the vocal hardliners here want to characterize as pseudoscience. This article is not necessarily inclusive of all verifiable characterizations. Instead, we have a very bespoke inclusion criteria, carefully tailored by the hardliner editors here, which attempts to weed out entries which offend them. Despite the craftiness of the inclusion criteria, the entry which I eventually navigated into this article revealed many holes and double-standards in the language, and the overall agenda dictated by the vocal hardliners here. As it stands, I don't know what encyclopedic purpose this article serves. The non-encyclopedic purpose is the hardliners' effort to corral all the things which they characterize as pseudoscience. If this is to be a list of topics which have been characterized as pseudoscience, then open up the gates and allow verifiable characterizations. If this is to be a list of things which are deemed pseudoscience by the scientific community at large, then rename it and make the inclusion criteria be just that. As it is now, however, the most appropriate title of the article would be: "List of topics characterized by some hardliner Wikipedians as pseudoscience so don't try to get your well-sourced, verifiable, notable entry included here or else you will be scrutinized, antagonized, ridiculed, and/or ignored... so good luck with that". That's probably too long of a title though. 172.250.119.155 (talk) 21:25, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose changes I'm not seeing any clear policy-based rationale for any changes, and the proposed changes need to be much clearer so we can indeed determine if they resolve any problems. The article has withstood close examination by a large number of editors over a long period of time, including a great deal of review in light of WP:ARB/PS. --Ronz (talk) 22:24, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
• Support One of the problems with this article is that it paradoxically includes items which are not pseudoscience. Instead, this article is being (mis)used as a dumping ground for anything that is wrong, regardless of whether or not each specific item is actually pseudoscience. I'm not sure how anyone can possibly defend a list which knowingly misleads our readers. It seems that we've forgot that our purpose as Wikipedia editors is to provide educational content. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:19, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

• You too keep mentioning non-pseudosciences which are included. I suspect that you, considering your track record, would seek to exempt certain subjects which all scientific skeptics would consider pseudoscience, but which you consider to be true. Which ones are there? Don't answer that here, but in a separate thread. I am curious and would like to fix that if necessary and proper. We seek to be careful not to include anything in group 4, only groups 1-3, per the ArbCom decision.
  Your argument is NOT a reason for deletion, but for improvement. Seek to help with that goal. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:47, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• @BullRangifer: Your last post is so bizarre, I'm not sure where to even begin as it has nothing to do with the current discussion or anything that I've ever said. First, you begin by talking about my "track record". What track record is that? Second, you bizarrely claim that I would seek to "exempt certain subjects which all scientific skeptics would consider pseudoscience, but which you consider to be true." Where the heck did you even get that from?!? I am a scientific skeptic. I don't think that any of these items are true. Where in the world did you get such an impression? I've said nothing of the sort. Third, why are going on about deleting this article? This is an RfC, not an AfD, and the RfC is about whether an article about pseudoscience should also include items which are not pseudoscience. Seriously dude, your comment has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 10:19, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• I too have a problem with Brangifer immediately assuming (against all evidence from edit histories, etc) that people who oppose his position are fringe theorists trying to push their pet theories off of this article. The true fact is quite the reverse. I want to give this article more teeth against the fringe theorists by making it clearly say "X is a pseudoscience" in a list where all of the entries are indeed pseudosciences. SteveBaker (talk) 16:02, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• Mildly disagree It's worth noting that this was in fact this page's previous title. I think it more correctly describes the essential characteristic it takess to be on the list - i.e., rather than having editors verge on OR to demonstrate something's pesudoscientific nature, one needs to point to sufficient RSes to show it being described as such. I think it serves the reader fine. OTOH, I wouldn't object strenuously to it being moved back, it is a bit clunky - David Gerard (talk) 14:39, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
• Tentative Oppose - If the article is renamed, it's not so simple to just say "ok, well now we'll just include things that are pseudoscience" because Wikipedia remains truth neutral. The difference is effectively "topics characterized as pseudoscience" vs. "topics characterized as pseudoscience per the majority of reliable sources" (which can be implied in the titles of many WP articles). A new kind of criteria have to be developed first, or we're right back at the ArbCom issue. A central issue, I think, is that even the most outspoken skeptics don't always use the word "pseudoscience," but that seems to be what's required here. If someone like Dawkins, for example, picks apart someone's claims to extrasensory perception, he's not entirely likely to use the word, but in order for our article to be functional his criticism of the science would have to be taken to imply such a judgment. In fact, I'd bet that the majority of articles on "water fueled cars" don't contain the word pseudoscience even if they overwhelmingly agree that it is. ...So how can this be made clear for the purposes of inclusion? --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  16:51, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• So you'd advocate that "List of sports rivalries" become "List of sports discussions characterized as rivalries" and "List of natural disasters" become "List of natural events characterized as disasters"? I doubt it. We do label things as "truth" here in Wikipedia - but we define it to be "true" that a subject is a pseudoscience if an unbiassed, science-based, professional source says it is. It is "true" that a subject is characterized as a pseudoscience if a reliable source says that someone characterized it so. Introducing "characterized as" doesn't alter the truth or otherwise behind what we say - it only opens the gates to unqualified (but properly reported) people causing topics to be added to our list that don't belong here...and results in us making distasteful POV-based decisions to include "Climate change denialism" and yet exclude "Climate change" - when both of them have clearly been "characterized" as pseudosciences (the former correctly and the latter incorrectly). SteveBaker (talk) 03:40, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

• weak oppose - "A pseudoscience is"? --- many reliable sources define pseudoscience - do the listed topics here meet those definitions? Can we imply the conclusion? Drawing conclusions that is evident in the reference would be the opposite of Wikipedia:No original research#Reliable sources. Thanks to POVPUSHing an article may not match the conclusion reached on this list, always worth checking but the articles themselves are not sources. Also an article may not not use the word "pseudoscience" because there is room to give readers detailed information about relevant controversies (WP:LABEL) Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 16:06, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

• Support - Current name of this article is ridiculous and was implemented as a compromise with pseudoscience promoters. We should not negotiate with terrorists. jps (talk) 12:45, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

• jps, that's not true. It was the only way we could save this article from their deletion attempts, and by doing so it has survived three AfDs. This attempt by someone who claims to be an enemy of pseudoscience plays into their hands. He wants to get rid of the article. The replacement would be a shadow of this one. I don't think he realizes the consequences of what he's proposing. The ArbCom ruling comes into play and will need to be heeded. See my comments below (look in the edit history for my comments immediately before this one). -- Brangifer (talk) 07:10, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

• I disagree with your position completely. Arbcom rulings are not meant to dictate content. We could keep this article as is with a new title. No problem. The title is not an inoculation, it's just a euphemism. jps (talk) 11:45, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

• They don't rule on content, but they did rule on format and use of Category:Pseudoscience in their decision. Thus the title and content must match, and this proposal raises the bar so high that it would mean a number of items listed would have to be removed for lack of RS. SteveBaker's demand for sources from "a science journal or some qualified/reputable scientist saying it in print" would mean that the WP:Fringe and parity guidelines can't be used to allow sourcing from what are often the only ones dealing with such woo....scientific skeptics. Science journals don't mention woo, and in fact we'd have a hard time finding any sources to use. They ignore pseudoscience and rarely comment on it. Steve doesn't understand the consequences of what he's proposing, and his new list, although small, will constantly be a bloody battlefield.
  I know you're not a fan of ArbCom, after your bans, but you need to think a bit pragmatically. Your support for this proposition places you squarely in the side of pseudoscience lovers. Take a look at who's supporting this. You now are on the same side as A1candidate! You really need to watch the company you keep. -- Brangifer (talk) 22:16, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

• When arbcom tried to rule on the use of Category:Pseudoscience, they were inappropriately making content decisions and there have been some clarifications by arbitrators since then that the opinion of Fred Bauder does not need to be taken as gospel. I simply and plainly disagree with your contention that this proposal raises any bar at all. As far as I can tell, we have a lot of "qualified/reputable scientists" who are identifying those items currently listed, though I agree the "journals" are red herrings completely. If the proposer has an ulterior motive to remove items on this list simply by changing its name, that's his own problem. The name "list of pseudosciences" does not immediately mean we have to change the inclusion criteria. jps (talk) 11:48, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

• Support - The current title is too long and needlessly introduces unencyclopedic vagueness with "topics characterized as" (Does the list deal with "topics" or does it deal with disciplines that have been presented as science and thus been labeled pseudoscience? Characterized by whom?). The lead section already makes clear the fairly obvious criteria that the list members have been so labeled. Astynax 17:56, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

• Titles dictate content and must be accurate, and it must harmonize with the lead. The title is long, but there are many more that are just as long and work just fine. The references state who is characterizing what. Your reasons aren't good enough to justify destabilizing this article, or, as Steve Baker wishes to do, is to delete it entirely. See my comment below where I provide the diff where he said it. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:04, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose (changed my vote) Support - Support as long as people aren't planning to swing a big axe on the existing content. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 06:03, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

• Unfortunately Steve Baker wants to get rid of this list entirely. He wants to replace it with a list where editors will be forced to settle the demarcation problem in a final manner for each entry, and the edit warring will be even worse than now. It would only, because of our ArbCom decision, be allowed to contain items from groups 1 & 2. We now include items from group 3. Those would all be axed. All content using scientific skeptical sources would also be removed because many of these sources are allowed by WP:FRINGE and parity. Those sources could no longer be used.
  We're looking at a major deletion of content and sources. This will leave a big hole in our coverage of the subject, and we will fail to fulfill our obligation as Wikipedians, to document the "sum total of human knowledge." That happens to also include characterizations as pseudoscience made in many RS which won't be allowed anymore.
  Lovers of the fringe, pseudoscience, quackery, and health fraud will vote for Steve Baker to be their patron saint, because he has done what they have tried but failed to do. -- Brangifer (talk) 06:59, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Brangifer, you (appear to be) arguing from emotion here, and that's a bad idea, especially when we're talking about a topic so closely associated with rationality and science. You may disagree with Steve Baker, but I can assure you that he is at least as much a lover of Truth and the scientific method as you are. Please don't make wild claims contrary to fact ("wants to get rid of this list entirely") or use laden terms in a derogatory way ("patron saint") -- you denigrate yourself, this article, and the scientific method. —Steve Summit (talk) 20:31, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

• Disagree hugely with changes. I can point woolly thinkers at this list and the proposed changes will water it down. Bad idea. --Roxy the dog (resonate) 07:08, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

• Support - This article is a massive WP:COATRACK for promoters of pseudoskepticism. There is a lot of selective fact picking based on a deliberate misrepresentation of sources. What concerns me is how easily anyone can categorize an entire medical field as a form of pseudoscience even though is no consensus in the scientific community for this. The most recent research shwos that acupuncture, for example, is is not pseudoscience and is based on valid scientific evidence. Why not wait for someone to publish an article claiming that Wikipedia is pseudoscience so that we can add it to this nonsensical list of indiscriminate information? -A1candidate (talk) 12:15, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

And here we have a prime reason this article is a good one. Acupuncturists don't like it when their pet woo is declared to be woo. This is a great list as it stands. --Roxy the dog (resonate) 12:56, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Just wanted to point out that the supposedly 'valid scientific evidence' supplied by A1candidate is nothing of the sort. --Roxy the dog (resonate) 13:06, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

A1candidate, I was wondering when you'd arrive to support the cause of pseudoscience promotion. I suspect you'll vote for Steve Baker to be the patron saint of woo lovers. He won't like that dubious honor, but he's your biggest ally right now. Your arguments really ring hollow, when there are abundant sources which do "characterize" various aspects of TCM and acupuncture as pseudoscience. Not having looked at the sources, I'm not sure whether they are in group 2 or 3. If in group three, then acupuncture will not be included in SteveBaker's new list and you'll be happy. -- Brangifer (talk) 22:25, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose for multiple reasons. First, the proposed change elevates each of the topics to the level of being individual pseudosciences, and I am far from certain that RS's will necessarily discuss whether these topics are each individual or not. Second, the proposed change seems to indicate that they all fall within one main topic, "pseudoscience," despite their often pronounced variation from each other, so the proposed title might be misleading in indicating that they all fall within a clearly defined area, which probably isn't really frequently defined that clearly. Lastly, honestly, the proposed change raises the bar for inclusion, demanding that anyone prove through RS's that the subject is pseudoscience, and most pseudoscientific topics will have at least some individuals calling it science, which would presumably possibly lead to interminable edit wars. And the current title, with the word "characterized", pretty much avoids all those problems, so I favor keeping it as is. John Carter (talk) 20:31, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

• It's nice to see an admin who isn't a fuzzy thinker. Fortunately we do have many. You have hit the nail on the head. This raising of the bar excludes the use of policies and guidelines which allow for sources which we suddenly won't be able to use here. That's not allowed. All policies and guidelines govern this list, and we should be able to use all sources which are allowable under those guidelines. -- Brangifer (talk) 22:36, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose My apologies for being late to the party, but I wanted to add my vote. I believe that John Carter above stated my own views better than I did. TechBear | Talk | Contributions 03:36, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. If the title were changed the article would be deleting without an AFD discussion. The name change would essentially undermine the list of topics characterized as pseudoscience because only pseudosciences would be allowed in the list. Everything that is characterized as pseudoscience would be deleted. QuackGuru (talk) 19:22, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

• Keep title but be clear about which topics have a mainstream following -- Demarcation is always contentious. Perhaps we could somehow flag topics that are "questionable science", like psychoanalysis, polygraphy, and a handful of alt-med topics, aspects of which have a substantial mainstream following. That would accord with the ArbCom principles listed at the top of the page and at WP:FRINGE/PS. But there's no "best" way to do this. --Middle 8 (talk) 23:50, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

• Comment: I think a big part of the problem is that too many of the arguments for incusion of topics in this article boil down to "things we don't like" or "ideas that are obviously bogus". Pseudoscience is a very interesting phenomenon, but it has a much narrower definition than "obvious bullshit". We should make sure that the topics selected for inclusion here truly meet a fairly strict definition of pseudoscience (ideally, a definition that matches the one in the pseudoscience article). —Steve Summit (talk) 20:21, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Based on the current inclusion criteria, I disagree that "we should make sure that the topics selected for inclusion here truly meet a fairly strict definition of pseudoscience". This is not a list of pseudosciences; rather, this is a list of topics which have been characterized (either historically or currently) as pseudoscience. This means that this list can include topics which do not meet a fairly strict definition of pseudoscience. This list can and currently does include topics which are not pseudosciences even in a loose definition. (some are "questionable sciences" ... some are now considered science but were once characterized as pseudoscience). Essentially, this is a list of notable opinions. If somebody or some body was/is notable in the field of science and had/has the opinion that foo is a pseudoscience, then foo can be included in this list currently.

