[WikiEN-l] Re: Categories and NPOV

Sat Jul 2 18:06:35 UTC 2005

"Pseudoscience" implies, at the very minimum, a form of deception (it
is "pretending" to be science). I think that's a pretty strong value
judgment. And most people interpret it to mean "crackpot" and "false."
It is certainly not a neutral term in and of itself. I don't know how
to quantify whether it is more or less neutral than something like
"Satanic lies" but I don't think it's quite so far off for most
people. For a practice or belief system which attempts to be
represented as some form of truth, being labeled as "pseudoscience"
cannot be seen in a "neutral" light. Which is why I think a heavy
attributional approach (what I've been calling a "sociological"
approach) is the only NPOV way to approach it.

FF

On 6/30/05, Phil Sandifer <sandifer at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> The important insertion that Wikipedia is not making in this debate
> is that pseudoscience is wrong.
> 
> That most reasonable people do believe pseudoscience to be wrong is
> incidental. The term itself does not necessarily imply the value
> judgment that "satanic lies" does.
> 
> -Snowspinner
> 
> On Jun 30, 2005, at 10:33 AM, Timwi wrote:
> 
> > Fastfission wrote:
> >
> >> [[Category:Pseudoscience]] is one which gets objections at fairly
> >> regular intervals. The reasons for the objections are pretty
> >> straightforward -- the users making such objections are almost always
> >> either Creationists or Eugenicists or other people who believe in
> >> bodies of thought labeled as "pseudoscience" -- and the response is
> >> generally pretty straightforward as well: Wikipedia is not claiming
> >> these so-labeled articles are actually "pseudoscience", but rather
> >> that they are labeled *by the mainstream scientific community* as
> >> "pseudoscience".
> >>
> >
> >
> > It is the year 2047.
> >
> > After a plentiful dinner, Bob and Stan have somehow got into this
> > discussion that doesn't seem to want to come to an end. Bob is a
> > Creationist, firmly believing in the truth of the Bible. Stan is a
> > scientist and defends Darwin's theory of evolution.
> >
> > To settle the dispute, Stan gets up and grabs a book from the
> > shelf. The front cover reads, "Wikipedia 1.0 - Category Index".
> > Knowing that if there's one thing he and Bob can agree on, it's the
> > reliability of the world-renowned Wikipedia, he browses through it
> > and eventually presents to Bob a page led by the heading
> > "Category:Pseudoscience". His finger points to the place where
> > Creationism is listed.
> >
> > "See, Creationism is pseudoscience," he explains.
> >
> > Bob snaps the book out of Stan's hands and browses forward a fair
> > chunk of pages. Under "Category:Satanic lies", he shows to Stan, we
> > find a reference to the entry on "Evolution".
> >
> > "See, Evolution is a Satanic lie."
> >
> >
> > No matter how many people you can convince that listing Article X
> > under [[Category:Pseudoscience]] does /not/ mean that Wikipedia
> > takes the stance that Topic X is a pseudoscience, the vast majority
> > will assume that it does.
> >
> > And that is why people are complaining about those categorisations.
> >
> > I am happy to have [[Creationism]] listed under
> > [[Category:Pseudoscience]], but only because it happens to agree
> > with my POV.
> >
> > Maybe the only way out of this is to call the categories something
> > unwieldy-but-NPOV like [[Category:Theories or beliefs widely
> > considered pseudoscience]]...
> >
> > Timwi
> >
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> >
> 
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