Talk:List of topics characterized as pseudoscience/Archive 14

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Cold Fusion

... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.120.99.82 (talk) 14:56, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

That one would be pathological science, per sources that one day I have to get around to add to the cold fusion article.... --Enric Naval (talk) 07:17, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Memetics

Deleted memetics, references to the "mainstream considerations as psedoscience" were Aaron Lynch an american writer, Luis Benitez bribiesca a medic in a 2 page essay, and Alister McGrath a well know opponent of Dawkins. The three hold opinnions on the matter and dont add "the mainstream" support as presented. Looking for more solid references to revert the edit. 190.158.6.164 (talk) 04:11, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

• Memetics is an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer based on the concept of the meme. Starting from a proposition put forward in the writings of Richard Dawkins, it has since turned into a new area of study, one that looks at the self-replicating units of culture. It has been proposed that just as memes are analogous to genes, memetics is analogous to genetics. Memetics has been deemed a pseudoscience from several fronts. It has been called redundant, without physical basis, and a means for attacking others' beliefs as opposed to actual science; according to one reviewer, "Memetics is nothing more than a pseudoscientific dogma encased in itself."

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.

My analysis parallels that of 190, above. I am not finding any indication from sources reliable to make the distinction that as pseudoscience is a notable description of memetics. The main article includes some criticism, but it does not appear to be widespread. If someone else can find a rock solid source for inclusion it should go back in the article, but I do not see it at present. - 2/0 (cont.) 14:24, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

The article is "topics characterized as pseudoscience". I would suggest that only a single reference is required to pass a characterized test. You state "some criticism" which is sufficient for a "characterization".  BRIANTIST  (talk) 15:37, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Focusing on what a single source or significant minority of sources say would be a violation of WP:UNDUE. Everything in the world could be characterized as pseudoscience based upon a single reference if that reference just blanket labels everything that way. It has to rise to a level of significance in multiple reliable sources before it should be mentioned. (And to clarify, I am not opposed to memetics being listed presuming it has enough solid sources. I know a number of people think it is hooey, or at the very least that a lot of the claims associated with it are nonsense, but whether the people saying that are notable or have bothered to publish on the topic is another question. (I also did not specifically check the sources above, so there may be room to disagree with the above posters on those points, but I am just responding to rebut the idea that a single source makes something worth mentioning here.) DreamGuy (talk) 16:44, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

My main concern is that we use sources generally regarded as trustworthy or authoritative in relation to the subject at hand (emphasis in original). It is my assessment that the sources presented do not satisfy the inclusion criteria at the head of this article, but I am willing to be convinced (hence moving it here for discussion). - 2/0 (cont.) 17:28, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

There are several good sources - I added one more - as well as one poor one. The terminology clearly justifies inclusion here; the standard is higher than many other sections, where just one known critic's comments have sufficed. If anyone objects, just take it back out again, and we can discuss it further, but it seems pretty clear to me that there's no justification for excluding this. hgilbert (talk) 02:42, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Puzzled; this has been removed again despite having two competent citations. Notable critics are verifiable sources; you can't claim that they are invalid merely because they are critical (circular reasoning!) hgilbert (talk) 13:21, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

One of the three cited critics has a PhD in Molecular Biophysics and is a professor at Oxford. Fits notability by any standard. (His book criticizing the theory was published by Blackwell, a mainstream academic press.) hgilbert (talk) 18:47, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Of the sources, only McGrath's book is even arguably suitable. As for that's use for the inclusion- I generally agree with the assessments of 2over0 and DreamGuy. Jefffire (talk) 20:29, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

First of all, only one source is needed and you agree that there is one. Second of all, the Benitez-Bribiesca paper is by an established medical researcher published in a mainstream journal. I don't quite understand your comment about an "unknown Venezuelan essay" in your revert edit summary; is there some sort of prejudice behind this? hgilbert (talk) 22:35, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Wellll...look at that. Memes even have a well-deserved entry in the Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience. Title: Memes as Pseudoscience. Hmmmm...guess this one's going back in. hgilbert (talk) 17:56, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I just noticed that too. Here is the Google Books link. -- ǝʌlǝʍʇ ǝuo-ʎʇuǝʍʇ ^ssnɔsıp 17:59, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

This actually looks like a decent source. I am pleased the two of you are beginning to understand reliable sourcing and referencing. Jefffire (talk) 19:13, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Jefffire, no need for the snarky incivility. Please consider removing. -- ǝʌlǝʍʇ ǝuo-ʎʇuǝʍʇ ^ssnɔsıp 19:29, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Works for me, thank you. Personally, I file memetics with the Anthropic Principle - not all that interesting if posed conservatively, and absurd if posed without a decent grounding in the field. I would have preferred that the entry had remained here while we had this discussion, but all is well in the end. - 2/0 (cont.) 20:48, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

"This actually looks like a decent source." That's hilarious; it's an article written by the renowned James Polichak. Ummm...Who is he? (As far as I can tell he used to be on the faculty of the Univ. of Michigan School of Law, but is so no longer.) Why do you consider an article written by him to be a good source, whereas Karl Popper is not? What is the standard being applied here???? Puzzled in Omaha, aka hgilbert (talk) 16:27, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Weakly sourced entries

Per request that insufficiently sourced entries remain on the talk page while sources are being found. Most of these have no source that terms them pseudoscience or the equivalent. If there is a source, it is inadequate or disputed.

Lunar effect

• Lunar effect is the belief that the full moon influences human behavior.

Polygraph

• The Polygraph (lie detector) is an instrument that measures and records several physiological responses such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, breathing rhythms, body temperature and skin conductivity while the subject is asked and answers a series of questions, on the theory that false answers will produce distinctive measurements. There is little scientific evidence to support the reliability of polygraphs. Despite claims of 90% - 95% reliability, critics charge that rather than a "test", the method amounts to an inherently unstandardizable interrogation technique whose accuracy cannot be established. A 1997 survey of 421 psychologists estimated the test's average accuracy at about 61%, a little better than chance.

Primal therapy

• Primal therapy is sometimes presented as a science. The Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology (2001) states that: "The theoretical basis for the therapy is the supposition that prenatal experiences and birth trauma form people's primary impressions of life and that they subsequently influence the direction our lives take... Truth be known, primal therapy cannot be defended on scientifically established principles. This is not surprising considering its questionable theoretical rationale." Other sources have also questioned the scientific validity of primal therapy, some using the term "pseudoscience" (see Criticism of Primal Therapy).[No such sources are listed in this article]

Psychoanalysis

• Psychoanalysis is a body of ideas developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud and his followers, which is devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behavior. It has been controversial ever since its inception. Karl Popper characterized it as pseudoscience based on psychoanalysis failing the requirement for falsifiability. Frank Cioffi argued that "though Popper is correct to say that psychoanalysis is pseudoscientific and correct to say that it is unfalsifiable, he is mistaken to suggest that it is pseudoscientific because it is unfalsifiable. […] It is when [Freud] insists that he has confirmed (not just instantiated) [his empirical theses] that he is being pseudoscientific."

I don't see the problem here. Psychoanalysis is routinely used as a test when new attempts to solve the demarcation problem for science/pseudoscience. In this sense, even though it's borderline as a pseudoscience, it's perhaps the most notable field characterised as a pseudoscience. Also look at the article psychoanalysis itself and its long discussion of the problem. What's wrong about sourcing the fact it's characterised this way to Popper himself? This needs to go back into the article. Hans Adler 06:12, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Subliminal perception

• Subliminal perception is visual or auditory information that is discerned below the threshold of conscious awareness and has an effect on human behavior. It went into disrepute in the late 1970s but there has been renewed research interest recently.

Hypnosis

• • The following is badly worded, as it affirms hypnosis' validity. Perhaps an entry under past life regression is warranted.
• Hypnosis is a state of extreme relaxation and inner focus in which a person is unusually responsive to suggestions made by the hypnotist. The modern practice has its roots in the idea of animal magnetism, or mesmerism, originated by Franz Mesmer and though Mesmer's explanations were thoroughly discredited, hypnosis itself is today almost universally regarded as real. It is clinically useful for e.g. pain management, but some claimed uses of hypnosis outside of hypnotherapy clearly fall within the area of pseudoscience. Such areas include the use of hypnotic regression beyond plausible limits, including past life regression. Also see false memory syndrome.

Iridology

• Iridology is a means of medical diagnosis which proponents believe can identify and diagnose health problems through close examination of the markings and patterns of the iris. Practitioners divide the iris into 80-90 zones, each of which is connected to a particular body region or organ. This connection has not been scientifically validated, and disorder detection is neither selective nor specific. Because iris texture is a phenotypical feature which develops during gestation and remains unchanged after birth (which makes the iris useful for Biometrics), Iridology is all but impossible.

Ayurveda

• Maharishi's Ayurveda. Traditional Ayurveda is a 5,000 year old alternative medical practice with roots in ancient India based on a mind-body set of beliefs. Imbalance or stress in an individual’s consciousness is believed to be the reason of diseases. Patients are classified by body types (three doshas, which are considered to control mind-body harmony, determine an individual’s "body type"); and treatment is aimed at restoring balance to the mind-body system. It has long been the main traditional system of health care in India, and it has become institutionalized in India's colleges and schools, although unlicensed practitioners are common. As with other traditional knowledge, much of it was lost; in the West, current practice is mostly based on the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 1980s, who mixed it with Transcendental Meditation. The most notable advocate of Ayurveda in America is Deepak Chopra, who claims that Maharishi's Ayurveda is based on quantum mysticism.

Therapeutic touch

• Therapeutic touch is a form of vitalism where a practitioner, who may be also a nurse, passes his or her hands over and around a patient to "realign" or "rebalance" a putative energy field. A recent Cochrane Review concluded that "[t]here is no evidence that [Therapeutic Touch] promotes healing of acute wounds." No biophysical basis for such an energy field has been found.

Chinese medicine

• Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is the traditional medical system originating in China and practiced as an alternative medicine throughout much of the world. It contains elements based in Taoism, Buddhism, and Neo-Confucianism, and considers the human body more in functional and vitalistic than anatomical terms. Health and illness in TCM follow the principle of yin and yang, and are ascribed to balance or imbalance in the flow of a vital force, qi. Diagnostic methods are solely external, including pulse examination at six points, examination of a patient's tongue, and a patient interview; interpractitioner diagnostic agreement is poor. The TCM theory of the function and structure of the human body is fundamentally different from modern medicine, though some of the procedures and remedies have shown promise under scientific investigation.

• Acupuncture is the use of fine needles to stimulate acupuncture points and balance the flow of qi. There is no known anatomical or histological basis for the existence of acupuncture points or meridians. Some acupuncturists regard them as functional rather than structural entities, useful in guiding evaluation and care of patients. Dry needling is the therapeutic insertion of fine needles without regard to TCM theory. Acupuncture has been the subject of active scientific research since the late 20th century, and its effects and application remain controversial among Western medical researchers and clinicians. Because it is a procedure rather than a pill, the design of controlled studies is challenging, as with surgical and other procedures. Some scholarly reviews conclude that acupuncture's effects are mainly placebo, and others find likelihood of efficacy for particular conditions.

• Acupressure is manual non-invasive stimulation of acupuncture points.

• Acupuncture points or acupoints are a collection of several hundred points on the body lying along meridians. According to TCM theory, each corresponds to a particular organ or function.

• Meridians in TCM are the channels through which qi flows, connecting the several zang-fu organ pairs. There is no known anatomical or histological basis for the existence of acupuncture points or meridians.

• Moxibustion is the application on or above the skin of smoldering mugwort, or moxa, to stimulate acupuncture points.

• Qi is the vital energy whose flow must be balanced for health. Qi has never been directly observed, and is unrelated to the energy used in science.

• TCM materia medica is the collection of crude medicines used in Traditional Chinese medicine. These include many plants in part or whole, such as ginseng and wolfberry, as well as more exotic ingredients such as seahorses. Preparations generally include several ingredients in combination, with selection based on physical characteristics such as taste or shape, or relationship to the organs of TCM. Most preparations have not been rigorously evaluated or give no indication of efficacy. Pharmacognosy research for potential active ingredients present in these preparations is active, though the applications do not always correspond to those of TCM.

• Zang-fu is the concept of organs as functional yin and yang entities for the storage and manipulation of qi. These organs are not based in anatomy.

Miscellany

• • Most of these are totally unsourced to anything claiming that they are even doubtful, much less pseudoscientific.
• Einstein–Cartan–Evans theory is a proposed unified theory of physics due to Myron Evans, a Welsh chemist.

• Electrogravitics is based upon the original work of Nikola Tesla and advanced by Thomas Townsend Brown that attempts to connect gravity and electromagnetism.

• Expanding Earth is a historical proposal that was made alongside continental drift theory and has been all but abandoned by geologists, yet still has some lay advocates, the most famous of which is Neal Adams

• Hutchison effect is a proposed explanation for purported levitation caused by devices made by John Hutchison.

• Hydrinos are a state of the hydrogen atom that, according to proponent Randell Mills, are of lower energy than ground state and thus a source of free energy.

• Lawsonomy was a proposed philosophy and system of claims about physics made by baseball player Alfred William Lawson.

• Kauko Armas Nieminen is a self-published Finnish autodidact proposing various alternative physical ideas.

• Nucleonic energy is a technological concept developed by Canadian autodidact and inventor Mel Winfield.

• Ousiograph is a device created by schizophrenic Steven Green to detect the messages that are sent to one's brain.

• Polywater is a hypothetical polymerized form of water proposed in the 1960s with a higher boiling point, lower freezing point, and much higher viscosity than ordinary water. It was later found not to exist, with the anomalous measurements being explained by biological contamination.

• Scalar field theories are a set of proposals that modify electromagnetic theory in various non-standard ways.

• Theory of radial momentum is a proposal by Ed Seykota, a commodities trader, which claims to clarify "problems" with the application of the Bernoulli principle.

• Time Cube is a proposed theory of everything which holds that time is cubic. Its creator, Gene Ray, finds those who are ignorant of or in disagreement with his theory to be "stupid and evil." According to his own web site, he is a diagnosed schizophrenic.

• Timewave zero is a numerological formula that was invented by the late psychonaut Terence McKenna with the help of the hallucinogenic drug dimethyltryptamine. After discovering 2012 doomsday predictions, he redesigned his formula to have a "zero-point" at the same date as the Mayan longcount calendar.

Reported

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Pseudoscience_advocacy

The activity here was reported to ANI as a total breach of injunctions against edit warring. I have not named names, but there are three active individuals here who I believe to be perpetrating a mythology that there is some sort of controversy over these entries when, in fact, there is not.

I have recommended in private that certain individuals no longer be allowed to edit this page and a thorough investigation of the sum total of their actions including edits to this article will be undertaken to see if topic bans of the sort I am subject to are in order.

ScienceApologist (talk) 05:22, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Additionally, keep in mind that this page is covered by discretionary sanctions - please use the talkpage liberally. - 2/0 (cont.) 06:11, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

(EC)I have reverted HGilbert's edits, as the moving to back here alone isn't sufficient reason to remove from the article; each should be examined, and the faults explained. Many of those seemed well cited to me, and the lack of consensus back here, lack of edit summaries to make clear your intentions, and the lack of a clear standard of what's enough citation, make this look more like a POV push. I recommend instead, you bring one or two back here at a time, get community help on these, then, with consensus ,make the edits to the front. Lunar Effect is poorly sourced, but hardly a controversial listing as a pseudo science. Fix it, don't blank it. ThuranX (talk) 06:12, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I explained the faults; none of these articles are well-cited for inclusion here, and the vast majority have no citations whatsoever that justify inclusion here. For example, many simply have citations to articles that factually describe them.

User:2over0 specifically mentioned above that s/he preferred if topics were kept on the talk page if their status was uncertain. This move was in response to this suggestion; was it not seriously meant?

All of these topics are in doubt: I will list them here and, according to our standards, they should be removed from the page promptly unless justifications for giving them are offered (and citations supplied). hgilbert (talk) 13:05, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Your behavior here is ridiculous. If you persist in deceptive edit summaries and massive blanking, I'll seek a block and topic ban. Like it or not, outside help was requested, and I see little validity to your massive blanking. Your most recent edit summary promised to take these items one by one, yet in that same edit, you pulled out about a dozen topics. Either go one by one, using clear and relevant edit summaries, or fix each one in place using your vague, lazy, and false summaries. Slightly changing the nebulous nature of your summaries while reinstituting the exact same mass removal edits is no improvement. ThuranX (talk) 16:05, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Ummm...I removed one topic, Chinese medicine, for which a number of sub-topics were given. What justifies its inclusion here? Quackwatch articles have already been judged to be sources we shouldn't be using here. What I find ridiculous here is the double standard: topics that are supported by multiple citations from solid sources are removed and topics that have no solid sources are maintained. hgilbert (talk) 16:20, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

You removed multiple listings. Whether or not they are related is irrelevant. Chinese medicine? Eating animal cocks isn't going to cure rheumatism, no matter how many species go extinct. Quackwatch, despite my current opposition to POV edits at it's wikipage, has a long list of prominent supporters of it's reporting, and without a separate debate, should not be recast as an invalid source. You need to open a separate discussion for that matter. Until that matter is resolved, status quo ante, its' good and those sourced to it can and should stay o nthe page. If you don't like that site, look at its sources in discrediting a topic and use those sources instead. Deletion of topics isn't a substitute for doing a bit of legwork. ThuranX (talk) 19:05, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Quackwatch has been agreed by everyone but those who have been shown to be alternative medicine advocates to be a perfectly good source for this page. It is a respected and notable skeptical organization. I am going to list acceptable sources at the top. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:17, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Discussion of reliable sources

User:Hans Adler, in a rather combative post to my talkpage, made known his opinion that the boilerplate on the top of the page is disruptive. I disagree, but open up the topic for discussion. I believe that such a boilerplate is appropriate for this article considering its controversial nature and the fact that this issue seems to be perennial despite numerous discussions that seem to me to indicate consensus that skeptical organizations are good sources. Let's discuss it. Question 1: Should we have a boilerplate which reminds Wikipedians what sources we are considering reliable for describing pseudoscience? Question 2: Are there specific sources we should or should not be listing? If there is enough controversy, we can open a WP:RfC on the issue. ScienceApologist (talk) 22:38, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

RS Boilerplate: Good idea?

My opinion is that, considering the amount of rhetoric that flies on fast and thick on this page, a boilerplate indicating reliable sources for pseudoscience description is more than reasonable. Many other controversial articles have such boilerplates (often called "FAQs") and this will avoid future controversy. ScienceApologist (talk) 22:38, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Bad idea. Here's the problem. This article does not necessarily deal with sources that are reliable at determining what is and what isn't a pseudoscience per scientific consensus. (See WP:PSCI.) Rather, this is an article which lists items that have merely been characterized as pseudosciencewe by some notable organization, researcher or academic. Some of these organizations and people may not necessarily be enough of an WP:RS to definitely label something a pseudoscience at Wikipedia per PSCI.

Quackwatch, which has been mentioned, is a fine example of this. Quackwatch, due to its apparent partisanship, is not necessarily reliable enough of a source to definitively label an item "pseudoscience" at Wikipedia per PSCI. However, even I will concede that Quackwatch is notable enough of a source to have its opinions accounted for in this article, which merely lists characterizations lodged by some notable organization, academic, or researcher. Quackwatch is certainly a notable organization with a notable opinion. However, in the same breath, we all must concede that notable organzations, academics and researchers whose characterization we don't necessarily agree with should also have their opinions listed (an attributed) here. I might not agree with the characterization made by this notable organzation. You might not agree with the characterization made by that academic. We both might not agree with the characterization made by some other researcer. But our opinions should matter not. If the organization or person is notable, then per the inclusion criteria of this article, their characterization should be included here.

As such, placing a list at the top of this article is rather fruitless and will probably lead to even more in-fighting at this article, with editors bickering about what should be included as a reliable source for this article and what should not.

So which sources can we use at this article? Per WP:RS and the inclusion criteria of this article, we can include any source which reliably reports on some notable organization's, academic's, or researcher's opinion that foo is pseuodscience.