Here's a thought experiment: Let's say that 100 years ago, a notable chemist published in a reliable source a treatise with characterized Atomic Theory as a pseudoscience, should we include Atomic Theory on this list? 172.250.119.155 (talk) 23:20, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

To your first point, I suppose you're right -- but if the incusion criteria aren't limited to pseudoscience, what are they? "A list of notably wrong ideas which we think it's really important to debunk again"?

To your second point, I'll see your Atomic theory, and raise you phlogiston, aether, and caloric. —Steve Summit (talk) 23:44, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

To your question following up to my first point: No. This list can contain ideas which are indeed correct, but they have been notably characterized not just as "wrong" but specifically as pseudoscience.

Which leads to your reply to my second point. Phlogiston, aether, and caloric are all obsolete theories and thus not analogous to the thought experiment about Atomic theory. However, if a source was presented which specifically characterized one of these obsolete theories as a pseudoscience, then the characterization should be added to this list. But let's return to the thought experiment. If we had a reliable source verifying that a notable scientist (or scientific body) once characterized Atomic theory as a pseudoscience, should we then include that characterization to this list? 172.250.119.155 (talk) 23:53, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Echoing my comment below, WP:PARITY addresses the problem of a few sources calling something -- atomic theory, or climate change itself -- a pseudoscience when most sources do not agree. So this is actually a "list of topics characterized as pseudoscience by more than a small minority of sources (and highly fringe topics that attract no serious criticism but are patently silly)", but that title is a bit long.  :-) Plus, we can and do annotate entries, so if an RS calls phlogiston pseudoscience, we can add that it's a superseded theory. Or if there is some mainstream acceptance of an idea, such as psychoanalysis or acupuncture for treating pain, we note that too. I don't agree that our inclusion criteria here for this list are overly ad hoc. Yes, "obvious science" such as Time Cube and the like falls under editorial discretion, as it should since highly fringe stuff won't always attract RS attention. (That, and our other criteria here, are per WP:FRINGE/PS, i.e. the ArbCom advice at the top of this page.) But otherwise, we follow sources; most of the topics on the list are well-sourced. And our criteria don't have to be foolproof; we can intelligently apply IAR, a.k.a. common sense, and not include things that would make an encyclopedia look silly. Apart from things that might be on the list, which topics already on the list are problematic? --Middle 8 (talk) 01:24, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

The inclusion of well-reputed topics such as Psychoanalysis on this list makes this encyclopedia look silly. I don't believe that PARITY applies on a list article as it would apply on an article about any of these included topics. This is currently a list of notable opinions but not necessarily scientific consensus. Whereas, in individual articles, scientific consensus supersedes notable opinions, per PARITY. This should be a list of pseudoscientific topics per scientific consensus (which can simply be expressed as: List of pseudoscientific topics). That would be a lot more encyclopedic. 172.250.119.155 (talk) 00:39, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, that's the thing: there is a divide in the scientific world over psychanalysis, and no consensus that it is either clearly pseudoscience or clearly accepted science (see category "3b" in discussion that follows). Here is where topics on the list fall according to Wikipedia's accepted demarcations (at WP:FRINGE/PS and the top of this page, per ArbCom):

• 1. obvious pseudoscience: plainly absurd fringe topics for which little if any RS criticism exists, and which we include per editorial discretion; endless variants exist
• 2. generally considered pseudoscience: topics like astrology, that have reliable sources indicating scientific agreement that they're pseudoscience, i.e. sources that meet WP:RS/AC
• 3a. questionable science that is probably generally considered to be pseudoscience, i.e. most topics on the list: these topics lack reliable sources indicating scientific agreement that they're pseudoscience, but also lack evidence of significant mainstream following, and have reliable sources calling them pseudoscience (such as notable scientists, philosophers, or skeptical organizations; note that while RS, these don't meet the threshold for sci consensus-level sourcing, i.e. WP:RS/AC)
• 3b. questionable science per se, i.e. a handful of topics including psychoanalysis, polygraphy, acupuncture for treatment of pain and nausea, and perhaps a couple others: these topics have evidence of significant mainstream following, and also have reliable sources calling them pseudoscience (such as notable scientists, philosophers, or skeptical organizations. The "pro" and "con" sources (or evidence, e.g. presence of studies in good peer-reviewed journals) for demarction are of roughly comparable parity.

That's the present situation. In the past, we organized the article so as to distinguish 1, 2, and 3. This annoyed some skeptics who felt (with justification) that 3a was not all that different from 1 and 2. However, it leaves us with the present situation in which we don't do a very good job of distinguishing 3b from the rest.

On your point about the list name, NPOV requires the "characterized" qualifier absent demonstrable scientific agreeement that every topic on the list is pseudoscience, and most editors have agreed it makes no sense to have a separate list for 1, 2, or 3, let alone exclude any from a single list.

A good solution has to be pragmatic. Honestly, I don't think the status quo is that bad. We could more clearly categorize 3b separately from the rest, and as long we we're clear about the threshold for evidence, we could avoid the POV-pushing situation I mentioned. --Middle 8 (talk) 08:17, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

The demarcation problem – and perhaps the reason why there is no consensus to maintain the status quo here – lays within squishy area of 3a / 3b (a separation which I don't see made at WP:FRINGE/PS nor at the top of this page so I wonder where I can read about this). If we limited this list to just the readily discernible categories 1 and 2, I see no reason why we would have to maintain the word "characterized" in the title. On the articles of the topics which fall into categories 1 and 2, we have no problem stating that they are considered pseudoscience (more definitive language than "characterized as pseudoscience"). By allowing for the inclusion of anything within category 3, this article will always suffer from a lack of consensus... and not just by people who want to see their pet topic removed from this list, but from editors such as me – an honest-to-goodness skeptic - who finds the inclusion criteria of this list to be based more on cynicism than skepticism. And for that reason, this list comes across as silly and unnecessary. I came to WIkipedia looking for a list of topics which are pseudoscientific and instead found a squishy list which I had to meticulously pick through and still couldn't discern which topics truly are pseudoscientific and which topics are just sort of characterized as pseudoscientific but might not be. And now I come to find out that the latter is broken down even further into "probably" generally considered pseudoscience and those which are just questionable but haven't been yet characterized by enough people to say that it is "probably" generally considered pseudoscience. Silly? Indeed.

To your point: "NPOV requires the 'characterized' qualifier absent demonstrable scientific agreeement that every topic on the list is pseudoscience..." - Exactly. So let's make the list just that because, ultimately, that is what is useful to a person researching what is pseudoscience. There are topics which undeniably fall into categories 1 and 2, and FRINGE/PS allows us to call, label, and list these topics as pseudoscientific — absent of the "characterized" squishiness.

To your point: "...and most editors have agreed it makes no sense to have a separate list for 1, 2, or 3, let alone exclude any from a single list." - I don't see how anyone can argue that it makes no sense to have separate lists, when clearly having separate lists drawing a distinction of which topics falls into which bucket would be vastly more useful to a user of an encyclopedia than one list with everything mushed together. I doubt this will annoy serious skeptics because this is a much more rationale approach. Likely, those who would be annoyed by such a logical and scientific demarcation are guided more by cynicism than skepticism. 172.250.119.155 (talk) 19:45, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

• Weak Support. With the present name and description, climate change denial and climate change science both belong here. With the new name, arguably, neither would belong here. (It should be pointed out that a number of nominally reputable climatologists consider some other nominally reputable climatologists as being absurdly wrong; I don't know of any climatologists who consider some other climatologists as pseudoscientists, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:11, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

@Arthur -- AFAIK, we get to exclude climate change per se because of WP:PARITY: we exercise editorial discretion (common sense and IAR) and exclude topics that have substantially more evidence of mainstream support than evidence for classification as pseudoscience. I don't think we need to change the name, although we might tweak the description. Have you any thoughts on my comments above re Wikipedia's demarcations and that we might better meet NPOV by distinguishing topics that retain significant mainstream support (there are a few) from the rest? --Middle 8 (talk) 08:17, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't know if it's a substantial minority, but the claim that climatology as a whole does not make accurate predictions (except on a gross scale) is a minority position, not a fringe position. I don't know if that makes it a pseudoscience.... — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:56, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

• Support. If there's to be a list of pseudoscientific topics, it should be a list of topics that are truly pseudoscientific. If we find excuses to lard the list with other bad ideas we disagree with, it becomes (a) hard to give the list a proper title, (b) extremely difficult to define objective inclusion criteria and (c) impossible (to my mind, anyway) to justify the list's encyclopedic purpose.

If there's a bad idea out there which we can't authoritatively say is pseucoscience, such that it doesn't belong on this list, that is not a problem. We can still encyclopedically state the badness of that idea, to our heart's content, on that topic's own page. Moreover, the topic's own page is the first place readers interested in the goodness or badness of that particular idea are going to be going anyway.

The purpose of this page is not (or should not be) to say that ideas are bad. The purpose of this page should be to collect those bad ideas that meet the particular definition of pseudoscience. Lack of inclusion of a topic on this page does not mean that it's not a bad idea, and certainly does not mean that it's a good one. Adherents of a particular bad idea should derive no satisfaction, and we need feel no dismay, if for whatever reason that idea doesn't meet the criteria for this page.

Wikipedia aims to be a repository of the world's knowledge. Wikipedia has no particular goal to be a concise, one-stop shopping center for all the world's antiknowledge, and this page needn't try to achieve that (impossible) goal, either. —Steve Summit (talk) 20:31, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

• Comment Noting the clear dichotomy of this discussion -- one real issue is whether such a list categorizes topics in Wikipedia's voice -- which the proposal above clearly would do. Thus List of topics not generally considered as accepted science would seem a lot more neutral in nature, allow for the counter-positions to be included for each topic, and avoid the clear dysphemism "pseudoscience." Last year, a person who said black holes can emit light would likely have been considered "fringe" but times change, and so we should avoid making too many claims in Wikipedia's voice on this sort of topic. Cheers. Collect (talk) 21:38, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
• Comment and Support The title begs the question of what pseudoscience is, and does not even do so coherently. There are other problems as well, such as the continual bellowing of mutually gored sacred cows, but the use of the word pseudoscience as in this list and this discussion does not even properly reflect the concepts discussed in the article Pseudoscience, which it should, given that the two form part of each other's context. Consider polywater. When it first was proposed it referred to objective phenomena with reasonable theoretical support and a few proposals and hypotheses. The supporting hypotheses took some effort to dismantle, but they were not shouted down, but instead yielded to attack by reason and calculation of the energy levels entailed. Finally, when the support for the theory was in disarray, actual experiment demonstrated that the observed "polywater" was in fact not water, but more or less hydrated silica, so the theory was abandoned pretty well forthwith. To the best of my memory there were no parting shots (in contrast to "cold fusion" for example, though I must admit that I might have forgotten a few by now). Now, if someone nowadays were to resuscitate the polywater idea and insist on its reality and health benefits and claimed that it is an observable consequence of morphic resonance and that we need an institute... then we could call that pseudoscience, just as we now could call phlogiston theory pseudoscience if we resuscitated it today; however, it wasn't pseudoscience in its day, even though in its dying struggles supporters took some time to retreat or die off. In summary, the work done on either of those topics in their day was not pseudoscience. Fundamentally a major error in this article, and a possible criticism in the Pseudoscience article is the failure to distinguish between pseudoscience as a pattern of behaviour on the one hand, and in contrast, pseudoscience a term for subject matter that forms a topic for such behaviour (or study). Just because a theory deals with a new field and proves to be unsuccessful in its predictions doesn't make it pseudoscience. Even if a theory proposes hypotheses (successfully or not, and whether in an established field or not) and subsequently is rejected (successful predictions notwithstanding) because it proves to be based on errors or miscalculations, does not mean it is pseudoscience. Insistence on its validity in the face of subsequent corrections and evidence would be pseudoscience, but that is a different matter. Without flogging that horse any further, I reckon that such distinctions need clearer recognition in both list and article, and the title(s?) certainly needs adjustment. Possibly something like: "List of Pseudoscientific topics and scientifically rejected themes (or hypotheses?)"? That is just offhand as an opener; I am open to improvements and alternatives. JonRichfield (talk) 07:05, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

• Comment Given the description in the lede ("topics that have, at one point or another in their history, been characterized as pseudoscience by academics or researchers") one would expect to find many scientific theories that were at one time considered unscientific, like Semmelweis' antiseptic procedures to prevent Puerperal fever. Instead we get the moon landing hoax. So a few guys trying to prove we didn't land on the moon is more important than the reaction by the medical community to the publication of "Die Ätiologie, der Begriff und die Prophylaxis des Kindbettfiebers"? Ssscienccce (talk) 19:06, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
• comment the issue with this article is not the title- it is with the criteria that violate WP:UNDUE. Having criteria wherein any mention of "pseudoscience" by anyone is given equal value is inherently inappropriate and encyclopedic. This is clearly a case where Ignoring policies like Wikipedia:V#Verifiability_does_not_guarantee_inclusion does NOT improve the encyclopedia. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 02:27, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose. The problem is not in the title. The problem is that some people see the title as justification to widen the article's scope. I was involved when the present title was found as a compromise. Background to this is that "pseudoscience" is not a precise term, and is essentially an invective.
  In many cases Wikipedia cannot decide whether something is objectively a pseudoscience. There is a huge spectrum of questionable, more or less superficially science-like activities:

Time Cube (pure nonsense using some scientific terms, no followers) – crystal healing (esoteric nonsense with some followers, no plausible arguments whatsoever) – homeopathy (established medical nonsense with many followers, arguments range from intriguing but false to totally implausible) – psychoanalysis (very well established psychological nonsense with many followers, arguments mostly not falsifiable, followers refuse to test their assumptions) – cold fusion (plausible scientific theory that might well have been true but probably isn't, followers isolated but still somehow part of the regular scientific community which they try to convince) – climate science (hard scientific field which is under attack for political reasons) and medical science (important scientific field with serious methodical problems, suffering from enormous amounts of corruption) – physics (mature scientific field with great research methods).

The demarcation line between pseudoscience and science is usually placed somewhere near psychoanalysis and sometimes near cold fusion. The problem with this article is that it is intended to list psychoanalysis and similar topics, whereas we definitely can't state in Wikipedia's voice that psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience. (Half the important authors on pseudoscience make it one, the other half explicitly don't.)

