Talk:Pseudoscience/Archive 13

Archive 10

Archive 11

Archive 12

Archive 13

Archive 14

Archive 15

Archive 16

Removal of "citation needed" tag on unsourced sentence, why?

My only edit here was to put a "citation needed" tag on a nonsourced claim (false) sentence . It was removed here[1] Why? I am changing it back. Please explain the revert on the talk page, and I will listen.69.199.196.246 (talk) 04:01, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think a citation is not needed, but maybe some clarification. The sentence is not making a factual assertion about the world (e.g. accupuncturists), merely a categorial assertion: a traditional healer who makes no claim to science cannot not a pseudoscientist. To be one involves both making a claim to scientific methodology and that claim being false. Whether acupuncturists fall into this category depends on the practitioner and the side of the scientific debate your find yourself on. Ocaasi (talk) 04:23, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

A RS is ALWAYS needed if another editor requests one, especially as acupuncturists claim they are doing science, not pseudoscience. I do not know if "protoscience" is well defined as different from pseudoscience. Why was the CR tag removed?HkFnsNGA (talk) 04:52, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

The cn tag was removed because I misread the diff. It's getting a bit late here, and I read 69.199 removing the CN tag. Thank you for undoing my edit. Anyway, I agree that the sentence really should have a cite. Does anyone know of one? Jess_talk|_edits 05:24, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

You will not find an RS cite. Acupuncturists take their traditional mystical roots (locations of acupuncture points are based on the "number" of days in a year (365), and the "number" (12) of rivers in the Chinese empire. On top of this an edifice of "scientific" studies and "electromagnetic needle" "research, that is actually FUNDED by medical research grants, e.g., here[2], and even get published in NEJM! At least three editors recently tried to categorize this as pseudoscience here[3], and the edits were reverted because the "scientific" community was still out on this as to whether or not it is pseudoscience or real science! 69.199.196.246 (talk) 08:14, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

This is missing the point. The source is only saying that if a traditional medicine practitioner makes no claim to scientific rigor, than no matter how mystical, it cannot be called pseudoscience. Because there is no attempt to present it as science, there can be no 'pseudo'science. Ocaasi (talk) 08:53, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely agree, the pseudoscience label must have valid claims, else it is pseudo(wiki)science. Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 15:11, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Suppose for the sake of argument that acupuncture was NOT a pseudoscience. Painting is not a pseudoscience. Sex is not a pseudoscience. Shouldn't we give "painting" and "sex" equal time with "acupuncture", in listing things that are not pseudosciences? For that matter, by the reasoning of listing everything that is not a pseudoscience as not being pseudoscience along with acupncture, why not list everything in the world that is not pseudoscience along next to acupuncture?HkFnsNGA (talk) 06:52, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Junk Science

Someone might want to add a sourced sentence or two to the section on pseudoscience in the courts, but leave the bulk of details to the junk science article. This is especially the case since the use of the term "junk science" post-dates the synonymous term "pseudoscience". If someone knows of a distinction between the two expressions, other than where they are more frequently used, that should be sourced and added, also. I would do it, but then I would be late to my intelligent design class.HkFnsNGA (talk) 02:56, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

"disagreement among philosophers of science and members of the scientific community as to whether there is a consistent and meaningful way to distinguish pseudoscience from merely non-mainstream science"

Regarding the unsourced quote from the lead: "disagreement among philosophers of science and members of the scientific community as to whether there is a consistent and meaningful way to distinguish pseudoscience from merely non-mainstream science" - There is a way to tell something is a pseudoscience, when it contains simple inconsistencies with observations, or with itself. The problem is how to tell something is not a pseudoscience (e.g., quantum physics and general relativity can not both be strictly true since they are inconsistent, in certain conditions).HkFnsNGA (talk) 03:05, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

(i) This is not a quote. (ii) It would appear to be a summary of the 'Boundaries between science and pseudoscience' section. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 03:20, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I removed sentence "TCM and acupuncture are NOT pseudoscience"

Dif

TCM and acupuncture ARE pseudosciences. They even get funded by medical and science agencies, despite their clearly being based on occult notions. Rather than argue the point, I removed the entire UNSOURCED sentence claiming that they are NOT pseudoscience.HkFnsNGA (talk) 03:21, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

and I restored it for the purposes of discussion. TCM and other traditional medicines are not pseudoscience, if only by virtue of the fact that they predate modern science (sometimes by as much as a millennia). they are largely self-consistent systems that work well within their boundaries (by virtue of generations of semi-systematic experimentation), and they do not as a rule pretend to be equal or superior to modern scientific medicine. Do not confuse earnest but primitive efforts at medicine with the wild-eyed claims of snake oil salesmen. --Ludwigs2 04:22, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs2: read WP:BURDEN -- "The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material. Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed." No cite, no restore. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 04:29, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I would further point out that the material in question has been (re)removed by three different editors, and only restored by one. The consensus, to the extent that it exists, appears to be for removal. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 04:34, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Also, that the practices predate modern science doesn't preclude them from being pseudoscience. People made scientifically-testable claims prior to the advent of modern science, and such practices are known to change over time in any case. Pseudoscience has a strict definition, and these undoubtedly fit it based on their lack of scientific acceptance. That said, I'm happy to have the content included if it is sourced first. I'll also ask that you don't accuse contributors of edit warring when they've made a single revert. Please AGF. Jess_talk|_edits 04:38, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

First, any editor with a modicum of experience who reverts a revert with out discussion is editing tendentiously. It doesn't matter if they were the one who made the initial edit or not - the third step in BRD is DISCUSS, not REVERTAGAIN. Lord knows I've made that mistake myself, so I can't criticize too much, but it is a mistake and it is tendentious and it is the beginning of an edit war. If you don't like the accusation, don't commit the error.

Second, I'll accuse you of anything I believe is accurate without any guilt whatsoever, and you I suspect (and hrafn I'm sure of, because s/he did it to me recently) would do the same to me. Civility does not extend to being a doormat, not for any of us. We'll all get along regardless.

Third, and to the substantive point, I understand the tension here because I've run into it a million times. you all want to extend the definition of pseudoscience to include everything that is not strictly within the limits of western science - narrowly defined - while I always hold out for a more specific definition of pseudoscience which involves intentional efforts to subvert scientific paradigms for some sort of specific interest. We'd all agree that creation science and magnetic healing bracelets are pseudoscience, but for me there is a fairly broad gray area of practices which are not strictly scientific in the western sense, but at the same time not antithetical to science and not trying to subvert the scientific image or scientific method. It's entirely black and white for you guys, which annoys the crap out of me; that attitude destroys all sense of balance and proportion. TCM, acupuncture, and a wide range of other alternative medical practices are not pseudosciences, because they do not fit the definition: they do not claim to be scientific in the western sense, do not claim to be superior to western science, do not in some case even claim to be scientific at all. Some of them may be cultish, yes (but that's not pseudoscience); some of them may have odd theological underpinnings (but that's not pseudoscience), most of them are likely not as effective as Western science (but that's not pseudoscience).

I swear, sometimes it feels like Wikipedia is harboring the last lost bastion of British colonials, with that incessant colonial need to extol European scientific superiority and save all those poor benighted savages from their strange fetishistic ways. It would be damned funny if you all weren't so damned serious about it. --Ludwigs2 06:11, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• 1. Regarding your remark, "most of them are likely not as effective as Western science (but that's not pseudoscience)", "efficacy" is a scientific claim, so by your very words they claim to be sciences, based in the occult, i.e., pseudoscience.
• 2. I put several reliable sources (Stanford University, Yale University, etc.) calling acupuncture a "pseudoscience" in the acupunture article here[4]. And acupunture is part of TCM, so they ARE both pseudosciences with WP:RS to back it up. How about restoring the sentence, but changing it from stating that they are NOT pseudoscience, to stating that they ARE pseudoscience?
• 3. Any objections to labeling them pseudoscience using my multiple WP:RS? If so, from this very pseudoscience article's lead, "those labeled as practicing or advocating pseudoscience normally dispute the characterization.", so if anyone objects to this, it is only more evidence that they ARE pseudoscience
• 4. (PS - I am Native American - Apache Indian, and North East African, not in any way a part of your claimed "harboring the last lost bastion of British colonials". Please don't insult me like that, just for removing a false statement without WP:RS.) HkFnsNGA 06:35, January 19, 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs2:

1. WP:BRD is only an essay, WP:V is policy -- guess which wins when they disagree.
2. Your third point isn't "substantive", it is merely an extended imputation of bad faith lacking any substantiation whatsoever.
3. Yes, we know, you're the sole champion of the WP:TRUTH, surrounded by an ignorant, bigoted, benighted WP:CONSENSUS. But as you seem more interested in polishing your halo (and flinging monkey poo) than in convincing us, this is now a WP:DEADHORSE. Give it a rest.

Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 06:59, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)@Ludwigs, I'm sorry that simply asking you to assume good faith resulted in such a defensive personal tirade on your part. I'm also sorry that asking for a reliable source made you feel that further asserting your point without a source was called for. The fact is that reverting once is not edit warring - rereverting as you did afterwards is, however, and it is particularly uncalled for when there was an open discussion on the talk page to which you hadn't yet contributed. I have no experience with you or your editing, but WP:BURDEN, WP:V and WP:AGF are all very much applicable here, and I'd suggest taking a moment to read through them again. Doing so from time to time is always helpful. It appears that any consensus which has yet formed is fairly clear on the exclusion of the content, and until that changes, I'd say this issue can be put to rest.

@HkFnsNGA Per #2, I'd support the addition of any practices to this article which can be backed up in reliable sources. If you have them, go for it. Jess_talk|_edits 07:07, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

If a RS calls it pseudoscientific, then the article may include it, but with attribution. That is not the same as labelling it with Category:Pseudoscience. The article is allowed to contain sourced descriptions, including pseudoscience, quackery, or whatever the source says. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:26, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Interesting discussion. I'll share some thoughts regarding the transition from traditional --> alternative --> scientific medicine.

To start with, I'm going to award Ludwigs2 half a point, because he's half right.

It's true that many forms of what were originally "traditional medicine" (folk medicine) were prescientific and on that basis wouldn't historically qualify as either science or pseudoscience.

It's also true that in our modern day and age where many of them are now "alternative medicine" and clamoring for acceptance on scienfic grounds, the game has fundamentally changed and so is our judgment of them. They are making claims of efficacy (a falsifiable MEDRS matter, falsifiability being a fundamental requirement for being considered scientific or pseudoscientific), and even performing scientific research, where often the only positive results are shoddy fringe science/junk science/pseudoscience "research". They have thus placed themselves onto the scientific playing field and can be judged accordingly. Many of them come up woefully lacking and reveal they are pseudoscientific because they still mix scientific terminology with ancient metaphysical notions. So the game has been changed and what was once ineligible for being judged as a science or pseudoscience is now placed on the target range holding a bullseye target in front of itself.

Shall we make this more confusing? Easily done. This is where the fun really begins!

There are some forms of traditional --> alternative medicine which, although currently properly judged as pseudoscientific because they insist on mixing the trappings of ancient dogma with scientific language, do use some methods which become proven scientifically valid and are accepted into modern medicine. Note the method isn't pseudoscientific, but its origins, IOW the school of thought or "trademarked" alternative medicine form from which it came is still very much pseudoscientific, even though one of its methods might, in and of itself when separated from the pseudoscientific explanations and setting, be legitimate and useful.

So where does that place acupuncture (and chiropractic)? Well, traditional acupuncture, even if it were to "work", would still be pseudoscientific, while medical acupuncture has at least the possibility of being a legitimate, scientific method because it is (supposedly) separated from its pseudoscientific roots. The same goes for chiropractic spinal adjustments, which are accompanied by metaphysical and vitalistic "vertebral subluxation" claims for cures of every illness imaginable. But when one takes adjustments and calls them spinal manipulation and separates them from all the junk, they suddenly become a legitimate form of treatment with some possible, although still uncertain, value.

Is that clear as mud? Have fun. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:26, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

For those who are curious, here's a link to the last version of the Medical acupuncture article before it was redirected to the acupuncture article. The old talk page redirects to a subpage of Talk:Acupuncture. I don't recall why this happened or if there was even a merge. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:38, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Per User:Jess’s “support the addition of any practices to this article which can be backed up in reliable sources”, I included section with pseudoscience as a subclass of nonsense, using acupuncture as the particular practice for example. Since from this very pseudoscience article's lead, "those labeled as practicing or advocating pseudoscience normally dispute the characterization.", I included multiple WP:RS on acupuncture as pseudoscience. I did not labelling anything with Category:Pseudoscience, per User:Brangifer’s warning.HkFnsNGA (talk) 07:43, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

You may also wish to use something from the subsection I have added below as it's a very significant person in acupuncture who is first quoted. -- Brangifer (talk) 08:08, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

PS to Brangifer, since you wrote so much, I read it, so you got at least one audience member. I would classify medical acupuncture as a pseudoscience if it uses the traditional acupuncture method for location of "points" as determined by the 12 rivers of the Chinese empire, and the 365 days a year. But I would classify it as a protoscience if it randomly picks the location of points, not using any occult basis, under a hypothesis that hitting a nerve with a needle, or causing the release of neurotransmitters (or endorphins, etc.) by small painless random insertions of needles, might have some measurable effect, say on pain relief. If it were found to cause such a release, as has recently been found with possible greater than placebo effect, (a study not yet repeated), I would prefer to just shoot up the stuff that gets released , rather than going through the tedium of all of the pinpricks.HkFnsNGA (talk) 08:02, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree. From what a president of a medical acupuncture society said, it's possibly still pseudoscientific on that basis. The quote and source can be found on the medical acupuncture article or talk page I linked to above. -- Brangifer (talk) 08:08, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Whoa daddy - seems I struck a nerve. alright then, let's hash this out. I'll try to keep my response short, but there's a hell of a lot of text to sort through for a single evening's posting. I'm going to drop this line in now, and then come back in a bit with a fully considered response. --Ludwigs2 16:06, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

@ HkFnsNGA: Again, you are indulging in black and white thinking. first, efficiency is not a scientific claim except in the very loose sense that people prefer things that work better to things that don't work quite as well. being less efficient doesn't make something 'less scientific' it just makes it less pragmatic. The real difference here is with things that are just plain bull - magnetic healing bracelets are not 'inefficient', they don't work at all. you cannot say that about TCM or acupuncture, which in fact to often work as advertised.

To your sourcing point... I've seen this game played endlessly on wikipedia: you find a source calls something pseudoscience (often a source that has no real knowledge about the topic, but is working off of ideological principles), and then claim that any source which disputes the label is a fringe source that must be disregarded. In research design textbooks that's referred to as 'data fudging' ('selection bias' is a gentler term that doesn't imply intentionality, but I think the intentionality here is clear). Sources which make claims such as "acupuncture’s theory and practice are based on primitive and fanciful concepts of health and disease that bear no relationship to present scientific knowledge" are making ideological claims, not scientific ones - obviously acupuncture's core assumptions will not resemble modern scientific knowledge because the roots of acupuncture begin back when western doctors were still using leeches to cure syphilis, so what's the point? Science is a generally open-minded process which subjects theories to testing; it doesn't dismiss theories because they "look funny". So yeah, I object to using reliable sources in a biased way to ideologically impose a disparaging label.

And I don't care if you're from Mars: I'm judging you by your attitude, not your genetic code.

Seriously dudes, - what do I need to do to convince you people that you will never win an argument with me by playing affective trump cards? For people who claim to believe in science you really overdo the "I'm so offended!" routine. Go ahead, gnash your teeth, tear your clothes, scream to high heaven about the unfairness of me pointing out what it is you're actually doing... - I mean, please do, it's seriously entertaining.

@ Hrafn: Your first point seems to imply that you think that policy justifies tendentious editing and edit warring. If that's what you really believe, let's take it over to wp:AN and ask for a broader opinion. Your second and third points are senseless and offensive, and not worth responding to.

@ Jess: You seem reasonable, and since I've never had the pleasure of a discussion with you previously I'd prefer if you didn't start making personal assumptions about me. what I wrote was a bit pithy, but it was neither defensive nor a tirade. I'll point out again the the gamesmanship involved in invoking BURDEN - in fact, any source I raised which disputed the claim that these things were pseudoscience would instantly be rejected as a fringe source. Unfortunately I need to convince the group of you to get out of your entrenched black and white thinking and engage the topic with thought and reason before there's any possibility that you would accept a source that runs counter to your current beliefs. unlikely to happen in the near future, but...

@ Brangifer: Largely I agree with you, though I'm a bit more careful with it, because 'alternative medicine' is such a broad-ranging concept. in my mind I break it down as follows

• medical pseudoscience: currently-offered practices with odd theoretical suppositions that claim to be scientific, but have been effectively refuted (either actively refuted by counter-evidence or having been tested reasonably without result)
• questionable medicine: currently-offered practices with conventional theoretical suppositions that claim to be scientific, but have not been thoroughly tested or have been tested with ambiguous results (this would include things like psycho-pharmaceuticals, for instance)
• alternative medicine: currently-offered practices with odd theoretical suppositions that do not compete directly with medical science, and have a historical track record with some moderate success. (e.g.., decent acupuncturists and TCM practitioners will direct clients to GPs if the client comes in with something they cannot treat. A lot of TCM and acupuncture business lies in wellness issues - trying to help people stay healthy or balanced, minor palliative care, nutritional issues, and other things where conventional medicine basically restricts itself to recommending aspirin and good night's sleep).

I just don't see any reason to assert the latter two as pseudoscience, and I can't shake the suspicion that people who do want to make that claim are just suffering culture shock (i.e. a 'different=bad' mindset).

enough for now. --Ludwigs2 17:33, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs2: my "first point" implied] NOTHING OF THE SORT! (In fact my point made no mention of either WP:EDITWAR, WP:3RR, or tendentious editing, so there is no reasonable way it could be interpreted as stating that WP:V overules either of those.) What my point actually implied was that as a mere essay, [[WP:BRD] did not justify you violating WP:BURDEN by restoring challenged material without an inline citation to a reliable source. Kindly (i) cease and desist misrepresenting my statements in violation of WP:TALK and (ii) cease and desist your pervasive & flagrant violations of WP:AGF. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 17:58, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Luwig2, you seem sincere. One reason that acupunture and TCM are pseudoscience is that they often make specific claims of testable, measurable, medical efficacy. Medicine is a science, and claiming testable efficacy is a claim to being scientificly measurable. (Also, most decent TCM doctors in China, or in most Chinatowns, do NOT refer to a medical GP.)HkFnsNGA (talk) 18:12, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs2, I just want to make sure there's no misunderstanding about my position. I don't believe all alternative medicine is pseudoscience. In fact we just had a discussion about this over at Category talk:Alternative medicine#Not category:pseudoscience again. It had been decided sometime ago that it shouldn't be a subcategory of Category:Pseudoscience, but someone had restored that without anyone noticing. We concluded it didn't belong and the whole category tree structure there has been changed. Alternative medicine is indeed a mix of traditional medicine, fringe practices, pseudoscience, metaphysical practics, religious ideas, and some things that are just so nonsensical that they're just wild speculation by unbalanced people. It's a jungle. Since some alternative medicine practices are pseudoscientific or contain pseudoscientific elements, it has to be dealt with on an article by article basis. Some articles rightly belong in the PSI category, others justify its properly sourced mention in the article, others should be in a religion category, etc.. I hope that clears up where I stand. -- Brangifer (talk) 18:29, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

@ hrafn: You obviously didn't read the comment where I said that re-reverting rather than discussing was clearly tendentious and clearly leaning towards edit war. Using burden to justify such behavior cheapens the policy. beyond that, please read what I said above about 'gnashing of teeth'.

@ HkFnsNGA: Occasionally that happens, yes, but for the most part TCM and acupuncture practitioners (in the western world) are happy in the 'wellness' niche. If you compare either of those with a clear pseudoscience like (say) orgone you can see the difference. Reich and his followers proclaimed orgone as a new scientific vision of medicine (as well as physics and cosmology), and kept on with that assertion despite failures to produce objective scientific evidence. TCM and acupuncture - in the cases I've seen them seek scientific verification - accept their failures gracefully and their small successes without crowing about them endlessly. I've never seen a TCM or acupuncture practitioner or group assert that it was the 'new' science over and above medical science. They may not be scientific, but they do seem to be reasonable and don't seem to have a problem accepting scientific results when they get them. in the eastern world, of course, TCM and its derivatives are still the medical norm in a lot of places, for historical and cultural reasons. Why would a medical practitioner in a chinese village send his patients to a western doctor when neither he nor his patients trust western medicine? That will change over time (with modernization and education), but you can't really call TCM pseudoscience because the people who have used it all their lives continue to use it.

