Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pseudoscience/Articles attracting pseudoscientific edits

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
To-do list for Wikipedia:WikiProject Pseudoscience/Articles attracting pseudoscientific edits: edit  · history  · watch  · refresh


Here are some tasks you can do:

    Directions: please add new comments at bottom of the appropriate section. Please sign your comment using ~~~~, and if possible please indent your comments using colons to visually distinguish your comments from neighboring comments. CH 09:36, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

    Contents

    [edit] This list is an experiment

    I have entered a selection of articles listed in List of alternative, speculative and disputed theories, plus a few not listed there. Even with such a small sample, currently even with most recent 500 edits setting, we only obtain a listing of about the last six hours of edits. That right there may indicate the magnitude of the problem. ---CH 08:29, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

    If you stumble over this list and are confused to find check by jowl, as it were, articles on

    1. Evolution
    2. Creationism

    or

    1. Albert Einstein
    2. Tom Van Flandern

    please note that this is literally a articles which are known or seem likely to attract pseudoscientific edits. Simply being listed on this list is not a judgement that a topic is cranky or that a person is a crank.

    Note that I have included articles on mathematical crank topics, since these are often invoked in psueodscientific contexts, e.g.

    1. Bible code

    In addition to possible future articles on misuses of statistics, a few items concern legitimate mathematical theories which have however been abused, sush as

    1. Catastrophe theory (not the same thing as Velikovsianism!)
    2. Chaos theory
    3. Extreme value theory

    Some possibly surprising entries include

    1. Alchemy: BIOR (believe it or not), there are vocal modern alchemy proponents, so we can expect to see crank POV pushing here.

    TIA! ---CH 09:32, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

    [edit] Rate of pseudoscience edits

    Wow, the list is still not "done" and now I am seeing 500 edits every half hour of the articles listed here.---CH 14:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

    We might need to split the list into one that is actually experiencing pseudoscientfic edits at the moment and ones that sometimes have such edits. Of course, that would be hard to do. I check the change list pretty often, but many items have scrolled off between visits, usually, so important edits may be missed. Bubba73 (talk), 01:22, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

    [edit] The new access panel

    Before the new "access panel", you could view the list and then edit only a section of it. Now you can only edit the entire list, as far as I can tell. Is there a way to put back "view the list", so individual sections can be edited? Bubba73 (talk), 01:19, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

    I agree with Bubba! The original panel with the View the list! button was more useful.---CH 22:33, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
    I like the new access panel better - except that it needs "View the list" also. If it had that, then I would like it. I now have the access panel itself on my user page, which is nicer than a linl to here. But you have to edit the whole page, instead of a section. Bubba73 (talk), 02:58, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
    Actually the first item in the box acts like the old "view the list". Bubba73 (talk), 15:17, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

    [edit] Redirects

    Someone advised us to make sure to add the actual article and not a redirect to it. What is an easy way to check? ---CH 22:33, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

    The only way I know is to click on it and when the article comes up, make sure it doesn't say "redirected from ...". If it says that, you clicked on a redirect, and only changes to the main article, not the redirect show up on "check the list". Bubba73 (talk), 02:50, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

    [edit] Count the entries?

    The process outlined in the todo list is a kind of "closure operation" in the sense of closure operators in mathematics, such as the topological closure of a set in a topological space, the subgroup generated by a set in a group, etc. In this context, it is possible to use statistical methods to estimate from the growth over time of the number of pages on this list how many pages (attracting pseudoscientific edits) it is still missing. Does anyone know a convenient way to count the number of articles and/or biographies listed in the watchlist? (I am looking for a wikicode solution, NTS.) ---CH 22:39, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

    [edit] Is this list becoming too long/unfocused?

    Quite a few of the entries which have been added seem to me to involve paranormal but not pseudoscience per se. I'd like to suggest that someone with an interest in paranormal copy the list to make a watchlist on paranormal articles, and allow someone (such as myself) to try to prune this list. One criterion I had in adding entries was that someone is persistently claiming that something suspect wears the shining mantle of science.

