On 7/21/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Jtkiefer wrote:
Your right calling creationism a science would be POV pushing, but if you take the stance that creationism is anything, science, pseudo-science, legend, myth, total bullshit... you're still gonna piss someone off which is an inherent problem with having an open medium like wikipedia.
The issue is generally easy enough to solve with freeform text in the body of an article by "going meta" and shifting the emphasis carefully until everyone is more or less satisfied. I am not the only person who has been pleasantly astounded at how well Wikipedia actually works at producing good high-quality consensus explanations in this manner.
Categories, on the other hand, are not as easy because they are so strictly limited. If we had a category of "things which are widely regarded, by scientists and others of a similar bent, as being less than fully established science, but which are often, by those who are not scientists, put forward as if they were science" then we'd have less trouble, I think. (And edit my description as you please until it's satisfactorily neutral. :-))
<POV> Now, a big part of the irritant in this discussion is that creationism is, as a matter of simple ordinary fact, pseudo-science or worse. Readers deserve to know, and quickly and simply, that treating creationist theories as if they were somehow scientific is completely and utterly unacceptable in scientific circles. The category does that concisely and correctly. </POV>
I have been thinking for many days (but with no progress) about a better name for the category.
--Jimbo
I think the existence of a pseudoscience category doesn't require that every item ever thought to be pseudoscience should be in that category. For example, there is perfectly normal, scientific support for aromatherapy used for mood enhancement. For simple health problems like headache and stuffy nose, there is also proof that aromatherapy is at least somewhat effective for those uses. Yet some fringe supporters claim that it is capable of much more, so it is grouped in the category "pseudoscience". I don't think it belongs in that category.
The category "pseudoscience" should only be for the truly and completely pseudoscientific; things that have been widely and publicly disproven, such as biorhythms, astrology, phrenology and perpetual motion machines. Aromatherapy doesn't belong, as its mainstream component (mood enhancement) is backed by science. Mentioning the pseudoscientific fringe application in the article is enough; it doesn't also have to be in the category. Items where fringe believers delve into pseudoscientific beliefs and practices should not poison the general article with the pseudoscience categorization if the mainstream use and application of the belief is not pseudoscience.
Since we cannot prove to the satisfaction of everyone but the fringe of society that creationism is pseudoscience, it shouldn't be in that category. Instead, it should be in a category of "origin theory" or "origin beleifs" or something like that, along with the big bang theory and intelligent design. That way, they share a common link as similar subjects, but we don't categorize religious theories as science of any kind. Creationism should be in any science category, either.
Errors of categorization should always be of omission whenever such classification can reasonably be viewed as an insult. Undercategorization due to POV doesn't have to be a problem; we should just make similar categories to link similar ideas together in other ways without POV judgement.
For example, I see no similarity between aromatherapy and creationism, except the POV judgement that someone has made to both articles, thereby linking them through pseudoscience. Neither has been widely disproven, so without the POV judgement, they wouldn't be linked, and shouldn't be. On the other hand, not having creationism and big bang theory linked in a common category is clearly breaking a rule of keeping similar ideas together, so we should find an NPOV common theme (origin theory or origin beliefs) to join them.