@ brangifer: Yes, I think we're on the same page with that. And yes, that makes me happy. --Ludwigs2 18:59, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Everyone.... please try to improve the civility climate here by avoiding a mocking tone, personal attacks, one-upmanship, assumptions of bad faith, shouting, sniping and snide remarks, etc.. I really think we can all improve and thus keep a pleasant, informative, and learning exchange going here. Thanks. -- Brangifer (talk) 18:29, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Brangifer, I tried to be civil in my "Luwig2, you seem sincere. One reason that acupunture and TCM are pseudoscience is..." remark above, in which I tried to address Ludwig2's concerns. Maybe you can add to it.HkFnsNGA (talk) 19:10, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

@Ludwigs: From what I have gathered from reading your responses, you are attempting to claim the content can be inserted without proper sourcing if you "win the argument". Per WP:V, that can never happen: "This policy requires that all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed to a reliable, published source in the form of an inline citation, and that the source directly support the material in question." Even if the your claims were 100% true, and even if nearly every editor here agreed the content should be included, it cannot be. It was challenged, and it lacks a citation, therefore it must be left out until that problem can be remedied. With that said, I'll repeat that consensus seems to have formed, so continuing this discussion without handling those kinds of roadblocks is unlikely to result in anything good. Jess_talk|_edits 21:12, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Hunh? where did you get that? You might try actually reading all the way through what I wrote. And trust me: if I want to be spoon-fed predigested policy interpretations, I'll open my mouth and go 'caw, caw'. If I'm not doing that, you can assume that I understand policy, and disagree with the way you're using it. I will in fact stridently ignore any application of policy (per IAR) that creates misinformation in the encyclopedia, and I will ignore any apparent consensus that does the same, so you'd best get off the policy hobby horse and get down to discussing content issues. clear 'nough? --Ludwigs2 21:55, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I "got that", from these sorts of responses, where you argue that you want content included even though it is unsourced. We can't do that. If you have a problem with WP:V, then I'd suggest taking that up on the policy talk page. For the time being, and until you can source the content, gain consensus for inclusion, and respond to civil requests in kind, I won't be continuing the discussion. All the best, Jess_talk|_edits 23:06, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah. then in fact you're not actually listening to me, but rather arguing with someone inside your own head. That's too bad, but it's not something I can really help you with. --Ludwigs2 00:01, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, you clearly want the content included, and when you've been repeatedly asked for a source you've failed to provide one. On top of that, your response to WP:V has been WP:IAR. What else am I to gather, Ludwigs? Jess_talk|_edits 01:13, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Meridians are not real

Felix Mann, founder and past-president of the Medical Acupuncture Society (1959–1980), the first president of the British Medical Acupuncture Society (1980), and the author of the first comprehensive English language acupuncture textbook Acupuncture: The Ancient Chinese Art of Healing first published in 1962, has stated in his book Reinventing Acupuncture: A New Concept of Ancient Medicine:

The traditional acupuncture points are no more real than the black spots a drunkard sees in front of his eyes. (p. 14)

and...

The meridians of acupuncture are no more real than the meridians of geography. If someone were to get a spade and tried to dig up the Greenwich meridian, he might end up in a lunatic asylum. Perhaps the same fate should await those doctors who believe in [acupuncture] meridians. (p. 31)

Felix Mann tried to join up his medical knowledge with that of Chinese theory. In spite of his protestations about the theory, he was fascinated by it and trained many people in the west with the parts of it he borrowed. He also wrote many books on this subject. His legacy is that there is now a college in London and a system of needling that is known as "Medical Acupuncture". Today this college trains Doctors and western medical professionals only.

Medical acupuncture has caused much controversy amongst traditional practitioners; the British Acupuncture Council wished for it to be called 'treatment using needles', and removing from it the title 'Acupuncture', as it is so different to traditional methods but have had to retract this after pressure from the medical profession. Mann proposed that the acupuncture points related to the nerve endings and he reassigned the points different uses. He altered the theory so that the treatments given are no longer individual to each client, a central premise of traditional theory. Traditionally the needle combinations differ according to the age of the client, the length of time they had the condition, the type of pain they experience and their health history. In medical acupuncture none of this is addressed and the presenting symptom is treated using a set group of points.

A report for CSICOP on pseudoscience in China written by Wallace Sampson and Barry Beyerstein said:

A few Chinese scientists we met maintained that although Qi is merely a metaphor, it is still a useful physiological abstraction (e.g., that the related concepts of Yin and Yang parallel modern scientific notions of endocrinologic [sic] and metabolic feedback mechanisms). They see this as a useful way to unite Eastern and Western medicine. Their more hard-nosed colleagues quietly dismissed Qi as only a philosophy, bearing no tangible relationship to modern physiology and medicine.

George A. Ulett, MD, PhD, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of Missouri School of Medicine states:

Devoid of metaphysical thinking, acupuncture becomes a rather simple technique that can be useful as a nondrug method of pain control." He believes that the traditional Chinese variety is primarily a placebo treatment, but electrical stimulation of about 80 acupuncture points has been proven useful for pain control.

references, collapsed for convenience and clarity

• Has this "80 acupuncture points has been proven useful for pain control" been replicated? If not, why not?HkFnsNGA (talk) 08:49, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• I'm not sure, but it's not real acupuncture anyway. It's really just electrical stimulation, which has nothing to do with acupuncture. If acupuncturists wish to sneak in their acupuncture points and then apply electricity to them, okay, but if they wish to claim an effect is because of some uniqueness about those points which the prescientific Chinese somehow magically understood, they'll need to prove it. Since there is no agreement on how many acupuncture points there really are or their location, and since there are many of them, (it depends on the school of thought), it would be odd if there weren't some effect from electrotherapy applied near many of those points. To claim it's a justification for acupuncture or its prescientific, metaphysical "beliefs" (not true "theories" in the scientific sense) is misleading, but this is - again - another evidence of pseudoscientific activity related to the promotion of acupuncture. -- Brangifer (talk) 17:25, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• I was once standing on the Greenwich meridian. I am lucky I did not find out it was not real then, or I might have fallen off, and needed acupuncture to relieve my pain.HkFnsNGA (talk) 08:44, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• LOL! Good one. -- Brangifer (talk) 17:25, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Brangifer, thanks for pointing out that the tour bus that charged me to take me to the Greenwich Meridian ripped me off, by taking me to a place that doesn’t even exist in reality. But right now I have a much bigger problem. There appears to be a gravitational field around my body, and all of the little arrows appear to be aimed right at my center of gravity (and I already have a belly ache). Imagine that. This is much worse than a mere 365 acupuncture needles pointing at me, since there appear to be an uncountably infinite number of these arrows, and the biggest ones are the ones closest to me.HkFnsNGA (talk) 18:41, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your point with this is. Meridian's are simply the product of a different medical model. You seem to believe that Chinese medicine was created in some kind of top-down fashion (as though some ancient Mandarin had a vision of organ systems and meridians and declared that that was how they would forever after view the human body), when in fact the system was built up over time from a loose form of experimentation, and the organ system/meridian system was simply a theory that they use to codify 'stuff that seemed to work'. you can fairly criticize it as overly-subjective, overly-metaphysical, and unverifiable, but saying it's not 'real' - well, what does that mean exactly? Physical bodies are not 'real' in a quantum mechanical sense - does that refute all medical science? Fibromyalgia was long considered not to be a 'real' disease; were all those early fibromyalgia patients 'really' fakers feigning pain to get attention?

If you're trying to determine what's 'real', HkFnsNGA, I suggest you abandon Wikipedia and seclude yourself in the monastic life for a few decades. If you are asserting that you know what's 'real', and that Wikipedia needs to conform to your personal knowledge, well... hunh. --Ludwigs2 17:53, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Ludwig2, I have lead a monastic life for a few decades. I am a mathematician and have spent most of my life out in the middle of the desert. I only thought I was standing on the Greenwich Meridian was real because a sign once specifically told me "The line you are standing on is exactly on the Greenwich Meridian", so I thought it must be real. After all, 160 years of a whole world of people believing in the Greenwich Meridian can't be wrong. They even had a pole that the sign was mounted on, right on the line, which must be like an acupuncture needle for the Earth itself. Then Brangifer went and ruined my life by implying above that the Greenwich Meridian was not real, after it was too late to get a refund for my travel fare to get to the Greenwich Meridian. HkFnsNGA (talk) 18:27, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

lol - well, people often confuse ontos and episteme. All we ever have access to is episteme - understandings validated by collective experience - but there is a basic human craving for for ontological surety - knowledge grounded in 'actuality' of some sort. The Greenwich Meridian is a true fact in the epistemic sense, since it's a solid collective perception that impacts broad areas of human life uniformly; the fact that it has no ontological basis may be profoundly disturbing to some, but is ultimately a meaningless concern.

This actually captures one of the differences between traditional and modern medicine: modern medicine comes out of a western analytical tradition that privileges ontos - collective experience in science is intended as a pointer to 'actuality' - and so discounts a lot of subjective experience as 'un-actual'. Traditional systems often used looser evidentiary systems which allowed episteme as meaningful evidence; thus a meridian point is a place where different people seem to have the same subjective experience (and the induction would be that everyone would have the same subjective experience, and that this reflects an underlying but unknown 'actuality'). Stuff like that won't fly in western medicine, but it's not irrational, just less constrained. but I digress... --Ludwigs2 19:17, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• Good, I got a "LOL" out of you. Brangifer said we were ALL not being civil. I really am part Apache Indian, and really do lead a monastic mathematician's life in the desert, and all of my ancestors (and yours, and everyone's) really did originally came from North East Africa (where pre-modern humans migrated out of), but I meant that as levity, not as sincerely thinking you were insulting me.
• More seriously, I agree to some extent with what you call "ontos" and "episteme", in that it might not exist in physical reality, but stil mey work, e.g., the mind may be in this category. You also made a valid point somewhere above, that it is possible that there are points where insertions of needles may have more effect than others, and with the available concepts to ancient Chinese, they may have fit a wrong model to it. For example, there may be about, but not exactly 365 such points, and the Chinese found the coincidence so close to what they incorrectly thought were the exact number of days in a year, added or subtracted a few points to make it fit. The same thing was done by ancient scientific astronomers, trying to fit all planetary motions on circles, and circles withing circles (epicycles), because they had only the idea of circles, not ellipses, to work with. And ellipses are only an approximation, too. Another example of what would appear to be completely unrelated is the approximate 28 day lunar cycle around the earth, and the menstrual cycle of approximately 28 days. That coincidence is so great that I would not be surprised if there were not an underlying relation, like tens of thousands of years of some lineage of lunar ritual tweaking evolution to produce it.
• Your other point is that there are things not yet measured by any western science. This can not be proved, but is certainly true. There may "well be" (pun) a proto-scientific kind of general "well being" that has not been recognized by science, but is being detected by TCM practitioners.
• As I said above, the main reason acupuncure is considered a pseudoscience is that the theory is inconsistent with other sciences, all the rest of which at least try to overlap in a basically consistent manner, together with acupuncture's claims to have a measurable and testable effect, which is a claim to being a science.
• I am a radical skeptic, but I also like to think I am equally radically open minded, and skepticism and open mindedness pull in opposite directions.
• If you don't think acupuncture is a pseudoscience, I guarantee that other editors will do their best to pick fights with you. Every person has beliefs that many others will ridicule, so you are no different than I or the other editors above. Its just that this time, it happened to be your button that got pushed.HkFnsNGA (talk) 19:52, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

You misunderstand which of my buttons got pushed, I think. I don't really have an opinion about TCM and acupuncture that's worth mentioning. I've personally had acupuncture that has been very effective for certain things, but I wouldn't go to an acupuncturist with, say, a compound fracture of the tibia (obviously I'd get a magnetic healing bracelet for that). The problem is that I'm a stickler for reason and common sense, and I get very annoyed when wikipedia editors pull chump moves (like tag-team reverts) to win arguments. I'm not pissed off about your individual opinions; I'm pissed off about your collective behavior. Sorry, but my extensive experience with wikipedia skeptics is that a small but vigorous cadre of them are hot-heads whose actions are restricted to aggressive reverts and mindless expostulations about policy violations; it sucks to deal with them, and I give short shrift to that kind of behavior when I see it materializing.

As I've said already, my only concern is about editors who want to push for a pure dichotomy - one the one hand science, which is all good, and on the other hand non-science, which is all evil pseudoscience. I understand if you think meridians and chi-flow are silly concepts - no reason why you shouldn't think that - but IMO you step into an unreasonable place when you try to assert that they are factually silly. That happens when you say things like "they may have fit a wrong model to it" and "the theory is inconsistent with other sciences". Each of those statements basically makes a falsehood claim, whereas any scientist will tell you that theories are never true or false, they just fit the available evidence to varying degrees. There's nothing wrong with the TCM model, except that it's not the model conventionally used in western medicine, and it doesn't map properly to the model that is used in western medicine (it doesn't even properly map to the same evidence structure). It would be pseudoscience if it habitually tried to make fake claims about science to promote itself; as it stands, it's just sort of different.

My point is, one cannot adopt the perspective of western medical science as the true perspective by which all other perspectives are measured as false. that's not even remotely close to being NPOV. Pseudoscience should be used only where practices actually abuse the precepts of western science, not for anything that someone decides isn't 'scientific enough' to meet their standards. --Ludwigs2 21:01, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Rebuttal of Ludwig2

1. WP:BRD DOES NOT give you the right to restore unsourced material in violation of WP:BURDEN. ("and I restored it for the purposes of discussion.") This has always been my point of contention with you.
2. As far as I can see nobody has agreed with your unsourced restoration of this material.
3. I am sick to death of your pervasive violation of WP:AGF. You are not a telepath, so you are not in a position to read our minds to divine our motivations. Examples include:
   1. "you all want to extend the definition of pseudoscience to include everything that is not strictly within the limits of western science - narrowly defined"
   2. "I swear, sometimes it feels like Wikipedia is harboring the last lost bastion of British colonials, with that incessant colonial need to extol European scientific superiority and save all those poor benighted savages from their strange fetishistic ways."
   3. "Hrafn: Your first point seems to imply that you think that policy justifies tendentious editing and edit warring."
   4. "editors who want to push for a pure dichotomy - one the one hand science, which is all good, and on the other hand non-science, which is all evil pseudoscience."

   As it happens, I don't care about the classification of TCM or acupuncture either way, I do care about reflexive restoration of unsourced material. So kindly stop treating me (and everybody else) as though we're some sort of jihad to restore the British Empire.

Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 03:31, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Hrafn, this section appears highly unwarranted, both because Ludwigs is no longer appealing to have the content restored, and most importantly because it primarily concerns user conduct and not article improvement. This sort of comment belongs on Ludwig's talk page, not here. I'd suggest moving it there (and when you do you're welcome to delete my comment if you'd like). As a personal note which comes only from my editing experience, this sort of thing seems unlikely to elevate the discussion... at best, it would probably spur a shouting match, which won't do anyone any good. If that's the case, the section will be hatted. Jess_talk|_edits 04:35, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Mann_jess: Ludwig2's comments throughout this thread have pervasively been about (wild speculations concerning the motivation for) "user conduct". Will these also be hatted? Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 05:07, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Good point. Let's leave the unpleasantness behind. Ludwigs2 has moved on. See below. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:38, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

@Hrafn If Ludwigs has started an entire section on an article talk page which only serves to discuss user conduct, then yes, it should be hatted or moved. The question is: What will this do to improve the article? I'm having a hard time thinking of much. If you feel strongly about another editor's behavior, you should take those complaints to their user space or to a noticeboard (i.e. WP:ANI). Jess_talk|_edits 06:26, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Acupuncture article sources about pseudoscience

The acupuncture article itself contains lots of sources describing acupuncture as pseudoscience, especially these sections:

• Acupuncture#Criticism

• Acupuncture#Evidence-based_medicine

Brangifer (talk) 20:53, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Summary

The discussion above seems to boil down to this: (I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong)

An unsourced statement that acupuncture is not pseudoscience was:

1. removed by HkFnsNGA.

2. restored by Ludwigs2, still without sourcing.

3. removed by Mann jess.

4. restored by Ludwigs2, for the second time.

5. removed by Hrafn.

What we have here is a classic edit war with one editor insisting on keeping unsourced commentary (with which they happen to agree) and three other editors removing it. Since the edit war has stopped and discussion is progressing nicely, I see no need to report this incident. Since Ludwigs2 still wishes to include the content, what's the solution? He can source the statement. Actually including more examples of pseudoscience isn't necessary. That can be dealt with in their own articles.

Now can we mark this whole section as resolved? At this stage, continuing the very interesting discussion would be a violation of NOTAFORUM. -- Brangifer (talk) 00:13, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Suggested solution

Here is what was removed. If we just leave out the stricken part, can we agree on restoring the rest? I think we can do that just on linguistic grounds without a source:

• "Further, there are protosciences such as cultural, traditional, or ancient practices such as acupuncture practice and traditional Chinese medicine which do not conform to modern scientific principles, but which are not pseudoscience because their proponents do not claim the practices to be scientific according to today's standards of scientific method."

Will that fly with the rest of you? -- Brangifer (talk) 00:38, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't really care much either way, while Ludwigs2 seems to care alot, but my own understanding of a "protoscience" is something that already evolved into a science, i.e., something in history that changed into a science, not that one that we guess may turn into a science. Otherwise, how do we know it is a "proto"-science, and not a "proto"-pseudoscience? The definition in the article is different from the usages I recall from several Philos. of Science courses from long ago. Maybe the expression evolved, or the usages I saw were not picked up by a dictionary.HkFnsNGA (talk) 01:16, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

As a note, the protoscience article does not use that definition. Either that article should be changed, or the proposed wording should be refactored. We should also have at least one source. Jess_talk|_edits 01:19, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Suggested solution sounds like a good idea. Why not give it a try? Xxanthippe (talk) 01:25, 20 January 2011 (UTC).

works for me - it's easier to deal with specific issues about acupuncture and TCM on their respective articles anyway. --Ludwigs2 02:45, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

That's basically what I'm getting at. I perceive that Ludwigs2 objects to the removal of some good content differentiating when and what can or cannot be termed pseudoscience, and that's a legitimate point. That is good content. He also objects to using acupuncture as an example of pseudoscience. Well, we don't have to use any example, at least not here. I'm going to restore the suggested solution and let's see if it looks good. If not, then we can tweak it so it fits better. -- Brangifer (talk) 04:38, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Dang! Now that I've tried it I see that it's not internally consistent! It says "protosciences" and then describes something that doesn't fit the definition. Frankly that middle part can just be eliminated, like this:

"Further, there are protosciences such as cultural, traditional, or ancient practices which do not conform to modern scientific principles, but which are not pseudoscience because their proponents do not claim the practices to be scientific according to today's standards of scientific method."

I'll try that (but I suspect it would be best without any mention of protosciences). -- Brangifer (talk) 04:43, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Sure enough. When I read the whole paragraph, I think the word "protosciences" should be replaced with "metaphysical or religious practices". That would fit just fine, but I'll wait for comments before proceeding. -- Brangifer (talk) 04:48, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes. I actually just hit the edit button to restate my objection to using "protosciences", but before I could you'd come to that conclusion on your own :p According to our own article, protoscience is not the correct word here. Anything else would do fine, unless we find a RS and change the linked article. Using "metaphysical or religious practices" shouldn't need additional sourcing. Go with that. Jess_talk|_edits 04:52, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

In fact... I changed my mind already. Why are we even specifying what kinds of practices don't fit in such a general sense? There are, after all, religious practices which are pseudoscience, such as various forms of creationism (namely ID). Phrasing it this way could mislead the reader into believing this holds true for all religious and metaphysical claims. Perhaps "there are some practices which do not..." would work better? Jess_talk|_edits 04:55, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I can understand! This gives me a headache (not really, but...). The problem with this is that we're writing about the demarcation problem, but there is an article and we have a link to it. Normally a section like this would just use the lead from that article and be done with it. That's the simplest way. Anything else that needs to be said about the subject should be said there, not here. We're writing this in the wrong place. We basically have too much in this section. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:45, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Hmm... I'm not sure if you're saying we should ditch the proposal altogether. If so, I think I'd oppose that notion. The distinction between pseudoscience and practices which don't claim to be science is an important one, as it establishes a context under which the topic can be understood. I would note that I haven't read the article in full in quite a while, so I don't know if that is already covered in enough detail already. Of course, if this is added, we do want to make sure the wording is precise first. I don't personally see any issues with just saying either of:

1) Further, there are some practices which are not pseudoscience because their proponents do not claim them to be scientific according to today's standards of the scientific method.

2) Further, for a practice to be considered pseudoscience, its practitioners must first claim it to be science, or adhere to today's standards of the scientific method. Some traditional practices do not make this claim, and are not considered to be pseudoscience.