The compromise is to make an inclusive list together with a slightly understated title that is meant to vaguely describe but not precisely define the inclusion criterion. A more precise title might be "list of topics reasonably described as pseudoscience", but that would be problematic. The present title is an elegant solution to the problem and doesn't need fixing. Hans Adler 12:27, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Noetic Science

I assume Noetics, Institute of Noetic Sciences, I Am (2010 American documentary film) (watch video) all belong on this list. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 08:33, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Traditional Chinese Medicine

Chinese medicine is a form of pseudoscience, based on totally unscientific principles. This should be added as a topic.Royalcourtier (talk) 06:20, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Traditional Chinese medicine is included in the section Health and medicine. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 06:22, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Climate change

The recent attempts at changing the entry on climate change appear to be FRINGE violations that fall withing Arbcom enforcement. --Ronz (talk) 14:38, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Possible sources

There are several reference works on the broad topic of pseudoscience including those at Wikipedia:WikiProject Skepticism/Encyclopedic articles. They might be potential sources for anything not listed yet I could myself check those listed to verify the description if someone were to ping me to do so. John Carter (talk) 21:05, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Revisit the question of the name of the article

This is a poorly named article.

First of all, it's written in the passive voice, a fairly unique achievement for a list. As a scientist, I am constantly trying to remove the passive voice from my writing and the writing of my colleagues. I think we should strive for the same at Wikipedia.

Secondly, it's a violation of WP:ASSERT. Literally everything written in Wikipedia's voice is a topic that has been so characterized as what is written in Wikipedia. That's the reason for WP:V and WP:TERTIARY. In other words, the current wording implies that it is only the opinion of people as to what constitutes a pseudoscience. This simply is not true. Pseudoscience can be identified through straightforward means. Those whose pet ideas are so identified may not like it, but that does not suddenly mean there is serious dispute on the subject. In fact, scientific consensus, when it comes to pseudosciences listed on this page, is rather strong.

Thirdly, uniquely among Wikipedia lists, it is a title that demands Template:According to whom. Wow!

I recommend changing (moving) to List of pseudosciences or List of pseudoscientific topics.

jps (talk) 00:50, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

The problem with moving the article to something like List of pseudosciences or List of pseudoscientific topics is that it doesn't reflect the opinions of all the stakeholders in the matter. Zambelo; talk 00:58, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Per WP:GEVAL and WP:UNDUE, it doesn't have to. It simply has to reflect the consensus of the reliable sources who demarcate. jps (talk) 01:03, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Agree. The other "stakeholders" are generally not considered reliable sources. Second Quantization (talk) 19:23, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

You are assuming that 'Science' only has one definition. While some 'traditional' sciences may be described as pseudo-scientific under the Western-influenced definition of science, to the people that practice them, they are primarily a very real science - building upon a long line of inquiry. To mark these as "pseudo-scientific" would mean you are prioritising one definition over the other - whereas listing these as "characterized as" and attributing the characterization, means that both ideas can co-exist. Zambelo; talk 04:21, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I am not assuming anything; I'm simply saying we go by what reliable sources say. There are no reliable sources which claim that there is a dichotomous break between what "Western-influenced" and "Eastern-influenced" definitions for science are. In other words, this concern is simply a red herring that some believers in, for example, New Age mysticism, try to hang their hat on. jps (talk) 10:44, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

jps, the proposed name “List of pseudosciences” sounds good — it's accurate and concise. In a previous discussion, user TS proposed that as “The Obvious Title”.  Unician ∇  07:01, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I think it is a reasonable title, but also concede that there are some topics mentioned here which are not pseudoscience as a complete whole but merely contain pseudoscientific aspects. However, that may not matter. jps (talk) 10:46, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I think that's a minor distinct which can be clarified in the article itself. Second Quantization (talk) 19:23, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Stating that the practices are pseudoscientific isn't factual - stating that there are some that have termed it so, is. It isn't accurate, because the topics aren't pseudoscientific - they are said to be pseudoscientific (by reliable sources) - there is a world of difference here. Zambelo; talk 13:21, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Everything in Wikipedia that is written about using the voice of Wikipedia as fact is done so because of reliable sources. That's how "facts" are handled in Wikipedia. See WP:ASSERT. You are claiming that there is another standard for factualness in Wikipedia, but our policies and guidelines don't allow for that. The standard is, after all, verifiability and not truth. The point here is that the pseudoscientific topics herein identified are included on the basis of strong consensus and there is no serious debate about any of the subjects herein contained. Oh, there are people who are upset by having their pet ideas called "pseudoscience", but that doesn't make their claims serious. jps (talk) 13:53, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

The problem in renaming the article seems to me to be that it would lump four distinct groups as indicated in the ArbCom ruling together under one title. Has anyone ever tried to see if the separate lists for the four groups would maybe be notable enough for separate lists? John Carter (talk) 14:35, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

No arbcom ruling is supposed to dictate content. jps (talk) 15:46, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Zambelo; policy WP:TITLE mentions 2 additional qualities other than verifiability: no original research and neutrality. Logos5557 (talk) 15:53, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Describing pseudoscience as pseudoscience is neutral. See the examples below:

1. Acupuncture is an ineffective practice based on pseudoscientific principles.
2. Acupuncture is undiluted hogwash.

Number 2 would be a problem under WP:NPOV, but number 1 is fine: well supported by reliable sources.—Kww(talk) 16:12, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Right, and as far as WP:NOR is concerned, the whole point is that the page doesn't come up with novel conclusions if there isn't a source which explicitly identifies the topic as having a pseudoscientific component. I think we're covered. jps (talk) 16:23, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Not right, because acupuncture should have been being presented as scientific by its practitioners/believers, before it can be characterized as definitely identified as pseudoscientificpseudoscience; see the definition. The current title is the most neutral one. Logos5557 (talk) 17:37, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

There are many acupuncturists who describe the "science behind their practice". We provide citations to these claims in this list. jps (talk) 17:50, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I checked the citations provided to the acupuncture heading in the list but couldn't find one. All I could see was that there had been scientific studies/researches on acupuncture (such as the findings of basic research on the mechanism of action: the release of opioids and other peptides in the central nervous system and the periphery and changes in neuroendocrine function) , which we can't regard as the claims of scientificity. In addition, "many acupuncturist" is not an exactly scientific approach/appraisal. In case majority of the practitioners/believers present acupuncture as scientific, then pseudoscientific "pseudoscience" characterization/categorization identification becomes reasonable. Logos5557 (talk) 19:03, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure what more you want. The relevant citations are in the article from numbers 267 to 288. That's twenty-two different sources which have many instances of identifying certain aspects of acupuncture (especially those portions associated with qi and meridians) as being presented as science by the practitioners/believers when there clearly is no case to be made for a scientific plausibility of such. jps (talk) 20:00, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

It's 14, not 22. Two of which are some sort of "consensus/position" declaration by health organizations NCAHF and NIH, neither of which categorizes acupuncture as pseudoscience. I checked the accessible ones (about half of 14), which have no such classification either. It should be noted that the adjective "unscientific" is not equivalent to "pseudoscience".

I also checked the accessible ones of the remaining 9, and could not encounter any instance of acupuncture's being presented as science by the practitioners/believers. There are 2 sources, however; CSICOP and Quackwatch which seem bolder than the others. Which in the end, is understandable considering their positions against such topics.

The boldest of all the bolders award goes to D.Mainfort, who states in his article in "skeptical brief" dated march 2000 that: "Although claiming to be scientific, they shun genuine scientific scrutiny. Their theories contain confusing and mystical concepts and they commonly cite “lack of faith” on the part of their patients as a way of excusing their failures. Belief in the supernatural creates great confusion that causes theology to become mistaken for science." Whereas, background of Donald in science, looks more mystical than acupuncture: "Donald Mainfort, who has lectured, taught English, and traveled extensively in China, now writes from Minneapolis."

Beyerstein and Sampson are more "scientific" in their appraisal published in skeptical inquirer dated august 1996. Maybe it's because of their solid background in science. Logos5557 (talk) 01:19, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

It's pretty clear from the sources that practitioners believe in qi and meridians and believe that there is empirical evidence for their existence. jps (talk) 01:45, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm afraid, it's your assertion/opinion only. Related laws should also be checked; the number of states mentioned in Beyerstein and Sampson's appraisal ("Seven states now have laws allowing any “licensed practitioner” to use any method he or she wishes, as long as the patient is informed in advance that the treatment lacks scientific validation") might have increased since 1996. If there are laws prohibiting licensed practitioners to present acupuncture as science, it is not quite right to characterize identify acupuncture definitely as pseudoscience. Logos5557 (talk) 08:45, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

This argument is irrelevant. That the sources regard something as pseudoscience is all that matters. (also, I think the definition of pseudoscience used in the pseudoscience article is a stupid one since they cherry pick a stupid one out of the Stanford encyclopedia article). There is no part of a proposed demarcation where the sort of "well they didn't say it was science did they" reasoning holds sway. Something is pseudoscience if it's (at least superficially) like science, but departs from the standard methodology, practices etc in important ways. This is the wider definition of pseudoscience [3]: "contrary to (2′), doctrines that conflict with science are sometimes called “pseudoscientific” in spite of not being advanced as scientific." Merely being a system of claimed knowledge in conflict with science is enough to fulfil 1 of the 2 criteria of something being pseudoscientific. Second Quantization (talk) 10:25, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

• Support. Nom makes a compelling argument. I would prefer the simpler title. - 2/0 (cont.) 17:47, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
  • To elaborate: the implied question "according to whom" is answered the same as for all of our other articles - by reliable sources. BR is very right that we do not want to go back to the bad old days of an edit war every other week, but the current title is just redundant. We can keep the inclusion criteria while discarding the kludge of a title. - 2/0 (cont.) 12:22, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
• Support I agree for several reasons:

1. It's more to the point.
2. The most reliable sources don't equivocate, and neither should we in the title
3. Any distinction between pseudoscientific components of an idea or concept and the overall idea being non-scientific can be distinguished in the article text itself.
4. Distinguishing science from pseudoscience is clearly normative, but we are merely being a conduit for a distinction that is expressed by the reliable sources themselves.
5. Where there is disagreement amongst the most reliable sources, we can note that disagreement in some form in the listing itself.
6. Arbcom is incapable of deciding content. This is restriction is a matter of formally ratified policy Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy#Policy_and_precedent.

Second Quantization (talk) 20:02, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose. There is a continuum at play here, not a black/white polarity with only two positions. Psychoanalysis is an example: plenty of people consider psychoanalysis to be a soft science, but some think it is pseudoscience. There is still a lot to be discovered in the field of science, and it is possible that a field which has been called pseudoscientific will in future discover a solid scientific basis. Binksternet (talk) 20:17, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

"Psychoanalysis is an example: plenty of people consider psychoanalysis to be a soft science". I think you'll find that very few consider it to be a soft science within psychology, and it's following is also pretty much non-existent in that field, Second Quantization (talk) 09:44, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose based on ambiguity, because I'm not entirely sure exactly what specifically is being proposed, because two different options, List of pseudosciences and List of pseudoscientific topics, seem to be proposed, and there is at least potentially a difference in the inclusion crieria of each. No neccesary objection to a specific single proposal if such were made. In fact, I could easily support List of pseudoscience topics, which seems to me more neutral and more inclusive as it would more easily allow for a link to a related list regarding critics of pseudoscience, and perhaps other related topics as well. The only real reservation might be possible redundancy to one of the somewhat standard now "Index of" articles, whichpseudoscience doesn't yet have. John Carter (talk) 20:41, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
• Question I don't think WP:ASSERT can be applied to this article to the level being proposed. The inclusion criteria for this article is rather weak, but for good reason. Given "one point or another in their history", we allow for entries that were once characterized as pseudoscience but do not any longer, correct? --Ronz (talk) 21:09, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Without trying to come across as tendentious, the above raises questions about which synonyms of pseudoscience would be considered acceptable equivalents for periods before the word itself was in regular use, or whether retroactive histories and discussions are the preferred sources for inclusion. Also, what would be the minimum number or percentage of sources, or would one such description be sufficient? John Carter (talk) 21:31, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

WP:ASSERT works, but in the other way. That is; there are many topics in the list whose "pseudoscience" property is not a mere fact, because there are serious disputes. Arbcom also once ruled in this way; astrology was characterized as "generally considered pseudoscience" and psychoanalysis as "questionable science". If they characterized astrology as "generally considered pseudoscience" instead of "obvious pseudoscience", how would they characterize acupuncture, for instance. Logos5557 (talk) 21:54, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

"Arbcom also once ruled in this way ..." No they didn't. You fundamentally misunderstand what arbcom does. Go read policy. Arbcom aren't subject matter experts, and arbcom is forbidden from making content decisions by policy. They only deals with behavioural issues, and we can ignore whatever principles they operated under, as one arbitrator outlines here [4]. Second Quantization (talk) 09:44, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

I will not defend arbcom's position, me thinks the same: arbcom should not be forced into such shallow waters. However, you also seem to have some misunderstandings about what arbcom does. We can safely take arbcom's ruling on "pseudoscience grouping" as an interpretation of the existing policy and guidelines ("The Committee's decisions may interpret existing policy and guidelines.."), such as WP:FRINGE/PS. I guess newyorkbrad just outlined this: "While the Committee will typically take into account its earlier decisions when deciding new cases, previous decisions do not create binding precedent. As community policies, guidelines and norms evolve over time, previous decisions will be taken into account only to the extent that they remain relevant in the current context." Logos5557 (talk) 11:06, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Firstly, the guidelines 8 years ago were radically different than they are now, see [5] and compare to WP:FRINGE. They look nothing like they do now. More importantly, could you misread that any more? He's referring to what the committee should do, not what the community should do with respect to content. You've somehow magically conflated the two. @Newyorkbrad: specifically said "The background principles adopted in this arbitration decision (which dates from 2006) do not govern how lists in mainspace are organized in 2014" [6]. That's uncontroversially clear. Second Quantization (talk) 12:31, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing WP:FRINGE's old version into attention. It seems I made a mistake by not taking the old version into consideration, but makes no difference. I can see that, when arbcom ruled on "pseudoscience groupings", there were none in WP:FRINGE. However, after arbcom ruled on (by means of their interpreting powers) and moved on, guideline evolved compatibly with what arbcom ruled 8 years ago. Is there any obvious conflict between arbcom ruling and the current WP:FRINGE? Put the old WP:FRINGE into my previous comment, nothing changes; arbcom interpreted the then WP:FRINGE, ruled on, and the community abode by.

