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Arbitration Ruling on the Treatment of Pseudoscience
Serious encyclopedias: Serious and respected encyclopedias and reference works are generally expected to provide overviews of scientific topics that are in line with respected scientific thought. Misplaced Pages aspires to be such a respected work.
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Shouldn't wikipedia belong to the article too? It's not a scientific work, but it alleges as such, and might be mistaken for science, while it in fact only repeats pseudofacts that are written outside wikipedia? Said: Rursus (☻) 16:52, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
I suppose that Brittanica should also be listed then, I mean it fits your definition above. Just for the record, wikipedia does not claim to be a science, nor does it even claim that to tell the truth; it claims to report what verifiable sources say. Finally, whether, or not, it can be mistaken for science is irrelevant to its status as pseudoscience. Phoenix1177 (talk) 04:12, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Ayurveda?
I don't see a source meeting this list's criteria (in the "skeptical groups" section or any other). AMA doesn't call it anything at all close to pseudo, and I think we've already established that Quackwatch is unsuitable for our purposes here: it's been called a partisan and unreliable source Arbcom (who, in that ruling, were right to criticize Quackwatch but wrong to criticize the editor who had used it in good faith as a V RS, as many had prior to that ruling). The final cite calls unlicensed practitioners "quacks", which is a term that can be fairly applied to unlicensed or otherwise improper practitioners of any medicine, including the modern kind (c.f. chelation therapy). --Jim Butler (t) 12:32, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
(Disclaimer: I wrote that entry with those sources, see Talk:List_of_pseudoscientific_theories/Archive_9#Ayurveda). The AMA source is only sourcing statement-of-fact explanations of what Ayurveda is. The Quackwatch source was added later, and it was repeating some of those statements, so I added it also there. (Mind you, the AMA source cites Carl Sagan lamenting "the rise of pseudoscience and superstition")
If the complaint is that it should be sourced from the CSICOP, then see that their newsletter had an article where Ayurveda was given as an example of the "scientification" of pseudoscience, and Skeptical Inquirer had an article on how alternative medicine misrepresented alternative medicine (aka pseudoscientific claims) (it cites ayurveda as the source of certain beliefs). Would that be enough to verify CSICOP's opinion?
Other sources that could possibly be used: the Skepdic Dictionary lists Ayurveda as an example of "pseudoscientific theories confuse metaphysical claims with empirical claims" websiteonline version of paper book. The Skeptic, the journal of "Australian Skeptics" group, mentions it tangencially page 40, bottom half of middle column, and the same group listed two promoters of Ayurveda as valid reader-submitted nominees for their Bent Spoon Award (search "ayurveda" on the 2005 nominations and 2006 nominations) The Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking has an article mentioning Ayurveda while reviewing the pseudoscientific aspects of an article on alternative medicine. The National Council Against Health Fraud gives zero scientific legitimacy for Ayurveda, albeit all mentions are either cites of other authors or tangencial mentions. James Randi also criticized it on his newsletter (ok, Randi is neither a "body" nor a "group" :D ) --Enric Naval (talk) 17:26, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Hi Enric, thanks for gathering all those sources. For purposes of this list, my concern is that while there are quite a few of them, they don't appear to be the right kind. They (i.e., all the sources saying Ayurveda is PS) are all comments by individuals. Regarding CSICOP, while it's probably true that they wouldn't publish something that the editorial board violently disagreed with, the same is true regarding the Massachusetts Medical Society and NEJM. However, we don't assume that papers published in NEJM necessarily reflect the views of the Massachusetts Medical Society, and therefore we don't accept such sources for the first, "sci consensus" tier. Obviously (well, to most people), one author's opinion is not self-evidently the same thing as consensus of a scientific or skeptical group (it's maybe even kind of the opposite). The opinions of even prominent individuals do not suffice for meeting WP:PSCI; cf. Carroll's observation that Karl Popper called psychoanalysis pseuodscientific: WP:PSCI spefifically says that that topic should not be so characterized (and nor should any topic that is neither trivially obvious PS nor "generally considered PS by the sci community"). Putting a topic in category:pseudoscience or on this list, presently titled "List of pseudosciences and pseudoscientific concepts", in fact amounts to characterizing a topic as PS. That is indisputable.