    OTH, the reason why I added some apparently dubious entries will be obscure, but I think justifiable, so maybe I just don't know something.---CH 02:25, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

    I have mixed feelings and I am uncertain what to do. The list is too long, because too many edits are showing up on the list. OTOH, all of the topics on the list that I know about are involved with pseudoscience or the paranormal. However, not all of the items are receiving speudoscientific edits. Maybe we should have a "hot" list and a "cold" list or something. Bubba73 (talk), 02:56, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
    Can someone write wikicode tools to make it very easy for project members to "makehot article" and "makecold article"? If so, I say go for it. In any case, I advocate slenderizing this list by getting User:GangofOne and others to agree to keep a separate paranormal watchlist. A number of approaches may be neccessary to control the growth of this list. OTH, I advocate getting concensus before deleting anything since we don't want to encourage cranks to delete their theory from this watchlist without being noticed. BTW, it seems that when using the new public watchlist template, clicking on the linkWikipedia:WikiProject_Pseudoscience/Articles_attracting_pseudoscientific_edits/publicwatchlist has the same effect as the old View the watchlist! button, so I guess this is not a problem after all.---CH 17:52, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

    [edit] Entries which are candidates for migration to paranormal list

    I took a quick look just as the S's, which suggests that 10% of the present links could perhaps be eliminated as per previous section. For example:

    The simple rule of thumb is whether the article has been edited to claim that something has scientific support (or to say that someone somewhere has persistently made this claim); for example

    does mention scientists so should be kept. CH 22:29, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

    User:GangofOne, I propose that you copy the current list into your user pages to make a paranormal list. We desperately need to prune this list if it is to remain useful. Someone like Jeff Rense apparently claims no scientific credentials and apparently his talk show deals with paranormal more than pseudoscience. Maybe it would help if we declare that for purposes of this list, "general ufo crankery", e.g. Alien abduction, is paranormal crankery, not pseudosience crankery? ---CH 22:29, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

    I agree that the list needs to be split or something. Is there a paranormal list/project like this one? Should this project also have the paranormal list? And, what is the distinction between paranormal and pseudoscience? According toPseudoscience and the Paranormal by Terrence Hines, paranormal is pretty much a subset of pseudoscience. Paranormal means that it depends on unknown forces/energies (psi) whereas things claiming to be true but lack scientific methodology, etc, are pseudoscientific. So a claim that (e.g.) remote viewing is true is both paranormal and pseudoscientific. A claim that UFOs are alien spacecraft is pseudoscientific but not paranormal, since no unknown forces would be required for a spacecraft to get here. Bubba73 (talk), 00:47, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

    Random question: who added Nick Zedd and why? Hubert Yockey? (Actually in that last case I can maybe guess, but there's nothing in the article to suggest why he might be listed here.) GangofOne? ---CH 04:40, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

    Actually, it looks like User:Hob Gadling added many of the inappropriate paranormal but not pseudoscience entries. I have left a message on his user page talk page asking him to help us revert this. ---CH 05:05, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

    The way I understand it, paranormal is generally a subset of pseudoscience, so should this list be pseudoscience that isn't paranormal and the other list be paranormal? Also, the list is supposed to be articles attracting pseudoscientific edits. A lot of the articles on the list are pseudoscientific, but are not attracting pseudoscientific edits. Bubba73 (talk), 05:27, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

    Hi all,

    1. Hob said its OK with him if I delete entries. Would anyone else object if I started doing that later today?
    2. I didn't intend to think too hard about what to call pseudoscience precisely because that way lies the madness of "debating" with cranks. Alas, the practical problem which confronts us is that the list very quickly grew much longer than I anticipated. The need to prune it prompted me to propose that we restrict entries to articles which have been known to attract cranky edits (including external links to known cranksites) claiming the mantle of science, e.g. physics, biology. But from perusing some of the articles added by Hob and others, it seems that they mention things like ghosts but don't really claim this has any relation to science. Under my proposal a hypothetical article on scientific evidence for the afterlife would still be fair game to add to the list.
    3. I agree that many articles on the list are not currently attracting pseudoscience or otherwise cranky edits. In the case of items I added, however, I had reason to believe they had attracted such edits in the past or were otherwise likely to attract such edits in the future. However, I agree that this is part of the reason why the list is too long to be useful right now.
    4. To elaborate on one of my proposals above, can someone write wikicode enabling us to have a long coldwatchlist and a short hotwatchlist?:
      • the coldwatchlist is regularly autochecked for recent edits
      • when a recent edit to article A is found, A is automoved to the hotwatchlist
      • project members would only check the hotwatchlist;
      • if the new edit(s) to article A are deemed noncranky, hitting a button moves it back to coldwatchlist (so in this scheme, project members would need to monitor the hotwatchlist regularly, or else it would grow as articles are autoadded simply because they were edited).

    Does this make sense? CH 23:55, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

    Yes it does make sense. But one thing, though, science isn't just biology, chemestry, physics, etc. Science is more of a method than a subject. I take "pseudoscience" a little more broadly than you do - things that are claiming to be true (from evidence, not faith), that aren't necessarily investigated by physics, etc. Take dowsing as an example. This is claimed to be true, but it isn't in the domain of any scientific subject. And the claims don't hold up to scientific investigation (in the broad sense). Bubba73 (talk), 00:12, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

    Bubba, I don't neccessarily disagree with everyone you wrote, but we need to control the length of the list in order for it to be useful. Did you see that GoO made another list for paranormal? ---CH 20:17, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

    [edit] Cleanup

    I have removed all the entries I could find which didn't conform to the new rules excluding certain topics. Please note that no "political statement" is intended; I simply needed to come up with some rules to help keep this list sufficiently focused to perhaps be usable.

    Notice that I retained cryptozoology, vaccine controversy, pseudomathematics (e.g. cranky takes on information theory, Bible codes) and a legion of articles on alleged over-unity (perpetual motion or energetic free-lunch) devices. It seems that the list is about evenly divided between biology (mostly creation science related) and physics (mostly anti-gravity and free-lunch related). In future it may be neccessary to try to maintain separate pseudophysics and pseudobiology lists. ---CH 20:17, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

    [edit] True-believer syndrome

    On which list (if either) should True-believer syndrome be listed? Much of the article is about Robert T. Carroll's book Skeptic's Dictionary, becasue it has an entry on it. Caroll himself has objected to so much of it being about him and his book rather than the topic itself. Bubba73 (talk), 18:46, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

    Hi, Bubba76, sorry I missed this before. Since True-believer syndrome mentions paranormal topics twice in the first paragraph, it should go to the paranormal watchlist. ---CH 21:41, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

    [edit] Edits by User:Fyslee

    Fyslee added a number of paranormal items to "Articles attracting pseudoscientific edits" which must all be moved to the "paranormal watchlist". I have left a message in his user talk page asking him to do that. If this doesn't happen in a few days I guess I'll have to do it myself. ---CH 21:40, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

    [edit] Pseudoscience article

    The article pseudoscience has a section "Fields termed pseudoscience by one or more critics". To me, none of the items on this list were ever considered pseudoscience. Pseudoscience is something incorrectly thought of as science, by definition. I don't think any of the items in that section meet that criteria. Please have a look at that article and especially that section. Thank you. Bubba73 (talk), 03:15, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

    Hi, Bubba, I haven't been closely monitoring that article, so am not sure I understand your objection. I confess that I haven't thought deeply about what distinguishes between
    1. pseudoscience,
    2. fringe science,
    3. protoscience,
    because I have fallen into the habit of using these terms to denote parallel concepts useful for WP cruft control:
    1. "maximally implausible fantasies which unfortunately some young and inexperienced students (or some extremely credulous adults) just might mistake for plausible knowledge",
    2. "speculative and currently viewed as implausible by mainstream scientists but often misleadingly portrayed (to judge from Googling) on the web as established scientific fact, claims which might well fool intelligent nonscientist adults as well as young students who Google for a school project",
    3. "proposals which are not obviously inconsistent with mainstream science but which have not yet recieved careful scrutinity within mainstream science; even adult scientists are likely to assume that without expending a good deal of effort, their best judgement is that it is too early to tell if this stuff is likely to ever become part of the canon of mainstream scientific belief".
    Re that last, it goes without saying that that majority of new ideas do eventually turn out to be wrong or otherwise of little value. This may be frustrating for the proponent of some protoscientific idea, but their reaction should be to try even harder to present honest arguments which convince their scientist peers to take the trouble to look for closely, rather than manipulating the WP into presenting an overstated portrayal of the current scientific status of their idea.
    Making this kind of distinction in a fair, accurate, and up-to-date way is one of the most valuble contributions scientist Wikipedians can make to the WP. This is because vast compilations of assertions are of no value unless the wheat has been sorted from the chaff. This is true of any information resource (for example, this statement is a maxim of intelligence analysts; they say they earn their salaries by comparing and evaluating the relative reliability of various bits of information, rather than by simply compiling a storehouse of raw nuggets of information good and bad.
    Anyway, it seems to me that the items listed in that section fall into the first category above, of stuff that few sensible adults would give any credence, but which young and inexperienced students need to warned about.
    Among the areas in which information is currently being manipulated to present a seriously misleading overstated account, the most dangerous for society in my view are
    1. fringe medical theories; e.g. IIRC, Duesberg was for many years used by some African governments to "justify" their refusal to invest scarce government resources in combating the spread of AIDs in their countries, at the cost of tens of millions of lives,
    2. "over-unity" energy schemes (which would violate the laws of thermodynamics and which would currently stand as among the least plausible notions which can even be imagined, but which are currently extremely popular among the inventor fringe, who apparently believe they have a non-negible chance of becoming a multi-trillionaire "new Edison" or something like that, and stray millions allegedly available from wealthy idgits really might give scam artists and self-deluded persons hoping to save the world from Big Oil a sizable financial incentive to defraud our readers by manipulating information in the Wikipedia. (Just to be clear: I am no fan of Big Oil, I just favor making rational choices about where to invest the greatest effort in seeking amelioration of current worldwide dependence of petroleum products; few would question the current situation is both unsustainable and highly undesirable for ecological and geopolitical reasons.)
    3. religious fundamentalist movements seeking to surpress (remove from public education curricula, remove from eligibility for research grants) any elements of mainstream scientific belief which they feel threatens their particular religious ideology (because this kind of regressive Ludditism tends to retard urgently needed progress in medicine and technology which would benefit everyone, including adherents of any given religious belief).
    Does this help?---CH 04:33, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
    It is my bedtime, so I'll answer briefly for now, and typing online. Anyway, it seems to me that the items listed in that section fall into the first category above - I'm talking about the section (title above) that lists the Big Bang, Germ theory, Newton's calculus of infinitesimals, continental drift, etc. I don't think any of those were considered pseudoscience - i.e. a subject incorrectly considered to be scientific. , these were things that were slow to gain acceptance. It is very common for people with an anti-science POV to say "scientists were wrong about X therefore they are wrong about Y." These things were not accepted until they had adequate evidence, which is very different from pseudoscience, which is something "accepted" that shouldn't be. Bubba73 (talk), 05:21, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
    Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../w/i/k/Wikipedia_talk%7EWikiProject_Pseudoscience_Articles_attracting_pseudoscientific_edits_67ca.html"