You seem to be in a hurry about other users' misreads/misunderstandings: I was also referring to what the committee would do (have I mentioned "community" anywhere?); let's see what they will do.

p.s. Perhaps you're referring to my arbcom statement; most probably I wasn't talking about what you thought I was talking about. Logos5557 (talk) 15:38, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

@John Carter "which synonyms of pseudoscience would be considered acceptable". I know of an article where a source is used to support the "pseudoscience" label, not because the source mentions it considers a topic to be pseudoscience, but because it calls the topic "balderdash". This is WP:SYNTH and WP:ASSERT at their worst. --Iantresman (talk) 14:49, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose Recommended/proposed title is not neutral and look like OR (as there are topics in the list, which can be classified as "questionable science"), which contradicts WP:TITLE. Logos5557 (talk) 22:07, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Not neutral? If the preponderance of reliable sources call the items on the list pseudoscientific, that's good enough for us. The idea that the list is OR, considering the numerous books dedicated explicitly to providing lists of pseudoscience but none for the current strange topic tells it all: I've seen plenty of "Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience" books, but no "Encyclopedia of topics characterized as pseudoscience". Which is really the original research ... ? Second Quantization (talk) 12:40, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Encyclopedias are WP:TERTIARY sources; it can be problematic to refer to with these kind of categorizations/characterizations. In addition, what if there are other encyclopedias which prefer otherwise, as stated by iantresman? Which encyclopedia is more credible/reliable? As far as specific "encyclopedias" limited to the specific topics are concerned, there might be COI issues as well. Logos5557 (talk) 16:28, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose. I don't like the current title, but there is no such verifiable "List of pseudosciences", per the Demarcation problem. To give the impression that we can reliable label a topic as pseudoscience is highly misleading (per WP:Assert), though I'll happily provide references attributing someone's view that they consider a topic pseudoscience. It's no different to trying to decide whether a rock band is "great"; just because we have sources that say that they are, doesn't been the label is decided, and "greatness" is a truth. As Binksternet notes, there is a continuum. --Iantresman (talk) 14:41, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

"As Binksternet notes, there is a continuum" and at the extremes is clear pseudoscience and normal science. Just because there is no universally agreed demarcation criteria (much like there is no criteria for deciding what a heap is), does not mean that pseudoscience does not exist, nor that most philosophers of science and scientists regard specific topics as pseudoscience (which is what we care about on wikipedia). Second Quantization (talk) 21:43, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

There is no "clear" pseudoscience because (a) there is no universally agreed definition (b) no consensus on what topics meet those definitions. I'll happily attribute reliable sources that consider a subject to be pseudoscience. But the idea that a topic is indisputably a pseudoscience and a truth, is a nonsense. We could make the same continuum argument of "great" rock bands, to the "worst" rock bands. We can both find significant reliable sources that may place certain rock bands at either end of the extreme, and maybe even a rationale. But it would be inappropriate to authoritatively label a rock band as "great" per WP:ASSERT. It does seem very odd to me, that some editors who claim to have a scientific background want to WP:ASSERT one of the most contentious, subjective and loosely WP:V labels to a topic. It is unscientific and un-Wikipedian! --Iantresman (talk) 22:56, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

You've just fallen back to repeating yourself instead of dealing with what I said. "We could make the same continuum argument of "great" rock bands, to the "worst" rock band" Except that pseudoscience isn't entirely subjective whereas rock bands are. It's like claiming that since we don't have one clear ethical system, we don't know murder is wrong. Some might question this, but the vast majority don't, similarly with instances of pseudoscience. I find calls about what is unscientific from a promoter of falsified theories amusing and lacking in credibility. This is wikipedia, we don't follow the scientific method, we follow our sourcing requirements. Sources unambiguously call specific topics pseudoscience, whether you think they should or not. Second Quantization (talk)

"a promoter of falsified theories". WP:CIVIL please. --Iantresman (talk) 13:18, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

You've been topic banned from areas of physics for promoting discredited fringe theories. My statement is perfectly civil, Second Quantization (talk) 14:57, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Bingo! 2ndQ is right. -- Brangifer (talk) 15:01, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

No, I promoted no such fringe theories, I was not even editing the article in question, and hadn't done so during the previous 5 years. The article was not under discretionary sanctions then, and is clearly not under them now. --Iantresman (talk) 16:45, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose • Sbmeirow • Talk • 16:07, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose, per above. Zambelo; talk 22:22, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
• Support:Pseudoscience is not the vague, squishy term that the opposers would have us believe.—Kww(talk) 22:58, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

• That's somewhat true, but that's not the subject of this proposal. A new title would mean a new list, with most of the current entries deleted. You are replying to the wrong question. -- Brangifer (talk) 23:24, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Oh? Like what? Second Quantization (talk) 21:40, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose. Keep the current title. It was formulated very carefully, as well as the inclusion criteria. This proposal brings nothing new to the table. We've been over exactly the same discussion numerous times, with believers in pseudocientific practices hoping to thus eliminate any grounds for inclusion of their favorite delusion, and certain (but not all) science-based skeptics who wish to assert that everything in the current list be listed as definite and unambiguous pseudocience, something which would eliminate much of the list. Well, the wise Psi ArbCom decision eliminates that possibility, and rightly so.

A list of unambiguous pseudosciences would be a very abbreviated list, and that's not the purpose of this list, since there are numerous entries where opinions are quite varied, yet some RS do characterize them as pseudocience, and therefore they can be listed here. Those RS deserve to be used, since they are a significant part of human knowledge, and our job is to document the sum total of human knowledge, including the opinions expressed in those RS. This list allows such mention, without dealing with the demarcation problem. (See Iantresman's wise comment above.) That's not the job here. That is done in specific articles. -- Brangifer (talk) 23:22, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

By inclusion criteria I'm guessing you mean the text in the first paragraph? John Carter (talk) 23:55, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Correct. That wording was hammered out among many editors of all persuasions and we reached a consensus/compromise, which seemed to even satisfy the pseudoscience POV pushers. (Therefore it should not be tampered with without very good reason, and even then very carefully. It's a real balancing act which stopped the huge edit wars which raged over this list!) It also used the Arbcom decision as solid backing.

Before that they had legitimate, policy-based, arguments for why their favorite delusion must not be listed at all. With this wording we can include subjects based on what RS characterize, without dealing with the demarcation problem, or worrying about whether the subject is undisputed pseudoscience. The current proposal would totally f**k all that up and we'd have massive edit wars again if we wished to retain even half of the current content. We'd end up with a shadow of this list. Instead of building Wikipedia, we'd diminish it.

It all comes back to what RS say, including opinions. Whether something is or is not pseudoscience is not the determinative factor for inclusion. In a sense (for this list alone ), we don't care, and yet we do, because we don't allow deliberate disruptive attempts at sabotage, where obviously solid scientific subjects get included because some fringe editor found a fringe idiot or fringe journal which characterized a solid science as pseudoscience. That's a pseudoskeptic's trick, and we won't allow it.

We leave the demarcation problem outside the door of this list. This is not the article Pseudoscience, nor a specific article for a clearly pseudoscientific subject, such as Homeopathy or Astrology. Those articles go further and totally deal with the demarcation problem, or they should. -- Brangifer (talk) 01:33, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Just a general comment about the demarcation problem: it's not that someone can't always tell you if something is pseudoscience, it's that no one's come up with an infallible method of doing so.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 03:00, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

" because we don't allow deliberate disruptive attempts at sabotage, where obviously solid scientific subjects get included because some fringe editor found a fringe idiot or fringe journal which characterized a solid science as pseudoscience" That's the issue. You set the actual criteria as "list of pseudoscience", but slant the title to a POV of "characterisation". Second Quantization (talk) 21:38, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

It always comes back to sourcing, and "characterisation" is a word to describe what sources say. Regardless of the exact words used, those words are "characterizations".

We have a policy against disrupting Wikipedia to make a point. We have had disruptive editors (who wanted to delete this list) add solid scientific facts on the basis of what I've described. This has actually happened, but since their sources were crap, the content obviously couldn't stay. We are required to use some common sense here. We don't play games with sources to make a point. We aren't allowed to misuse them or give the extreme fringe junk sources used by pseudoskeptical believers in pseudoscience any credence here.

There is one place where we do that, and that is in articles about themselves. There we use their own primary sources to document their own beliefs that nonsense is fact and that fact is nonsense. That's allowed. Articles like Joseph Mercola, Gary Null, and Hulda Clark probably have such content.

I don't know why you're objecting, unless you are just hankering to do what I've suggested is not a good idea. Are you just being contrarian? This is not a battlefield. Your comments seem to constantly tend toward defending fringe POV and their pushers. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's what I'm sensing. I hope you are more careful in the future and will dispel that feeling. -- Brangifer (talk) 00:35, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

"It always comes back to sourcing, and "characterisation" is a word to describe what sources say." No, it's a weasel word you add to put in doubt where there is none in the sources. "Your comments seem to constantly tend toward defending fringe POV and their pushers". How on earth did you get to that conclusion? I tend to think of your comments the same way, by giving fringe POV pushers all this wiggle room by slanting the title of the article. Did you notice how your position aligns with the fringe believers camp on this issue? I haven't seen any fringe believer that has agreed with me here. Further Considering I have 23,000 edits, nearly all related to stopping WP:FRINGE POV pushing, as well as regular involvement in WP:FTN, I have no idea how you could arrive at that bizarre conclusion. Second Quantization (talk) 07:08, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

So sorry about that! I have stricken those comments. It's just a case of mistaken identity. I didn't realize you had changed names and I confused you with someone else. -- Brangifer (talk) 15:04, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

How about "List of topics categorized as pseudoscience"? QuackGuru (talk) 06:23, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

That would eliminate a number of entries because sourcing and only the first two of the four ArbCom groupings above would allow it. Currently we can include anything that would fit in the first three groups, and that's considerably more than your suggestion would allow. It would also be a duplication of Category:Pseudoscience which would be impossible to keep up to date since the population of that category, like all categories, changes constantly, with no good way to keep track of it. -- Brangifer (talk) 06:35, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

How about "List of topics regarded as pseudoscience"? QuackGuru (talk) 07:08, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Definitely better, as it's nearly a synonym of "characterized". I believe our inclusion criteria take care of the "by whom" question, and of course the RS do that as well. Proper attribution will be appropriate. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:31, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Brangifer, you've been treating like the arbcom thoughts mean anything about content, for years now. Who gives two shits what their category was 8 years ago. ArbCom can't set content guidelines by policy, and have even indicated that their operating principles don't dicate content policy: [7]. Second Quantization (talk) 21:38, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Over- or mis-regulation/protection can always be problematic in any area; economy, banking, etc. Although the motivation stated in 2nd sentence of the lede;

"These characterizations were made in the context of educating the public about questionable or potentially fraudulent or dangerous claims and practices - efforts to define the nature of science, or humorous parodies of poor scientific reasoning."

seems quite supreme/lofty, it might be helpful to elaborate/emphasize/highlight the contents of 4th and 5th sentences;

"Though some of the listed topics continue to be investigated scientifically, others were only subject to scientific research in the past and today are considered refuted but resurrected in a pseudoscientific fashion. Other ideas presented here are entirely non-scientific, but have in one way or another infringed on scientific domains or practices."

by adding some sort of matrix table, by means of which the topics in the list can be characterized in more detail. Logos5557 (talk) 09:42, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

"Other ideas presented here are entirely non-scientific, but have in one way or another infringed on scientific domains or practices" This sentence is a definition of pseudoscience per [8]. For some reason editors here are unfamiliar with what the philosophy of science actually has to say in relation to demarcation. Non-science infringing on the scientific domain is pseudoscience by a common definition, while some (seemingly all the editors here for some peculiar reason), have a more restrictive definition that practitioners have to identify it as science. This is quite simply not the case. Some practitioners of astrology claim astrology is pseudoscience while others don't. Is it somehow both pseudoscience and non pseudoscience at the same time because the practitioners are divided? Clearly not, it's pseudoscience because it falls into the purview of science, but does not meet its standards. What it's practitioners think about the issue of science vs not is besides the point. Second Quantization (talk) 21:53, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

A few comments. JSTOR alone as 2300+ articles return with the word pseudoscience, with an article from Science on single-sex schooling a high return. SSS ain't on the list that I can see. I'm assuming this is a dynamic list, but it's hard to see it ever being close to complete. Has a breakdown into subarticles ever been considered, and do we have any "Index" articles yet?

Some modern "theoretical" sciences (like theoretical physics) have I think been called pseuoscientific. Should they be included? And as someone who himself is a skeptic about whether current global warming is primarily due to changes brought about by man (declaration of POV), and at least thinks he remembers the "p" word being used to describe that, if such sources do exist, how would this deal with a topic where both sides have been called pseudoscientific in good RS's?

Lastly, as someone who took part in AE once in a while, I hope everyone remembers whether or not the ArbCom principles carry any force, the discretionary sanctions do. John Carter (talk) 22:35, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

What I meant was something like this:

Topic	Scientific investigations continue	Subject to scientific research in the past	Refuted	Resurrected	Infringed on scientific domains	etc.
Acupuncture	X				X
Astrology		X
...	...	...	...	...	...	...
Psychoanalysis	X				X	X

Entries of the topics in the list seems as just copies from specific articles, together with insufficient citations. Such a matrix table could provide an overview to the reader. Logos5557 (talk) 23:20, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Further to SQ on philosophy of science, given the demarcation problem (that no one can explain exactly how to figure out whether or not something is science in the general case) it's not uncommon to simply define pseudoscience as non-science, because whether or not you're calling some non-science thing a "pseudoscience" is philosophically uninteresting.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 03:01, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

@2ndQ You also seem to think that, there must be consensus on the demarcation, while you couldn't provide any yet. The favorite reference of yours do not claim any consensus on demarcation criteria. The author just -pointlessly- highlights a paradox between disagreement on demarcation criteria and agreements achieved in particular issues:

"It is in a sense paradoxical that so much agreement has been reached in particular issues in spite of almost complete disagreement on the general criteria that these judgments should presumably be based upon. This puzzle is a sure indication that there is still much important philosophical work to be done on the demarcation between science and pseudoscience."

In addition to that, his "wider sense" thing seems just an "interpretation/observation" or misrepresentation:

"Common usage seems to vacillate between the definitions (1)+(2′) and (1)+(2″); and this in an interesting way: In their comments on the meaning of the term, critics of pseudoscience tend to endorse a definition close to (1)+(2′), but their actual usage is often closer to (1)+(2″)."

Unless "common usage" do surpass (1)+(2″) over (1)+(2′) in writing, it's just a speculation to claim the existence of any consensus. I would recommend being skeptical of his "speculations". Logos5557 (talk) 14:18, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

"it's just a speculation to claim the existence of any consensus" You undermine your own argument. "It is in a sense paradoxical that so much agreement has been reached". This agrees exactly with what I have been saying; there is consensus about specific things being pseudoscience, even if an exact criteria hasn't been set out. We don't care about exact criteria, since we only care about what topics reliable sources say is pseudoscience. Second Quantization (talk) 14:55, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

@2ndQ: Scientist A reaches a conclusion that "x", "y", "z" are pseudoscientific by using demarcation criteria (1)+(2′). Scientist B reaches the same conclusion about "x", "y", "z" by using demarcation criteria (1)+(2″). Hansson, while stating that there are no outright consensus on demarcation criteria, and after adding that Scientist A endorses criteria (1)+(2′), claims that Scientist A's actual usage is closer to criteria (1)+(2″), without presenting any written declaration from Scientist A that Scientist A admitted using criteria (1)+(2″). Then 2ndQ comes and claims that, reliable sources using criteria (1)+(2″) can dictate content in wikipedia, instead of criteria (1)+(2′), just because Hansson speculated about a nonexistent consensus on demarcation criteria. Why sould we trust Hansson? What if his interpretations were not correct?

