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.
Well put.
[I]t would be best if someone with authority (cough cough, Jimbo) would put out a decree saying, "Wikipedia should strive for NPOV as much as possible, but if there are questions as to which direction to lean in terms of very subtle unmarked POV, it should lean towards the POV of the relevant scientific community."
Seconded. You have a flair for understatement.
The need to have some meaning indicates we will have to perhaps sometimes have some statements which are less neutral than others.
Beautifully put - I think I'll quote this statement on my user page if you don't mind :)
[T]he question of whether certain aspects of homeopathy (not the diluting part, but the other "like helps like" part) is unclear.
As long as you end with diluting your solution so there's not a single molecule left of the original substance the other aspects of your methodology are fairly irrelevant to the efficacy of the results.
I will have to admit that a small part of the homeopathic "remedies" you can buy are not so diluted. And again, a small part of *those* may include some active ingredients.
So, some people start with active ingredients, don't dilute them out of existence and still call it homeopathy - presumably to make use of homeopathy's "good name". I'd argue that it isn't really homeopathy but I'll admit that it confuses the issue. The "like helps like" theory, as it is applied by homeopaths, is pseudoscience. Perhaps not quite as egregious an example as "water can remember stuff you put in it", but still pseudoscience.
I still maintain that classifying homeopathy as pseudo-science makes Wikipedia a more useful encyclopædia. (Marginally of course.)
Regards, Haukur
So, some people start with active ingredients, don't dilute them out of existence and still call it homeopathy - presumably to make use of homeopathy's "good name". I'd argue that it isn't really homeopathy but I'll admit that it confuses the issue. The "like helps like" theory, as it is applied by homeopaths, is pseudoscience. Perhaps not quite as egregious an example as "water can remember stuff you put in it", but still pseudoscience.
The "scientific" formulation of "life helps like," as I've heard it, is simply "symptoms to diseases are actually signs of the immune system attempting to work. Rather than stifle them, one should encourage them." So, for example, when you have a cold, rather than take medicines to force your runny nose to stop running, one should take things which encourage the nose to run more: the running is a sign of the nose trying to purge out whatever you caught, and blocking it up only prolongs the disease period itself.
Now I'm not saying that's correct at all as a medical model but formulated *as such* you can see why it was not dismissed as total quackery by my professors. Of course the diluted aspect is clearly pure unscientific nonsense.
Anyway, I'm no expert on homeopathy or alternative medicine, so I'm not going to comment too much further on this, I'm just relaying what was relayed to me, but it seems to hold fairly well. Hence "homeopathic nasal spray" will actually make your nose run more than it did before, as anyone who has tried it will attest. But anyway, this may have been "diluted" several times from the original practitioners to the formulation I gave above, and may in fact contain a marginal amount of the original input, to use a metaphor. ;-)
FF