On 6/30/05, Haukur Þorgeirsson haukurth@hi.is wrote:
When we say "Homeopathy is a pseudoscience." we are also providing information by writing down a true statement. If I may paraphrase a couple of sentences from a certain sci-fi franchise:
"The first duty of every Wikipedian is to the truth, scientific truth, historical truth and personal truth. It is the guiding principle of Wikipedia."
You've mentioned four separate truths there.
I'm of the opinion that Wikipedia tries to serve all of them, not just the scientific truth.
In what order we serve them is the primary puzzle, and that differs on a case by case basis.
For example, I think mention of Creationism is perfectly appropriate for the article on [[Earth]]. Should it be the first mention? No.
Mention of the scientific explanation of the origin of the earth should similarly get mention in the [[Creationism]] article.
It's not our job to decide what view is the right one, even though we've all probably already made our own decisions. It is our job to catalog and present the views, preferably thoroughly referenced and cited, ordered by vague consensus judgements of levels of acceptance and importance, and then let the readers make the final decision of what they believe.
We are catalogers of existing third party views of the truth, nothing more. We shouldn't be here to judge the truth or falsehood of anything; only the level of acceptance of various views of the truth.