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This article was nominated for deletion on January 31, 2007. The result of the discussion was Keep.

This article was nominated for deletion on February 1, 2007. The result of the discussion was Keep.

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Examples

There is a discussion at Talk:Pseudoscience#Examples which may interest editors of this article. -- Levine2112 19:26, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Read, agreed, and, I repeat: "WP:PSCI". Said: Rursus (☻) 16:59, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

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Shouldn't wikipedia belong to the article too? It's not a scientific work, but it alleges as such, and might be mistaken for science, while it in fact only repeats pseudofacts that are written outside wikipedia? Said: Rursus (☻) 16:52, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

As soon as you can find a pair of good WP:RS sources for that... :D --Enric Naval (talk) 18:08, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

OK, OK, I'll see what I can do. Said: Rursus (☻) 06:55, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I suppose that Brittanica should also be listed then, I mean it fits your definition above. Just for the record, wikipedia does not claim to be a science, nor does it even claim that to tell the truth; it claims to report what verifiable sources say. Finally, whether, or not, it can be mistaken for science is irrelevant to its status as pseudoscience. Phoenix1177 (talk) 04:12, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Ayurveda?

I don't see a source meeting this list's criteria (in the "skeptical groups" section or any other). AMA doesn't call it anything at all close to pseudo, and I think we've already established that Quackwatch is unsuitable for our purposes here: it's been called a partisan and unreliable source Arbcom (who, in that ruling, were right to criticize Quackwatch but wrong to criticize the editor who had used it in good faith as a V RS, as many had prior to that ruling). The final cite calls unlicensed practitioners "quacks", which is a term that can be fairly applied to unlicensed or otherwise improper practitioners of any medicine, including the modern kind (c.f. chelation therapy). --Jim Butler (t) 12:32, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

(Disclaimer: I wrote that entry with those sources, see Talk:List_of_pseudoscientific_theories/Archive_9#Ayurveda). The AMA source is only sourcing statement-of-fact explanations of what Ayurveda is. The Quackwatch source was added later, and it was repeating some of those statements, so I added it also there. (Mind you, the AMA source cites Carl Sagan lamenting "the rise of pseudoscience and superstition")

If the complaint is that it should be sourced from the CSICOP, then see that their newsletter had an article where Ayurveda was given as an example of the "scientification" of pseudoscience, and Skeptical Inquirer had an article on how alternative medicine misrepresented alternative medicine (aka pseudoscientific claims) (it cites ayurveda as the source of certain beliefs). Would that be enough to verify CSICOP's opinion?

Other sources that could possibly be used: the Skepdic Dictionary lists Ayurveda as an example of "pseudoscientific theories confuse metaphysical claims with empirical claims" website online version of paper book. The Skeptic, the journal of "Australian Skeptics" group, mentions it tangencially page 40, bottom half of middle column, and the same group listed two promoters of Ayurveda as valid reader-submitted nominees for their Bent Spoon Award (search "ayurveda" on the 2005 nominations and 2006 nominations) The Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking has an article mentioning Ayurveda while reviewing the pseudoscientific aspects of an article on alternative medicine. The National Council Against Health Fraud gives zero scientific legitimacy for Ayurveda, albeit all mentions are either cites of other authors or tangencial mentions. James Randi also criticized it on his newsletter (ok, Randi is neither a "body" nor a "group" :D ) --Enric Naval (talk) 17:26, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi Enric, thanks for gathering all those sources. For purposes of this list, my concern is that while there are quite a few of them, they don't appear to be the right kind. They (i.e., all the sources saying Ayurveda is PS) are all comments by individuals. Regarding CSICOP, while it's probably true that they wouldn't publish something that the editorial board violently disagreed with, the same is true regarding the Massachusetts Medical Society and NEJM. However, we don't assume that papers published in NEJM necessarily reflect the views of the Massachusetts Medical Society, and therefore we don't accept such sources for the first, "sci consensus" tier. Obviously (well, to most people), one author's opinion is not self-evidently the same thing as consensus of a scientific or skeptical group (it's maybe even kind of the opposite). The opinions of even prominent individuals do not suffice for meeting WP:PSCI; cf. Carroll's observation that Karl Popper called psychoanalysis pseuodscientific: WP:PSCI spefifically says that that topic should not be so characterized (and nor should any topic that is neither trivially obvious PS nor "generally considered PS by the sci community"). Putting a topic in category:pseudoscience or on this list, presently titled "List of pseudosciences and pseudoscientific concepts", in fact amounts to characterizing a topic as PS. That is indisputable.

