Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pseudoscience/Archive 2

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Physics Essays (and other "journals")

If you look over at the Autodynamics talk [1] you'll find some discussion between anon and Salsb about "Physics Essays", and whether it "counts" as a journal. One useful thing to do would be for people familiar with it (I'm not) to write a Physics Essays article, which could be ref'd for discussions of this sort, if its the sort of journal (as it appears) that publishes junk but allows impressive-seeming refs. William M. Connolley 22:52:58, 2005-07-10 (UTC).

I was pondering this already given my disucssion with anon, although I know little beyond its reputation, or lack there of, and lack of citations by anyone else. There's also a journal called Medical Hypothesis, which plays a similar role in medicine, although Elsevier is more honest about the papers being "radical" non mainstream, and unpublishable elswhere Salsb 23:04, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

I went ahead and made a Physics Essays article. Please look at it and check its neutrality, especially in the policies section. Salsb 23:49, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

What's with Found. Phys. Lett? - Bearden did get some articles published there:

Pjacobi 08:50, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

Just for kicks, I checkout out Bearden's publication record in Found. Phy. Lett:
16 papers, cited in total: 19 times by Bearden in other Found. Phy. Letts, once by someone else in Found. Phys. Lett, once by Bearden in optik -- in an article only cited by Bearden -- and once by someone else outside of Found. Phy. Lett in an article with no other citations. Salsb 04:11, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Foundations of Physics and Foundations of Physics Letters are considerably more reputable than physics essays. The articles tend be speculative {unless they're historical}, or rather complicated alternative explanations. or reformulations, of observations or accepted theories. Some of them are crack-pot, and some just bizarre. Those crack-pots tend to publish their more reasonable work in these journals. The articles are supposed to examine the "crucial and often controversial issues that underlie current studies in the physical sciences." Foundations of Physics Although most are not accepted elswhere; I did on Web of Science search and looked through the last 120 articles from foundations of physics; only 15 had been cited elsewhere, including a few historical articles. I wouldn't dimiss a reference to a foundations of physics out of hand, but I would look at it skeptically as possible fringe science. Salsb 16:11, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

As for autodynamics, I actually find the article to be reasonable, and the talk with anon seems fruitless, so I'm not doing to spend any more time on it. Salsb 16:11, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

In the Autodynmaics article, the SLAC physicist who is quoted with experimental evidence against AD , Pierre Noyes, is a contributor to Physics Essays and has a long-standing interest in alternate physics foundations based on discrete physics. He is one of the main participants in the Alternative Natural Philosophy Association, which has plenty of fringe talks. So guilt-by-association with a particular journal exhibits a rather strange use of logic in this case. (Go to arxive and search Noyes, if you like to see more.) GangofOne 09:37, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Can someone enlighten me about the standing of the "Hadronic Journal"? Doesn't look typically hadronic to me, and whereas the majority of articles look sane, I've stumbled across this one. --Pjacobi 22:02, July 16, 2005 (UTC)

I dug around on Web of Science,and Hadronic Journal isn't indexed anymore. Only articles up to 1987 are listed, suggests it is not a credible journal, at least anymore. The articles that are indexed tend not to be cited. I went 1983-1987 and only about 1/3rd of the articles have any citations, and most of those have 1-3 citations. Salsb 03:56, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Hadronic Journal, from Institute for Basic Research, [2], under Ruggero Maria Santilli , author of Il Grande Grido: Ethical Probe of Einstein's Followers in the U. S. A. : An Insider's View , creator of "hadronic mechanics", a generalization of quantum mechanics, discoverer of hadronic chemistry and new chemical species "magnecules", and energy device to process waste organics to useable fuel, "magnegas"TM GangofOne 04:08, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Another suspect journal: what's going on with Physica Scripta? Looks very authorative, but publishes Bearden and Evans. --Pjacobi 21:51, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

On one hand, it would be really handy to have a list of journals with classifications such as "rigorously reviewed", "not rigorously reviewed", and "non-mainstream advocacy". On the other hand, unless that list was compiled by a committee of well-regarded experts in the relevant fields, and hosted outside of Wikipedia, it'd likely be shot down as POV-pushing (possibly with some justification, depending on how its maintained). And I'm still tracking this page; I'm just mostly on sabbatical.--Christopher Thomas 22:19, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
The Wikipedia namespace isn't bound by the NPOV policy (at least not in the same sense, as the article namespace). I see the problems with such a list, but if you get covered in a pile of cites and references by Reddi, it would be helpfull for a first triage. To sort out those authors, which are all within the big claims business and those who get cited without their knowing and involvement, because something in their papers sound superficially fitting as reference for the big claims. --Pjacobi 22:39, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
"what's going on with Physica Scripta? Looks very authorative, but publishes Bearden and Evans." Maybe Bearden and Evan once said something that was true? GangofOne 07:01, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
Although this would court controversy (but then, anything related to this project courts controversy!), it would probably be useful to concoct some simple rules for deciding whether a journal should be classified as a crank journal. One obvious criterion would be that the journal's mission statement espouses cranky ideas (e.g. "relativity is wrong!", in the case of Galilean Electrodynamics). A trickier criterion (or at least a clue) would be that the founders are widely regarded as physics cranks (e.g. Petr Beckman, in the case of Galilean Electrodynamics). The decisive criterion would be that examination of back issues shows that most articles pass our criteria for crankiness. If I were less lazy I'd carry out that test for the journals mentioned in this section :-/
FWIW, I have noticed that whenever (in the context of gravitation physics) I encounter citations to Physics Essays, Foundations of Physics Letters, or Hadronic Journal, the cited articles always seem to always be fringe or even cranky. But I'd hesitate to condemn entire journals without examining back issues. Some years ago I did examine back issues of Galilean Electrodynamics and the pseudophysics samizdat MetaResearch Journal, and can confirm that these two do seem to "publish" only cranky articles and therefore must be considered crank organs. I am not sure whether sites such as Anti-gravity News offer "printed" versions or not, but such sites are also clearly cranky. I guess everyone here knows about [crankdot, which lists many crank websites, including sites promoting free energy (as in not paying for your lunch), electrogravity, conspiracy theories, and so forth.
Hadronic Journal is published by [Hadronic Press, Inc. in Palm Harbor, FL, USA. They seem to have published quite a few fringe books. Arkadiusz Jadczyk of [Cassiopaea seems to have had some weird mystical connection with Roger Santilli and Hadronic Press. ---CH 21:43, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
Guide to "interesting journals" from someone who should know it:
These 'dissidents' or 'nonconformists' criticize real or apparent inherent contradictions and/or inconsistencies of orthodox relativity, mainly focusing on the special theory of relativity (SRT) rather than the general theory. Occasionally, counter-proposals are offered. The expression Anti-relativity had orginally been coined in order to discredit the research activities of these workers. Typical publication platforms are journals like Apeiron, Galilean Electrodynamics, Hadronic Journal and Physics Essays.
[3]
--Pjacobi 18:59, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

RfC on Astral projection

I've opened a RfC on the Astral projection article. Any chance the members of this project would be willing to weigh in on the issue? (unsigned per RfC rules) 20:01, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Templates and other progress

I've created {{Infobox Pseudoscience}}. Further information is on WikiProject Pseudoscience in the appropriate section.

The name shows up as "disputed science" for a reason - I want it to be something that pseudoscience proponents won't take immediate offense at.

Next up is creating a template that you can initialize new or rewritten articles with. When it's done, you'll be able to reformat articles by adding {{subst:Pseudoscience blank}} to the beginning or end of the article, saving (so that the framework is substituted in), then cutting and pasting the rest of the article text into the framework and rewriting as appropriate. This is not done yet, but it's simple enough that it should be created next time I de-lurk.

I've also updated the "to do" list.

I'm still on sabbatical. It's just a modestly active sabbatical. I was thinking about getting back into PNA/Physics work, but one look at the current state of Autodynamics editing convinced me to stay away for a while longer.

