[WikiEN-l] Pseudoscience category - GSPOV

Tue Jun 28 15:50:15 UTC 2005

Haukur Þorgeirsson (haukurth at hi.is) [050628 21:42]:

> As for the "alternative medicine" category then I
> suppose "medicine that has not been proven to work"
> or some such would be more accurate. I for one would
> actually prefer "quack medicine" since "alternative"
> has some undeserved positive connotations and implies
> that quackery is somehow a viable alternative to actual
> medicine.
> So, don't forget to take the Grumpy Scientist Point
> of View into account :)

There was a bit of a revert-war over this last year - [[Alternative
medicine]] had [[Category:Pseudoscience]] on it (for things like
homeopathy, which defies physics and chemistry), and this was getting
removed because some of it is closer to protoscience (e.g. acupuncture, in
which the stated theory may appear to be nonsensical but the stuff may
work, for some values of 'work'). So I solved it by also creating
[[Category:Protoscience]] and adding suitable things to that and putting
both on the article ;-)

There is such a thing as pseudoscience and things that are deserve the
label. It belongs under 'science' because it claims the clothes of science
but isn't, hence the 'pseudo' - religion doesn't do that (except of course
when it does). The objectors are basically stating "I don't like it being
applied to my favourite thing so it must be a violation of NPOV." I see no
reason to indulge this.

- d.