Talk:List of organizations opposing mainstream science

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Broader issues regarding article structure[edit]

As I noted in an ANI thread, there are questions beyond the narrow wording issues.

We shouldn’t permit the existence of a List article to be high-jacked by someone who can’t be bothered to write a proper article. A list article should not be a place for mini-articles. Personally, I would prefer that organizations who do not have an article should be wholly removed, but that’s my preference, and may not be supportable by policy and practice. However, per WP:LISTCOMPANY, an entry should have a reliable source establishing it’s membership, but that is not carte blanche to write a mini-article. I think it makes sense to have a very short, neutral description. A good example is Discovery Institute which mentions its founding date and a neutral description of its subject matter.

I believe the following entries:

  • Academy of Nations
  • Natural Philosophy Alliance
  • Study Group of German Scientists for the Preservation of Pure Science

Should be pared back to a founding date, a two or three word description of their position and a decent reference in support of their inclusion in the list.

As a side benefit, this would stop the heated discussion about the current wording. If these organizations are notable, someone can create an article about them, and we may have to address the wording issues there, but we shouldn’t have to here.

I plan to make edits consistent with this view, but will hold off a bit to see if other views can identify policy or guidelines supporting these mini-articles.--S Philbrick(Talk) 22:17, 12 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Planned replacements:

  • Academy of Nations - An organization primarily disputing Einstein theory of relativity.[1]
  • Natural Philosophy Alliance - An organization which believes there are fundamental flaws in theories such as relativity, the big bang, plate tectonics.[2]
  • Study Group of German Scientists for the Preservation of Pure Science - An organization formed by Paul Weyland in 1920, for the purpose of discrediting Einstein's theory of relativity.[3]

References

  1. ^ Milena Wazeck (9 January 2014). Einstein's Opponents: The Public Controversy about the Theory of Relativity in the 1920s. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-01744-3.
  2. ^ "Natural Philosophy Alliance". (Archived version as of 13 April 2014)
  3. ^ Brandon R. Brown (2015). Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War. Oxford University Press. pp. 99–. ISBN 978-0-19-021947-5.

Any disagreement?--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:22, 13 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am normally dead against unlinked entries in list articles. I feel that they open the door to all sorts on unverifiable cruft. I can tolerate entries where there is a linked article that is not an article for the organisation itself but which does cover it to a reasonable degree, e.g. a biography of its founder. In this case, I think that removing them completely is not the way to go as it may well be that some or all of those organisations do deserve to have articles. What you propose instead sounds good to me. If red links are to be included then I suggest to add a comment above them saying something like "These organisations are notable and have red links pending the creation of articles. Please do not remove them without discussion." I speak as somebody who itches to remove red links unless they are very obviously valid.
BTW, I notice that there is already a stub article for Paul Weyland (which confirms exactly what I expected given the name of his organisation) and rather more about him in German Wikipedia. I've linked it. --DanielRigal (talk) 14:20, 13 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
As I hope is clear, had I started the article I would not have included them. However, I am reticent to remove them without a clear consensus. You and I would support complete removal. If enough others weigh in with the same opinion we can completely remove them, but I think stripping them down to a bare minimum is a reasonable short-term approach. I don’t like red links either (except in the short term which this isn’t) so I wasn’t planning on making them red links. --S Philbrick(Talk) 14:40, 13 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • It is reasonable to exclude organisations that do not have articles, given the contentious nature of the subject. Guy (Help!) 21:56, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree that organizations that don't have articles should be removed from this list. Perhaps make a talk subpage full of redlinks and put them there so that they can be restored if and when articles are written about them (like I'm doing at List of reportedly haunted locations in the United States and Talk:List of reportedly haunted locations in the United States/Sourced but not notable). ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 13:58, 16 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree that we should remove entries without articles for this page. I also think the whole article needs another look as well, perhaps at AfD. The whole page seems kind of glued together haphazardly. FuriouslySerene (talk) 14:43, 16 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agreed. And done. This leaves open the question of what to do about things like Flat Earth Society via Modern flat Earth societies and Morgellons Research Foundation via Morgellons. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:33, 16 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I strongly disagree. There used to be a whole article (reasonably extensive, and well sourced) on the Natural Philosophy Alliance. It is quite notable (there are books on it), and was only removed since editors thought it was being called out unfairly, and was better included among a group of organizations opposing mainstream science. Thus its inclusion here was a result of planning and lots of discussion, certainly not since someone could not be bothered to write an article. I've tried to find a link to the deleted article, and the discussion around it, but Wikipedia policy prevents this for all but administrators. If someone could bring it back, and place at least the relevant portions of it here, that would be most helpful. LouScheffer (talk) 16:06, 16 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • Definitely complicated when that happens. There have been many times that an article was merged based on discussion at the origin page just to have local consensus at its merge target reject the merge (involuntary celibacy being a recent example). I'm inclined to stand by the idea that we shouldn't have items here that don't have their own page (or at least an article section) elsewhere given how contentious this page is... — Rhododendrites talk \\ 16:25, 16 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Lou. No need to require lay entries to have their own article. Nothing wrong with red links. They are articles waiting to happen. SageRad (talk) 16:38, 16 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@SageRad: The point you're agreeing with is that it's not an article waiting to happen. An article already existed, so could easily be recreated if it's a topic that should have an article. The question is whether this should be home to, as someone else put it, mini-articles for topics that don't merit an article. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 17:52, 16 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This is precisely why NPA used to have a section on this page. It seems inconsistent to me to first remove the page and replace it with a section, then remove the section, then remove any reference since there's no page or section! It's one of the more notable such organizations, with books, NY Times articles, etc. So it should surely be referred to in some manner. LouScheffer (talk) 16:49, 16 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Which version was well-sourced? I am no seeing one in the current or deleted history that would qualify as that. Guy (Help!) 00:13, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It's only been an hour or two since I discussed WHY it was there, and since then there have been 2 preferences for inclusion and one not, so we ARE discussing it here. I'd give it a day or so to let others weigh in. LouScheffer (talk) 17:29, 16 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

