Ray Saintonge wrote:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
I'm coming across as much more strident in this thread than I mean to be. But the point is that pseudoscience is in fact *bullshit*, not science, and there's going to be no label that doesn't puff up the subjects with false respectability that won't soon carry the same connotations. Because it is in fact bullshit.
I wholeheartedly agree with the above. Pseudoscience is nothing more than dogmatic and irrational thinking trying to pretend it's exactly the opposite to get public support. It should not be given a single bit of credibility at all - and not giving it credibility would fit perfectly with our policy of neutral point of view.
The Neutral Point of View has nothing to do with what you say, which is clearly the ranting of someone who doesn't know WTF he's talking about.
Despite being somewhat of a scientist myself (well, as a PhD student in the sciences, in some sense a scientist-in-training), I tend to agree more with Ray than David or Chris here. I can't say I have any interest in pseudoscience, parascience, "alternative science", or whatever you want to call it, and it certainly shouldn't be portrayed as accepted by the mainstream, but on the other hand I see no reason or justification for actively attacking it. The point of Wikipedia is not to discern fundamental truths (an impossible task, and original research in any case), but to document who says what. If someone has proposed what they call a scientific theory, but most scientists think it's not one, then we can report that matter-of-factly, preferably with citations to who says what.
Using the label "pseudoscience" upsets this matter-of-fact reporting, because we essentially take sides in the dispute. It's NPOV to say that it's rejected by most scientists; that it's not taught in science classes; that so-and-so a scientific body or eminent scientist has issued a statement saying it's crap; and so on. Saying outright "Wikipedia has concluded that it is fake science" is not neutral. More neutral is "Wikipedia has concluded that it is claimed by its proponents to be science, but not accepted by most scientists as science." "Pseudoscience" means literally "fake science", which is the former, and therefore inappropriate; we need a term that means the latter.
-Mark