So, if we can't cite Popper in this particular case (i.e., saying a topic *is* pseudoscience), we can't cite some random dude writing for CSICOP either. Of course, that doesn't mean we can't necessarily use those sources elsewhere on WP: e.g., in a topic's own article, or in a list like this but with an appropriately qualified title, e.g. "List of alleged pseudosciences" or "List of fields or concepts that have been labeled as pseudosciences and pseudoscientific" or something. Do you see what I'm getting at? Under the WP:PSCI part of NPOV policy, we can't designate topics as pseudoscience without being able to hit a certain threshold of source, i.e. one showing general scientific agreement. (See also WP:RS#Consensus; NPOV and VER are completely intertwined.) This issue has been a point of contention for practically the lifetime of this article, despite WP's mission to present facts about opinions, not opinions as facts.
To be honest, I'm also pretty dubious that the "statements from skeptical groups" are really indicative of general scientific agreement. I've been willing to live with including them as a sort of metastable solution, i.e. one that's the least offensive to most editors, but I would have significant problems with loosening the inclusion criteria even more, e.g. by taking articles attributed to singles authors as being the voice of the publishing org. I still think the best solution would be to either retitle the article as above, or have two articles and only keep the first section (and maybe the trivial examples, following the curious logic of WP:PSCI) here. However, experience shows that such proposals always degenerate into polarization and the forwarding of proposals even worse than what we have now. So I think the best thing is to hold the line and keep the inclusion criteria from getting much broader or narrower. regards, Jim Butler (t) 09:07, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Oh, noes, not this again, please. That section is clearly labelled as "considered by skeptic groups" to clearly separate it from the part that has statements from scientific bodies and academies, there was already a RFC on splitting the list where all those arguments and some more were put forward. About why it's silly to dismiss the statements of skeptic groups when talking of pseudoscience, see my comment at the RFC. (as an example, search for the "Hongcheng Magic Liquid" entry, which only has a book by Sagan as source, as nobody on academia commented on it)
About WP:PSCI, it looks like a strawman in this case: Popper also called Marxism a pseudo-science for the same reasons as Psychology, and nobody argues to list marxism here (among other things because 1962's Popper's definition of pseudoscience differs a bit from 2008's CSICOP's definition). Also, you ought to show that Ayurveda has a "substantial following" on mainstream, so you can show that it's only "some critics" that are saying that it's pseudoscientific....
About using statements by individuals, you see, as far as I know, CSICOP doesn't have an editorial stance (apart from a very general list), so I can't really point you to a CSICOP-sanctioned statement. We will have to do with pointing at what articles they decide to publish on their official journal and newsletter, or pointing at statements by founding members like Randi or Sagan, unless you can think of a better way to decide it. Also, it's pretty clear to everyone that CSICOP considers pretty much all of alternative medicine to be pseudoscience, and ayurveda is an alternative medicine, so I don't think that this part is open to debate... unless you want to argue that CSICOP actually considers Ayurveda as serious science :D --Enric Naval (talk) 22:30, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
"Oh noes"? I don't think you understood my statement: I said that while I had serious reservations about the skepticial society section being included in this list as currently titled, I'm cool with keeping it as a compromise, but not with expanding the inclusion criteria further to include statements by individuals.
The point with Popper is that statements by individuals don't suffice, per WP:PSCI (part of NPOV, not quite a strawman). It's pure original synthesis, not to mention utter absurdity, to argue that "hey, no one contradicted that guy, so his views must represent sci consensus". That's why this edit of yours is wrong in practically every respect possible (WP:UNDUE, WP:RS#Consensus, WP:SYN). We may have to go to article RfC over your fanciful attempt to redefine scientific consensus.
There's a very fundamental point you're just not grokking, Enric: verifiability, not truth. Sure, lots of scientifically-minded types think lots of things are bullshit, if they even consider them at all. Guess what? We don't say, "hey, no way CSICOP could possibly think Ayurveda is for real, let's put it on the pseudoscience list". There's thing thing called WP:V that says we have to find a suitable source. And we follow NPOV, which includes WP:PSCI. Topics like Ayurveda (which, from a worldwide view, certainly have a substantial following) don't necessarily have to be assumed pseudoscientific until proven otherwise, or assumed scientific until proven otherwise. They don't have to be characterized as one or the other at all, unless we can find the proper source saying so. If you can't find that source, you don't "make do" with what you have just because you really want to list as many pseudosciences as possible: instead, you work those sources into WP where you can, in ways that are consistent with NPOV. regards, Jim Butler (t) 23:44, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
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