Talk:Scientific skepticism/Archive 4

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Archive 4

Potential copyright violation

I was looking into the following sentence in the lead: "Scientific skepticism involves the application of skeptical philosophy, critical-thinking skills, and knowledge of science and its methods to empirical claims, while remaining agnostic or neutral to non-empirical claims[definition needed] (except those that directly impact the practice of science)." It appears this was copied verbatim (starting with "the application of...") from https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/scientific-skepticism-rationalism-and-secularism/.

I'm not sure how to best handle this, as the sentence provides a relatively clear and concise summary of the subject, but unfortunately I don't believe copying verbatim like this is allowed. For now I've removed the sentence in question. Maybe someone can come up with a good introductory sentence to replace it? Stonkaments (talk) 02:36, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Removing GSoW from the article

@Rp2006: As per WP:BRD let's get to it. My position is that exactly one article has been provided as a source that covers the GSoW. Said source has not described GSoW as an especially notable skeptic project; it is simply a skeptic project that exists and it's unclear to me as to why it should occupy a privileged position above all other skeptic projects in existence. Additionally, the section title "Notable skeptical projects" logically implies that subsections should be notable, yet GSoW has not been shown to be notable as evidenced by its lack of a Wikipedia article. It would seem like WP:SPAM to include an entire subsection on this obscure organization that doesn't have a Wikipedia article based on a single independent reliable source. The subsection itself seems to be promotionally written as well, given its heavy reliance on affiliated sources and the long laudatory quote from the JREF.
I believe that the solution to this is to remove the subsection entirely and maybe place a single sentence mention of GSoW in the history section. This would be an appropriate level of coverage for an organization of GSoW's importance. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 17:41, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

You may be correct Chess - GSoW does not have a Wikipedia page. It has been mentioned multiple times in R/S as being one of the most important projects currently fighting against anti-science magical thinking, and I'm not even thinking of the WIRED article. But I'm busy working on other projects to look them up. I really don't care if GSoW is mentioned or not (not that anyone needed my permission), GSoW will keep doing the work that it does. I don't understand your tone at all, "let's get to it?" and "this'll annoy a few people but removing from the list." - we are all here with the same goal. With the amount of nonsense still here on English Wikipedia (and the masses in other languages) I think there are better things to do. If others want to drag this out into a long mess then go at it. Sgerbic (talk) 18:24, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

@Sgerbic: I'm not seeing those "reliable sources" and personally I'm rather skeptical of the person running the organization asking me to just take their word for it that their organization is "one of the most important projects currently fighting against anti-science magical thinking". One wonders where the empirical evidence is for that claim. Anyways, to explain the tone I used, it's because I'm well-aware that attempting to remove GSoW from this article would result in annoyance to people who are members of/affiliated with GSoW (such as yourself as it seems). The "getting to it" is in reference to the fact that I've made a WP:BOLD edit, someone has reverted me, and now it's time to "get to" the discuss part of BRD. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 18:41, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I wasn't telling you to take my word for it. You aren't going to bully me so just stop with the snark Chess. Sgerbic (talk) 19:51, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. To dedicate a large section to GSoW but only single sentences for Plato, Bertrand Russell, James Randi, and Richard Dawkins is an incredibly arrogant violation of WP:Due weight. Chop that shit down to one sentence. MarshallKe (talk) 19:25, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Agree Sgerbic (talk) 19:52, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Plato and Russell rang my SYNTH alarm bell. Plato died long before scientific skepticism was a thing, and even Russell mentioning the term would be an anachronism. Indeed, the sentences about both philosophers are WP:SYNTH and should go. --Hob Gadling (talk) 20:01, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I don’t have a problem significantly reducing the GSoW text to something like it currently is. I do however think it’s warranted to include the fact (removed in the recent edit) that one of the founders of modern Skepticism, James Randi, thought the project was important enough to recognize it’s importance and give a grant to Susan Gerbic for her work. Rp2006 (talk) 18:14, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Synthesis and/or relevance concerns

@Hob Gadling: Starting a new section because this seems worthy of it. Regarding Plato and Russell, and possibly many other pieces of this article. What standard(s) shall we use for this article to determine whether a particular source is relevant to the topic? WP:Relevance is a mere essay that touches on this. It seems to me that Russell is pretty obviously related to scientific skepticism even if no direct source says he is. Could this be an instance of WP:SKYBLUE? How many "times removed" can a topic be before we start calling it synthesis? I'm not attached to any position here, just trying to figure out how this stuff is handled. MarshallKe (talk) 16:35, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Scientific skepticism is a young term. Connecting anybody to it is only possible if reliable sources connect them to the subject. In Russell's case, if there is a source that calls him a precursor of scientific skepticism, that would be fine. But the current sentence Bertrand Russell argued that some individual actions based on beliefs for which there is no evidence of efficacy, can result in destructive actions is what Russell said about the dangers of wrong thinking. While that is something scientific skeptics also care about, it has nothing to do directly with them. This is as if a Wikipedian wrote in the UFO article that in Renaissance paintings there are things that look like flying saucers. The connection to the subject of the article is made by the Wikipedia user, not by WP:RS. Plato, Russell and saucers are WP:SYNTH. --Hob Gadling (talk) 17:57, 11 December 2021 (UTC)