You (and may be Hansson also) are pointing "shadows" (a consensus which covers some topics, not all) as some sort of proof of consensus on demarcation criteria. If there is any consensus, it is limited to the beliefs/practices and area of studies mentioned, and can not cover any nonexistent consensus on demarcation criteria. That is, only;

"creationism, astrology, homeopathy, Kirlian photography, dowsing, ufology, ancient astronaut theory, Holocaust denialism, Velikovskian catastrophism, and climate change denialism" (as stated in hansson's article)

fall into the scope. This limited consensus should not be an excuse to further "extrapolations".

You should be aware of his weasel words as well: "...but their actual usage is often closer to (1)+(2″)", "...but the general picture is one of consensus rather than controversy in particular issues of demarcation", etc. WP:WEASEL

"It is in a sense paradoxical that so much agreement has been reached": This seems to be both an exaggeration (by the author) of the real situation and an inconsistency with his other expressions.

"We don't care about exact criteria, since we only care about what topics reliable sources say is pseudoscience.": Without outright criteria on which consensus to be reached, we should be very careful about those "reliable sources". Logos5557 (talk) 18:25, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

• Comment I agree with the name change, however, we should re-examine the entries on the list to make sure that non-pseudosciences aren't included. In the past, (I'm not sure if this is the case now), editors have used this article as a List of things that are wrong and included items that didn't purport to be sciences (such as supernatural beliefs and conspiracy theories). Several editors worked hard to try to get these items removed (with varying degrees of success). A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 12:05, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

You are using a specifically limited definition of pseudoscience. Something can be pseudoscience even if it doesn't claim to be scientific. Read: [9], Second Quantization (talk) 14:51, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. I didn't read the entire article but I did read the first 8 pages. It says "Sometimes the term “pseudoscience” is used in a wider sense". Earlier in the article, it says, "Many writers on pseudoscience have emphasized that pseudoscience is non-science posing as science."

In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary defines pseudoscience as:[10]

1. As a count noun: a spurious or pretended science; a branch of knowledge or a system of beliefs mistakenly regarded as based on scientific method or having the status of scientific truth.
2. As a mass noun: spurious or pretended science; study or research that is claimed as scientific but is not generally accepted as such. Chiefly derogatory.

So, yes, the term is sometimes used more widely, but that's not the standard definition. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:27, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Both of those definitions are contingent on the definition of science. The OED gives 17 variations on the definition of science, which would lead to 34 variant definitions of pseudoscience. John Carter (talk) 15:44, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

So, what are you saying? That the article in unimprovable? If so, you maybe right. Why do you think I stopped editing the article last year? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 22:58, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

All I'm saying is any attempt of our trying to arrive at a definition of our own will likely fail, because there doesn't seem to be a clear consensus real world definition. John Carter (talk) 16:07, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

• Although I'm no fan of an article title that legitimately deserves to be marked as {{weasel-inline}}, I think it's becoming likely that, for whatever good or bad reasons, attempting to change that title is going to cause more smoke and noise than the fix is worth. At what point does it become clear that the result is “no consensus”?  Unician ∇  02:09, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

To repeat what I said above, I think a List of pseudoscience topics under that title probably would work. It would be better able to match the two encyclopedia lists, by also including those who criticize as psedoscience, althogh I also think that the number of topics other than those fields described as pseuoscience would likely be a comparatively small part. It could in some cases also help establish more about the nature of the inclusion, if it said "Person X" in the list of critics of pseuosciences descibes this as pseudoscience for the following reasons.... Such a structure would also help clarify the dubious descriptions. So, if Jerry Falwell or Jim Jones were the "labeller", that sort of entry structure would make it easier for the reader to judge the reliability of the labeller. John Carter (talk) 16:07, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose As much as I would like to support this proposal, I cannot unless we until we first agree upon a definition of pseudoscience and prune the list of all items that aren't pseudoscience. I would think that the first step - agreeing upon a definition of pseudoscience - should be relatively easy. After all, the Oxford English Dictionary is quite clear and unambiguous:[11]

1. As a count noun: a spurious or pretended science; a branch of knowledge or a system of beliefs mistakenly regarded as based on scientific method or having the status of scientific truth.
2. As a mass noun: spurious or pretended science; study or research that is claimed as scientific but is not generally accepted as such. Chiefly derogatory.

Likewise, Merriam-Webster is quite clear and unambiguous:[12]

1. a system of theories, assumptions, and methods erroneously regarded as scientific

Unfortunately, there continues to be a dispute amongst editors about this definition despite the fact that they are provided by the most reliable sources we can possibly find.

Further, the list needs to be pruned of all items that aren't pseudoscience. Off-topic entries which do not purport to be real science (such as religious and supernatural beliefs) need to be removed.

These seem to me to be necessary first steps before we can address the issue of renaming the article.

As another editor pointed out, it is extremely unlikely that we will ever reach consensus on these issues. This is why I gave up trying to improve the article last year. It's simply not worth the time and trouble. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:13, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

"unless we until we first agree upon a definition of pseudoscience". Editors do not get to decide a definition per cThe real world does not agree upon a definition, per the demarcation problem, and the real world does not agree on which topics should be labelled as such, and why. This is not my opinion, or being bloody minded, that's what I see in the sources. I am more than happy to attribute the views of some notable people who consider some topics to be pseudoscience, in line with WP:V and WP:RS and WP:NPOV. --Iantresman (talk) 08:48, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Again, nobody's calling for editor's to make up their own definition. In fact, I'm advocating the exact opposite. As has been proven several times now, reliable source have already provided us with the definition[13][14][15] which is clear and unambiguous. We simply have to accept the definition that reliable sources already use. The problem lies with editors using WP:OR to manufacture dissent and confusion when there is none. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 09:27, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

We can find a dozen definitions from a dozen reliable sources, and try and agree on some common criteria. That is WP:SYNTH. I would expect a dictionary to have a different definition to an encyclopedia, to a philosophical source, to a science source. All these sources are valid viewpoints. Then the application of a generally accepted definition to an actual topic, is further WP:SYNTH. If we all agree that pseudoscience is "not following the scientific method", who's to judge that a topic or person does or does not. I've seen editors judge this on as little as one source. I've seen editors take a handleful of sources that suggest one thing, and then ignore half a dozen other reliable sources that take the opposite view. The label is unreliable, as evidenced by the continuous discussion, disagreement and poor use of sources. --Iantresman (talk) 10:15, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

No, that's not WP:SYNTH at all. SYNTH is when you combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. In any case, you don't need to respond since I'm already !voting against the proposal. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:53, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

I'll just clarify, in this case we are voting for a unique definition, where none exists. I shall say no more. --Iantresman (talk) 22:04, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Members of this list

The general consensus on lists per MOS:LIST is "The items on these lists include links to articles in a particular subject area" and the (specific consensus?) in this list article, per the top hidden note, is "The inclusion criteria must necessarily be strict enough that notability should be established at the main article first". In other words this is looked on as a list of articles, the general purpose of MOS:LIST and every item in this List article is an article. If it is supposed to be some other way it should be established here in talk. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 20:28, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Notability is established by use of independent sources, which are already here, not by the colour of a link.

Also please see WP:BRD: Revert, Discuss, not Repeat your position over and over until others agree with you. Andy Dingley (talk) 20:42, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

In follow up, the entry of Ontopsychology contains no WP:RS on the topic (a message board discussing a book in Italian that we can't read is not RS). So this entry fails per the remainder of the top note. So we are actually at WP:BURDEN - if you want to restore it, you must supply reliable sourcing. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 20:46, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I'll quote WP:N specifically for you:

""Sources may encompass published works in all forms and media, and in any language."

You've been here for years - you surely know this already. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:00, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

"A message board discussing a book in English" would be equally fatal: the problem is "message board", not "Italian".—Kww(talk) 21:24, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

And Dr Susan Blackmore counts for nothing? Keep swapping around though, I'm sure something will stick in the end. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:59, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for the revert ....but.... There is a long discussion right above this one on list membership. I assume that led to the notes being left at the top of the List article re: this topic has to be noted as a pseudoscience in its parent article with reliable sources. Per WP:CSC there are some occasions where items in a List don't have articles, but this isn't one of them, the consensus seems pretty clear. Now I did take a look at the sourcing per, could this just be a redlink with reliable sourcing? The sources we have are a book in Italian, a message board, and a self published website. That does not seem to even be close to the level of RS needed here. This really seems to be a case of WP:WRITEITFIRST. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 02:37, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Since the discussion and edits show a split on this and the sources are border line (but there) I am reverting my self in the theory it is better to build the encyclopedia than do nothing. I am assuming an article will follow at some time. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 15:58, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

The subject needs to be notable enough to create an article, so do that first. If it's sourced well enough, it might "stick", and THEN try again. The sources you have aren't just borderline. When the poor ones are removed, you've got little left, so I'm reverting you. -- Brangifer (talk) 17:00, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

There is an International Association of Ontopsychology as per here, and Antonio Meneghetti is apparently notable enough to have articles in at least the (I think?) Italian wikipedia here, so I don't think that there are necessarily any reasons that an article could not be created and reasonably sourced to establish sufficient notability to be considered notable and then included in the lists of NRMs and pseudosciences, provided the topic is described as both in some independent reliable source. John Carter (talk) 18:56, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Start from User:OccultZone/Antonio Meneghetti. OccultZone (Talk • Contributions • Log) 13:29, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Proposal to delete this article

Why is this an article in Wikipedia? Topics characterized by who? Mainstream medicine? Science? I highly doubt there is overwhelming agreement among doctors or scientists on almost any subject, much less agreeing which "topics" to consider "pseudoscience". Really, this article is just a list of things a majority of WP editors don't like or understand. Is there an article titled "List of Chicks whose Boobs are Considered Large"? Really the whole thing should be scrapped.Herbxue (talk) 22:50, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

I concur that scrapping this article deserves serious discussion. The rationale for the article is based on flawed a priori reasoning. For example, we read in all seriousness that some topics are "obviously" pseudoscience. Are we including chiropracty here? Has the author of this dictum of the obvious ever experienced this healing modality. Really, anyone who claims that chiropracty is a pseudo-science has spent too much time with his head stuck in an AMA bag. As Herbxue says, this page is merely a laundry list of ideas that some wiki editors don't understand and have no interest in. That's all well and fine - no one can force them to take an interest. But the label "pseudoscience," used in the context of Wikipedia, is just an expression of prejudice bordering on fanaticism.--76.100.170.62 (talk) 17:22, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Why? It's a useful article with sourced and attributed content... Zambelo; talk 01:21, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

What is its usefulness? Telling people what they are authorized to think about? It is a miscellanous listing of prejucides.--76.100.170.62 (talk) 17:22, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

It's obvious why User:Herbxue wants this article deleted, see Special:Contributions/Herbxue. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 01:46, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

How is it useful? Who is it useful to?Herbxue (talk) 03:57, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

It is useful as a handy list of woo stuff to be able to refer the gullible to on bookfarce and in internet forums when all the woo believing stupidity arises. Rather nicely, its form is tight and succinct, covering lots of ground, and pointing to bigger articles on the woo subjects. It is rather nice to get surprised responses along the lines of "Gosh, I had no idea that chiropractic was such nonsense (smiley face)" or "How on earth do they get away with conning people so easily with that rubbish !" from people who had previously been convinced about their woo of choice by those making money from them.

Right. Just as one may have thought. You are busy policing the world from those who are taking money from others who don't have the blessing of wall street. "It is rather nice to get surprised responses along the lines of "Gosh, I had no idea that chiropractic was such nonsense (smiley face)"

Exactly. You just told on yourself. You like this article because it saves you from actually having to make any inquiry yourself or from documenting your arguments in discussions with those who don't share your prejudices. This is a horrible standard and wikipedia should be ashamed of itself for tolerating this sort of ideological tomfoolery.--76.100.170.62 (talk) 17:26, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

It is therefore a very useful article to me, and many others in a similar situation, and many of my friends. It is another small and potent weapon in the fight to educate and enlighten against those who promote this sort of nonsense. -Roxy the dog (resonate) 10:44, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Rather than suggesting the list is impossible (and is just a list of things editors don't like or understand), perhaps you would identify a few items from the list which are not pseudoscience? What source verifies that? Johnuniq (talk) 11:11, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Delete this article? That's a startling proposal. There is a great deal of material on pseudoscience on Wikipedia, and this is one of the root articles, the summary entry at the end of the Template:Pseudoscience navbox. As an article, it's dense with information, much more than a bare list, and it's heavily sourced. The associated Category:Pseudoscience and its extensive tree of subcategories organize many articles (I stopped counting at 1000). If your suggestion is that pseudoscience is an arbitrary label, are you also suggesting that its categories, its nav box, and all mention of the term “pseudoscience” be stricken from Wikipedia? And if not, why single out this one key article?

Pseudoscience‎ (74 C, 465 P)

 Unician ∇  14:06, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm singling this article out because it is not an article about a subject out in the world, it is created within Wikipedia to lump together disparate subjects that are defined here by what they are not, or where some sources say they fail. It is a hit-list. Roxy exemplifies part of my issue with this - on the one hand the mission is to educate and enlighten (which is great), but the end result is that the casual reader just lumps all these subjects together as "nonsense" and dismisses them. Really the article does not seek to educate, it provides a conclusion and says "don't bother with any of these" - I don't think it is WP's job to do that.

