Yes, non-mainstream scientific theories are something different than pseudoscience; i.e. that whole "Variable Speed of Light" theory whatnot that a few legitimate physicists have advocated and is considered within the bounds of physical research but is not currently accepted by most physicists as likely being true. (At least, that's my understanding of it -- I'm no physicist)
A better label might do it, but at some point you risk things being unmanageable and bordering on self-parody. [[Category:Is labeled as a "pseudoscience" by the mainstream scientific communitiy]] is more accurate and NPOV, but for obvious reasons it seems impractical.
If there was some way to make it so that when somebody entered in [[Category:Pseudoscience]] it would say that at the bottom of the page, it would be more practical, but as far as I understand it the best one can do along these lines is a redirect which doesn't fix the problem. And I don't think this is necessarily a sensible modification to request for MediaWiki -- it would be somewhat complicated and the developers have better things to do.
Hmm. If someone could come up with a better title that might fix it, but I fear there are no simple titles. And anyway, it still doesn't solve the question of symmetry: [[Category:Considered a Satanic lie by certain religious sects]] would still feel too much like pandering to a certain POV for me to feel comfortable with it on the [[Evolution]] page.
I'm leaning towards just creating a [[List of pseudosciences]] which would redirect to [[List of "pseudosciences"]] or some other title which would indicate explicitly the problematic nature of the term. I don't think there is an article like this at the moment, with the exception of [[List of alternative, speculative, or disputed theories]] which is not quite the same thing, is not a great title, and is currently in debate on VfD, I believe. Then I would nominate [[Category:Pseudoscience]] for CfD. However I'm not sure it would pass -- there are a lot of people who are (rightfully, in my mind) suspicious of such nominations as either misunderstanding the category, or being someone who is just unhappy with falling under it. Clearly neither is the case in this instance but I'm not sure everybody else would see it this way.
On the other hand, I'm inclined to think that there SHOULD be somewhat POV "warnings" on some pages of *some* sort. It would be counter to the idea of producing a true encyclopedia of *reliable* knowledge if it was impossible to distinguish things which have good support for their belief from things that do not. Of course, I fully recognize that my sense that science is a more reliable form of knowledge than most others is reflective of a certain POV I carry (and honestly, I'm a lot more moderate on these lines than a good number of people -- there are some branches of science I definitely take more seriously than others, and I've probably spent more time than most in looking at the problems with the scientific "system", at least from a historical point of view). In an ideal world, a well-written NPOV article though ought to indicate that sort of thing pretty clearly and pretty early on.
And in the end, maybe what it comes down to is: Categories should not serve as "warning" flags. They are meant to just be taxonomic devices. Obviously taxonomy carries strong implications towards meaning (viz. George Lakoff's work), but this fact just reinforces the point that taxonomy needs to be considered strictly under the NPOV policy as well.
Hmm. Well anyway, I will think about it some more still, there is no rush on this. I appreciate the comments given so far in response to this.
(And I'm clearly not trying to imply that this is just MY decision to make, of course! But I'm aware other people have other things they are working on, so if I imply that this is something weighing of me specifically, it's just because I know that this is not likely at the top of anyone else's agenda)
FF
On 6/27/05, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/27/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Well, I happen to be a scientist by training and profession, and not a Creationist or Eugenicist, but I really dislike [[Category:Pseudoscience]]. This *is* indeed making a claim from Wikipedia that said articles describe pseudoscience, which is not particularly neutral. If, as you describe, we want to describe something as "labelled pseudoscience by the mainstream scientific community", it should be given a category that reflects that more neutrally, such as [[Category:Non-mainstream scientific theories]]. Sort of how we have [[Category:Alternative medicine]] rather than [[Category:Quack medicine]].
But a major aspect of Category:Pseudoscience is that they generally aren't scientific theories at all, but rather that they use scientific language without the accompanying rigor. They might be right, but they generally are not science.
I agree that a more neutral sounding name would be nice, but I'm not sure what would work... I believe the category is useful, so we shouldn't just do away with it. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l