--- David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
This proposal to purge the word "pseudoscience" smacks of Sympathetic Point Of View. We don't do that here.
This thread has gone long enough and proponents of the term "pseudoscience" have been somewhat successful at muddling the issue of the term and the normal application of NPOV, and claiming there is some choice between using a pejorative and using a crackpot terminology. No doubt this is due to our history of fending off various crackpots and so forth, and hence a defacto deference to SPOV may be justified. But I'd like to see people actually admit that there is such a deference, and that this influences the interpretation of NPOV.
They seem to forget that NPOV is largely based on the use of relatively neutral terms, and that while the term "pseudoscience" has its place, and its not clear that it doesnt have too much of a place in Wikipedia. Why dont we use derogatively racist or sexist terms in writing articles? Social propriety? No, because the term itself is in violation of NPOV, and shapes any discussion around the term in a way which makes NPOV writing difficult.
People on this list seem to have come around to the point of agreeing with this basic point, but because change requires effort, have simply fallen to defacto positions, and some even seem to have backwards-crafted their arguments in a way which make NOR seem to be more important than NPOV. That itself is a SPOV claiming NOR to be greater than NPOV.
For the pro-SPOV crowd to claim changing "pseudoscience" is contradicting NOR is about as much of an irrational circularly-supported argument Ive ever heard. (Science by definition is the institution by which all "research" is measured, and which even in its most important research can often only be generally communicated to the general or non-specialist public.) The argument that POV terms shift over time is a long-term one and is not valid in this context.
In this case, I dont think its either original research or overly sympathetic to point out the problems with creating an institutional prejudice of accepting a non-scientific term "pseudo-science" as a neutral term for any non-science. Naturally, the other side likes to argue that deference to science is close enough to NPOV for most cases. But there should be some explicit statement that Wikipedia NPOV has indeed a defacto policy of defaulting to SPOV.
NPOV trumps NOR. Does "pseudoscience" violate NPOV? If so, saying other terms cross NOR fails if the term itself can be substituted at this time and if the costs are covered by the benefits to NPOV.
-Stevertigo
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