Someone above asked for a source saying a topic in here is not pseudoscience. That's beside the point - sure any of them can be characterized as pseudoscience, but who is an acceptable characterizer? For example, Dermatologists routinely prescribe antibiotics for skin problems when they have no idea what microbe is at play or if there is even a bacterial cause. Sounds like pseudoscience to me, shall we include Dermatology in this list, since I just characterized it as such? I don't believe that would be appropriate for an encyclopedia, and I believe the creation of this article was an act of original research. Herbxue (talk) 14:58, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more.--BenJonson (talk) 17:34, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

It seems to have been to AfD three times. At the last one[16] the consensus was "quite clear, almost SNOW-worthy" to keep it. Don't reckon that would've changed. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 15:13, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Alex, I probably should have looked for that first. I see the time is not yet right, but it is clear from that link that my concerns with this are shared by others. Dropping it for now…Herbxue (talk) 15:30, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

@Herbxue. Straw-man argument. We don't accept unpublished characterisations from random wikipedia editors. If you think that the article gives undue weigth to some characterisations, you could list them on the talk page and get them discussed. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:30, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Again, my point is not that any one particular subject is being treated unfairly - its the creation of this list that is an act of original research.Herbxue (talk) 18:41, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

And I believe your point is specifically counterindicated by the existence of multiple encyclopedias of pseudoscience, lists of encyclopedic articles from two of which can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Skepticism/Encyclopedic articles. And others exist as well. The existence of those encyclopedias, which are effectively "lists" of pseudoscientific topics, is presumably sufficient to establish the notability of this list. John Carter (talk) 18:45, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it's a list article, or index article, simply pointing to detailed material elsewhere with which it is in WP:SYNC. If WP categorized such indices as "original research" there would need to be a lot of deleting done! (Starting maybe with Glossary of alternative medicine – now there is an article which does need some attention ... ) Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 18:47, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Wow you did it again, I had no idea that list existed. As I said, dropping it before I take us into forum territory.Herbxue (talk) 23:21, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I've done a pretty miserable job of publicizing any of the pages in Category:WikiProject lists of encyclopedic articles, so I can't in any way criticize you on that score. John Carter (talk) 00:07, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Criteria for inclusion

First, I think it reasonable that anything included in a reference work on pseudoscience which is explicity or implicity descibed as such in that work be included in this list. Randi, perhaps, who is probably included because of his criticism of pseudoscience, and similar would be included in a list of those related topics. It seems to me that this list would be most obviously consistent with all relevant policies and guidelines if it served as a list of topics to which the term has been applied in RSs. That approach is the one I took when gathering together sources for what became the List of new religious movements, although admittedly that topic seems to be the subject of more reference works than this one.

Another question is how to dealwith pseudoscientific subsets of broader pseuoscientific sets. We already seem to not include all the various forms of astrology from the list, because the entire field is pseudoscientific. Would it be best to do that across the board, with perhaps links to appropriate more focused lists, or not?

Another question might be, given the comparative small number of reference overview sources, what number of good RSs should be considered the minimum for inclusion? And how reliable would an RS have to be? Would local newspapers qualify?

Lastly this does seem to be a dynamic list as per that template,which probably should be added. Given the potential size of a fairly full list, even with numernous spinouts, it might get too long to be useful. Has there ever been an attempt to create pages like Index of firefighting articles? I'd love to see as inclusive an index as possible, because it would make it easier to go to AE for problem cases. And AE is less likely to be subject to hijacking by fringe promoters than the noticeboards are. Anyway, thoughts? John Carter (talk) 15:55, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

We have sources which include subjects that for whatever reason, have, or have been considered pseudoscience, eg. Articles included in the Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience conveniently listed here.[17] I have no doubt that many editors will happily accept some subject uncritically (because they fit with accepted norms), but will fight tooth and nail to exclude others for "special" reasons. --Iantresman (talk) 19:28, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I think we need to agree upon a definition for pseudoscience. As I pointed out above, in the past we've included items in the list which are not pseudoscience such as conspiracy theories and beliefs in the supernatural. The article that Iantresman refers to includes religious beliefs such as prayer. As for sourcing, we should look to see what the consensus of reliable sources say about a topic. If there is general agreement that topic is pseudoscience, then we can plainly state that. If there is no general agreement, I'm not sure. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 20:05, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I doubt very seriously we will ever agree on a definition, and even if such an agreement among us were made, new editors would change it and it would be OR of a sort anyway. NRMs are similar because that definition is still open to question, and that is why the approach of repeating reference surces was taken. And, FWIW, prayer isn't included, prayer and healing is included, but that is a different matter. I say that as the person who assembled that page while going through the books listed and skimming them. And, if there are disruptive edits,well, AE is obviously available. John Carter (talk) 20:27, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

We have a well documented demarcation problem. It's not for us to dictate a definition. That's why proper encyclopaedias like Britannica don't label relevant subjects as "pseudoscience, and neither do Encyclopedias of Science,[18][19][20][21][22] --Iantresman (talk) 22:12, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Please understand that I am not advocating that we dictate a definition. In fact, I'm advocating the exact opposite. We should simply use the definition used by respected, third-party reliable sources. As mentioned above, the Oxford English Dictionary defines pseudoscience as:[23]

1. As a count noun: a spurious or pretended science; a branch of knowledge or a system of beliefs mistakenly regarded as based on scientific method or having the status of scientific truth.
2. As a mass noun: spurious or pretended science; study or research that is claimed as scientific but is not generally accepted as such. Chiefly derogatory.

Does anyone seriously dispute that the Oxford English Dictionary isn't a reliable source or that this definition isn't correct? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:09, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

The demarcation problem reminds us that the are many definitions of "pseudoscience" from many reliable sources. We can't pick one, when we would all have our own choice. We would also have a problem applying the definition to a topic, we would all draw a line in the sand in different places. And if we apply the "pseudoscience" label to a topic, how do we know which criteria have been selected (there seem to be seven categories of criteria)... have they been selected by opinion? by rigorous scientific testing? who agrees? Labelling a topic as "pseudoscience" is not a scientific endevour, even though people may suggest that it is. --Iantresman (talk) 23:22, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

"The demarcation problem reminds us that the are many definitions of "pseudoscience" from many reliable sources." This assumes facts that are not in evidence. Are you saying that sources that are equally (or more) respected sources than the Oxford English Dictionary which support a different definition? Is so, can you please present these sources?. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:46, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

There is no pseudodemarcation problem.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 01:56, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

A dictionary of philosophy may provide a reliable definition of "pseudoscience", or a science encyclopedia, or Encyclopedia Britannica, or a skeptics dictionary. I think they all have a claim to providing a reliable description of pseudoscience. Arguing over whether there is a "right" and most reliable definition, would be to ignore all the other reliable and verifiable views. It all boils down to the demarcation problem, and that there is no absolute truth. --Iantresman (talk) 10:30, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

I think reliabilities of each source depend on the context, as the related policy/guideline outlines WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. A source reliable for a specific subject, may not be reliable for another. Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy -which looks like a student project more than a reliable encyclopedia- may not be reliable for demarcation problem, for instance. I don't think that demarcation is something which can be summarized in a 3-5 page article with weasel words. Publications like csicop and quackwatch can safely be regarded as "fringe" sources for some subjects, because they may differ considerably from "mainstream" sources such as Encyclopedia Britannica. Logos5557 (talk) 12:50, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Alternatively, rather than take a broad and vague definition (demarcation problem), and then allow a broad and vague application (WP:ASSERT), we could just see which reliable sources already label certain subjects as pseudoscience. The Encyclopedia Britannica labels few subjects as pseudoscience (alchemy, physiognomy). I bet the reliable Oxford English Dictionary describes NO topics as pseudoscience. Neither does the DK Encyclopedia of Science, nor does the Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, nor the Macmillan encyclopedia of science (all 11 volumes), etc etc. The real world tends not to label topics as pseudoscience because it is unreliable, contentious and pejorative. --Iantresman (talk) 13:14, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Why are these topics not in the list: Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (categorized as pseudoscience in wikipedia) and Global Consciousness Project (was categorised as such in the past). Logos5557 (talk) 13:01, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Likewise many subjects listed in the Encyclopedia of pseudoscience such as cosmology per Stephen Hawkings[24] (primary source), secondary source[25] (note: used to be considered). Then there is Herbert Dingle on the Cosmological principle, and I am sure, others. --Iantresman (talk) 13:23, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

@Iantresman: How do you know why the Encyclopedia Britannica does what it does? No doubt they don't do it because its a normative distinction. Wikipedia is different, we don't care if a viewpoint makes a normative judgement, we merely care about prevalence in reliable sources. Your shrill repetitions about the demarcation problem are getting nowhere. As I have already mentioned, philosophers of science tend to agree almost universally on what is and is not pseudoscience in general, and rather devise criteria to which to judge their criteria of demarcation (e.g Astrology is a prototypical pseudoscience often used in these examples, while Popper used psychoanalysis and Marxist historiography). The argument is over the general reasons and edge cases.

"Does anyone seriously dispute that the Oxford English Dictionary isn't a reliable source or that this definition isn't correct?". There is no need to rely on a dictionary. The Stanford encyclopedia provides the same two definitions: [26], "it is not scientific, and ... it is part of a non-scientific doctrine whose major proponents try to create the impression that it is scientific." and "it is not scientific, and ... it is part of a doctrine whose major proponents try to create the impression that it represents the most reliable knowledge on its subject matter." Second Quantization (talk) 21:37, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

@2ndQ. "we merely care about prevalence in reliable sources". That's not what I see. I see personal blogs, and books on economics, used as sources, contrary to WP:RS, and I see secondary sources such as the BBC, Scientific American, Stephen Hawkings, Nobel Prize winners, and peer reviewed sources dismissed at the whim of editors.

"philosophers of science tend to agree almost universally on what is and is not pseudoscience in general" -- not according to the demarcation problem.

"Your shrill repetitions". WP:CIVIL (again) please. --Iantresman (talk) 21:50, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Do you base your knowledge about a topic on what you read on another Wikipedia page? All of the major philosophers (who accepted demarcation to be a worthy enterprise) take Astrology to be an example of pseudoscience in their discussions (and in that article). As already mentioned, the specific examples are generally not disputed by philosophers. Second Quantization (talk) 22:02, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

There is no universally accepted definition of pseudoscience. But there is no doubt that we can find groups of people who agree with each other on certain criteria and topics. I am more than happy to attribute these views in line with WP:V and WP:RS and WP:NPOV. But many editors go the extra step, and inappropriately consider these views to be described as truths. As you will see from comments on nearly any Wikipedia page where the pseudoscience label is used, others disagree. --Iantresman (talk) 22:37, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Eh? "There is no universally accepted definition of pseudoscience" - that's nonsense. Look the word up in any of a dozen online dictionaries and you get the same definition:

• Google: "a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method."
• Wikipedia: "a claim, belief or practice which is falsely presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method"
• RationalWiki: "any belief system or methodology which tries to gain legitimacy by wearing the trappings of science, but fails to abide by the rigorous methodology and standards of evidence that are the marks of true science."
• Dictionary.com: "any of various methods, theories, or systems, as astrology, psychokinesis, or clairvoyance, considered as having no scientific basis."
• Merriam Webster: "a system of theories, assumptions, and methods erroneously regarded as scientific"
• TheFreeDictionary: "A theory, methodology, or practice that is considered to be without scientific foundation."
• Cambridge Online: "a system of thought or a theory that is not formed in a scientific way"
• Oxford English: "A collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method."
• American Heritage: "A theory, methodology, or practice that is considered to be without scientific foundation"
• Collins English: "a discipline or approach that pretends to be or has a close resemblance to science"
• Vocabulary.com: "an activity resembling science but based on fallacious assumptions"
• Wordnik: "a theory, methodology, or practice that is considered to be without scientific foundation."
• Wiktionary: "Any body of knowledge purported to be scientific or supported by science but which fails to comply with the scientific method."
• Webster's New World: "a set of beliefs, theories or practices falsely believed to be based on scientific evidence."
• Wordsmyth: "a theory, methodology, or the like, such as astrology, that claims an unjustified scientific basis or application."
• ScepticsDictionary: "a set of ideas put forth as scientific when they are not scientific."

Wikipedia has chosen to use wiktionary's definition - producing the following bright-line test:

1. The theory/methodology has to make claims that are testable by science.
2. The theory/methodology does not use the scientific method to form, define or validate those claims.

We adopt rule #1 in order to avoid calling unfalsifiable, faith-based religious theories "pseudoscience" - and rule #2 is called out in every one of the definitions above.

So, let's have no more "There is no universally accepted definition of pseudoscience" - that's complete nonsense - wishful thinking by people who choose to believe in scientific-sounding claims without having the common sense to ask how we know those statements are true. We have a perfectly good definition for this word that is indeed universally accepted by dictionaries and encyclopedias throughout the English speaking world.

SteveBaker (talk) 15:00, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

It is worth noting that each of the definitions above seems to inherently presuppose a specific definition of "science". Unfortunately, that word itself, as I indicated above, has 17 variant definitions in the OED. That being the case, every different variation on the definition of science produces a variation in the definition of pseudoscience. While I think everyone would agree that in 90-95% of the cases there isn't much real difference between the definitions, those that remain can and are sometimes very seriously problematic. John Carter (talk) 19:57, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

You can use that argument to say that any word in the entire language is ill-defined because every word is defined in terms of other words which in turn are defined by yet others. The word "science" has so many definitions because it's used in so many ways. But in the context that we care about here, it's pretty clear what we're talking about. SteveBaker (talk) 02:16, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Animal Mutilations (Ufology)

The current text reads:

"Animal mutilations – cases of animals, primarily domestic livestock, with seemingly inexplicable wounds. These wounds have been said to be caused by natural predation ..."

Can any of the editors on this page explain why it's pseudoscientific to claim that "animal mutilation" might have been caused by "natural predation"? I personally have hauled the front half of a hooked fish out of the ocean because (presumably) the latter half was eaten by a small shark, a seal, or something else after the whole fish swallowed the hook. Am I being pseudoscientific in this presumption? Help me out here, folks. Do we have a credible source that says no natural predator ever mutilates its prey? Sfarney (talk) 06:50, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Take a look at it now. That sentence was awkwardly worded. It should be clearer now. -- Brangifer (talk) 17:22, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Much better. I don't totally agree with the statement, but at least now it doesn't beg for the blue pill, where bunny rabbits are never mutilated by raptorial near misses from. ;-) Sfarney (talk) 06:35, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Brainwashing (Pychology)

This article apparently classifies the subject of brainwashing as a pseudoscience. If so, the editors who wrote this need to come to grips with other literature on the subject. I suggest perusing the sources cited in Anti-cult movement. Either the secular anti-cult movement is itself operating on pseudoscience, or the editors of this page have got just a tad too aggressive. Sfarney (talk) 07:18, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Aryanism (Social Sciences)

(Moved from User talk:Sfarney)

I reverted your edit about Aryanism. Your comment was "Racial theories: There is no logical support for saying that the Nazis believed in Aryanism, hence Aryanism is a "primary motivator" for war crimes and atrocities." Do you really believe that Nazis didn't believe this? The article actually said "and hence a primary motivator for numerous war crimes and atrocities." Your edit left the article saying it "was one of the core tenets of Nazism, some proponents of which were found guilty of numerous war crimes and atrocities." Do you mean some proponents of Nazism, or Aryanism? Myrvin (talk) 19:09, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

The phrase "of which" always refers to the most recently used noun, in this case "Nazism." Sfarney (talk) 22:36, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Just making sure that was what you meant. The words "were found guilty" looked as if perhaps they didn't do it. Myrvin (talk) 23:43, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Hehe, the words "were found guilty" suggests they didn't do it?? Good grief! What would be suggested if they "were found not guilty"?? Meaning no harm, I laugh only at the terrible secondary growths that sprout on this thin crop of words, here on the Internet. Sfarney (talk) 06:51, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

As you say, we have to be very careful (exacting) with the language here. Phrases such as "were found guilty", rather than "were guilty", are what Holocaust deniers use. They would say that the Nazis weren't guilty of crimes, but the war crimes trials only found them guilty. See [27]. Careful language is what we all want. Myrvin (talk) 09:37, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Careful to speak the truth we should be. Careful to avoid speaking the same truth that someone from the Dark Side might say is NOT the kind of careful anyone should care about. For it is well known that even the Devil can quote Scripture. :-) Sfarney (talk) 05:42, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps you are saying that there is no source that says that "Aryanism is a "primary motivator" for war crimes and atrocities." Myrvin (talk) 19:39, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

As originally worded, the statement was erroneous. I.e., Nazis believed X, hence X is a prime motivator for war crimes and atrocities. And yes, I am saying that it is ridiculous to assert that "Aryanism is a 'primary motivator' for war crimes and atrocities." No Nazi has claimed that Aryanism is the prime motivator for the War, the camps, or anything else. Aryanism is only one of many master-race doctrines in the world, and none of the other resulted in a Holocaust. Sfarney (talk) 22:36, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

It actually said it was "a core tenet". Saying "No Nazi has claimed that Aryanism is the prime motivator for the War, the camps, or anything else" is fightin' words. I hope you are absolutely sure of that. Myrvin (talk) 23:43, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

The source says that Aryanism was "seized upon by Hitler and the Nazis." But the current wording on the page asserts that "Aryanism ... was one of the core tenets of Nazism." This is a mischaracterizes of the source. Britannica makes clear that Hitler and the Nazis existed before they adopted Aryanism. The sequence clearly indicates that other things were the core tenets around which Nazism was formed, and Aryanism was adopted or grafted on to the existing movement. Therefore, Aryanism was not a "core tenet." The source says only that Aryanism was made the basis of a government policy. Sfarney (talk) 06:51, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

You left "core tenet" in your edit, so I thought you were OK with that. Perhaps we differ in what the phrase means. Hitler rants on about it a lot. Himmler took it to heart. Do you deny that it was a 'tenet', or that it was one of the ideas at the heart of Nazism?

