[WikiEN-l] Pseudoscience category - GSPOV

Tue Jun 28 17:45:38 UTC 2005

Haukur Þorgeirsson wrote:

>>And in the end, maybe what it comes down to is: Categories should not
>>serve as "warning" flags. They are meant to just be taxonomic devices.
>>    
>>
>Agreed. If someone reads an article on, say,
>homeopathy and only realizes when she sees the
>categories at the bottom that the thing doesn't
>work then there's something wrong with the article
>(incidentally I think [[homeopathy]] makes the
>"doesn't work" part fairly clear as it is).
>
The degree of doubt that there might be about homeopathy does indeed 
belong in the article on the topic.  We are, of course, in no position 
to make a final determination that it either works or doesn't work.  
Either position would be pseudoscientific.  We can establish that a 
dominant segment of mainstream science believes that it doesn't work.  
Once that point has been established there is no need to revisit the 
issue ad nauseam.  If the major premise is questionable than so too are 
any ideas derived from it.

>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.
>
"Alternative medicine" is excellent as an NPOV category without 
introducing a needlessly pejorative term like "quack".  "Not proven to 
work" within the rules of mainstream science is already implicit in the 
term "alternative".  The concepts "not proven to work" and "proven not 
to work" are very different, and quackery would have more kinship with 
the latter.  I can just as easily see that "quack medicine" has 
undeserved negative connotations, while "alternative" adequately warns 
the user to proceed at his own risk.  The credibility of the various 
practices that come under this heading is wildly variable, and some may 
indeed qualify as quackery, but certainly not all.

Ec