[WikiEN-l] Categories and NPOV

Mon Jun 27 20:31:26 UTC 2005

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".
>  
>

Well, I happen to be a scientist by training and profession, and not a 
Creationist or Eugenicist, but I really dislike 
[[Category:Pseudoscience]].  This *is* indeed making a claim from 
Wikipedia that said articles describe pseudoscience, which is not 
particularly neutral.  If, as you describe, we want to describe 
something as "labelled pseudoscience by the mainstream scientific 
community", it should be given a category that reflects that more 
neutrally, such as [[Category:Non-mainstream scientific theories]].  
Sort of how we have [[Category:Alternative medicine]] rather than 
[[Category:Quack medicine]].

-Mark