I'm not happy with my wording on that last one, but you get the gist. Jess_talk|_edits 17:09, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Also, just to throw another point of contention out there... I'm not sure how I feel about the "today's standards of the scientific method" part in the first proposal. I'm not sure I oppose it because of that alone, but it might be cool to refactor that bit anyway. Something can very much be pseudoscience if the proponents claim it's science but not according to today's standards of the scientific method. The claim that it's science is the important part, not what standard they're using to judge. Jess_talk|_edits 17:14, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

• I worked Ludwigs2's suggestion, as modified by Brangifer, into another sourced and explanatory paragraph, whch I added to the "Boundaries" section. I believe the way I did it is consistent both with views expressed above by Ludwigs2 and all other editors. This is a demostration of my own maxim, that it is generally possible to reach total consensus among reasonable editors discussing things in good faith. (There may not be consensus on my own writing style, so feel free to modify my own edit as much as you may want.) HkFnsNGA (talk) 17:52, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

(e/c) Jess, the problem you're having (and the problem most people have when they consider the pseudoscience issue), is that you're trying to relate it to actual practices. Any time one does that, one gets sucked into some claim that 'this' kind of science is correct science, and 'that' kind isn't, and then starts to choke on the demarkation problem. The issue really should be centered on 'scientific authority' in the socio-political sense, not 'scientific methodology': pseudoscience exists where people or groups try to co-opt scientific authority for some public purpose while ignoring the systems of validation and verification that define scientific endeavors. It's a much more stable and testable definition of the term; basically you click 'yes' if the group wants to appear to be scientific to gain public support of some sort but avoids actually subjecting itself to any rigorous 3rd party examination, and then you can avoid all the unpleasant tug-of-wars through the philosophy of science. just sayin' --Ludwigs2 17:53, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

• I WP:Bold added Ludwig2's "more stable and testable (sociopolitical)definition", to the lead, with RS. Ludwigs2's POV is quite typical of much of post-Kuhnian analytic philosophy of science, and is not "fringe" in any way. Someone might want to add RS to my own source, as it should be pretty easy to find in the contemproray Phil of Sci literature.

I am working on adding something about Ludwig2's remarks on "other standards of evidence" to the "boundaries" section, which is also typical of much post-Kuhnian Phil of Sci.HkFnsNGA (talk) 19:11, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs2, after thinking about your remarks, I found that my desire to be “radically open minded” outweighed my “radically skepticism”, which pull in opposite directions, and added a complete paragraph including the consensus on your “cultural, traditional, or ancient practices” sentence, to both the pseudoscience and protoscience articles.

Regaring TCM, just to show you my skepticism about my own hypocrisy, I spent eleven years at Stanford University, attacking studies by scientists there, as a Philosopher of Mathematical Statistics and Data Analysis. I was there, attacking the “abuse” of the term “energy” in TCM, when I asked for a break, to get some coffee, saying that I had run out of “energy”. I did not mean to use “energy” as a metaphor, but to describe something “actually” not in me.HkFnsNGA (talk) 18:48, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I'm totally with you on that. the word 'energy' does too much work in these discussions (and to complete the physics pun, it encourages a whole lot of foot-pounding). It's funny: in TCM, 'energy' (at core) just means that electric ticklish feeling you get when the needle is set in properly, or when you focus your mind carefully on a part of your body (which is why chi is also called 'breath', because meditators focus on that ticklish feeling on the upper lip as they breathe through their nose). but somehow it got aggrandized into a broader spiritual 'energy' in New Age parlance. The latter is a bit out there, and tends to make normally calm rationalists foam at the mouth, which is perfectly understandable, and yes, a great drain on one's energy.

I'm going to have to read over the whole article to see what changes you've made - it sounds like you've been busy. --Ludwigs2 19:56, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

If you see anything to add to what I put in, or to delete, remember, be WP:Bold and "just do it"!HkFnsNGA (talk) 20:07, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs2, well put. I'm wiping the foam off my mouth! -- Brangifer (talk) 22:09, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the humor, Ludwigs2, I pounded my foot, slapped my knee, and laughed out loud. I should have used some of my foot pounding and knee slapping "energy" that your humor created, for Succussion of a homeopathic remedy, since this is the exact kind of energy is needed for succusion or the water wont remember anything right. As far as broader spiritual energy "being out there", there is no "out there" if you believe, as I do firmly, in the Extended Mind hypothesis. Schroedenger, whose body particles were really spread "out there", went so far as to not even believe in individuated conscience, as he pointed out to in What is Life? (the book that gave Watson and Crick the idea for DNA as storing information). Aldous Huxley, a member of the Huxley Family of strict skeptics (he was the grandson of Darwin's bulldog, T.H. Huxley, the brother of UNESCO founder and first director Julian, and half brother of Nobel laureate mathematical biologist and discoverer of the conduction of electrical "energy" in the body Julian Huxley), had "cosmic energy" ideas that were even more "out there" than Schroedenger, and his second wife Laura H. invented "New Age" philosophy. I just noticed that Brangifer appears to be winking at me just above this remark; take a look and see if that is a real wink I am seeing. I could use a bit of intersubjective verifification right now.HkFnsNGA (talk) 10:05, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

How to avoid edit wars in Pseudoscience talk pages, and LOL

Wikipedia editors can get hot, as is clear in many edit wars (or near edit wars) relating to articles on the pseudosciences. These articles have talk page archives that are so extensive that they defy a thorough reading in a single lifetime, such as the 46 (as of today) archives on the homeopathy talk page here[5]. An entire academic sub-department might be added to university Sociology and Phil of Sci departments, just based on studying Wiki edit warring in these pages.

Personally, I accept the authority of bumper stickers, and “question authority”. Being a “radical skeptic” may seem to be in opposition to being “radically open minded”, e.g., it is indisputable that acupuncture is “nonsense with needles”[6] (since acupuncture is founded on the number 12 from the “12 rivers” of an ancient Chinese empire, and on 365 which, depending on what “is” is, “is” the “number” of days in a year). But this is not necessarily the case, since being skeptical of one’s own views is where the radical skepticism should begin, which requires a radical open mindedness.

In the pseudoscience article, I initially (using WP:RS and a radical skeptic POV ) deleted an assertion that “TCM and acupuncture are NOT pseudoscience”, sparking a near-edit war here[7]. While engaged in the heated talk page discussion, I recalled from eleven pompous years doing philosophy of mathematical statistics and data analysis at Stanford, that while I was once in the middle of lambasting TCM’s abuse of the word “energy”, I had run out of energy, and needed a coffee… and I meant “energy” to refer to a real, actual thing that was “in” (or not “in”) me. What hypocrisy! I then managed to add much to what I deleted as NRS to the pseudoscience article (with RS), adding something positive about cultural, traditional, or Ancient practices here [8]. So I managed to completely reverse my “radical skeptic” POV deletion, by trying to be equally “radically open minded”. I ended having a big LOL at myself.

“There is a gem of truth in everything” sounds preposterous to most radical skeptics. The central problem with buying into this statement is when there is an utter refusal by someone to allow their beliefs to be “falsified”, in any sense of the word. But if you manage to find such a gem (e.g., by interpreting any pseudoscience as possibly being a protoscience, then looking very hard), you will get to LOL at yourself and your prior POV. (Of course, this requires “buying into” the notion of a “paradigm shift”, and then self referentially applying this to Phil of Sci itself.)

One can get the biggest LOL by laughing at ones’ self. So when you get hot, and almost get into an edit war, but then figure out how to completely reverse your own POV, and ADD content to what you originally want to delete, I guarantee you a big LOL at yourself. I recommend this POV to all skeptics - be most skeptical of your own POV, succeed at it, then LOL. An “edit war” is “never” “necessary” (whenever “never” “is”; there may be a modal logic error in “this” sentence; and skeptics should never WP:MOS:Quotation marks overuse “scare quotes”, which can also spark edit wars). HkFnsNGA (talk) 21:59, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Why was this deleted - "Pseudoscience is considered a subclass of "nonsense" by some scientists, e.g., when considering acupuncture."?

The following was deleted, as "not helpful". I don't understand.

Pseudoscience is considered a subclass of "nonsense" by some scientists, e.g., when considering acupuncture.

HkFnsNGA (talk) 00:57, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree that's not a particularly helpful edit summary (ignoring the irony)... that said, I can fathom a guess about why it was reverted. I'd still like to see some cleanup, which might be best done by another editor for copyedit and not content purposes. For instance, the section title needs to be truncated, the section wording needs to be rephrased to a more neutral tone, etc. Even with that done, there might be an objection to the content even being included in the article anyway. We need to establish that this is a notable view to establish its worthiness of inclusion. I haven't read the entire article recently, so I can't comment to that effect. We won't know for sure until the opposing editor comments, but those are some avenues to pursue in the meantime. Jess_talk|_edits 01:25, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

But I reduced it to just the single sentence.HkFnsNGA (talk) 01:43, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Forgive my rambling. Embarrassingly enough, I got confused between your contribution on this page and the one you made to Homeopathy. The only two issues I can see with this edit I mentioned in the section above. Can we perhaps find a source which uses the definition you've proposed? Jess_talk|_edits 04:46, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Just a point. Mann jess, you asked for notability for this, but that's only a requirement for article creation, not article content. Content just has to come from a RS. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:48, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I didn't actually ask for notability, technically speaking... I think it might be fine to include, but was guessing at why it was reverted. That said, content definitely does have to be notable. We can't include every little time someone has used the word pseudoscience, or fringe views, and so on. We have to give proper weight to everything we choose to include, and sometimes the proper weight is zero. That said, I'm apparently all over the map with this issue... too many proposals happening tonight, I guess; You can ignore my request for sources, since clearly you already have them. Jess_talk|_edits 06:37, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

• INCLUDE - It is so fundamental that “pseudoscience” is “nonsense”, that it may be considered by some editors to be “not helpful” to bother to even point it out in the article, being uninformative because it is obvious. It may not be helpful to those already familiar with what “pseudoscience” is, but the purpose of an encyclopedia is not to preach to the choir. A high school student, unfamiliar with the expression “pseudoscience”, might be reading a scholarly article on a pseudoscience, and encounter a word switch to “this nonsense”, or some such. Or a history of science student, looking at attitudes of scientists.

* This interchangeable usage of "pseudoscience", and "nonsense" when referring to it in schlarly articles, is so basic that it appears to be “not helpful”. But this only argues to INCLUDE it, and in the lead, not to delete it.

* A second interpretation of "not helpful" is that it is considered completely obvious by the deleting editor, but possibly might stimulate pro-pseudoscience editors to complain on the talk page. This should never be a criteria for what goes into an encyclopedia, i.e., "delete content to avoid minority editors creating talk page discussions" is not an argument for inclusion or exclusion of content, again arguing to INCLUDE. HkFnsNGA (talk) 17:05, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I think we should wait for the opposing editor to comment here before settling on an explanation for his revert. If he isn't able to respond in a few days, I'd say you should add it back in to spur discussion. If you're in a hurry, you could post to his talkpage with a link here too. I'm not sure whether it's appropriate to add to the lead, but I haven't read the article in full in quite a while, so I'm not the best judge. All the best, Jess_talk|_edits 16:57, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Giving time for an explanation is why I did not revert the deletion. I posted alot on various pseudoscience talk pages, and noticed an overlap of editors on the various articles, so wanted to "go slow", to give time to read and respond. I did not want to bother the editor with a post to his/her talk page, but decided to just sit and wait for a response.HkFnsNGA (talk) 17:05, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

• Xxanthippe , I changed my edit to be about “Usage” of the expression “psedudoscience”, expecting that this makes it incontrovertibly “helpful” under any interpretation of “not helpful”, and WP:Bold reinserted it. But if you meant another interpretation of “helpful” that I did not anticipate, feel free to delete my new edit, and discuss it here.HkFnsNGA (talk) 18:25, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I object to the "nonsense" sentence because, well, it is just nonsense. Unless you interpret the word the way the sources surely meant it: As an expression of irritation about the mere existence of pseudoscience. (Or some other negative emotion.) The fact that our nonsense article is much less developed than this one and that none of the senses of the term "nonsense" that are described there fits here is symptomatic of this. Encyclopedia articles, however, do not express irritation. They make factual statements that are technically correct.

Actually, calling pseudoscience nonsense does make some sense as a factual statement insofar as the word "pseudoscience" itself is often used in precisely the same way. However, Popper and others after him have attempted with some success to give the term a precise, useful definition, and so pseudoscience now exists as a serious philosophical concept. This is what this article is about, not the sloppy approach of some self-styled "skeptics" who write about pseudoscience in general and various specific forms of pseudoscience and other nonsense (I am allowed to write this on a talk page -- this is not article space) in a way that fits Ludwigs2's definition of pseudoscience: "Pseudoscience exists where people or groups try to co-opt scientific authority for some public purpose while ignoring the systems of validation and verification that define scientific endeavors".

This article should describe pseudoscience, not be itself pseudoscientific. Calling pseudoscience nonsense in the context of an encyclopedia is about as pseudoscientific as Sokal's excellent paper. Hans Adler 21:05, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Hans, I acutally put Ludwigs2's socio-political definition in the article, with RS, and his is a good definition that is not uncommon. I think the attitude of most scientists, using "nonsense" to describe a pseudoscience, is one of dismissiveness more often than irritation. Usage in scientific literature (e.g., things fouond in Google Scholar, might have an expression like "this nonsense". If no one knew pseduoscience was nonsense, they might not know what "this" referred to. Popper likely also often replaced pseudoscience with nonsense in conversations and maybe in writings, as this is quite common in academia. Please reconsider, as you yourself, as you pointed out, slipped out "nonsense" in reference to pseudoscience. On the other hand, nonsense is not always pseudoscience, because pseudoscience is a kind of nonsense. (I will looke at the nonsense article and see about improving it. Nonsense happens to be my forte.)HkFnsNGA (talk) 09:30, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

• Include - sources indicate pseudoscience has no valid scientific criteria. It is nonsense. Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 21:17, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
  • ZuluPapa, please do not edit my posts. I had to undo the bolding of four full sentences. It gave entirely the wrong impression of my state of mind. Hans Adler 21:21, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Zulu Papa 5 *, I think I recall your name as bringing up something about "cause and effect" being absent from an article, perhaps in scientific method. If that was you, I checked the scientific method article and there is nothing on this in it. You should WP:Bold put your thoughts in the article, in a section by that name. Even a single sentence will do. If it is controversial, someone will tag it with a tag, and others might find a source for your ideas, and others might improve what you write. Your point was a good one and should not be forgotten with time.HkFnsNGA (talk) 09:36, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks ... I am having difficultly staying focused now and must find additional sources. Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 14:39, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Just put something in without sources. Others will either delete it, or fix it.HkFnsNGA (talk) 23:06, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I think that Hans Adler cuts to the pith of the matter here. There is no need to veer from an encyclopedic voice, and indeed we are bound by policy to restrict ourselves to factual statements drawn from reliable sources without editorializing. Additionally, while there may be some social purpose to listing acupuncture at this article prominently, it actually detracts from the article quality to use a less than clear-cut example. - 2/0 (cont.) 19:29, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I removed it and copy-edited the phrase to read:The term "pseudoscience" is considered by some scientists, medical doctors, scholars, and skeptics to be a subclass of “nonsense”, so the expressions are often used interchangeably. I don't see how that's not a simpler, more clear, and more encyclopedic way of saying the same thing. 2/0 is right that acupuncture is a bad example because it is not clear-cut (because some acupuncture is scientific, because some acupuncture doesn't even pretend to be scientific, because some acupuncturists dispute the label even if they are not following scientific methods). If we want to use an example at all--though I think it's unnecessary--I think we can pick something less widespread, less researched, and less ambiguous (Dowsing? Reiki? Nothing?). Ocaasi (talk) 04:32, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

This whole article has turned into an attack article.

If you look at how pseudoscience as used by both general public and scientific community, you will see that the introduction used here is way too definite about its use as an insult. if you want this article to be just an insult, then split it off as "Pseudoscience, the insult!"

The term, "nonsense" is simply dismissive and has no place here!Tom Butler (talk) 17:30, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

The terms "pseudoscience" and "nonsense" are mostly used interchangeably by scientists, as in the RS citations. This widespread usage is historically significant, and as a usage, the information belongs in an encycopedia article. HkFnsNGA (talk) 18:12, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

No, "nonsense" is always intended to be dismissive. As such, it is an insult and most good scientists I know do not go around being insulting. Tom Butler (talk) 18:18, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Right now, you are saying that the science is bad and not the application of the science. If I spend the night in a haunted building and report that I have scientifically confirmed that it is haunted--I did scientific research, then you could say that what I did was pseudoscientific. If I engage a professor of physics from a local university to study the profile of the physical energy in the building to determine if there are any substantive reasons for people thinking it is haunted, then that can be expected to be an application of good science. It is the application and not necessarily the subject that you seem to be after here. What you should title this article is "pseudoscientific." As it stands, you are just being insulting. Tom Butler (talk) 18:18, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Using your reference 2 "A comparison of the negated terms related to science can contribute to clarify the conceptual distinctions. “Unscientific” is a narrower concept than “non-scientific” (not scientific), since the former but not the latter term implies some form of contradiction or conflict with science. “Pseudoscientific” is in its turn a narrower concept than “unscientific”. The latter term differs from the former in covering inadvertent mismeasurements and miscalculations and other forms of bad science performed by scientists who are recognized as trying but failing to produce good science." Good science can be conducted without endorsing the subject. Tom Butler (talk) 18:33, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Tom, relax a bit. the whole pseudoscience issue is badly represented and badly handled on wikipedia, yes, but getting up in arms about it is not a productive approach to the problem. --Ludwigs2 18:58, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I was once the substitute teacher for the travelling clown class of Cirque du Solei. I considered "nonsense" to be a compliment, not an attack. HkFnsNGA (talk) 20:28, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

"May"

Tom Butler, I think you miss my point here. There are almost certainly issues with this article (there usually are, but I have not caught up on the recent mess beyond a brief scan here to see if your bold edit that I reverted had been discussed), but the introductory sentence as it stands is just plain bad English. The subclauses where you added "may" are part of a list of alternatives, joined by the conjunction "or". This indicates that, while everything properly described as pseudoscience lacks scientific status, it will not necessarily fulfill all of the conditions in the representative list. If a claim, belief, or practice fulfills none of the stated conditions, then it is not pseudoscience and is off-topic here. Whether any particular practice should be described as such is, of course, better discussed at the relevant talk pages. - 2/0 (cont.) 19:19, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Apart from that, in an encyclopedia we need not be overly concerned with the broadest applications of a word. People consult encyclopedias for the technical definitions and use dictionaries if they want to know about the usage in common speech. We don't say that a murderer is someone who has killed unlawfully, or is under possibly false suspicion of having done so, or who may have killed a person or an animal in a technically lawful way that is nevertheless regarded as immoral by some. It's for dictionaries to list all the marginal uses. We may or may not mention them in the article, but other than in truly exceptional cases they certainly don't belong in the first paragraph. Hans Adler 21:08, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I just came to this article and read that pseudoscience is any practice that does not apply accepted scientific methodology. That is essentially what the first paragraph states. Then I survey other articles in Wikipedia and see virtually every (what skeptics call) "fringe subject" is described as pseudoscience. As a literalist, I gather that Wikiepdia is saying that science is never applied to these subjects.

That is a pretty big deal since government funding is often based on public perception. Governments around the world, including the USA, have accepted the skeptical definition of science and it is reinforced here. If that is what you want to say, then you need to be more precise. All inclusive statements are not acceptable.

Also, looking at the "nonsense" references, all 7 of them are about acupuncture. With the possible exception of Reference 12, all they establish is that the editor does not much like acupuncture and that skeptics like to call what they disagree with "nonsense."

• Reference 6 has "nonsense" in the title, obviously for emphasis. It is not a peer-reviewed article.
• Reference 7 is a skeptical article--skeptics are always insulting and the reference is not a reliable source. A search did not turn up "nonsense."
• Reference 8 is a skeptical blog (not RS) and nonsense did not show in a search.
• Reference 9 is another skeptic (co-founder of the New England Skeptical Society.)
• Reference 10 is also a skeptical website with no reference to "nonsense" in the article.
• Reference 11 is more a roundup of other articles
• Reference 12 is perhaps the only one that should be considered a good reference.

The term is being given undue weight in the introduction and is clearly intended to vilify rather than inform. Tom Butler (talk) 21:35, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Basic reading comprehension is required for using and editing Wikipedia. Compare:

"Okay, I just came to this article and read that pseudoscience is any practice that does not apply accepted scientific methodology. That is essentially what the first paragraph states." (what you said)

"Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific methodology, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status." (what the first sentence says)

The key idea here is that pseudosciences is pretend science. Cooking is not pseudoscience, except arguably in the few cases of cooks who falsely claim to have made it a science.

If Wikipedia calls something a pseudoscience that is not actually a pseudoscience, then you will have to fix the respective article. As someone who had to go through pages and pages of discussions to get the absurd categorisation of the ghost article as pseudoscience finally removed (with the help of Ludwigs2), I can understand your concern in principle, though I don't know whether I will agree with you about any single article. In any case editing the definition of pseudoscience for such a reason is not the right approach. This is a term that many philosophers have written about, and they are writing mainly about how to define it precisely to get a good demarcation from science. Hans Adler 22:21, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Irritating remarks about reading skills aside, like it or not, this article is a reference used by most of Wikipedia. This astounding piece of literature is a good example: "All of these attempted explanations by believers are roundly criticized by physicists and skeptics as being pseudophysics, a branch of pseudoscience which explains magical thinking by using irrelevant jargon from modern physics to exploit scientific illiteracy and impress the unsophisticated." (from [9])

If the article was titled "pseudoscientific", then "Pseudoscience is a claim presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific methodology, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status" would work just fine. This intro would probably work without changing the title. My problem is that people do not say "That claim is pseudoscience" they say" "That is pseudoscience" and link to this article.

