Pseudoscience

How are we to write articles about pseudoscientific topics, about which majority scientific opinion is that the pseudoscientific opinion is not credible and doesn't even really deserve serious mention?

If we're going to represent the sum total of human knowledge, then we must concede that we will be describing views repugnant to us without asserting that they are false. Things are not, however, as bad as that sounds. The task before us is not to describe disputes as though, for example, pseudoscience were on a par with science; rather, the task is to represent the majority (scientific) view as the majority view and the minority (sometimes pseudoscientific) view as the minority view; and, moreover, to explain how scientists have received pseudoscientific theories. This is all in the purview of the task of describing a dispute fairly.

Pseudoscience can be seen as a social phenomenon and therefore significant. However, pseudoscience should not obfuscate the description of the main views, and any mention should be proportional to the rest of the article.

There is a minority of Wikipedians who feel so strongly about this problem that they believe Wikipedia should adopt a "scientific point of view" rather than a "neutral point of view." However, it has not been established that there is really a need for such a policy, given that the scientists' view of pseudoscience can be clearly, fully, and fairly explained to believers of pseudoscience."

Giving "equal validity"

But wait. I find the optimism about science vs. pseudo-science to be baseless. History has shown that pseudo-science can beat out facts, as those who rely on pseudo-science use lies, slander, innuendo and numerical majorities of followers to force their views on anyone they can. If this project gives equal validity to those who literally claim that the Earth is flat, or those who claim that the Holocaust never occurred, the result is that it will (inadvertently) legitimize and help promote that which only can be termed evil.

Please be clear on one thing: the Wikipedia neutrality policy certainly does not state, or imply, that we must "give equal validity" to minority views. It does state that we must not take a stand on them qua encyclopedia writers; but that does not stop us from describing the majority views as such; from fairly explaining the strong arguments against the pseudoscientific theory; from describing the strong moral repugnance that many people feel toward some morally repugnant views; and so forth.

Note the ignorance, bias, and non-neutrality that are built right into these foundational Wikipedia directives for Neutrality. The directives unqualifiedly identify "majority view" with "scientific view", as if everything that the majority-view-du-jour regards as "scientific" sprang into existence by a divine fiat, a daily direct divine update of the "what is science" databases inside the minds of "official scientists"; and they unhesitatingly and with utter insouciance identify "minority view" with "pseudo", i.e. fake (obviously the otherwise unsupported little qualifier "sometimes" in the phrase "sometimes pseudoscientific" wormed its way into this document as one of Wikipedia's moronic devices for "consensus building"). No acknowledgement is made of the fact that every significant thought or discovery that ultimately made it into the catalog of things "scientific", was once a minority view that emerged in obscurity and against opposition of the contemporary mainstream, and had to struggle for recognition. No sign is given of any understanding that science, and knowledge in general, are man-made endeavors that take place within man-made structures of power and finance, and are subject to all the perturbations inherent in such a framework. Doesn't the policy-making body within Wikipedia feel that a major problem before an editorship of an encyclopedia is that the new - new thought, new discoveries, new approaches - is precisely that, new, and cannot be judged "neutrally" (that is, assuming one attempts to interpret the word with any degree of honesty) by the standards of the majoritarian institutions of the time? No, it doesn't and it couldn't possibly - because Wikipedia itself is conceived, down to its deepest foundations, as such a majoritarian institution, and the glorification of "majority consensus" as a path to Truth and Knowledge is Wikipedia's morality, its ideological life's blood. It is inconceivable that there could be a Wikipedia policy document acknowledging that actual knowledge is always wrenched singularly and against the "consensus" of the day, when Wikipedia is a project dedicated to precisely the denial of this fact, and presided over by the maxim "through mediocrity to excellence". The existence of a Wikipedia Science Police, the systematic malice, harassment, and falsification which is accorded by Wikipedia "editors" to dissenting and pioneering scientific views, the falsification of the very process of thought and discovery, are nothing but necessary consequences of Wikipedia's rationale, guiding ideology, and modus operandi. In its very depths, Wikipedia is anti-knowledge. That one can have an encyclopedia built on such a foundation is a sign that a Brave New World has indeed arrived, and its cadre of Brave New Scientists is formed by people like William Michael Connolley and Freddie Salsbury.

Wikipedia's notion of Pseudoscience is so fundamentally flawed and misinformed that it's hard to believe that any organization in the public eye would openly promote it as an acceptable working premise.  A majority view on anything, has never ipso facto made that view right.  There is no majority view of science that would make it unalterably 'right'. Science is conventional by the simple fact that it is a convention, a conventional sum-total and integration of various fields of knowledge, a convention which is taught in schools, a convention which, by virtue of being such, is able to find official and corporate grants for research, and is so widely taken for granted that it may be encapsulated in 'shorthand truisms' as mass-media content. But there are, in fact, no democratic majorities anywhere voting on what is, and what is not, science, and the invocation of a 'majority' is simply an ideologically charged, populist spin on the fact that a given convention determined what an epoch thought about a subject, specifically what the institutions of an epoch thought about a subject.   Historically, such dogmatically unquestioned conventions have repeatedly proved to be disastrously wrong.

Wikipedians have the same notion of what a majority is that bureaucrats have always had: a majority is what you make it out to be, what you manufacture as an institutional 'fact'. In the present case, it really means a majority of those Wikipedia Administrators who have made it their project to promote a certain view of science. And to present itself, somehow, as fair, this majority, in writing its policy, goes as far as conceding to its own minority that if the views of science cannot be explained to believers in pseudoscience, then maybe Wikipedia should adopt a scientific point of view...ie upgrade its stamp from NPOV to SPOV!

This alone should make one pause and wonder if this Wikipedian project of a monopoly of falsified knowledge is not one of the major new elements of a pervasive fascism, to be exposed and taken down by whatever means possible. A fascism of falsified knowledge, intent on representing the entirety of knowledge with the stamps "majoritarian" and "scientific", smacking of a still more mediocre form of Lysenkoism, and unable to provide any factual content. And we are supposed to feel relieved to hear that the neo-Lysenkoists in Wikipedia are a minority in the majority:

There is a minority of Wikipedians who feel so strongly about this problem that they believe Wikipedia should adopt a "scientific point of view"

Can or should one try to argue with fascists, even when they are in positions of power? Or...??

Here is an attempt to do the former, from Aetherometry Talk:

About Categorization

Mel Etitis and Theresa knott: If you intend to continue Mr. Connolley's proxy project of stamping the just-now-created pseudo category of 'pseudophysics' on this entry - then I presume you have studied the concept of pseudo a little better than Ms. Knott has learned to spell the word "irrelevant". That's "irrelevant", Ms. Knott - not "irrelavent". The Funk and Wagnalls dictionary defines pseudo as

1) False; pretended

2) Counterfeit; not genuine

3) Closely resembling

4) Illusory; apparent

5) Abnormal; erratic

If you are going to mule-headedly insist on recategorizing the Aetherometry entry into this POV(lovian) category, then, BEFORE doing so again, please defend - in detail - and provide cited references as to how the physics of Aetherometry - as well as the extensive work in physics of Mills, Tesla and Carezani etc., - conforms to the official dictionary definition of "pseudo". 4.233.120.63, 3 July 2005 17:31 (UTC)

Exactly. It's pseudophysics because it's not physics. So that would be 2), 3) and 4) of the definition above. The reason i say it's not physics is because it hasn't been peer reviewed by physisists [sic], it's never been published in a physics journal. The reason I say it's pseudophysics is because to someone without an education in physics it resembles physics.What does a term like "massfree energy" say to a layman if not physics? The catagory [sic] lets the casual reader know not to trust the physics sounding words, this is not the same sort of thing as say relativity or quantum mechanics. Theresa Knott (a tenth stroke), 3 July 2005 20:15 (UTC)

Yes, Knott appears to be a wanabe physi-sissie who knows her 'catagories'... Another mind-bender from the same thread:

"Pseudo" signals to the "casual reader" that the thusly-labeled activity has been reviewed, and has been found to be not real physics, but counterfeit and phoney. Just because something has not been peer-reviewed doesn't make it counterfeit or phoney. If you want a category for not-peer-reviewed scientific endeavours, then call the category "scientific claims that have not been peer reviewed", or "scientific claims that the Wikipedia community cannot evaluate fairly". "Pseudo" is not an NPOV designation. 216.254.161.129, 3 July 2005 22:30 (UTC)

Then the casual reader should be less casual. Also, "pseudoscience", etc., can be perfectly NPoV, though their use has to be carefully watched. Mel Etitis, 3 July 2005 22:37 (UTC)

Then William M. Connolley just hits the head on the nail:

Sounds exciting. If genuine, it would have been submitted to Nature or Science. Since it hasn't been, the conclusion is obvious... come back when you have some genuine references to genuine journals. & its "Dr Connolley" to you. William M. Connolley, 2005-07-04 11:19:35 (UTC).

Perhaps the reader should be reminded, at this point, that Wikipedia determines what is Science, by counting the number of Google hits...