Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard

Fringe theories noticeboard - dealing with all sorts of pseudoscience
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Waterboarding

Background: Just an FYI, if a few people could watchlist this page it would be VASTLY appreciated. A consensus is forming to downgrade the article to semi-protection after being fully protected for a very long time. Previously, literal hordes of random IP users had aggressively and completely uncivilly edit warred and flamed each other, alternately vandalizing the page, and getting into gross POV battles, while the then-handful of logged in users could only ask for protection. At one point, it was something like 100+ edits in two hours, until Alison (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) locked it down.

Why I'm posting here: In the slow consensus building on Talk after, not one single IP editor chimed in that I can recall, at all. Finally, the only real consensus matter left was whether or not to call Waterboarding an act of torture or not. Since everyone seemed to just repeat and advocate their personal views, which wasn't of any use to us, I posted a section here asking for people to list all sources on either side of the fence--is it, or isn't it torture? The consensus based on the presented sources was 100% incontrovertable. The world considers waterboarding an act of torture. That section for sources opposing this notion sat empty for nearly two weeks. Today, we have two sources from two pundits, opinion columns both. One says its not torture. The other says it's up the American legislature to decide (which, of course, it isn't, except for the purposes of US law).

Based on this, please read this section. In an odd situation, the supposed view of the current United States government (supposed, since they won't really comment either way) is "believed" to be that waterboarding is not torture. Many of us therefore have a firm belief that the idea, based on sources and verifiable facts, that waterboarding is not torture needs to be limited in the article, per WP:WEIGHT, and because it is a WP:FRINGE view held by few authorities on torture, related law, and experts that have actually spoken up. Please watchlist this article, in case anyone tries to advocate or advance unreasonable fringe or wild views on this article. Thanks! Lawrence Cohen 23:46, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

To add a bit more to what Lawrence says. The talk pages are long and involved and may be hard to get through. The gist of the issue is this: A good number of sources describe waterboarding as torture. A smaller number say it is not torture. (A poll by CNN shows that there is disagreement in the US population with a ratio of 1:2, with the majority believing it is torture). There are three positions being advanced:

1.The article should firmly say that Waterboarding is Torture

2.The article should avoid connecting waterboarding with Torture.

3.The article should mention its connection with torture but also that this connection is disputed.

Generally, people who believe position #1 should prevail, strongly reject both option 2 and option 3 and believe that WP:Fringe should prevail above WP:ASF despite the fact that ASF is a policy and fringe is a guideline. There also seems to be a rejection of the principle that consensus can change and that per WP:CON consensus on an individual talk page really cannot violate fundamental policies. --Blue Tie (talk) 02:36, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Please note there is further discussion on this topic below in this section #Waterboarding (2). It might be better to note your comments there; whatever you prefer. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 03:43, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Walled gardens of woo

Category:Ascended_Master_Teachings Category:Theosophy. Check out such lovely pages as Master Jesus, Secret Chiefs, HPB: The Extraordinary Life and Influence of Helena Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, "I AM" Activity and many, many more! Adam Cuerden ^talk 22:52, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

what's the issue? it's nutjob philosophy. are there references to regular philosophical works? Are there issues with notability or excess fringe pov weight? --Rocksanddirt (talk) 00:28, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Notability, POV, and a great deal of describing fringe beliefs as standard, or even true. Adam Cuerden ^talk 06:09, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Theosophy and Madame Blavatsky did have an influence in the late 19th-early 20th centuries, extending as far as a small part in the development of black religious-political organizations such as the Nation of Islam. But this is going overboard. Raymond Arritt (talk) 06:17, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Quite. I wouldn't object to a few articles, but this is beyond excessive. Fringe theories have a habit of multiplying to hundreds of articles, which are impossible to maintain. Adam Cuerden ^talk 08:41, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, crap. This is one massive walled garden and there's plenty of notability issues to be sorted out. We've also got excess weight/POV-issues - see here for a (now thankfully deleted) example. I suspect it's redirect-and-prod time again. Moreschi ^{If you've written a quality article...} 20:07, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Hah! Yes, pruning pseudo-philosophy has been one of the major accomplishments of this noticeboard. (Back in Integral thought land I just deleted about two pages of self-published criticism from Ken Wilber's article.) Fireplace (talk) 20:30, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

This from the Los Angeles Times (The mighty I Am; cult led by Guy Ballard Los Angeles Magazine April 1, 1997):

Guy Ballard founded the I Am cult in southern California in the 1930s, claiming to be a reincarnation of St Germain and George Washington, among others. Ballard died in 1939 and his wife and son were indicted for fraud the following year.

On a blistering evening in August 1935, a bizarre rite took placeat the Shrine Auditorium. A crowd of nearly 6,000 gazed upon a brightly lit stage flanked by large paintings of Jesus and St. Germain. Onthe stage, a man who called himself Godfre Ray King read messages hesaid had been passed down from divine entities. Written in "living letters of Light" only King and his wife, "Lotus," could see, the words expressed love for the devoted audience members and hatred for their numerous enemies. Then Godfre and Lotus led their disciples in the chanting of decrees, sometimes beseeching their gods for "ONE MILLIONDOLLARS IN CASH! TAX-FREE!"

This service was a coming-out party of sorts for the Los Angeles-based I Am movement, which may have been one of the kookiest cults inAmerican history. Southern California historian Carey McWilliams described the group as "a witch's cauldron of the inconceivable, the incredible and the fantastic."

"Godfre Ray King" was the two-bit alias of Guy Ballard, who claimed religion had found him in 1930 during a hike on Mount Shasta when a young man offered him a cup filled with a strange, creamy liquid--"a much more refreshing drink than springwater," Ballard recalled. Theyoung man then transmogrified into St. Germain: eighteenth-century French politician, adviser to Louis XV and leader of the Ascended Masters, an elite group that included Jesus, Hercules and the God of the Swiss Alps, among others.

Thank heavon Master Jesus for reliable sources. Fireplace (talk) 20:50, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

This Los Angeles Magazine article was an opinion piece with grossly inaccurate information. To call this a "reliable source" is simply incorrect, and to use it as a source of accurate information on the beliefs of this religious organization to single-handedly rewrite the "I AM" Activity article into a POV piece is wrong. Arion (talk) 15:47, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I've done some redirects, rewritten "I AM" Activity, and left a proposal to redirect/merge everything else at Talk:Ascended Master Teachings#Time for an overhaul, in case anyone here wants to comment. Fireplace (talk) 22:32, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I've done a little merging and deletion, but this is a huge article set... Adam Cuerden ^talk 03:11, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

And there's been resistance from the followers of this movement. I suspect this will end up at AFD. Fireplace (talk) 03:14, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not a follower of any of these movements, but after checking out some of the pages, I don't think it's a walled garden. There are inbound links and some of them are plenty notable. Theosophy , its founders, and its many spinoffs for example, had a significant effect on Western society in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and several notable authors and poets were members or followers (ie, WB Yeats as one prominent example).

Also, they're not exactly WP:FRINGE theories, in the sense of needing a noticeboard report - they are not scientific, or pseudoscientific, or being used in that way. They're religious or philosophical systems, and many books have been published about them, making them notable. I'm not saying at all that we should present the content of the philosophies as "truth", but if they're notable, what's the problem with having an article about them, as long as the article has references to support the notability? An example of that would be something like Flat Earth Society. No-one thinks Wikipedia is actually saying the Earth is flat, but the organization that propounds that idea has made itself notable enough to have an article, even if it gets a chuckle every time someone looks at it. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 08:24, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem with the "many books about them" is that if you look closely, you'll see that most of the references in these articles come from publishing houses involved with the movements. There do seem to be a few independent, reliable books talking about these things (with titles like "These also believe: A study of modern American cults and minority religious movements"), but I suspect that insofar as they are notable, they are notable for their sociological aspects and the controversies surrounding them, not for their doctrinal views. As written, all of these articles are focused almost entirely on using wikipedia as a forum for their "fringe" metaphysical views, thus raising WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE issues (as well as WP:N issues for the large web of articles they have created). Fireplace (talk) 17:20, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Those are good points, and if it turns out that the topics are not notable beyond self-published materials, that would be a concern. But the articles in the lists and categories above are not a monolithic whole where they are all the same. Some of them may be fringe metaphysical views as you described, but some are articles about philosophies or people who have influenced other people, had an effect on society, and do have non-self-published materials written about them. I'm not an expert on the topics, so I can't pull a bunch of references out of my hat right now. But it seems to me those are article content issues that should be discussed on the talk page of the articles, not discussed in detail here - unless we invite the people editing those articles here to participate in the discussion. If there is an article where you feel all of the references are self-published, wouldn't the usual method be to discuss your concerns on that article's talk page? I am not saying which of those articles is OK, and which may be off-track, I have not studied them enough to know the answer to that. As I understand it, the consensus process is one of the most central policies. So if decisions are made about those articles, the people working on them should be included in the process. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 18:51, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Those discussions are already occurring. See Talk:Ascended Master Teachings, Talk:"I AM" Activity, Talk:Seven rays. Fireplace (talk) 20:37, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, sure - there's quite a lot here that is notable - but there's also a fair chunk that's not and that's only referenced to self-published ("vanity") books. It's just a question of separating the wheat from the chaff. And, as we saw at the Count of St Germain, POV concerns are also an issue. Moreschi ^{If you've written a quality article...} 21:25, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

The desire to censor that which appears "nutty" or "fringe" or not "notable" in one's own subjective judgement has no place in a general reference encyclopedia. If you do not want to read about various religious movements, philosophies, scientific theories, social and cultural developments, then don't. Imposing your standards on others by wanting to exclude that information, if it is not to your liking, is known as censorship. Arion (talk) 22:10, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

The free interchange of information is how advancement in science and humanity in general occurs. Censorship has never led to progress. Just look at the "dark age" of Europe when the "all-powerful" church decided that it would control what people said or thought, all in the name of superstitions that it proclaimed to be the whole "truth" and all that it disapproved of to be "heresy".

Look at what censorship did in Nazi Germany where mass murder of Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals occurred and no one even knew until much later how extensive it had been. Look at Iran today where homosexuals are being widely executed and the government censorship merely parrots the line that "there are no homosexuals in Iran"!

Today that same mentality would smother access to subjects that it deems "fringe" and "pseudoscience". You have no right to make that value judgement when dealing with sourced and referenced articles, no matter what the subject matter. Using that tactic is simply not the way to build Wikipedia into the academic and NPOV encyclopedia that it is intended to be.

After the "thought police" go after the new religious movements of the last 150 years, what will be next? Excising all the "irrational beliefs" and superstitions in Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, etc. etc. etc.? However about removing all articles based on various world mythologies and the individual figures in those mythologies? Where will the censorship end? Arion (talk) 22:50, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Amen. —Whig (talk) 22:54, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, now that we've established that the people wanting to keep Wikipedia a reliable, verifiable, neutral, referenced source are censors who are leading us to the dark ages, Nazi Germany, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, I'd like to point out that you both seem to think Wikipedia is something that it is not, namely it is not a free repository of information. If you don't like the constraints that Wikipedia has on sourcing, notability, or inclusion, then you are free to start your own wiki. ScienceApologist (talk) 23:05, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

• I happen to be a Wikipedia editor who is absolutely committed to keeping Wikipedia a reliable, verifiable, neutral, referenced encyclopedia. However censorship is not, and was never intended to be, a role for Wikipedia editors to engage in.

• There appear to be individuals on Wikipedia that have no hesitation to use labels like "fringe" and "pseudoscience" in order to discredit anything they disagree with or do not understand, and to go so far as to censor and delete that information.

• This is no different than the Taliban in Afghanistan destroying the large Buddhist statues, since they disagreed with that religion.

• This is no different than Christianity, not so long ago, labeling those who disagreed with the mainstream religious superstitions to be "heretics" and deserving of being eliminated by any and all means. Arion (talk) 01:39, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

what absolute nonsense. I keep hearing accusations of "censorship" when the entire debate surrounds WP:NOTE. Wikipedia doesn't carry your nephew's garage band -- "censorship"? The one policy you fail to list as being "absolutely committed" to is notability, perhaps you should give that some thought. Nobody suggested Ascended Master Teachings for deletion, alright? Everybody here is fully prepared to carry articles on fringy nutcases just as long as they meet basic notability criteria. This doesn't mean we accept the inflating of fringe pseudo-philosophies into a whole compendium. For some reason, Blavatskian "Theosophy" is vastly and unduly over-represented on Wikipedia. The comparison with Taliban vandalism or Christian inquisition is so far out of line that you are really just establishing your complete failure to understand this debate. Perhaps you should re-read WP:FRINGE, slowly and deliberately. dab (𒁳) 12:26, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Regarding censorship, see the first observation by Antandrus. Raymond Arritt (talk) 13:00, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

The reason I wrote about censorship attempts is in response to specific actions that were undertaken yesterday. Two editors discovered a way to eliminate articles they did not like by placing "redirect" tags on them. This was an attempt to make articles that each unilaterally decided he did not want to appear in Wikipedia, to - in effect - no longer exist on Wikipedia. I do not believe this is a sign of the greatest respect for fellow editors. The issue is not a "merge debate", since the action on this and another article were taken WITHOUT DEBATE. It was only after I personally reverted the redirects, with a comment that redirects should not be done without discussion or consensus, that comments began.

To make this very clear, unilaterally creating a redirect on an article to another article that does not have the same content, results in that article no longer able to be accessed. This happened to the "Djwal Khul" article and the "Guy Ballard" article. These articles, until I reverted the redirects, were suddenly unavailable. If I had not had them on my watchlist, I would not have known how to undo these unilateral actions.

Using the "notability" WP:N argument can be a convenient way of eliminating articles that one happens to not like. The "notability" principle was and is intended to prevent some local group, for example a neighborhood Baptist congregation, from creating a Wikipedia article and portraying themselves as having national or international scope. If a scholar, researcher, or author has written about the subject of an article, then it is notable and can have an article in Wikipedia.

I have observed an unusual amount of derision and negativity directed against articles related to the "Ascended Master Teachings" and "Theosophy" - an example of this is the title of this section ("Walled gardens of woo"). Before considering how to eliminate these few articles on subjects that many people consider spiritually significant to their lives, how about first considering the elimination of the hundreds of Wikipedia articles on comic book characters from Marvel Comics and DC Comics - for example: List_of_DC_Comics_characters. How about considering the eliminating the hundreds of Wikipedia articles on Catholic saints (List_of_saints) and hundreds of Wikipedia articles on Hindu gods and goddesses (List_of_Hindu_deities)? Arion (talk) 15:37, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

there is nothing wrong with healthy mergism, especially in fringe topics. This has nothing to do with like or dislike, the burden of establishing notability lies with those who want to keep the article separate. No, "notability" is not sufficiently established if there is a citation of some academic paper. Otherwise, we'll end up with one article per every paper ever published. Yes, healthy mergism also applies to comics characters. Pointing to a perceived attitude of laxness in another field is the WP:OTHERCRAP fallacy and doesn't help. But I take it you have not really been involved in comic strip topics recently? There have been positive outcries over the strict notability policing in 2007. How about comics books enthusiasts point to the Theosophy clutter budding on WP in order to bolster their position? That would be as fallacious as the inverse. Aburesz, there can be bona fide debate over merging or not merging. So far, with your ranting about Taliban censorship, "elimination", allegations of bad faith etc., you haven't even begun to participate in such a debate. You should reconsider and try an approach more based on factual, down-to-earth argument than hysteria, now. If you do that, people might be inclined to respect your position and seek a compromise. As long as you keep ranting about censorship, you won't have much of an effect. dab (𒁳) 16:14, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest you avoid personal attacks using such language as "ranting" and "hysteria". You conveniently responded to my pointing out the hundreds of individual comic book character articles on Wikipedia, but ignored the more to the point examples of the HUNDREDS of Wikipedia articles on Catholic saints (List_of_saints) and HUNDREDS of Wikipedia articles on Hindu gods and goddesses (List_of_Hindu_deities)? If these can be justified in having their own articles - and they are justified (just look at any other encyclopedia which also lists individual entries) - then a dozen entries on Theosophical and Ascended Master saints are also justified. Arion (talk) 16:42, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Just to highlight a pattern of behavior, in addition to comparing us to Hitler and the Taliban, this user has already been blocked twice for 3RR, and once for this: Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Aburesz (2nd nomination) (subsequently unblocked). Fireplace (talk) 16:50, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

By the way, two points regarding his last comment: Many, if not most, Catholic Saints are notable outside of sainthood. Edward the Confessor for instance. Also, due to several thousand years of literary tradition, many of the Hindu gods are notable in their own right. However, Theosophy is a funny case: It's massive reinterpretation of notable figures done in a very few books, by a very few (if not, in some cases, one) authors. There's a religion of homeless children in Florida that claims, among other things, the Virgin Mary killed Jesus and went insane, and then became Bloody Mary. Fascinating stuff, but that doesn't change that it's a fringe interpretation, and probably not notable enough to be mentioned in Jesus or Virgin Mary, or to have all the aspects covered in separate articles. Adam Cuerden ^talk 17:28, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Distorting what I wrote does not change what I wrote. I wrote about the dangerous potential effects that censorship has demonstrated in totalitarian regimes, and the beauty of Wikipedia is the FREE ACCESS to reliably sourced information.

The effort by Fireplace to discredit me is not helpful to this discussion, to say the least. Arion (talk) 18:58, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Neither accusations of censorship nor displays of TYPOGRAPHICAL EXUBERANCE will help your case. Please make your points in a framework relevant to Wikipedia policy, and engage constructively with other editors. Raymond Arritt (talk) 19:38, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

In the last 132 years, hundreds of books have been written about "Theosophy" and the "Ascended Master Teachings", in various languages and by many publishers. These have described their religious / philosophical theories, their "saints" and adepts, and the social phenomena of the 19th and 20th century organizations that developed from the foundations of the writings of Helena Blavatsky, Rudolph Steiner, Alice Bailey, Guy Ballard, and various others. Arion (talk) 20:29, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

this is still beside the point. Nobody suggested the Theosophy article should be deleted. Try to debate on topic and avoid pointless tangents. dab (𒁳) 09:30, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

That Theosophy is important and merits and article (or a few) isn't disputed. The question is whether every minute aspect of Theosophy and related topics should be in its own article. A small number of strong articles would be preferable to a large number of stubby and fragmentary articles. Raymond Arritt (talk) 17:55, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

religious beliefs are not fringe theories

First for context - My approach is as a rational skeptic. I am not a follower of these beliefs, and I've never edited those articles. My comments here are the result of reading this discussion, checking some of the articles, and reviewing the relevant guideline and policy pages. I have no agenda for the articles, but I do have an agenda for fairness and the core policies.

• These articles are not a WP:walled garden. One can follow links from many articles not directly related to these, on a variety of topics, and in just a few clicks be in the midst of the most esoteric articles on Theosophy, various unusual religions, and Western Hermetic traditions in general. Examples of articles that link to these in just a few steps include: Freemasonry, Kabbalah, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Alchemy, Mysticism, Humanism, Metaphysics, Philosophy of religion, Esoteric Christianity; and, links on the pages of such notable people as Carl Jung, WB Yeats, Alexander Scriabin, Rudolf Steiner, William James, Emanuel Swedenborg, Arthur Schopenhauer. (I'm not implying these people all followed those beliefs, this is just to show that the articles reported in this notice are not a walled garden, they are part of the interconnected encyclopedia).

• Another series of religion articles has been listed below in the section titled #Golden Dawn. Those articles are related to the ones in this section, so this discussion applies to them as well.

• The title of this section, Walled gardens of woo is insulting to the people who believe in those religions and to the editors working on the listed articles . Many religions have precepts that may appear as "woo" to non-believers, but that doesn't mean they should be made fun of on a Wikipedia noticeboard.

• Editors working on articles should be informed when there is a discussion of those articles on this noticeboard. If discussion is also started on the article talk pages of the affected articles, or if various tags are placed, such as notability, POV, etc - a link to the report here should be made part of the record in the talk page discussion of the article - especially if there is any chance that the article may be nominated for deletion. We should respect the work of our fellow contributors enough to at least mention to them that their work has been reported on a noticeboard.

• WP:FRINGE does not apply to religious philosophy. It's purpose is to protect science, politics and history articles from viewpoints that have no realistic mainstream support. The words "religion" and "philosophy" do not even appear in the guideline.

...Even major religions have elements that sound like fringe theories. Should we have sections in the scientific article about Death on Resurrection or Reincarnation? Those would be "fringe theories" and could not be supported in a scientific context. But as religious beliefs, those are are appropriate for separate articles. Similarly, a story like Feeding the multitude, which works fine as a theological article about one story in the Bible, would be a fringe idea if it were used in an article about solving the world's hunger problem.

We also have articles about Christian fringe ideas, like Necedah Shrine, or Perceptions of religious imagery in natural phenomena in which the Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich is described, among many other clearly non-mainstream expressions. Should those articles be reported here?

Are minority religious beliefs to be treated as "fringe theories" and excluded from Wikipedia? I don't think anyone is trying to do that, but it could be an unintended result.

The questions about this group of articles are not about WP:FRINGE, they are based in the NPOV/N/V policies and should be addressed through the usual procedures - discussed on talk pages; references found and added if they exist; posted for an RFC; or nominated for deletion if not notable enough. Or, bring them up at WP:SKEPTICS or one of the other relevant projects.

But this noticeboard should not be used for philosophy or religion articles, it should be used to keep fringe theories from disturbing science, politics, history and similar academic topics.

If people want this noticeboard to moderate religion or philosophy articles, then I suggest that the WP:FRINGE guideline would need to be changed to set out clear parameters on those issues. As it is written now, those topics are not part of its mandate. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 03:24, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Something as obvious as minority religious beliefs should not be treated as "fringe theories" should not have to have been stated here. Thank you for stating it!

Besides the redirecting of articles to another Wikipedia article in order to make them disappear - which has been done in the last 2 days - there has also been the sudden disappearance of an article on my watchlist, and I have not been able to recover it. I saw no discussion for deletion. It simply was deleted. Again, it is related to one of these Theosophical "minority religious beliefs"! I will be looking into this further. Arion (talk) 03:47, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Jack-A-Roe: I agree that several comments made in this thread have been uncivil. I don't agree that New Age religious movements are outside the scope of WP:FRINGE, as they make plenty of claims that are inconsistent with mainstream science. But most importantly, consensus on solutions is not achieved here -- that's not the point of a notice board (the point is to cast light on dark areas of Wikipedia). If you look around at the articles that have been highlighted here, you'll notice that the "usual procedures" you advocate are humming along nicely -- articles are being tagged, improved, discussed in the appropriate places. I've seen you posting courtesy notices directing editors to this page (which is perfectly fine) -- but this page *isn't* the place to discuss the articles, as you rightly point out. And that's not how this noticeboard has been used. Fireplace (talk) 06:46, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to suggest an RfC/A on this noticeboard if that is appropriate. Or in any case to find a way to get outside comments in a proper fashion, because I think Jack-A-Roe makes a great point here and what was done was invisible to any normal process, articles on theosophy (a major branch of hermetic religion/philosophy) seemed to just disappear from Wikipedia without prior discussion. —Whig (talk) 07:47, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

this noticeboard is just a convenient place to alert interested editors of problem articles. It doesn't replace debate on article talkpages. All debate taking place here could just as well have been conducted on user talkpages or privately off-wiki. Further debate on the purpose of this noticeboard goes to the talkpage please. Redirecting or merging is not "deletion". These are simple edits which can be both made and reverted by any user. Disagreement on whether an article should be merged is a regular content dispute like any other and needs to be discussed on article talkpages. dab (𒁳) 09:28, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Based on the events of the last several days, I have questions as to what is actually going on. But to call all this a "regular content dispute like any other" ignores what has been going on, even in the last hour.

I am a homeopathic physician with 27 years clinical experience. One week ago on 6 December I saw that the tone of the Homeopathy article was so POV that it was as if it was a non-encyclopedia article that would be better titled "Criticism of Homeopathy". I wrote a number of comments and suggestions on how the the article could be improved to NPOV standards.

Then in the last several days some of the anti-homeopathy editors went to my user page and checked out my "user contributions". The harrassment started as they started messing with those esoteric/Theosophy/Ascended Master Teachings articles I had worked on - with derision and mockery, and eliminating 3 of them by "redirects" to other not identical articles (which I reverted) with no discussion or consensus. Each of these 2 editors had essentially made those articles unavailable. One of those articles was completely deleted without any discussion or consensus on a deletion. Arion (talk) 15:57, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

you essentially state your WP:COI, and re-state your failure to understand basic Wikipedia process. Redirection isn't "deletion": you can revert it, and are discussing it even now. WP:NPOV means "weighted by mainstream academic opinion". Inasmuch as your personal opinion diverges from academic mainstream, I hope you find Wikipedia articles biased against your views: that's as it should be per the very policy you cite. dab (𒁳) 16:01, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

The policy that I cite is the Wikipedia policy (and that of all general reference encyclopedias) that there should be no personal bias for or against the subject of the article. An article should be edited by Wikipedia editors in such a way that the wording does not reflect our own personal beliefs and views. Arion (talk) 16:12, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

indeed. The emphasis is on personal. There should be bias informed by academic expertise. Aburesz, if you want to continue discussing Wikipedia core policy, please go to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) or Wikipedia_talk:Neutral_point_of_view. Also note the "sympathetic point of view" policy taken by Wikinfo, which may be closer to what you are looking for. dab (𒁳) 16:25, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I have been a researcher for the past 4 decades of the new religious movements of the 20th century, especially the ones born from the foundations of Esoteric Buddhism, "New Thought", Theosophical and Ascended Master Teachings. Our university department has especially examined the historical and social contexts of those minority religions. To exclude relevant data from Wikipedia on their beliefs, key religious "saints" known as "Ascended Masters", and the individuals who helped shape these organizations would be unthinkable. Arion (talk) 05:17, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I support the massive pruning of these articles down. I think, like many above, that it is, in effect, a Walled Garden. It might have a gate at each compass point, but it's still defended rigorously by a small group of editors who have some POV interest in the topic, and who apparently defend the garden with Godwin's Law, comparing any who want it pruned to Nazis and Big Brother. Fireplace's rewrites should continue, and strip out all the vanity press stuff going on in these articles, merging anything that gets to stub length back into the bigger articles. ThuranX (talk) 15:09, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

• NPOV is the basis of WP. We do not differentiate between one religious movement and another in the way we deal with them. We do not decide which religious teachings are true, or even which religious teachings are respectable. The Theosophist movement was a religion of some slight importance now, but much more in previous years. It deserves articles on the same basis as any other religion.
  

Proportional weight is relevant. There is a vastly greater literature of the Christian Jesus than the Theosophist Ascended Jesus, and this is appropriately reflected in the number and length of the articles on each. But the major theological bases of each religion deserve articles. I commented elsewhere that theosophist sources can be used for theosophist concepts. We do not insist on having non christian views of Christian saints, of non-Jewish views of Jewish rabbis. so if we had hundreds of articles on theosophist luminaries, earthly or otherwise, it might be a cause for concern. A mere dozen or so articles? that's in proportion.
I hope nobody is absurd enough to think i am likely to have the least intellectual or emotional attachment to movements such as these. Yet i regard them as fully appropriate to an encyclopedia. There is no true or false in religion in the same way there is on some other topics--there are beliefs and opinions, but some think their beliefs rise to the level of truth confirmed far beyond the level of mere empirical evidence. Therefore we can report only what people think and say, and what they do. For the thinking and saying part, their own religion's primary sources are the Reliable sources. DGG 02:29, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Help me understand how "I am activity", Secret Doctrine and Secret Chief are problematic as their own articles? All three fairly major works/ideas. The Secret Chef idea shows up all over the place in various occult teachings.  ? Sethie (talk) 04:58, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

The way you establish that a subject is notable is by finding reliable, independent sources that devote significant coverage to the topic. Do such sources exist for the articles you name? --Akhilleus (talk) 05:12, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

What I have noticed in many of these "notability" and "reliable sources" arguments is that there is a double standard repeatedly being applied by some. If the article references support their POV, then they argue for their inclusion. If the article references are contrary to their POV, they argue for their exclusion. That is my observation over the last 14 months of editing.

I find it absurd that anyone thinks that the way to document a religious belief from a particular religion is that you go to "outside sources". Often outside sources do not have a clue as to what those beliefs are, but they will do some sloppy quick research to see what other sloppy researchers have previously written, and then grind out an article (like the above quoted Los Angeles Magazine article) full of factual inaccuracies that other sloppy researchers will then quote from in the future for their so-called "article". Arion 3x3 (talk) 07:03, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

What we're talking about here is whether a particular religious belief is notable. If no one outside the community that holds a particular belief has bothered to take notice of it, that's good evidence that the belief shouldn't be included in an encyclopedia. --Akhilleus (talk) 07:17, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

This discussion is probably better had at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Master Hilarion, where the fangs have really come out. Several editors have asked us not to debate policy or content on noticeboards, and I tend to agree. Fireplace (talk) 07:23, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I didn't read half the above, but wanted to comment on the topic suggested by the header. Minority religious beliefs can be fringe views, and this guideline can help editors decide how much weight to give a minority religious belief's viewpoint. The WP:FRINGE guideline is based on the NPOV WP:WEIGHT guideline, which calls for viewpoints to be weighted by notability in articles. A minority religion that (just as an example) believes Jesus was an alien, has no weight to place that view in the Jesus article. That doesn't mean that the view that Jesus was an alien is "wrong", just that it's not notable in weight comparison to the orthodox Christian view that (rightly) dominates the Jesus article. The intent behind WP:FRINGE may have been to protect science articles from fringe science, and protect history articles from fringe history, but it can also (by virtue of being based on WP:WEIGHT) protect mainstream religious articles from fringe religious views. Even if there's not consensus to do that, WP:WEIGHT is still in effect. