Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pseudoscience/Archive 3

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Contents

New perpetual motion template

Update on this... there is now Template:Perpetual motion machine created by User:Perpetual motion machine, whose contributions William M. Connolley 21:55, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

This type of information should not be presented in a self-referential disclaimer, it should be incorporated into the text. Either the article is encyclopedic and factual, in which case no disclaimer is necessary, or it is not and should be deleted or heavily revised. Self-referential tags on articles should never be permanent features. This new template is a big improvement, but it should not refer to "this article"; instead it should incorpate the name of the invention. --ragesoss 22:23, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
I think {{perp}} should be deprecated as soon as possible and replaced with the new template.--ragesoss 22:31, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Is see some articles use perp on talk pages; that's fine, of course. I'm going to move all the ones in articles to the talk pages.--ragesoss 22:48, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Why, exactly, are you doing this instead of just substituting {{PAGENAME}} for "this article" in template:perp? I strongly dislike template:perpetual motion machine, because it seems to have cut and pasted template:perp and bits of template:Infobox Pseudoscience together in a way that makes questionable sense. Once my current work-deadline cools down, I'm going to tweak template:perp, and restore it to articles, and take a stab at making a perpetual motion machine infobox, which is what template:perpetual motion machine appears to be trying to do.
I'm also wondering who perpetual motion machine (talk • contribs) is, and why they didn't just edit under their primary account.--Christopher Thomas 23:21, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Template:Perpetual motion machine now got misleadingly stuck at Cox's timepiece. And at Axletree Dynamo, an article which sets new standards on not defining its lemma. So it's [Axletree Dynamo on AfD] now. --Pjacobi 23:04, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

This has moved back up to the top of my to-do list. Before I make changes, does anyone besides User:Ragesoss see merit in the changes User:Perpetual motion machine made to the way perpetual motion machines are flagged? People have managed to change my opinions by rational debate in the past, so I don't want to pull the trigger on the new template if anyone else _does_ think it's better. I don't see why the disclaimer was moved to the talk page, and I don't see what this new template does that the "disputed science" infobox template didn't do.

I'll also gladly accept proposals for new alternate solutions.

To answer User:Ragesoss's original objection, in theory, the disclaimer template wouldn't be needed at all. However, as WMC pointed out in the original thread about it, it's next to impossible to keep a heavily-contested perpetual motion article's introduction neutral. --Christopher Thomas 00:02, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I like the way it is now. My objection was based on the earlier banner version, and then the to the self-referential aspects of the infobox version. I don't have a problem with highlighting the fact that something is a perpetual motion machine, it just shouldn't come off as a warning.--ragesoss 00:12, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
I replied a little too quickly. What trigger are you planning to pull exactly? Adding the "perp" template back into the articles?--ragesoss 00:16, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
I think the current version of the PMM infobox is vastly superior to simply a warning banner across the top. I especially like the "Theory violation" part, which gets down to the point of what makes it a PMM very nicely and makes it a much stronger implicit warning than simply having the disputed science template {{Infobox Pseudoscience}} but without the ugliness of a warning banner. It has the warning text of the perp banner within it, too. (Although I wouldn't mind seeing that go, I don't mind it there either).--ragesoss 00:27, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Specific concerns with the new infobox, other than the ones already stated in the previous thread (now archived), are that the headings within the box are poorly-suited to the subject ("disciplines" and "core tenets" will be largely the same for all PMs, and "theory violation" will always be "second law of thermodynamics" and "conservation of energy" for all PMs), and that it was implemented with no discussion as a replacement for a banner that was implemented after _much_ discussion.
My planned course of action, which I stated above, but will restate for clarity, was to change things back to the way they were before User:Perpetual motion machine's unilateral change, and then solicit suggestions for changes, starting the discussion process that was short-circuited by PMM's actions.
What I'm doing _now_, is holding off on reverting the template changes, and holding the discussion first, to minimize (further) disruption.
I can see an argument for having an infobox. I don't think the current infobox is better than the "disputed science" infobox would be. I'm open to suggestions for better versions. I dispute unilateral removal of the warning banners, which is why I asked for other opinions now. As many of the regulars here can tell you, there's a strong tendency for most crank articles (including perpetual motion machine articles) to be presented in a non-critical light, which is why the banner was produced in the first place. Dig through the archives for context. --Christopher Thomas 01:36, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
They won't all necessarily violate LoT 1 and 2. But how about modifying the new template to be like the disputed science one, except keep the banner text at the bottom as it is now. Having a warning banner across the top of an article perpanently is just plain ugly.--ragesoss 01:46, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
By definition, they all seem to violate the first law, at least. How does this look for a proposed version?
Perpetual motion machine:
{{{name}}}