Please do not mistake my intentions here. I agree that there are serious problems with people mistaking many concepts as being supported by good science. I have to deal with such fuzzy thinking all of the time, but I don't resort to generalization of this scale and I don't resort to insults. ... well, mostly don't. Tom Butler (talk) 23:15, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

"Explanations" of "energy healing" that use physics terminology seem to me to be very good examples of pseudoscience. So is your problem that people generalise from one aspect of a topic to the entire topic, claiming that it must be pseudoscience because parts of it are pseudoscientific?

Humans have a known cognitive bias to identify related things that they don't like or just don't know much about. Editors who are only interested in a topic to the extent that they want to fight pseudoscience are sometimes a problem in that respect. They tend to stress the pseudoscientific aspects unduly even if they are fringe relative to the topic itself. This is very hard to counter. Hans Adler 23:51, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that is my issue. In this article, we give a name for bad applications of science but in a general way that helps a person generalize. I cannot edit in most of those articles because Brangifer will cry to the COI Noticeboard, but if this article was more specific to say that an application of science may be pseudoscience, then I could reasonably argued that editors must be specific about what in the subject is and is not a appropriate science. "A claim presented" is more specific and "a claim, belief, or practice" is way too inclusive.

Back to that haunted house, a careful survey of the energy (electricity, audio, rf, magnetic, gravitational) could be excellent and appropriate science. Concluding that there are ghosts because of variable em is not. One is appeal to science (authority or "co-opting science" as I suppose Ludwig's sociologists would say). The other is just good research. Tom Butler (talk) 00:08, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Hmm. Anyone using physical instruments in such a context and making claims of measuring "energy" related to sound or gravitation would almost certainly be engaged in pseudoscience. But I understand you just meant this by way of a hypothetical example? Hans Adler 00:38, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm.? Audio frequency energy is a major contaminant in many "haunted" situations. Since it may influence the formation of EVP, any good "energy survey" should consider it. Gravity anomalies associated with granite intrusions are frequently claimed as indicators of hauntings activity and I do not believe this has been empirically studied. Detecting variations in local magnetism using a magnetometer gives some measure of this. And yes, it is part of the energetic profile of a location. Properly done, such a survey is accomplished using good science and without regard to possible paranormal results. That is my point. separate the application of science from the belief. That is not possible as the article is written. Tom Butler (talk) 17:29, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

"Audio frequency energy"? What's that supposed to be? It sounds as if it should be physics, is that correct? Can you point me to a (mainstream!) scientific publication that discusses it? To be absolutely clear: It sounds like a clear example of pseudoscience to me. But I have studied only about 3 years' worth of physics for my maths degree, so obviously I can't claim to know everything in that field, and of course you may be using non-standard terminology for something that actually exists. Hans Adler 17:41, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay Hans, I can see this is not a good place for me. I don't understand your dismissive attitude. See Sound and note that there are a number of references to the energy associated with audio. Most of the frontier subjects branded as pseudoscience are so because the accuser thinks the subject is impossible or matters of delusion. It is used to discredit the people trying to study the subjects. That is probably why philosophy and sociology keeps creeping into this article.

As along as this article is written in the sociological view ... nonsense, appeal to authority and such, rather than the inappropriate application of methodology, then it will remain part of the problem, rather than a service to humankind, as you all obviously believe Wikipedia is supposed to be. Tom Butler (talk) 18:38, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Of course there is energy involved in sound, but energy is an abstraction that cannot be measured directly. (At least in practice. Theoretically you can measure it by weighing, but that's obviously not feasible for such small amounts so close to Earth.) You can also measure certain more directly observable quantities and then derive the amount of a certain form of energy that is present. But that's a rather pointless undertaking. If there is anything special, you will see it in the more directly observable parameters and don't have to transform it into something else that has a fashionable name first. Hans Adler 22:56, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Tom, the problem is mostly miscommunication, I think. Ghost Hunters can use stringently scientific tools and techniques and still be pseudoscientific because they work from preconceptions that most scientists would puzzle over. Yes, most places in the world (including haunted houses) have a certain level of background noise (aka 'audio frequency energy') that might interfere with sensitive scientific experiments, but the very act of trying to distinguish random background noise from specific noises that are supposedly related to paranormal activities draws in a number of a priori assumptions that scientists would not agree to. The problem is that while such experiments would be superficially objective, they inevitably rely on a subjective interpretation about the meaning of certain noises (as opposed to objective recognition of such noises) which throws the whole project into question. I mean, it's one thing to hear and measure an eerie-sounding groan - that's objective. it's quite another thing to assert that disembodied spirits exist and make such sounds, which can be distinguished from old pipes, sagging house frames, distant traffic... I think that Hans is just confused about which side of this example you're coming from. --Ludwigs2 19:43, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs2, "eerie-sounding groan" describes the sound I make after reading some comments and edits on pseudoscience related pages. I hope my neighbors don't think my place is haunted. HkFnsNGA (talk) 20:07, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Haunted is just an example you all will know. There are others, such as the possible influence of biofield with intention, remote viewing and ITC. You can grown, but it makes me nervous to see groaners edit these subjects, as they tend to be faith-based.

Ludwig, I concur with your assessment of the problem of credibility, a priori assumption on both sides of the question) and what are often faith-based views. As an engineer, running an organization professing objectivity, the issue is lack of data based on real study. I don't care what the mainstream thinks, but I cannot understand what I study without that research and it is not going to happen without funding that will never come with the government parroting the skeptical view as propagated here.

Perhaps that might be a viable approach to this article. Science is pseudoscience if it is applied from an a priori assumptions whether they are tenable or not. That would equally apply to the assumption that there is dark matter and the assumption that there is subtle energy. The corollary to that would be that a priori rejection of a claim is also pseudoscience.

Where that neat little package goes bad is the sociological catch 22 in which we have no common ground for conversation. Mainstream science cannot convince me I am wrong because it does not speak in a language that shows it has studied the subject. ("Crackpot" is not a proper science-based assesment.) I cannot convince mainstream science that I am right because the subject is simply taboo. Since mainstream science is dominant, "it cannot be because science does not allow for it and therefore your belief in its possibility is delusional" will remain the status quo.

Oh well..... Tom Butler (talk) 21:01, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Are you proposing this definition be used for the article? If so, we need reliable sourcing to back it up. If not, then I'd have to point you to WP:NOTFORUM - discussion of the topic is not appropriate here; This page is intended to discuss article improvement. As a sidenote, concepts in science like dark matter are both evidence based and testable. They also have enough backing by the scientific community to disqualify them as pseudoscience. That they are either abstract notions, or beyond "visual" investigation is irrelevant in light of those two facts. Jess_talk|_edits 22:04, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs2's sociological definition

Ludwigs2 proposed a soliological definition on these talk pages. -

In sociology, pseudoscience may exist where people or groups try to co-opt scientific authority for some public purpose (e.g., junk science in the courts or in politics) while ignoring the systems of validation and verification that define scientific endeavors, “most notably a willingness to be disproven by new evidence (if and when it appears), or supplanted by a more-predictive theory”.

I did not agree with replacing the existing definition, but found Ludwigs2's definition to be noncontroversial (post-Kuhn standard issue). I therefore included it in its own paragraph in the lead. But my insertion of Ludwigs2's definition was reverted because I had a bad source. I therefore reinserted it with "citatin needed" tag, which I think is not necessary because the content is not controversial. HkFnsNGA (talk) 22:42, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Just to nitpick... if it was reverted, it likely is controversial, by definition. If someone could track down a source for it, that'd be great. Jess_talk|_edits 23:10, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

In spite of some earlier extensive research on the topic, I think I had not seen this definition before. Yet it strikes me as probably the most insightful that I have seen so far. This is certainly what defines a pseudoscience for me. Now let's look for a source. Hans Adler 23:31, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

It is not a good definition because of the identification with '"public purpose". While practicioners of pseudoscience often have such a purpose in mind it is not intrinsic to the practice of pseudoscience. Often cranks try to promulgate their own eccentric ideas with no more intent than to have them recognised by others. Plenty of examples can be found on Wikipedia (see Heim theory), which is a paradise for cranks until they draw attention to themselves by going too far and get stopped. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:12, 26 January 2011 (UTC).

I didn't understand the Heim theory example. HkFnsNGA (talk) 06:31, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Ok, a couple of points to clarify...

First, I didn't offer this as a 'sociological definition' for use in mainspace, and was fairly surprised (but not upset) when it ended up there. I offered this in talk to explain why the definitions used by wikipedia editors often fall to pieces under examination (based on Kuhn, yes, and on a fairly extensive reading in the philosophy of science). If you want to find someone in the literature who holds a perspective of this sort you're probably going to want to look at Feyerabend, or in the post-modernist critiques of science, and even then you're not likely to find direct discussions of pseudoscience, because pseudoscience (believe it or not) is not really that much of a concern in the philosophy of science these days. Wikipedia editors tend to use a rigid interpretation of a theory of pseudoscience that was already dated in the 1970s, and they end up constantly rehashing the same ontological quandaries that PoS scholars maundered over in the 70's; I was just trying to wave in a little fresh air on a stale talk page issue.

Don't get me wrong, the view I gave is the logically a sounder definition, if only because it defines pseudoscience in terms of a positive assertion - what pseudoscientists do - as opposed to defining it in terms of a negative assertion - what isn't a science. It would not be a controversial or surprising definition anywhere except wikipedia, and it's only controversial here because it interferes with a particular form of wikipolitics, about which there is nothing to do except roll one's eyes and sigh deeply.

Second, Xxanthippe, "promulgating one's eccentric ideas so they are recognized by others" is the very definition of having a public purpose. Some guy who sits in his garage all day writing out a 'New Physics' purely for his own solitary interest is not a pseudoscientist - I don't know what he is, though I'm sure there's a DSM IV category for it. Science is public, by definition. This is inherent in the nature of validity and replicability because effects need to be replicable and usable by other people; science relies on publicness as a means of self-correction and authentication. The key to understanding pseudoscience really lies in the way that pseudoscientists abuse this publicness to assert authenticness and avoid self-correction. But again, I'm simply pointing out why these discussions keep smacking face-first into the demarcation problem. --Ludwigs2 02:59, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

"Public" doesn't add much because all normal science is "public" anyway. The scientist seeks to convince the world of the validity of her/his findings. The same for the pseudoscientist. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:34, 26 January 2011 (UTC).

yes, exactly, except the scientist conforms to a set of public (communally determined) rules about what counts as proper evidence, whereas the pseudoscientist applies a set of private (idiosyncratic) rules for evidence and flouts the public rules. part of the problem with the demarcation issue, in fact, is that every once in a while someone's crazy idiosyncratic evidence-rules actually work and a new science is born, and no one can quite figure out what to do with that (philosophically speaking). I mean, Newton comes along and says "look, if you take this equation you can predict the motion of everything in the universe", which is an absolutely insane thing to say (ask anyone in an intro physics course), but hey! How the hell did that happen? PoS people have been kicking themselves in the head over that for decades. --Ludwigs2 07:15, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Maybe I'm missing some of the sociological nuances here, but aren't the contributions of Newtonian science at least that we can trust math fundamentally, and that neither logic, mathematical equations or p-values require social support in order to be valid? Newton's reception at the time, or the stunning deviation of his ideas from the norm seems to be tangential to how we measure something's worth as science today, since only from the validity of the data and the soundness of the methods do the conclusions garner status, not from consensus approval. Or is that just a clean modern answer to a murkier problem. Ocaasi (talk) 07:33, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Don't over-read it: just hyperbole. No one really questioned Newton in his own time, or ever. I could have chosen a better example (for instance, Plate Tectonics, which everyone thought was stupid when it was first proposed), but... --Ludwigs2 07:47, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I understand the emphasis on 'inter-objectivity' (to use an awfully redundant word), which would involve more than one experimenter, but I still don't find 'public' necessary. If I can personally conduct an experiment with valid experimental conditions, I think it's scientific even if no one else can confirm it (as long as I can repeat the experiment with appropriate controls and design). There is probably an overlap between individual cranks and self-delusion, but if a crank thinks he is performing science but selling it to no one but himself, why isn't that pseudoscience all the same, albeit a kind even more lonely and unlikely to receive peer review? Ocaasi (talk) 05:05, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

"Public" is not the right word. , and I can't think of an alternative right now, but I understand Ludwigs2's point. Co-opting the word "science" and the appearance of being scientific, to get its caché is the point. Some pseudoscientists are delusional and think they are doing science, but others just want to use the caché of being thought of as scientific by the "public", meaning by some class of others not in their pseudoscience field. Maybe someone can suggest different wording. HkFnsNGA (talk) 06:18, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Here are some words to work on that may help get rid of the "public puropse" -

"In sociology, a pseudoscience may exist where, in order to obtain or assume the authority and reputation of science, its practitioners try to create the appearance of using the methodologies of science when they it do not, most notably by being unwilling to be disproven by new evidence (if and when it appears), or supplanted when there is a more functional theory.".

This wording deals with Ocaasi's self deluded lonely scientist who might want the reputation for their own self image, and deals with the "public". HkFnsNGA (talk) 07:41, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

(e/c)@ Ocassi: pardon me for going a bit off topic on a subject I love, but the issue here (and really one of the hallmarks of science) is not inter-objectivity, but rather the inductive claim that rigorous inter-subjectivity tends towards objectivity. In other words, the more people who have the same subjective experience under controlled conditions, the more likely that the experience represents an objective fact about the world. Often this is abbreviated by the scientist (i.e. the scientist will simply assert that anyone who bothers to look will see the same result, based on his own systematic control of the conditions, and most reviewers take it for granted), but the principle still holds. so even if you conduct an experiment by yourself, part of being scientific is obeying the stringently and communally defined rules of inter-subjective experience. Your experiment has to be performable by an arbitrary person with the same results, otherwise even you wouldn't consider it valid.

at HkFnsNGA: that looks ok. doesn't really get rid of the 'public' issue (just hides it behind the words 'authority' and 'reputation', which are inherently public words), but, maybe that's for the best. However, I've had two G&Ts, so I'm not sure I'm completely compos mentis. I'll reread it in the morning. careful with the 'predictive' language, though: that too is fairly archaic PoS. I'd be happier if you replaced if with 'useful' or 'functional'. --Ludwigs2 07:42, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Its functional now. It deals with "public" issues of Ocaasi's isolated scientist seeking self image (which is really self delusion), in that they might want the appearance to themselves and no one else. No public involved. HkFnsNGA (talk) 07:49, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I WP:Bolded it in. Feel free to modify or revert if it still has problems. "Appearance" can be to oneself, as a kind of bad faith self delusion, so a "public" could be the target of appearance, but does not have to exist at all with reworded version. It would still be nice to get RS on this. My wording comes from memory of going over this in elementary PoS classes, so I am pretty sure RS can be found without too much work. HkFnsNGA (talk) 14:01, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I propose we remove this sentence from the lead. It is unrelated in the rest of the article - there's no follow up and no references. It's also rather ambiguous - seems to be saying pseudoscience manifests in some special way in social science and sociology but stops there. Maybe this is a topic that could be expanded on in articles about those topics rather than the non sequitur it appears to be here. Jojalozzo 15:35, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Ludwigs2's definition is a good one, but it was added to the article rather incompetently, and in fact it was never intended to be included. Surely some experts have discussed a definition of this type, so let's find the reliable sources first. Hans Adler 16:09, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I have no objection to removing it. I put it in because I believed it to be true, and sourcable, and something commonly encountered by laypersons in news about including creationism in public education. But my primary motivation was (given it was true and sourcable) to end talk page discussion. I put a CN tag on the recent version, but someone can delete to whole thing if they want, with no objection from me. HkFnsNGA (talk) 17:25, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Pseudoscience as nonsense and bad faith

While scientists and logical positivist philosophers may consider pseudoscience to be nonsense (sense = meaning; so pseudoscience = unverifiable or unfalsifiable = meaningless = nonmeaning => nonsense; or some such reasoning), sociologists, psychiatrists, philosophers of mind, ethicists, and existentialists might better classify it as a kind of bad faith. Bad faith is characterized by an intention to deceive using spurious argumentation (pseudo-logic), a refusal to confront facts, or self delusion. I found iffy RS for putting nonsense in the pseudoscience article (I love puns), but I can’t find RS on this (and did not expect to) so it is original research. But editors here might want to constructively contribute to the bad faith article, which is in need of much work, since the ideas are similar. HkFnsNGA (talk) 07:28, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I nixed it - POV-pushing fluff. hopefully whomever is advocating for it will explain their reasoning here, but if not I'll nix it again. silliness. --Ludwigs2 18:12, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

The "nonsense" info is not fluff. It is the way scientists view pseudoscience, and the usage is such that they are used by scientists as synonyms to describe anything purporting to be scientific. The expressions are used interchangeably, or similar such, as in the many RS provided. HkFnsNGA (talk) 01:06, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately it is fluff, and worse, it's polemic fluff. I can find a ton and a half of reputable source which call FOX News 'nonsense' (and I can make a very good argument that it is in fact factually nonsense), but we are not going to be adding '"Some people think FOX News is pure nonsense" To the FOX News article. it's wp:Weasel wording, it's tendentious, and it's a bad faith way to approach editing an encyclopedia. Rule #1 of an encyclopedia is that articles have to give a basic level of respect to all noteworthy topics: if it doesn't, it's not fulfilling it's purpose as an encyclopedia. Indulging in name-calling without clear sourcing and direct attribution is a definite nono. --Ludwigs2 03:30, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Common usage is not irrelevant, but 'nonsense' seems like a potshot to me. Better that we explain the facets of science, the pretenses of pseudoscience, and give some comparative examples of each. But I think 'nonsense' is just like name calling. Ocaasi (talk) 03:33, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Pseudoscience has been examined by a number of philosophers, including some with a high profile. They are the experts on the topic. We don't have to resort to using statements from scientists who are merely expressing their irritation but not trying to make any specific informative point. Hans Adler 07:22, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Also, bad faith is simply not a necessary feature of pseudoscience. Most pseudoscience is just self-deception. The lowest level of science competence is when you are so incompetent that you don't even realise what you are doing is not science. Unfortunately some people who think of themselves as scientists stoop to that level when they are dealing with pseudoscience. They pretend that they are combatting it in a scientific way, using only scientifically sound arguments, when they are actually just making stuff up to express their emotions. This kind of behaviour can often be observed in Wikipedia, and sometimes it gets disruptive. This behaviour, too, is sometimes a symptom of self-deception rather than bad faith. Hans Adler 07:33, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Hans. This is an important point. As a person both on the receiving end of accusations of pseudoscience and as a person trying to advise others how to conduct good science, how this article is written is much more than a philosophical one. People will copy it, good scientists will refer to it as a reference and governments will likely adopt its values. And I assure you this is not just hyperbole. The NSF referred to an article out of the Skeptical Enquirer to justify its view on pseudoscience. Some of the dominant editors here subscribe to opinions set by the skeptical journals. In a literal sense, this article may set the tone for what is good science and who is practicing it--certainly who will be funded.

We contracted a research group to study a question. They did good science in the mainstream sense, but can only be expected to be published in a journal that itself is always branded as a pseudoscience publication. Depending on its version, this Wiki article has been written with the assumption of the researcher's bad faith. If it cannot be written as Hans is suggesting, to allow for degrees of acceptable science, then it will always be just a bone of contention.

By degrees of acceptable science, I mean study: to use practices of good science to learn more about something; research: to use practices of science to develop and test hypothesis; science: research reported in peer-reviewed journals. I conduct good research but am mostly self-published, so without properly vetted reports, I sould not say I do good science. This article is not about pseudo-study or pseudo-research.

The real problem comes when we say that science can only be done on accepted subjects and can only be reported in accepted journals. As Wiki editors, we do not have the right to set such policy. All of the complaints from the mainstream I have seen about bad science have been about application of practices (like cold fusion), subject (all things paranormal) and people (such as the Parapsychological Ass.) This article should focus on practices and avoid specific subjects areas or groups. Tom Butler (talk) 18:58, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Overview

Ocaasi, can you revisit the last lines of the overview? here, it read pretty well, but you changed the statistical parts from elements of the scientific method to required elements for science to be done. I read as much of the reference as Google would let me here and the author does not seem to be saying that it is a condition of good science--just if used, it should be done right. Tom Butler (talk) 02:51, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi Tom, I'm not sure which edit you mean. About 2 months ago I copy-edited different sections (some of which was reverted by Kenosis). I didn't intend to change the meaning in any place, except to make it more clear and readable. From my History, all I see are minor rephrasings, so I don't know what switch from 'elements' to "required" you're talking about, and the diff you listed doesn't show it. I'll look again, but as of now I'm not sure which change seems off, or even different. Ocaasi (talk) 06:32, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Here is the quote from [10]:

Current

All gathered data, including the experimental or environmental conditions, are expected to be documented for scrutiny and made available for peer review, allowing further experiments or studies to be conducted to confirm or falsify results. The scientific method also involves the statistical quantification of significance, confidence, and error.[10]

Proposed

All gathered data, including experimental/environmental conditions, are expected to be documented for scrutiny and made available for peer review, thereby allowing further experiments or studies to be conducted to confirm or falsify results, 'as well as to determine other important factors such as statistical significance, confidence intervals, and margins of error.[12]

I think it would be good to return to that sentence. "other important factors such as ..." is a good way to include reference to such tools as statistical analysis without saying that they are required elements of good science. If no one disagrees, then I will restore that sentence later today. Tom Butler (talk) 18:05, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I refactored to make the versions clear. I didn't see the change having a difference in terms of of necessity. I meant that doing statistics is often part of doing science, not that it must be. If you can rephrase it to indicate that go for it. Maybe just add 'commonly' before 'involves' in the current version. Or if others have different ideas... Ocaasi (talk) 20:51, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Merge this article with Junk Science, Voodoo science, and Pathological science?