So, if we can't cite Popper in this particular case (i.e., saying a topic *is* pseudoscience), we can't cite some random dude writing for CSICOP either. Of course, that doesn't mean we can't necessarily use those sources elsewhere on WP: e.g., in a topic's own article, or in a list like this but with an appropriately qualified title, e.g. "List of alleged pseudosciences" or "List of fields or concepts that have been labeled as pseudosciences and pseudoscientific" or something. Do you see what I'm getting at? Under the WP:PSCI part of NPOV policy, we can't designate topics as pseudoscience without being able to hit a certain threshold of source, i.e. one showing general scientific agreement. (See also WP:RS#Consensus; NPOV and VER are completely intertwined.) This issue has been a point of contention for practically the lifetime of this article, despite WP's mission to present facts about opinions, not opinions as facts.

To be honest, I'm also pretty dubious that the "statements from skeptical groups" are really indicative of general scientific agreement. I've been willing to live with including them as a sort of metastable solution, i.e. one that's the least offensive to most editors, but I would have significant problems with loosening the inclusion criteria even more, e.g. by taking articles attributed to single authors as being the voice of the publishing org. I still think the best solution would be to either retitle the article as above, or have two articles and only keep the first section (and maybe the trivial examples, following the curious logic of WP:PSCI) here. However, experience shows that such proposals always degenerate into polarization and the forwarding of proposals even worse than what we have now. So I think the best thing is to hold the line and keep the inclusion criteria from getting much broader or narrower. regards, Jim Butler (t) 09:07, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Oh, noes, not this again, please. That section is clearly labelled as "considered by skeptic groups" to clearly separate it from the part that has statements from scientific bodies and academies, there was already a RFC on splitting the list where all those arguments and some more were put forward. About why it's silly to dismiss the statements of skeptic groups when talking of pseudoscience, see my comment at the RFC. (as an example, search for the "Hongcheng Magic Liquid" entry, which only has a book by Sagan as source, as nobody on academia commented on it)

About WP:PSCI, it looks like a strawman in this case: Popper also called Marxism a pseudo-science for the same reasons as Psychology, and nobody argues to list marxism here (among other things because 1962's Popper's definition of pseudoscience differs a bit from 2008's CSICOP's definition). Also, you ought to show that Ayurveda has a "substantial following" on mainstream, so you can show that it's only "some critics" that are saying that it's pseudoscientific....

About using statements by individuals, you see, as far as I know, CSICOP doesn't have an editorial stance (apart from a very general list), so I can't really point you to a CSICOP-sanctioned statement. We will have to do with pointing at what articles they decide to publish on their official journal and newsletter, or pointing at statements by founding members like Randi or Sagan, unless you can think of a better way to decide it. Also, it's pretty clear to everyone that CSICOP considers pretty much all of alternative medicine to be pseudoscience, and ayurveda is an alternative medicine, so I don't think that this part is open to debate... unless you want to argue that CSICOP actually considers Ayurveda as serious science :D --Enric Naval (talk) 22:30, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

"Oh noes"? I don't think you understood my statement: I said that while I had serious reservations about the skepticial society section being included in this list as currently titled, I'm cool with keeping it as a compromise, but not with expanding the inclusion criteria further to include statements by individuals.

The point with Popper is that statements by individuals don't suffice, per WP:PSCI (part of NPOV, not quite a strawman). It's pure original synthesis, not to mention utter absurdity, to argue that "hey, no one contradicted that guy, so his views must represent sci consensus". That's why this edit of yours is wrong in practically every respect possible (WP:UNDUE, WP:RS#Consensus, WP:SYN). We may have to go to article RfC over your fanciful attempt to redefine scientific consensus.

