[WikiEN-l] SPOV threatens NPOV

Sat Dec 17 03:38:43 UTC 2005

On 12/16/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> I'm still not at all convinced this is a problem, except in the view of
> those who don't like a label that accurately and concisely describes
> what they're doing.

Here's the crux of the problem: How do you know whether [[Cold
fusion]] belongs in the pseudoscience category or not? Some people
argue it is pseudoscience. Some argue it is protoscience. Some argue
it is none of the above. "Some" can include scientists, philosophers,
historians, and the practitioners.

Whose analysis do you go with? Do you try and offer up your *own*
analysis? Do you try to debate it on the wiki? Considering that a
hundred years of debate have not produced a well-accepted model of
what "normal scientific practice" or even "the scientific method" is,
do we expect to resolve this on Wikipedia? What happens when our
private conclusions vary from those of the mainstream opinion?

The article text, of course, can handle such uncertainty. We can state
all POVs and concerns and arguments and well attribute them. But we
haven't found a way to do it with this category definition.

FF