Anyhow, that's my opinion. If this article only included sources which were reliable enough to definitely label something pseudoscience (per WP:PSCI), then this article wouldn't be about mere characterization and it would rather be titled "List of pseudosciences" where the inclusion criteria would only be those which satisfy PSCI. This is not what we have here and that's fine. Since this list liberally includes characterizations (opinions) rather than definitive labeling (scientific consensus), we must be inclusive of all opinions from the full range of notable organizations, researchers, and academics - no matter how much we may disagree with their "characterization". Otherwise, this article runs the risk of becoming a clearcut POV fork - where editors determine which point-of-view they want to include in this list and which ones to leave out. Again, in my opinion, that's a bad idea. -- ǝʌlǝʍʇ ǝuo-ʎʇuǝʍʇ ^ssnɔsıp 01:45, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

If what you are saying is correct then the article is written explicitly to contravene WP:RS. I think most editors here would dispute this characterization. Start a WP:RfC if you believe otherwise. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:06, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

That's not what I was saying at all. Please reread if that is the conclusion you are drawing from what I wrote. If anything, this article circumvents WP:PSCI by making the inclusion criteria about opinion rather than scientific consensus. -- ǝʌlǝʍʇ ǝuo-ʎʇuǝʍʇ ^ssnɔsıp 15:44, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

If you think the article circumvents policy or accepted guidelines, then there really is nothing more that can be discussed here. It's a bit like asking someone who doesn't believe waterboarding is torture to accept as reasonable an attempt to list acceptable sources that describe waterboarding as torture. ScienceApologist (talk) 17:01, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

SA, you misunderstand Levine2112. The inclusion criteria for this article are actually designed to allow the inclusion of multiple RS that would otherwise be excluded if every item mentioned must be an absolute and unquestioned PS, IOW Wikipedia would be characterizing/categorizing them as unquestioned PS. That would be a different and much shorter article. Only some items here can be categorized as PS, while the rest are considered PS in the real world by notable individuals and groups. The subject of pseudoscience is a large one and there are many notable and RS in the real world which discuss it. They deserve a place here, so we have created this list where we use the basic RS and Notability policies as our inclusion criteria. Some common sense should also be used to avoid gaming the article with point violations that seek to include unequivocably and obviously non-PS subjects. That's just plain disruption. Brangifer (talk) 16:47, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

There is no such thing as an "absolute and unquestioned PS" by definition. Pseudosciences, except in the cases of the parody pseudosciences, are believed by their adherents not to be pseudosciences. So either Levine2112 is making a point that this article deserves deletion due to an absolutist sensibility or he is claiming something about unreliable sources. I think the latter is clearly the case. ScienceApologist (talk) 17:01, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

You may be right. There is no such thing as an "absolute and unquestioned PS" by definition in the real world. However, at Wikipedia, we have WP:PSCI which provides a threshhold for what we can and cannot label as "pseudoscience". This article circumvents PSCI by not necessarily lablelling topics as pseudoscience but rather listing and attibuting notable sources which have characterized a topic as pseudoscience. In order for this article to avoid becoming a POV Fork, it needs to be open to all significant notable POVs then. This includes notable "alternative" sources. Don't forget that we can and should always attribute the opinions in this list. So it should say, "According to the Church of Tinfoil Hats, evolution is a pseudoscience." Just like it should say, "According to Quackwatch, traditional chinese medicine is a pseudoscience. Make sense? -- ǝʌlǝʍʇ ǝuo-ʎʇuǝʍʇ ^ssnɔsıp 17:42, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I also wish to point out this part of Wikipedia:Fringe_theories#Parity_of_sources: "Parity of sources may mean that certain fringe theories are only reliably and verifiably reported on, or criticized, in alternative venues from those that are typically considered reliable sources for scientific topics on Wikipedia. For example, the lack of peer-reviewed criticism of creation science should not be used as a justification for marginalizing or removing scientific criticism of creation science, since creation science itself is almost never published in peer-reviewed journals. Likewise, the views of adherents should not be excluded from an article on creation science because their works lack peer review. Fringe views may be excluded from articles on mainstream subjects to the extent that they are rarely if ever included by reliable sources on those subjects.". This supports what Levine2112 is saying about all significant notable sources being included, not just the notable sources of one POV. --stmrlbs|talk 20:12, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

This is a mainstream subject. Fringe views are excluded rightly. ScienceApologist (talk) 00:14, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

We get more than enough nutjobs here, upset that tinfoil condoms are considered a pseudo-scientific idea, rather than a proper antenna for alien impregnation by proxy. Having something we can point to which says yes/no is valuable. Making that list the be all and end all of authority, however, is also dangerous. As Levine points out, characterization is a bit of a grey area. We need to balance the two. Perhaps we need to revise the scope of the article, to only list that which is more authoritatively discredited or dismissed, instead of simply 'characterized', eliminating much of the problem right away. Some Quackwatch cites would probably have to go, those where it's his 'opinion' more than a conclusion based on multiple studies, but those where he's simply summarizing multiple studies would stay. If it's a keep or go, I'd reluctantly vote Keep, but I'd prefer Keep with reviews as needed of listed sources, and an acknowledgment that those aren't the be all and end all. ThuranX (talk) 14:28, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I think we need a balance of conciseness versus thoroughness. Including long-winded reviews of sources may be more consensus-building, but it will ultimately waste a lot of time and space that can be used for other things. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:08, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

So far the current format and inclusion criteria seem to be working well and don't need changing. Brangifer (talk) 16:47, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I tend to agree, but it seems that there are other longtime editors at this page who don't quite understand what the "inclusion criteria" are. ScienceApologist (talk) 17:02, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

(←) I like the idea of circumventing some of the more tedious and tendentious discussions here. I replaced the sourcing notice with a FAQ incorporating most of it. I added the qualifier usually reliable and removed mainstream media sources. - 2/0 (cont.) 04:05, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

It might also be worthwhile to incorporate the ArbCom notices on the principle that excessive clutter tends to be ignored irrespective of its relevance. Right now I am leaning towards leaving them prominently displayed, but only weakly. - 2/0 (cont.) 04:14, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, 2/0. I think your solution is very economical and reasonable. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:59, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Which sources?

Please try to focus on specific suggestions for improvement and avoid general argumentation. - 2/0 (cont.) 01:18, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I am fairly broadminded as to which sources count as describers of pseudoscience. The sources I listed are still the ones seen above. I encourage editors to impeach any sources they deem problematic but remind them that just because you don't like a source (I'm looking at you, Stephen Barrett haters) doesn't mean it isn't reliable. And, no, the arbcom decision in Barrett v. Rosenthal does not indicate that Quackwatch is a poor source. We've established that multiple times in numerous venues including in an arbcom clarification. ScienceApologist (talk) 22:38, 30 July 2009 (UTC) See my answer just above. But generally I think Quackwatch/Stephen Barrett is fine as a reliable source of its own characterization that something is a pseudoscience. However, due to its partisanship, Quackwatch is not necessarily a reliable source to determine whether or not something is definitively a pseudoscience per scientific consensus. But that's of no concern at this article, which merely lists characterizations of notable organizations/academics/researchers, of which Quackwatch is definitely a notable organization (hence, the existence of the Quackwatch article here at Wikipedia). Be that as it is, our so-called "alternative" haters must concede that notable "alternative" organizations, researchers, and academics also have opinions about what they would characterize as pseudoscience and those characterizations should also be included and attributed in this list article. -- ǝʌlǝʍʇ ǝuo-ʎʇuǝʍʇ ssnɔsıp 01:59, 31 July 2009 (UTC) Alternative organizations are not reliable sources. If you want to propose one for inclusion, be my guest. QW is non-partisan, by the way. The article Wikipedia has on QW is actually pretty clear that most if not all scientifically-minded organizations and individuals who have reviewed it consider it to be a reliable source. That's good enough for Wikipedia. Of course, I wouldn't expect you to like Stephen Barrett due to your acknowledged prejudice against him. Thankfully, your reputation precedes you. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:05, 31 July 2009 (UTC) At ArbCom and RS/N, Quackwatch has been deemed a partisan source time-and-time again which has a reliability that is determined on a case-by-case basis and is wholly dependent on proper attribution. (This is not about me or you, so please be sure to keep your comments less personal in nature. Thanks.) -- ǝʌlǝʍʇ ǝuo-ʎʇuǝʍʇ ssnɔsıp 15:48, 31 July 2009 (UTC) No, that's simply not true. Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Barrett_v._Rosenthal#Request_to_amend_prior_case:_Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration.2FBarrett_v._Rosenthal and Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_32#Usage_of_Quackwatch_as_RS_in_medical_quackery plainly show you to not only to be wrong, but either extremely forgetful (you were involved in both discussions) or preposterously misleading as to the content of the discussions. QW is an impeccable source and no one has established otherwise. Not you, not Rosenthal, not any of the anti-Barrett partisans. Good day. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:48, 31 July 2009 (UTC) These two links don't prove what you think they do, although it's reasonable to think they do. It's also reasonable to think they prove the opposite or, as I do, that the truth is somewhere in the middle. Hans Adler 19:57, 31 July 2009 (UTC) It's also reasonable to keep a polite tone and avoid personal comments. (Sigh...why do I think that the person who most needs to hear this is the person least likely to listen to it?) hgilbert (talk) 22:02, 31 July 2009 (UTC) My only contention above that was tied to the two links was that they didn't support Levine2112's claim that QW was not a reliable source. As to what exactly the "middle" is, I think it's pretty clear that QW can be used as a source and is not automatically blacklisted. That I think it to be impeccable and that no one has established otherwise is my own opinion. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:58, 1 August 2009 (UTC) I agree, Hans. That discussion didn't really show anything except that Quackwatch should remain what it has been - a source that is evaluated case by case - and this is probably dependent on the quality of the article on Quackwatch. Factors such as how well it is referenced, whether it has been published in any 3rd party sources, etc. make a difference as to how "reliable" this source is. Like any other self-published source, it is subject to WP:Rs#Self-published_sources. Self-published sources are largely not acceptable, though may be used in limited circumstances, with caution - when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. --stmrlbs|talk 03:39, 1 August 2009 (UTC) You're forgetting WP:FRINGE#Parity of sources indicates that when people make specific claims which are essentially self-published (as much of the claims of the effectiveness of certain alt meds are, for example), then "self-published" sources like QW are perfectly legitimate. Since Stephen Barrett is one of the foremost experts in alt med as established by multiple third-party sources, we use him with impugnity. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:58, 1 August 2009 (UTC) No, actually I'm not. Even in that article, it says "Of course, for any viewpoint described in an article, the most reliable sources available should be used.". The reason that Quackwatch is deemed a reliable source in the this area is because most of the time, the "most reliable sources", as defined by Wikipedia standards, are not available. Quackwatch is a RS in this area because it is a notable critic of pseudoscience. However, Barrett's articles are not peer reviewed, and he is also notable for his strong opinions. But I have no problem with Quackwatch being used as long as the statement is qualified with "Quackwatch says", or "in a review by Quackwatch, ...". Just like a statement from any expert from an alternative source should be qualified. --stmrlbs|talk 19:57, 1 August 2009 (UTC) Attribution is a good thing. It is playing on the safe side, so let's use it more. Brangifer (talk) 22:25, 1 August 2009 (UTC) There is nothing wrong with attribution as long as it isn't written in a way to indicate that the viewpoint is singular when it is, in fact, not. Oftentimes there are insinuations in writing and here on the talkpage that Barrett's views are somehow unique, not shared by others, or outside of the mainstream understanding of the subject when, in fact, I have yet to come across a view of Barrett that was not a fair summary of the scientific consensus on a topic. ScienceApologist (talk) 00:54, 2 August 2009 (UTC) Good point. Simple attribution with a wikilink solves that problem. Anyone who knows anything about mainstream science and medicine knows that the mainstream shares Barrett's and Quackwatch's POV on most issues and vice versa. It is only believers in fringe subjects who disagree with him, especially those who have a commercial interest threatened by his exposure of their fringeness and unscientificness. Mainstream disagreement is very rare, as we have discovered in our mostly vain attempts to find mainstream RS for criticism. It's nearly impossible to find a negative word. Such rare finds are the exception that proves the rule. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:24, 3 August 2009 (UTC) On the flip side, it's easy to find instances of Quackwatch/Barrett disagreeing with very mainstream sources, as when he complains about the IOM's CAM committee, fwiw. Not that that changes anything; QW is fine here as long as it's attributed. As usual, if we want to say that a certain view is sci consensus, then we need an appropriate source (which the IOM is, and Barrett/Quackwatch aren't). --Middle 8 (talk) 22:01, 4 August 2009 (UTC) The point made in the very article you cite is that Barrett is more mainstream than the IOM. The problems with the IOM are well-noted in many places here. Barrett, it turns out, is a good counter to them. Your bald assertion that the IOM represents scientific consensus is completely wrong. Barrett's views are generally much closer to the scientific consensus than any committee assembled with naturopaths, homeopaths, chiropractors, and acupuncturists. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:34, 7 August 2009 (UTC) Nope, sorry. The IOM is one of the United States National Academy of Sciences, one of the most prestigious scientific bodies in the world. Contrary to your assertion, its CAM committee is mainly composed of MD's and PhD's. The IOM has vastly more weight than self-published sources like Stephen Barrett, no matter what Barrett says about it. Barrett is virtually fringe by comparison. Read WP:MEDRS, especially this part. As I said, this is largely a moot point, since we can use Barrett/QW with attribution, but we can take it to RSN if needed. --Middle 8 (talk) 03:42, 8 August 2009 (UTC) Don't get caught up in your own fantasies about what makes a scientific consensus... it's not done by fiat: it's done through analysis of the sum total of published articles. When CAM folks make claims that are not backed up by anything but their own fantasies -- and they generally do this more often than not -- they are acting against scientific consensus and as a pseudoscience. This is documented by Barrett, and we avoid the particular attribution to him when necessary. We need not accommodate the practitioners and true believers of CAM since they are unreliable sources. The IOM's CAM committee necessarily must be "big tent" since CAM is a huge industry that has had problems with regulation. We are under no obligation to treat them as anything but a place for sourcing to begin. Barrett does a good job of acting summarily in contrast. ScienceApologist (talk) 01:43, 10 August 2009 (UTC) (←) @ScienceApologist: No need to make personal aspersions about "fantasies" (see WP:NPA). You won't advance your cause by continuing down that road. IOM is self-evidently a better source for scientific concensus than Barrett, as far as I'm concerned, and you haven't refuted the fact that WP:MEDRS supports that view. If you look at articles about mainstream vs. fringe views on evolution and global warming and so on, you'll see that Academies of Sciences are much, much stronger sources than sites like Quackwatch. They are far more respected in academia, too: as a thought experiment, compare the fates of two tenure-track professors, one of whom publishes 10 articles in PNAS and the other of whom publishes 10 articles in Quackwatch. As BullRangifer and others have said, QW is fine with attribution, and fine to use per WP:PARITY. What I'd add is that when mainstream, peer-reviewed sources like Academies of Sciences weigh in on alt-med topics, they strongly outweigh Quackwatch (again, per WP:PARITY). Anyway, when/if there is a specific edit we disagree on, we can take it to RSN. For now, we can just agree to disagree. --Middle 8 (talk) 04:11, 10 August 2009 (UTC) You make a lot of bold assertions here but provide no evidence to back them up. I have referenced the goals of both of these sources as evaluative rationale. MEDRS does not say anything about considering Barrett better than IOM's CAM group or vice-versa. In fact, I would say that most of MEDRS actually corresponds to the analyses I provided. "Academies of science" are not bully-pulpits, and they aren't necessarily the best sources when it comes to detailed claims. If you look at the articles on evolution and global warming what you'll find is the academies referenced for general points and specific instances of pseudoscience referenced by individual scientists (at TalkOrigins Archive, for example). This is the same way that Quackwatch functions in the alternative medicine vs. mainstream medicine debate. It is simply a repository for the mainstream thought on the claims of anti-scientific alt. med. proponents. As I point out, there is a real danger when people who are alt. med. advocates begin to place ultimatums on particular attribution. The tendency is for people to say things like, "Oh, since it was only QW that said thus-and-such and not the IOM's CAM panel, then we should write 'According to Stephen Barrett, thus and such.'" The problem with this kind of writing is that it poisons the well and makes the reader think that a criticism is singular when, in fact, it is not. There is not a single fact that Barrett has pointed out on his website which has ever been refuted by the alt. med. community. This makes him a reliable source for asserting facts. And asserting facts is what the best Wikipedia articles do, and we will continue to do this while avoiding the particular attribution advocated for by fringe proponents. Every single mainstream source we have that is not tainted by the likes of alt. med. proponents backs up Barrett. Therefore, to claim that there is some sort of "outweighing" that has happened vis-a-vis this source is simply an attempt to disparage a source which is acknowledged almost universally by mainstream evaluators as one of the best sources out there for disambiguating between scientific and pseudoscientific claims in medicine. To be clear, I'm fine using other sources in addition to or even in supplement to Barrett. I recognize that we should cast our net widely for sources so as to avoid singular opinions or determination. There is nothing wrong with doing that. What's more, Barrett is meticulous about citing his sources which are generally all peer-reviewed, so relying on those sources directly often helps us write better articles. But there are times that sources may contradict the mainstream science that Barrett references, or may hedge where Barrett is plain, or might avoid issues Barrett handles directly. In such instances, Barrett is clearly the superior source, and particular attribution to Barrett as though his opinion is singular would clearly be in violation of our guideline against particular attribution. Such advocacy is FRINGE-POV pushing plain and simple. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:58, 10 August 2009 (UTC) @ScienceApologist: That is indeed the nub of our disagreement: you want to cite Barrett as fact, while I want to say "according to Barrett...". Even BullRangifer, no friend of alt-med, has expressed his preference for using attribution with a wikilink. Please be specific about which assertions of mine you disagree with. Are you saying that Quackwatch is as scientifically weighty and prestigious as, e.g., PNAS? I don't think too many educated people would agree with that. As for assertions like "Every single mainstream source we have that is not tainted by the likes of alt. med. proponents backs up Barrett", that sounds like circular reasoning. (that is, "Barrett said the IOM's CAM panel is tainted, so we can throw that out as a counterexample" -- so goes the logic.) I certainly agree that we should cast our net widely for sources, but I don't agree with this statement: But there are times that sources may contradict the mainstream science that Barrett references, or may hedge where Barrett is plain, or might avoid issues Barrett handles directly. In such instances, Barrett is clearly the superior source, and particular attribution to Barrett as though his opinion is singular would clearly be in violation of our guideline against particular attribution. WP:MEDRS is clear about which sources are best, and Barrett is not at the head of the pack. The burden is on you to show that Barrett trumps the Institute of Medicine, or whatever source we're talking about. Hedging or avoiding issues may well indicate a lack of scientific consensus, and just because Barrett has expressed an opinion doesn't mean that it's the mainstream one. For mainstream, we follow MEDRS, which prefers peer-reviewed articles (preferably reviews and meta-analyses), textbooks, and statements by medical and scientific organizations. The resolution is straightforward: we should be citing Barrett and the sources he cites, as well as other MEDRS's that may have differing views. You have not met the burden of showing that Barrett/Quackwatch is a superior source to all the stuff enumerated at WP:MEDRS, and I doubt you ever will, unless Barrett changes his model and starts publishing excellent MEDRS-type material (peer-reviewed review articles, and the like). When such sources exist, they are without doubt superior to Barrett; when they don't, WP:PARITY means Barrett is fine. It's not any more complicated than that. And I don't see the purpose of continuing this discussion unless there's a specific edit in question. --Middle 8 (talk) 07:20, 11 August 2009 (UTC) I don't think we should continue the discussion until a specific edit we disagree upon is found either. It may very well be that we never disagree on anything due to external considerations. You seem content to ignore the problems of particular attribution in your continued insistence on disparaging Barrett, to what ends? Unclear. I have met the burden of showing Barrett is a superior source. As a secondary clearinghouse of mainstream thought and analysis, Barrett's website often covers issues not touched in the peer-reviewed literature. ScienceApologist (talk) 12:35, 11 August 2009 (UTC) @SA: I agree with your statement that "As a secondary clearinghouse of mainstream thought and analysis, Barrett's website often covers issues not touched in the peer-reviewed literature." Well-said. It's when topics are covered in the peer-reviewed literature that I object to the presumption that Barrett is superior even to those sources. How you have justified that presumption (other than simply reasserting it) remains unclear. --Middle 8 (talk) 20:09, 11 August 2009 (UTC) I see. You have said it before ("In such instances, Barrett is clearly the superior source"). Somebody protested, but that doesn't count because protest by fringe POV-pushing morons such as Middle 8 and Hans Adler is to be expected. And of course you didn't agree with the protest. Since there was no reasonable objection you have now proved it beyond reasonable doubt and are entitled to repeat it until one or two other editors begin to believe it. This is exactly the same behaviour that Dana Ullman was banned for. Hans Adler 13:54, 11 August 2009 (UTC) I fully endorse what Middle 8 said. Moreover, there is currently a topic ban discussion going on against Dana Ullman for behaviour that is quite similar to ScienceApologist's behaviour here. The main difference seems to be that Dana Ullman regularly gets lost in intricate details and sub-details, while ScienceApologist generally works with sweeping, unproved asssertions instead. The bizarre claim that an unexplained opinion by someone who plays an expert in the media is always more reliable than a peer-reviewed scholarly article, provided that the "expert"'s opinion is more extreme, didn't fly last time and it's not going to fly now. Of course this only applies to anti-fringe "experts", because, because, ..., ah, yes, that's it: because the expert has been endorsed by the webmaster of a scientific organisation and a paper in a medical journal said that his website can be recommended to patients! Hans Adler 08:55, 11 August 2009 (UTC) Now you're getting needlessly personal, Hans. If you think I should be treated similarly to Dana Ullman, please start a discussion elsewhere to that effect. Here is not appropriate. ScienceApologist (talk) 12:35, 11 August 2009 (UTC) May I remind you that the first needlessly personal comment in this section was "... plainly show you to not only to be wrong, but either extremely forgetful (you were involved in both discussions) or preposterously misleading as to the content of the discussions." Did you complain to the editor who said that? Why not? At the time I explained patiently why it was problematic, and Hgilbert commented further: "It's also reasonable to keep a polite tone and avoid personal comments. (Sigh...why do I think that the person who most needs to hear this is the person least likely to listen to it?)". I believe Hgilbert was right. More recently the same editor said "Don't get caught up in your own fantasies about...", and again you didn't set the editor right, although I am fairly sure you were aware of the comment. Looks like a double standard to me when you now complain about me. I will take you to ANI or elsewhere when I am of the opinion that a certain threshold has been crossed by your disruption. The threshold that is being applied to Dana is not reasonable, which is why I defended him even though I wish he would simply stop editing. Hans Adler 13:44, 11 August 2009 (UTC) Hmm... so I guess you're actually okay with those comments considering you think that your comments were okay. I'm glad you agree with me about their propriety. As far as I'm aware, there is no rule against applying double standards at Wikipedia. I've always advocated doing so, and have argued all along that there is a substantive difference in the realpolitiks of the situation. I look forward with anticipation to your ANI complaint that will never be forthcoming, I predict. ScienceApologist (talk) 14:26, 11 August 2009 (UTC) Most splendlidly encapsulated.  :-) --Middle 8 (talk) 08:59, 11 August 2009 (UTC) Yes! Great tag team! ScienceApologist (talk) 12:36, 11 August 2009 (UTC) WP:AGF, please --Middle 8 (talk) 20:09, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Standard of inclusion

Reminder: the standard of inclusion for topics here is that they have been characterized as pseudoscientific by reliable sources, not that they have been disproved. hgilbert (talk) 13:37, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Religion area

this part is biased against religious beliefs, and needs to be revised to become more neutral. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tim Tebow Rocks! (talk • contribs) 20:29, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

How do you suppose we do so? It is not biased, it is a list. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.232.196.34 (talk) 00:46, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Outline of pseudoscience

As this is no doubt a controversial article, the moving should have been proposed here first. Can arguments for or against be presented below. I think no consensus should return the article to previous title, but I'm not convinced either way as yet. Verbal chat 10:44, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Against

it was undiscussed, and he just did it all of the sudden. needs to be reverted.Tim Tebow ROCKS!!!!!! (talk) 18:00, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Moreover it makes no sense since this is not an outline of pseudoscience at all. It's exactly what it says: A list of topics that have been characterized as pseudoscience. Hans Adler 08:04, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

*searches for the definition of outline* A "general description covering the main points of a subject"? No, that would be covered by the pseudoscience article. This article is a list. --Enric Naval (talk) 08:51, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Important discussion developing

This may require comments from interested parties:

• Is 'pseudoscience' the best word to use? Science is surely the key.

Brangifer (talk) 19:39, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Addition to religious beliefs

Would it be appropriate to add all the various groups scattered around the world claiming to be one of the Lost tribes of Israel when there clearly is no evidence at all to support their claim? I nominate the Bnei Menashe as the top pottiest. Brutal Deluxe (talk) 18:23, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps Pseudohistory would be a better target article for that material.   Will Beback  talk  20:19, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

NSF

• The scientific consensus, as expressed by the National Science Foundation (NSF), considers that beliefs in ten survey items are pseudoscientific beliefs. They are: "extrasensory perception (ESP), that houses can be haunted, ghosts, telepathy, clairvoyance, astrology, that people can communicate mentally with someone who has died, witches, reincarnation, and channelling."