There's a very fundamental point you're just not grokking, Enric: verifiability, not truth. Sure, lots of scientifically-minded types think lots of things are bullshit, if they even consider them at all. Guess what? We don't say, "hey, no way CSICOP could possibly think Ayurveda is for real, let's put it on the pseudoscience list". There's this thing called WP:V that says we have to find a suitable source. And we follow NPOV, which includes WP:PSCI. Topics like Ayurveda (which, from a worldwide view, certainly have a substantial following) don't necessarily have to be assumed pseudoscientific until proven otherwise, or assumed scientific until proven otherwise. They don't have to be characterized as one or the other at all, unless we can find the proper source saying so. If you can't find that source, you don't "make do" with what you have just because you really want to list as many pseudosciences as possible: instead, you work those sources into WP where you can, in ways that are consistent with NPOV. regards, Jim Butler (t) 23:44, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

P.S. The Hongcheng thing clearly belongs on a list like this, but we should tweak the inclusion criteria of that section to include statements by groups (like governmental organizations) that aren't official scientific bodies, but that do, like sci-skeptic groups that are composed of both scientists and laypeople, carry some weight of consensus. --Jim Butler (t) 02:20, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I opened an article RFC below, as it seems the best course of action. I agree that statements by bodies like governamental organizations can be added.

About Ayurveda, I need to check other sources and tweak that entry, can't do right now. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:36, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

RfC: Can we use individual staments to measure scientific consensus on pseudoscience

Template:RFCsci

On the Pseudoscientific concepts per scientific consensus, there is a dispute (see section above) on WP:NPOV/WP:PSCI interpretation and on what type of sources are sufficient to WP:V verify properly the "scientific consensus" on a topic. This part is undisputed:

The following have broad consensus concerning their pseudoscientific status. Indicative of this are assertions by mainstream, specialized scientific bodies (e.g., a society of plasma physicists) or one or more national- or regional-level Academies of Science

And this other part was removed as a violation of WP:UNDUE, WP:RS#Consensus and WP:SYN (see section above):

or, in the case of non-notable concepts that have received no attention from those bodies and academies, and only then, the indicative can be that expert scientists have challenged the legitimacy of these ideas and no other expert scientists have contradicted them.

The question is, should we keep this text or remove it?

• keep there are topics notable enough to get an article, but not notable enough to get a statement by a scientific body declaring them pseudoscientific (and/or unscientific), so it's impossible to meet that level of verifiability. WP:PSCI does not require statements from scientific or governmental bodies, if there is a statement by a notable scientist of the field on a reliable source saying that it's pseudoscience, and no other notable scientists saying that it's not, then that should be enough. There is no requirement anywhere that sources for scientific consensus can't be from individual scientists. WP:RS#Consensus says, for example, that consensus can be determined from "independent secondary or tertiary sources that come to the same conclusion", and it just warns about using reliable sources for claims of "most scientists". The section of the policy has never required anything other than "a reliable source for the consensus" (or a version of that wording), see the creation of the section on December 2006, and versions of January 2007 and April 2008. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:32, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
• Keep per Enric's arguments. Statements that this is contrary to the ArbCom findings are incorrect, and it is misleading to say that we are taking one persons view and using it to represent consensus. Protestations that we should wait for the Royal Society or similar to declare something PS grossly misunderstand the nature of these organisations and are unreasonable demands that would damage the Misplaced Pages project. Verbal chat 19:38, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

  Also Keep current name. There are no NPOV, V, or RS problems with the article content or the name. Renaming has been the subject of other RfCs, and has not gained consensus. Verbal chat 07:41, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

  Also keep in current location. There are no NPOV, V, or RS problems with current placing or usage. Basically No Change. Verbal chat 20:10, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

