[WikiEN-l] SPOV threatens NPOV

Fri Dec 16 02:14:53 UTC 2005

On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 04:58:51PM -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
> >Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >>Because you had to characterize it as pseudoscience in the first place.
> >>
> >This resembles a circular argument.
> >
> >Is there any word or phrase in *common usage* (i.e., we can't coin a
> >Wikipedia-only neologism) that covers what is meant by "pseudoscience"?
> >
> "Alternate science" is such a term which does not carrry the same 
> negative baggage as "pseudoscience".

"Alternate science" suggests that a type of science is being done, which
is (a) not always the case, and (b) adopts the practitioner's POV.

Regarding (a), see e.g. the NYT article of December 7 regarding the
Templeton Foundation's attempts to fund "Intelligent Design" research.
The foundation, which funds work to reconcile science and religion, went
to ID advocates -- including the Discovery Institute -- and tried to get
research proposals.  They got ... nothing.  The ID "scientists" don't
want to _do_ science, even for a sympathetic audience like Templeton.

Science is not just a field of knowledge -- it's a field of endeavor; a
range of organized human behavior.  It isn't ideas or subject matter
that constitute science, but rather scientific _practice_ -- research,
experimentation, observation.  If there isn't any science _practice_
being done, then the field isn't scientific.

You don't get to be a scientist by having opinions about the same sort
of matters that scientists study.  You have to actually do the work and
participate in the process.  Science isn't something scientists believe
in, it's something scientists _do_.

"Alternate science" suggests that there's science being done, but that
it simply comes to different conclusions than mainstream science.  But
in this case (and many others) there isn't actually any science there;
there's only the *assertion* of science.  That's what makes ID not an
"alternate science" but rather a pseudoscience.

-- 
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>