Merge this article with Junk Science, Voodoo science, and Pathological science? HkFnsNGA (talk) 21:27, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Junk Science appears to be very much just an American phenomenon, but could be merged here with no apparent loss. I certainly wouldn't merge in the other direction. I had never heard of Pathological science before now. Thanks for broadening my mind. Still thinking about that one. HiLo48 (talk) 22:48, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Junk Science has its own particular context involve litigation and political advocacy. Its main thrust is public relations, so pseudoscience (the method) is just incidental to the goals of spreading doubt, creating the appearance of debate where none exists, and countering legitimate concerns. I think it could be a small section in the pseudoscience article, but there's too much separate info to integrate them completely. Ocaasi (talk) 23:22, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I think junk science can easily be merged here, and should be. Pathological science I've never heard of either, but seems to be a slightly different issue - science that is only bad because the scientists are overly-optimistic about small effects - but could probably be worked in as well. In fact, pathological science may fail notability; I'm debating whether to tag it so. --Ludwigs2 05:40, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Section: List of pseudosciences commonly encountered

I believe that there should be examples likely to be known by laypersons in the lede, for explanatory value. Also, there should be a section listing commonly encountered pseudosciences. HkFnsNGA (talk) 00:11, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

This is not a good idea for this page which is devoted to conceptual issues. It would lead to interminable edit wars as all the cranks lined up to delist their own speciality and list everybody else's (see Martin Gardner, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science). Some might even want to list Sociology as a pseudoscience. Think what an argument that would provoke. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:46, 27 January 2011 (UTC).

Xxanthippe, I am relatively new to pseudoscience articles, but it only took me only a few hours to appreciate the point you make. However, examples are the best way for me to understand almost any concept. When I lecture, if I don't give examples, it takes forever for an audience to get the concept, if ever. With adequate RS, at least a few noncontroversial examples should be discussed. I seem to recall from many years ago Popper or someone in his circle used unmeasureable and unfalsifiable psychoanalysis as textbook pseudoscience. It would also be informative for an encyclopdeia user to know what are commonly accepted by scientists as pseudoscience. Maybe edit wars can be avoided by wording like "these scientists or eminent scientific bodies call what is on list psedudosciences" with RS. Or, "according to (RS), blah blah is a pseudoscience. HkFnsNGA (talk) 01:08, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, see, here's the problem right in front of you. If you add psychoanalysis to the list, I'll revert it: Popper's definition of pseudoscience is incredibly dated, and even Popper wasn't entirely convinced that psychoanalysis fit the bill. The minute you start adding examples (unless they are clear-cut, everyone-and-their-mother-already-agrees examples), you're going to have to defend the inclusion, and that will lead both reasonable editors and pov-pushers into problematic debates. Which definition of pseudoscience are we using, and why? Are we applying the definition conservatively or liberally? And if we stick with the obvious clear-cut examples (like creationism) we'll get editors complaining that we are unfairly singling out that particular thing.--Ludwigs2 02:53, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Maybe we could use a hypothetical example, in which some set of insufficient evidence is used to support logic leading towards an invalid conclusion, meanwhile purported to be scientific. If we don't leave an entire profession (Acupuncture, Psychoanalysis) in the cross-hairs but instead just give a specific example, we can indicate a pseudoscientific action rather than indict an entire field. Ocaasi (talk) 03:36, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

That would open up to anti-WP:Original Research and anti;WP:synthesis finatics (and be tricky).

Psychoanalysis can be used to exemplify the idea of non-empirical basis and falsifiability (e.g., "Popper said that... psychoanalysis... penis envy... nothing can refute it + RS"), modern acupuncture (with specified points) for stacking science on garbage points determined by the numerological days in a year and refusal to acknowledge no anatomical structures corresponding to 365, homeopathy for refusal to acknowledge proof of existence of molecules, TCM for sympathetic magic (tiger's penis for impotence), creationism for refusal to acknowledge multiple inter-consistent sciences from paleontology to astronomy showing the same thing - more than 6,000 years old, etc. Without these kinds of specific examples, I'm not sure I would ever have understodd the pseudoscience concepts (enough to question them). Just mentioning the concepts brings to mind the examples we learned them by. HkFnsNGA (talk) 03:53, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I still prefer the more detailed approach you are hinting at, that we take an aspect of a field such as psychoanalysis and use an RS to explain what aspects of it are pseudoscientific (e.g. unfalsifiable). In fact, it'd be great to have a section which listed each characteristic violation and a demonstration of it, sourced to an RS, and detailing one specific situation in a particular field. Ocaasi (talk) 04:09, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

The "aspect" approach seems great, and it can be flipped over to answer Ludwigs2's "Which definition of pseudoscience are we using, and why?" We are using this aspect of this definition to apply to this aspect of this field- why? to explain the concept of that aspect of the definiton. I also think that a rebuttal of the offended pseudoscience should also be added, if RS'd, because it is either a good rebuttal, or characterizes a refusal to be disconfirmed or supplanted. HkFnsNGA (talk) 04:37, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Believe it or do not, this page is actually a great deal calmer than it was a few years back. Part of getting there was moving most of the specific examples to the list that must not be named. In terms of communicating with our audience, it is best to stick with a small number of ideas that are well known enough as pseudoscience that everyone will be able to relate to why they are so characterized; even astrologers know why people say astrology is pseudoscience, though they might not agree. These examples should also be as straight forward as possible, requiring few if any caveats and no unusual context. - 2/0 (cont.) 06:17, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Right now the list is reduced to two specific examples - astrology & homeopathy - and those ultra classic examples should be uncontroversial. Let's leave it at that. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:15, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Agree, the fewer the better. Maybe a longer list on a separate page where the POV warriors can fight their battles. Xxanthippe (talk) 07:27, 27 January 2011 (UTC).

Exactly. It exists at List of topics characterized as pseudoscience. Can we mark this section "resolved" yet? -- Brangifer (talk) 07:39, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I haven't thought this through, but I suspect that all of the concepts of different ideas about pseudoscience can't be exemplified by specifics from homeopathy and astrology. Also, finding RS with these two used as the only examples may be problematic. What's wrong with just use wording like "Popper called psychoanalysis a pseudocience because... so is not falsifiable, which was Poppers criteria...", which is easier to source than "homeopathy is not falsifiable because ... molecules ... water has memory ... quantum entanglement...", which may be true, but no RS. (2/0. "The list that must not be named" is the name of a list. You must not do that! And homeopathy can’t be all that bad since its lede and gleanings from its talk page material got enough votes to make the cutoff to be included in WP:Still more Best of Bad Jokes And Other Deleted Nonsense (WP: Still more Best of Best of BJAODN) in this section here[11].) 07:50, 27 January 2011 (UTC)HkFnsNGA (talk)

An important part of the objection to mentioning psychoanalysis is found in the PSI groupings at the top of this page. The PSI ArbCom lists it as an example of "questionable science". The ArbCom didn't completely forbid mention of it as pseudoscience, but it must be done cautiously and certainly be accompanied by very good mainstream refs and note that such is a minority view, even in the mainstream. No, other examples are better.

If you're interested in finding specific examples that illustrate "all of the concepts of different ideas about pseudoscience" you've got an interesting but exhausting task ahead of you. Finding RS for each one? I'd rather use my time on something more productive! If you want to go that route, the best place to start is the List of topics characterized as pseudoscience. -- Brangifer (talk) 06:07, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Daunting list of refs there, 283 of them. Thanks, and thanks for the likely good advice as to where to spend time. I had an attitude toward Wiki that if I found a problem with an article, I would fix it. After days at homeopathy for one lede paragraph... whew. Maybe you're right about how to best spend time, but I don't want to lose my "fix Wiki" POV. HkFnsNGA (talk) 06:28, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

In addition to what BullRangifer said: It appears that psychoanalysis is the most important test case for definitions of pseudoscience. When a new one comes up, people ask, "how does it classify psychoanalysis?" It's a borderline case. In my personal opinion it's well on the pseudoscience side, but there is certainly nothing like a general consensus for that. Hans Adler 10:40, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Just as an aside, the reason why psychoanalysis is the borderline case is that it gets at the definition of 'science' as well as the definition of pseudoscience. One of the problems with the way 'pseudoscience' has been used historically is that it's geared towards low-complexity sciences like physics. low-complexity in this sense means sciences in which broad simplifications can be made without damaging reliability too much. One can assert that all physical objects can be approximated by a point mass and the equations for projectile motion still work more or less properly (unless you get to odd cases like the motion of feathers in atmosphere, where complex interactions creep back in). One cannot assert that all men or all women are the same and expect to make valid universal claims about gender, because individuals have complex psychological interactions with their own gender that influence their behavior. Many people take the science/pseudoscience distinction to mean the difference between accurate and inaccurate (true/false) science, in which case psychology (and psychoanalysis in particular) starts to look pseudo. However, even psychoanalysis is a relatively decent tool for understanding the complex behavior of human beings (unlike something like phrenology, which really is pseudoscience), and taken that way it starts to look more scientific. --Ludwigs2 16:23, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Role of authority

This article does not mention the role of authority in many pseudosciences, e.g., astrology or homeopathy. HkFnsNGA (talk) 22:12, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't have mentioned it, because I don't know what you mean. Can you explain a little more please? What do you mean by authority? Examples might help. HiLo48 (talk) 22:26, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Ok. And the following explanation might be modified for placement into the article text.

Role of authority - Pseudoscientists might refuse to acknowledge new knowledge because of a belief in some authority, then layer science terminology on top of the authority's declarations in order to try to account for new facts or knowledge. For example, homeopathy has been called a pseudoscience because of it commitment to the authority of an individual in the face of new facts and new scientific knowledge that contradicts it, then layering scientific terminology on top of the authority's declarations to try to justify them. It was declared by German physcician Samuel Hahnemann in 1796, before atoms and molecules were proved to exist, and it was believed that substances were infinitely dividable. Homeopaths view Hahnemann's law of similars and principle of potentization (which were not arrived at with any kind of scientific methodology) as authoritative, so it is not subject to question. Hahnemann recommended his "remedies" be diluted to as little as one part in 10⁶⁰, which left no molecule of the substance originally diluted, but Hahnemann could not know this. When later homeopaths had to admit molecular theory in chemistry, they dealt with the "no molecules" problem by declaring water to have a "memory", and when this was contradicted by physics and chemistry, they suggested the memory could be accounted for by quantum entanglement. Astrologers might add their work to the work of ancients, accepted on authority, without using science terms as in homeopathy, but using confusing complex procedures.

These two examples make different points.

I think all arguments by authority are scientifically invalid, and any adherence to 'first principles' which are not empirically testable is a violation of scientific method. The Chiropractic article actually has a good section this, because, although parts of Chiropractic can appear a little hokey today, when it first was evolving it at least made an attempt at rationalism, logical deduction from first principles to logical treatments. Of course, if those first principles are wrong, made-up, or untouchable it can't be fully scientific. I'm curious if demarcation problem experts think our own modern scientific worldview is free of any such a priori views, or, if we tolerate some, how they are distinguish from the typically dismissed kind. Ocaasi (talk) 23:12, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

A problem is that it may be that all science builds on authority, e.g., I heard that philosper of time and Vienna Circle member Hans Riechenbach axiomatised general relativity after it came out. Axioms are like authority. What distinguished general relativity from pseudoscience, at the time before it could in be tested, was a willingness to give up if radically disconfirmed. Aint no disconfirmation for a person who allocated their life's time to learning esoterics of homeopathy. They will not give up their belief in authority. HkFnsNGA (talk) 23:30, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

That is probably the truest definition of a pseudoscience: something believed for some specific reason that no amount of contrary evidence could ever change. Ocaasi (talk) 23:39, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

What you just wrote is a definition of bad faith. Pseudoscience is a subclass of bad faith (and nonsense, as I argued above, and NPOV's it as an RS'd in an edit, only to have it POV deleted);

pseudoscience is bad faith in which the trappings of science are assumed.

HkFnsNGA (talk) 02:33, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

You are going to have to have some really well-qualified people say this for you-references. From my experience, people are not as gullible as you suppose. They believe in things because they work for them. Perhaps the modern version of homeopathy is the growing realization that knowingly taking a placebo can sometimes help treat an ailment. That is modern and important science addressing why people might persist in using homeopathy. We have a hard time talking to our brain. As someone mentioned here, acupuncture is looking like an effective complementary tool for pain management because it tricks the natural healing ability of the body into action.

I think astrology is silly, but my personality matched the more irritating characteristics of a Taurus way before I ever learned about the art. On the surface, it has me pegged, so should I believe in the influence of the stars? Or, should I be looking for some more mundane explanation? It is not my field and I don't really care, but I am pretty disgusted at the intellectual laziness of people who simply reject without examination ... and obviously reading a Wikipedia article on the subject is not examination.

I think the proposal is not a good idea. If anyone is being brainwashed, it is the skeptic who let a few opinion setters describe their worldview. Tom Butler (talk) 23:22, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

My multiple personalities were born under different astrological signs. But then, in an effort to slow down the aging process, I moved my birthday to Feb 29, so the earth had to travel around the sun four times for me to have a single birthday. Right now, I am celebrating my birth year. HkFnsNGA (talk) 23:30, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

As I see it, the authority of science is success and it is maintained by an institution that decides in favor of self-preservation. But that institution is not just scientists. It is university and government and a public that funds for expected benefits. Belief in a subtle energy reality in which the influence of intentionality is as real as any mechanical process is not really unlike institutionalized science. In the end, it is funded for expected benefit and by people who are, for the most part, willing to examine what they are told by science and take what makes sense from both views. One dominates society and the other is beginning to flex some pretty impressive muscles.

"something believed for some specific reason that no amount of contrary evidence could ever change" is called a religion and that has a very different dynamic. You might try to write this article that way, but it won't last long. Aint no disconfirmation for a person who blindly sits at the feet of institutionalized belief systems. Tom Butler (talk) 01:05, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Science will always have a bias towards the consistently measurable. As soon as subtle energies can be measured, they will be scientific. Until then they are, for scientific purposes, no different than religion. Doesn't mean they're false, just that they're unfalsifiable, unmeasurable, invisible. Ocaasi (talk) 01:17, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, actually, your data may be old. I by no means condone fuzzy thinking by anyone (including myself if I am aware), so I am not saying that some practices done under the cover of science need to be addressed, but the answer is not to outlaw thought. As Richard McNally said in the conclusion of the essay referenced in the article (now 68), "In conclusion, when clinical psychologists make claims on behalf of their theories or interventions, we should ask them, “How do you know?” Or, we can paraphrase the immortal words of Cuba Gooding Jr.: “Show me the data! Show me the data!” We have to trust that people ask that question all of the time. Contrary to what the NSF and skeptics think, we do not have to be protected from ourselves. The same goes for subtle energy, and with no thanks to mainstream science, data is beginning to accumulate to show meaningful reasons why people persist in thinking some of these phenomena are real. The subject has always been falsifiable , it is just that we did not know how. The science is certainly not ready for prime time, but some of the words I see here suggest the subjects should be outlawed before they hurt someone.

There is an interesting reference here showing that some people have difficulty accepting what they are referring to as the "demarcation problem.": science verses pseudoscience. It is echoes to some extent in the Boundaries section of this article. if you get to reading the article, some really level heads have also worked here. Tom Butler (talk) 01:48, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes this is where Ludwig's notion of science being 'public' is very helpful. When I suggest that subtle energies are non-scientific, it means only--only--that they cannot be meaningfully measured by more than one person. It's not even an attempt to deny anyone's personal experience of them. I don't even mean that in a strongly subjective way, as if energies are merely illusions. I mean that until we can share or mutually observe those phenomenon in measurable, repeatable, science just has a big 'no comment'. Skeptics insert a more colorful phrase, but that's because many people are content to indulge things that not only aren't measurable but which can be better explained by already understood phenomena, or for which contrary evidence has already been presented. Even many aspects of traditional chinese medicine, or ayurveda may turn out to be "true", but that doesn't justify the current adherence to their practices as scientific. Similar to the Wikipedia distinction between truth and verifiability, Science is less concerned with what is "true" than that there is valid path to prove or disprove it. Ocaasi (talk) 02:01, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

In all of these discussions, the underlying point making the most sense is to highlight the difference between open science and secret science. Science is the study of nature to increase understandable that is real. As an engineer, my part is to take that real understanding and turn it into a really great Internet or toaster. It is a community process and a community trust.

Secret science does not really exist. What does exist is understudied evidence. Okay, I study electronic voice phenomena or EVP. The process of collecting examples of EVP is repeatable and anyone can be trained to do so. While there are possibly a few human influences (fear and such) they are quantifiable, so experimental results are reasonably standardized. There are existing theories, hypotheses, proposing models about EVP that are testable, and as with instrumental quantification of the influence intentionality on subtle energy, these theories are complementary to other science including some physical sciences. our hypothesis include ideas that are not tenable to mainstream science, but since we have not found an explanation it is necessary to look under every rock. I would love to have a testable explanation that is mainstream, but all I get is "delusional" or "appeal to science" kind of dismissals. Parapsychology is faring little better and they have doctorates.

The problem is not that these things cannot be studied or that the experiments cannot be conducted, but that they are not being conducted enough to establish an acceptable standard of science and anyone trying it is probably going to be expelled from the established science club. All of the arguments here assume fraud, secret knowledge, blind belief of defiance of authority. They just do not hold water unless you give us a way to make our case. Set a testable standard for reasonable consideration--ask us for the proof by saying, "If you are not a pseudoscience, then show us this and this and this." Then if we do that, you have to tell us why we cannot just be good scientists who disagree about a hypothesis. Tom Butler (talk) 02:41, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

(e/c)Look, to understand the nature of authority in science, and the problems with it, you have to look at the historical problem. prior to the enlightenment (or thereabouts), authoritative statements about the world came from two sources: from passed-down tradition (including religious dictates) or from rational/rhetorical argument. most cultures used a combination of the two (for instance, Jewish and Islamic understandings of the world start with passed-down teachings, but have well-defined systems of argumentation for interpreting those teachings in the current world). The enlightenment did two things to upset that apple cart: (1) it began insisting on broad equality (liberalism) which poked holes in the traditional authority structures (where religious status was equated with worldly knowledge), and (2) it began to inundate the world with new information at far too rapid a rate for traditional modes of authoritative discourse to keep up. Early scientists were not particularly empirical - some of them put out nutty theories one the basis of scant evidence, and were given reasonable credulity on them - and most scientist (up through Darwin, at least) tried to keep their theories at least marginally consistent with religious dictates. It wasn't until the mid to late 19th century that scientists started to get fed up with the philosophically-driven approach to science and started insisting on a more pragmatic "show me that it works" approach. This is really the root that scientific authority springs from, a kind of "You can say what you want about it, but I can show you what actually happens" thing. It's hard to argue with empirical evidence.

The problem with this approach is that as science progresses, theories get more subtle and evidence becomes more and more subject to interpretation. it's one thing for Newton to drop a rock and time its fall - that's obvious and simple. It's another thing entirely for a particle physicist to point to a curlicue in a bubble chamber and claim that it's a subatomic particle. the latter claim rests on an extensive body of other theory and other research that non-experts simply have to take for granted. The scientist's authority, then, is built not just on his own evidence, but on a house of cards built from the evidence of all the scientists who did the other underlying research. However, to the non-expert the particle physicist's claim requires a certain suspension of disbelief: one has to trust that the particle physicist is basing his claim on an established bed of valid research, and not just making sh@t up as he goes along. When one makes that suspension of disbelief, one credits that scientist with authority on the topic that he rightly deserves, even though one can't oneself check that that authority is rightly deserved. This is where pseudoscience steps in. Pseudoscientists make claims based on a bed of evidence that doesn't exist, or on odd or incoherent interpretations of evidence that does exist. So, a pseudoscientist might say something idiotic like "That particle physicist is wrong: the right-spinning curlicues are actually made by angels and the left-spinning ones are made by demons, both of which are released when matter is reduced to its spiritual form in the collision". The non-expert doesn't know on his own whether the particle physicist or the pseudoscientist 'rightly deserves' the authority of making a claim, because the non-expert doesn't know the intermediary research (which is where the scientific claim gets its authority). Then it starts to get weirdly socio-political: the scientist will lay claim to authority by pointing to his degree and his CV and his publications; the pseudoscientist will lay claim to authority by criticizing the blinkered, repressive nature of mainstream science, and you can be sure that both sides are going to gather people who are willing to suspend disbelief in their direction.

fun, hunh? --Ludwigs2 02:52, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I enjoyed that. Tom, no one is saying that studying EVP is pseudoscientific. It is just a valid as other people studying other fringes of the known world. The problem comes with making claims about EVP that are not supported by evidence, or by (some) bringing assumptions to the process, or not taking account of confounding variables like electric interference or feedback. Also, I think you can expect some tolerance at least of your curiosity and exploration, but you can't exactly expect equal funding or respect, per se. It's one of the hallmarks of a good scientific theory that before it's revolutionary paradigm shift that it gets torn to pieces by the establishment. That's one of the ways that science raises the standard of proof for new ideas, although sometimes that appears to come or does come at the expense of them. This is getting off-topic, but I'd just come back to the foundation for your research: What questions are you asking? Are they testable? Does your explanation of phenomena depend on supernatural/a priori assumptions? If all those work out, then it's not pseudoscientific, you're just studying something people don't have a good understanding for yet. Ocaasi (talk) 03:26, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah, Coleridge. Ludwigs2 seems to be well spread in his knowledge base from which he reasons. HkFnsNGA (talk) 16:33, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

As it is applied to some fields, a definition of pseudoscience could be "any system of study that allows for nonphysical explanations in its hypotheses." Many parapsychological studies satisfy all of the criteria for good science including academic credentials and peer-review, but they allow the possible existence of a subtle energy to be included in their hypotheses. In some cases, the subtle energy model better describes the evidence than does a physical only model. As we understand it today, transcommunication is simply not able to be modeled using physical only principles. Some of the observed phenomena might be effectively modeled if you also allow for the existence of subtle energy, but all of it can be modeled if the possibility of survived personality is allowed in the hypotheses.