Why was this material deleted? The editor wrote "...this is a misrepresentation of the source".[2] However it seems mostly correct. It might be slightly reworded, but I don't understand the need to delete it.   Will Beback  talk  23:19, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Could be spill-over from WT:NPOV#RfC: Using the National Science Foundation as a reference. Ravensfire (talk) 00:58, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

You are correct, and also from the RfC at Talk:Ghost. This was the subject and it was approved by overwhelming consensus in both RfCs. Even the complaint at AN/I was closed in my favor. The two editors who are opposing this were on the losing end and are still carrying on their war against the consensus. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:22, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

it's a bit of a struggle over the misrepresentation of the source. The quote in question (IMO) has been taken drastically out of context and used to imply something that the NSF itself would not advocate. unfortunately, reasoned discussion on the matter has proved difficult, and so the quote is getting edited in on a number of pages (I guess so that they can claim some sort of de facto victory). it's odd and unfortunate. --Ludwigs2 01:25, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

the misrepresentation, incidentally, is that this quote is from a footnote: in the original document is was used as a fairly minor example of poor critical thinking in the general public. it's being used by a few editors as though it were a direct statement by the NSF that all sorts of odd beliefs can be criticized as pseudoscientific. happy to give more details if you like, but that's the nutshell. --Ludwigs2 01:33, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

BullRangifer has spammed this passage to Ghost, Witchcraft (where he reverted it back in a few minutes ago and Malleus removed it again), Pseudoscience, here and even WP:NPOV. Just look at the title of the document, and the title of the chapter used. This is not some scientific consensus statement or a research paper examining what is pseudoscience and what isn't. It's focused on the sad state of science education in the US. To demonstrate this, it cites a Gallup poll about belief in paranormal (not pseudoscience), which asked for belief in 10 paranormal topics. The NSF paper quotes a correct definition of pseudoscience (something that pretends to be science and satisfies some other conditions). In the next paragraph it claims to report about belief in pseudoscience but really conflates that with paranormal. This is a casual use of an equation between paranormal and pseudoscience, which results in the list of 10 paranormal topics appearing as a list of 10 pseudoscience topics. This makes sense for many of them, but not all. Specifically not ghosts, reincarnation and witchcraft, which are arguably always paranormal, but are only in some cases pseudoscience (i.e. when people pretend to be scientific, e.g. ghost hunters). E.g. Buddhists who believe in ghosts and reincarnation as part of their religion obviously don't believe in pseudoscience. All serious definitions of pseudoscience make sure to exclude the mainstream religions.

So this document in no way pretends to be authoritative on the question of what is pseudoscience but instead treats it only very casually, being obviously very imprecise and even inconsistent; certainly nowhere does it pretend to speak about the scientific consensus; and there is no independent confirmation from anything else. If the NSF talks about the scientific consensus here about instances of the widely discussed demarcation problem, then one would expect to find at least one or two serious papers that discuss ghosts in general (not ghost hunters!) in relation to pseudoscience. Similarly for reincarnation and witchcraft.

So this passage fails because even after removing the "scientific consensus" hyperbole it's still very dubiously sourced and its claim raises red flags. Hans Adler 01:40, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Hans Adler and Ludwigs2 were on the losing end of two RfCs which approved this wording and source. As such the precise wording and source are consensus content. They are very appropriate in this context. The two edit warriors are warring against me, and have forgotten the context where this content has been for a couple weeks. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:20, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

"On the losing end". Aha. I have heard this things like that several times recently, but only from BullRangifer. I adressed it on his talk page. No need to repeat that discussion here. Hans Adler 19:04, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Hans are you deceptively implying that you were among the overwhelming majority who created the consensus in both RfCs which approved of the NSF source, the quote, it's presentation by me, and its interpretation? The fact is that you were in that small minority of objectors who ended up "on the losing end", but who are still refusing to abide by the consensus in two RfCs. Your disruption and deceptive statements need to stop. -- Brangifer (talk) 00:46, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

BullRangifer, the result of both RfCs was that the NSF is a very reliable source. Nobody doubts that. Don't pretend that this makes justifies you to misquote an NSF source. Hans Adler 02:05, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

So you, by not answering, are you admitting that you were deceptively implying you !voted for the RfC proposal, and not against? Hmmm... As to "misquoting", I would never get away with such a thing, and the majority in the RfCs found no evidence of misquoting, and refuted your accusations of so doing. -- Brangifer (talk) 02:15, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Since you are once again accusing me of misquoting the NSF, please provide the NSF quote in question, and explain which words I have falsified, twisted, or whatever that would constitute "misquoting". I have been quoting them exactly, with attribution. Even Will Beback, who hasn't been part of this debacle, and without any coaching, quoted them exactly. Are you also charging him with "misquoting" the NSF, since he used the exact same quote from them which I did? -- Brangifer (talk) 02:20, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Here's the text from the source:

• Nevertheless, about three-fourths of Americans hold at least one pseudoscientific belief; i.e., they believed in at least 1 of the 10 survey items (similar to the percentage recorded in 2001). The cited poll
  • Those 10 items were extrasensory perception (ESP), that houses can be haunted, ghosts/that spirits of dead people can come back in certain places/situations, telepathy/communication between minds without using traditional senses, clairvoyance/the power of the mind to know the past and predict the future, astrology/that the position of the stars and planets can affect people's lives, that people can communicate mentally with someone who has died, witches, reincarnation/the rebirth of the soul in a new body after death, and channeling/allowing a "spirit-being" to temporarily assume control of a body.

I'm not sure I understand the objection - is it that the text didn't summarize it correctly, or that the sources isn't reliable, or what? Re-reading the source, I see that there may be better parts to cite, but if the entire paper is unreliable then that'd be out. Has this been discussed at WP:RSN?   Will Beback  talk  07:19, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

The paper appears to be an official NSF statement of some kind. Unfortunately it's incomplete on the NSF web page, but the letter of transmittal can still be found on archive org: [3]. It defines the scope of the document as an executive report: "The Science Indicators series was designed to provide a broad base of quantitative information about US. science, engineering, and technology for use by public and private policymakers." Note that it does not make any claims about absolute reliability at an extremely detailed level. There is a huge number of authors, including many with non-academic affiliations. [4] I could not find any information about this document is prepared, but it seems extremely unlikely that every single sentence goes through careful vetting and is proofed against being misunderstood when taken out of context. What counts here is the big picture of what the respective section wants to say.

It is obvious from reading the section "Belief in Pseudoscience" that its first sentence is an adequate summary for its intent: "Although S&T are held in high esteem throughout the modern world, pseudoscientific beliefs continue to thrive. Such beliefs coexist alongside society's professed respect for science and the scientific process."

The rest is a demonstration of the problem, presumably as part of a political plea to do something about it. It cites mostly opinion polls. It does not cite any literature about the demarcation problem, nor does it give us any other reason to believe that this is supposed to contain a contribution to the question what is and what isn't pseudoscience. It does cite a reasonable definition of pseudoscience from this book, which is probably a good book, but certainly not appropriate for being cited for its content in the paragraph right before an official NSF statement about scientific consensus.

The author probably knew that belief in ghosts, witches and reincarnation can be based on religion rather than belief in pseudoscience. Maybe there would have been better, scientific sources that could have been cited, which make the correct distinctions. But for the intended audience the distinction between pseudoscience and paranormal (the list comes from a Gallup poll on paranormal) doesn't make a difference; the paper cites sources that are known to politicians and trusted by them. The paper does not try to misrepresent what it does. It does not claim explicitly that all these paranormal beliefs are pseudoscientific beliefs, just strongly suggests the equation by treating them as equivalent.

So the basic question is this:

Given a section on "belief in pseudoscience" in an executive summary report that was prepared by the NSF for use by politicians. The section conflates pseudoscience and pseudonormal and relies on references such as opinion polls and popular books. Is it an appropriate source for characterising highly notable topics as pseudoscience, when it does so only implicitly, does not back the characterisation with arguments or references, and there is no evidence that such a characterisation is even discussed in other reliable sources that we would consider appropriate?

Hans Adler 09:48, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I missed the part about this being an "executive summary". I can't find those words anywhere. It's an very long and detailed document for an executive summary, which I usually think of as being no more than a few dozen pages (or even just a dozen paragraphs). However, it if is an executive summary then it may still qualify as a source. If necessary, we can allude to that fact. "The NSF issued an executive summary of a paper on science and engineering which briefly discussed the prevalence of pseudoscience in the modern role. It said that 'belief in pseudoscience is widespread' and listed ten commonly believed examples: x, y, z." Would that be correct?   Will Beback  talk  11:36, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

The paper is an executive report (not executive summary; I mistyped), as is clear from my first link, which goes to an archived copy of the letter to the US President. (It's part of the front matter, but all the front matter produces 404 errors on the NSF site.)

After correcting that, your version is more correct but still bad quote-mining. I see I will have to take this matter to WP:RS and perhaps even start a proper RfC about the problem. Even some of the scientists who edit here seem to have no clue of when it is appropriate to cite someone else for something and when it isn't. I imagine it's not nice to be told at a conference: "Thank you for quoting my paper, but I would really have preferred it if you had just sent me an email about the ambiguous formulation in footnote 3, rather than quote it out of context and write an entire article based on my mistake."

I will make one last attempt to explain the problem here: The original context was a discussion of belief in pseudoscience for an audience that cannot be expected to be interested in the distinction between pseudoscience and paranormal. So it conflated the two.

The present context is a precise treatment of pseudoscience accusations against various topics. The difference does matter here.

Think about this way: If a paper speaks about the prevalence of various kinds of molecules in the universe, then it may say "roughly x % of the mass of the universe is water". It's OK to cite this in Water#Water in the universe, in a context that discusses the various forms in which it can appear in the universe, so that it is implicitly clear that the source speaks about all of them. It's not OK to cite this in List of liquids. (I am relieved that this is a redlink, by the way.)

I guess that most people agree that belief in ghosts, reincarnation or witchcraft represents belief in paranormal. Suggesting that it also represents belief in pseudoscience (without setting the context so that it actually fits the definition, as in ghost hunting) is surprising, because no reliable source does that elsewhere. We can't advance that position here based on such flimsy evidence. Hans Adler 12:11, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Will: the other problem is that this report is revised yearly, and the particular language the brangifer is relying on so heavily only appear in a couple of years, and has disappeared completely in the last four years. the most current version of the document is here: here in abbreviated HTML, and here for the full PDF version of the chapter. note how much more careful they are with language in the current version. --Ludwigs2 14:46, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the list is the most useful thing in that citation for us to summarize, but it could be used to support the inclusion of individual concepts in this list. As for the changes in subsequent years, I don't see that as a problem so long as we make sure it's clear which edition we're citing.   Will Beback  talk  18:51, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the changes in subsequent years are basically meaningless. But I despair that throughout the project I am encountering this incredible amount of incompetence and willingness to cite a source that is obviously completely inadequate for what it is supposed to support. It feels a bit like running through a kindergarten and tearing poisoned sweets out of the children's hands, while being chased by furious parents who are complaining about my heartlessness. Executive reports for politicians are not the medium in which surprising new scholarly statements are published, regardless of the author. Especially when they do not actually claim to do so. What is so hard to understand about this? And of course the entire list is affected by this, not just the things on it that obviously aren't pseudoscience. Why is it so necessary to label paranormal beliefs that, normally, have absolutely nothing to do with anything remotely like science as pseudoscience? What's so pseudoscientific about Hamlet? What's so pseudoscientific about Hinduism? There is a serious academic debate about what is pseudoscience and what isn't. Serious scholars argue whether psychoanalysis is pseudoscience or not, and disagree about it. Nobody argues whether ghosts, reincarnation or witchcraft is pseudoscience or not. The very idea that they could be pseudoscience is too remote for that. I am not just claiming that. At one point I thought perhaps someone like Stephen Barrett is pushing an "everything that isn't true is pseudoscience" agenda, but I found nothing of the sort. Search for "ghost pseudoscience" on the web and you will find reasonable things about ghost hunting, which is of course pseudoscience, and some accidental hits about the "ghost of Popper" etc., but no discussion whether belief in ghosts is belief in pseudoscience. This is BullRangifer's original research. He doesn't understand it, you don't understand it, and I am despairing in face of the incompetence. Hans Adler 02:03, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

More attacks and belittlings? Hans, you are fighting your own OR fight against the NSF and myself for your version of the "truth" on this matter, while the majority in two RfCs are accepting that the NSF made a verifiable statement, revealing they understand this matter better than we do. I side with the NSF and the majority of editors who !voted in those RfCs, most of whom I don't know. Note that you have twice been called out and asked clearly to provide proof for your numerous false statements that I have tried to "change policy". I'm still waiting. -- Brangifer (talk) 02:12, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I have used Will Beback's excellently worded statement above as a significant part of a completely reworked edit. Note that this is not a reversion, but is totally reworked and expanded content. It is placed at the bottom in its own section where other statements by scientific bodies can also be placed. The new statement also links to the Gallup Poll and attributes the ten paranormal concepts as part of that poll.

I hope that the edit warring against the NSF (in this list) will end here. I know it will continue on other articles and talk pages until the disruptors are either blocked or banned, since they have vowed to wage a war on this issue until they get their way. The war is largely fueled by misunderstandings which have, because of failures to AGF, been turned into malicious charges against me of gaming the system, lying, trying to change policy, etc.. I hope it will stop soon, but I fear this will end in an ArbCom, where the only consolation for such a huge waste of time will be that the whole (very small) band will be blocked and/or banned for their disruption, personal attacks, and other policy violations. -- Brangifer (talk) 02:05, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

and Hans Adler has reverted it in his edit warring fashion against this source, no matter which article it's used on. Note this was a totally revised version, in a different place. Will someone else revert him and give him a warning? -- Brangifer (talk) 02:33, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

and it thoroughly deserved to be reverted - that was even more weaseled than the previous versions.

@ WillBeback: just to point out the problem here, I tried at one point to rephrase the quote so that it said (more or less) "the S&TI of 2006 made this list of ten things [...]. later revisions of the document do not use this terminology (see NSF 2010)". however, brangifer (and if I remember correctly QuackGuru and Verbal, sequentially) reverted that wording on the grounds that it was OR (can you believe it? - proper sourcing as OR!). I hate to say it, but they are perversely and obstinately determined to force this phrase in as though it is a clear, indisputable, and direct statement of the NSF's policy on pseudoscience, rather than a footnote to a small section of a chapter on critical thinking. The only thing more absurd than the effort itself is that they have so managed to confuse the issue that people aren't seeing how absurd their claim is. I mean, this is on the level of my claiming that the Tea Party Movement is a Marxist organization by citing the vast number of times they mention the word 'socialism'. Yeah, their logic really is that bad. --Ludwigs2 03:16, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Will, just to make sure you don't misunderstand things, Hans didn't start this whole debacle, Ludwigs2 did, so take what he says with a pretty large grain of salt, or the whole shaker He too was one of the few objectors who was on the losing end in the RfCs. His arguments didn't succeed in fooling the majority, so now he's repeating the nonsensical claim that it's my wrong arguments that convinced so many. There were far too many influential and intelligent editors who !voted and discussed to be fooled by anyone. They didn't succeed in changing Hans Adler's or Ludwigs2's minds, so they just !voted against them and for my proposal, which quoted the source just as accurately as you have done above. This would be amusing if it weren't so tragic and disruptive. -- Brangifer (talk) 03:46, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Editors can improve the text instead of deleting a whole section of the article. Statements by scientitifc bodies is very relevant. This is a new section and should be allowed to expand. QuackGuru (talk) 03:38, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Of course. Hans Adler's edit warring spirit and hatred of anything related to this NSF quote has caused him to blind revert, without realizing it was new content, in a totally new context. That's a very large AGF. Is it deserved? -- Brangifer (talk) 03:46, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

"That's a very large AGF." This sounds like an accusation, so I almost guess you mean ABF? In any case your assumption that my "edit warring spirit" and "hatred of anything related to this NSF quote" are my motivations here is totally wrong and an assumption of bad faith. Your assumption that I reverted without reading is also totally wrong and an assumption of bad faith. Here is why I reverted your nonsense:

1. "An example of characterization as pseudoscience by a national scientific body is provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF), whose statements are generally recognized to harmonize with the scientific consensus in the United States."

Putting two statements together in order to advance a new thesis is improper synthesis. The two statements in question were:

• The NSF provided an example of characterization as pseudoscience.
• NSF statements are generally recognized to harmonize with scientific consensus in the US.

Both individual claims are defective, but I am not going to continue explaining and explaining and explaining all the little details to someone who simply does not want to understand the arguments. This is probably the fourth or fifth page where we are having this discussion, and I don't know through how many iterations your misquotations has gone by now. Removing a misquotation from Wikipedia shouldn't be a full-time job. Let's just note that the citation at the end does not cover the second claim and is therefore fraudulent.

By putting the two claims together into a single sentence you make the reader draw the following conclusion:

• Characterization of the examples as pseudoscience is probably in harmony with scientific consensus in the US.

Although you have tried to hide behind the sources, you have advanced the claim that there is such a consensus. This is a blatant breach of the following rule from WP:RS#Academic consensus: "The statement that all or most scientists or scholars hold a certain view requires reliable sourcing. Without a reliable source that claims a consensus exists, individual opinions should be identified as those of particular, named sources. Editors should avoid original research especially with regard to making blanket statements based on novel syntheses of disparate material. The reliable source needs to claim there is a consensus, rather than the Wikipedia editor."

• 2. "In 2006 the NSF issued an executive summary of a paper on science and engineering which briefly discussed the prevalence of pseudoscience in the modern role."

This looks like an attempt to say that everything quoted from the NSF must be taken with a grain of salt because that was not the focus of the paper. But that's not what it says. Most readers will assume you are quoting a part of the paper that discusses pseudoscience in depth and just mentioning (however pointless that is) what that part of the paper also briefly touches upon.

• 3. "It said that 'belief in pseudoscience is widespread' and, referencing a Gallup Poll, stated that belief in the ten commonly believed examples of paranormal phenomena listed in the poll were 'pseudoscientific beliefs'. The ten items were: 'extrasensory perception (ESP), that houses can be haunted, ghosts, telepathy, clairvoyance, astrology, that people can communicate mentally with someone who has died, witches, reincarnation, and channelling.'"

That's much better than what you had previously, but even if we ignore that you blatantly link quoted words to Wikipedia article in breach of WP:LINK#General points on linking style, thereby suggesting improperly that the NSF author had exactly those definitions of the words in mind that Wikipedia has in the corresponding articles; even if we ignore that it's still not OK.

A list of examples of paranormal is almost completely pointless in the present context unless you want to compare paranormal and pseudoscience in some way. When you transfer the list into the present context in the way you did, it is blatantly obvious that you do so in order to advance the claim that this is a list of pseudosciences. (And don't come with the silly "belief in" distinction again. It's completely pointless here and has nothing to do with the present argument. I refuse to say "belief in" all the time just to humour you.) Advancing this claim is exactly what you have been doing from the beginning. And doing so is wrong because "the NSF does not make that claim". You are reading it into their paper, so don't hide behind them. Hans Adler 10:31, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

This is absurd, ghosts, witches, haunted houses and reincarnation are concepts which originated in folklore, tradition or religion hundreds or thousands of years ago. Science and pseudoscience were completely irrelevant for them; now in our modern cultures, those have been the subject of pseudoscience, but this is an extremely minor aspect. We need as an encyclopedia to maintain a neutral point of view and historical and global perspective, we should not foster the absurd viewpoint that objects of folklore or tradition, or belief in them, are pseudoscientific. First, believing in some extra-scientific concept doesn't imply believing in their (modern) pseudoscientific explanations, even nowadays (it can remain as a traditional belief). It's on the verge of anachronism really, as if we put Gautama Buddha in Category:Pseudoscientists. Second, 'targets' of pseudoscience are not pseudoscience themselves, the earth is not psci even if some people pseudoscientifically 'proved' that it was flat, neither are ghosts and so on. The NSF 2006 paper is misleading and/or contradicts other RS in several respects, so it can't be used to justify this POV, and anyway they mentioned those subjects in the context of analysis of pseudoscience and meant their modern interpretation, while we cover them in entirety. As it stands, the section is thoroughly misleading. Belief in witches for example, was in history essentially one of tradition and folklore, and nowadays it remains essentially a traditional or folklore one, not a pseudoscientific belief; even Gallup said paranormal, not pseudoscientific, and other sources don't support this (can you give even another one ?). Cenarium (talk) 18:48, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience

Dr William F. Williams, Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience (2000) publ. Fitzory Dearborn Publishers, ISBN 978-1-57958-207-4

This book could be used in the WP:LEAD to summarise the body with specific examples of pseudoscience. QuackGuru (talk) 05:34, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Earth Science candidates

Earth energy and vortices? Feng Shui? Ley lines?

I would like to suggest Biodynamic Agriculture for inclusion. Several closely related subjects are already on the list. (Earth sciences seems like the best category for agricultural topics, right?) A13ean (talk) 20:48, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

That sounds good to me, as long as we can get a good source that clearly describes it as pseudoscientific.

(should this new section be at the bottom of the page?)

bobrayner (talk) 21:59, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Linda Chalker-Scott, "The Myth of Biodynamic Agriculture", Master Gardener Magazine (2004).

Smithdismiss, D. "ON FERTILE GROUND? OBJECTIONS TO BIODYNAMICS". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

Smith, D. (2010). "Biodynamics in the Wine Bottle". Skeptic. 2010. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

Shermer, M. (2002). The skeptic encyclopedia of pseudoscience. ABC-CLIO.

Here's a first few I rounded up, I'll do a better job when I have a bit more time. A13ean (talk) 01:15, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Statements by scientific bodies requires expansion

I think "Statements by scientific bodies" is a good start to a new section for this article. Is there any recommendations for more statements from other organisations. QuackGuru (talk) 02:39, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

There is more from the NSF in other years, and the British House of Commons Science and Technology Committee in 2009-2010 had some choice things to say about homeopathy. I don't recall if they use the word "pseudoscience" or some other synonyms. I'm sure we could find other statements from scientific bodies, but it's not easy, since they generally ignore pseudoscience, which is why we have WP:FRINGE.-- Brangifer (talk) 03:49, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

The House of Commons only gives one example. In a report published today, the Science and Technology Committee concludes that the NHS should cease funding homeopathy. It also concludes that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) should not allow homeopathic product labels to make medical claims without evidence of efficacy. As they are not medicines, homeopathic products should no longer be licensed by the MHRA.

