[WikiEN-l] CYD for admin (was Crackpot articles)

Sat Jul 5 19:14:23 UTC 2003

Michael Becker wrote:

>I also want to urge Tim to go forward with his plan to get some
>involvement from the skeptic community, we need some informed skeptics
>to provide some balance on this issue.
>
>>I'd like to point out a number of crackpot articles recently 
>>contributed by the user Reddi:
>>
><snip>
>
>>Any suggestions about what to do?
>>
>
>We have to keep an eye on him. Note that most of his contributions need
>copyediting anyway, since his English isn't too good. Reddi seems to be
>a pleasant, courteous guy, so he's never going to get banned.
>
The suggestion that anyone might be banned for supporting 
"pseudoscience" is frightenining.  Copyediting someone's English is in a 
different league.  It is always a great exercise in the practice of NPOV 
to take an article with which you strongly disagree, and copyedit the 
English without changing the substantive intent of the author.

>After coming across [[reciprocal system of theory]] for the first time
>just recently, and after personally spending a great deal of time on
>[[neutrosophy]] and other articles, I have a feeling we're losing the
>war on pseudoscience, mainly due to an insufficient number of motivated
>skeptical contributors. I've been giving serious thought to advertising
>our cause on the major skeptical community forums.
>
Sometimes it seems that the greatest boost to pseudoscience is from 
ill-informed and self-appointed sceptics.  Having more of them would 
only make the situation worse.  They are often at such pains to disprove 
something that they extract a straw man from the proponent's material, 
and beat it to death.  The proponent then sees the straw man taken out 
of context, and feels the need to defend his views.  The sceptic's 
efforts end up as a parallel to feeding the trolls.

>I don't really see any other way to do this, other than plain
>old-fashioned manpower. If any of these theories are truly
>idiosyncratic, we'll be able to save a lot of time if we can get them
>deleted. Other than that, we've just got to do the research, present the
>flaws, and contextualise.
>
Wrong!!  The burden of proof for a scientific (or pseudoscientific) 
hypothesis lies with its proponent.  Similarly, in a judicial 
environment the person making a complaint has the burden of proof, 
failing which he loses his case.and the defendant is under no obligation 
to say a word.  The sceptic who chooses to make a direct attack assumes 
a burden of proof that did not exist prior to the initiation of his attack.

With most of these articles a simple respectful statement that the 
practice or topic is often regarded as idiosyncratic or unproven, etc. 
(intentionally avoiding the polemical word "pseudoscientific") is all 
that is required.  Any further detail adds fuel to the fire.  The place 
for many of these theories is as quaint and often amusing footnotes to 
the history of science.  If a "scientist" feels that he is wasting a lot 
of time disproving these theories, he has no-one to blame but himself.

Eclecticology