Understanding of what is studied in parapsychology should a minimum requirement to edit this article, but information about the study of transcommunication is a little more obscure. Data can be reliably collected under controlled conditions. There is a growing body of study indicating the objectivity of the data as experienced by blinded panels. With a few exceptions virtually none of the studies have reached peer-reviewed publications, and unlike work in parapsychology, I would estimate to say that we are doing "science" in the traditional sense. We are still just "studying."

In astronomy, proposing the existence of dark matter was not a popular hypothesis, but it was necessary to speculate about some "X" factor in order to study the symptoms. That is really all we are doing.

Ocassi, of course this article is calling us names. it is designed to set us aside as not normal--a "scarlet letter" of sorts that can be used by the mainstream to say "they are not us." The fork in the road is the "allows for nonphysical explanations" part. Even ostensibly even minded HkFnsNGA can't help but scoff. Tom Butler (talk) 18:27, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Tom, politely, you are not normal, because you study ghosts and the potential of non-physical energies and entities to affect physical phenomena. And if or when that study ever reveals a consistent measurable force which can be causally linked to human spirits it will receive equally abnormal amounts of paradigm-shattering attention. That's kind of inherent with the extraordinary claims-extraordinary evidence model, a sociological if not scientific standard.

Your processes may either be scientific or non-scientific; as we've been over, the models you use are less the issue than the approach to evidence, openness to peer review, willingness to consider confounding factors or alternative explanations. I do think that most scientists would argue that when you can't model a system completely using only physical components, adding in the deus ex machina of 'things that do but can't be seen' and then deciding they are connected to disembodied human spirits is a pretty classic violation of Occam's razor, original synthesis, and just inventing causes. The problem is that you can't ask a meaningful scientific question if that question is 'are there ghosts' but then you actually are studying electric or magnetic fields as a proxy to answer that. You have to remove the a priori assumption and instead just say, "what are these electric phenomena?" and "what are these observed social anomalies?". Then when you can't find physical scientific explanations you have to just throw up your hands and say, 'well, we'll keep looking'. But filling in the gap with ghosts--how would it be different from Gods and angels and unicorns? So, if you have observed interesting energetic/social patterns, I think you should study them. Introducing the notion of 'maybe they're human spirits', however, for me is the kind of non-logical jump that in part characterizes pseudoscience. One of the characteristics of science in my mind is patience with explanations: where there is no good answer the scientist shows restraint (or at least knows well the completely provisional quality of a hypothesis) whereas the pseudoscientist has already started justifying their chosen explanation's validity, putting the cart well out in front of the horse. Ocaasi (talk) 23:22, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

The discussion in this section is getting off topic. HkFnsNGA (talk) 23:42, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Two examples that can be used to explain concepts

Two examples that can be used to explain concepts are creationism and racist Nazi eugenics. HkFnsNGA (talk) 21:32, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Article is an arbitration case waiting to happen

But that is the whole point of this article. First, there have been endless discussions attempting to reach a lasting consensus. For instance, pseudoscience and fringe science. I have attempted to explain the case for the point of view of some of the commonly named pseudosciences, not to explain their value, but to show that the article is simply calling out any subject that is not mainstream. I told you that all of the science methodologies are properly dealt with in parapsychology and all you can see is your incredulity about ghosts. I told you that we examine all possible answers and you assume we have made a conclusion in behalf of what you obviously think must only be supernatural. Most noteworthy are the two logical errors in your advice that we are somehow violating Occam and that, if the answer is not in the book, then we should keep reading until the answer is in the book. Is there not something about the definition of insanity here?

So here is the bottom line. The article is written too inclusively when there is no need. Yes, obviously there is pseudoscience out there. Unlike some, I am not offended by the concept of this article. What I am offended by is that it is written in a way that gives closed minded people a name to dismiss what they don't understand. Tom Butler (talk) 01:07, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Tom, allow me to be completely open. The problem you are talking about has deep historical roots on project. there was a period some years ago, before my time, when editors went to bat against a whole slew of fairly extreme fringe science advocacy. It was good that that happens - we don't really want wikipedia proclaiming UFOlogy and cryptozoology as important mainstream sciences, for instance - but it left in its wake an unfortunate hard-core anti-fringe advocacy cohort, and a sometimes pugnaciously hard-nosed pro-science attitude across the project. Myself, I've been slowly working to moderate that attitude over time, but it's the kind of thing where headway is measured in months, not edits. Aggressive challenges of the kind you're making just trigger an automatic defensive reaction. while there are times when it's useful to trigger such a reaction, for the most part it's better to try to ease your way into it and make incremental changes. --Ludwigs2 03:59, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I understand the recalcitrance of mainstream editors. I also know that whatever progress made here to make this article more balanced would be reversed the day Schroeder is let out of jail. Reading the article at one time, one finds the same things said over and over--psycho babble, assumptions of delusion or fraud. I cannot see that you have made any forward progress, nor will you by being the only agreeable "balancing editor".

I see that the page gets around 1500 hits a day. Considering my website only sees 1000, that is a pretty big deal. We do not have an article on pseudoscience, but a search on the Internet gets this Wikipedia article first, and then and endless array of skeptical websites harping about pseudoscience. The common denominator is that they vilify free thought rather than discussing specifics. Perhaps my time would be better spent placing an article high on that search.

Meanwhile, it is NewsJournal season and I have to get back to work. Tom Butler (talk) 23:00, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Damned liar!

"There's lies, there's damn lies... and there's Statistics" - Mark Twain

"I am a Statistician" - PPdd

Pseudoscience commonly uses methods to lie with statistics. An example is methods derided in Measured Lies: The Bell Curve Examined, which uses "hoodoo science" and "pseudoscience" as synonyms to describe abuse of statistics in social sciences. (The book is pretty ideologically right wing, Bork liked it, so "hoodoo science" is common in right wing intellectual attacks on contrary ideological arguments abusing statistics in social sciences and now other sciences.) I propose a new section in this article about "how to lie with statistics". There is much RS on this. PPdd (talk) 05:59, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Nicholas Turro's subsumption of pseudoscience and junk science under pathological science

Nicholas Turro's definitions here[12] seems to subsume pseudoscience and junk science under pathological science. I think the three are essentially synonyms in general academic use, and the articles should be merged. PPdd (talk) 06:06, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Merge from hoodoo science

Hoodoo science is currently about two sentences with two sources, one of which is apparently a bare mention. I suggest merging it into this page, perhaps in one of the "identifying pseuodoscience" subsections. Unless there are considerably more sources forthcoming on this neologism, it's better (and safer) here where it is one part of a larger topic and thus unlikely to be deleted. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 17:57, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I created it. Merge it to be a section of this page, with a redirect to here. PPdd (talk) 18:06, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Also merge voodoo science, junk science, and pathological science to sections here, and add sections on how to lie with statistics voodoo economics here but possibly keep their own article, which may have extra technical or political stuff.

Some think pseudoscience and junk science are subsets of pathological science,[13], some others think the other way around, and some think the three are synonyms. No need for four articles on what are not uncommonly used as synonyms PPdd (talk) 18:15, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I think the merges to here make sense. Pathological science may in some sense be the umbrella, but in overwhelming common usage pseudoscience is the general category. Anyway, pathological almost always seems to connote bad faith, so I think pseudoscience is a much better core term. Pseudo is neutral enough that it doesn't take a stance on the intent of the practitioner, though it can accommodate simple incompetence, ignorance, or malice. So I think we should keep it at the center. Ocaasi (talk) 19:26, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Merge all to here. PPdd (talk) 23:39, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Agree I support the merger proposal. Put all of the crap in one pile, I always say. Tom Butler (talk) 01:20, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Having looked briefly at all pages, Hoodoo science is the only one that I really, strongly feel needs merging here. The rest could probably remain as standalones (based on current content). Voodoo science should be Voodoo Science in my opinion though - focusing on the book but incorporating the few mentions of the phrase into the page. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 02:42, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Let's add a mention of "voodoo science" as a historical term and synonym here, and convert that page to the book article; it's 90% about Park (author) anyway. Ocaasi (talk) 11:39, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Absence from citation databases

In Absence from citation databases, the entry mistakes acceptance by the mainstream as the definition of pseudoscience. If there are no references for this, it should go. Lack of citation only indicate ignorance of the subject or ignoring the subject but does not say anything definitive about the kind of science. Tom Butler (talk) 02:44, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Unnecessary examples

Resolved

New editors have added Dianetics to the list of examples in See also. I understood we were keeping the number of examples to a minimum, partly for clarity and partly to keep this article from becoming a list of alleged pseudosciences. Each of my attempts to adhere to what I understood as our consensus was reverted and I have used up my three reverts. I do not believe that adding Dianetics or any additional alleged pseudoscience examples will improve this article. I hope we can discuss this issue here rather than edit warring. Jojalozzo 07:04, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "new editors". Lots of us watch and edit these pages. To many of us you are the new editor. It's rather interesting that you only reacted to the addition of Dianetics, and used a false edit summary, which was answered quite well by Moriori. Each time you always chose to remove only that one. The Dianetics article makes it plain that it's considered pseudoscientific. Now if there is a consensus to not add more (and I'm not the one who added it, or restored it, whatever the case may be), then point me to it. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:31, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I apologize for not recognizing your past contributions here and lumping you with others who seem to be participating here mainly to promote the inclusion of this link to Dianetics. The other examples in the See also section are listed because they are the examples chosen for illustration purposes in the article. As my edit comment said, Dianetics is not referenced in the article and I do not see how adding any more examples to the See also section benefits this article. In addition, as my edit comments said, this article is not the place for a list of pseudosciences. There is another article for that and there are good reasons for why we have made that separation. I may be completely off base, but it appears to me that some editors may have more interest in associating Dianetics with pseudoscience than in improving this article. Jojalozzo 14:39, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Brangifer, I once used the Scientology Celebrity Center in Hollywood to put on a fashion show, and (of course) got a sales pitch based on a bunch of pseudoscience gobbledy-gook, which was the most clear cut case of actual pseudoscience I have ever personally encountered in real life (and I knew Linus Pauling and owned the building across the street from his "Vitamin C Studies Institute" - my own name for it, so that is saying something). But the Dianetics article in no way makes it clear, implicitly by describing Dianetics, or explicitly, that Dianetics is a pseudoscience, so the link as it stands in the pseudoscience article has no value at all for a reader, and I tempororily deleted it[14]. When I have time to read up a little on what I actually saw being argued as practiced, I will add to that article, and put the example back in this one. Or if you can add a brief RS description of the pseudoscience methods into the Dianetics article, then put it back in the list in the pseudoscience article, this will actually help users understand what a pseudoscience is. PPdd (talk) 15:04, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Then you haven't looked carefully at the article. The word appears three times in different places, it is in the Category:Pseudoscience, and it has the pseudoscience template at the bottom, and it's properly sourced. This was mentioned in the edit summaries more than once. Otherwise I have no problem with the cleanup of the See also section. -- Brangifer (talk) 01:20, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

The "See also" section is supposed to provide leads to further reading that might help expand the reader's understanding of the topic and direct them to related topics, and one of the things a reader might be thinking is "I wonder what topics are generally considered as pseudoscience?". To satisfy that, we have a link in the "See also" section to List of topics characterized as pseudoscience, which I think is quite sufficient - I see no additional benefit in picking out a small handful of examples to include separately. I also don't think we need "See also" entries for topics highlighted elsewhere in the article, as they should be wikilinked where they're mentioned, and so they don't need additional "See also" links - see Wikipedia:See also#See also section, where it says "Links already integrated into the body of the text are generally not repeated in a "See also" section". So I say leave out Dianetics and also remove the few existing links to specific "pseudosciences", as they are already linked in the article or are included in the list. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:19, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

That's fine with me. I think the main article List of topics characterized as pseudoscience is pretty thorough. Does the benefit from selecting a few from that list outweigh the drama caused in the selection? It seems like it will continue to make for these kinds of debates, as there is no particular logic to why 3 or why 5 or why these 3 or why these 5... Ocaasi (talk) 15:34, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I removed the specific examples as redundant since already in the list, and arbitraily chosen (and to avoid "you're arbitratily picking on me" talk and edits). PPdd (talk) 15:47, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I am one of the "new editors" mentioned by User:Jojalozzo, having first contributed to Wiki nine and a bit years ago (as IP). I noted that he had removed Dianetics from the article and User:BullRangifer then restored it. Jojalozo reverted a little later with the edit summary "not ref'd in article, does not belong". This raised my antennae so I checked out the Dianetics article and saw it is considered to be pseudoscience. Deciding his edit reeked of censorship I restored Dianetics with the edit summary "Dianetics is definitely ref'd as pseudoscience in its article. See last sentence in 'Scientific evaluation and criticisms' ". Jojolozzo reverted, but found an entirely new reason, instead saying "we have enough examples here, please use List of topics characterized as pseudoscience". So once again I restored Dianetics to this article, leaving the edit summary "Restore valid entry. It features in "List of topics characterized as pseudoscience" and has a Pseudoscience Category on its own article. It is vandalism to remove valid information.". That was my last edit for yesterday (afternoon my time) and I see this morning Dianetics (and others) have been deleted. I'm not too fussed by that, but I just needed to explain why I edited as I did. I saw it as censorship, and acted accordingly for the good of Wikipedia. I I wasn't a newbie making rash edits. Moriori (talk) 21:01, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't think anyone took the new-editors piece too seriously. Any deletions of a known pseudoscience are cause for suspicion, but when it's one from a Scientology related enterprise there's an even extra level of hmm... Not to accuse anyone of anything, just to explain the level of attention these things get. I think the current state, with just the List and no examples works best, but not for the reasons suggested initially by those wanting to remove it. Ocaasi (talk) 21:06, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Comment - Does anyone care enough one way or another to even bother to comment? PPdd (talk) 21:58, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Don't we already have a list of pseudosciences? Since there are so many on that list, we can hardly mention most or all of them here, so I think listing one or two specific pseudosciences in "see also" will have more disadvantages than advantages - any choice would be arbitrary and it's a catalyst for miniature edit wars when we could all be doing something else more useful. bobrayner (talk) 22:48, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Maybe we should vote on it, and tell our best personal adventures with pseudosciences as justifications for our vote... but on the list talk page, not here. PPdd (talk) 23:02, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I see Moriori and Ocaasi have explained exactly the reasons why I saw red flags and edited as I did. We see this type of situation often and it often doesn't bode well, but this ended fine. It looks like we can mark this resolved. -- Brangifer (talk) 01:28, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I too am glad this has been resolved amicably. My POV radar lit up for the opposite reason. I guess that's what the Red Phone is for, eh? Jojalozzo 02:10, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Application of MEDRS re biomed conclusions "peer reviewed" by pseudoscience journals

Alt Med journals revisited: Application of MEDRS re biomed conclusions "peer reviewed" by pseudoscience journals is being discussed here[15]. PPdd (talk) 16:05, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Attention needed at Osteopathy

Attention is needed at the Osteopathy article per this. PPdd (talk) 05:33, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Special status of alt med in pseudoscience

A person may follow authority in medicine. A person may follow authority in the courts. If the authority claims a scientific basis, and uses pseudoscientific methods to do it, then this is pseudoscience in both cases. But if the authority does ‘’not’’ claim a scientific basis, the former is ‘’still’’ pseudoscience, and the latter is ‘’not’’, because medicine is a branch of science, and law is not. Alt meds have a special place in pseudoscience because there need not be a claim of scientific methodology, yet it is still pseudoscience, since it is medicine. PPdd (talk) 08:01, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Correct, and also because alt med makes falsifiable claims of efficacy which are not proven to be true. It is defined as unproven or disproven methods. -- Brangifer (talk) 21:27, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I.e., tautologically special, too. PPdd (talk) 21:42, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

LOL! -- Brangifer (talk) 23:04, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. There is extensive philosophical literature on the nature and definition of pseudoscience, and while I can't claim to have read and understood all of it, it seems clear to me that your reasoning is at odds with the mainstream expert opinions and of a much lower intellectual quality. Defining pseudoscience is a tricky problem, and it's generally not helpful to promote ad hoc definitions on this talk page. If you are not familiar with the discussion, I suggest that you get an overview by reading Sven Ove Hansson's article Science and Pseudo-Science in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

It appears to me that the definition of pseudoscience that you are using is even more general than what Hansson discusses under "3.4 A wider sense of pseudoscience".

One key problem in your argument is that you are begging the question when you assume that the standard for comparing and classifying CAM is "medicine", i.e. scientific medicine. Modern scientific medicine has grown out of the art of treating patients so that they hopefully get, or at least feel, better. Large parts of CAM have grown out of the same art, but without becoming scientific, and sometimes even without trying to become scientific. It's unfair to hold the narrow definition of "medicine" as a scientific discipline against fields that are part of medicine only in the original, wider sense.

Your argument would lead to absurd results. If we take it seriously, a number of practices of mainstream medicine would have to be classified as pseudoscientific merely because they have no scientific basis. Is charging money for treating a patient pseudoscientific? Maybe you can fix your definition to get rid of this particular artefact, but there are others that will make more work: How about palliative care for the terminally ill who cannot express their wishes? If we take your definition of pseudoscience seriously, that's a pseudoscientific practice, and the only rational way of dealing with them would be to dump them alive on some rubbish heap, or whatever is the cheapest way of disposing of them allowed by law. Hans Adler 09:18, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

What "your definition" are you talking about? PPdd (talk) 18:58, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I now see that you used the words "pseudoscientific methods". For some reason I read this as "non-scientific methods". Sorry for the misunderstanding. I obviously need new glasses. (Seriously. I lost my glasses the day before yesterday.)

But I fail to understand what you mean by "special status of alt med". How is its status any different from pseudoscience in biology, chemistry, physics, geology, ...? Hans Adler 19:14, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

As to your glasses, looking for glasses without glasses borders on being a logical paradox. I recently had to fix the little screw in my reading glasses, which takes reading glasses to see.

How it differs is that (1) those particular pseudosciences make false claims to scientific methodology, whereas an alt med does not need to make such a claim, but since medicine is science, it implicitly makes the claim, which is a "special status" of alt med. (2) Brangifer points to a second way in which it is special, in that since medicine is about efficacy, and efficacy is established scientifically, alt meds by deifinition make unestablished claims, so are by definition pseudoscience. PPdd (talk) 01:24, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I think he's using the standard skeptic-lite argument that medical science is somehow 'ontologically' true, and therefore anything which disagrees with medical science is explicitly false and consequently pseudoscientific. but frankly, I found this thread to be pointless and confused, and decided (as I think you're finding out now) that it would take too much effort to untangle the confusion (which would have to happen before we could even start having a meaningful discussion about the issues). but...

P.s.: skeptic-lite - that great skeptical taste without all that philosophical substance to weigh you down. Lifestyle choice of the modern skeptic-on-the-go. --Ludwigs2 22:25, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

LOL! I'm not quite that naive. Modern medicine isn't all EBM. It's a blending of art, experiment, old inherited practices, serendipity, and solid, research-backed, practice. Where it fundamentally differs from alt med is that it is constantly seeking to become more and more evidence-based, well-knowing that such will never be completely possible or practical. Some of the "art" will always be necessary, but it should at least not be contrary to EBM.

This is a relatively modern movement in medicine, in keeping with the developing and pervasive practice of using the scientific method as a winnowing tool to separate all the inherited practices within modern medicine. Some of them are very old and never been tested very well. Some of it is chaff and must be discarded (that never happens in alt med), while other is worth keeping and improving, and still other is promising and deserves more research. It's a never ending process. So yes, there are likely some pseudoscientific aspects to certain old medical practices that haven't been discarded yet, but we can't be sure of that before it has been reassessed to determine if that's the case. If so, then we need to get rid of it.