I was thinking of using sources that give multiple examples. QuackGuru (talk) 04:03, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I followed the link and expected to find the syllable "pseudo" somewhere on the page, but didn't; neither did I find anything remotely like the usual definitions of pseudoscience. So I am not sure what the point of that link was. Of course it's clear from reading that piece that very likely in the committee's opinion homeopathy is pseudoscience. However they missed this chance to say so, making it, if anything, a very weak argument against calling homeopathy pseudoscience. We certainly can't ascribe this opinion to them without serious original research and misrepresentation.

They did not miss the chance to practise a little bit of pseudoscience themselves, or at least incredibly sloppy science:

"Beyond ethical issues and the integrity of the doctor-patient relationship, prescribing pure placebos is bad medicine. Their effect is unreliable and unpredictable and cannot form the sole basis of any treatment on the NHS."

That's either the first I hear that anybody has proved that the placebo effect is "unreliable and unpredictable", as opposed to being subject to a huge variety of factors that are not known yet because nobody is researching them. (Well, there are a few results already. E.g. it is stronger for asthma than for many other diseases. One study found it is stronger when the placebo is administered by a homeopath than when it is administered by a regular physician.) Or they simply make this scientific claim about facts without any evidence – merely because it suits what they want to achieve politically.

Moreover, their hard line against placebos is not actually followed by GPs. They have always prescribed placebos and will continue to do so. In many respects it is less ethical to use a substance with a clinical effect (such as aspirine) for that purpose than a proper placebo. Prohibition only hurts the patients. Hans Adler 10:45, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

You should not expected to find the syllable "pseudo" somewhere on the page. As long as it is characterized as pseudoscience it meets the inclusion criteria. Products are making medical claims without any evidence of efficacy. QuackGuru (talk) 17:50, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Now that's a novel interpretation of our policies. I remember very well how you claimed improper synthesis at Citizendium for a simple calculation. Now, apparently mind-reading has suddenly become an acceptable way of interpreting a source. Amazing. Hans Adler 18:33, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

How does one characterize something as pseudoscience without using the term pseudoscience? DigitalC (talk) 18:44, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

See WP:PRIMARY: Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources. Secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic's notability and to avoid novel interpretations of primary sources, though primary sources are permitted if used carefully. All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors.

Editors are not allowed to make synthetic claims not found in the primary source. The calculation (requiring a calculator) is not made by the primary source. It was made by editors.

Perhaps your disagreement is with the inclusion criteria. The lead starts out by saying "This is a list of topics characterized as pseudoscience by organizations within the international..." QuackGuru (talk) 18:48, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I note that you are completely ignoring the issue that you are proposing massive original research here. But I suggest we just abort this silly discussion. There is no need to continue unless you start to act based on your bizarre ideas. Hans Adler 18:57, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Or wait! I think I got it. Do you mean, since we already have homeopathy in the article, it can be discussed in your new section? That makes slightly more sense, but would be a case of WP:COATRACK. This kind of information would belong into Homeopathy. We can't turn this list into a coatrack for additional negative information about the fields that appear here. If disparaging the members of the list is the purpose of the list, it will have to be deleted. Hans Adler 19:01, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

According to your logic we can't include sources that characterize a topic as pseudoscience when the inclusion criteria is a list of topics characterized as pseudoscience. I don't follow your logic. QuackGuru (talk) 19:08, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Your source doesn't do that. It does not characterise homeopathy as pseudoscience. You cannot do that without using the word pseudoscience, because there is no synonym for that word. Hans Adler 19:45, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

As long as the source characterises homeopathy as pseudoscience it meets the inclusion criteria. A characterisition of pseudoscience is characterising it as pseudoscience. Your missing the point that the inclusion criteria stated it can be characterized as pseudoscience. A characterisation of pseudoscience does not require specifically saying it is pseudoscience otherwise the title of this list would not have the word characterized as part of its name. If you want to change the inclusion criteria you would have to start by changing the title of this article. QuackGuru (talk) 20:13, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Nonsense. One characterises a topic as pseudoscience by saying explicitly that it is pseudoscience. You are simply misunderstanding the words. The lead says something about synonyms being also acceptable, but I don't think this makes sense. I certainly can't see a synonym for pseudoscience in the text you found. This is my last contribution to this silly discussion. If you want to get blocked or banned for a stupid misunderstanding, that's your problem. But don't complain about people being mean to you afterwards, it will be all your own work. Hans Adler 20:33, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

The title has the word "characterized" in it for the purpose of allowing topics that are characterized as pseudoscience. It is not required the source specifically say it is pseudoscience otherwise the title of this article would not have the word "characterized" in it. QuackGuru (talk) 20:42, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I think what QG is saying is that any source which wikipedia editors can use to characterize a topic as pseudoscience is a sufficient source to include the topic on this page. You'll notice that if I changed the page title to "List of topics that scientists characterize as pseudoscience" half of the material would have to be removed - the wp:weasel wording in the title (where it doesn't actually specify who is doing the characterizing) is papal indulgence for a lot of skeptical sins. I'm tempted to flag the entire page under naming convention policy, but... maybe later. This entire page is basically one big end-run around wp:V and wp:NPOV; it really ought to get the shit revised out of it, but I'd feel more optimistic about single-handedly Invading and democratizing North Korea than about making the needed revisions here. Pyongyang, I think, could be reasoned with. --Ludwigs2 20:52, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

actually, I think I will check over at wp:naming conventions about page titles with weasel words. seems like it ought to be a nono... --Ludwigs2 20:56, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

For now I added House of Commons to the section. We can start a RFC for this new section. QuackGuru (talk) 00:29, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

(undent) Edit summary aside, removing that section is actually a pretty good idea. As a minor quibble, the NSF SEIND reports do not speak with the voice of the NSF, though they are generally good sources. More importantly, though, why do we want to devote a section of this list to Statements by scientific bodies? Clearly what such bodies have to say about pseudoscience is relevant to Pseudoscience and various articles in Category:Pseudoscience, but I am not sure that we need so much content here.

@Ludwigs2 - please check the archives, the name of this article is a perennial issue. I might support the right rename proposal, but I would really prefer to avoid hashing out the same dead arguments. - 2/0 (cont.) 20:49, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

(to first paragraph of 2/0's comment) Yeah, that section does not belong in this article. (to second paragraph) I remember those lengthy coversations. Ludwigs should point which sources not authored by scientists would be discarted by the rename, and how that would improve the article. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:03, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I think Ludwigs2 is simply wrong in this instance. There is no problem with list titles not describing with absolute precision what is in the list, so long as it doesn't create a POV problem. E.g. we don't call our lists of notable Xs "List of notable Xs". We just call them "List of Xs" and mention in the lead that they are not complete because we list only the notable ones. Here we would only have a POV problem if the title implied a stronger degree of pseudoscience-ness than we actually check for the entries. The opposite is not a problem. Understatements are always OK for lists. This list is a problem, but it's better to have the problem here than at pseudoscience, where it was previously.

Basically the idea was to split the pseudoscience article into theory and practical application of the label, because the readers are mostly interested in the former, and the POV pushing surrounding the latter degraded the article. (This list has roughly 1/4 the page views of pseudoscience.) Hans Adler 21:21, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

well, I may be wrong (wouldn't be the first time), and I'm not sure I want to reopen the whole can of worms around the naming of this article. personally, I'd have gone with a narrower 'list of pseudoscientific concepts', and then made it clear in the intro that it was only going to address research programs and practices that clearly claim to be scientific but equally clearly go against scientific assumptions and established research. That just seems more sensible to me.

Beyond that, if I were to prune the article... there are items like channelling and seances which have never (to my knowledge) really offered themselves as scientific and never received any scientific consideration; other items like attachment therapy, subliminal perception, or psychoanalysis which were once-valid theories that have largely gone the way of the dodo (thankfully in the fist case) but still have some serious scholarly proponents; still others like alternative medicine and chiropractic which are over-arching terms that are not in themselves pseudoscientific (though they may contain pseudoscientific practices); things like Traditional Chinese Medicine or Ayurveda, which are well established practices using un-analyzable modes of evidence; things like 'The Shroud of Turin' where most of the actual science done is good science floating around (and generally going against) some funky but deeply held religious beliefs. I could go on, and I'd need to look at each topic in much more detail, but you get the idea. it's the 'characterized as' phrase that makes this list kind of a dumping ground, because any non-mainstream idea has someone (somewhere in the mainstream) who has characterized it as pseudoscience. The normal practice on wikipedia is to report scholarly consensus - most psychologists would not be inclined to label psychoanalysis as pseudoscience, even though it's not a technique that many use, so why should the fact that Popper used the term outweigh the general consensus in the psychological community? if you see what I mean. --Ludwigs2 22:04, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

If we remove psychoanalysis from the list then we can really just delete it. This is easily the best documented case because everybody uses it as the test case for their definition of pseudoscience. I think it's also what first motivated Popper to take the question of pseudoscience seriously. He had a certain feeling about psychoanalysis and wanted to justify it according to objective criteria.

It's funny what you say about psychologists not being inclined to label psychoanalysis as pseudoscience. I have no idea if that is true, but I think that most physicians in Germany (I can't speak for the world) are not inclined to label homeopathy as pseudoscience. There are lots of regular GPs who even practise it to a very limited extent. But since this list exists basically just for being able to say at yet another place that homeopathy and a few other fields that are borderline in the same sense as pseudoscience, it would never do to take homeopathy off. And actually my personal POV is so strongly anti-psychoanalysis that I would find it very hard to agree with taking that off the list.

The problem with a list with stronger inclusion criteria is that we would lose (1) the borderline cases, which are what the anti-pseudoscience POV pushers are most interested in; and (2) lots of obvious pseudoscience, just because there are no sufficiently strong sources to claim more than that they have once been characterised as pseudoscience. Hans Adler 22:38, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

well, I picked psychoanalysis as an example because I happen to know it is still part of the regular curriculum for clinical degrees in psychology and for certain kinds of research psychology. It would be a bit like calling the theories of Copernicus and Galileo pseudoscience because the discipline has moved on to better theories. there's no question that psychoanalysis (as they say) "has issues", but Freud's basic framework is still a significant influence in the field. It just strikes me as odd to talk about how something still taught by the scholarly community is pseudoscience. I mean, I understand the issue - Popper was calling out the issue that psychoanalysis is largely unfalsifiable and was worrying about the deeper nature of scientific investigation (I'm not in Popper's camp, incidentally; I'm much more inclined towards modern theories of scientific pragmatism). but I don't think even Popper ever said that psychoanalysis has no positive effect - he just said that it wasn't a falsifiable approach, meaning you couldn't positively attribute any effects to the theory itself.

Maybe it's just me: when I think 'pseudoscience' I tend to think about non-scientists playing at being scientists (as I've said elsewhere, people who try to claim the authority of science while avoiding or circumventing the methodology of science). I don't see that psychoanalysts have done either, certainly not in the way that, say, creationists have.

I'm not so big on labeling homeopathy (or a lot of things classed under Alternative medicine) as pseudoscience either. but you're right, there's such a strong anti-AM faction on wikipedia that straightening that out is going to take a lot more time and effort.

A Woody Allen moment: "I was gonna kill myself, but I was in a strict Freudian analysis, and if you kill yourself they make you pay for the sessions you miss." --Ludwigs2 23:15, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

NSF RFc Again.

I'm closing this RfC as National Science Foundation is a reliable source for stating that "belief in ghosts and spirits" are "pseudoscientific beliefs." Editors should keep in mind that the NSF position on this is meaningful, notable, reliable and scientific. ... en.Wikipedia is not about truth, it's about verifiability. Gwen Gale (talk) 15:40, 15 March 2010 (UTC) (All emphasis original.)

Not including Ghosts in this list after reading the above, or reading the original NSF reports, fails a reasonable man test.

Guyonthesubway (talk) 13:59, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

The NSF is of course a reliable source for stating that – if it states that in a meaningful way. Which it hasn't done. Hans Adler 18:04, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

For crying out loud, write a RFwhatever that asks the question in a way that you understand. Then consensus can beat the horse to death -again- and you'll be satisfied. How about that? Guyonthesubway (talk) 18:45, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

As you know, there is currently a relevant thread going on at WP:RS/N. If this discussion stalls, or if in the end you and BullRangifer disagree with its result, we can still start an RfC. In the meantime, stop misrepresenting the previous RfC as if it had settled the question. Hans Adler 19:35, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Gwen Gale has modified its close so it no longer supports what you suggest (not sure what it is actually). Anyway, the NSF source does not support the characterization of "Ghosts, the belief that the spirits of the dead may appear." as pseudoscience. The relevant part of the paper was basically a summary of this graph and other trends, and nothing in this summary is clearly supportive of such characterization in the sense defined by the verifiability policy, which I cite "must clearly support the material as presented in the article". Cenarium (talk) 23:42, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Link in first sentence

I am referring to this edit. As a stylistic edit it's not a big thing, and I can't be bothered to check whether we have some special guidance on leads of lists. (The general guidance would be that because it's a descriptive title, the title doesn't even have to be bold, and then the link would be fine.)

But I want to make sure that we all still agree what this list is: A list of topics characterised as pseudoscience, i.e. in the sense of the article, not a list of topics that have casually been referred to as pseudoscience in a loose manner of speaking.

I realise that by asking this I may be opening a can of worms, and there is a potential loophole here that perhaps could be exploited to remove some of the items on this list that are unquestionably pseudoscience. (I didn't check, and I am not aware of any in particular.) But I want to make sure that this edit doesn't become a successful move in BullRangifer's POV pushing campaign of presenting a casual statement using loose language as a highly authoritative verdict on pseudoscience in the technical sense, in the leads of many articles. Hans Adler 07:38, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

That edit is purely stylistic and doesn't change anything, much less create some imagined "loophole". Try to AGF. As to anything I have done with leads, you know perfectly well that I have pulled back some time ago and haven't even been resisting your current campaign to remove the National Science Board statement from articles. You are the one opening a can of worms by even mentioning this. The old discussions about the wording of the lead discussed the subject to death and we found a peaceful solution that works pretty well. My edit doesn't change a thing. -- Brangifer (talk) 14:21, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Psychology

How is Behavioralism not in the Psychology section, but memetics was before I deleted it. Memetics is not a psychological topic, and it is not a pseudoscience. Behavioral psychology is a perfect example of pseudoscience. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.180.61.194 (talk) 03:03, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

According to which source? ScienceApologist (talk) 19:56, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

The Social Sciences

As a list of pseudosciences I am surprised not to see what Feynman labeled as a pseudoscience, the 'Social Sciences'. "They follow the forms, you gather data, you do so and so fourth but they don't get any laws. They haven't found out anything. They haven't got anywhere, yet." (Feynman) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaO69CF5mbY

So, the question I am asking is, should SOME social sciences, a reference to the fact that some parts of some social sciences or some aspects of the social sciences be placed in the pseudoscience wiki.

Discuss. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.11.153.79 (talk) 02:09, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

A bit too off-the-cuff and perhaps inexact. Psychoanalysis has been famously called pseudoscience by a number of commentators, and we still struggle how to include it exactly in this list (it isn't clear, for example, that all of the theories of psychoanalysis were meant to be scientific statements, after all). Painting with a brush over all of the social sciences is, it seems to me, not the point of Feynman's commentary since social science is a ridiculously large category. Is demography pseudoscience? How about conversation analysis? His point about organic farming is well-taken, but could be sourced to even more thorough debunking. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:55, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Missing topics

Is there a reason why cold fusion is not on this list? Also, given that Apollo moon landing hoax accusations is on the list, it seems appropriate that 9/11 conspiracy theories be added as well, right? -Cwenger (talk) 01:32, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Cold fusion is more commonly called a pathological science by interested commentators, but there may be some sources which indicate it is pseudoscientific. Certainly some cold fusion proponents have been accused of acting with pseudoscientific aplomb (e.g. hydrinos). The other suggestion you have seems reasonable to me. It would require some sources which describe as pseudoscientific the specific theorizing about the subject. I'm not familiar enough with the skeptical literature and which scientific bodies/academics that have made statements about this in order to add the topic myself. Please help us find sources. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:49, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Earth Science candidates

Biodynamics

The original thread got archived, so if no one has any concerns I will add it to the list.

Linda Chalker-Scott, "The Myth of Biodynamic Agriculture", Master Gardener Magazine (2004).

Smith, D. "ON FERTILE GROUND? OBJECTIONS TO BIODYNAMICS". Fine Wine. 12.

Smith, D. (2010). "Biodynamics in the Wine Bottle". Skeptic. 2010. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

Shermer, M. (2002). The skeptic encyclopedia of pseudoscience. ABC-CLIO.

Here's a first few I rounded up, I'll do a better job when I have a bit more time. A13ean (talk) 01:15, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

One more ref is Goode, Jamie (2006-03-01). The science of wine: from vine to glass. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520248007. A13ean (talk) 15:45, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Its connection to anthroposophy and astrology and the lunar effect might all be noted too. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:03, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

There are plenty of weird enough aspects to biodynamics (says even I, who try to buy the products for their flavor and quality), but the present text in the article doesn't show that this is termed pseudoscientific or the equivalent (by a verifiable source natch). I'm removing it until this can be found (and it's possible that it can be as it's a controversial subject) - but this article really has a clear inclusion standard that we should hold to. hgilbert (talk) 16:08, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm reverting you, the sources provided are fine. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:16, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

What synonyms for pseudoscientific are used to describe the agricultural approach? There's one vague reference to "astrological" - which is not the same as calling something pseudoscientific; other sources, in any case, say explicitly that sowing and other activities are done according to the astronomical, not astrological conditions. (And if you don't think the astronomical conditions affect plants, try growing one without the influence of the sun!) hgilbert (talk) 16:27, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi HG, I did not add in any references from Skeptic organizations, but based on the first sentence of this article perhaps I should have? I'm trying to not go beyond the scope of what's already included in the "criticism" section. As far as the sources go, I'm using the LCS one which says

"In fact, Steiner declared that these spiritualistically determined methods did not need to be confirmed through traditional scientific testing, but were true and correct” unto themselves (Kirchmann, 1994). The rejection of scientific objectivity in favor of a subjective, mystical approach means that many of Steiner’s biodynamic recommendations cannot be tested and validated by raditional methods. In practical terms, this means any effect attributed to biodynamic preparations is a matter of belief, not of fact."

The Fine Wine article has a lot of similar material in it, but the conclusion starts with

"What we see when looking over the biodynamic landscape is a vista of starry eyes and good intentions mixed with quasi-religious hocus-pocus, good salesmanship, and plain scientific illiteracy. It is true, biodynamic practice does not appear to involve anything that would be agriculturally harmful; and, indeed, it counsels methods of organic farming that are, in themselves, beneficial. It may give lackadaisical viticulturalists a kind of quasi-religious motivation or inspiration to spend more time at work, using treatments that amount to mulching and sparse irrigation. Taken as such, it might seem the practice is worth perhaps muted applause or a disinterested shrug. In fact, however, it is the esoteric, occult aspects that give biodynamics its originality and raison d’être. Get rid of the esoterica, and it is not clear that any point remains for the small industry of consultants, conferences, press articles, books, or fanciful homeopathic dilutions."

The Goode book puts it a bit more civilly:

"Where the difficulty remains is that while much of Biodynamic practice is so esoteric and has such a "pseudoscience" ring to it, mainstream scientists are afraid to be associated with it"

It seems to me that biodynamics is generally characterized as such by people outside of the field, regardless of how we feel about it. Does this sound OK? A13ean (talk) 16:53, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Biodynamic agriculture's association with "astronomical" conditions is not the same thing as watching any solar-cycle, and you know that. As far as I'm concerned, these references do a really good job of showing how the people promoting this stuff have been hoodwinked by astrological mumbo-jumbo. Planting based on the phase of the moon is rank pseudoscience and is discussed as such in, for example, Shermer's encyclopedia. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:34, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree with ScienceApologist on this one. Those sources do show that key parts of biodynamics are just credulous nonsense. If further sources are needed it should be fairly straightforward to dig them up, but I really doubt it's necessary to find yet another scientist to confirm that a cosmic cowhorn will do little for a field of crops.

bobrayner (talk) 16:41, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, A13ean; that's pretty definitive. It almost makes me regret enjoying my salad today!

I very much appreciate your listing the actual points. hgilbert (talk) 19:22, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

HG, thanks for taking interest in the article. Don't let anything get in the way of enjoying a salad! I'm about to pick some arugula myself. Best A13ean (talk) 22:10, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Aetherometry external link?

I removed the following from the list because the external link sends people to a page unrelated to the subject (some long thing anti-wikipedia thing) when they link-through from wikipedia the first time. Also the subject was a redlink (although an article for it has just been created by User:Holderbog).

• Aetherometry is the belief in a supernatural substance known as Aether that is capable of producing massless energy.

I certainty do not dispute that this is pseudoscience, but does it merit mention here, and if so, are there any other references that can be used? A13ean (talk) 21:24, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

We don't usually list items that don't have articles, and the article was deleted at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Aetherometry (second nomination) because of a lack of reliable sources. I see that this text doesn't include any reliable source. I left a message to the user that re-created the article. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:05, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry about posting the wrong link, the intent was to redirect to the Aetherometry homepage, not their anti-wikipedia rant page. I agree that it's all psuedo-science, but it may be best to categorize it as such so that it is not taken seriously & so that their anti-wikipedia claims are without substance. I have found some mentions of Aetherometry outside of the official website that all exist to debunk it. Some of those sources even mention that Aetherometry proponents AKA "The Correas" have gone out of their way to personally censor/slander any retort to their theories; this would make for an interesting article from a NPOV &, imo, would contribute to the Psuedoscience section. Any assistance in researching/writing the topic is much appreciated! --Holderbog —Preceding undated comment added 14:46, 24 August 2010 (UTC).

I think listing all the reliable sources you can find here might be a good start. A13ean (talk) 15:17, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

In brief, here is what I have found -

http://www.orgonelab.org/correas.htm - A review of the Aethomerty work by an independent scientist in Oregon & His experience in dealing with "The Correas". Page features three rebuttals of Aethometry theories which are unchallenged

http://www.pureenergysystems.com/obituaries/2004/EugeneMallove/LastMessage040513/ - Open letter from Eugene Mallove which apparently lists Aethometry work as a new form of mass free energy.

http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/inhofe-global-warming-deniers-scientists-46011008 - Lists Dr. Paulo Correa on a list of Global Warming deniers (not sure how relevant that is)

http://www.infinite-energy.com/resources/iccf10.html - Paper by Eugene Mallove on Aethometry; I have not yet determined if this has been peer reviewed

http://www.rialian.com/rnboyd/subquantum.htm - Seems to be a huge list of theories on Aether, of which is listed Aethometry.

http://www.massfree.com/MFT_products.shtml some Aetheromoetry products (it seems) featuring mass free energy at work (?). Also see http://www.massfree.com/orac_info.shtml for testimonials (?)

http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg03504.html - Email thread discussing the inventions of Aethometry, decides they do not work

I'd appreciate any help in finding more information on them. Anything Peer reviewed & Debunked would be valuable. --Holderbog —Preceding undated comment added 16:56, 24 August 2010 (UTC).

