On Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 11:55:08AM -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
"Parascience" or "alternate science" are often used, and do not carry the same emotional baggage as pseudoscience. I have also seen "traditional science" in relation to subjects like astrology or alchemy that predate the development of the modern scientific method.
We should probably avoid coining new terms or encouraging the use of terms which are very likely to be misunderstood. To me, "traditional science" sounds like the opposite of "alternative science", whereas the above suggests that they would include many of the same fields -- for instance, current practitioners of "scientific astrology".
There's one overarching reason, it seems to me, that Wikipedia aligns itself more strongly with science than with faith or other "systems of knowledge": one of our principles is _verifiability_, which is also a principle of scientific research. When a scientist propounds results that are not verifiable -- such as Pons & Fleischmann's cold fusion -- the resulting smackdown from the rest of the scientific field is *exactly* the sort of thing we want for unverifiable wild claims on Wikipedia, too.
Proposed systems of knowledge which do not include verifiability as a criterion will necessarily, it seems to me, do worse on Wikipedia than science does. That doesn't exempt us from reporting their claims accurately when relevant; but it -does- mean that we're less likely to accept their standards of evidence for describing the world.
It's tricky. I think we really do want to describe the Earth as a roughly spherical planet in orbit around a yellow-white star. It isn't enough to say that most scientists and astronomers believe this, while various other people think it's a flat plane or a hollow sphere: we really do want to accept the scientific standard of evidence here rather than just treating it as a "Scientific Point of View".
The thing is, the same set of standards likewise lead us to say that:
* Homeopathic preparations made according to Hahnemann's method contain none of the "potentized" substance. * Dogs, bears, apes, and humans descended from a common ancestral population of small furry creatures resembling shrews, which lived around the same time as the dinosaurs.
* The Sun is in the constellation of Ophiuchus, not Sagittarius or Scorpio, for the first half of December.
People who believe in homeopathy, creationism, or astrology are likely to denounce these claims as belonging to a "Scientific Point of View" or something similar. Nonetheless they are based on the same standards of evidence that entail that we may describe Earth as a planet rather than a plane, disc, hollow ball, or carrot-shape.
We need to take those standards seriously, though. We should be sure not to embrace a claim simply because it is made by a scientist or other professional, for instance. Likewise we need to make sure that claims of doubt or disproof are *also* verifiable: when someone goes to list something in a "criticisms" section (be it on [[Homeopathy]] or on [[Evolution]]) we need to be sure that the so-called criticism actually addresses the subject at hand.
Consider also the related case of the law, which -- like science -- has some kind of standards of evidence. We start the article on [[Ted Bundy]] with the claim that he _was_ a serial killer and rapist ... not merely that the court _claimed_ that he was a serial killer and rapist. We don't apply this standard uncritically; there are certainly courts whose opinions we would not take in evidence. But where we do, we are generally not wrong to do so.
When you look at the abortion debate there seems to be somewhat of a truce in that the primary name for the two sides are "pro-life" and "pro-choice". Each of these is a term that the respective sides feel as acceptably representing what they stand for. If the pro-life people start by calling the other side "baby killers" there is no room for dialogue.
I certainly agree that we need to refrain from epithets. I'm not sure where the term "pseudoscience" falls, though. I personally would use it very narrowly, to refer to fields whose practitioners make a point of calling the field scientific, but where nothing like scientific practice is being done ... or, perhaps by extension, where there are not actually any data upon which to do scientfic study.
In short, you can't be doing pseudoscience if you don't claim to be doing science, or more generally try to adopt the mantle of science. If you teach dance and tell your students that it's good for their souls, this isn't a claim to science -- so it can't be pseudoscientific.
I recognize that some "skeptics" like to call various practices "pseudo- science" even when they don't aspire to science. I don't think we should accept that usage in Wikipedia. We should use the term narrowly to refer to specific cases where claims of science are made without the actual scientific practice to back them up.
Whatever term we choose for what saome call "pseudoscience" must be acceptable to both sides, but especially to the side so named.
I'm not so sure this makes sense. There are lots of labels that we are willing to apply to people who do not themselves accept the labels. The most obvious are those drawn from fields such as science and law, which have reasonably credible standards of verifiability.
"Fraud" would be worse because of the implications of criminality. The profit motive is often totally absent in the minds of most believers in a "pseudoscience". The people who develop these ideas are usually doing so in good faith, and they were effectively applying GFDL long before it was invented. They, no more than Wikipedia, could not control commercial applications by downstream users..
I'd limit "fraud" the same way as "murder" -- it's basically a legal claim that needs reference to some sort of juridical decision. But there are other terms, such as "quackery" in the practice of medicine, which refer to deceptive claims more specifically. It's perfectly reasonable to refer for instance to the [[Violet Wand]] as a quack medical device that gained popularity as a fetish toy.