[WikiEN-l] Re: Pseudoscience category - GSPOV

Wed Jun 29 11:47:08 UTC 2005

>On the one hand, "Pseudo-science" embraces more than just fakery that
>is being passed off as medicine. Other examples of subjects that I
>think would be fairly categorized as pseudo-science would include
>Ley lines, the teleological theory of cultural evolution, the theories
>of Immanuel Velekovsky, & as someone mentioned upthread ghosts. I
>guess you could say that it is any hypothesis that cannot be proven
>experimentally, but the least controversial examples are the ones
>that _have_ been disproven -- yet still have their true believers.

I fully agree.

>On the other hand, "quackery" is more properly applied to medicine
>that either does not work, or is harmful.

I fully agree.

>One can graduate from a
>mainstream, accredited medical school, receive a medical degree, &
>even be board-certified -- & yet still be a quack.

I fully agree.

Some doctors with education in scientific
medicine are quacks. The discipline itself,
however, isn't quackery. Homeopathy, on the
other hand, is pseudo-medicine. Everyone who
practices homeopathy is a quack while she's
doing it, in the sense that she is providing
medicine that doesn't work.

I keep coming back to homeopathy because it
is probably the pseudo-medicine discipline
with the greatest mainstream popularity. It
even has some degree of official recognition
in some countries. And yet it has been shown
beyond any reasonable doubt not to work.

>But if it really doesn't hurt anything if we call it "Alternative
>medicine", & creates a bit of WikiLove to do so, then shouldn't we
>accept the term & move on to other things?

I am arguing that the term is misleading
for the articles that category currently
holds (I won't repeat my argument here,
see my earlier posts). I suggest we replace
it with "Pseudo-medicine" and will do so
myself if objections are not raised.

>I see that we have 5
>candidates for the Wikimedia Foundation who are all well qualified,
>but we can only elect two: isn't that problem worth at least as
>many posts as this one?

Certainly. I wish them the best of luck.

If this discussion is overly burdening the
mailing list I suggest we continue it on the
talk page of Category:Alternative medicine.

Regards,
Haukur