(I was expecting magazines like New Scientist, maybe journals, maybe books. Articles or essays published in books, skeptic books listing pseudosciences. Articles on history of science would be perfect. The problem is that aetomethry is not notable enough to appear in that sort of publications. The sources listed here are, well..., I don't want to sound insulting but they are websites in the internet, people sniping at each other via open letters published in their own websites. They are nice to provide context once you have an article, but they don't establish notability). --Enric Naval (talk) 18:46, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

"Articles or essays published in books, skeptic books listing psuedosciences" - any examples of these? Would like to check their sites for more info. Bigger is better. --Holderbog —Preceding undated comment added 10:57, 25 August 2010 (UTC).

Examples of these sources are, for example:

• On Fact and Fraud: Cautionary Tales from the Front Lines of Science, David Goodstein
• The Skeptic's Dictionary [5]
• in the Biorhythm article, check references 1, 3, 4, 5, 8 and 11.

--Enric Naval (talk) 18:46, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

problem

Unfortunately, the recent name change has created some direct conflicts with the pseudoscience ArbCom ruling. Per Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Pseudoscience#Questionable science, many of the items on the page in fact they have substantial followings, with no broad consensus in the scientific community that they are pseudoscientific, but they are now being characterized as pseudoscience by wikipedia, regardless. It was one thing when the title explicitly made the claim that these were topics that were characterized as pseudoscience, but there are many topics which have been so characterized so by various individuals which certainly do not belong in a glossary of pseudoscience. The nature of a glossary implies that included topics are rightly characterized as pseudoscience, and that is not something we can imply in many of the included cases.

So, how do we resolve this problem? --Ludwigs2 02:18, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Where is the original discussion of the name change? If there wasn't one - then the simple answer is to revert the name change pending further discussion and some emerging consensus. I would certainly support that. SteveBaker (talk) 02:54, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I also feel that the original name was more representative of this page's contents. It seems like it is more of a list of objects in the category with brief descriptions. I tend to think of a glossary as more of an index with definitions of terms. A13ean (talk) 03:08, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

The change seems controversial enough to warrant discussion first. The editor who did this appears to have a bit of a history of rash name changes. My vote: revert for now. hgilbert (talk) 08:43, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd just as soon see the new name stick and the questionable material get deleted. Frankly, the old title was the product of a lot of wikilawyering by editors explicitly interested in circumventing the 'questionable science' clause by claiming that so long as the article specifies that it's about 'characterizing' then normal rules about undue weight can be suspended. it's a bit like starting a page called 'list of politicians who have been characterized as a-holes', if you follow my drift. The new name is better than the old in that sense - it's not trying to edge its way past arbcom rulings, at any rate - and changing the focus of the article would mean we can delete all defensive rationalizations that are currently a required part of the text (e.g., 90% of the introduction is an explanation of why this page is not violating the arbcom ruling). it would make for a better page overall. --Ludwigs2 14:50, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I would agree with a revert. "Glossary of..." articles are not standard. No comment on Ludwigs' sour grapes. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:07, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

The old name was decided at Talk:List_of_pseudoscientific_theories/Archive_12#Potential_retitle. This new name has not been discussed, and it has the problems that the old name wanted to solve. I say to go back to the old name. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:26, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

@ SA: nothing sour about it - that's an objective assessment, which I can back up with a whole lot of diffs from the talk pages here (starting with the one Enric linked above). You're entitled to disagree, of course, but I don't know how you would justify that disagreement when this page clearly lists psychoanalysis, while arbcom explicitly excludes psychoanalysis from being characterized as pseudoscience. There is no way to explain that except through some fairly torturous wikilawyering. yah? --Ludwigs2 15:39, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I've been operating under the assumption for years that Arbcomm was wrong to name specific topics. We could ask them to strike the ruling. I'm sure it would pass (compare the ruling for timecube), but I think it's safe to assume that the current crop is very uncomfortable dictating content from on high as the ruling currently reads. That said, if you feel strongly about it and think this is an issue that's likely to cause problems in the future, I'd join you in a Request for Amendment or Clarification. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:25, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

From my perspective, this is not an issue of specifically-named topics - I have the same objection with several other items on this page, it's just that psychoanalysis is the most obvious and accessible example. The problem (IMO) is the long-standing, low-grade feud between fringe advocates and debunkers, each of whom abuses scientific opinion. I mean, it's just a general lack of common sense. I can point to a number of items on this page that are not particularly scientific but that have extensive and mostly non-cotroversial uses in the real world (psychoanalysis, TCM and its derivatives, Feng shui, and ayurveda, just for starts), and several others that seem to have no place on this page at all (how are 'credit scores' pseudoscience?). So why do editors defend their inclusion so strongly?

If you want to make a request for amendment, we could do that, but I'd want Arbcom to make it clear that skeptical advocacy is just as much pseudoscience as any other form of fringe advocacy. that in itself should be enough to remove most of the problematic items from this page (to the extent that it would preclude wikipedia editors from making exaggerated claims about the refutation of ideas by the scientific community). I'm open to better conceptualizing, though. If you and I can craft something that's acceptable to both of us, I think it might have a decent shot at being accepted.

as an aside, I was under the impression that 'Time Cube' was removed not because it was seen as dictating content but because it was just a bad example (a totally non-scientific concept being offered as the example of obvious pseudoscience was a bit odd). was there some subtext that I missed? --Ludwigs2 17:13, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Getting angry at skeptical criticism does not seem to me to be reasonable. Each of the topics you mention have been applied verifiably in pseudoscientific ways. Sure, there are non-pseudoscientific aspects to a lot of the subjects listed here, but that's sort of beside the point. This isn't supposed to be a list of things that are only pseudoscience. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:24, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

SA: it doesn't seem reasonable to me for you to make ad hominem assertions, either. The next time you assume that I'm angry (or make any other irrelevant assumptions about my emotional state) I will demonstrate for you what I'm actually like when I get angry so that you can see the difference. agreed? Trust me, it's not something you're likely to confuse with any other state; I'm not subtle about it at all.

silliness aside, I don't understand the claim you were trying to make when you said "[each has] been applied verifiably in pseudoscientific ways". that's either a truism (in that everything that's ever been considered a science has fallen victim at one point or another to pseudoscientific claims), or circular (in that everything that's been called pseudoscience in sources can be verified to have been called pseudoscience in sources). or is there a nuance to it that I'm missing? and if this is not supposed to be a list of things that are only pseudoscience, then what is the criteria for inclusion, and why does the word pseudoscience appear so prominently in the title and on the page? --Ludwigs2 20:47, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Reliable sources have identified applications and attributions for each of the subjects on this page as being used in a pseudoscientific fashion. Unreliable sources have accused other subjects as being applied in a pseudoscientific fashion, but we don't list those because the sources are unreliable. Skeptical sources such as Skeptical Inquirer, Michael Shermer, etc. are pretty reliable and have been generally praised by independent evaluators. Their only detractors tend to be the people they criticize (and that's obviously why the detractors tend to be unreliable). ScienceApologist (talk) 22:18, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Ah. so you've selected a set of sources A, decided they were reliable, and then decided that all sources B who disagree with them are unreliable because - apparently - they have been determined to be unreliable by A. That logic doesn't strike you as a bit peculiar? Imagine if we applied that to other knowledge domains (e.g. Christian sources are reliable, Christian sources find Muslim sources to be heretical, therefore no Muslim sources are reliable). Don't get me wrong, I have no problem recognizing when scholars actually demonstrate that a given practice is flawed, or noticing when some group is obviously trying to leverage scientific opinion using flawed theory or methodology - most of the stuff on this list really is pseudoscience. But that aside, I see no reason why we should privilege the non- or semi-scientific opinions of skeptics over the non- or semi-scientific opinions of others. I mean, again: psychoanalysis has a handful of vocal skeptical critics, yes. but it also has thousands of accredited and licensed practitioners, some number of academic programs at universities, possibly millions of clients... and yet that handful of skeptic sources seems to outweigh everything on wikipedia (at least as far as some editors are concerned). Or take AltMed, which isn't even a 'thing', but rather a vast and loose collection of practices, most of which have no real relation to each other. Yet some editors seem to feel that AltMed as a whole can be labeled as pseudoscience, as though all altmed practices were equivalent to the worst thing that can be identified as altmed.

does that strike you as reasonable and appropriate? from my perspective, that looks more like some editors have a bee in their collective bonnet about psychoanalysis or altmed or what-you-will, and are working hard to skew sourcing to support their own sourpuss POV. Skeptical sources are surely reliable, but they are not determinative, particularly not when they are merely informed opinion without true scientific evidence backing them up. --Ludwigs2 00:09, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

You seem to personalizing this too much. Are there editors out there who want to characterize all of alternative medicine as pseudoscience? Maybe. Are there editors who want to do the same with psychoanalysis? Maybe. But I see no evidence of a coordinated conspiracy to get those views promulgated to the expense of any others here on Wikipedia. My point is simple: there are definitely aspects of altmed and psychoanalysis which have been verifiably criticized as pseudoscientific (you admit as much). We seem to agree on this general point. Handling this properly requires careful discussion. To use perhaps a less personal example for you, UFO religions are not "pseudoscience" either -- they're religions. But to the extent that UFO religions have made various claims that are dressed in the accidents of scientific verbiage they engage in pseudoscientific rationalizations for beliefs.

You are seeming to engage in a disparaging of "skeptical" sources with very little in the way of neutral critique. This is not a case of group A versus group B. This is a case of three groups, A, B, and independent evaluators that have no irons in the fire. What we have is, unfortunately for the altmed and psychoanalytic pushers, a coordinated acknowledgment on the part of independent scientists that skeptics are right if perhaps mean. This is shown time and again across a wide variety of fields. Are there millions of believers in pseudoscience? Sure! Are there academics who are hoodwinked? Absolutely. But reliable sources are pretty easy to distinguish and, in this case, the skeptics are the reliable ones. A successful take-down of any of the skeptical disputations of the pseudoscientific aspects of, for example, certain psychoanalytic claims of quantum souls has never been seen by me. I look forward to such a reification if you can think of one.

Finally, I'd also point out that using Muslim criticism for Christian theology is definitely frowned upon in Wikipedia as is vice-versa. The extent to which the magisterium metaphor can be employed in these discussions, what we seem to have is a definite ability to say that criticism of claims about science should be done by scientists and skeptics but not those who are neither making such claims. This is not an exact metaphor, but it's surprising how much mileage we get out of it considering it was your hypothetical.

ScienceApologist (talk) 03:37, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Second notice about ad hominem statements. If you continue trying to make this about me, I will start trying to make it about you, and that will not be pleasant for anyone.

Also, a note about misrepresentation: where did I say anything about a "coordinated conspiracy"? I don't think there is such a thing: I think there are a few editors with a bee in their bonnet and too much time on their hands doing their best to push a little pseudoscientific skepticism. shall I name some names and give some examples, or are you willing to accept the truth of that statement?

All that being said, where in heaven's name do you get the idea that there is "a coordinated acknowledgment on the part of independent scientists that skeptics are right" about psychoanalysis and AltMed. Again, psychoanalytic theory has a long history at the forefront of the cognitive sciences, and while it has fallen by the wayside in recent times it is still taught in universities (both academically and clinically) and still carried on as a legitimate practice. There have been a few skeptics opposed to it - mostly on the Popper non-falsifiability premise (which even Popper waffled on) or out of a Skinner-style refusal to accept any 'internal' cognitive processes (an idea mostly put to death by Chomsky) - but there is no 'coordinated acknowledgement' among scientists in general, and certainly no 'coordinated acknowledgement' among academic psychologists, that Freud is pseudoscientific. Likewise, AltMed (as I mentioned above) is a catchall phrase for any number of unrelated practices - no reputable scientist says that AltMed as a whole is pseudoscience because no reputable scientist has a workable definition of what is and is not covered by AltMed. I can certainly find any number of stupid practices that are lumped in under AltMed that scientists collectively reject (e.g. the Bates Method or Homeopathy), but I can also find any number of practices under the AltMed heading which scientists have not rendered any opinion on whatsoever (often because such practices don't pretend to be scientific in the first place). so again, you can not have a 'coordinated acknowledgement' about the status of something when there is no 'coordinated acknowledgment' about what is and isn't included in that something.

This is a good place to point out that one of the core components of skeptical advocacy is making interpolations and generalizations that go well beyond what scientists actually claim. scientists know better than to speak out ahead of the evidence, even where they believe they are in the right; skeptical advocates don't.

lastly, I used the Christian/Muslim analogy to point out the flaw in your logic, not because I was particularly interested in discussing religion. The flaw in your logic is that you are basing your assessment of validity on the claims of sources who clearly represent one particular point of view. You have effectively created a non-falsifiable premise of your own (i.e., only a source which is already committed to the skeptical perspective is reliable enough to criticize it: would that be catch 23?). I understand that skeptics want it to be the case that they have the full support of the scientific community, but that is (of course) every pseudoscientist's dream. I see very little evidence that the scientific community as a whole indulges in the sort of broad speculative critique that skeptics take as their norm. --Ludwigs2 07:01, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Ludwigs2, psychoanalysis is transparently a nude emperor scenario and I found evidence (a very detailed newspaper report by a journalist specialising on psychoanalysis) of the psychoanalysis community having realised this and trying to address the problem through change. Per NPOV that situation prevents our saying in the article's voice that "psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience", but it does not prevent us from presenting the case. If you read Arbcom's pseudoscience decision carefully you will see that they are not saying more than that, and that you are trying to overinterpret it. Hans Adler 09:25, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and of course the completely undiscussed renaming of this contentious article was not acceptable at all and the revert was correct. The editor should have known this. [6] Hans Adler 09:31, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

1. Second notice about ad hominem statements. If you continue trying to make this about me, I will start trying to make it about you, and that will not be pleasant for anyone. I hope you believe me when I state that I'm not intentionally trying to insult or attack you. If you could be more specific about how you perceive this to be happening, I'd appreciate it so I can have a conversation with you without upsetting you.
2. shall I name some names and give some examples, or are you willing to accept the truth of that statement? It's not really appropriate to do that here, but if you'd like to discuss this at my talkpage maybe we can try to come to some understanding as to who the "bad apples" are.
3. there is no 'coordinated acknowledgement' among scientists in general, and certainly no 'coordinated acknowledgement' among academic psychologists, that Freud is pseudoscientific. Agreed that broadly this is true. Freud is an intellectual giant in the field of understanding individual behavior and relational development. However, it is undeniable that various Freudian and especially Jungian psychoanalytic theories which were touted as "scientific" in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are now considered on par with religious metaphors and on the pseudoscientific side of the scale in academic circles (even ones which teach psychoanalysis!) I more-or-less agree with Hans Adler's summary in this regard.
4. Your dislike of the term "coordinated acknowledgment" seems to me to be misapplied. I'm not saying that the scientific community has vetted every statement ever made by every skeptic on every topic. I'm talking about a general acknowledgment that the scientific community has given with regards to the skeptical community's debunking of claims normally ignored by the scientific community. The distinction you seem to be making between legitimate scholars and skeptics seems to me to be without basis. Perhaps specific examples could be offered of skeptics who have criticized subjects in a way you think is less than "scholarly"? Reliable, independent sources which dispute those analyses would be especially welcome.
5. I see very little evidence that the scientific community as a whole indulges in the sort of broad speculative critique that skeptics take as their norm. All the reliable sources I've examined which deal with this topic say that the reason this is the case is because the scientific community doesn't want to waste its time on pseudoscientific claims. They let the skeptical community do the dirty work, as it were. Phil Plait serves a function for astronomers who don't want to waste their time dealing with every UFO-sighting, 2012 myth, or astrological portend. Stephen Barrett functions very much the same way in the medical community. Literally every independent, third-party source I've come across which deal with these and other skeptics refers to them as good resources for the critiques they offer. I've yet to see an independent commentator from the relevant scientific fields criticize skeptics in the way you do. Pointing me to such a source would be greatly appreciated. (Note: I have seen criticism come from people who actively advocate for the ideas the skeptics debunk, but such sources do not meet the definition of "independent".)

ScienceApologist (talk) 16:13, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Re 4: I think this is not going in a good direction at all. You should be aware of the problem that for a lot of pseudoscience we don't have academic literature to go by because scientists simply don't see a reason to write about every particular brand of nonsense. The same problem obviously holds for some of the "sceptic" literature at the lower end of the quality spectrum. There is no incentive at all for scientists to write rebuttals to pseudosceptics who are writing against pseudoscience but substitute research and insight by pure zeal and polemics. They are not doing science a service, but attacking them would not do science a service either. Hans Adler 16:30, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I use two very particular examples here of particular "skeptics". Do you think your critique applies to any of the writings of these two? Moreover, in light of WP:V, how are we supposed to decide which part of the quality spectrum a commentary lies if no independent sources have commented on it? If we are going to discount obscure "pseudoskeptical debunking" then we probably should discount the subject they are debunking as well per WP:UW. Right now, WP:FRINGE explicitly allows for debunking as a viable confirmation for WP:N. If this is not the case, then we may need to engage in a culling of certain fringe theories from Wikipedia. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:50, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

There is currently a relatively broad consensus that "debunking" sources such as the Skeptic's Dictionary can be used. That's good and necessary. The best way to ensure that it stays that way is by making sure not to abuse that possibility, i.e. to only use high-quality "debunking" sources, and to only use them to support claims that are actually true. So no claims that something has been disproved, when in fact nobody has really looked at a claim because it's simply too silly for that. No claims of scientific consensus that a topic that is taught at universities is pseudoscience. Etc. That way we can continue to use such sources and don't have to discuss their quality in the presence of fringe fans. Hans Adler 17:21, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

That seems reasonable to me. I'm not sure why you think my comments contradict this ideal. ScienceApologist (talk) 17:46, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Hans, SA: I have no problem with reliable 'debunking' sources as a particular POV. I only begin to object when wikipedia editors start trying to elevate that particular POV to a matter of scientific truth, or start trying to press the POV as the only POV worth listening to. That abuses both NPOV and the self-critical nature of science.

SA: you asked above for skeptic sources that are less than scholarly, but then you give a perfect example in your next bullet point where you say "All the reliable sources I've examined which deal with this topic say that the reason this is the case is because the scientific community doesn't want to waste its time on pseudoscientific claims. They let the skeptical community do the dirty work, as it were." Well, of course skeptical advocates say that, just the way that ufologists and cryptozoologists always claim that they are using rigorous scientific methodologies. Pseudoscience is defined by unjustified and unverifiable assertions that science supports its findings. Stephen Barrett and his Quackwatch thing are a perfect example: I have no doubt that Barrett gives voice to ideas that a good number of medical scientists agree with but aren't comfortable voicing professionally, but I do not believe that Barrett somehow 'speaks for the medical community'. if he did, then those medical scientists would not feel uncomfortable about voicing those views themselves and there would be no need for Barrett and Quackwatch. The observable fact is that mainstream scientists don't do much research into sketchy knowledge domains, but why they don't will vary widely by domain (i.e. the reasons why astrophysicists don't research UFOs will be very different from the reasons why medical researchers don't research acupressure), and it's highly unlikely that there is a concerted agreement among scientists that skeptics are going to be their scientific watchdogs (knowing scientists, if that were the case they would set up formal academic departments dedicated to debunking, and every university would have an endowed debunker's chair). As far as I can tell, scientists don't do research into sketchy knowledge domains because there's no real value in it for them. Scientists want to do research that expands human understanding, and piddling around with questionable material on the fringes isn't likely to have that result. They will do it when there is a value - that's why you get some of the serious debunking material where a dangerous or stupid practice gets refuted through proper methodological means - but otherwise scientists qua scientists don't pass judgement in the absence of scientific investigation.

So, to point: including debunking sources is useful and proper; engaging in debunking ourselves is not.

re: ad hominems... You first asserted that I was angry, you second asserted that I was personalizing. You used both assertions as grounds for claiming that my argument was less-than-valid. that's the definition of an ad hominem. fairly minor infractions, mind you, so it's not worth getting up in arms about, but I do want to point out that it's what you we're doing.

Hans: I don't really disagree with what you say. but we do need to keep focus on the complexities of the issue. for example, there are a couple of (for lack of a better term) sects of clinical psychoanalysis that sees themselves as the direct descendant of Freud's original practices, and that can be a bit (for lack of a better term) cultish. but that shouldn't reflect on the vast use of elements of psychoanalytic theory throughout clinical therapy. Even cognitive therapy (which is about as far from classical psychoanalysis as you can get) wouldn't exist except that Beck was looking for short term alternative to psychoanalysis. Maybe what wikipedia really needs is a policy on not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. --Ludwigs2 17:48, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

medical scientists would not feel uncomfortable about voicing those views themselves and there would be no need for Barrett and Quackwatch. -- Simply wrong. The reason most medical scientists do not do what Barrett and QuackWatch does is because they don't have the time and don't want to bother dealing with quacks. Look at the example of both Barrett and Singh for more. Most medical doctors will tell you that they agree with the quackwatch perspective. Arguing otherwise without any sources seems very silly to me when the article on the subject points to a good deal of medical doctors explicitly praising the site. Claiming that the reasons why astrophysicists don't research UFOs will be very different from the reasons why medical researchers don't research acupressure is a bald assertion without any source to back it up. It's an opinion of an altmed apologist and one who doesn't like UFOs, apparently. I see this all the time with fringe advocates (and I'm not calling you a fringe advocate here, I just see you parroting their poorly considered opinions). They generally state that their particular pet theory is somehow better or immune from the critiques leveled at any number of other fringe theories. The fact is that top-notch academics like Robert Todd Carroll and Michael Shermer have documented that there is a typology associated with such promotionalism that is remarkably uniform from fringe theory to fringe theory. It's even found in situations where the ideas are not explicitly pseudoscientific (e.g. redshift periodicity, to pick an example I'm intimately familiar with from my field). In short, I just don't think you've got a leg to stand on impeaching Barrett and Quackwatch. That said, we're not in the business of debunking so I have no problem with us avoiding that kind of advocacy. But we must admit that the debunking sources which have been admitted to this page including Quackwatch are of high enough quality to use them as reliable sources.

Incidentally, I don't think getting angry or interpreting anger in the post of another is something which makes any argument less valid. I was just trying to get you to calm down and had the opposite effect. It did seem like by mentioning the bad apple editors you were needlessly personalizing the issue, but I see you've let that drop for the time being. This was in no way meant to dismiss your concerns.

