[WikiEN-l] Parascience subst. pseudoscience

Tue Dec 20 18:52:14 UTC 2005

--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> This proposal to purge the word "pseudoscience"
> smacks of Sympathetic
> Point Of View. We don't do that here.

This thread has gone long enough and proponents of the
term "pseudoscience" have been somewhat successful at
muddling the issue of the term and the normal
application of NPOV, and claiming there is some choice
between using a pejorative and using a crackpot
terminology. No doubt this is due to our history of
fending off various crackpots and so forth, and hence
a defacto deference to SPOV may be justified. But I'd
like to see people actually admit that there is such a
deference, and that this influences the interpretation
of NPOV.

They seem to forget that NPOV is largely based on the
use of relatively neutral terms, and that while the
term "pseudoscience" has its place, and its not clear
that it doesnt have too much of a place in Wikipedia.
Why dont we use derogatively racist or sexist terms in
writing articles? Social propriety? No, because the
term itself is in violation of NPOV, and shapes any
discussion around the term in a way which makes NPOV
writing difficult.

People on this list seem to have come around to the
point of agreeing with this basic point, but because
change requires effort, have simply fallen to defacto
positions, and some even seem to have
backwards-crafted their arguments in a way which make
NOR seem to be more important than NPOV. That itself
is a SPOV claiming NOR to be greater than NPOV.

For the pro-SPOV crowd to claim changing
"pseudoscience" is contradicting NOR is about as much
of an irrational circularly-supported argument Ive
ever heard. (Science by definition is the institution
by which all "research" is measured, and which even in
its most important research can often only be
generally communicated to the general or
non-specialist public.) The argument that POV terms
shift over time is a long-term one and is not valid in
this context.

In this case, I dont think its either original
research or overly sympathetic to point out the
problems with creating an institutional prejudice of
accepting a non-scientific term "pseudo-science" as a
neutral term for any non-science. Naturally, the other
side likes to argue that deference to science is close
enough to NPOV for most cases. But there should be
some explicit statement that Wikipedia NPOV has indeed
a defacto policy of defaulting to SPOV. 

NPOV trumps NOR. Does "pseudoscience" violate NPOV? If
so, saying other terms cross NOR fails if the term
itself can be substituted at this time and if the
costs are covered by the benefits to NPOV.

-Stevertigo

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