The Cunctator wrote:
Considering both Wikipedia's mission and
Wikipedia's methods, having a
bias towards scientific (objective, confirmable, empirical, etc.)
language and methods in constructing articles is right and (I believe)
necessary.
If we do not use specific, empirical language, we cannot express
confirmable statements. We will instead use sentences that muddle
meaning and issues. This fails Wikipedia's mission and leads to a
breakdown in Wikipedia's methods, as the hammerings of multiple authors
will not lead inexorably to one result.
Another way of putting the same idea: Wikipedia needs to be biased
towards language based on consensual thought, such as scientific
language, because Wikipedia is a consensual product.
I don't in general agree with this: there is very good reason Ethics
journals do not use scientific terminology exclusively when discussion
the abortion issue, because such terminology, while well-suited to
discussing specific medical procedures, is ill-suited to discussing
ethical issues. I think when discussing ethical issues we should make
current accepted practice in the field of Ethics our model, not current
accepted practice in the largely unrelated scientific fields. I've
suggested the Journal of Applied Ethics as a good model, but I'm open to
other suggestions as well.
A specific recommendation for the article at hand: the
discussion of the
medical procedures and the political debate about the medical procedures
need to be mde distinct.
One thing this means is that the language of anti-abortion proponents
can't be used to describe the medical procedures, as that language
expressly disallows such a distinction.
This I agree with. There should be a section (or separate article) that
describes only the medical procedure, using medical terminology (but
with an attempt to keep it from becoming dry and jargon-filled so that
it's not comprehensible to a layperson).
-Mark