ScienceApologist (talk) 19:13, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

well, again, you've made a logical error. The only sources that claim that (as you say) "Most medical doctors [...] agree with the quackwatch perspective" are skeptical sources - this is in fact the reason they feel the need to argue that other doctors don't want to bother dealing with quacks (they need a justification for making that claim, don't they?). At any rate, I've never seen any source presented other than a die-hard, self-professed skeptic who makes such a claim. It's been a while since I looked at the QW page, but as I remember the supporting sources were all minor clinicians publishing in minor journals or government figures talking about the site as a public service - no major medical journals, top-flight scholars or other highly reputable sources have weighed in on the website, and the decent academic sources that have mentioned it have all given it mixed reviews (saying, usually, that it's a good idea but pursued without sufficient fact-checking and with an excess of zealotry). I also remember torturous arguments where editors on the QW side took perfectly valid academic sources that criticized QW and turned them inside out looking for any detail that could be used label the source 'fringe' and dismiss it. fairly pathetic exercise in spin-doctoring, that...

I mean, let's be blunt. I know for a fact that if some UFO source made the claim that "all reputable scientists would agree with the findings about alien spaceships if only they would examine the evidence" (along with some odd justification for why scientists have not examined the evidence), you'd laugh it off the project. yet for some reason when a skeptic comes along and says "all reputable scientists would agree that this is pseudoscience, if only they took the time to examine it" (with the excuse that scientists don't take the time because they can't be bothered) you welcome it with extreme credulity. That kind of selection bias is a problem.

And again, if you think I'm angry, you are sadly mistaken (or else you've lived a charmed life, separated from the ills of the world like the Buddha, so that you have no experience with the normal range of human emotions. God bless you if that's true... ). I am simply explaining this to you in unminced terms, the way I would to a student who has produced variations on the same error seven or eight times in a row. You are attempting to claim that a particular point of view is in fact not a point of view but a verifiable truth. You keep pointing to the sources that present that point of view, and to the fact that those sources claim to be speaking truth, as though that claim itself were evidence of actual truth. You not only fail to make the distinction between methodologically sound research and scientifically-informed opinion, you rely on that failure to back up your assertions about the 'truth'. And through some unknown mechanism you seem to think that you are using a better form of reasoning then the people you are opposed to, though for the life of me I can't see the difference. do you see where I'm coming from? --Ludwigs2 21:48, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Your characterization of QW is just plain wrong. It is a top-notch reliable source and impugning it in the manner you are doing is just silly. Point to a single "decent academic source" that gave it "mixed reviews". Your strawman argument relating to apparently how you see my willingness to give skeptical debunking a high marks for reliability misses the point about as far as possible. The issue is not that we should ever claim that "all scientists say" when not "all scientists say". The issue is that we should be free to use skeptical sources as reliable means to determine what is and isn't pseudoscience. Finally, pseudoscience is not determined on the basis of research: it's determined on the basis of false claims and misrepresentations. That's a different beast. What I will not do is argue point-by-point what is and is not a pseudoscience according to my opinion. All I'm arguing is that within the confines of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines as presented, skeptical sources can be used to determine what ideas are pseudoscientific. ScienceApologist (talk) 23:08, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

piffle.

1. They are a few such sources in the quackwatch article, unless it's gotten whitewashed again. if so, they are there in the history. do s search for the last time I was involved with the article and you'll see them being discussed (if you call it discussion). After that, come back here and admit that your characterization of QW is just plain wrong.
2. Sources are not used on wikipedia to 'determine' anything - wikipedia is not in the business of making truth claims. sources are used to present differing perspectives, in their appropriate prominence. Skeptical sources are perfectly reliable for determining that 'skeptics' view various topics as pseudoscience, and that is useful and valuable information for many articles. In a number of cases (creation science, for an example) there is good reason to believe that the scientific community as a whole concurs with skeptics. in other cases (psychoanalysis, and many forms of alternative medicine, for examples) there is good reason to believe that the scientific community does not concur with skeptics, not as a uniform whole. And there are many gray area topics where it is not clear precisely where the scientific community stands, or even any reason to assume it would take a stand in the first place.

--Ludwigs2 23:44, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

1. Don't rely on your memory. You've got nothing.
2. "Good reason to believe", I suppose, is shorthand for "I believe". Nah, I'll stick with reliable sources which have all basically come down on the side of the skeptics. Go ahead, give me a source which contradicts that.

ScienceApologist (talk) 05:04, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

yeah, yeah, yeah, pretty much what I expected you to say. tell you what: let's save this for the next time we have an actual problem to resolve. you've obviously not willing to discuss the matter properly in abstract terms, so I'll have to wait until I have something concrete enough to nail your POV to the wall. regards till then! --Ludwigs2 19:00, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

(Reply to topmost posting) - This article is far too political, as it lists things in it that are not considered by its [well-grounded] practitioners to be pseudoscience, such as chiropractics and alternative medicine. Orthomolecular medicine is a type of alternative medicine that studies the effects of vitamins at various doses, and practices the scientific method. Is it pseudoscience? No. Has anybody claimed that it is pseudoscience? Probably. On retrospect, it's an annoying list. The Transhumanist 18:10, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

You lost me at "as it lists things in it that are not considered by its practitioners to be pseudoscience". This is easily the funniest contribution to the entire pseudoscience debate that I have ever seen. Hans Adler 22:41, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

forgot an adjective, sorry. The Transhumanist 02:57, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Even if it were true that some of the entries here are incorrectly labelled as pseudoscience (and I'm more than happy to entertain that possibility) - the correct reaction to that would be to tag or remove the suspect entries pending the discovery of reliable sources that could settle the matter. Renaming the article in an effort to match incorrect content is a totally bizarre reaction! It would be like seeing that someone had added "Albert Einstein was a 6' tall pink rabbit who liked to wear socks." to our Albert Einstein article and we reacted to that by renaming the article to Things that aren't true about Albert Einstein and then removing most of it!

A "glossary" is an alphabetical list of terms and their definitions. A "Glossary" of terms relating to pseudo-science would have to include definitions for words like "repeatable experiment", "peer review" and "unfalsifiable" - terms that people who are concerned with the identification of pseudo-sciences would be likely to use. It would be something like Glossary of professional wrestling terms and little (if any) of the present content would apply to that kind of article. This article is clearly a "list" of things that are pseudo-sciences - more like List of Byzantine emperors. That's an entirely different thing from a glossary. You might argue that there should be an additional Glossary of pseudo-science terms article - but since the language used in the field isn't markedly different from that of other general sciences so I don't think we could justify that. You could (possibly) successfully argue that this article shouldn't exist - and you could certainly argue that some entries don't belong here and that others are missing. But you can't possibly argue that it's a "glossary" - it just isn't.

SteveBaker (talk) 03:10, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

As an aside, I think that it would be more accurate to say that keywords used in the field aren't markedly different from that of other general sciences, becase pseudoscience often borrows liberally from scientific vocabulary. However, the words may be used to mean different things, or bodies of text may take different structures, in line with the peculiarities of each pseudoscience. (For example: silly reasoning, misuse of "significance" or " controls", or the widespread misappropriation of the word "quantum").

That could could be the basis of a good article, and I would welcome a glossary of pseudoscience, but that is not here. This article is a list of pseudosciences and alleged-pseudosciences, not a glossary of words used by those pseudosciences.

bobrayner (talk) 11:03, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, indeed. I'm not sure whether the new name was intended to imply a glossary of terms used by those who practice pseudo-science - or a glossary of terms used by those people who investigate certain topics and classify them as pseudo-science. It doesn't actually matter which of those was intended because neither of those things are remotely similar to what this list actually is. Again, feel free to start a new article for either of those two possibilities (and be prepared to fight the AfD that would inevitably result!) - but this article ain't remotely like either of those things and renaming it so that you can then change it doesn't make sense. If you don't like the article, either fix it or try (again) to get it removed. Trying to dispose of it by the sneaky trick of renaming it, then changing all of the content to fit the renaming (and THEN getting it deleted) just isn't how things work around here. SteveBaker (talk) 16:01, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Steve: please note that I have tried once or twice int he past to remove some of the more questionable material, and to discuss its removal, but each time I was reverted, and each time the discussion amounted to someone telling me (effectively) "Someone somewhere somewhen called X a pseudoscience, this is a list of things characterized as pseudoscience, therefore X belongs in the list." That is reasoning I myself would characterize as pseudo-logic, but I was never able to get anywhere beyond that. I understand what the 'correct reaction' is, but 'correct reactions' rely on 'correct responses', and when the latter aren't forthcoming then there is no point in engaging in the former. In some ways I don't mind the 'list of' existing - no one pays much attention to 'list of' articles, and it provides an outlet for people who want to vent about some topic they dislike so they don't do it elsewhere on the encyclopedia. I just don't want to allow it to shift into declarative mode where it starts looking like it's making subject-matter claims. --Ludwigs2 18:03, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

So what you are saying is that you want to remove an entry from the "list of topics characterized as pseudoscience" - despite there being reliable sources to show that the topic is indeed characterized as pseudoscience - and despite a consensus to keep it?!? Isn't that...um...wrong? Since you can't get the item removed from the list on the grounds that it does indeed fit within the list - your reaction is to change the list so that you CAN remove it? Jeez! Learn to admit defeat and move on! The only reasonable course of action for you at this point is to argue that a list of topics characterized as pseudoscience is not something that Wikipedia should maintain. That means you've gotta go through the WP:AfD process - but this article has been through that THREE TIMES already - and each time it's survived. Dude - this is definitely time to give up and go do something else. Using sneaky, underhand tricks like renaming the article in order to exclude content that you don't like (but which is demonstrably allowable)...that's simply not the way Wikipedia works! SteveBaker (talk) 00:10, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

OK, I certainly don't agree with Ludwigs2 about psychoanalysis and whether it belongs here, but let's be fair: This article started life as "list of pseudosciences", which was a spin-out of an ever-contentious list of examples in the article pseudoscience. The present title is about as odd as that of List of United states presidents with facial hair during their tenure (which oddly just survived an AfD). It makes sense as a compromise, but not per se. The compromise became necessary because many editors insisted on putting things in the list that are probably (in my opinion) pseudosciences, or have notable pseudoscientific aspects, but that cannot be characterised as pseudosciences without some qualification. All of this is odd, and it's not Ludwigs2's fault, or indeed any individual editor's fault. Hans Adler 00:46, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Steve - a couple of points:

• I didn't change the name of the article, user:the_transhumanist did. If you're going to start spinning out a tale of woe about me, you'd best make sure that you're not starting from the wrong presumptions, otherwise you just end up looking foolish.
• Consensus is not mere agreement between a limited number of editors. Consensus is supposed to be a system for ensuring that the encyclopedia is accurate and neutral through reasoned discussion over content. There is certainly grounds for putting psychoanalysis et al on a 'list of things characterized as pseudoscience' - I could obviously debate the intelligence of having such a page in the first place, or of including these topics on it, but given the page's existence and the willingness of some editors to push policy technicalities to their limits, it's not worth arguing over. However, we cannot assert that psychoanalysis actually is pseudoscience, which is what the name change did. now that the page is back to its original name I'm not going to fight over it.
• I don't accept defeat, ever. I do accept reason (good reasoning has no winners and no losers). If there's some topic you want me to stop harping on, you'd best give me a good, rational explanation of why my perspective is wrong, because you can be damned sure that I only harp on things when I have a good, rational explanation of why I'm right. --Ludwigs2 04:11, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Oops! My profound apologies - I had kinda lost track of who had changed the article through this L-O-N-G thread. SteveBaker (talk) 15:13, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the original change in name was a good one either. "List of pseudosciences" would be a better title. Sure, we have to establish that there are reliable sources to say that some particular topic is a pseudoscience - but having established that, why further qualify it? We require some reliable source to have "characterized" a topic as pseudoscience - but having done that, we've passed Wikipedia's bar for "truth" and we can just say that the topic is a pseudoscience. We don't have List of dog types characterized as breeds - we have List of dog breeds, and we rely on reliable sources to say what does or does not constitute a dog breed. Having established via those sources that some kind of dog is indeed recognized as a unique breed - we add it to the list. In the case of highly controversial cases like psychoanalysis - we can note that there is controversy about that topic - providing reliable sources to show that some established experts say that it's NOT a pseudoscience. That serves our readership better than listing it on an equal level with things that are utterly, clearly, obviously pseudoscience - or omitting it entirely. SteveBaker (talk) 15:25, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

What you seem to be missing is that the concept of pseudoscience is basically a glorified invective. The only reason it's a respectable term is because Popper made it so by initiating the philosophical debate about the science/pseudoscience demarcation. But it still has most of the characteristics of an invective and is typically used as one. While I understand and endorse the original motivation for this list, it is asking for trouble in the same way as list of unreliable newspapers, list of over-expensive cars, list of exploitative employers or list of useless scientific endeavours would. Hans Adler 16:54, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

What a great list of new Wikipedia articles. Will you create these, please? What about list of incompetent leaders of countries and list of foolish lists? hgilbert (talk) 17:38, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

how about List of topics not currently on wikipedia lists?

Steve, my bigger concern is really synthesis, which is periodically rife on pseudoscientific topics on wikipedia. I never mind including a source that says says X is pseudoscience (with proper attribution), but I get uncomfortable with unjustified extensions to the scientific community as a whole. Again, there's a very large difference between something like creation science (where we have numerous sources in the scientific community speaking out against it) and something like psychoanalysis (which has some well-founded critiques in the literature, but is still taught and practiced and used). claiming that the first is pseudoscience in some absolute sense is probably justified; claiming that the second is pseudoscience in some absolute sense is synthesis designed to promote a particular worldview. This isn't a defence of topics like that, merely an acknowledgement that there is still an ongoing debate over them in the scientific world. The problem here is a problem of wikipedia editors pushing their personal perspectives into articles (consciously or not): too many editors think that psychoanalysis et al are <ahem> 'crocks of shit', and feel it's the project's responsibility to let everyone know what crocks of shit these topics are. The 'pseudoscience' label is just monkey-fight ammo in those battles. Honestly, that attitude has got to go. --Ludwigs2 18:56, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree that there is a problem with the term being over-applied. But it does have meaning - some field that claims to be a science - but which doesn't operate by scientific principles - is a pseudoscience. Obviously if you work in some field and people say "what you are doing isn't real science" - you may be upset about that - but that's life! If you want to be taken seriously as a science - then follow the scientific method. If you can't or won't do that then stop claiming to be a science. Pseudoscience a clear, well-defined term, and it's a useful one.

The trouble is that there are shades of grey here:

• At one extreme, we have fields like Economics and Psychoanalysis - which don't do enough things like experiments with controls to determine whether their claims are true - although they do use peer-reviewed articles and sensibly edited and widely respected journals. Both are certainly "characterized as pseudoscience" by some people - but whether it actually falls under the term is highly debatable.
• Slap in the middle of this, we have stuff like homeopathy - which also claims to be a scientific endeavor - yet which does absolutely none of the things that constitute the scientific method. It's clearly, unambiguously, a pseudoscience.
• At the far end, we have things like astrology which certainly doesn't follow the scientific method - but arguably doesn't claim to be a science either. Most religions are not pseudo-sciences because they make no scientific claims whatever.

The problem with the current name for this list is that it allows anything which any reliable source ever claimed to be a pseudoscience to be added to the list in a totally uncritical manner. If we simply called it "List of pseudosciences", we could provide a more balanced view of borderline cases because we'd be required to provide a balanced view (between reliable sources) of whether something actually IS a pseudoscience rather than merely providing proof that some reliable source somewhere did in fact characterize it as such. That wouldn't get psychoanalysis off of the list - but it would permit a more balanced presentation of contrary voices from reliable sources.

SteveBaker (talk) 20:02, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. The problem with the word pseudoscience is that while it was originally coined as part of a serious discussion about the demarcation problem, it was rapidly co-opted by people who were mostly concerned with combatting scientific charlatans (of which there are plenty), and who had very little interest in the philosophical difficulties of the idea. It lost a lot of its meaning in the process. I usually stick with the conservative scientific sense of the term: a pseudoscience is any activity that claims the authoritative mantle of science but rejects or ignores scientific methods and evidence. of course, that definition excludes things that never claim to be scientific and excludes things that are semi-scientific or loosely scientific, so it doesn't satisfy anyone who wants to use the term in its combative mode. That's always been the problem on this article (and on other articles in other ways). Editors add topics to this list because they think those topics represent stupid, unscientific ideas. if you say to them "X isn't really a pseudoscience" they respond with "Why are you defending such a stupid, unscientific idea as X?", and the explanation that "X may be stupid and unscientific, but isn't pseudoscience" doesn't satisfy.

The problem with calling this page 'List of pseudosciences' is the same problem with having a page called 'List of evil political leaders'. Putting someone on the list and then explaining (in the small print) that they might not actually be evil isn't really NPOV. It would be better to go with something like 'List of dubious sciences', with sections for clear pseudoscience and other sections for ambiguous disciplines. That way we can start gentle and use stronger terminology as needed, rather than starting harsh and having to backpedal. I'd certainly have no objection to psychoanalysis being pointed to as a dubious scientific endeavor, since every psychologist I've every talked to is well aware of the weaknesses of psychoanalytic theory. --Ludwigs2 07:56, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Random, drive-by opinion: the present name is too inclusive, rendering the list meaningless. Some of the entries are clearly not pseudoscience - pick your own favourite - even if someone, somewhere, sometime has managed to get their opinion published that it is. As such the list might be amusing, but it has no merit. There will be more haggling over a more exclusive list, but that is inevitable. Information content, in this area, comes at that price, I'm afraid. --Michael C. Price ^talk 06:26, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Follow-up: A further issue is the one of circularity, which I think Ludwig2 made. This list seems happy to accept creationism as pseudoscience (which it is) just because an evolutionist says it is - but creationists decry evolution/Darwinism as pseudoscience (which is isn't) - yet we don't include Darwinism here. Why not? Because we don't accept pseudoscience (creationist) sources as reliable? That is begging the question. We should judge entries on their merits, using the usual standards of WP:RS etc rather than adopt some limp-wristed PC policy of "characterised as pseudoscience" (which is just giving in to the pseudoscience crowd). --Michael C. Price ^talk 08:09, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Implying that creacionist sources are reliable sources :) How about [7]. It was published in Creation Matters (Creation_Research_Society#Publications). Or a mainstream article saying why creationists consider evolution to be pseudoscience, and why their arguments are flawed.

We could add Darwinism, I think it was considered pseudoscience when Darwin first presented it.

(this list also lacks Social Darwinism and Eugenics?! There were listed in a previous version mirror). --Enric Naval (talk) 08:55, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

However we use the phrase 'characterized as pseudoscience' we need to use it with a consistent rationale. Part of the problem is this kind of blanket use of the phrase 'not reliable'. Creationist sources are perfectly reliable as descriptions of some aspects of the creation/evolution debate, but not reliable as statements of scientific opinion. So, if we are going to loosen the interpretation of this page to include any mere claim (regardless of supporting evidence) then creationist sources are just as reliable as any other; if we are going to tighten it so that it only refers to more rigorous applications of the term then then some things that are currently on the page would need to be removed.

Social Darwinism may belong, though if I remember correctly there are some academics who claim that there never was any actual line of theory called Social Darwinism - a few off-hand comments by scholars that got parlayed (Fox News style) into a political brouhaha. And eugenics actually was/is a science, it is just a deeply and horribly immoral science. It is a perfectly feasible project to breed human beings the same way we breed dogs and cattle and sheep (for various desired phenotypic qualities); it's just disturbing to contemplate. --Ludwigs2 15:37, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

"List of topics characterized by the mainstream scientific community as pseudoscience" is rather unwieldy, but perhaps a more accurate description. Or we could just mention the inclusion criteria used in the lead. A13ean (talk) 18:16, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Moving forward

There are two issues here:

1. What to call this list. Currently list of pseudosciences redirects here. That should be a list on Wikipedia, but we were unable to get to a consensus among editors for decent inclusion criteria for such a list which brings me to:2
2. The inclusion criteria right now for the list is that a reliable secondary scientific/skeptical source called the subject "pseudoscientific". That's all we need for inclusion. This is actually a fairly stringent inclusion criteria, but it pisses off a good number of, how shall we say?, advocates. This is especially true of altmed advocates and certain paranormal spiritualizing (the creationists having all but given up in this go-'round). However, note that when the NSF came out and called "ghosts" a "pseudoscience" that got a bunch of people pissed off too. "Pseudoscience" is a catch-all term for misapplied scientific-sounding statements. That's all. To that end, there are pseudoscientific applications of the most mundane and legitimate of endeavors. That's fine with me, but the issue here seems to be that certain editors want to remove or demote a lot of the sources used here to demarcate pseudoscience (c.f. my discussion with Ludwigs2 above regarding Quackwatch). It's been quite some time since we eliminated the "tiered-sourcing" listing that was going on here, and we can't go back to that. So maybe the thing we should do is just have discussion over whether individual sources are reliable or not for list inclusion. Then we could move to the better title.

Or not.

I'm just saying....

ScienceApologist (talk) 17:55, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I still prefer List of dubious scientific endeavors, which is both more accurate and less prejudicial. Despite ScienceApologist's apparent paranoia about fringe advocacy (and his apparent enchantment with pissing people off), there is absolutely no reason to elevate skeptical sources beyond their proper prominence, or to engage is synthesis in order to oppose flakey theories. And don't even get me started on that NSF 'ghosts' debacle, which was the worst and most trollish abuse of the scientific perspective I have ever seen on Wikipedia - heaven save us all from fanatical skeptics!

List of dubious scientific endeavors anyone? --Ludwigs2 18:17, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

"Dubious" in a Wikipedia article title? No. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:32, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

So you prefer a word that you acknowledge is a pejorative? lol - advocates, I swear... --Ludwigs2 19:29, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Pejorative is okay. Evaluative is not. c.f. conspiracy theory. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:39, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that a pejorative is not an evaluative? please explain that, since (obviously) it makes no sense in conventional English usage. --Ludwigs2 19:53, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

A "pejorative" is, like civility, in the eye of the beholder. Therefore, if we have good reason to use a term that some think is pejorative and we are able to use it while maintaining a neutral point-of-view, we are equipped to do so at Wikipedia. An evaluative statement is one that expresses an opinion. "Dubious" as an adjective expresses the opinion of "doubtfulness". That is, it requires the writer who applies that adjective to evaluate the truth-value of the question, "Is there significant doubt with regards to this topic?" That's a complete value-judgment. In contrast, labeling a topic "pseudoscience" is, like labeling a topic pornography or conspiracy theories, a task that can be done independent of value-judgments. Why you may be confused is because our modern society tends to place "science" on a pedestal so anything that is "pseudoscience" is often considered pejorative by those who hold science in high regard. However, one can easily detach from that opinion and value judgment from the label and determine a particular thing is "pseudoscientific" without making any value judgments about the thing itself. All one needs to do is compare proper use of the scientific method to the processes and rhetoric associated with the thing at hand. Compare such a task to getting a name for Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. While such a name would be pejorative to those who hold Dionysius the Areopagite in high regard, independent of such evaluations the terminology is strictly without value-judgment. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:53, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

and yet, the very nature of referring to something as a 'pseudoscience' is intended to cast doubt on the validity of the subject as a scientific activity, making the term an explicitly evaluative one. I understand that you (personally) are of the opinion that the word 'pseudoscience' can be applied in an objective, value-free manner, but your opinion is not supported by reliable sources (the term suffers from an excess of differing, contested definitions in sources, and the most reliable of those sources only use it in a cautious conservative manner), and the term is almost never used as an objective, value-free term on wikipedia. if it were, then no one would try to label things like psychoanalysis and alternative medicine as pseudosciences, since they are clearly not considered to be such by the majority of scholarly sources. In fact, your suggestion that we "compare proper use of the scientific method to the processes and rhetoric" strikes me as a request that we engage in wp:synthesis to determine for ourselves that a topic is pseudoscientific, which is precisely what we do not want to be doing, per policy. no?

