[WikiEN-l] Pseudoscience category - GSPOV
Delirium
delirium at hackish.org
Tue Jun 28 21:07:44 UTC 2005
David Gerard wrote:
>There's lots of pseudoscience that isn't alternative medicine. That a group
>claims a given label is demeaning doesn't mean it doesn't and shouldn't
>apply.
>
>
But it *clearly* is demeaning---it's not a neutral, descriptive label
such as "alternative medicine" that is simply a category of stuff with
no value judgment about it. "Pseudoscience" is not a label anyone would
use for any reason except to attack a particular theory. It's actually
quite common in scientific circles to hear it lobbed as a pejorative,
usually qualified with something like "so-and-so's work is verging on
pseudoscience". It's certainly not appropriate as a neutral description
in any context along the lines of "this theory is [[pseudoscience]]",
which is what the category label is, in effect (although a claim like
"this theory is considered [[pseudoscience|pseudoscientific]] by the
mainstream scientific community" is of course fine, if true).
-Mark
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