About a year ago, we noted that the section on the NPA was inaccurate and seemed to violate Wikipedia's guidelines by simply being gratuitously insulting - see ticket #2016021010021657. There was agreement and changes were made by the Wikipedia Support Team and Stephen Philbrick - see above. However, recently a group has brought to my attention that since then two footnotes have been added to NPA in this Wikipedia section. The first gives a Margaret Wertheim reference. A main focus of the above referenced ticket was about Wertheim's offensive bias and style and, from an objective point of view, about her total lack of qualifications - so adding this footnote to her book seems to be a regression on the agreement. The 2nd footnote references a quote from 2006 or before and claims, "This "Alliance" is to genuine physics or natural philosophy as "Creation Science" is to genuine biology."" I'm very familiar with the NPA website from before 2006 to the present and don't remember anything like that quote. In any event, the quote seems to imply that the NPA is defining itself in such terms. Even if the quote can be found somewhere in the 100s of pages from a myriad of different contributors (I did a Search of the NPA site and there were no matches) or found on some other website, the footnote would still be totally misleading. This article's editors still seem to be searching for derogatory statements that they can include about the NPA and similar organizations without any restraint. So while the February 2016 changes were great, there still seems to be a problem with the editors' attitudes. As a brief comment, the editors seem to assume that any criticism of currently accepted physics theory must be looney. This idea is unscientific as there are a lot of acknowledged problems in physics and all past advances in physics have come from questioning the then currently accepted physics. Further, it is NOT part of the accepted scientific method to assume that criticism of currently accepted physics is inherently looney. Thanks for your consideration of this - your past efforts are greatly appreciated. HarvPhys (talk) 15:35, 21 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

George C. Marshall Institute and The Heartland Institute[edit]

I removed the George C. Marshall Institute and The Heartland Institute from the astroturfing section but they've been restored by another editor to the general section. I don't believe they should be included, at least based on how the page is currently made. The page is supposed to be a list of organizations that oppose mainstream science, not organizations that have one position, among many others, that is non-mainstream. Most of the work of these institutions have nothing to do with climate change (and isn't quite as controversial). I think including them on this list is highly misleading. Considering how highly contentious the title of this article is, I think we need to be very careful including organizations like this, and should only include if the very purpose of the organization is contrary to mainstream science, and not simply if they do happen to hold some positions that are contrary. I will remove them for now but if others disagree let me know. FuriouslySerene (talk) 15:02, 16 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree on logical grounds. If an organization holds even one very non-mainstream view, this means to me that their overall motivation, or logic, is suspect, and hence I cannot trust their views in other areas. Hence they should be on the list, though probably with the caveat that they have other positions. LouScheffer (talk) 15:38, 16 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think trust is the question here. I think the question is whether a reliable source would characterize the organizations themselves as opposing mainstream science. I don't think any have been presented, nor would there likely be one. Considering how contentious the accusation is, I don't think it should be included. There's plenty of coverage of their environmental views on those pages already. FuriouslySerene (talk) 17:07, 16 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t buy the argument that this if an organization holds one non-mainstream view, that their “overall motivation, or logic, is suspect”. However, if an organization, such as Heartland, has been extensively written about regarding one area, such as climate science, it is appropriate to include them on the list. The list ought to identify, as it does, the specific area qualifying them for inclusion.--S Philbrick(Talk) 23:03, 16 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I am not aware of any evidence that either of these two give a flying fuck about what the scientific community thinks, they care about dollars, specifically the dollars their donors can make by avoiding any costs from destruction of the glbal commons. Guy (Help!) 00:07, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Section headings[edit]

I removed the astroturfing section and folded its contents into the preceding (main) list. It seems like some of the disagreement stems from section headings and perceived scope therein (or of the list as a whole). I'd like to suggest that, for now, we combine the list into one. Right now this list of organizations has one section for "list of organizations" and one for "groups promoting quackery". Unless we're going to sort all of it by ~"field" it may help to combine. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:56, 16 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sources[edit]

Can we agree that nothing should be on this page without citing a source indicating that it opposes mainstream science? Over the course of these four edits] Edward321 added a bunch more organizations, all of them unsourced. I was tempted to roll back the whole thing, but even in the older version before Edward321's edits there were a bunch of unsourced entries. Removing all unsourced entries would leave about 7 entries on the list. I wanted to ensure there was consensus to decimate the list before doing so. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 16:04, 18 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If a source is a click away in the article, I'd say copy that citation over rather than remove. If the org's article doesn't have sources which sufficiently back up the claim, then yes, remove. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 16:20, 18 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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