If we are going to imply that certain topics are 'dubious' as scientific topics, then we might as well not use pejorative code-words like pseudoscience (which simply exaggerate and confuse the issue), and go straight to say what we actually mean to say. --Ludwigs2 21:42, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Ludwigs2, since you keep coming back to psychoanalysis: Maybe you should read a bit more of the philosophical literature about the term pseudoscience before making claims about it. From what I have seen there, psychoanalysis is the test case for all these definitions. An author who proposes a new definition generally spends a lot of time explaining why psychoanalysis is still a pseudoscience under this definition, but for other reasons than with previous definitions, or occasionally the author explains why psychoanalysis is not pseudoscience under their definition. It all started with Popper, who was motivated by this very case to study the demarcation problem. Hans Adler 00:30, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I know this material fairly well. Popper labeled psychoanalysis pseudoscience because it failed his own theory about the nature of science (falsification principle). Popper started waffling on the assertion in later writings, and falsification is no longer considered an accurate model of the process of science (to the extent that it ever was so accepted), though it still has its uses and adherents. Most people dislike psychoanalysis for "lay" reasons (it's a weird theory with uncomfortable presuppositions - most people think Freud is telling the world that we are all irrational id-monsters driven by the dictates of our gonads, but most people think that's only true of people they don't like). They seize on even outmoded critiques of psychoanalysis just so they have something the critique the theory with, because they have a serious urge to critique the theory. That's not to say that psychoanalysis is the cat's meow - the discipline has numerous issues from a philosophy of science perspective - but it's (for example) a long, long way above the level of magnetic healing bracelets.

with respect to falsifiability - it pays to remember that neither Newton nor Einstein nor any of the quantum physicists have yet determined what gravity is. They have a set of theories that work well, but 'gravity' is just an empty placeholder word for something that (currently) can neither be confirmed nor denied. does that make the various theories of gravity pseudoscience? eh... no. --Ludwigs2 02:20, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

That they don't know something about their field doesn't make something more or less a science - it just makes it incomplete. Physicists don't generally make claims to know what gravity "is" - and they don't base any of their actions or other claims on the basis of some random guess about what it is. However, there have been multiple, rigorous, careful, statistically sound, controlled experiments that show how gravity affects things. Hence, physicists can say: "Gravity is a force that's inversely proportional to the distance from an object and directly proportional to the mass of that object." That kind of claim is rigorously scientific, and backed by the very best of "the scientific method"...it is, in some sense "The Truth"...even though it doesn't answer the whole question. You can still use the equations for gravity to design bridges and launch spacecraft and predict the orbits of planets...the results are 100% reliable and useful.

Contrast with psychoanalysis where there are some hypotheses about what causes some mental conditions - and the treatments are utterly un-tested. There is wide debate over whether what they do actually works or not - and there are multiple 'schools' of psychoanalysis that are completely at odds with each other. They do not take a population of people with some condition and expose half of them to the chosen treatment (eg putting them under hypnosis and regressing them into their childhood) and the other half to something that seems superficially to be similar to the patients - but which lacks some specific aspect of the treatment (a "placebo") - maybe they hypnotize the patients and talk to them about the weather or something. Then you study the difference in the recovery rate of the two groups and then you know to within some measure of confidence whether your hypnotic regression treatment works or not. You do this a lot of times with different treatments and you wind up with a solid, scientific understanding of what works and what doesn't. Maybe you could write equations showing the amount of time you have to regress someone in order to achieve recovery - maybe you'd discover that sitting in a comfy chair for an hour every week de-stresses people and that's what actually makes them better. Right now, nobody actually knows. As with gravity, you might not understand the "why" of what makes your treatment work - but that's not a part of the scientific method. Psychoanalysists don't do that because it's incredibly difficult to do. (How would you reliably deliver a double-blind placebo "couch session"?) It's not their fault that their field is a pseudoscience - it's hard to imagine it being any other way. That doesn't make it "wrong" or "useless" or "unworthy" - but it most definitely does make it a pseudoscience.

They are not alone in that - economists have the same problem. To pick a topical example: Should you increase taxation on the wealthy during a recession or decrease it? Nobody really knows because they don't have two identical economies to test the hypothesis on and whole economies are too difficult to simulate to build good computer models. Maybe taxing the rich worked 50 years ago - but then was different to now - so it's not a solid experiment. Hence, economics is a pseudoscience...again, it's not a terrible thing - or a damnation of economists - it just isn't a proper science.

SteveBaker (talk) 02:52, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

And this very nice little bit of original research is your reason for labeling these fields as pseudoscience? I mean, I don't disagree with your analysis as much as you might think, but I wouldn't call economics or psychoanalysis pseudoscience (and I work if a field where I could do that legitimately, and even get myself published for it). you've made the rookie mistake of judging science by its results rather than its methods. Physics is an easy science: the math is straight-forward, the margins of error are largely ignorable, and the subject matter can be abused to your heart's content. Economics and psychology are difficult sciences (the math is convoluted at best, the margins of error are huge, and unless one is a Nazi one must treat one's subjects gently). Sure, if you want to fire a rocket at the moon, any third year physics student can work out the details handily, but complexify physics problems just a bit and they become unsolvable: consider, for instance, weather prediction, which is a purely physical problem that has roughly the same scientific success as psych or econ. Should we call physics pseudoscience because it can't make accurate predictions of purely physical phenomena like the weather? maybe we should. --Ludwigs2 06:28, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

You completely misunderstand what I'm saying. Sure, that was OR - but I'm not writing an article here, so that's OK. I'm explaining why calling a particular field of study a 'pseudoscience' doesn't necessarily mean that it is useless. Economics and psychology aren't (strictly speaking) sciences at all - that's the entire problem here. They are pseudosciences precisely because (as you correctly point out) they address subjects where using the scientific method is too difficult or too unethical. As for understanding the weather...30 or 40 years ago, meteorology was a pseudoscience - but in recent years, they've realized the limits of what they can predict, reduced the reliability of their claims and started to do solid experimentation to establish ways to ascertain the reliability of what they are saying about the weather. Meteorology is now a proper science - and they now freely admit that there are serious limitations on what they can do. That's why weather forecasts are now rarely attempted for a month into the future. They don't say "It's going to rain tomorrow", they say "There is a 40% chance of rain tomorrow" using scientific principles to ensure that they don't make overly strong claims. Physicists make no claim to be able to predict the weather - to the contrary, they produce mathematics such as chaos theory to prove conclusively that you can't do that. It's a rookie mistake to judge a science by the amount it's discovered about its field. It's all about the methods. It is perfectly reasonable for a scientific endeavor to come up with the answer "We don't know". What isn't acceptable is to act as though you know something when you don't. The problem with both economics and some sub-fields of psychiatry is that they don't (and typically, can't) measure how well they are doing - or even whether what they are doing works at all...yet they still claim the trappings of science - and they continue to apply their methods to the world without any solid knowledge about what actually works and what doesn't. Hence the label "pseudoscience". Both fields seem to be doing some good in the world - but without the ability to test their methods in a controlled fashion, we shouldn't claim what they are doing is scientific. SteveBaker (talk) 18:35, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

The difficulty here is that of fuzziness. There are two sources of that:

1. We might pick a fuzzy term to describe the content of the list. "Dubious science" is fuzzy as all hell - but "pseudoscience" has a really solid dictionary definition that is testable. (Are there reliable sources that show the topic being described by its proponents as a "science"? Are there reliable sources that show that the scientific method is not being followed? If "Yes" and "Yes" - then it's pseudoscience - otherwise it's not.)
2. We have some degree of fuzz in what our reliable sources say - some of the more borderline things on our list are described as "science" in some reliable sources and "pseudoscience" in others.

Right now, by using the word "pseudoscience", we get minimal fuzz of the first kind. By adding "characterized as", we eliminate the fuzz of the second kind because any reference in a reliable source is enough to get a topic into the list...no matter how many other reliable sources say "No", the topic has been characterized as pseudoscience at least once - so no matter if 100 reliable sources contradict that, we can put the topic into our list. So we have successfully created a very accurate definition of what ends up in the list and what doesn't.

The trouble with that is that the resulting list isn't particularly useful. No matter what you think of Economics (or Psychoanalysis) as sciences, they are WAY closer to what a science should be than (say) homeopathy. Lumping them all together drags Economics down into the mud and raises homeopathy higher than it deserves to be.

IMHO, we need to remove the "characterized as" bit and stick with just "List of pseudosciences" - but recognize that we then have some "fuzziness of the second kind" going on here. We should do that by carefully providing reliable sources that say that Economics (or Psychoanalysis or Religion) are NOT pseudosciences alongside those that do. We can use a paragraph or so to explain that in some cases the classification is disputed by reliable sources. That doesn't mean that we have to list junk references from homeopathists who insist that they aren't a pseudoscience - because they don't do that in reliable sources (per WP:FRINGE and WP:WEIGHT, etc).

It's going to be much harder work for us all to do things that way - but the result would be a much fairer, more useful list. For skeptics, that list will be all the more damning of Homeopathy for going lightly on Economics. For non-skeptics, this list would be more balanced where balance is clearly due (eg Psychoanalysis). I think we all win.

"List of pseudosciences" is the honest title.

SteveBaker (talk) 01:50, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree that "List of pseudosciences" is the honest title.--Michael C. Price ^talk 02:01, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, so long as we realize that if we change the title to 'List of pseudosciences' then we will be required to remove all topics which are not clearly pseudoscience. as I said above , there are at least 5 o 6 of them that will have to go. We can not be using this page (or any page on wikipedia) to make the case that a topic is pseudoscience; if it is not clearly and unambiguously defined as pseudoscience then it won't belong on the page. This will take us back to the previous dispute about the relation of skeptical sources to the scientific community at large. I, for one, am unwilling to merely assume that a skeptical source reflects the opinion of the scientific community as a whole, and without some decent corroborating material, publications that are explicitly skeptical seem to lack weight as sources. how will we deal with that? --Ludwigs2 02:30, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

That will always be a problem, and the solution is to find better sources - which is easier said than done, I'll grant. But the solution is not to lump together everything that anyone has ever described as pseudoscience, which just devalues the term. 5 or 6 items for removal sounds about right. --Michael C. Price ^talk 02:44, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

No!! - that's most definitely NOT what I'm advocating. I'm saying that things that have been 'characterized' as pseudosciences by one or more reliable sources stay in the revised list. Those sources are (by Wikipedia's definition) "reliable" - so we can trust that what they are saying has merit - even though it may not be the whole story. But I propose that we agree to take the page space to carefully balance that with whatever the other reliable sources say when they claim that these are perfectly acceptable sciences. We say that so-and-so said that psychiatry is a pseudoscience because of this or that failure of scientific method - but these other people said that it's a solid science despite that lack (or that it doesn't lack that or whatever) - and here is a brief summary of their arguments - and now, you the reader have heard a fair and balanced sampling of the reliable sources and you can make up your own mind - or follow the little blue numbers and figure it out for yourself. Simply removing disputed topics from the list does a disservice to our readers. Putting debatable things into the list without balance and commentary does an equal disservice. We need to fix BOTH problems.

We go from a relatively simple bulleted list of items - to a format where indisputable (by reliable sources) topics like astrology and crystal healing get a simple entry describing what they are - along with the indisputable references...but less solidly agreed upon entries get a paragraph or two of balanced explanation as to what the two sides of the dispute are saying, and why. If we can't find reliable sources that balance the "pseudoscience" label - then the answer is simple and so be it...that's what reliable sourcing is all about. But, as I said, it's not going to be easy - and we are going to have some disputes about the edge cases. As I said - doing it this way provides the advocates of those 5 or 6 entries a way to explain the opposite viewpoint. It's no longer a matter of "Look! It's characterized as pseudoscience - end of debate."...in my scheme, it would be "Well, yes, a reliable source says it's pseudoscience - so it needs to be mentioned in the list - but if these other reliable sources say it's not - then we put those in too". We write some balanced words to allow the reader to form their own conclusions from a condensed version of what the competing RS's are arguing.

SteveBaker (talk) 03:16, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, that sounds a good solution. Except that it is no longer just a list? --Michael C. Price ^talk 03:29, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Well...the Manual of Style WP:LIST guideline specifically mentions "Bulleted lists" where entries "consist of both a link and explanatory text." and "Definition lists" which contain a term and a definition "which can be quite long"...or we could even go with "Pro and Con list" style where two contrary viewpoints are expressly listed in a side-by-side format (although I think it's clear that the Manual of Style somewhat deprecates this approach - and it would be ugly when we have entries for which there are no reliable contrary sources). Obviously, we should strive to keep this "explanatory text" reasonably brief. If it goes beyond three or four sentences, I'd be getting nervous. But we can certainly be allowed the space to say "X is considered a pseudoscience by source Y because of A, B and C. X is considered a true science by source Z because of D, E and F."...and leave the linked article to provide a more detailed view of any controversy. So there is no problem with something being both a list AND having some explanatory text - in our case, explaining why the item in on the list - and why some sources say it should not be. SteveBaker (talk) 03:48, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

@ Steve: I'm sorry, but I'm a bit tired of people using the word 'reliable' and 'unreliable' as though they had the same moral force as the Christian phrases 'Word of God' and 'Heresy'. 'Reliable' does not mean that source is unquestionably correct in all contexts; 'reliable' means that the source is trustworthy for a particular use on Wikipedia. Some sources are reliable sources for the scientific perspective broadly put, while some sources are only reliable for a particular point of view (be that skeptical POV or fringe POV or even just the view of a particular author). let's try to keep things in perspective please. --Ludwigs2 06:11, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

That is precisely why I'm advocating that we use the Wikipedia guidelines for what is considered reliable and what is not. "Reliable" (in this context) does indeed mean "trustworthy for a particular use on Wikipedia" - and that's precisely what we need here. We recognize that "reliable" does NOT mean "absolute truth" - but only the lesser standard of "worthy of guiding how a Wikipedia article that falls within it's domain is written". I'm talking about sources that we can trust for matters relating to science in the context of a Wikipedia science article. Recognizing that these "reliable" sources sometimes disagree - this approach sometimes requires us to provide more than one slant on the question of whether something is a pseudoscience or not. What we can't do is to ignore a reliable source that says that a topic is a pseudoscience just because we don't like that conclusion for whatever reason. What we need to do in such cases is balance that "reliable" (ie trustworthy-in-the-context-of-a-Wikipedia-science-article) viewpoint with other "reliable" viewpoints where they are available. Within the context of Wikipedia guidelines, that is a fair approach. If you consider it to be an unfair approach it can only be that you're looking outside of those guidelines for judgement on what should or should not go into the article - and that's not how things work around here.

Perhaps the way forward at this point, would be to take one or two of the controversial entries in the list and make a sub-page where we can see how the approach I propose would work out in practice. If we can make that work for a controversial entry - we can make it work everywhere.

SteveBaker (talk) 13:35, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

"worthy of guiding how a Wikipedia article that falls within it's domain is written"? that's a very odd phrasing. what you mean to say (I think) is that reliable means that a source accurately reflects a particular point of view as it relates to a particular group (it's a bit like the statistical concept of reliability in that way - is this one author's statement reflective of claims that other sources from that group might make?) we have to keep a careful eye on which group the source is reflective of, however, otherwise we are creating improper inductions.

You seem to have gotten the idea that I am suggesting we 'ignore' skeptical sources. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am simply trying to prevent editors from treating skeptical sources as though they are innately reflective of the larger scientific community. Skeptics have a point of view which bears presenting in articles under NPOV. Sometimes it's easy to see that their POV is shared by the greater scientific community, sometimes it's easy to see that their POV isn't shared by the greater scientific community, and in the latter case skeptics do not get a free pass on NPOV because some editors think the point they are making is important.

But let's see what you wrote below...--Ludwigs2 16:39, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Current science and technology sources gives specific examples of reliable sources for Wikipedia articles that are about science. If you can find something in one of those sources (or one that could plausibly belong to that set) that says that some highly controversial topic is a pseudoscience - then we should certainly place that topic onto this list. That would exclude sources like Skeptic magazine for the most controversial topics. We shouldn't use a piece in Skeptic magazine as the sole basis for putting (say) psychoanalysis onto this list - the people who write for that journal are (for example) Magicians - not scientists, so it doesn't carry that much weight. But I'd have no problem quoting Skeptic to back up some much less debatable claim - such that "crystal healing" is a pseudoscience - if no better source can be found. I'd also use it to expand upon the arguments for (say) economics as a pseudoscience if a reliable source says that it belongs here.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence...which in Wikipedia terms is to say: Highly controversial statements require reliable sources in the field of debate of the article. (in this case, science) Claims from reliable sources in the field of science (such as some of those listed below by Enric Naval in the case of psychiatry) should be a 'golden ticket' to get something onto the list...just as they are right now with the present "characterized as" list...but contrary viewpoints from similarly reliable sources should also guarantee a balanced explanation for why this topic is a disputed candidate - despite being included on our list for the sake of completeness.

SteveBaker (talk) 18:16, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Steve - combining my responses two your two points here. this thread is a bit too long.

There's a couple of different points here that we are disagreeing on. My perspective on each:

• Pseudoscience is not a value-neutral term. pseudoscience may have had a brief moment as a properly analytic term under Popper, but other than that it is traditionally used as a pejorative (and commonly used as such without any effort whatsoever to relate it to anything resembling an analytical claim). Even where people do try to use it analytically, the term - despite Enric's (rather one-sided) claims about definitions below - has no general definition. I'll point out the obvious, that the definition Enric prefers differs fairly dramatically from the one that the NSF uses (from Shermer: "claims presented so that they appear [to be] scientific even though they lack supporting evidence and plausibility"). There are many ways of dealing with the issue of questionable science than indulging in pejoratives (and justifying the act by using the looseness of the the definition to reconceptualize the term at need).
• non-science, bad science, and questionable science are not all encapsulated under pseudoscience. You are basically spin-doctoring the definition of science to fit your personal prejudices. This whole effort is a bit like calling someone (pardon the bad language, and the hyperbole) a 'dumb, nazi-loving, coprophiliac', and then justifying the phrase by claiming that you can prove that it's an accurate statement (on the illicit assumption that purportedly 'objective' claims can't be considered offensive). You and I both know that the entire raison d'etre for this list is so that editors can have a legitimate excuse to defame topics they disrespect; there's no other purpose to a page like this. I don't mind the 'disrespect' part of that equation (since some of these topics are thoroughly disrespectable), but I object to the overt effort to defame anything on wikipedia - that's not what wikipedia is for.
• Wikipedia's job is to present scientific perspectives for exactly what they are: established theories about the world backed up by replicable evidence. Wikipedia should not be engaging in scientific debates itself - we are not here to establish that a scientific perspective is the correct perspective (science can do that well enough on its own), or to critique various ideas according to their 'scientificness'. We are here to present information about particular ideas as they are presented in reliable sources (including any critiques of those ideas that are so presented), without judgement or prejudice of our own. You are quite correct that 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence', and that is something that the scholarly world needs to be concerned with. but we on wikipedia do not get to evaluate ideas on whether they have met their evidentiary burden. That is for primary and secondary sources to do. We are obviously obligated to prevent such ideas from being presented as though they have greater scientific acceptance than they actually have, but we should stop there and not allow ourselves to fall into the trap of evaluating ideas ourselves.

Do you see where I'm coming from? --Ludwigs2 19:31, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I see where you're coming from - but I profoundly disagree. Pseudoscience isn't a pejorative - and it most certainly DOES have one single, clear definition. Check any mainstream dictionary you can get your hands on - they all agree on the definition that I've been using throughout this thread. It's a perfectly simple concept that's well defined and useful. None of the dictionaries I consulted listed it as "vulgar" or "pejorative" or "slang" or "considered offensive" as that kind of word would be. Sure, if you happen to be an astrologer, you may not like being described as a pseudoscientist - but then people who steal things don't like being called "criminals". That doesn't make the word a pejorative - so long as it's appropriately applied.

I do agree that bad science isn't necessarily pseudoscience. For example: cold fusion is bad science - but it isn't pseudoscience.

Contrary to your assertion, we're not discussing the definition of "science" - we're discussing "the application of the scientific method". That is a reasonably well-defined set of procedures that sciences are supposed to follow. Our article on the method says:

"Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, identifiable features distinguish scientific inquiry from other methods of obtaining knowledge. Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses. These steps must be repeatable, to predict future results. Theories that encompass wider domains of inquiry may bind many independently derived hypotheses together in a coherent, supportive structure. Theories, in turn, may help form new hypotheses or place groups of hypotheses into context."

That's a pretty good definition. If some field of study doesn't do those things - and if it behaves as if it were a science - then it's pseudoscience. Period. That's not the fuzzy hard-to-pin-down thing you seem to wish it to be.

As for what Wikipedia is or isn't. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia - that's its job. That encompasses the things you want it to be - but it most certainly includes lists like this one. We have a stack of guidelines that tell you that. If this article didn't fit that mission and those guidelines then it wouldn't have survived three AfD's. So that ship has already sailed. This article exists - will likely continue to exist - and we should do our best to improve it. Sorry if you don't like that either - life ain't always what you want.

So - we have:

• A definition of pseudoscience, from a stack of dictionaries - it's not changing - it's not vague.
• A definition of the scientific method which people can use to judge whether something is pseudoscience or not.
• Reliable sources that tell us which things are judged by those criteria and which are not.
• An article that lists pseudosciences that's not going away.

So, the wiggle room we have is to consider how we're going to present that information on this page.

Not doing it at all is not an option - arbitarily picking and choosing what gets on the list and what doesn't according to your personal opinions is utterly unaccaptable. Right now - the criteria for the list presents a brutal cutoff - with no room for explanation of any contrary (and reliably sourced) viewpoints. We can leave it that way - or we can do what I recommend which is to remove the brutal cutoff and allow room for a two-sided presentation. If you want a softer approach, you need to support what I'm promoting because the alternative is what you see in the article today.