The application of all this to alt med occasionally results in preventing some alt med practices which clamor for acceptance from being included in mainstream practice, since so much of it is blatently or fundamentally based in pseudoscientific ideas. The complementary and integrative medicine movements seek to counteract this use of the scientific method to make and then keep modern medicine as free from pseudoscience and quackery as possible. They use muddled thinking and confuse the picture, often to the detriment and even unnecessary death of patients.

Is that all clear as mud, or should I shake or stir it along with your favorite brand of skeptic-lite and drink it down? -- Brangifer (talk) 04:37, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

You left out of what medicine is - "... external profit driven advice, succeptability to pharmaceutical advertisement, math and statistics phoia, laziness, intentionally veiled ignorance, and thirst for personal profit". :) PPdd (talk) 19:26, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

sorry, BR, that was my assessment of PPdd, not you. he's been having a bit of an "energizer bunny" moment on TCM (and I assume other altmed articles); I've been waiting for him to settled down into a more conventional editing style before putting serious effort in to repairing his worst misconceptions.

Point of order, though: EBM is not really a movement or a practice - EBM is an anti-altmed idea that has been floated as though it were part of the philosophy of science, but in fact hasn't made much traction there or anywhere. It's by all measures a fringe concept (advocated primarily by its proposers and adherents, largely ignored by mainstream science and philosophy, presenting itself as true without actually measuring itself against other more established theories in the field). The central tenets of EBM do not really stand up to analytic scrutiny, and while it's a reasonable enough idea in its own way it is not applied in a self-consistent fashion (otherwise TCM and acupuncture would qualify as EBM - the primary critiques of those practices are theoretical objections, not evidentiary ones). I'm just sayin'... --Ludwigs2 16:46, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

@Hans - I thought the "energizer bunny" ad was for an erectile dysfunction med, and the idea is that bunny never runs out of juice, so it may be a long wait for settling down. :)

There really should be two pseudoscience articles. One would be oriented to a general readership, the other oriented to the highly technical philosophical analysis of what science is or is not. (I just had the bad memory of plodding through some technical response to Lakatos as an undergrad and thinking, "do I really want to be doing this? If not, what else is there except superficiality?" PPdd (talk) 19:48, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure why you are addressing me with that bit about the "energizer bunny ad", which I guess I have never seen or heard about and I have certainly not mentioned. My only mental association with this expression is an old Duracell ad that involves lots of pink toy bunnies.

And for all those who, like me, are puzzled by the letters "EBM" -- apparently that's an abbreviation for Electronic body music. But I can't say I understand what you guys are saying about it...

(First paragraph was serious, second paragraph was TIC.)Hans Adler 08:36, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

The 'energizer bunny' thing was mine, a reference to PPdd's current rather over-enthusiastic approach to editing. As for EBM, it actually stands for the Excess Bile Metric: the theory that the degree of pseudoscience of any idea can be accurately measured by the amount of yellow bile produced when someone thinks about it. The problem, of course, is that the theory is only used by people with a predisposition for excess bile, which throws off statistical norms. --Ludwigs2 17:03, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Nothing can "stand up to analytic scrutiny", but if a realist throws real rocks in a scuffle with an idealist, the idealist should "duck" (and quack out a complaint). Wouldn't it be more appropriate to cite an "integrative synthesis" example instead of a differential analysis to attack EBM? :) PPdd (talk) 19:48, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm... your first line seems to have disposed of all of science and philosophy. skepticism that approaches the point of nihilism is not really useful.

with respect to your other... I don't mind EBM as a concept. but as it stands it's definitely fringe. There are too many people involved with it (both analytically and casually) who consistently redefine it just so that it continues to exclude altmed. Currently it's more the medical equivalent of the 'No Homers club', and doesn't command a lot of respect as a philosophical approach to medical science. maybe that will change over coming decades, but that's not a reason to give it undue weight as of now. --Ludwigs2 20:20, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Occam’s Razor vs. Alice in Wonderland

Violation of scientific principles such Occam’s Razor characterizes some pseudoscience publication conclusions (also misuse of statistics and logical invalidity). An “Integrative Medicine” article abstract goes like this, (paraphrasing slightly) - “Weight reduction and exercise are known to reduce the risk of heart disease. We did a study that added 'mindful meditation' to weight loss and exercise, and the total intervention reduced risk. This shows Integrative Medicine methods can be used to reduce risk of heart disease, possibly by incorporating weight reduction and exercise.”[16] How should this kind of publication style, typical of pseudoscience pubs, be dealt with in the article? (This particular example is a primary source study, but the same reasoning is typical of such secondary reviews of such primary studies.) PPdd (talk) 03:07, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Have you looked at the article or just at the abstract? A lot of non-mathematicians have serious problems with expressing simple connections, often while intuitively getting some of the most important things right anyway.

I suggest that you find a reliable source of high quality that discusses "this kind of publication style", and then propose including it in the article. Hans Adler 06:50, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I have not looked at the article, but the abstract makes it pretty clear that "integrating" in integrative medicine can be to take a known medical effect, throw a confounding factor alt med treatment on top and do more studies, then declare victory for the integration. PPdd (talk) 14:15, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

PPdd - in fact, if a study could demonstrate statistically that weight reduction and exercise + meditation significantly reduced the risk of heart disease over weight reduction and exercise alone, that would be both scientifically meaningful and interesting. Occam's razor is a principle of selection - it says that we should select the simplest explanation that accommodates all the available evidence. if available evidence were to show that meditation had a measurable impact on incidence of heart disease, then Occam's Razor would suggest that the standard medical model would have to be rejected or revised, since it would no longer adequately accommodate the evidence.

In other words, one needs to show that the study itself is flawed; one can't simply assume that that the study is flawed because the study's presumptions conflict with conventional models. doing so would be unscientific. --Ludwigs2 19:28, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

A study comparing an adjunct to a known effective treatment with the treatment alone is reasonable (although maybe a waste of money for some alt meds). This study did not do that. Adding an adjunct to what is already known to be an effective treatment alone, then making claims about the efficacy of adding an adjunct, without comparing it to the treatment alone is pure pseudoscience. A child whould be able to understand why it is bogus. It was also "edited" and "peer reviewed" in a major CAM/IM journal, indicating how pervasive pseudoscience is in CAM and IM. PPdd (talk) 19:40, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I went and looked at the abstract, and I don't see what you're talking about. The study appears to be comparing what they call an 'integrative approach' (which seems client-centered health coaching using non-conventional techniques) to well-established statistical averages for conventional medical care, for a population of individuals with a particular kind of health problem. There's nothing wrong with that from a research perspective that I can see. Of course, the problem they ought to address is the 'attention' factor - there are numerous studies which show that extra attention (as would be the necessary case with a client-centered approach) can by itself have a significant impact on outcomes. But overall this seems like a standard medical preliminary research model: take a group of people with a condition, give them a treatment, and compare the results to established standards of treatment. of course, normal medical research would then go on to a double-blind paradigm for further testing; that would be impossible to structure for this kind of approach, since it requires patient participation in the treatment. That being said, their conclusion is not exaggerated with respect to the research (they are not making any extraordinary claims, but simply noting that their 'integrative' approach reduces risks, including the possibility that the personalized attention merely got patients to follow the health and exercise routine more diligently). Unless there's some deeper flaw in their methodology that I can't see from the abstract, this seems fine. Not too earth-shattering, maybe, but fine. what precisely are you objecting to in it?--Ludwigs2 20:07, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure that this is a good paper to be arguing about. To me, the methodology doesn't look as bad as PPdd seems to have concluded. And quoting from the paper: "CONCLUSIONS: A multi-dimensional intervention based on integrative medicine principles reduced risk of CHD, possibly by increasing exercise and improving weight loss" or to paraphrase "nagging people about their weight may encourage them to lose weight and so cut down on heart disease". This seems a remarkably modest conclusion. They dress some things up in polysyllabic words, but that is the stated conclusion. I am quite suspicious of the statistics in the paper and the the claims of statistical significance seem surprising given the sample size and the small differences they are talking about. But I couldn't make any definite statements about that without a week's research and probably access to the raw data. I was peripherally involved in medical statistics at one time and I'm suspicious of a lot of mainstream medical statistics too. Dingo1729 (talk) 20:56, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I like Dingo's paraphrase better than mine. But I still don't think its about IM. For example, my ex was a psychoimmunologist and very much of an evidence based orientation, so her nagging would not be considered "alternative". The point is the wording and inference to conclusions. Dingo's wording would have been much better for being in the article, and would still not justifiy a conclusion about IM, only possibly about environmental medicine, where types of reminders like nagging are added to the environment. Personally, I keep a scale in the bathroom next to the sink so I see it each morning. (Maybe I should move it to in front of the refrigerator.) PPdd (talk) 21:04, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

It's not just nagging. There was a marvelous piece of research from the old 'efficiency studies' period, where some researchers were trying to determine the physical environment in a factory for maximal productivity. they tried manipulating all sorts of variables - ambient light, room temperature, noise level, length and frequency of breaks - but found that no matter what they did (short of making the room freezing cold or leaving the workers in near total darkness) productivity kept increasing. They finally had to conclude that the workers were enjoying the attention of being in the study, and that was what was increasing productivity. people are weird.

Plus - psychoimmunologist? from the word roots that would be someone who prevents mind infections (e.g. stops the spread of unhealthy memes or keeps people from joining religious cults). that can't be what you mean. --Ludwigs2 00:25, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Here's what psychoimmunologists do. She sucked the blood out of people, then gave them pain, then sucked the blood again and took it to Linus Pauling's personal massive facility to look at the T-cells. Since he had a crush on her, he gave her free reign. Since he used the place for Vitamin-C studies, and since I am me, he banned me from the building. Her experiments are still going on over a decade later at UCSF dental school, where you can use her "cognitive coping" pain management methods instead of anasthetics as part of a study subject, and get free dental work for participating. I think I would rather have to resort to acupunture. :) PPdd (talk) 00:41, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Hawthorne effect ;) --THE FOUNDERS INTENT ^PRAISE 18:59, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

One would expect Duke University research MDs to know how to control for the Hawthorne effect. PPdd (talk) 19:10, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Calling alt med pseudoscience with RS (previously objected to for no RS)

There has been objection to calling alt meds "pseudoscience". But here is a quote from a very prominent TCM historian and practitioner as a secondary source on it, calling TCM "science", and describing why -

"It is further said in the oral traditions of the Fire Spirit School that the seedlings of aconite (“Traditional Chinese medicine#Aconite root|The King of TCM Herbs]]” and the “Queen of Poisons”) need to be harvested high in the mountains where they endure great cold—maybe this is why this herb is so powerful in driving out damp cold—-and then should be planted at the winter solstice in the Jiangyou area among other crops. The aconite plant then grows in the time of year when the yang is in its ascendancy and is harvested at the summer solstice before the yang starts its decline. This herb thus very literally absorbs only the energy of the yang part of the year. This attention to timing is important, but most growers now disregard this key feature. I believe very strongly that it is these types of detailed practical instructions that make Chinese medicine a science in its own right, and that it is important that they be heeded, whether modern laboratory verification has been able to perceive any benefits or not. The principle that involves herb cultivation in the right place and harvesting at the proper time of year is called didao yaocai. This term means “genuine,” and expresses the proper yin and yang properties of the herbs due to correct attention to planting in the right place (di: yin) at the right time (dao: yang). Only then can this herb considered to be genuine. It is not just a matter of correct species identification.[17]"}}

It should be that when you describe your methids as science, it is fair to describe it as pseudoscience at WP. Comments? PPdd (talk) 21:23, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

The phrase whether modern laboratory verification has been able to perceive any benefits or not is what categorizes it as pseudo-science. If results cannot be replicated then it is not science. TFD (talk) 21:49, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, yes, clearly pseudoscience. It's interesting that an apparently sane person believes that "detailed instructions" are the hallmark of a science. Perhaps the logic is "Science is precise therefore anything precise is Science". Dingo1729 (talk) 22:11, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I am not clear on the first sentence in this section. Is there a need for RS calling at least one altmed a pseudoscience or for calling all altmeds pseudoscience? This source addresses the first interpretation but not the second. However, it also requires OR to interpret the quote as saying anything other than that TCM is a true science, nothing about pseudoscience.Jojalozzo 11:37, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

@Joja - There was a complaint at this talk page (or talk:alt med, I don't remember which) about calling a TCM practice "pseudoscience", because it did not claim to be a science. Here is where it does claim to be a science, and an explanation why. The person quoted is a famous TCM historian/practitioner/scholar, and specializes on oral tradition in TCM, and is quoted in an oral interview as a secondary source on what he calls "science", but with wording straight out of the defining lead sentence of pseudoscience. PPdd (talk) 14:26, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying that. From what you say, I don't understand what all this is about. Just because someone calls it a science doesn't mean we can call it a pseudoscience. That would be synthesis and OR. All we need is a source that says it's pseudoscience. This discussion seems like a lot of fuss about the subject and not the article. Jojalozzo 03:25, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Cooking is a lot more notable than traditional Chinese medicine, and I am pretty sure a lot more people call it a science. Presumably we all agree that the article should not say that cooking is pseudoscience. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) What's different about TCM? Hans Adler 22:51, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

@Hans - "Culinary science" is a science, not pseudoscience. E.g., McDonalds uses sophisticated operations research methods to optimize cooking output. Immediately dropping hot hard boiled eggs in cold water to better shell them later is a science fact, and is not pseudoscience. Punching a hole in a bagel or doghnut flaying a slab of meat, etc., to increase surface area exposed to heat for more even cooking, are scientific methods. Methods of causing bread to rise are science. Pasteurizing or cooking time to kill harmful bacteria is science, and as the Odwalla salmonella in tastier unpasteruized apple juice problem about 15 years ago showed, science and art mix. "Culinary arts" uses culinary science to appeal to taste. Some areas of indian cuisine might be called "pseudoscience", since they are neither art nor science, such as relating food ingredients to the tin tal structure of some tabla music, or relating them to the strutcture of a work of indian art. Other aspects, like making ghee, are scientific, to be used in gustatory arts. PPdd (talk) 14:40, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Wow. I had noticed this pattern before but this has confirmed it: You are always locating pseudoscience in areas you are not familiar with, while what you know to some extent apparently is always clean. How about the following very widespread misconceptions that are actually being taught as part of this "science":

• Salt should be added to pasta water only after it started boiling. Otherwise the pasta may not turn out well.
• Alcohol used in cooking evaporates completely, or at least overwhelmingly, so that food prepared in this way can safely be given to children and alcoholics.
• Mushrooms must not be heated a second time, so if you cooked too much and want to eat the rest on the next day, you must it them cold.

You seem to be influenced very strongly by a cognitive bias that makes things that you know well appear interesting, large, diverse, multi-faceted and generally positive except perhaps for a few black sheep, while things you don't know much about appear usually not worth examining, small, uniform, homogeneous and dominated by their negative aspects. I am sure we all have this cognitive bias to some extent, and some related biases have Wikipedia articles (see outgroup homogeneity bias, trait ascription bias (yes, I am aware of the irony), well travelled road effect). If you want to contribute to an encyclopedia, you must either learn to control this bias or stay out of topics that you are not actually interested in. Hans Adler 18:17, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah. the problem here is that people keep trying to dichotomize what's really a continuum. Science in its simplest sense just means the systematic observation of actions and their results, and the attempt to create theoretical constructs that describe that relationship. In that sense, science has been an ongoing project for many thousands of years in many different contexts. the tools of observation used in traditional chinese medicine (or in cooking, for that matter) are not on a par with modern tools, and the theories they use are not what a modern scientist would view as parsimonious, but that doesn't mean they are not scientific (that's as wrong as saying that early 20th century race car drivers are not actually race car drivers because their cars only went 60mph).

Pseudoscience, by contrast, is really something that tries to claim the authority of science without actually doing the systematic observation that science requires. I don't really consider most forms of AltMed to be pseudoscientific because (1) most never try to usurp to authoritative position of modern scientific methods, and (2) most have some system of observation and analysis, even if what they observe and how they analyze is a bit odd from western perspectives. of course there are AltMed pseudosciences (e.g. magnetic healing bracelets or modern Rife devices, that pretend to scientific rigor because it sells product), but most of altmed is just extrapolations of traditional (outdated) methodologies for a modern clientele, mixed with a form of one-on-one personal care that makes them more friendly than the detached, impersonal, aseptic atmosphere of a clinic or hospital. --Ludwigs2 00:14, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Since Wikipedia is a secondary source accoring to WP:RS,(that was a bad joke about the highly nonWP:V and WP:OR) definition of pseudoscience from its article. "Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific methodology". Pretty much exactly worded as the bold face in the quote above, but generalized. PPdd (talk) 02:43, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Contrary to popular opinion, being a secondary source implies avoiding synthesis in both direction. The definition you give (which is a reasonably good definition) should be used judiciously, neither overextending nor minimizing the language. I don't think the source above 'presents the topic as scientific' in the way this definition implies - The archetype of pseudoscience (obviously) is creationism, which explicitly claimed to be in competition with (even superior to) modern scientific theory and methodology. This TCM author only seems to be claiming that there is form of scientific reasoning in play, and is not comparing TCM to modern medicine or making any claims of equivalence. --Ludwigs2 01:30, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Actually, WP:SPS states the following:

Anyone can create a personal web page or pay to have a book published, then claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason, self-published media, such as books, patents, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, personal or group blogs, Internet forum postings, and tweets, are largely not acceptable as sources. Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable 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. However, one should take care when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else is likely to have done so.

I have added in the emphasis. And furthermore, WP:CIRCULAR states:

Articles on Wikipedia or on websites that mirror its content should not be used as sources, because this would amount to self-reference. Similarly, editors should not use sources that present material originating from Wikipedia to support that same material in Wikipedia, as this would create circular sourcing—Wikipedia citing a source that derives its material from Wikipedia. Wikipedia may be cited with caution as a primary source of information on itself, such as in articles about itself.

Sorry, but you can't cite a wiki on a wiki. N419BH 01:33, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

It was a bad joke on my part. Most editors here know me and expect dumb jokes to be peppered with content. I struck the joke "WP is RS" part. The point of the joke was that the definition in the pseudoscience article is not WP:V, and is pure WP:OR (but still a good definition that I am not suggesting changing). It just turned out that the language of the definition (OR nonV) has wording almost identical to what the quoted famous TCM scholar/practitioner used to self describe his field. That second point is a fact, but is also actually funny. LOL PPdd (talk) 05:51, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

The subject is confusing for me because I keep looking for a reasonable distinction between honest but inadequate attempt at science and honest (pseudoscience?) and successful attempt at science (real science?). There is a parallel between medicine and engineering. As an engineer, I am not a scientist. I practice according to theory and some of those are based on physics and chemistry. In fundamental terms, medicine is a practice based on a theory. The theory is usually based on the sciences of biology and physics, but in some cases, the theories are based on educated guesses derived from experience. Alternative practices are the same. In some cases mainstream medicine has or had it wrong, but there the science is discussed by the mainstream community from the perspective of what was learned. In alternative practices, the science is just vilified by the mainstream.

From my perspective, I would end the article with the statement that "The term pseudoscience is often considered inherently pejorative." I have said it before. The term is being used to discount science when the quality of science should be addressed just like one would for any effort to conduct research. It is also being used to discount good science that is based on assumptions that are not acceptable to the mainstream editors. That is intellectually lazy and simple prejudice ... not encyclopedic at all, just a tool for the skeptics, and as such, the article will never be stable as it is now. Tom Butler (talk) 02:14, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

It's not surprising that you find it confusing, because it still confuses people who study science for a living. see the demarcation problem. In fact, what happened (if you'll pardon a momentary exegesis) is that back in the first half of the last century there was a push to 'define' science - this was part of the modernism movement, which was trying to export modern western culture to other places in the world in the belief that modern western culture was inherently better than those 'exotic, primitive' societies. 'Modern western culture' boiled down to capitalism, democracy, and science/technology, and a lot of people had a vested interest in demonstrating that all of those were intrinsically better. This led to people like Popper trying to construct rationales that explained why modernist science was actually superior: pseudoscience was his brainchild in a lot of ways, as his way of distinguishing 'true science' from other activities that looked like science. However, modernism is basically dead (most people subscribe to various forms of multiculturalism now), no one in the philosophy of science subscribes to Popper's theories any more, but the pseudoscience idea has hung around as a kind of cultural prejudice. I mean, most scholars recognize that there is a difference between proper research paradigms and flawed methodologies, but the idea that there is a singular 'scientific method' that sets western science apart has been mostly discarded in favor of utilitarian models of science.