I choose Door #2. My primary source on the "core tenets of Nazism" is Mein Kampf, which bases the race policies of Nazism on a) German nationalism, b) Germany for Germans, c) a laundry list of crimes by other races and nationalities, d) Eugenics and Evolution (social Darwinism). As the Britannica indicates, Aryanism (belief in a quasi-mythical white super-race) was grafted onto a body of Nazism that was already in existence. Sfarney (talk) 19:30, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Your "exacting" Aryan race article has "The ideology of Nazism was based upon the conception of the Aryan race being a master race." "Based upon" there, and "the basis of the German government policy ..." in EB, looks like a core tenet to me. Myrvin (talk) 07:49, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

uh, that article does not belong to me. I cited to the careful language in the intro, not the whole thing. In any case, as an ideology, Nazism existed before it took over the German government. EB says Aryanism was the basis of the German government policy. It is incorrect to use that source to argue that Aryanism was the core tenet of the Nazi ideology. Sfarney (talk) 19:30, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

I've added a citation and quote for the original words. Myrvin (talk) 20:50, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I see that. The EB quote does not support the original words in the Wiki.Sfarney (talk) 19:30, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

It does matter what source said that -- many hysterical claims have been published about the Nazis, and Wikipedia has to be somewhat discriminating. For an exacting use of language, read the intro for Aryan race. Sfarney (talk) 22:36, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Can we move these arguments together down here?

You will have noticed that I altered the wording to fit the EB.

Yes. Thank you. Can you tell me where you get the assertion that Aryanism was a "core tenet" of Nazism? Your source (EB) does not support that statement. Sfarney (talk) 05:42, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

We do differ on what "a core tenet" means (a, not the). It does not mean it has to be there at the start of Nazism - although it might well have been. It does not mean it had to be invented by Nazis. It means that it was one of the most important concepts of Nazism, wherever it came from. Chambers: "tenet Any opinion, principle or doctrine which a person holds or maintains as true." "core 2.The innermost or most essential part of something". Myrvin (talk) 21:22, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Chambers makes my point: "most essential" is exactly the problem. If X is the "most essential part of" Y, without X you cannot have Y. Eggs are the most essential ingredient of an omelet because without eggs, you don't have an omelet. But Aryanism was obviously not the most essential part of Nazism, because, as the EB indicates, Nazism existed before it seized on Aryanism. Wikipedia needs a source to say that Aryanism was a core tenet of Nazism, or we should remove the statement. Sfarney (talk) 05:42, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

So you are really only objecting to the word "core", but you are happy with the word "tenet"? Would you accept something like "an important tenet"? Myrvin (talk) 09:18, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

That would be totally correct and fully supported by the sources. Thank you for your careful work for Wikipedia. Sfarney (talk) 05:05, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Referring to "Mein Kampf". Hitler did write: "The question as to the ground reasons for the predominant importance of Aryanism can be answered by pointing out that it is not so much that the Aryans are endowed with a stronger instinct for self-preservation, but rather that this manifests itself in a way which is peculiar to themselves.". He also used the word "Aryan" many times, as in "This very fact fully justifies the conclusion that it was the Aryan alone who founded a superior type of humanity; therefore he represents the architype of what we understand by the term: MAN." Do you really think that "Aryanism (belief in a quasi-mythical white super-race) was grafted onto a body of Nazism" after Mein Kampf? It seems to me that Hitler was a believer in the Aryanism nonsense from very early on, and used it as the philosophical and pseudo-scientific basis of his poisonous rhetoric. Myrvin (talk) 09:25, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Alright, I stand corrected. Apparently, the EB was mistaken in saying that Hitler and the Nazis "adopted" Aryanism. But as a Wikipedia editor, I must bow to the sources, and all I have ever requested was a source on the statement. We must find a source for the Wiki assertion, or modify the assertion so that it conforms to the sources. And apparently we cannot use an original source (such as Mein Kampf for the facts you cite here) as a source, though I disagree with that Wiki policy in principle.

If you read wp:psts, you'll see that it is not a blanket ban on primary sources. It's the interpretation we need to worry about. Myrvin (talk) 07:39, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

In Aryan race, an editor has added this [28] for this. Any good? Myrvin (talk) 16:06, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

I'll grant you that it is interesting. I don't know exactly how you would use it, though. I suggest that you stick with "important tenet" as you suggest above. Sfarney (talk) 05:05, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Dianetics (Religious)

Sources must be cited. It is academically dishonest to attribute a claim to a party without sources, then assert that the party later "retracted" that claim, and provide references to a dozen denials. In this article, we have such a statement:

Dianetics ... purports to treat a hypothetical reactive mind by means of an E-meter. L. Ron Hubbard was later legally forced to admit it "does nothing".

An innocent reader could easily believe that at one time the E-meter was claimed to be an instrument of medical treatment and that Hubbard was caught in a lie and had to retract. But where is the source on the original claim? This statement should be removed until an original source for the original claim is found and cited (and not just a bald accusation by one of Hubbard's critics). Sfarney (talk) 17:48, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Neither of the Wikipedia articles, Dianetics nor E-Meter, allege that Dianetics purported to treat a reactive mind by means of an E-meter prior to Hubbard's (1966?) legal disclaimer. This unsourced statement will be removed in a day or two if no source is provided. Sfarney (talk) 00:28, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Note to readers, User:Sfarney deleted Dianetics from the article on February 6, 2015. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 00:59, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Talk Section Names

Since there are numerous unrelated topics in this article, I think it would make our lives easier if we rename the talk sections to match the exact name in this article. Format = topic from article (section from article). I hope this is ok with everyone else. If there is a better way to do it, please provide suggestions. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 01:17, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Psychometrics (Life sciences)

The psychometrics section was deleted as it is a widely accepted area of psychology (scales such as the PANAS, the STAI, personality measures of the Big Five, etc. are widely validated and utilized by research psychologists and neuroscientists). Use of psychometrics are a direct consequence of the cognitive revolution. Prior citations appeared to be biased against psychometrics, and included a lot of pop-science books refuting IQ tests. While books like the Bell Curve are certainly wrong in their interpretations, IQ exams are well validated with primary literature to support their usage. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:D:2881:D20:ECF0:4A0E:ACF5:A68C (talk) 03:48, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

The current section should be rephrased to more neutrally reflect that there is a wide variety of views on this, and psychometrics is a fairly wide field itself, but removing it from this list completely doesn't seem appropriate. Being biased does not invalidate a source. This is a list of topics that have been characterized as pseudoscience by reliable sources. This is not a list of topics that are pseudoscience. Grayfell (talk) 20:41, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

It goes without saying that those within a field itself assert its validity. Obviously no one expects those within a pseudoscience to admit that it's a pseudoscience as that would threaten their livelihood. The prevailing wisdom in the larger scientific community is that it's pseudoscience. Volumes have been written on this fact and the subject has been beaten to a bloody pulp, but like many pseudosciences it perpetuates on despite what science has said about it. No way should this page seek to confuse the public as to that fact. It's bad enough Wikipedia has become a last bastion for these types.--TDJankins (talk) 00:16, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Do you have sources beyond books that decry the use of IQ exams? Where is the outcry of physicists against the SAT, ACT, GRE, or MCAT which are standardized psychometrics? As far as I can tell all of those exams are widely used with absolutely no outcry of the scientific community of peudoscience. I have supplied articles that discuss and give data on the validity of these tests in future performance, but I do not believe you read them. Most of the citations as listed in the article are in reference to claims that IQ tests assess innate aptitude, which is in fact not the scientific consensus now; instead it is now widely understood that the cause of differing IQ scores is multifaceted, but (and this is key!) they are not invalid at predicting future performance. Furthermore, your characterization of the issue as having been "beaten into a bloody pulp" is entirely misguided; did you not notice that psychological assessment courses are required for APA accreditation of clinical psychology programs? Or that psychometric work is accepted by APS journals? Or do you wish to question the validity and judgment of the entire field of clinical psychology? If you still have questions, I am more than willing to supply you with further empirical articles that clearly demonstrate the validity of psychometric data, which continues to be used in clinical, social, developmental, experimental, and biological psychology research. If you can, I challenge you to clearly provide links to sources available online that provide support of this supposed "scientific consensus" against psychometrics, I would be glad to read them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:D:2881:D20:18A1:2C6B:2A82:23F5 (talk) 05:58, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Reverted this edit because no explanation was given for edit and the references used do not clearly support the material as presented in the article. Citing a Cronbach and Meehl work does not support a statement on "controversy", a source about a controversy would (WP:V). The second source does not seem to cover Psychometric validity/IQ Tests (also WP:V). Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 21:33, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Psychometrics is taught in every single college and university department of psychology in the world. One can earn a Ph.D. in the subject from any number of universities (e.g., [29], [30]). This means that it is not just some self-delusional subfield of psychology, but that it is recognized and sanctioned as a legitimate field of scholarship by higher education authorities worldwide. Citing a number of ignorant, skeptical crackpots to say that it's "pseudoscience" is the height of wikimania. 32.218.152.85 (talk) 17:26, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Stephen Gould was rather not an ignorant, skeptical crackpot. Vsmith (talk) 17:45, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

As it stands now, the article on Psychometrics flatly contradicts the section in this list claiming that it's pseudoscience. This claim, though possibly not limited to crackpots, is clearly a minority opinion and should be stated as such: WP:NPOV. --Feldkurat Katz (talk) 19:52, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Do you know of any non-psychologists or non-psychometricians (those who do not practice psychometrics) who undertook a thorough investigation of psychometrics and were able to conclude that it's not a pseudoscience? I think some people in this conversation are confusing whether something is done/used with whether it's pseudoscience. Completely different concepts.--TDJankins (talk) 06:18, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia should not perform original research to establish the standards to judge pseudo-sciences and to determine whether X or Y is one or not. Wikipedia should refer the consensus of the scientific community, or, if there is no consensus, neutrally enumerate the major positions. In the case of, say, astrology, there is a clear consensus in the scientific community, proponents of astrology as a science are only found outside the scientific community. The case of psychometry is competely different, since it is widely accepted by mainstream science.

According to your reasoning, should we also include economics as a pseudoscience? In my opinion Trivers makes a better case against economics as, say, Gould does against psychometry, which I believe to have a better scientific grounding than many other branches of psychology. Its critics are mainly ideology-driven and attack psychometry because they don't like its findings. But my opinion is not relevant here, neither is yours. The scientific community is relevant here, and they largely accept psychometry, therefore the psychometry section in the article cannot stand as it is now. --Feldkurat Katz (talk) 07:05, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Psychometrics is clearly not accepted by mainstream science. You saying that it is doesn't make it so. You need evidence. Once again, do you know of any non-psychologists or non-psychometricians (those who do not practice psychometrics) who undertook a thorough investigation of psychometrics and were able to conclude that it's not a pseudoscience? Here we have cited five scholars from the larger scientific community who have each done such an investigation and concluded it is pseudoscience.--TDJankins (talk) 23:54, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

We have heard you the first time, thank you. Repeating your arguments ad nauseam does not make them any better. A handful of cherry-picked critics, most of them known for an ideology-driven political agenda, does not represent the scientific community. I dare say I could find researchers in several fields outside psychology and psychometry, say, education, medicine or genetics (chosen at random, geneticist Tim Spector comes to mind) who uphold the validity of psychometry, but that's beside the point. --Feldkurat Katz (talk) 08:14, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

I would support the inclusion of a sourced section on economics (Voodoo Economics comes to mind), but adding one to prove a WP:POINT is not the way to go about doing that. Psychometrics is widely accepted by most of academia. It is also characterized by a small, but not trivial, minority as being a pseudoscience. The current wording doesn't make that clear, and it doesn't make it clear that the field is broad enough to contain a range of practices. Some of those are on the fringe, and some are very mainstream. The section could stand to be reworded, removing it completely seems extreme. Grayfell (talk) 07:45, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

I have had a go at rewording it. I'm not sure it was correct English as it was. Myrvin (talk) 09:25, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Taken from your edit summary: " 'contrived' is weasel. 'Additionally' doesn't make sense. This is what critics say." "Contrived" is a sourced word and clearly a true word as these are artificial tests just made up by some dude based on what he thinks is intelligence or creativity. "Additionally" does make sense as the first sentence is clearly describing a topic that is pseudoscience as IQ tests for example do not even measure what they purport to measure. That is a widely accepted fact and one that has even been proven in a court of law. It is impossible for any test to measure every aspect of intelligence in equal weight and thus it impossible for any test to measure "intelligence." Further, it is impossible to isolate innate intelligence from learned abilities. Measuring (metrics) elements of the mind (psycho-) is impossible. In regards to your comment "this is what critics say," every description on this page is what critics say. This page is not for representing pseudoscientific beliefs as fact.--TDJankins (talk) 00:14, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