I don't think you have too many choices at this point.

SteveBaker (talk) 22:41, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

You don't think I have many choices? Yeesh... Steve, I know this material better than you, I understand precisely what perspective you're coming from, I understand why your perspective is mistaken; the only real problem I'm encountering is getting you to see outside the particular rut you've dug yourself into. And yes, I recognize that it sometimes takes a very long time to get people out of their ruts; nature of the human beast, that. but I will keep trying (like a good scientist) until either (1) I succeed, or (2) you convince me that you're right. #2 isn't happening at the moment, for the following reasons:

• Your definition of 'the scientific method' is one that both Kuhn and Feyerabend (just to mention the two most famous) would disagree with more or less strenuously. some of the points are reasonable - the bits about presenting 'hypotheses as explanations of phenomena' and describing repeatable experiences are fairly good, for instance - but not all sciences can or do 'design experimental studies' in the narrow sense of the word, and prediction is highly contested as part of the definition (that's really a hold-over from logical empiricism, which as a whole is considered defunct).
• Calling someone a criminal without evidence most certainly is pejorative (as evidenced by the fact that it's actionable in court - libel/slander). You can only call someone a criminal when there has been sufficient evidence presented in court for a judgement that a criminal act occurred; you cannot legally call someone a criminal on mere suspicion, qualifying later that they haven't actually been proven to have committed a crime. Likewise, we can clearly call something like 'creation science' pseudoscience because the scientific community has rendered extensive commentary on the matter. But with something like psychoanalysis - where there a is relatively small number of critics of the field, and a relatively large number of scholars who find the field useful (if limited and dated) - then we are illicitly jumping to conclusions by asserting that it is pseudoscientific.
• Dictionary definitions (tertiary sources) do not outweigh scholarly opinions in secondary sources. Enric has presented one secondary source for the definition of pseudoscience, I have presented a second that is quite a bit different, I'm quite certain I could find at least two more competing definitions in the literature if I look - please explain how that is not vague.
• Even if we did have (as you suggest) a "definition of the scientific method which people can use to judge whether something is pseudoscience or not", it is against wp:OR for wikipedia editors to evaluate material ourselves to generate novel information. I know you know that policy; what I can't understand is how you can't see that you are explicitly suggesting that we do that anyway. again, in cases where reliable sources carry that burden for us, that's fine, but that is not true of many of the cases listed on this page.

Don't bullshit me about the AfD results; I'm more than certain that if I checked the AfD pages it would be the same 12-15 editors rendering the same 'KEEP' votes for the same fairly poor reasons; and they would all be the same editors who are the most vocal contributors to this page and other pseudoscience arenas. Which is neither here nor there (since I'm not asking to have the page deleted). My only point here is that if we change the title of this page to imply a strong assertion of pseudoscience then we have to remove those topics which are not clearly and unambiguously identified as pseudoscience in reliable sources. there would be no more monkeying around with the 'some guy once called it that so it qualifies' rationale, and no more editorial synth as one or another of us tries to show that something qualifies as pseudoscience because there's not enough reliable sourcing to carry it. do you have any particular objections to that?

also, let me be frank: Are you suggesting that we need to choose between (a) a 'brutal cutoff' which is intentionally designed to be vapid so that that it can include all the material that some editors have predetermined should be on the page, or (b) a criteria that explicitly allows us to miscategorize that same predetermined material so that we then have to explain how it has been miscategorized? Because if that's what you're suggesting, I suggest strongly that you reconsider your position.

honestly, my suggestion of 'List of dubious scientific endeavors' is a better and more inclusive title, because it allows us to structure the article in line with the ArbCom ruling (including things that are obviously pseudoscience along with things that are not, without implying that the latter are). I understand how the current (really ungainly) title - along with the bare-faced wikilawyering in the introductory paragraphs - came into existence, of course. But as far as I can tell, the wikipedia pseudoscience wars are over, and it's time to move on. --Ludwigs2 00:42, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Then the outcome is this: In order to make change - you need consensus, without consensus, you get the status quo. I can live with the status quo - it's not the best we could have - but it's better than nothing. So there is no possible reason for me to agree to change unless I see it as a positive change. Now, unless there are a lot of people hiding here who agree with you - you don't get any change because this thread CLEARLY exhibits no consensus. I don't have to convince you - I tried to give you a compromise - but now I give up trying. Been nice talking with you - it's over. SteveBaker (talk) 01:42, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

LMAO - Steve, that is one of the worst uses of the term consensus I've seen on wikipedia. basically what you just said is you can't dispute my argument, and you don't care to concede to it or work with it, so you're going to hunker down with the other people who don't want to give the issue fair consideration and engage in numerical trench warfare. Which is pretty much where I expected this discussion to end; I had no illusions about that.

I'm ok with the status quo as well, at least for the time being; mostly I drew out this argument for the more open-minded people who might be reading this, so that they could begin to see some of the logical flaws in the way this issue is being addressed. with luck, the ideas will build a bit over time, and in a year or so I'll be able to generate the support I need to make some effective changes on this and related pages. knock wood, and maybe we can restore some common sense to fringe and pseudoscience discussions on wikipedia. at any rate, I'm sure we'll be back at this debate sooner or later, so... till then! --Ludwigs2 02:10, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

N.B. interestingly, it looks to me like a consensus may be emerging to rename this article List of pseudosciences. I'm going to mull this one over. ScienceApologist (talk) 03:33, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't have any particular objection to that, with the caveat that it would require removal of some material from the article, as I noted above. --Ludwigs2 16:17, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

But that's your problem. If you're going to remove things for which there are reliable sources - then what is your criteria? "Things that Ludwigs thinks are pseudoscience" doesn't really cut it. SteveBaker (talk)

No, my criteria would be matters of balance (per wp:UNDUE) and matters of editorial synthesis (per wp:SYN). We can discuss these matters on a case by case basis if and as they arise. Or do you object to these Wikipedia policies being applied to this page for some reason under wp:IAR? --Ludwigs2 23:10, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

You have an exceedingly strange idea of "balance". I've been repeatedly saying: "let's change the list so we can provide a balanced view between reliable sources" - and you want nothing of it - you just want to remove a bunch of entries. I don't see how you achieve a balance by completely eradicating all mention of the very thing being discussed! (Especially when you have no good criteria for what you're going to exclude!) SteveBaker (talk) 01:12, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Now you are simply blowing smoke up out collective asses. who talked about eradicating sources? what I said was that if sources do not unambiguously identify a topic as pseudoscience, then we cannot include that topic on a page that would explicitly identify it as pseudoscience. This is simply, straight-forward, blue-letter POLICY, isn't it? Or do you for some reason believe that pseudoscience claims are not subject to the same practices of sourcing and attribution that other claims on wikipedia need to abide by? I mean seriously: are you just trolling now? because if you are, let it go already. --Ludwigs2 02:18, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I vaguely recall that Ludwigs wanted to remove the "Psychoanalysis" entry. --Enric Naval (talk) 07:40, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

So you're saying that if even one reliable source says that something ISN'T a pseudoscience (ie "...if sources do not unambiguously identify a topic as pseudoscience"...your words, my emphasis) - then we should exclude that topic from the list? How is that better than if even one reliable source says that something IS a pseudoscience, then we should include it on the list? (Which is what we're doing right now.) Both of those extremist positions are poorly serving our readership because they hide information from reliable sources that has a bearing on the topic of discussion. Our readers deserve to see what a broad cross-section of reliable sources have to say on each topic that is currently being identified as pseudoscience by at least one reliable source. Erring on the side of either inclusion or exclusion is equally bad. My proposed compromise between those two extremes is to say that when reliable sources are not in 100% agreement, we list the topic here and explain that there are two sides to the story - showing both sides using reliable sources. That is a compromise between the status quo and what you are advocating. I simply don't see how that is less balanced than your idea of simply tossing things off the list if the reliable sources don't 100% agree. This absolutely follows the letter and spirit of our policies on reliable sources, balance, due weight, fringe science, NPOV, etc.

If someone comes to Wikipedia having read a newspaper report someplace that says that (let's say) psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience - then if psychoanalysis isn't on this list then they'll either conclude that the newspaper was wrong (which is not correct - the newspaper may well have been quoting a reliable source) - or they'll conclude that our article is incorrect. Neither is fair - neither helps our readership (which, incidentally, is why we're here!). What should happen is that they come to this list - they scroll down to Psychoanalysis - and there they read that such-and-such reliable source did indeed say that psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience because...yadda,yadda...but that some other reliable source (possibly MANY other reliable sources) said that it wasn't because...yadda,yadda,yadda. That is a balanced viewpoint. If our reader needs more information then they can follow the little blue numbers and read verbatim what was said by whichever reliable sources are on the two sides of the debate.

THAT is what an encyclopedia should do for them. What you are proposing is arbitrary censorship of positions that you personally dislike to see in print even though there are reliable sources backing that position - and that simply isn't acceptable. SteveBaker (talk) 14:54, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

(e/c) That is not what I said at all, no one who has read any of my posts could reasonably assume that that is what I meant to say, and the fact that you are asserting it anyway speaks badly of your character and your intentions. Absolutely amazing, the love affair skeptics have with straw man arguments... You and I can have a valid disagreement abut the interpretations of policy, and discuss that in reasonable and civil tones, but if you keep making moronic statements of this sort the discussion will degenerate.

What I said was that skeptical sources do not get an exemption from wp:UNDUE. Again, do you have a problem with that?

Now let's dispose of your straw man. no reader who reads something about psychoanalysis in the newspaper and wants to check it in wikipedia is going to come straight to this page - most likely s/he will go to the psychoanalysis page, where s/he can get a detailed discussion of the issue. Further, readers do not need to see a page that starts by including anything that some notable halfwit somewhere has called pseudoscience (and then rationalizes why it might not be), any more than readers need to see a page List of bad presidents which lists every president that some notable halfwit somewhere has labeled as bad (and then rationalizes why they might not have been that bad). The entire premise of this page is tendentious, and this page is really only going to appeal to people who are already die-hard skeptics. Now, so long as the page is explicitly called 'list of topics characterized as pseudoscience', there is enough wikilawyer room to justify broad inclusion, and it's not worth the time squabbling over it to try to assert common sense. But if you change the title of the page so that it asserts that what is included are actual pseudosciences, you lose those wikilawyer rights and actually have to show that there is an affirmative reason to label something as a pseudoscience. one source might suffice for that, if it's a very good source and there is very good reason to believe that single source represents scientific opinion more broadly, but most likely one source by itself would not be sufficient for that task any more than one source would be sufficient to prove any contested point on wikipedia.

I don't actually disagree with your assessment of what an encyclopedia is supposed to do, mind you. For the rest of it, unfortunately, you're putting me in the position where I have to decide whether you're pretending to be stupid for rhetorical advantage, or whether this is actually the way you see things. That is making me uncomfortable, and so I would prefer if you paid a bit closer attention to the actual sense and progression of the discussion in the future. Thanks. --Ludwigs2 17:16, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Psychoanalysis has been mostly rejected by mainstream neuroscience, although there are some notable exceptions. It's fringe currently and I would consider it a pseudoscience. Most of the things on this list are just obvious and don't need that much debate and that is one of them.99.36.96.230 (talk) 16:22, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Psychoanalysis does not generally try to make claims about the neurological structure of the brain, and neuroscience does not generally try to make claims about subjective experience or higher consciousness, so issues of fringe does not apply in this case since there is no real competition on a scientific level (outside of science fiction, that is). maybe in 30 or 40 years... --Ludwigs2 18:09, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Ludwigs2 that this article is like a List of bad presidents. There is no generally agreed or useful definition of pseudoscience, or common usage of the term. It is just a term that some people like to use as a put down. Roger (talk) 19:56, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

More like List of antipopes. Check the sources in this article and at pseudoscience. There is a consensus definition. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:16, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think 'list of antipopes' is a good comparison. An antipope is easily identified as someone with a reasonably large following supporting his claim to the papacy (the list explicitly excludes questionable cases); in fact, most of the people who were antipopes could quite reasonably have found themselves as popes in slightly different circumstances. however, the distinction in the pseudoscience realm is not between mainstream science and things that fall just short of mainstream science. pseudoscience is aimed more at things that clearly could not be considered scholarship in any event. It's actually fairly easy to identify things that could not be considered scholarship in any event; my complaints always focus on areas where there is clearly extensive scholarly work going on, an assortment of wikipedia editors are trying to parlay (usually well-justified) critiques into outright condemnations. see the difference? --Ludwigs2 04:58, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

"pseudoscience" label in RS

In the last AfD I produced a list of books that were lists of pseudosciences. Do I have to make another list, just to show that it's still an encyclopedic topic that is treated in this exact way in RS?

A different topic, one of the concerns was that sources said "X is pseudoscience" but no source ever said "X is science and is not pseudoscience". Well, here you have a book whose explicit goal is pointing out which practices are pseudoscience and which aren't: Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology Written by 4 professors and PhDs in psychology:

• Scott O. Lilienfeld
  • he also wrote 50 great myths of popular psychology: shattering widespread misconceptions about human behavior, "uses popular myths as a vehicle for helping students and laypersons to distinguish science from pseudoscience."
• Steven Jay Lynn, "Research interests: Hypnosis, dissociation, memory, mindfulness/acceptance, experimental psychopathology, and science versus pseudoscience."
• Jeffrey M. Lohr Post Doctoral Fellow in Behavioral Modification, "I am collaborating with Dr. Scott Lilienfeld (Emory University) on a program of research that involves the analysis of science and pseudoscience in contemporary psychology. The topics include the empirical analysis of treatment efficacy and the promotion of “fringe” treatments as they relate to treatments for trauma and anxiety, and for other psychological disorders. We are also developing and validating educational materials for the analysis of pseudoscience in various domains of psychology."
• Carol Tavris, Ph.D. in the interdisciplinary program in social psychology at the University of Michigan, "She has given keynote addresses and workshops on, among other topics, critical thinking, pseudoscience in psychology, anger, gender, and psychology and the media. (...) Fellow of the American Psychological Association and a charter Fellow of the American Psychological Society; and, for fun, a Fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal."

And also Research in Psychology: Methods and Design], see chapter "Psychological science and pseudoscience", by another professor in psychology C. James Goodwin. quotes: page iii: "Thus, the student using this book will encounter thorough discussions of the nature of psychological science and how it differs from pseudoscience", page 568. "(in the Glossary) Pseudoscience: A field of inquiry that attempts to associate with true science, relies exclusively on selective anecdotal evidence, and is deliberately too vague to be adequately tested."

--Enric Naval (talk) 07:44, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

More examples:

• Scientific perspectives on pseudoscience and the paranormal: readings for general psychology, Associate professor and psychology department chair Luis A. Cordón (in his page he recommends CSICOP, Randi, and the Skeptic's Encyclopedia) Page 204: "Pseudoscience. Pseudoscience is simply false science. That is, anything that superficially resembles science, yet isn't science, is pseudoscience. The difference between them is one of degree rather than of kind, with no single clear boundary demarcating the essential difference. Although the boundaries are fuzzy, however, the distinction is a very important one, specially in the field of psychology. As a relatively young science, wich unlike physics or chemistry has yet to enumerate a set of fixed principles that operate near universally, psychology is a discipline in which the distinction between real and false science is often unclear, especially to people outside the field. One major distinction between science and pseudoscience lies in the concept of falsiability. (continues discussing falsiability) Beyond the lack of falsiability, there is a set of characteristics tipically found in pseudoscience that may help you to identify it (revised burden of proof, overreliance on testimonials and anecdotal evidence, emphasis on confirmation rather than refutation, overuse of ad hoc hypotheses to escape refutation, absence of self-correction, use of obscurantist language, absence of connectivity with other disciplines) (he gives examples of pseudoscientific psychological theories for each characteristic)"

• Also note this journal article: Lilinfield, S.O., Lohr, J.M. and Morier, D. (2001). The teaching of courses in the science and pseudoscience of psychology: useful resources. Teaching of psychology, 28, 192-191. Cited in The Psychology of Paranormal Belief: A Researcher's Handbook

About "pseudoscience" not having a clear definition, the books above have no problem in giving a clear definition of it. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:47, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

This sounds like a useful way to proceed for this particular field.

Pseudoscience has a very clear definition - pick up any dictionary - they pretty much all say the same thing. A pseudoscience is a field that claims to be a science but which does not follow the scientific method. I don't see anything unclear about the definition - it's a simple, testable, rule. The degree of 'fuzz' is in how rigorously that is applied. I doubt that any science is utterly 100% reliably following "the scientific method" in absolutely everything it does. If we said that (for example) one aspect of the scientific method is that experiments have to be performed with controls and subsequently duplicated independently before their results can be relied upon - then:

• In the case of astrology, it is very clear that astrologers go to no effort at all to do experimental work on their results - and such external tests as have been done by people outside of the astrological community have not shown positive results for their methods. That why astrology is solidly defined as a pseudoscience.
• But one could also argue that the work being done at the Large Hadron Collider is pseudoscience because there is only one LHC and duplicating the experiments totally independently would be exceedingly difficult. However, that's a very small issue in that case because there are independent studies that carefully examine the processes involved in using LHC to ensure that there isn't any bias or other influences going on.

But that kind of observation makes for borderline cases where the pseudoscience label is hard to pin down. We know what the word means - it's perfectly clear - but some shades of grey emerge from its practical application - and that's why we need space to make use of these other reliable sources that explain the contrary viewpoint.

SteveBaker (talk) 13:49, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Biological Psychiatry

Biological psychiatry is not a pseudoscience. Most of the critics are just anti-psychiatry types or scientologists. This is a fringe view and not a mainstream idea. I think it should be removed. Evidence in favor of it is the dozens of FDA approved medications for psychiatric disorders and thousands of papers in related fields. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.36.96.230 (talk) 13:00, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

FDA approved psychiatric medications http://www.neurotransmitter.net/drug_reference.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.36.96.230 (talk) 13:35, 1 October 2010 (UTC) See google scholar for some papers on biological psychiatry. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=biological+psychiatry&btnG=Search&as_sdt=8000&as_ylo=&as_vis=0 Calling biological psychiatry pseudoscience is the same as saying global warming is pseudoscience.

Also see Journal of biological psychiatry http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00063223 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_Psychiatry Biological Psychiatry is a selective and highly cited journal in the field of psychiatric neuroscience. As such it is ranked 4th out of the 101 Psychiatry titles and 14th out of 219 Neurosciences titles on the 2008 ISI Journal Citation Reports published by Thomson Scientific in 2009. The 2008 Impact Factor score for Biological Psychiatry is 8.672.[1] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.36.96.230 (talk) 13:07, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, it has been characterized as pseudoscience in reliable sources:

• Psychiatrists Colin A. Ross and Alvin Pam Pam A. (1990), "A critique of the scientific status of biological psychiatry.", Acta Psychiatr Scand Suppl. (362): 1–35, PMID 2088016
• "Book Review. Pseudoscience in Biological Psychiatry: Blaming the body", N Engl J Med 1995 (332): 1796, June 29, 1995, PMID 17667478
• Jensen, S.; Arnold, E.; Swanson, M.; Vitiello, B.; Abikoff, B.; Greenhill, L.; Hechtman, L.; Hinshaw, P.; Pelham, E.; Wells, K. C.; Conners, C. K.; Elliott, G. R.; Epstein, J. N.; Hoza, B.; March, J. S.; Molina, B. S. G.; Newcorn, J. H.; Severe, J. B.; Wigal, T.; Gibbons, R. D.; Hur, K. (Aug 2007). "3-year follow-up of the NIMH MTA study". Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 46 (8): 989–1002. doi:10.1097/CHI.0b013e3180686d48. ISSN 0890-8567. PMID 17667478.
• Kirsch, Irving; Moore, Thomas J.; Scoboria, Alan; Nicholls, Sarah S. (Jul 2002). "The emperor's new drugs: An analysis of antidepressant medication data submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration". Prevention & Treatment. 5 (1): No Pagination Specified, Article 23. doi:10.1037/1522-3736.5.1.523a.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

I'm not sure about rejecting sources because they are "anti-psychiatry". The entry should mention the scientologists, but that's a matter for editing the entry, not for removing it.

(I see that the controversies are notable enough to spawn three different articles: Anti-psychiatry, Biopsychiatry controversy and ADHD controversy). --Enric Naval (talk) 00:04, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Well considering the blurb didn't say that it was not a majority view, I thought it should be removed. It was very biased against biological psychiatry. Scientists (in the relevant fields) who consider it a pseudoscience are in a minority. It seems weird to see a legitimate field of research on this list while mostly everything else is pure bull.

Do you think marijuana or cocaine are just placebos? Is it not legitimate to study how drugs affect neurochemistry and mental states? One of the sited research in the blurb was about the ineffectiveness of antidepressants (not about whether biopsychiatry was pseudoscience). Researchers have characterized global warming and string theory as pseudosciences, but neither of those are on the list. Why aren't anesthesiology and pain medication also considered pseudoscience?

Biological psychiatry is constantly refining theories as new data emerges. It is not enough to point to some wikipedia articles as evidence, considering there are so many anti-psychiatry people. There are legitimate questions about the effectiveness of antidepressants, but the mainstream view is that they do have utility. Unless you believe in dualism, it seems like the biology of the brain holds explanatory power for our consciousness and thought processes.

Lets discuss this further before it is reverted back to what it was. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.36.96.230 (talk) 01:26, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

The entry can be rewritten to say that it's a minority view and that scientologists support for non-scientific reasons. If you want to add those things, you just need to find sources that support inclusion. There is a section called "Previously_disputed_natural_phenomena", and, if we have entries for it, we could make a "Topics that were previously considered pseudoscience" section. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:20, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Just as an aside, this discussion is a very good example of the problem I'm discussing above. --Ludwigs2 15:23, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I just don't think it needs to be readded. I pointed to a highly cited journal in the field. How many of these other topics can you say the same for? It seems like a broad stroke to paint a whole area of actual research as pseudoscience (or characterized as pseudoscience), especially since biopsychiatry can encompass a lot of different things. I think this list should reflect the mainstream scientific view of the relevance of a specific domain. I don't believe it has ever been a mainstream opinion that the field is pseudoscientific. Pretty much all of the other topics on the list are basically rejected by a majority of mainstream researchers. You can find vocal minorities against almost any science.

Ludwigs, what you are talking about has only a minority of supporters.

"However, for most neuropsychologists, indeed for most scientists, the obvious response to the mention of psychoanalysis has been one of blanket rejection."

There are a few other things that also appear out of place on this list. The thing about credit scores doesn't seem notable enough to be here.