Unfortunately, wikipedia is far more sensitive to cultural prejudices than most arenas of life, so pseudoscience is a far bigger deal here than it is practically anywhere else in the world. interesting (but annoying) phenomena. --Ludwigs2 05:34, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Tom Butler, your confusion might be lessened by reading the bad faith article, which has a section on "honesty" as you use it in pseudoscience. Sartre introduced the idea, which then developed into where a person deceives themselves (like in the pseudosciences of creation science or nazi eugentics, they may be superficially "honest", but are actually dishonest because they are dishonest with themselves. Ludwigs2's confusion is about technicalities of a different kind. PPdd (talk) 05:45, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Well I think in some cases (many cases) politics has entered into the fray, and when that happens controversy usually increases proportionately (possibly exponentially). --THE FOUNDERS INTENT ^PRAISE 14:13, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Pseudoscience may seem like a bad faith issue to some, but since the term has been defined, it has become a name used to identify any idea that does not conform to some people's worldview. That is simply promoting prejudice and "official Wiki" opposition to new ideas. People may believe that it is necessary to identify fraudulent use of science but the distinction between bad faith and honest but uninformed attempts at good research is not being made here.

This discussion is pertinent to the article's development because I know it has been a battle ground for years now. It is possible to make the article more specifically about failed attempts at good science rather than about fraud and deception for profit. All of my areas of study are classified as pseudoscience, and I take the implication in this article that, therefore, I am fraudulently deceiving the public or putting the public in danger as a direct insult of the popular use of this term in Wikipedia and by the skeptical community. Even more damaging is that the vilification can and has resulted in the kind of danger that makes me think I should go underground with my work. (When I talk about my work, I should be talking about the work of a pretty large community around the world.)

You may be educated, but the many of the people who read this article are more Luddite than scholar. I am confident that most people editing here are not sufficiently informed about progress in understanding subtle energy phenomena to make a blanket claim about bad science or fraud. If that is the case, then the only remaining reason for this article's tone is to discourage people from studying subjects which are not currently supported in modern science. That is tantamount to the mainstream becoming a "Flat Earth Society." Tom Butler (talk) 19:55, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Tom: the pseudoscience problem on wikipedia is that the project has a vocal contingent of dedicated skeptics who have gotten it into their heads that they need to defend the project from fringe advocacy. That's not such a bad thing except that (a) skeptics aren't really scientists, and tend to act on ideological grounds rather than reasoned analysis, and (b) the 'defend the project' mentality means that they will often support other people they perceive as skeptics, regardless of the actual context of the matter. What happened here is typical of my experience on fringe articles: make some minorish change, offer a reasonable explanation, then be met with a flurry of kneejerk reverts (usually without explanation or discussion) and be forced to repeat the same reasoning over and over and over again as different skeptical editors show up to repeat the same defunct arguments that the last dozen skeptical editors made. It's like one of those zombie movies where no matter how many you escape, another always appears with the same stumbling, mind-devouring intent.

Wikipedia IV: Night of the Living Skeptics. yeah, this is probably going to get me in trouble... --Ludwigs2 22:23, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs2, my fellow zombie just phoned me, and has to work late as a Whac-A-Mole, so here I am instead. Scientists are usually skeptics (e.g., definition of "normal science" and why it sticks), and most skeptics come from their ranks, so skeptics are usually scientists, especially prominent skeptics like at Science Based Medicine. PPdd (talk) 00:46, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

PPdd, that makes zero sense. Scientists have no ownership of skepticism, so it's silly to say that most skeptics are scientists. Anyone with a reasonable level of common sense and awareness can be skeptical. --THE FOUNDERS INTENT ^PRAISE 03:51, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

PPdd, do you really want to include the likes of James Randi adherents as the scientists you respect? You may want to stop canvassing amongst the various talk pages to drum up support for yoour personal crusades. I know admins get a little concerned that such activity is intended to gang up on opposition. Of course, I know you would not dream of doing that. Tom Butler (talk) 01:09, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

PPdd - actually, science and skepticism are entirely different projects; they share the word skepticism, but it has different meanings for each group. for a scientist, skepticism means (roughly) "I choose not to have any beliefs about a subject in the absence of evidence." It's a philosophically conservative position designed to keep people from making a priori assertions about the world (except those dictated by logic or math). For skeptics, by contrast, skepticism means (roughly) "I choose to believe that non-conventional ideas are wrong until they have met some burden of evidence." This is an ideological position designed to advocate against certain kinds of viewpoints. See how these differ on (for example) acupuncture:

• Looking at something like acupuncture scientifically one would be forced to admit that there really isn't much evidence either way - there is no scientific reason to recommend its use, but no obvious reason to say that it's wrong, either.
  • i.e. acupuncture is morally neutral, like drinking tea with honey and lemon when you have a cold.
• Looking at something like acupuncture as a skeptic one would find oneself saying that acupuncture hasn't met the needed burden of evidence, and so acupuncture is wrong - and this will lead to ideological claims that people who take acupuncture are stupid, that people who do acupuncture are charlatans, and etc.
  • i.e. acupuncture is morally bereft, like selling sugar pills as cure for cancer.

Science and skepticism overlap in the assertion that one should use practices that have been born out by systematic experience. But that's where the similarity ends: skepticism goes on to make moral judgements about practices that science can never make, and to engage in advocacy with respect to those moral claims. I mean, look at the vast range of skeptical literature, almost none of which contains any actual research (aside from literature reviews of other people's published work), and which is almost entirely dedicated to critical declamations against one or another questionable activity. Skepticism is (frankly) scientific punditry, and while I won't deny its value in that 'consumer advocate' sort of way, one needs to be cautious with it as an intellectual enterprise. --Ludwigs2 03:00, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs2, in the following statement I suspect you have unintentionally created a straw man argument, or are confusing pseudoskepticism for skepticism. I say "unintentionally" because I know you know better, when you just think it over:

• Looking at something like acupuncture as a skeptic one would find oneself saying that acupuncture hasn't met the needed burden of evidence, and so acupuncture is wrong - and this will lead to ideological claims that people who take acupuncture are stupid, that people who do acupuncture are charlatans, and etc.

Human nature being what it is, that might happen, but skepticism is directed at the undocumented claims made for acupuncture, not at acupuncture itself. It's just a method. Since it actually affects the body, it has the potential for both good and bad effects. The claims commonly made are the problem. If the claims were neutral, there would be no problem. Marcello Truzzi understood the matter quite well. Skepticism is agnostic. That most modern skeptics think he had a problem with never saying "enough is enough", and that they think there is a time to call a spade a spade is another matter. They don't hesitate to declare obviously nonsensical claims for nonsensical and insist that the burden of evidence is on the one making the nonsensical claims. In that sense one might say that the very definition of modern skepticism has moved a bit further from his definition. By contrast, those who are enthused with pseudoscientific ideas would like to keep their minds open to even the most ridiculous speculations (no amount of evidence to the contrary can dissuade them), while skeptics require extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims. They don't keep their minds open to such claims for all eternity. They move on to other more constructive endeavors and wait for proponents to provide proof. If they do so, then the skeptics will drop their skepticism and accept this new evidence. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:24, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

You're right, I didn't speak clearly. The main distinction I was trying to make is that scientists (as you/truzzi point out) are agnostic, but skeptics have a distinct belief structure. Having the belief structure is not bad in-and-of-itself, and there is a distinct difference between skeptics (who will believe something is false until they see a clear demonstration of its truth) and pseudoskeptics (who believe something is false as a matter of ideology, and cannot accept it as true, regardless of evidence, without something akin to a crisis of faith). For instance, if the rapture were actually to happen tomorrow, scientists would go "hunh, look at that" skeptics would go "well, shit! who'da thought?", and pseudoskeptics would go on denying it until Jesus himself smacked them on the nose with a rolled up newspaper.

Don't know if that's of any use, but it sure was a fun example. --Ludwigs2 05:53, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Finding a second opinion

I have been searching the Internet for a second opinion about pseudoscience. In fact, the only people who seem to be using the term are skeptics, scientists complaining about opposing views and people who parrot scientists and other opinion setters. This is very strange in that there seems to always be opposing views for other subjects or viewpoints. It is the nature of some people to be a little contrarian. Do you suppose it is professional suicide to question the concept? It certainly is here if you look at how some editors think.

I did find one interesting article which I think is much more balanced and reasonable than the one here. The main difference is that it is more balanced. At least I did not feel that the editors were attacking, only explaining. The pseudoscience article is here. Tom Butler (talk) 00:24, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

What in the current article do you think is attacking? IRWolfie- (talk) 01:01, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

You have a point Tom Butler. Before I read your link, I was thinking exactly what that article says - "The term is pejorative, and its use is inevitably controversial..." It is what real scientists think of stuff that claims to be science but isn't. However, I cannot see how such a negative perspective can be avoided. HiLo48 (talk) 01:12, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes Tom, please point it out. As to the pejorative nature of the term, certainly it's pejorative. So what? What relevance does that have here? -- Brangifer (talk) 01:40, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

It is perfectly normal for inherently negative concepts such as pseudoscience, stupidity, murder, child abuse etc. not to have public proponents or apologists. Sometimes there are proponents, but they try to cheat by changing the definitions (as the previous US government did with torture, for example). Even for totally negative concepts one sometimes finds proponents or at least pretended proponents. Some such people (Satanists) choose what they consider sufficiently evil and therefore cool. They are not interested in defending pseudoscience or other forms of incompetence or dishonesty.

The philosophical troubles with demarcation between science and pseudoscience do of course make the concept of pseudoscience somewhat questionable, but no more so than the concept of science. If you are interested in scholarship (in a wide sense) that strives to defend stupidity by claiming essentially that there is no real difference between science and pseudoscience, then I suggest you look at what some postmodern authors say about science. Hans Adler 21:18, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Just looking at the List of topics characterized as pseudoscience... One must clearly distinguish the following:

1. Simply not science (religious beliefs, astrology, etc.)
2. Fringe/unproven theories. They may be wrong or occasionally right, but they do not contradict basics of mainstream science.
3. Bad science (articles retracted from "Nature")
4. Defunct historical theories (e.g. Lamarkism) - no one currently claims them to be correct scientific theories
5. Legitimate scientific disputes, e.g. about Global warming, no matter who was right or wrong
6. Real pseudoscience, e.g. Lysenkoism. This is something which satisfy two conditions: (a) it was claimed to be real science, but (b) it contradicted well established basics of science (e.g. Genetics) at the time when the pseudoscientific theory was proposed. Pseudoscience is usually promoted by people who pretend to be scientists, like Trofim Lysenko or Olga Lepeshinskaya (biologist). Hodja Nasreddin (talk) 16:46, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Astrology "simply not science" -- is that supposed to be a joke? Astrology is the standard example of pseudoscience. It's the one thing that basically everybody (and certainly all philosophers of science whose opinions on pseudoscience I have read) agrees is a pseudoscience. Also, calling the dispute about global warming a legitimate scientific dispute is a severe over-simplification. To the extent that there is an actual legitimate scientific dispute, it is overshadowed by a denial campaign that has no legitimacy whatsoever and which employs deliberate pseudoscience, character assassinations against scientists and similar dirty tricks. Hans Adler 21:03, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps I did not think it through. Astrology is a set of systems, traditions, and beliefs founded on the notion that the relative positions of celestial bodies can explain or predict fate, personality, human affairs, and other earthly matters. The influence of solar cycles on "earthly matters" is actually mainstream science.Hodja Nasreddin (talk) 03:05, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Hans, I am not sure if I read your comment correctly. Did you just compare pseudoscience with stupidity, murder and child abuse?

The first thing I have noticed about pseudoscience is that virtually all of the people using the term are either skeptics on clearly skeptical websites, people who need a term that will prejudice the reader or people quoting skeptics and those scientists. Government agencies are basing their claims on statements from skeptical publications. In turn, Wikipedia editors are basing statements here on those references and probably millions of less discerning people are assuming all of this is a proper scientific perspective. That is circular referencing.

The first sentence in the article makes an absolute statement that pseudoscience does not follow "valid scientific methodology" and that there is a "general absence of systematic process." The part I think is the most clever is the implication that, while yes it is a derogatory term, it is only so because it is the awful truth and those practicing pseudoscience naturally complain about being so labeled. Most of the opening is like that.

Of course there are cases of bad science, but most often it is because of a poorly considered hypothesis or because the person simply does not have the training in proper science and logical thinking. Telling someone like a ghost hunter that they are stupid for believing in ghosts when they have a really convincing picture of one in their camera is naturally going to get a "Yes there are" response. The intellectually responsible thing to do is to examine the photo and figure out what it really is. This article helps to assure that anyone who does thids will be vilified.

(This is a well-known dilemma for people seeking help understanding how mundane artifacts might be mistaken as paranormal phenomena. Someone says "pseudoscience" and people who might know run for the door.)

As for the proper scientific method, it is easily demonstrated that a lot of what you call pseudoscience is good science often applied by academically trained good scientists. What the article is really saying is contained in that one word of the opening sentence: "plausibility." Right now, the official position of editors who want to make studying anything they deem to be pseudoscience an actionable offense that would result in a permanent block, and probably jail if they were lawmakers is that "It is impossible and therefore cannot be." That automatically makes all things they disagree with, pseudoscience. Tom Butler (talk) 23:20, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Okay, let's look at why astrology is a pseudoscience. I study the major arcana of the Tarot to better understand the concepts in the hermetic teachings. There is a strong correlation between tarot and astrology when it comes to major personality types. There is also good agreement with the four temperaments described by David Merrill and Roger Reid. These are all observational categories.

Relating astrology to the position of the planets does use astronomy, but it appears that astronomy was more related to agriculture and astrologers adopted astronomy as a possible causative influence for observed personality. I am not a scholar on astrology and lost interest in astronomy in elementary school, but it has always been my understanding that astrology is based on a theory and uses astronomy as a tool. It is the theory you all are objecting to and calling astrology a pseudoscience is clearly a way of vilifying that which you do not agree.

There are excellent reasons to think personality is related to planetary cycles, but probably not for the same reasons held by astrological theory. For instance, people born in the winter are apparently more prone to schizophrenia. The culprit is thought to be virus in "junk DNA" which is sometimes "turned on" if the mother or child has a cold or flue near the time of birth. This is actually being considered as the cause of other degenerative diseases of the brain. This is way out of my field, but the correlation between season of birth and behavior--in some cases--is clear. See [18], [19], and [20]

All of your indignation aside, astrology is a theory put to practice based on information gathered via astronomy. As seen in our day, it is based on science, but the theory is based on observation and science is just handy. It may be a silly idea, but it is only pseudoscience because you say it is. Tom Butler (talk) 18:02, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

If it were a science then it would be possible to predict outcomes that could not be explained by other factors, such as climate at time of birth. And rather than merely using astronomy for gathering information, it makes specific claims about planets, stars and moons that supposedly affect people and events in ways that cannot be explained by physics. TFD (talk) 18:16, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

For Wikipedia, astrology is a pseudoscience because all relevant reliable sources agree that it is a pseudoscience and most regard it as the paradigm of pseudoscience. This is not the place for continuing this absurd discussion. See my second comment in the thread Talk:Astrology#'pseudoscience' in first line. Hans Adler 19:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Hans, I couldn't get past Brangifer comment that "we use pejoratives here all the time because RS use them." That gives me a new definition for "stupid is as stupid does."

But I agree that nothing more is going to be gained here. I do want to thank everyone for helping me understand some of the social dynamics of this issue. What I have learned is to recommend that people ask those who discount their work as pseudoscience if they have examined the tenets of the subject, and if so, exactly what in it is pseudoscience. If that does not produce a response that can be addressed then the person must assume the pseudoscience claim is based on either just the desire to discount the subject or there is a genuine belief that the subject is impossible because mainstream science (or its apologists) say so. There is no way that accusations based on scientism can be addressed with rational discussion.

Of course, there are issues with science education but they will not be addressed with this sort of name calling. I don't care where the idiot saying so was published. Tom Butler (talk) 22:33, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Tom, we don't use pejoratives as pejoratives, we use words as words. Whether they are pejorative is secondary. There is simply no non-pejorative word for pseudoscience (non-normal science really doesn't cut it), and yet this phenomenon is well covered in thousands of RS. We reflect their 'bias' and also note the status of the word as it is perceived by those it is applied to. I know you'd prefer there be no such thing as pseudoscience, but somewhere along the way you'll run into a subject that just seems hokey (Raelians? Young Earth Creationism? ShamWow?) and find the claims made to represent the validity of these subjects couched in a pseudo-scientific language which is wholly unwarranted. Ocaasi (talk) 23:37, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Bad picture.

The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phrenologychart.png picture appears on this article. After noticing that it does not link to Phrenology, I checked. Phrenology contains a much clearer version of the same file: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PhrenologyPix.jpg it solves the readability problems of the picture in this article. I have replaced the hard to read version with the clear one from the Phrenology page. Chardansearavitriol (talk) 16:24, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Overview

Could someone explain why this article has an Overview section. Isn't that a) the lede; b) redundant with the lede; c) misnamed; or d) better split up into the respective sections that handle the content. What is the point of this section, or the precedent for including it in an article that is not that long or even that complicated? Would it be better broken up into 'history' and 'definition' or somesuch? Ocaasi ^c 14:53, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

The overview is more detailed than the LEAD (this isn't a newspaper). It's critical so that when we point fringe-pushing editors to this article, they might understand (though highly doubtful) what constitutes pseudoscience and what doesn't. For most of us, it isn't complicated, misnamed, redundant. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 15:24, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that adds up. Encyclopedias articles are overviews, and having an overview section within one, when there is already a lede, is a sign that the article is not well structured or organized. By analogy, consider if the lede had its own sub-section called 'introduction'. Or if the a History section had its own first sub-section called 'overview of prior events'. That could be justifiable in an extremely long article (which would almost definitely run into WP:FORK constraints before such a section was warranted), but since this is not a particularly long article, that doesn't make sense either.

Also, having a cheat sheet to educate POV-pushers is not part of the purpose of articles; I think that's a conflation of article-space and project-space goals. If we want to have something like that it should be at WP:FRINGE not here. Ocaasi ^c 15:40, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

The heading is unhelpful but I think some of the content is good - particularly on definitions of pseudoscience. Perhaps we could trim out a couple of redundant sentences, and rename the section accordingly? I'd agree that dealing with unhelpful editors is something we would normally do elsewhere (including on talkpages), but it is sometimes reasonable to adapt article content to such pressures. For example, if an instance of an ethnic label in a BLP (or a genre label in a music article) attracts lots editwars and drama, sometimes it's better to just remove that label... bobrayner (talk) 15:50, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

I find these discussions tendentious. Why don't editors spend time writing articles? As a warning, almost anything written here will involve edit warring. There are a large number of editors who helped write this article over the years that will stand up to any Fringe-pushing POV edits. And even a slight change will become a battle. It's only worth making changes to fringe editors with an agenda. Otherwise, the article is fairly useful. I use it all the time in the real life world as ways to point out pseudoscience. It's probably one of a handful of articles on Wikipedia that's actually academic-worthy. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 17:03, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Something about marking as 'tendentious' an attempt at discussion' isn't really in the spirit of writing collaborative encyclopedias. A suggestion was made, you disagree with it, others contribute... That's not tendentious unless you think others disagreeing with you is inherently tendentious. I don't care to disagree with you, but I do fix errors in article construction where I see them. I don't think most editors avoid topics because they may turn into edit wars either. If that was the case, almost nothing would get written. That said, just because something is contentious doesn't mean it has to turn into an edit war.

I don't think the proposed changes (or questions) are even that contentious. It's just organizational logic to not have an overview section in a short encyclopedic article. And the assumption that the only people who oppose you are those who want to harm the encyclopedia also preempts any kind of discussion, effectively assuming the conclusion you brought here. Last, if something is 'academic-worthy' that doesn't mean it shouldn't be improved. More likely the opposite.

Bob, I like the suggestion to have a definition section. It looks to me like a few paragraphs of definition and a few paragraphs of history or ideological evolution. Both of those make sense as subsections for an article about terminology that has an interesting and contentious history.

Currently the 'Identifying Pseudoscience' section is both very long and also a jumble of first history and then identifying factors. That should probably be split into two, first history and then definitions/criteria. The material in the overview could respectively begin, or be mixed into, those sections (or if it's repetitive just removed). Generally readers don't benefit from an overview after an introduction if the alternative is well structured and titled sub-sections. If the overview is needed, the rest of the article is likely poorly written. I don't think that's really the case; I just think the overview is not needed. Ocaasi ^c 17:45, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

I think Ocaasi's criticism is valid and the proposals are good. I say go for it. Jojalozzo 22:45, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Ocassi has no consensus to make such POV changes. I say NO. There we go, a tie. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 16:41, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I support Ocaasi's proposal. Of course, wikipedia is not a democracy; perhaps we could strike some kind of compromise. Are there any parts which you consider could be improved? bobrayner (talk) 16:47, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

O.M., you have presumed a lot here--that this is a vote, that my changes would be POV, that the article is better now than if the changes you haven't seen yet were made... There are options: try a new version, draft, or discuss changes--but unilateral opposition to something you haven't been able to evaluate without any reason is not really an option. You'll have to start with an explanation of why the article warrants an overview section, which is fairly (completely?) unusual, and nothing I've seen at other serious, well-written articles or described in MOS guidelines.

Bob, do you think it would be more constructive to do this in /talkspace as a draft? It could be a bit unwieldy since it involves several sections. Ocaasi ^c 17:29, 17 April 2011 (UTC)