Haukur Þorgeirsson (haukurth@hi.is) [050628 21:42]:
As for the "alternative medicine" category then I suppose "medicine that has not been proven to work" or some such would be more accurate. I for one would actually prefer "quack medicine" since "alternative" has some undeserved positive connotations and implies that quackery is somehow a viable alternative to actual medicine. So, don't forget to take the Grumpy Scientist Point of View into account :)
There was a bit of a revert-war over this last year - [[Alternative medicine]] had [[Category:Pseudoscience]] on it (for things like homeopathy, which defies physics and chemistry), and this was getting removed because some of it is closer to protoscience (e.g. acupuncture, in which the stated theory may appear to be nonsensical but the stuff may work, for some values of 'work'). So I solved it by also creating [[Category:Protoscience]] and adding suitable things to that and putting both on the article ;-)
There is such a thing as pseudoscience and things that are deserve the label. It belongs under 'science' because it claims the clothes of science but isn't, hence the 'pseudo' - religion doesn't do that (except of course when it does). The objectors are basically stating "I don't like it being applied to my favourite thing so it must be a violation of NPOV." I see no reason to indulge this.
- d.