Ray
Thanks for your reply. I've recently heard that one of the things that Wikipedia is not is that it is not a place for "original research". I accepted this once I heard it, but your last sentence now has me wondering if the opinion on this is split.
Can we add content that is unproven by the wider scientific community with a boilerplate, or is it barred altogether?
Cheers, Ed
Ray Saintonge wrote:
If we accept only the opinion of experts we end up putting ourselves into an elitist box, and that strikes me as very un-wiki. Ultimately, the facts should speak for themselves without regard to who is expressing them.
Proponents of mainstream "science" ofte go to great effort to discredit ideas which appear contrary to their own, and in doing so can manage to make themselves look even more foolish than the people whom they are confronting.. It is not necessary to pepper an article through with "they believe . . " or "the discredited idea that . . .", etc. The first burden of proof in a scientific concept rests with the proponents. If they fail to carry that burden then there is nothing there for the opponents to disprove. For many of these articles a simple piece of boilerplate, perhaps as the second paragraph, should be enough to satisfy NPOV. It could read, "The subject of this article is considered unproven by the wider scientific community. Users relying on the information in this article do so at their own risk."
Keeping things simple can save a lot of flames. Ec