[WikiEN-l] SPOV threatens NPOV

Fri Dec 16 17:27:56 UTC 2005

One slight refinement...

> In analogic form about applied POV... Pseudoscience : Soviet spy ::
> Mainstream scientific community : U.S. intelligence services.

Or, put bluntly, "pseudoscience" is a designation given by the
mainstream scientific community (to certain fields of study), "Soviet
spy" is a designation given by U.S. intelligence services (to certain
individuals).

Now the problem with both is that such designations are often highly
disputed -- ID claims it is not a pseudoscience and indeed claims that
often evolution is pseudoscientific. In labeling ID a pseudoscience
and evolution not one, we're implicitly taking a side in this debate.

Again, I think in some circumstances such leaning is not bad -- I
would rather Wikipedia be known for supporting the mainstream
scientific position on such small details as categorization than known
for supporting the fringe position. We're an encyclopedia, after all,
and the scientific community POV is easy to understand and relatively
transparent for people to look at and evaluate (not the case in terms
of U.S. intelligence services POV, which is very purposely closed and
obscured). But that's just one take on it.

FF