• Keep There are some things that are clearly pseudoscience that the academies have not yet issued statements on. It would be disingenuous to not label these as pseudoscience just because the academies have better things to do. -Atmoz (talk) 23:05, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

*Keep, with a title change. Or remove, without one. - I'm in favor of having a robust list, but not at the expense of NPOV and VER. My logic flows from WP's very basic mission to present facts about opinions, not opinions as facts. We should not say topics "are" pseudoscience (which is what inclusion in an article called "List of pseudosciences..." undisputably does) without strictly meeting WP:PSCI's "generally considered PS by the sci community" criteria. (Yes, single sources may make statements which if uncontradicted imply consensus, but see WP:SYN. Yes, many minor topics don't attract commentary from group sources, but see WP:NOTTRUTH.)

The reason for an absence of commentary from gold-standard sources is sometimes that the demarcation is not always clear, e.g. in medicine. Listen to what one of the most gold-standard sources in the English Language, the Institute of Medicine, says: "Boundaries within CAM and between the CAM domain and the domain of the dominant system are not always sharp or fixed."ref We really need to wake up and acknowledge the fact that just as there are obvious pseudosciences like perpetual motion machines, there are real cases like acupuncture, or psychoanalysis, where the demarcation problem applies. In such cases, WP needs to be smart and nuanced rather than cavalier. Scientists and doctors are well aware of mixed-bag topics like chiropractic, and if they were as obviously pseudoscientific as intelligent design or something, a big science academy would have said so. Only recently did such a group get around to making such a statement about homeopathy. The emergence of consensus, especially the verifiable kind (which is the main kind WP cares about!), takes time. We should not rush things, but rather report them as they verifiably stand. Grey areas exist, NPOV and VER matter, and we should always qualify and attribute opinions on any topic where sources fail to meet the highest standards to which WP:PSCI rightly points.

However, we can fix all this with a simple title change. We can say "X topic is called pseudoscience by Y source" and not have to worry about WP:PSCI as long as the list title is tweaked to allow for that qualification: e.g., "List of topics described as pseudoscientific". That would also allow citations of individual authors, e.g. writing for CSICOP, cf. the Ayurveda debate above. As WP:RS#Consensus says, "The statement that all or most scientists, scholars, or ministers hold a certain view requires a reliable source. Without it, opinions should be identified as those of particular, named sources." That means such things CAN be cited on WP but NOT in ways that characterize them as pseudoscience (which includes this list, as titled).

For those who worry that such a change would dilute the impact of the list, don't worry: the first section, with rock-solid sources and wikilinks to the relevant topics, will remain just as it is. No one could possibly read that section and not understand that all those topics are considered pseudoscientific by the scientific community, and that the sci community has spoken clearly and en masse to that effect. Likewise, other sections can remain, and new ones can be added, each stating exactly what type of source is used. How can that not result in a better list?

(whew) If that came off as long-winded apologetics for pseudoscience and muddy thinking, sorry, I'd already parted ways with your thinking awhile back and we'll have to agree to disagree, and follow WP:DR as needed. If this sounds reasonable, maybe we should revisit the idea of a title change? regards, Jim Butler (t) 02:36, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

• Keep. Well formulated and necessary given the amount of pseudoscience cropping up on this wiki. Pcap ping 14:36, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
• Keep, but not in this section On reflection, the particular sentence debated in this RfC sounds OK to include in the list as titled, but why don't we just stick it under the Idiosyncratic ideas section instead of the "scientific consensus" section? I agree with all the other editors who have commented to far that we should include the info on WP, but we shouldn't overreach: it cheapens scientific consensus to throw the term around casually. However, if someone can produce an RS supporting the position that uncontradicted statements by notable scientists really can indicate a scientific consensus position on fringe topics, then sure, let's do it. (My objections, struck above, to expanding the inclusion criteria without changing the list's title apply to including sources like the one disputed for Ayurveda, i.e. individual, non-notable scientists writing for CSICOP.) regards, Jim Butler (t) 19:54, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been listed on the Fringe theories noticeboard. - Eldereft (cont.) 17:06, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

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