Gareth Owen wrote:
Are you really suggesting that "most scientists find Theory X to be beyond reasonable skepticism." is not an acceptable standard for the exclusion of Theory X from a supposedly scientific encyclopedia.
I don't see why we shouldn't mention it, especially if it has some following in the political debate, as long as we do mention that most scientists consider it unreasonable and unfounded (when that is the case). Our pages on various minority religious views don't say, for example, "only a bunch of crazy cultists hold this obviously illogical view" (even in cases where the view is provably in conflict with reality). We instead say something more like "These claims are nearly universally discounted by those outside the group." Sure, it's a *little* silly in some very fringe cases, but there's a lot of gray area where we simply can't make that decision. I don't really see what's wrong with saying "This view is sometimes promoted, by widely discredited by the scientific community." That, to my mind, in fact is a *stronger* statement against than "This view is clearly false", because in the latter case people will say "so what if Wikipedia says it's false?", given that we have no independent authority on essentially any topic. In the former case it's clear that we're reporting a matter that was settled by people in the field, not making the claim ourselves
-Mark