Forces Exploited:

{{{forces}}}
Proposed Mechanism:

{{{claims}}}
Year Proposed: {{{origyear}}}

Original Proponents:

{{{origprop}}}

Current Proponents:

{{{currentprop}}}
{{{name}}} is a form of perpetual motion machine. Such machines violate the known laws of physics (most notably conservation of energy, conservation of momentum, and the first and second laws of thermodynamics). Claims of the development of such devices are considered pseudoscience by most scientists.
"Forces exploited" is poorly named. It's supposed to list items along the lines of "electricity", "electrochemistry", "mechanics", or what-have-you (replacing the not-terribly-useful "disciplines" field). Suggestions for changes are welcome, as the box at the bottom (especially) is difficult to read. I'd also strongly suggest calling it something like "Infobox Perp", after infobox naming conventions.
Lurker responses? --Christopher Thomas 02:03, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, no lurker, just me again. I would condense the box at the bottom to "...violate the laws of thermodynamics. Claims..." Certainly there is no need to mention conservation of energy and the first law, and I think just the laws of thermodynamics part is sufficient for the sake of concision; any other broken laws are an added bonus. "Forces used" might be an alternative for "Forces exploited." That renaming sounds like the right thing.--ragesoss 02:35, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree, no need to mention conservation of energy and thermodynamics. Also change "the first and second" to "the first or second" since a PPM need only break one of the first 2 laws of T to operate. --Michael C. Price talk 12:00, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Digital Universe: Will this be Pseudoscience POV Pushing on a Grand Scale?

Having very reluctantly concluded that Wikipedia classic is doomed to the same inexorable degradation which we saw on newsgroups (projects like this one being at best a desperate rearguard holding action, as it were), I was encouraged to see that Larry Sanger is apparently involved in a forthcoming competitor to Wikipedia. According to the article Sanger intends Digital Universe to be more reliable than Wikipedia. Among other things, it is to rely on experts to exercise editorial control.

That sounded great! At least, until I noticed that the president of Digital Universe and also of ManyOne Networks (which is touted as the webhost for Digital Universe) is none other than Bernard Haisch.

Who is Bernard Haisch? Well, for starters see:

Haisch apparently also operates something called the California Institute for Physics and Astrophysics. The mission statement of this organization says The California Institute for Physics and Astrophysics (CIPA) focuses on research in electrodynamics, relativity, gravitation, inertia and the quantum vacuum zero... Google suggests it is mostly a collection of Haisch's papers. BTW, it seems that this organization may consist solely of Haisch himself, but I didn't try to verify that impression.

I don't want to be charged with trying to tar Haisch with guilt by association, but I think it bears mentioning that Haisch is apparently married to one Marsha Sims, who edits something called Journal of Scientific Exploration, which is published by the Society for Scientific Exploration, whose mission statement reads The Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE) exists to foster the serious and rational study of all questions that are amenable to scientific investigation, without restriction. The Society publishes a peer reviewed journal, the Journal of Scientific Exploration.... And what does JSE publish? Well, the very first paper I came across was:

MAY, E. C., JAMES, S., SPOTTISWOODE P., & FAITH L. V. (2000). The correlation of the gradient of Shannon entropy and anomalous cognition: Toward an AG sensory system. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 14, 53-72. In this study, we hoped to replicate earlier findings that have demonstrated strong evidence for anomalous cognition (AC), as well as a significant correlation between the quality of the AC with the gradient of Shannon entropy, but not with the entropy itself. We created a new target pool and a more sensitive analytical system compared with those of earlier studies. We then invited 5 experienced receivers (i.e., experiment participants) to contribute 15 trials each. In addition to the usual rank-order analysis, 2 other methods were used to assess the quality of the AC. The first of these was a 1 to 7 rating scale that has been used in the earlier studies. The second, a figure of merit, was based on a fuzzy-set encoding of the targets and responses. The primary hypotheses were (a) that a significant correlation would be seen between the figure of merit quality assessment and the gradient of Shannon entropy for the associated target and (b) that the correlation using the rating assessment would be consistent w ith earlier findings. A secondary hypotheses was that the figure of merit quality would not correlate with the entropy of the associated target. All hypotheses were confirmed. Our results are part of the growing evidence that AC is mediated through a sensory channel.

I don't know what anomalous cognition is supposed to be, but it sure sounds like a pseudoscientific codeword for ESP or something like that. The next few articles I found were titled:

  • Are Reincarnation Type Cases Shaped by Parental Guidance? An Empirical Study Concerning the Limits of Parents' Influence on Children
  • Children Claiming Past-Life Memories: Four Cases in Sri Lanka
  • Moslem Cases of The Reincarnation Type in Northern India: A Test of the Hypothesis of Imposed Identification. Part I: Analysis of 26 Cases

...well, you get the idea. I seem to recall recently seeing a citation of an article on an exploration to find the Yeti in this journal too... IIRC, a preceding editor of this journal was one Henry Bauer, author of The Enigma of Loch Ness: Making Sense of a Mystery and Scientific Literacy and The Myth of the Scientific Method.

OK, like I say, make of this what you will. The apparent link with JSE doesn't prove anything about Haisch but in context I think it does raise some questions about just what kind of "expert" Digital Universe has sought out to "guide" its article creation.

And now for some comic relief. As a rather silly example of crank POV pushing, see Dennis Overbye's slam of a new film touting quantum conciousness in today's New York Times. I think we can expect to see future edits by an anon linking this cranky film to various otherwise legitimate physics articles, just as happened for its predecessor (mentioned in the Overbye piece).

But there is a serious point here: at least some cranks read the newspaper too, and I think they can see how much trouble political pressure groups like the Discovery Institute have created for working scientists, and I think its given them ideas. See organizations like Archive Freedom. I fear that it would be grave mistake for the leaders of mainstream science to underestimate the amount of time they will have to spend in the future trying to argue the case for real science in front of policy makers, courts of law, and legislators.

Coments?---CH 18:10, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

The "Digital Universe" project will come to stand of fall based on the merits of its content. It will bear watching any may even be worthy of participation at first. If mainstream views and editors are stymied by Haisch, then the project will quickly flounder. OTOH, if mainstream editors are permitted a fair say in this project, then Haisch's views may quickly be pushed off to the side. My guess is that there will an early period of peaceful growth, followed by a ugly power struggle. If Haisch win the power struggle, then he will still lose becuase another parallel site will be established to do what the Digital Universe was supposed to do.
So for now, this is a proof-of-concept, and should be approached as such. Let Sanger and Haisch do the basic groundwork, and lets see how far we can take it even with Haisch involved. Even if it cannot become the reputable source that it should be, it will open the door to the creation of such a source. --EMS | Talk 18:38, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Just read the NYT piece. [1] It says "The parapsychologists were booted from the American Association for the Advancement of Science 30 years ago." which is a counterfactual, based on what I read at Parapsychology. See also the existence of Journal of Scientific Exploration, another one for your list. Also, you may recall if you haven't repressed the fact that Jack Sarfatti worked with Joe Firmage on ufo ideas 5 years ago, until Firmage's internet money ran out. Check out his massive philosophy book The Truth on the web somewhere. Small world. I see Haisch coauthor Puthoff is replicating Randall Mill's Hydrino theory experiments. I seem to recall Puthoff was getting government (military) grants. Suckers for dreams of power. I see Mill's board of directors are mostly military retired double-dippers. Anyway the DigUniverse article is written like a press release, what they're GOING to do. Maybe they could hire Marlee Matlin as spokesperson. What the **** down the * hole. --GangofOne 22:23, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I have just created Bernard Haisch and have added much information to Journal of Scientific Exploration. ---CH 01:09, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Rotating magnetic field

Rotating magnetic field has flared up again... its a telsaphile magnet; has been a redirect for ages, now resurrected by user RMF and the talk page unexplainedly "archived" William M. Connolley 18:35, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Cox's timepiece

User:Perpetual motion machine (talk • contribs) returns to Cox's timepiece (briefly mentioned above) and insists that it's a working "perpetual motion machine". I'm not in the mood to further argue with this guy's ramblings and twisted definitions, especially since any points I could make would get attacked as NPOV anyway (in a style that I suppose might be reddily recognizable to those with more experience in handling it than I have). Could somebody be so kind as to tell him that his oh-so-neutral interpretation of the second law is, what was that b-word, bunk please? Femto 17:08, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I've added my rv... such a lot of words on the talk page! William M. Connolley 18:28, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Questionable edits by User:Haisch and anon socks

Hi all, I am ccing here a message I just left in Talk:WikiProject Physics because I think it should be of interest to members of this project also:

Hi all, a new user, Haisch (talk · contribs), who is in real life fringe physicist Bernard Haisch, is edit warring regarding his wikibiography Bernard Haisch and some articles in which he has an interest, Journal of Scientific Exploration and Stochastic electrodynamics. Please see also his user talk page, my user talk page, and the Paul August's user talk page.

Haisch also edits as an anon from the pltn13.pacbell.net domain (Southwestern Bell InterNet Services; geolocated in San Jose, CA)

  1. 69.107.150.126 (talk · contribs) adsl-69-107-150-126.dsl.pltn13.pacbell.net
    1. 5 June 2006 removes internal link to Bernard Haisch from List of UFO researchers
    2. 12 June 2006 confession of IRL identity
    3. 25 April 2006 implicit confession of IRL identity
    4. 26 April 2006 example of edit adding citation to his own book (I think this is linkspam, although some of these are more justificable than others)
  2. 69.107.144.172 (talk · contribs) adsl-69-107-144-172.dsl.pltn13.pacbell.net
  • the pltn13.sbcglobal.net domain (SBC Internet Services; geolocated in the Bay Area)
  1. 71.146.176.178 (talk · contribs) adsl-71-146-176-178.dsl.pltn13.sbcglobal.net
    1. 10 June 2006 refers to Haisch's career as "my career" in insulting talk page message

Important note: the pltn13.pacbell.net domain has also been used by Jack Sarfatti, who as you all know has been permabanned. I'd like to avoid that kind of mess from repeating itself with Haisch. In any case, be aware that Sarfatti continues to occassionaly edit as an anon, and ironically he has also used this domain. Even more ironically, Sarfatti doesn't care for Haisch and myself have sometimes reverted sarcastic comments by the Sarfatti anon in various articles mentioning Haisch! (Just to add to the confusion, another user (apparently), DrMorelos (talk · contribs) apparently also edits as the anon 69.109.222.23 (talk · contribs) and claims to have earned a Ph.D. from an American University and mentions other things which fit both Sarfatti and Haisch. However, DrMorelos appears to have distinct fringe science interests.)

Returning to the edit war by Haisch: I feel (see the talk pages) that I have bent over backwards to

  1. not overreact to some questionable anon edits by Haisch
  2. be helpful to Haisch as a WP newbie (despite Digital Universe)
  3. not overreact to violations by Haisch (talk · contribs) of WP:NLT-WP:CIV-WP:AGF

Remarkably, in a comment on my user talk page and without any prompting from me, Haisch himself raised the issue which most concerns me about allowing persons to edit articles about controversial "scientific" topics in which they are directly involved:

If I go and seek funding from a philanthropic organization for the Digital Universe Foundation, as I am doing, and they look me up on Wikipedia, your negativity may cost me a grant... and I will never know that. Make no mistake about it. Wikipedia has tremendous influence, and that is precisely why must be both accurate and fair. The Wikipedia is perceived as no mere gossip sheet. Your words could deprive my organization of a million dollar grant because of your implicit judgment of my scientific career.

Needless to say, the issue which troubles me is that Haisch implicitly admits to a million dollar financial incentive :-/ to slant the WP in a pro-Haisch manner. I find this deeply disturbing.

In the matter of Bernard Haisch, the original version of which I wrote and which Haisch keeps rewriting, I told him several times (and followed through on my promise) that I am willing to discuss his objections line by line. I told him that I feel it is in the best interests of WP readers (and even himself) that he restrict his comments on articles on controversial topics in which he is directly involved to the talk page, but let me implement any changes in the article itself. I have been through several iterations of this with him already, and have made a handful of minor factual corrections he suggested and also made other changes. However, Haisch seems to insist on editing his own biography, an despite repeated polite warnings, he continues to leave insulting messages in various talk pages, which makes discussions with him unpleasant. He also continues to edit his own biography (breaking up the flow of ideas and adding a pro-Haisch slant). I have asked him to take a break for a few days to calm down but he also appears unwilling to try this. Please help me discourage him from edit warring until he calms down enough to respect WP:CIV. TIA ---CH 18:55, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

NPOV issue

I have begun a discussion of NPOV issues related to this group here. --ScienceApologist 14:18, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Missing to-do list

I've just noticed that Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Pseudoscience/to_do has gone missing. Nothing turned up checking for an AfD. Could one of the admins lurking here check the deletion log to see why it was pruned, and by whom? --Christopher Thomas 23:40, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Modern Galilean relativity

Dunno if anyone other than the Chris Hillman and Christopher Thomas are still reading this, but this article is a real problem in terms of presenting pseudoscience as respectable, misstatements of fact, and so on. ---CH 20:51, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm still here too. It is just difficult to work on the article, since it is more of a tedious rant. Most of it probably needs to be removed. --Philosophus T 21:09, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I'll add a debunking section. --Michael C. Price talk 21:11, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Done. "Mainstream Critique" section added in an attempt to provide some balance. --Michael C. Price talk 21:45, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
That was a constructive action! To have a separate critique section may enable to more thoroughly present the counter arguments; as a bonus it might reduce the edit war with KraMuc, as it implies less text interference. Harald88 16:43, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, glad you liked it. It also makes is harder for cranks to dilute the mainstream view without being detected. Perhaps, though, I should have placed as the first section after the intro. What do people think in general? --Michael C. Price talk 17:25, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
I think that it is standard, after an introductory summary that mentions the status of affairs, to first develop the topic and next the criticism. Harald88 22:10, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
However, we don't want the criticism section hidden away from the reader by being at the end of a very long article. We need some way to balance these concerns in articles that follow this format. -Philosophus T 22:17, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Banner template?

I've created a banner template for talk pages, somewhat as a test, at Template:WikiProject Pseudoscience. I'm not convinced that this is a good idea. It would increase our visibility, and might attract other helpful editors to the project - I do know there are quite a few people who probably aren't part of it only because they don't know that it exists. On the other hand, it might cause some controversy, though it would at least be on the talk page. There is also the question of what articles to apply it to - just physics-type pseudoscience, or articles like Astrology as well? For fun and to see the results, I might try addng it to Astrology, which is undergoing a large pseudoscience/not pseudoscience debate. --Philosophus T 14:27, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I like that template: you phrased it in such a manner that it can hardly cause controversy. And the astrology Talk page is certainly appropriate. Harald88 16:47, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
My main concern with the banner is that it points people to this talk page, without making it clear that this is _not_ the place to discuss specific articles. Other than that, it looks fine to me. --Christopher Thomas 19:57, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
I've changed the text a bit to try to make that clear. However, there is the problem that talking about specific articles, especially asking for help on specific articles, seems to be the main use of this page despite its intended purpose. That use seems to be working well, and we probably need to consider it. --Philosophus T 22:25, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
This was originally supposed to go to PNA/Physics, and has since been moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics. After I archived threads and put up the big notice at the top of the page, this page stayed clear of article-specific threads for a surprisingly long time. I'll do another archive/move purge some time within the next couple of months. --Christopher Thomas 06:40, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
The revised version looks fine to me. By the way, we still need feedback about the proposed tweaks to the perpetual motion machine template noted above. --Christopher Thomas 06:43, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Reiki (talk)

An editor here keeps removing a "scientists consider Reiki to be pseudoscience" statement in the introduction since the editor claims that it is not relevant. It would be nice if someone else could look into this. A similar discussion is also taking place at Talk:Astrology, by the same editor. Essentially, the argument is that since supporters of the two areas don't claim that they are scientific "in the modern sense" (but Astrology can still be "the oldest, and best documented science in the history of humankind"), any view that the topics are pseudoscientific doesn't matter. --Philosophus T 01:30, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

What to do about references

For many pseudo-scientific theories (I have in mind the Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe, there is very little in the way of published papers debunking the ideas...anyone who knows about the science in question can read the theory and realise it's patently obvious that it is rubbish, but no-one is bothered to sit and pick it apart and publish. How does one introduce the idea that the theory is bunk, without performing "original research", if there are no references to cite? Obviously, this goes for many pseudoscientific theories, so laying out some established method would be a good idea.--Byrgenwulf 09:14, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

In some cases, probably also in the case of Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe the theory is "not even wrong", people somehow "derive" quantum mechanics from it but you could just as well "derive" any hypothetical laws of physics from it.
If statements about physics are made, e.g. that you can derive QM from the theory, then it's reasonable to to label the theory as pseudoscientific on the grounds that as a physical theory it is not falsifiable. To supporters of the theory this may sound unfair, but it is up to the supporters to prove their claims by publishing the theory (at least the claims about deriving physics) in peer reviewed journals about physics. The lack of such publications is evidence for the pseudoscientific nature. Count Iblis 13:42, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
If it makes statements that outright contradict known physics, you can point out these inconsistencies (and link to the appropriate physics pages) without it being OR, as your citations are the experiments that support the known physics phenomena. Be very careful when doing this, though - any _derivation_ or _argument_ you have to make would be OR, so it would only be a valid approach when the statements _directly_ contradict known physics. You can also point out where the proposed model and mainstream physics diverge without outright saying "this is bunk", in areas where a non-expert reader might be misled. I'm not sure how much of this applies to CTMU, though, as from what I can see the article is mostly gibberish. --Christopher Thomas 16:00, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
What if there is an argument about that though? I recall that for the Aetherometry article, the theory claimed to be able to allow measurements and physical constants with no uncertainty. I therefore added quantum mechanics to the list of theories it was incompatible with (I should have added common sense to, since it is common-sensically impossible to take measurements without uncertainty). The supporters disagreed with me, saying that I just didn't understand the theory. How obvious do these things have to be? --Philosophus T 04:47, 15 July 2006 (UTC) 04:34, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
In such cases it's best to alert the people at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics. If an argument can be made using well established physics, then that is not original research. The borderline between "obvious" and "not obvious" has to be roughly defined such that "not obvious" corresponds to a non trivial result that is publishable in a leading physics journal. This means that if the refutation is obvious it can be pointed out in the article. If it isn't you can either cite references to the physics literature or if those refs. don't exist yet, you can write your own article and get that published (that takes some time, of course).Count Iblis 12:57, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, me lord! The Paulian "not even wrong" epithet certainly applies to the CTMU...and it smacks of the Bogdanoffs/Sokal hoax. The article is so littered with abused terminology that it is likely to awe and wow the layman into believing that it must be true. The problem is that is has been published, in the notorious ID journal, but whenever I try to provide (with links and damned good references, mind!) the scientific community's consensus view on the nature of that journal, my edits are just reverted. Maybe I should just give up. --Byrgenwulf 13:54, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I guess that more people should become involved in editing this article to make it moe balanced. I've placed it on my watchlist. The lack of publications in reputable peer reviewed physics journals (Physical Review, Foundations of Physics etc. ) should be mentioned. Count Iblis 14:07, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
I think this article will end up deleted in the end, and whatever scant pieces are left will be swallowed by the page devoted to the author, but in the future when such articles come up the best way to describe them is in terms of what they do not do. For example, this particular idea is not based on the scientific method nor is it based on observation so it cannot be said to be a scientific theory by the author's own admission. This doesn't require a citation to show because the author himself admits to not being conversant with science -- instead he relies on a scholastic derivation of "reality" and "existence" that make no claims of being connected with scientific research. Making it clear that the idea isn't scientific and removing the POV suggestions that it represents a theory of everything and emergent properties of science is the best way to go. This effectively paints the idea into the corner it desires to inhabit. It is also always helpful to dumb down the wording as much as possible and remove the jargon that serves to obfuscate. If a term is used but isn't defined, it is not useful to our readers. Obscure wording violates WP:STYLE and should be eliminated in favor of prose that are accessible. --ScienceApologist 16:47, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Trouble on the science front.

Science section of Astrology is highly prone to POV changes and insertion of pseudoscience. Could someone take a look at it please? Jefffire 14:05, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Sure, someone can take a look at it, but with the well entrenched supporters there, changing anything is difficult. --Philosophus T 21:14, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Impossible, more like, since we are in the minority! --Michael C. Price talk 21:22, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

apparently biased selection criteria

This article now ("temporarily") states:

For a pseudoscientific theory to be important, it has to have the paper trail to be encyclopedic, and have other scientists publish in response, or cite its articles.

It had in addition the following unacceptable claims (I moved that here for discussion):

Threshold is lower if the published articles are rebuttals. Threshold is higher if the published articles agree with the pseudoscience work, as this could just be collusion in a tight-knit group of pseudoscientists.

  • 1. This looks like a contradiction in terms (can a scientist be a "pseudoscientist"?).
  • 2. It is not up to us to force either our (editors) opinion or "mainstream" opinion above the opinion as expressed in scientific publications, or to one-sidedly assume a conspiracy - in fact this is a good example of what Wikipedia forbids.

I propose to either replace it with nothing, or perhaps with something like:

Editors should realise that if a published article is a rebuttal, it could be simply based on prejudice. Inversely, if a published article agrees with what generally is considered to be pseudoscience, its sole purpose could be to support befriended pseudoscientists.

  • I have doubts about the following instruction: ["in line with NPOV:"] No gushing about how wonderful the pseudoscientific theory is. That will be obvious without the gushing if it's true.

I have not seen such a remark in the NPOV rules; instead it is common and accepted that claimed advantages of theories are expoused in the article space. Thus I think this needs a little reformulation.

Harald88 19:22, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[point 1:] Sadly yes, a scientist can be a "pseudoscientist", very easily. Think of Fred Hoyle on evolution, or Roger Penrose on consciousness. --Michael C. Price talk 19:39, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
It will be better to write in such sentences "pseudoscientific", which avoids to generalize and doesn't attack the person. Harald88 13:16, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
The point might be clearer if we demarcated two different kinds of pseudoscientists: those that work (with varying degrees of success) to get their works published mainstream journals and those that do not. It's easy to dismiss creationism because they gave up trying to get their work published long ago. Astronomy and Space Science, a new journal in astrophysics routinely publishes fringe and even pseudoscientific work because it is fledgling. Unfortunately, peer review is no gaurantee that a work will be scientific. --ScienceApologist 22:30, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
I largely agree but think that "mainstream" or not isn't a valid consideration, as that could make Wikipedia disproportionally biased towards mainstream opinion, due to non-neutral preselection. IMO a distinction should be made (and is made, in fact!) between scientific peer reviewed publications and those that are not. The last group is only of encyclopedic interest insofar as it attracted significant publicity in well-known non-peerreviewed journals and magazines; and the article should clearly indicate so. See for example Afshar experiment, which may be considered encyclopedic because it's well known - last week it was even discussed at my university (not that I call it pseudo-scientific, it's more fringe). Harald88 13:16, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
To respond to your objections: Published dismissal because of individual prejudice is unlikely, as it would require many scientists (from the authors to the reviewers to the editorial committe of the journal) to be willing to risk their careers by publishing an article that isn't backed up by evidence. Any published dismissal, therefore, is very likely to accurately reflect the views of some substantial number of mainstream scientists. Your proposed rewording implies the opposite.
Publishing an article in support of a pseudoscientific theory, on the other hand, is easy as long as one picks a journal with sufficiently lax standards, or restricts oneself to preprints (some of the arxiv preprints supporting autodynamics claims were particularly memorable for the glaring calculation errors made). In an ideal world, all editors would immediately know which journals were reputable and which weren't. In the absence of such an ideal world, a guideline to take rebuttals more seriously than fringe claims works well as a heuristic.
Accusations of _institutional_ prejudice against non-mainstream theories may be (somewhat) better grounded than accusations of individual prejudice, but that doesn't end up affecting the Wikiproject (or Wikipedia) much. WP:V and WP:NPOV make it clear that, barring some means of making editors precient, the view of the majority of scientists is to be considered the most accurate, and opposing views are to be given space in proportion to their level of support among the scientific community.
With regards to your dislike of the "don't gush about your theory", this is in direct response to the tendency of pseudoscience articles to have a very non-neutral and non-encyclopedic tone, stating (in so many words) that their theory is the best thing since sliced bread. This tendency violates the "weight in proportion to viewpoint representation" part of WP:NPOV, and violates WP:SOAP, so your objection to the statement is puzzling. --Christopher Thomas 00:15, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Where did I suggest "individual prejudice"? I certainly didn't intend to do so - usually mainstream prejudice is group prejudice (doesn't everyone know that?) If you think expansion would be needed to make that clear, please go ahead. Also, no career is at stake to express an erroneous opinion that is shared by many, and I regularly see examples of such "unlikely" prejudice. It is true that "Any published dismissal, therefore, is very likely to accurately reflect the views of some substantial number of mainstream scientists"; however, it appears that you suggest that those views are necessarily always "right" even if contested by a small but non-negligible number of other scientists. That is, however, only likely; therefor it can't be a valid decision criterium. And where in Wikipedia did you read that the view of the majority of scientists is to be considered the most accurate?! Wikipedia does not adhere to such an over-simplistic POV, and the article on Pseudoscience points out why that would be mistaken.
About "no gushing": My objection concerns only the formulation (which should apply to all articles, as it has nothing directly to do with the subject!), and not the essence. I agree with your formulation that an overly enthousiastic "very non-neutral and non-encyclopedic tone" should be avoided, and that it's worth pointing that out. Thus I propose to reformulate that sentence accordingly.
The main criterium for us is the opinions as expressed in scientific publications; the second one is to give more weight to the more generally held opinions. Preprints that don't correspond to publications are of little or no value and don't count as scientific publication (exceptionally they may have use to highlight the POV of a certain individual).
That is, roughly, Wikipedia policy, and I see no justification nor any reason to deviate from it. To the contrary: with strict adherence to Wikipedia policy pseudoscience has little chance, as the policy was in part designed to take care of that problem!
It may be useful to stress the applicable policies and guidelines and link to them.
Regards, Harald88 13:16, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

The light side of fighting pseudoscience vanispamcruft

Thanks to User:MrDolomite for this priceless quote:

Muscle & Fitness and Esquire are not proper citations for what presents itself as a scientific topic. [2]

This saved my day, which started getting an Amazon advertisement mail:

Amazon customers who have bought "Lectures on Quantum Theory. Mathematical and Structural Foundations" by C. J. Isham are also interested in books of Myron W. Evans. So we want to inform you that "Generally Covariant Unified Field Theory - The Geometrization of Physics - Volume II" by Myron W. Evans is now available.

Aaaaaarrrggghhh.

Pjacobi 21:18, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Dental amalgam controversy

I realize that this is somewhat removed from the original physics focus of the project, but a few editors brought this article up on IRC as having problems with pseudoscience and POV editing issues similar to other articles we have dealt with. I'm not really in a condition to evaluate those statements right now, but am putting it here anyway, so that others can look at it. --Philosophus T 11:43, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Should probably put Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine on alert. linas 15:17, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Australian Ufology

The Australian Ufology is apparently not on the watchlist because it was nominated for Good article status! I have read it and found it miserably failed to come even close to the criteria. I thought people involved in this project might like to know. Pascal.Tesson 03:11, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Please help me defend my policy related research into wikishilling

Hi all, you might be interested in this MfD. ---CH 23:57, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Special:Linksearch

Perhaps I'm the last one to notice this, but I just noticed, how valuable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Linksearch is to find articles which may need attention. Examples:

Pjacobi 19:36, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

My brain hurts enough without dealing with these myself at the moment, but thanks for the technique pointer. First on my priority list when I'm not on sabbatical is to deal with the template changes made by PMM and with the guidelines changes made by Harald88. --Christopher Thomas 20:55, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Free energy (disambiguation)

Our friend from 134.193.* is at it again. Signing off now, someone want to handle this? Femto 18:07, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Orthomolecular medicine

The article on Orthomolecular medicine is currently embroiled in a very verbose, very contentious edit war. A helping hand from rational clear thinkers is needed. Caution: I am finding that a band of kooks and cranks are now attacking me on my own talk page; so getting involved may be hazardous for your nerves. linas 15:31, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Milo Wolff again

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Milo Wolff, then Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation/2006-08-06#Milo_Wolff. Note that Solmil (talk · contribs) previously created Myron Evans, misleadingly portarying him as a mainstream, a ludicrously misleading claim. Solmil might be a sock for Haselhurst (talk · contribs).---CH 03:17, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

User:Bubba73 pointed out to me that this AfD resulted in keep! I can't find evidence of a second AfD. Maybe the article is now a red link because it was prod'd? ---CH 03:50, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

news flash! conservation of momentum violated!

Article for deletion: EmDrive linas 04:32, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Of possible interest

Of possible interest to contributors here is this bit about "New Scientist" magazine. --ScienceApologist 13:58, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Myron Evans, with a twist

I note with growing concern that this page increasingly resembles a diatribe written by someone with a serious grudge against Evans.

Don't worry, I am not going over to the dark side--- far from it--- but I have become increasingly alarmed about edits by a group of users (apparently single purpose accounts used only to edit this article):

Inquiries on their talk pages about their identity IRL and their personal connection to Evans have so far not yielded satisfactory answers. I fear that these users appear to constitute a group of meatpuppets (or sockpuppets), and they appear unable or unwilling to explain why they feel that Evans (who to me seems a very minor crank of little importance in the big picture) warrants a steadily growing article with two dozen links to the half-crazed AIAS blog (hardly a reliable source!) but remarkably little hard information. While these users no doubt feel they are "fighting the good fight", I am concerned that they have lost sight of the goals of the Wikipedia.

I believe that User:Pjacobi has come to similar conclusions, but unfortunately I just saw a message on his user talk page stating that he will be AFW (away from Wikipedia) for several days.

I have some additional concerns about this situation which I think I should only mention in emails to users I have come to know and trust.

Anyway, I am proposing at Talk:Myron Evans to stubbify the article and cut down the links to perhaps three links:

  1. to the AIAS blog, which will tell sane readers all they need to know about Evans, in his own words,
  2. G. t'Hooft's essay using "ECE" as a classic example of a crank "theory",
  3. G. W. Bruhn's page on "ECE".

Comments would be welcome at Talk:Myron Evans.---CH 04:06, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Update: Pjacobi did a fine job of stubbyfing the godawful mess at Myron Evans. Then I remembered a second and redundant article, Alpha Foundation's Institute for Advanced Study (AIAS, the Evans "research institute"), and nominated it for deletion.---CH 00:14, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Heim theory AfD

As I just wrote on the WikiProject Physics Talk page, the article Heim theory has been proposed for deletion. Comment as you see fit. Anville 13:52, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Aluminium battery

The subject of this article seems to be of a highly questionable nature, and the article does not have any reliable and reputable sources. I have thus nominated it for deletion here. I expect that others will be able to investigate the matter more thoroughly. --Constantine Evans 13:07, 29 September 2006 (UTC)