This is not the venue to debate whether or not psychometrics is a pseudoscience or a fact at all. Like it or not, psychometrics is widely accepted by academic psychology. It is characterized by a few (but not many) psychologists as pseudoscience, while it is accepted to varying degrees by most. If there is an article or section of an article discussing this we should link to it, otherwise the summary seems adequate. Grayfell (talk) 00:50, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

For the umpteenth time, it does not matter if it is accepted by those who practice it (mostly psychologists). Every topic on this page is accepted by those who practice it. What matters for every topic on this page is what the larger scientific community has said.--TDJankins (talk) 01:03, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

I see what you're getting at but I think there's more to it. We don't expect psychologists to determine the validity of plate-tectonics, so why would we expect the broader scientific community to determine the validity of a sub-field of psychology? There are many specific criticisms of individual psychometric tests and ideas (Myers–Briggs Type Indicator#Criticism, IQ tests, etc.) but as a discipline the field is not universally considered pseudoscience, and psychometric tests are very widely used. Regardless of their limitations, such tests are used in clinical diagnosis, therapy, research, and others. If you think that most psychologists are pseudoscientists, you're not alone, but this isn't really a good place to advance that argument. Grayfell (talk) 01:12, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Beyond ridiculous. If psychologists started saying plate tectonics is a worldwide mental delusion, other psychologists would not be the only ones able to identify that as a pseudoscientific belief. Your assertion that psychology is on the honor system is absurd. Your assertion that use equals science is doubly absurd. No field is on the honor system or empowered as the sole arbiter of all it produces much less one on as shaky ground as psychology. If someone actually believes that fields are on the honor system and that use equals science, then they do not understand what constitutes science or pseudoscience and they should not be editing this page.--TDJankins (talk) 20:56, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

That wasn't my point at all. WP:AGF, please. Of course outside criticism is allowed and encouraged, but suggesting that only outside fields should be considered when determining how a sub-field is regarded is a non sequitur. Why should we disregard psychologists' opinions just because they often use the ideas being criticized? If a paleontologist wants to call psychometrics a pseudoscience, so be it, but that doesn't reflect on the entire scientific credibility of psychology. Since the field of psychology mostly considers psychometrics to be scientific, that should be reflected here. Grayfell (talk) 21:34, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

The larger scientific community does not reject psychometrics any more than it rejects economics. Gould's book, The Mismeasure of Man, is used as the source for this entry, as well another, as it attacks "the claim of "classifying" individuals of different phenotypes into discrete races or ethnicities." The book sold well, and got a lot of praise, but it is not well accepted by the larger scientific community and many regard it as pseudoscience. You can find individuals who badmouth economics and a lot of other subjects. Roger (talk) 06:06, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

A knee-jerk reversion I think. The words "have claimed" suggests that they don't claim it anymore. But I suppose even anti-psychometrics people think that its practitioners still claim its usefulness. Nobody is going to "claim to measure" with a "contrived" test. Whether they are right or wrong, they claim to measure with a test. The word "Additionally" is bad English. It needs a word that says, regardless of what these people claim, others disagree - "However". "On the other hand", "But".Myrvin (talk) 07:36, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Or we could just say "Critics say that environmental and pre-exposure factors are often disregarded" and keep it simple. Grayfell (talk) 08:22, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

I can live with that. The entries in this article need to say: This is what the proponents claim; and this is what those who say it is pseudoscience say. Myrvin (talk) 09:06, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. Grayfell (talk) 09:34, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't think we are getting anywhere in this discussion, and it has deteriorated into an edit war. I have requested arbitration in Dispute Resolution: Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard#Talk:List of topics characterized as pseudoscience. Myrvin (talk) 14:15, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

TDJankins, your main argument is to go with the view of the larger scientific community. However, that view is overwhelmingly in favor of psychometrics as all the top universities employ professors who recognize it as science. You have not produced any scientific paper saying that psychometrics is pseudoscience. Your main source is Gould, and a couple of others who rely on him. But the only part of his book that was published as a science paper was decisively proved wrong, and he is widely regarded as having fudged his numbers for ideological purposes. The 2011 NY Times article says "almost every detail of his analysis is wrong." Therefore this entry should not mention Gould's book, directly or indirectly, without also explaining that his thesis has been overwhelmingly rejected by the larger scientific community. Roger (talk) 17:19, 6 March 2015 (UTC) I proposed an edit [31], but someone has reverted it, even tho there is no support for the current text in the dispute resolution page. Roger (talk) 17:19, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

In regards to your problem with one of the seven sources, The Mismeasure of Man, Gould may have been wrong about Morton's skull measurements, but he wasn't wrong about psychometrics. It's very suspicious that you keep bringing up that unrelated issue. This whole post of yours is very suspicious as it's one untruth after another.--TDJankins (talk) 03:04, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

WP:DRN

Discussion is underway at the dispute resolution noticeboard concerning the content issue of whether psychometrics should be included in the list. I suggest that all discussion of this content issue be taken from this talk page to the dispute resolution noticeboard until the issue is resolved. Be concise and civil. Focus on content, not contributors. Any other issues should continue to be discussed at this talk page. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:23, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Murphy's Law (proposed)

When it rains it pours... Is this a real, proven, scientific theory? If not, it could be added to this page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.244.120.30 (talk) 15:13, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

But who ever claimed that it is a scientific theory? Not every untrue thing is pseudoscience. — Jeraphine Gryphon ^(talk) 15:46, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

The Murphy's law wiki article doesn't even call it pseudoscience. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 04:33, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

It isn't science, nor is it a true "law". Like Hahnemann's "law of similars", it is a (joking) postulate rather than a scientific law. -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:14, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Scientology (Religious) - FDA case against emeter misrepresented

User:Staszek Lem, you have reverted my edits to return text that now says, "L. Ron Hubbard was later legally forced to admit it [e-meter] does nothing." But Hubbard was not a party to the suit by the FDA. The parties under the jurisdiction of the Court were UNITED STATES of America, Libelant, v. An ARTICLE OR DEVICE . . . "HUBBARD ELECTROMETER" or "Hubbard E-Meter," etc., Founding Church of Scientology et al., Claimants. Hubbard was not present, not a party, not under the jurisdiction of the court, and could not be "forced" by the court to do anything. The party under a court order was the Church. We of Wikipedia must aim for accuracy, even when useful sources get sloppy with their facts. Slade Farney (talk) 00:28, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

SO why don't we just say that the church was forced to admit the e-meter does nothing?--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 01:04, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, User:Staszek Lem, that would be an improvement. However, as told in the Court of Appeals decision two years earlier: "They [Scientologists] have made no attempt to contradict the expert testimony introduced by the Government. They have conceded that the E-meter is of no use in the diagnosis or treatment of disease as such, and have argued that it was never put forward as having such use. Auditing or processing, in their view, treats the spirit of man, not his body, though through the healing of the spirit the body can be affected. They have culled from their literature [**23] numerous statements disclaiming any intent to treat disease and recommending that Scientology practitioners send those under their care to doctors when organic defects may be found." The 1954 Creed states:

... the spirit alone may save or heal the body.

In short, the church was not *forced* to admit that the e-meter does nothing because that was their assertion all along, and your proposal would be still be a misstatement. Slade Farney (talk) 01:58, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

References

All this fine and good, but it does not belong to this page. This page is a list. A brief comment for each item is to provide a mention with reliable reference that something is called "pseudoscience". Detail and explanations how crooked they are belong to the corresponding subject page. Staszek Lem (talk) 02:03, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

P.S. the same goes with "Touch assist" What we have here is a piece of original research. A simple question: did anyone define Touch assist as a piece of pseudoscience or false science or else? Please also keep in mind that not all snake oil is pseudoscience. As for the "standing wave" case, the counterargument (unreferenced) is just as silly as the argument itself (I will not go into detail; reference, please). Staszek Lem (talk) 02:10, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Concerning the "brief comment for each item": Do we say that Astrologists bite the heads off chickens and superglue them to prayer wheels? Surely the "brief comment" must be in line with the prevailing truth. That is what I am bringing to your attention. "Hubbard" was not "forced" etc. If the source we are using says that, the source is too careless with fact to use as a source. The church was the party in the case and was given the court order/injunction to label the emeters. The original text was trying to imply that this was a reversal of church doctrine ("forced to admit"). That WAS the story in the text. I showed here that that story is simply not true. (Please observe, I am not trying to stuff all that into the text of the page.) OK, you take away that story and what do you have? The astrologers were "forced" to stop biting the heads off chickens, and the church was required to add labels to emeters as an additional notice of what the church had been preaching all along. And the FDA was required to return the emeters and books. Ho hum. I don't think the item belongs in this list because even the hostile judge (strong language for a judge) decided the emeter was religion, not pseudo-science. Slade Farney (talk) 06:53, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

My point exactly, unless a reliable reference calls something synonymous to "pseudoscience", the item is off the list without lengthy discussions and waste wikipedians' time. Reference, please. Period. Staszek Lem (talk) 17:36, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

There are two separate issues here. One, I agree that the court case could be used to perhaps justify the word "forced" if there were evidence that there had existed earlier comments which did not make such a clear statement. The word "forced" is a bit strong, however. It might be worth noting that this independent reliable source also says that Hubbard was forced to admit the e-meter "does nothing," citing two other sources to that effect. But at least a quick search of Google doesn't produce any independent reliable sources which specifically state that the e-meter is pseudoscientific in and of itself, although a few do specifically seem to indicate that Scientology "auditing" is pseudoscientific. John Carter (talk) 17:48, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Are there any sources which say that the whole scientology is described as pseudoscientific? If yes, then we don't have to waste time and space to list all its teachings here. Staszek Lem (talk) 17:52, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

The fact that something that is so obviously pseudoscientific cannot be included for lack of sources and legitimate disciplines can because someone got angry once at reading bad research and denounced an entire field as pseudoscientific shows clearly how useless this list is. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 17:54, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

This situation is akin to calling someone "fascist" and we include him to "List of fascist". We have to use common sense to distinguish the usage of a word as a reasonable description or as a slur. Of course, this makes the life of a wikipedian harder, but it does not invalidate the list. The list is titled "...characterized as pseudoscience" not "...called pseudoscience". The word "charcterized" implies a certain reasonable argument is involved, not just name calling. Staszek Lem (talk) 18:36, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Actually we would call it "list of people 'characterized as fascists". We should make that list. It would be long. And useless.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:40, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Well, it the "useless" part (for both lists) we are in a complete agreement. But again, I think the same about the"List of pokemon". But not for true wikipediholics. :-) Staszek Lem (talk) 19:02, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

I've seen some sources which specifically call dianetics a pseudoscience, and it's already included in the list, and this page, if its reliable, calls Scientology a pseudoscience. There may well be others. And this page could, I guess, be used to say that Scientology at least was a pseudoscience, before, as it says, Hubbard "turned it into a formal religion." And I want to note that I agree with Maunus about the problematic nature of the qualifications for inclusion here. John Carter (talk) 18:08, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Uh, folks, the latest change by Staszek Lem, though an improvement, still includes a false statement, sic: "L. Ron Hubbard was later legally forced to admit it "does nothing." Hubbard was not a party to the suit and the court did not issue an order on him. I have included links to court papers above. If that is what the source says, the source is too sloppy to use for the Wikipedia. We should find another source. Slade Farney (talk) 18:29, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

I note that one of the sources I found online, which I linked to above, makes the same statement, indicating two sources for its "article," although I'm not sure whether this particular statement is sourced from them. That link, is, again, here. I also note what seems to me to be a possibly dubious logical flaw in the above argument, specifically whether the court case could be the only place in which an individual could be "legally forced" to do anything. I cannot think of any other specific situations in which he might have been "legally forced" to make such a statement, but, I am not an expert in the law regarding such matters either. I believe that if there are serious questions regarding this matter, the better place for such discussion would probably be at the WP:RSN or WP:NPOVN, and also perhaps contact editors at WP:LAW or any editors with legal expertise to see if the possible flaw in the above logic is a real flaw. John Carter (talk) 18:50, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough. Check me out: Court compulsion comes only through a judgment or an injunction. In either situation, the court must establish "jurisdiction" over the person it seeks to compel. Source must cite the court case and year so that it can be verified. If the case is the FDA v. e-meter case, the source fails on accuracy. This page also should not say just "later", but should give a date. "In 19__, Hubbard/Church was forced to stop biting the heads of chickens." Slade Farney (talk) 19:14, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

The wiki source is apparently based on this page by Robert Todd Carroll. The FDA case is the event, and Carroll does not say HUBBARD WAS FORCED. The authors of our source (In Defense of Science: Why Scientific Literacy Matters by Frank R. Spellman and Joni Price-Bayer) should each be sent a nice bottle of eyewash. Slade Farney (talk) 19:38, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

There is however at least a possible difference between "legal compulsion" and "court compulsion". While I do not necessarily disagree with the accuracy of that being the only place on could receive "court compulsion," there may be other circumstances, such as I suppose filings of legal documents in some other venue, which might qualify as "legal compulsions." And, FWIW, there is a long-standing precedent, even if it is one I personally don't particularly like, that even errors in otherwise reliable sources can qualify for inclusion if they are prominent enough or repeated often enough. Like I said, the best way to resolve this would I think be at one of the noticeboards, with possibly a notification of the discussion at the WikiProject Law talk page. John Carter (talk) 19:47, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

I may not have been clear in my last. The Wiki page is naming Spellman and Price-Bayer as source. But Spell/Price-Bayer cite to Carroll, and Carroll does not make the statement they attribute to him. Spell/Price-Bayer is shown to be erroneous not only from the original court judgment, which is on line, but from the source they cite as their source (Carroll). Carroll does not say what they cite him to be saying. Slade Farney (talk) 20:46, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Speilman/Price-Bayer also misrepresents the Evans statement in Cults of Unreason. Here is what Evans actually wrote in 1974, the year of the final judgment in the case: "They [e-meters] are not - as the Food and Drug Administration found to its embarrassment in the case of the E-meter - sold or promoted as therapeutic devices." According to Evans' direct statement, the embarrassment was handed to the FDA, not to the church, and neither Hubbard nor the church were "forced to admit" anything. Spellman and Price-Bayer were putting their own spin on the affair, scratching their own itch in a manner that does not do a scholar credit. Slade Farney (talk) 17:58, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

I must also comment on the reliance of sources '"if they are prominent enough or repeated often enough:"' This policy would qualify Pope Paul V (the pope who prosecuted Galileo's) as a reliable source on the solar system. He was certainly prominent and whatever he said was repeated "often enough." From what I understand of your statement, it doesn't matter how thoroughly he is proved to be wrong. Have I misunderstood? Slade Farney (talk) 20:46, 26 March 2015 (UTC)