There's been a lot of talk about this at [[Category:Conspiracy theories]], and although I hate the fact that that label closes people's minds to thinking about these theories, it is the most concise and recognizable descriptor for them.
I'm a scientist, so I am totally biased on the pseudoscience issue, but I think that a well written article that is NPOV should explain both sides: it should describe the theory, it's history, and the objections of the scientific community. In other words, a NPOV article in [[Category:Pseudoscience]] should already describe exactly what it means for it to be in that category - that mainstream science doesn't accept this theory for various reasons. One wouldn't need to read [[Pseudoscience]] in order to understand why it's been placed in the category.
The [[Category:Pseudoscience]] tag at the bottom is definitely used by some as a warning label, which I can't really fault because many theories cloak themselves in scientific language that can easily lure a non-scientist into thinking its a mainstream scientific theory backed by the scientific community. I suppose that the [[Category:Conspiracy theories]] serves a similar purpose.
So I guess my conclusion is that it might be okay to have something like [[Category:Satanic lies]] for example if the article text dealt with who thought it was a satanic lie and why, but inappropriate otherwise, as the reader wouldn't understand the characterization. Of course, I wouldn't use the name satanic lies. I mean I thought conspiracy theory was a loaded phrase for a category name, and it's a commonly used.
Laura
On Jun 26, 2005, at 1:56 PM, Fastfission wrote:
[[Category:Pseudoscience]] is one which gets objections at fairly regular intervals. The reasons for the objections are pretty straightforward -- the users making such objections are almost always either Creationists or Eugenicists or other people who believe in bodies of thought labeled as "pseudoscience" -- and the response is generally pretty straightforward as well: Wikipedia is not claiming these so-labeled articles are actually "pseudoscience", but rather that they are labeled *by the mainstream scientific community* as "pseudoscience".
And the text of the category page and the [[Pseudoscience]] article spell this out pretty clearly, in my mind. The article itself goes to much length to talk about how the notion itself is seen as somewhat dubious even in circles of people not labeled as such -- philosophers and historians of science, for example, have at times gone to lengths to argue that the boundaries between what is a "science" and what is not are exceedingly difficult to lay down. Feyerabend, for example, made a large point out of showing that many things today considered canonical distinctions between "science" and other modes of thought did not apply to many of the "fathers" of science (i.e. Galileo, Newton, etc.) and others have made similar observations both in historical and current science. After a century of thought on it, the demarcation problem has still not been convincingly solved.
Okay. So we have a nice NPOV article on the subject itself. But what about the category? Does that nuance and care get lost when articles just say "Pseudoscience" at the bottom of the page? Can we trust the user to click it and read our little explanation/disclaimer?
Let's assume that we can, for a moment.
What if we had an article on [[Satanic lies]], which explains that followers of certain religion sects view a number of modern practices and beliefs as lies of the Devil. It also notes that quite a few other religion sects don't believe in this, and that mainstream philosophers and scientists find this a pretty poor model of thought. After ten centuries of thought, the problem of knowing what is a Satanic lie or not has still not been convincingly solved. A nice, NPOV article.
Would we accept a placement of [[Category:Satanic lie]] onto pages about Evolution? Sure, the category page itself would not, "Now, this is only believed by a certain group."
Would we allow it? If not, why not? Do we accept it if we lean towards the mainstream opinion in categorization efforts, or do we see this as a NPOV problem?
I've been defending the presence of [[Category:Pseudoscience]] for some time now as a sociological category, but it occurred to me today that one could imagine all sorts of circumstances in which it would seem hopelessly POV to have category labels of this sort (one could include things like [[Category:Hoaxes]] or [[Category:Conspiracies]] or whatever in this, if those categories exist), even if their actual articles (and even category pages) were written in perfect NPOV. Does the brevity of category labels make this impossible? I'm beginning to think they might, and that these sorts of categories should be converted wholly into lists. I wouldn't mind a [[List of Satanic lies]] which clearly noted who thought they were and included [[Evolution]] on the list. But I would mind having [[Category:Satanic lie]] put onto the Evolution page.
Any input on this would be appreciated as I mull this over.
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