--Christopher Thomas 08:41, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Um, I'm concerned; disuputed science is science that is disputed. By contrast, pseudoscience is not science at all. I don't like offending anyone, but one does have to be realistic. linas 17:10, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
My main concern is that a "pseudoscience" info box will be instantly removed from any article it's inserted into, whether calling the article "pseudoscience" is valid or not. The edit history of Autodynamics is a great example (look at the wrangling over the "because this is only believed to be scientific by a handful of people, it's pseudoscience" line). I believe that calling "pseudoscience" "disputed" is correct, though the converse is not always true, so I feel that this naming scheme is an adequate compromise. If you can suggest another way of accomplishing the same goal (infobox inclusion) with "pseudoscience" in the title, I'm all ears. However, you'd probably have to get an arbitration-and-lockdown vote for each and every pseudoscience article to do it (not a bad idea for some of them, but time consuming to do for all of them). --Christopher Thomas 17:36, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
OK, well, since you are more active in this area than I, its your choice. I'd rather not surrender any territory.
The autodynamics dispute (and pseudoscience in general) is a bizarre psychology I don't entirely understand: why would anyone want to spend time and effort on something that's clearly a dead end, when there are so many other interesting and true things to ponder? Is it because one can "completely master" all of autodynamics, rather than having to face an endless journey of new discovery, as legit science forces you to do? linas 04:28, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Re. psychology, I've found that you get diminishing returns trying to analyze things beyond the point of "this person seems to be acting crazy". That having been said, I think it's a combination of two things. One is that when you've invested so much time and effort in pursuing something, you have a strong reluctance to abandon the investment, and this can affect rational thinking. However, I feel that's not usually the main motivator. My best guess as to what the key thought process is is something similar to religion - the person has had an epiphany, where suddenly It All Made Sense. Once they have that feeling, they hold on to it to the death, logic be damned. I run into this a fair bit, online and offline, in technical and non-technical areas. The epiphany isn't the bad part - the bad part is refusing to take a harsh look at the dream the next morning. Generally it's impossible to argue with someone like this.--Christopher Thomas 06:10, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Decision criteria

I just read the section Decision criteria on the project page, and find myself rather in disagreement with it. It seems to confuse different ideas and different concepts; and there are many ways for this section to be mis-interpreted. For example:

  • Astral projection has no doubt many articles published about it in peer-reviewed journals; in particular, many of these articles will be by sociologists or psychologists who might not beleive in astral projection themselves, but are rather studying the types of people who do beleive it.

I'm willing to state that astral projection is a branch of mysticism, a topic of popular culture, discussed by philosphers and religious leaders of all stripes. However, astral projection is neither science, disputed science, nor even pseudoscience. So I'm not sure what these decision criteria are going after, or to what they are to be applied. linas 17:29, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

The criteria given are not intended to be the _only_ criteria. They are simply some of the criteria that have been used in past VfD discussions to decide whether or not to _dismiss_ articles as non-notable or non-encyclopedic. For example, Harmonics Theory didn't have refereed publications or much of a paper trail outside its supporters' web sites, so it was deemed non-encyclopedic and deleted. For your astral projection example, the fact that there's a lot of published literature about it says that it probably should be in Wikipedia somewhere. This doesn't say that it's correct, or that it's science. Those decisions would be made on other criteria.
If you feel the phrasing of that section should be changed, change it :). It's flagged as a work in progress, after all. --Christopher Thomas 17:43, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Oh, OK. linas 04:28, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Green cheese model feedback and template

I've made changes to the "claims" section of the Green Cheese Model sample article, as it's what I plan to base a blank-article template off of.

If lurkers here could read the article and comment at the end of the talk page, that would be greatly appreciated. I want a reasonable generic pseudoscience article structure finalized before it gets cast into a substitution template.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Christopher Thomas (talk • contribs) Pjacobi 09:14, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

FYI, there is already an example article which has - I suppose unknowingly - a structure and treatment of the subject similiar to our "Green cheese" template: Nazi moon base. --Pjacobi 09:14, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Wish I'd found this earlier...

this project seems to focus more on pseudoscience in the hard sciences, but I figure at least someone might be concerned about what's going on over at Hypnosis: Sam Spade and some self-proclaimed "Dr" whose degrees appear to be from those "prestigious non-accredited universities" we keep getting spammed by have succeeded in converting the page to a presentation solely of their POV on hypnosis. The introduction used to cover the fact that hypnosis is believed by some to grant access to the subconscious, allowing applications such as memory enhancement and sensory alteration, but that there are also those who believe that hypnosis does not exist. Now the introduction starts off by claiming that hypnosis comes from the ancient Egyptians and until recently, it claimed that hypnosis could be used to increase breast size, and one has to scroll halfway down the page to discover that the existence of hypnosis is not universally agreed upon. Sam announced his intention to force his POV on the article by fair means or foul here, and even though it was my illness flaring up rather than my "losing interest", he still took advantage of my absence to convert the article into one that he knew for fact did not represent all views fairly. -- Antaeus Feldspar 19:43, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Whereas sometimes a cry for help here may get heard, this page is not a substitute for Wikipedia:Requests for comment/All. The project was instead created to find better ways of encyclopedic treatment of pseudoscientific topics. (BTW: Sam Spade is indeed a Wikipedia legend, and you can't really claim to be a real Wikipedian if you didn't enjoyed a article content dispute with him). --Pjacobi 20:19, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Maybe you can ask at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine or perhaps someone should start a Wikipedia:WikiProject Psychology linas 02:43, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Or start a thread on Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Psychology. --Christopher Thomas 03:42, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

pseudoscience alert: Speed of gravity

The first half of speed of gravity looks like a reasonable historical review of what newton thought, and a discussion of gravity waves. But then we get to the section on experimental tests, and leave the known universe. Deleting this content is easy, fighting the anon editors will be harder. Volunteers, please! linas 05:14, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

WMC's removal of my name

Is this a private group? I want to contribute to the project by Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View rules, and for aiding in flagging articles that aren't Encyclopedic for removal. WMC seems bent on excluding me. J. D. Redding

I understand his reticance. You are the author of a fairly large number of articles on pseudoscience, with many/most of them written in a very breathless, gullible and naive style, presented as if the topic were truth rather than science fiction. I call on Motionless Electrical Generator as an example -- here's an article that should state up front, in big red letters this device is utter and total crackpottey. Instead, it presents the device as if it were quite legitimate and reasonable. The only clue that its nuts is the code-word "over-unity", which other naive readers might not clue into. Why does it have this powerful POV slant, and yet no POV sticker on it? I don't know. So I imagine that WMC views your presence here as being the proverbial "fox in the hen-house". linas 01:47, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
I do contribuete articles on pseudoscience and protoscience.
... additionally, you stance is not a NPOV. The Motionless Electrical Generator is a, in the least, a legitimate transformer. Your powerful POV slant does not let you see that. It's not "breathless", "gullible" and "naive" to do so and stating such about me borders on a personal attack on me. The topics are of facts rather than "truth". J. D. Redding
I frankly agree with the removal. At minimum, Reddi, please withdraw your name until the RFArb you're involved with is settled, as it directly relates to allegations of POV-pushing (Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Reddi_2). Having observed at least some of the debates cited in that RFArb, I have grave concerns about your ability to act in concordance with the stated purpose of this Wikiproject. --Christopher Thomas 05:45, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I do not see in RFArb rules that I cannot join projects nor contribute to wikipedia. Also, I have grave concerns the true purpose of this Wikiproject is not to further NPOV ... but disguised as a POV-pushing project. The actions (at RFArb and here) smack of suppression of intellectual dissent, IMO. J. D. Redding 02:17, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

This is the cry of the crank throughout the ages. You push psuedo-science, to the detriment of wikipedia. The last thing this project needs is you. William M. Connolley 10:51, 23 December 2005 (UTC).
Attacking the messenger is the tactic of the pseudoskeptic. Attacking articles that doesn't agree with a certian view, reguardless of the facts, is done to the detriment of wikipedia. Your (and others) actions match the qualities that are listed in the suppression of intellectual dissent. Wikipedia does not have a Scientific point of view ... but a NPOV ("absolute and non-negotiable"; something that people participating in this project don't seem to get). J. D. Redding 17:27, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
Science is not a POV, and if you follow your link, you will see that it points to a rejected policy. linas 17:51, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
There is a Scientific point of view (often wieghted toward a atheistic naturalistic viewpoint) ... and true science is bias manytimes by the people involved. It is a rejected policy because NPOV is "absolute and non-negotiable". J. D. Redding 05:27, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
There is nothing in the RFArb rules that says you can't contribute (unless an injunction is levelled against you). However, it is a valid reason for _concern_, as stated in my initial response. More to the point, you've had three users (myself, User:linas, and User:William M. Connolley) express concern with your addition in the member list, and no other users express support for it. Consensus seems pretty clear, here. You can't unilaterally insert yourself over the objections of several other editors, any more than you could make such unilateral, contested changes anywhere else in Wikipedia. --Christopher Thomas 17:17, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
THe RFArb is an attempt to suppress intellectual dissent, as seen by the comment and "evidence" in the RFArb.
The "memebers" in this project do seem not to adhere to avoid making unilaterally contested changes in Wikipedia (but that is part of wikipedia). Wikipedia is not for a "consensus reality". Inaddition ... Wikipedia is not a democracy ... but really that is besides the point, WP:CON (Consensus) applies to article (and adminship), not projects (unless I missed a rule somehere).
IMO., thi is not a real "project" ... but seems more to be a exclusionary and selective group POV-pushing (mainly from a "scientific pov"]).
Sincerely, J. D. Redding
I rather think that Wikipedia already gives alternative theories rather more weight in articles than they're really due. I don't really see why articles that purport to be on scientific topics shouldn't be written from a SPOV. I think that's what this project is about. — Laura Scudder ☎ 20:52, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
Scientific topics should be in the NPOV ... NPOV is absolute and non-negotiable. What this project is about is a SPOV, not a NPOV. J. D. Redding 05:27, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Actually, scientific articles on a topic should present the SPOV of that topic in a NPOV way. E.g. a NPOV article on evolution would have to be very critical of this theory simply because a large fraction of the population still believes in creationism and rejects Darwinian evolution out of hand. However, more than 99.9% of biologists accept evolution. So, the SPOV is that evolution is basically correct and that creationsism is nonsense. Now it is perfectly legitimate to write a NPOV article about what scientists think of evolution. The evolution page is writen in this way.Count Iblis 13:05, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Scientific articles on a topic should present a NPOV. Period ... it's non-negotiable.
As you describe the evolution article as now, it's not in conformance with the NPOV policy. To be in conformance, the article on evolution would have acknoledge the critical views of the theory simply because a number of scientists and a portion of the population still rejects Darwinian evolution (BTW, Darwin's original proposition was wrong and modified shortly after his 1st proposition of it (just to note) ... so critical views of the theory are not in error all the time).
The POV is that evolution is correct and that creationsism is nonsense. The NPOV ackowledges the criticism, the facts, and the proponents (probably in a reverse order that I just listed). BUT, because of actions concerning POV pushing (such as this project amd member has done in various articles) ... sadly this is being plainly ignored.
Sincerely, J. D. Redding 07:28, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
I found this page by chance, as I try to find out why a biased, POV pushing label is permitted as a tool in Wikipedia. And I fully agree with the above comment: although I suppose that Darwinistic evolution is largely correct, that won't cause me to push my popular POV on the reader. I cannot help but discern a notable contempt for Wikipedia's demand that no "SPOV" is preached (just imagine that we would allow a "Religious point of view" by the Catholic church on bible subjects!). This is serious. What can we do about it? Inform Jimbo perhaps?Harald88 22:46, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
Just last month, this was already discussed on wikien-l, where Jimbo contributes. Maybe different participants have different summaries, but my summary is:
  1. Don't be shy or use weasel words when naming bad science bad science, pseudo science pseudo science. Sympathetic point of view is explicitely not a policy of Wikipedia.
  2. Don't do original research to explore the merits of theory. Formal arguments (occurs or not in textbooks, is taught or not at universities, is published pr not in peer reviewed journals) should do
  3. For a significant set of articles, the scientific point of view is the neutral point of view. It just makes no sense to ask outside of math, science and engineering for the density of boron, the earth's circumference, the proton's mass, the number of quarks, the merits of the Banach-Tarski paradoxon.
Pjacobi 13:34, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the link, that spells a lot of reading! I did not know that there were two meanings to SPOV! I meant: WP:SPOV is definitely not a policy of Wikipedia; that so-called scientific point of view has been rejected by the Wikipedia community. I agree that a true scientific POV is compatible with NPOV, as it does not adhere to dogma's but is neutral, openminded and fair. Harald88 13:56, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Not that much reading after all; and I did not notice a comment by Jimbo, but I did notice an interesting suggestion: "concepts described as pseudoscience". Harald88 14:48, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
I've mentioned it mostly, for your concerns Jimbo isn't aware of this debate. --Pjacobi 14:59, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Regarding the proposed policy at Wikipedia:Scientific point of view: That was an ill-fated and not very well prepared attempt to codify a policy, not very differnt from the above mentioned three points.
It didn't get much attention let alone support, due to its flaws, and so was marked as This Wikipedia article or category is currently inactive and is kept primarily for historical interest.. Interestingly User:Reddi changed the header from "historical" to "rejected" [4].
It seems that a broad, widely applicable policy page is considered to be too difficult or not helpfull, as the actual cases involved can be quite different. So we have case by discussions on the talk pages of Astrology, Intelligent Design, Aetherometry, Cold Fusion and whatsnot. Sometimes matters escalate through all steps of the dispute resolution process, see:
This in turn is heavily discussed at current RFA/ArbCom election:
Pjacobi 14:36, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Hm... given that the current not-policy tag on SPOV is due to Reddi, I've reverted to Dunc. Perhaps it should be revisited. Pj: could you ref some of the more relevant posts from the mailing list, for those of us too lazy to search the whole month? William M. Connolley 21:40, 15 January 2006 (UTC).

Ugh. If I give the summary out of the brain, it may be biased. So I'll have to wade through this endless thread. And I'm using a mediocre web mail account for the mailing list. Anyway, I'll try, but it will take some time. --Pjacobi 20:58, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Proposal: perpetual motion automatically psuedo-science

Having just read the Motionless Electrical Generator page, I'd like to propose that anything that attempts to describe a perpetual motion machine aka over-unity thingy, be automatically declared junk - just as the US patent office does. I don't see why people should be forced to consider them case-by-case. Either just redirect them to perpetual motion, or put in a nice header-template: "This article describes a purported perpetual motion machine; science and experience says these don't work; read on at your peril".

William M. Connolley 11:07, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

(PS., appearantly you did not check that)
over-unity redirects to perpetual motion .. if you would have checked. Not everyhing that attempts to deal with "perpetual motion machine" is "psuedo-science" ... serious discussions of perpetual motion usually occur only when dealing with the topics of "open systems", "aether theories", "free energy" (as in "renewable"), and "vacuum energy". J. D. Redding 02:34, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
I do not believe that there are any serious discussions about perpetual motion with regard to free-energy/vacuum energy. FWIW: my PhD thesis was on vacuum energy. I feel I have a good b.s. detector for the topic. linas 16:07, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't know about a redirect in all cases — some of these cranks are kinda interesting (read entertaining) — but this is a pretty good example of using a wikilink alone (over-unity) to gloss over a potential sticky point. I'd say we should at least make sure each lead paragraph has a clear statement about what it means to be a proposed perpetual motion machine. — Laura Scudder ☎ 14:23, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, how about this:

This article describes a perpetual motion machine which violates the known laws of physics and therefore represents pseudoscience, however convincing the details may appear.

You have been warned. Read on with caution...

Ive added it to the MEG page. What do you think? William M. Connolley 15:44, 23 December 2005 (UTC).

Works for me. We'll see how long it lasts. linas 16:07, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
A couple of items. First, you might want to use "subst:" to bring in the template text, so that what you're discussing doesn't change if it gets revised [I've just pasted in the original text, cos it did get revised! William M. Connolley 22:35, 23 December 2005 (UTC)]. Second, I feel that there are parts of the warning that are unnecessarily close to POV. Why not just, "This article describes a perpetual motion machine, which violates the known laws of physics. Claims of the development of such devices are considered pseudoscience by most scientists."? --Christopher Thomas 17:08, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

(the current version of the template is:) +

This article describes a perpetual motion machine, which violates the known laws of physics. Claims of the development of such devices are considered pseudoscience by most scientists.

I would really rather that the intro was simply complete to begin with, which would render the warning template unnecessary. — Laura Scudder ☎ 20:45, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
In principle, thats best. In practice, we seem to spend a lot of time arguing about the intros to these articles, and repeating the same arguments, or more likely getting bored and not repeating them. My hope with this is that productive people don't need to spend their time fiddling with the article text; we just need to make sure the header is in place. William M. Connolley 22:35, 23 December 2005 (UTC).

I suggest that if no further changes are proposed by New Years, we stick a link up on the project page under "useful templates". If you think we'll all be on holiday until then, I'm certainly willing to wait longer. Thanks for putting in the effort to produce the template! --Christopher Thomas 06:14, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Added, since it hasn't been touched as of 11 Jan. 2005. --Christopher Thomas 19:19, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
And of course, now that I say that, I find something that could stand being changed. Would anyone object if I removed the "width" specifier? As-is, some browsers (like mine) will be forced to render a page wider than the browser window. Without the "width" tag, it resizes to fit the article text width (as with the tweaked version currently on this article page). --Christopher Thomas 19:29, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
Width is definitely broken as of just now. linas 02:45, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Legal liability, fraud

FYI, there is potentially some legal liability for misrepresenting such machines. This is an area that is regularly plied by fraudsters and con-men bent on bilking gullible investors out of millions. I present two examples. In one case, I acted as a consultant to a California millionaire, in the family of the owners of a national chain of stores. He'd been given a demo of a teleportation device, which was promptly dismantled after the demo. Claims were that teleportation could also be done to satellites in orbit, and that tens of millions of dollars of investment were needed to design the satellites. This was a pure, classic con. In the second case, there was a slahdot story a few years ago about "seven machines that could predict the future", with these machines being ticking away in the basements of Harvard, Oxford, etc. The link was to a science website that carried this story. This site was highly professional: it carried several dozen science stories of the day, all legit except this one. It had top-notch production sensibilities, clean layout, a bit of advertising, but not much: this site looked as good as or better than Scientific American, Science News, the New Scientist, etc. While pretending to be a periodical, I note that after half a year, the site was never ever updated again. It was a one-shot deal. I became convinced that it was built entirely to carry this one story about the future-predicting machines, and was meant to make them look very credible in the eyes of some victim, who was the target of a scam. Its not unreasonable to think that WP could be a venue for something similar: some mark being told that something is so well-known, there's even a WP article on it. You don't want the victim coming back and suing. linas 16:48, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

A bit of a straw man and, moreover, a slippery slope. Have you not read the General disclaimers? Wikipedia is not a source of professional advice. As stated in the Risk disclaimer, no consequential damages can be sought against Wikipedia ... there is not an agreement or understanding between the reader and Wikipedia. J. D. Redding 02:41, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Category justification for pseudophysics and pseudoscience

I've justified the inclusion of the pseudophysics and pseudoscience categories over at Category talk:Pseudophysics. I hope this generates some noise, either there or at Category talk:Pseudoscience. In brief, I argue that it is inconsistant to support a science category but not a pseudoscience category since one is only the positive POVed counterpart of the other. --Intangir 07:22, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I actually tend to disagree with this. My argument is along the lines of "notability". If there are enough articles in "pseudoscience" to make splitting the category useful, _and_ if "pseudophysics" is a term commonly used outside of Wikipedia, then sure, but I'm not convinced these criteria are satisfied. Of course, this is just my vote on the subject. --Christopher Thomas 17:51, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm sorry for the confusion. My argument isn't for the splitting of pseudophysics from pseudoscience. It is for the inclusion of negatively biased categories. --Intangir 22:37, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
I _understand_ what your argument is - I just _disagree_ with it, for the reasons stated. Category:Condensed matter physics exists because it's a term in common use by experts in the field, and because there are a large number of articles which are reasonably classified into it. Making a Category:Pseudo-condensed-matter-physics would just be silly, as 1) this term is never used, and 2) it would have a grand total of zero articles in it given the current content of Wikipedia. There is no requirement for symmetry in categories, but you are using such a requirement as the cornerstone of your argument. The only thing Category:Pseudophysics has going for it is that it _might_ be a reasonable category for sub-sorting, given the number of physics-related pseudoscience articles. However, it still has _against_ it the fact that the term isn't in general use in the scientific community. That's the actual point of debate regarding it. The complaints about "pseudoscience" being a derogatory label are just noise - it's a term that _is_ in common use in the scientific community, with a well-defined definition, allowing articles to be demonstrably measured as being pseudoscience or not. That's why the rename-to-something-nicer vote from a while back failed. I hope this gives you an increased understanding both of the background behind the debate over "pseudoscience" and "pseudophysics" and the functioning of Wikipedia itself. --Christopher Thomas 22:57, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't understand what you mean when you say "I've justified the inclusion of the pseudophysics and pseudoscience categories". Inclusion where? how? What do you mean by "justify"? what are you justifying? I also don't understand what you mean by "it is inconsistant to support a science category but not a pseudoscience category". What do you mean by "support"? Finally, I strongly recommend keeping the discussion in one place, and not three places. It becomes a terribly disjointed conversation when it is being simulaneously discussed in three places at once. linas 19:31, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
By inclusion I mean inclusion into the Wikipedia, at any level. People argue from NPOV that categories like pseudoscience shouldn't exist because placing an article into one means the Wikipedia is making a negative value judgement. I have justified their inclusion in the sense that I have formally refuted their argument(or nearly any argument they could make). Anyone who supports the inclusion of a positive POV category, such as Science, must also support the inclusion of its negative POV counterpart(in this case- Pseudoscience). Otherwise, their position is incoherent. Also, more than just demanded by logical consistancy, this is a practical matter. I realize that this is the right place to talk about this so let me post my argument here. --Intangir 22:37, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Science:
The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena. - Dictionary.com
Science is definitely a neutral category; the abovementioned "formal refutation" is invalid. What can be argued if something is "good" or "bad" science; and in fact that is what this is all about. Such things are nevertheless inherently POV. Harald88 23:01, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

(copied from pseudophysics talk)

People argue that the Pseudoscience category shouldn't exist because it means the Wikipedia must make a pejorative statement about a topic, potentially inciting advocates and wasteful edit warring.

You might argue that we shouldn't even have a category like this, and that NPOV requires that we only categorize into uncontroversial categories which lack value-judgement(or at least only favorable judgement). This argument has some merit. In many cases it isn't clear whether something is a fringe science or pseudoscience. Infact, you might even argue that the only difference between these categories is the subjective judgement between which ideas you like and which you don't. However, this is not correct, in my opinion. There are some clear-cut cases where an idea fails to establish some uncontroversial criteria. For example, nearly all of a theory's predictions may radically conflict with experimental evidence, or a theory may make no predictions at all (this is just unfalsifiability in better clothing). Continuing to reason with any such theories is uncontroversially unscientific. However, more exclusive pseudoscience criteria may also be more controversial. But there exist at least a handful of criteria which are almost universally accepted by physicists/scientists themselves. In essence, these are their functioning definitions for what scientists mean when they call a theory scientific/unscientific. In any case, arguing that there are no good(uncontroversial) criteria for determining if something is pseudoscience is equivalent to arguing that there are no good criteria for determining if something is science.

We can deduce that criticizing the inclusion of a pseudoscience category(or any other 'unscience-but-like-science' category) is inconsistant with also supporting the inclusion of a science category. That is, anyone who supports the inclusion of a positive POV category, such as Science, must also support the inclusion of its negative POV counterpart(in this case- Pseudoscience). This follows because, as opposites, what one includes defines what the other includes by default. Here goes:

An idea is either science, similar to science, or not related to science at all. Science is similar to itself, of course. However, pseudoscience is not actually science and only similar to science. Now consider that we have a controversial, similar-to-science(possibly actual science) idea which needs to be categorized. Obviously, we should not file it as 'unrelated-to-science'- How would readers find it? It is important to realize that this is what we would have to do if we have a science category but no 'unscience-though-similar' category. Articles not in the science category would be in a 'dissimilar-to-science' category by default. You necessarily make a pejorative categorization every time you choose to not categorize something into the favorable counterpart. The intentional abscence of a positive statement is equivalent to a negative statement.

It occurs to me that my 'proof' thus far slightly misses the point. While not logically different statements, lacking pejorative categories at least avoids offending those who have failed to realize that not qualifying for the favorable counterpart category still says the same, pejorative thing. Thus, some wasteful editwarring with the more clueless apologists might be avoided. But this is not so. Consider, the wastefulness caused by their continual attempts to favorably categorize an undeserving article. Each time an edit war might result when the article is invariably decategorized. The problem doesn't simply go away by avoiding pejorative categories.

Actually, it only becomes worse. Consider if 30% of edit-soldiers desire an article to be in category 'A', leaving 70% desiring category 'not A'. Obviously, the most stable place for the article is in 'not A'. However if we have no 'not A' category then the article remains uncategorized. Someone new may come along, and in reading the article may notice that it remains uncategorized. Feeling helpful they would categorize into 'A'. However, if a 'not A' category existed they would have put it in there 70% of the time. Unfortunately, this wastefully tilts the natural equilibrium. The article's categorization is challenged more often.

Of course, none of this reasoning implies that you shouldn't question the individual validity of the categorization of specific articles. Nor does it question the creation of more nuanced categorization schemes. However it does show that we should either include pseudoscience or give up the science category all together. And thus we see a reduction to absurdity, for who would support giving up the science classification? --Intangir 23:20, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

That suggestion is misleading: see above. Harald88 23:01, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Link to WikiProject Physics

While I can see arguments for removing most of the "cruft" in this diff, despite it being in the template for new WikiProjects, I'm strongly opposed to removing the link to Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics. I've restored it in the "useful links" section, where it won't be taking up as much space. It is an extremely useful WikiProject to consult when considering pseudoscience concerns and accuracy concerns for physics articles in general, and the relation between WikiProject Physics and WikiProject Pseudoscience isn't noted anywhere else on the WikiProject Pseudoscience page (we're listed as a sub-project on WikiProject Physics). --Christopher Thomas 21:42, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, my apologies, I was attempting minor cleanup. linas

Potentially interesting proposal at Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Reddi_2/Workshop#Troika

You may like to view Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Reddi_2/Workshop#Troika. I don't know if this is going to fly - it may depend on peoples views - but its interesting. Who wants to be #3 :-)? William M. Connolley 22:52, 31 December 2005 (UTC).

This is an interesting idea, but it would have to be spelled out that the watchdog users would only have the power to ban people who are making blatantly disruptive or unscientific additions, as opposed to merely controvertial additions. I decline to be considered for this committee, as it sounds like it would involve far more drama and stress than I'm prepared to deal with. Potentially useful if implemented carefully, though. --Christopher Thomas 21:44, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
SCZenz may be interested. Perhaps it would be better if we had a peer review system for all science articles. The reviewers would be contributers to wikipedia who have a background in science or who have a track record of high quality wiki articles on scientific topics. The referee report has to be discussed openly and any decision would be made in the usual way. So, in principle this does not change any of the usual wiki rules because people could choose to ignore the referee report.

Count Iblis 15:04, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Simple suppression of intellectual dissent. This is when a more powerful opponent tries to silence the other (directly and indirectly) rather than trying to defeat the arguments of the other. When an individual acts or does something that is seen as a threat to a special interest group or other group of individuals, action is usually taken in an earnest and conscientious action intended to stop or penalise the dissenting individual. Opponents are commonly composed of governments, industries, or professions. Sincerely, J. D. Redding 07:35, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Is this project mainly for patrolling Wikipedia

I wonder whether this project is mainly for patrolling Wikipedia against pseudoscience. Then it will be a very tough task. Good luck. However I am interested in looking at this problem from the framework of conflict and co-operation in scientific practice and paradigm, based on evolution theory, sociology etc. --Dejakitty 12:44, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

The intent of this project at its inception wasn't so much to "patrol for pseudoscience", as to make sure that any pseudoscience articles describe themselves according to the guidelines in WP:NPOV. The problem was (and still is) that articles about pseudosciences tend to portray the pseudoscience as unchallenged fact, while WP:NPOV states that departures from what the majority of scientists accept as fact should be clearly labelled as such. Pseudoscience articles tend also to be subjected to AfD if they're non-Notable, though I tend to lean towards voting for keeping neutral versions (I'm something of an inclusionist that way).
In practice, this project isn't terribly active, as most of us are tired of arguing with the adherents of various pseudosciences (the ones I've run into have been very active, and immune to any form of reasoning; I had to go on sabbatical for a few months after the whole "Harmonics Theory" debacle).
I hope this gives you some insight into the nature of this project. For more detail, see the project page itself. --Christopher Thomas 15:16, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Thomas, I searched WP:NPOV for "label", "labelled" and "labelled" but did not find it. Apparently you are reading things that aren't there. What is there, however:
the task is to represent the majority (scientific) view as the majority view and the minority (sometimes pseudoscientific) view as the minority view.
Apparently, people here disagree with that policy. Harald88 23:10, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Question moved from my talk page (Aetherometry)

This question was asked on my talk page, but I have moved it here as I believe it will garner a larger response, and the inquirer wanted to know other editors' reasons as well. --Philosophus 05:47, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Excuse me, please, this is Janusz Karpinski, writing just after midnight on January 13. I am curious why such person as you, obviously a scientist, spends time so without point, quarrelling about aetherometry. Why do you give permission to keep this article in Wikipedia which you can not verify and on a subject which is well known only to few people? An encyclopedia is a bad place for this and it is damaging to the dignity to spend time making such bad blood in such pettyness. Wikipedia has policy that says it should not allow such articles. Is it not that you think that this policy is wise and upholding to dignity? I am writing not only to you but also to other few scientists who are involved in aetherometry fighting now. Also excuse that I am new to writing in Wikipedia. (written by 4.154.226.185)

I have spent much less than an hour in total in my writing about Aetherometry on the talk page, though I know others have spent a considerable amount of time doing so. I have never done so before, and do not believe I will do so in the same way again, as I agree with you that such writing is pointless. I was deluded in thinking that I would be able to force supporters of the theory to agree that Aetherometry was incompatible with all of Quantum Mechanics due to the impossibility of doing canonical quantization without the uncertainty principle, and get them to address some core problems that I can find looking at the article, like how particles like photons and gravitons can exist in the theory when quantisation is impossible. I was hoping that someone like Pgio would add an action for something basic like photons, but instead my core questions were ignored (they have not been answered in the archives of that page as implied). I thought that the supporters of the theory would act like scientists, addressing the problems honestly and admitting shortcomings and problems which they have not solved. However, I was wrong in assuming this - possibly because the supporters are not scientists, but instead seem mostly in journalism and marketing (at least I think so), and are only interested in promoting the pseudotheory, not questioning its validity as a true scientist would do.
Unfortunately, the page has been up on Articles for Deletion before, and was kept due to lack of consensus. Aside from the supporters of such pseudotheories, there are rational editors who argue that the articles should be kept as the subjects are notable (do a search for Aetherometry on google), and NPOV coverage on WP will be a good thing. Unfortunately, while I believe that this would be the case ideally, I do not think this happens in practice: the supporters will not admit problems or allow criticism in the articles, and editors knowledgeable to be able to tell pseudoscience from real science just don't have enough time to keep the pages in order, nor to read through jargon-filled nonsense in order to find problems with such theories. In the case of Aetherometry, my interpretation of the EULA to read the texts means that I would not be allowed to publish a negative opinion of the writings.
It also seems that some editors believe that NPOV means that no pseudotheory, even completely insane ones like the Time Cube, should be presented in an unfavorable light. Notice that the Time Cube article, like the Aetherometry article, claims only that "most" academics/scientists reject the theory, though I would be astonished if a single qualified, respected academic in the appropriate field would not reject such a "theory". The academic community doesn't care about arguing over these matters, and as a result, the supporters are able to mostly get their way on WP.
Personally, I am quite dismayed the use of distorted Physics as justification for a variety of New Age like things that I see so often. This is my primary motivation for trying to stop this incursion of pseudotheories. I do not believe the average person in the US can tell the difference between real science and many crackpot theories and misinterpretations.--Philosophus 06:37, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
Hey Philosophus! I'll answer a coupla your questions on the Aetherometry Talk page. But right here I'll note: quantization is certainly not incompatible with Aetherometry, and I can't understand where you got that; you can publish whatever you want under the EULA, you just agree to indemnify the Correas, so y'know, fire away; the fight the ENTIRE TIME has been that the 'critics' of the article haven't bothered to read enough theory to actually formulate crticicism. So, wading through 'jargon' is part of learning something, right? Pgio 07:29, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi, and please pardon me if my remarks are stupid or too many. One observation I have: on the talk page for aetherometry, somebody just said that the article is too long. But it seems that you want it to be even longer. Your questions are very involved. For example, it probably takes a lot of time and patience to explain how, as you say, particles like photons and gravitons can exist in the theory when quantisation is impossible, or to explain if truly quantization is impossible in aetherometry. I think aetherometry sounds crazy, but I also dont see why would Mr. Pgio want to spend time explaining such involved things. What will it give him? And what will it give you? Another question I have: what does "notable" mean? Not in English, this I know, but in our discussion here. I think it has been said several times in the past that aetherometry does not have any mentions or discussions in any known scientific journals. Does not this to the contrary make it non-notable? And about the difference between crackpot theories and real science, I think you are very correct that the average person cannot tell the difference. But let me see if I can express my view. The difference between crackpot theories and real science is following of the scientific method. If Wikipedia wants to educate the public, its behaviour must be itself a good example of the scientific method. It cannot just say that something is crackpot or something is pseudoscience because it feels that way. I think that this is not scientific. Saying in an encyclopedia that something is crackpot or pseudoscience on belief does not give a model of not following unverified belief. And the public needs such a model. So if Wikipedia has an article where it cannot provide this model, but instead has to give a model of judging on unverified belief, it should not include the article that causes it to behave that way. It gives a very bad example. This is my opinion. I hope it can be understood. Sincerely, Janusz. Januszkarp 22:16, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Czesc, Janusz. You make many interesting points. Also: I agree completely with Philosophus and his observations and feelings on the subject. At this time, WP does not have a mechanism for peer review of science topics, nor is there a way to keep nonsense editors and bad editors in check. There are some nascent proposals being debated: the most notable one at this time is Wikipedia:Stable versions. Perhaps that mechanism will be able to keep some of the nonsense in check .. perhaps. We won't know what the effect of that policy/system is until it is implemented, and that may take a long time. Janusz, you should understand that in its current structure, WP will allow the person with the most energy and most time on thier hands to "win" any argument. This means that single-issue editors will usually dominate over generalist editors, who do not have the energy to fight. If you have ideas on how to regulate editing on WP so that some of the nonsense is kept out, then you should discuss this ... I'm not sure where ... here, at Wikipedia:Stable versions, and at other locations. linas 23:56, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Czesc, Linas. I dont have ideas of general solutions to difficult problem of keeping nonsense out of WP, but I have simple rule for not getting into some not solvable situations that result in nonsense. If there is topic such that the only way that Wikipedia administrators can agree to have article about topic is by including in article not-verifiable information or judgement, then dont have article about this topic. It means topic is not ready to be included in encyclopedia, and will just force never ending not reputable untruth, which is one kind of nonsense. And making stable version of not reputable untruth will not make it truth or reputable, just stable. Sincerely, Janusz. Januszkarp 19:09, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Need a hand on Dianetics

I'd be grateful if the participants in this WikiProject could have a look at Talk:Dianetics. Several editors (including myself) are trying to ensure that the Dianetics article is tacked in an appropriate way, i.e. WP:NOR, WP:NPOV etc. We're encountering considerable problems convincing a Scientologist editor that Dianetics is a pseudoscience and doesn't qualify as a scientific theory, which is how he wants to treat it. I'm sure you've encountered many similar arguments coming from ID apologists, creationists etc. Your perspective as people with a lot of experience in editing pseudoscience topics would be very useful. -- ChrisO 18:47, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

You're not going to successfully convince the Scientologist editor. The best approach I can recommend is to start a content RFC. In the RFC, state very clearly what specific items are being disputed. If you get consensus on an editing direction in the RFC, you can overrule the other editor's actions without needing to convince them. If problems occur after this, you can start a survey, again with a very specific question or small set of questions being asked. The idea is to use formal methods to make it very clear what community opinion is about how the article should be written. If the editor subsequently violates that community opinion, you continue up the dispute resolution chain with mediation and finally a request for arbitration if they aren't willing to respect the consensus of other editors. For an RFArb to be accepted, it has to be very clear that you're disputing user conduct, not article content, which is why the emphasis is on first proving that most of the editing community disagrees with the editor's actions, then going through the proper channels to try to get them to voluntarily respect the community's opinion, and only then asking for admins to back you up.
Good luck. This is part of why I tend not to edit pseudoscience articles that are being actively debated nowadays (had to go on WikiSabbatical for several months after Autodynamics and Harmonics Theory, and AD _still_ needs to be brought back into line with POV). --Christopher Thomas 21:39, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice! *wry grin* -- ChrisO 20:03, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I did a brief check, but couldn't be bothered with the details. If he is breaking WP:3RR then file are report at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR William M. Connolley 21:54, 7 February 2006 (UTC).

Where is the problem? It's very clearly stated in the intro that it "has been criticized as pseudoscientific quackery by most professional scientists and members of the medical community." Do they try to remove that statement? Harald88 22:13, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
It seems there's been some agreement to call it pseudoscience, but not how to include the majority scientific view per WP:NPOV#Pseudoscience. — Laura Scudder ☎ 04:27, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I suppose you could say that there's agreement in that everyone except the Scientologist editor seems to have agreed that Dianetics should be described as a pseudoscience with the scientific view presented as per WP:NPOV#Pseudoscience. Christopher Thomas's idea of conducting a survey of the existing editors to determine the way forward sounds workable. -- ChrisO 20:03, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Just make sure that you carefully read the documentation for all of the procedures involved. It took me quite a while to figure this out, and it could have saved me lots of headaches if I'd read the relevant pages first. All of the links are in my original reply. The reason is that anything that doesn't have all of the "i"s dotted and "t"s crossed will bog down or even be rejected when and if things go to arbitration. --Christopher Thomas 20:54, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
That is not true, ChrisO is misrepresenting. The Scientologist editor has conceded. But there are other issues disrelated to this Project, such as ChrisO presenting unverifiable references. --JimmyT 19:36, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Should sources be peer-reviewed?

Over at an article that more than one editor has found dubious, the following exchange occurred:

EDITOR 1: "This article needs to be written around a peer-reviewed source. There's no reason to believe that any of this is accurate."
EDITOR 2: "No it doesn't. This is Wikipedia, not a Scientifically approved journal or anything like that."

I'm wondering how well these two statements square up respectively with Wikipedia's actual standards. Does the fact that Wikipedia isn't "a Scientifically approved journal or anything like that" really mean that its scientific articles do not need to be based on peer-reviewed science? This is the article, in case context is needed. -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:39, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Reliable source and Wikipedia:Verifiability. Consensus from past AfD debates was that if it doesn't have peer-reviewed literature about it, it's not notable enough to be included, but 1) Wikipedia:Notability is not a policy, so you'll get debate over this, and 2) it's quite possible for a pseudoscience to be well-known but not published about in scientific literature. Mostly I'd suggest using peer-reviewed, reputable scientific publications as a yardstick for whether or not something is considered valid science by the scientific community. This will affect how an article is written (whether or not something is claimed to be scientific fact), but won't necessarily cause the article to be dumped. Good luck sorting it out (debates like this were part of why I went on sabbatical). --Christopher Thomas 18:14, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

A pseudoscience watchlist?

Hi, I recently added myself to the participants in the project. As I understand it, members agree upon the goal of ensuring that articles on pseudoscience topics are fully WP:NPOV, and in particular do not portray a fringe science speculation as mainstream, a crank "theory" as comparable to general relativity, etc. I am currently watching a number of pseudoscience related articles, but my watchlist is too long to be useful on a daily basis. Is it technically possible to create a watchlist for this project? So that members can add articles to the list and from time to time drop by and conveniently check the recent history of articles listed on the watchlist? I have in mind a page which would consist of links with buttons you could press to see the history. Comments? ---CH 21:53, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

It's certainly possible (and easy) to create a list of page history quick-links (using {{article}}, producing something like Cheese (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)). If you want to put something like this at Wikipedia:WikiProject Pseudoscience/Articles attracting pseudoscientific edits or the like, by all means go ahead, as it's a useful tool that doesn't already exist elsewhere on Wikipedia. Be ready for political drama in response, of course. Making a watchlist-equivalent page would have to involve off-site scripting, I think. Ask me again when this term is over and I'll put together a script for this (after getting proper bot approval). I won't be in a position to do this before April, due to schedule craziness. --Christopher Thomas 22:23, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
There's also a {{public watchlist}} template -- the watchlist page itself has to be created and edited by hand, but I created a couple of subst'able templates ({{pwli}} for list items and {{pwlr}} for redirects) that make it easier. You might want to look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Scientology/publicwatchlist for an example of such a watchlist in use. -- Antaeus Feldspar 23:21, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
The idea is to list recent changes to a set of articles on one page, in the same manner as a user's watchlist, which these watchlist templates don't appear to do. Thanks for pointing them out, though, as they're potentially useful for other purposes. --Christopher Thomas 05:57, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
They do do that, though. The set of articles is described on one page, and then the {{public watchlist}} template itself gives convenient URLs for seeing the recent changes to articles in that list, viewing the list history, editing that list, and just going to the list page itself. Actually, adding "Special:Recentchangeslinked/" to the beginning of any normal double-bracket link should have the same effect as navigating there manually and then clicking "Related changes" in the sidebar. Check Special:Recentchangeslinked/Wikipedia:WikiProject Scientology/publicwatchlist to see what I mean. -- Antaeus Feldspar 15:40, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Ok, I'd misread the templates the first few times around. Thanks for clearing that up. I'll add a watchlist to the WikiProject some time within the next week or so. --Christopher Thomas 06:00, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Antaeus, this sounds useful. Can you provide (maybe in the talk pages for the templates) and explanation of syntax and what these tempates are supposed to accomplish? I think creating something similar to the Scientology public watchlist for this project might be useful. ---CH 19:46, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I've made a start; can you read it over and see how well it explains things? -- Antaeus Feldspar 04:29, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Antaeus, thanks, very clear! But these don't quite do what I want. I find {{article|articlename}} works best for listing articles, but I'd like to have something similar for categories, e.g. *{{pwlc|Pseudoscience}} should produce

(but with working links, of course!). ---CH 06:20, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, interesting! I'll have to play around with something like that, but I believe it could be done. It'd probably be better to start a new template for that, however, because it differs significantly from the {{public watchlist}} template and therefore doesn't serve quite the same purpose. What you describe has an advantage over the existing template in that it can automatically start watching pages as they're added to the category; however, it has the disadvantage that you can't add pages without putting them in the category, and it won't detect the change if someone removes the page from the category (and frankly, that's probably one of the changes one wants to watch for most on a project like this. -- Antaeus Feldspar 23:24, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
It also won't see any changes in sub-categories of the category, only in the pages directly in the category. -- Antaeus Feldspar 23:40, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Announcing the WikiProject Pseudoscience shared watchlist!

Hi, all, I have created this proposed watchlist following the suggestions of User:Antaeus Feldspar. Check it out at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Pseudoscience/Articles_attracting_pseudoscientific_edits. Click on Check the list! to, you guessed it, check the list. The list itself includes some directions at the top of each section regarding syntax if you want to add a new article. The only tricky thing is that I listed biographical articles after all the other articles. The reason for this is that one naturally looks up people in the order last name, first name, but other articles under their title in lexicographic order. (In a few annoying cases, the first word of the title is "The"; there should be a law...) If y'all like this new watchlist, someone with more experience in this project than I should probably add a link from the main page. ---CH 21:59, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm pleased to have a second announcement to make: I've made some upgrades to the template used as a front-end to the list, so that now you can place a handy set of links for accessing and checking the shared watchlist on your user page. Inserting {{public watchlist|Wikipedia:WikiProject Pseudoscience/Articles attracting pseudoscientific edits/publicwatchlist}} into the source for your user page should create a convenient "access panel" there. -- Antaeus Feldspar 23:23, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Antaeus! I just added a link to the shared watchlist from the main project page. Hope this is OK with everyone.

I hate to encourage the cranks, some of whom are evidently reading this disucssion page, but I now fear that making that watchlist, which involved considerable work on my part, might have been a large waste of time. Drawbacks of this watchlist which I have noticed so far include:

  • Edits come so fast and furious that it is utterly impossible for even a full time monitor to keep up.
  • I added a disputed science infobox to several of the listed pages, as an experiment. I felt this was a big improvement. I was not very surprised to see that almost all of these additions have been reverted by angry cranks, but I was disappointed to see that I was the only one arguing to retain the infoboxes, and quickly grew exhausted. In fact, I have given up. Simply changing the name of the template from "pseudoscience" to "disputedscience" might help in arguing with angry cranks, BTW, since some users who prefer to regard "theory X" as protoscience rather than pseudoscience may at least be willing to admit that their pet theory can fairly be characterized as constituting disputed science.

The only potential advantage which I can think of right now is

  • If someone cares to count the number of listed pages, it is possible that we could make a rough and ready estimate of how frequently the listed pages are edited, on average. This could be useful in tracking the growth of known pseudoscience articles and the growth of the wikicruft problem generally. Unfortunately I have little hope that damning statistics will change anything, given the apparently ineffective political structure of Wikipedia.

Comments?

More generally, how do project members assess the effectiveness of this project in curbing pseudoscience POV-pushing edits to the Wikipedia? I am concerned we are far too few in number to be able to do much. One reason for this is that it takes us far more time and energy to revert each bad edit (deciding what to do, finding best previous version, arguing for one's action in the talk page, etc.) than it takes a crank to make such an edit. But I am too new here (and probably, at the moment, too depressed by the Sissphyean nature of this thankless task) to be able to form any reliable judgement about the overall effectiveness of this WikiProject.---CH 18:06, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'd like to make a recommendation to anyone who plans to check a shared watchlist: as long as your browser is JavaScript enabled, go into your preferences, go to the tab that says "Recent changes", and set the radio button to "Enhanced recent changes". This changes the way you see a "recent changes" page: instead of each individual edit showing up on a different line, each article which was edited at least once in the target timeframe gets a single line which reports the number of edits and the editors who made them. If there's just one edit, the entry shows more detail about that edit; if there's more than one, there's an arrow at the left of the line which can be clicked to drop down a list showing all the edits in detail. I know that this made the difference for me between "this would be a useful tool if it's not the death of me!" and "wow, this really is a useful tool!" -- Antaeus Feldspar 23:21, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
User:Hillman aka CH was lamenting {on various talk pages) that the list was expanding beyond the realm of utility, by tons of paranormal and other weird topics, that didn't even CLAIM to be science much. My solution, (since I caused part of the problem ) was to split off a new watchlist, where the junk that doesn't go in the first list can go. I took the User:Hob Gadling list of pseudobleep and stuck it in to start. The process of editing out the original list and inserting in the new list is yet to be done. Please join in. Wikipedia:WikiProject Pseudoscience/The para-hemi-meta-quasi-science publicwatchlist --GangofOne 07:52, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, GoO. In lieu of the automated tools for keeping hotlist and coldlist, maintaining these could be difficult. Even if both lists prove too long to use for tracking and correcting individual non-NPOV cranky edits, they might be of some use in tracking the edit rate of project-related articles. That is, set 500 (maximal setting), check the list, and count the number of edits in past six hours. Then one can try to spot check histories and estimate how many were cranky POV-pushing or vandalism. Repeat on different days of the week at different times. A lot of work, and I have little hope it would persuade the Wikimedia Board to face up to reality and modify their policies, revamp the admin system, streamline vandal reversion, and make other neccessary changes. ---CH 14:57, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I think dividing the watchlist will make it a bit more manageable, but I share many of the same concerns as Hillman; plus, I think without clear principles distinguishing what goes in one list from what goes in the other, it's going to be even harder to keep the lists up-to-date and useful. (Sorry, GoO, spiritual guidance wasn't answering my calls.  ;) I was pondering this as a possible "rule of thumb" distinction, though: would you consider the hypothesis scientific, if you were unaware of the evidence contrary to it? Thus, "phrenology" would go in the regular pseudoscience list, because the basic phrenology hypothesis could have been supported by scientific evidence, except that the evidence debunked it instead. The "Bible code", on the other hand, is pretty clearly not a scientific hypothesis to begin with.
Alternately, would it be useful to split off watchlists covering pseudoscience in specific fields? I actually had a great idea in the middle of the night: talk Wikipedia:WikiProject Alternative medicine into developing their own watchlist, and then trim this list by all the entries that are duplicated there. Unfortunately, that WikiProject seems to be inactive, but I think the idea might be sound, especially since someone with scientific expertise in a particular field might feel qualified to watch for pseudoscience creeping into those articles, as opposed to being able to spot what's pseudoscience in all fields. -- Antaeus Feldspar 16:42, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Linkspam, cranky POV pushing, proprietary "technology" promotion

Hi, I am concerned by edits I've noticed in various articles which favorably describe some alleged development and link to a cranky website promoting an alleged propriety "technology". Such sites often include appeals to potential investors. This is not a particularly good example, but the most recent such instance I've seen is that 130.184.88.44 from the University of Arkansas edited Gravitational radiation. The added text included several links to a website, [www.gravwave.com Gravwave LLC] which claims Gravwave® LLC is the first company to pioneer efforts to create important practical, commercial and military high-technology applications for HFGWs. I would regard such claims as cranky; indeed, this site is mentioned at [www.americanantigravity.com American Antigravity], a clearly cranky website.

I just want to make sure users other than myself are looking out for this kind of thing. ---CH 19:56, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

When I'm active, I flag it (along with any other changes) on articles on my watchlist. Promotion like this can generally be reverted on-sight, and these reversions don't tend to be disputed. --Christopher Thomas 06:48, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

A related project

I just found out about this project. There is this fairly new project: Wikipedia:WikiProject Rational Skepticism that I think could go un your list of related projects. I didn't want to make the change myself because I'm new over here.

A question: this project mainly seems to be about topics that are in the domain of physics. Is it involved with other forms of pseudoscience too? Bubba73 (talk), 18:23, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Has anyone made the change? As for possible topics of interest to this WikiProject, see the shared watchlist. ---CH 18:14, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project

Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-class, B-class, and Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Can you recommend any suitable articles? Please post your suggestions here. Cheers, Shanel 20:39, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Bigfoot

Because some advocates of cryptozoology claim the mantle of science, this subject IMO does count as pseudoscience. In this category, apart from Nessie there is no more famous subject than Bigfoot, and for this there is no more famous "evidence" than the Patterson film. This article has a huge bibliography, but to my astonishment, this list omitted the book by journalist Greg Long until I added it just now.

Patterson, the ringleader of the hoax (which involved two other principals), died in 1972, but Long tracked down his confederates and obtained a complete confession from the man who actually wore the suit. The monkey suit turns out to have been a commercial gorilla suit owned by Patterson, which was slightly modified to make the film. Long also obtained much information on the motivations of Patterson (basically, a con man in constant need of money who hit upon yet another scheme to rake in some cash).

Anyway, someone needs to edit the section dealing with the Patterson film to summarize Long's findings. It is amazing to me that this film is still discussed as it could possibly be "genuine", when by any journalistic standards known to me, it can only be described as a confessed hoax.---CH 19:53, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Sheesh, Patterson-Gimlin film begins Few doubt the film is authentic! I give up. ---CH 20:08, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Template tweaks, and test renderings

Recently, User:Epastore made some well-intentioned changes to Template:Infobox Pseudoscience that accidentally caused rendering problems in some cases. I've kept what could be kept, and to make it easier to avoid similar difficulties in the future, I've added documentation at Template talk:Infobox Pseudoscience on what bits are there for a reason, as well as test instances of the infobox so that the effects of a template change can be quickly evaluated under various pathological conditions. --Christopher Thomas 20:45, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Pseudoscience template formatting poll

User:Epastore has pointed out that the bulletted list style the template is currently optimized for may or may not be the best alternative to use. I've started an informal poll, as I recognize that my preferences might not be representative of all of yours:

Should lists in the "disputed science" infobox be single-line comma-delimited lists, or newline-delimited bulletted lists?

While this is a pretty trivial issue, it does have surprisingly large impact on how the guts of the template work (one or the other will look nice, but not both, with the way tables currently seem to work). Votes go below.

  • Bulletted. I think it's more readable than comma-delimited, though I agree that list length is a concern. --Christopher Thomas 05:37, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Single-line, comma-delimited, because it's takes up less space and stands out leses. Karol 08:32, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - Actually, my main reason for using comma formatting was that I couldn't get multiple bullets to work (still a little new to wiki'ing, I guess... I should have known to look at the talk page for an example). I don't have much preference now. :) Epastore 00:51, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

After an embarassingly long time, I've clued into the obvious solution for making both versions look good, so the question is a non-issue. Still nice to have a consistent format, but it's much less pressing now. --Christopher Thomas 05:19, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Bios theory and User: Lakinekaki

Been a while since I've been here, and hope it is OK to draw attention here to a specific pseudoscience problem which I think is particularly blatant. I have presented some startling evidence at Talk:Bios theory of some very troubling POV-pushing and also a serious conflict of interest, not to mention deceptive behavior. What to do? ---CH 05:37, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Did I mention that it appears that thousands of lives of patients in neonatal ICUs might be at risk each year in the U.S. alone, if this "bios theory" might actually be used to make critical care decisions in the treatment of these patients, as some indications in the article seem to suggest? This is, or could be, very serious stuff.---CH 08:57, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Added to AfD as non-notable. This isn't really the place to have OR about the theory's use in neonatal ICUs, so it is probably best to delete it. If you want to investigate it and write a report about it, we might be able to recreate the article and use it as a source, though. I would think that something being used would have a bigger internet presence.--Philosophus T 09:41, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Bi-Digital O-Ring Test

Help requested on Bi-Digital O-Ring Test. It was just re-written by a proponent. -Will Beback 20:33, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I've submitted it to AfD. If it is notable enough, we could merge it into the Omura article. Philosophus T 21:01, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
Ok, I am now having some difficulties with this. It is obviously pseudoscience and quackery, but as with many other cases, it is somewhat difficult to find sources that will satisfy everyone, and I am predictably having problems justifying the categorization to at least one editor. It would be nice if someone could help strengthen the evidence for keeping these categories. --Philosophus T 01:08, 24 May 2006 (UTC)