Ah, but "beliefs" is a touchy word. If you put "Origin beliefs" on the article about the Big Bang, I'm betting some people would get irritated -- "Science isn't about mere belief."
Of course, in a sense they're right -- if you take "belief" to just mean something held on unsubstantiated faith, then scientific facts are generally held to be a bit more than that. But of course the Creationists don't consider their beliefs to be of that nature either -- they're more than happy to give you what they considered to be reasonable substantiation! In the end it comes down to disagreements about methodology, interpretation, etc.
So what words to use? "Origin considerations"? Now we're getting into the absurd and the meaningless. The need to have some meaning indicates we will have to perhaps sometimes have some statements which are less neutral than others.
But I agree with the notion that Wikipedia will always reflect a certain POV. It is impossible to do anything truly "objectively" -- what would it mean to be an observerless observer? But I think the issues here are a bit more complicated than this. The Apollo moon landing article is mostly about what is most widely considered by *relevant authorities* to be true -- it doesn't matter if 60% of the world population doesn't believe it happened that way if 99% of scientists do, in my opinion, as this sort of knowledge is firmly within the domain of scientists to provide the best answers on. So they get the "unmarked" POV.
Of course, enough people believe that the landing was a hoax to make that a notable interpretation. There have been books, magazine articles, television programs, etc. about the question -- it is a relevant POV which must be addressed. And so at the end of the article it says, "See this other article for the hoax theory." (Not all alternative interpretations are notable enough to discuss at length, of course. Some require only a small paragraph and a link to provide enough relevant coverage, in my opinion).
I think writing "Homeopathy is a pseudoscience" is too strongly worded -- the question of whether certain aspects of homeopathy (not the diluting part, but the other "like helps like" part) is unclear. I've heard certain parts of homeopathy discussed by biologists and physicians in a positive light during a class at a major American state university. It is best to say, "Many aspects of homeopathy are considered to be pseudoscientific by the mainstream medical community" or something along those lines. Attribute the POV, "mark" it a bit, but honestly it is not a deep "mark".
FF
On 6/30/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
We have an overview article [[Origin beliefs]], which seems to be a reasonably neutral yet succinct and descriptive term for the class of beliefs about the origin of the universe that lay outside the scientific community. How about [[Category:Origin beliefs]]?
-Mark
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l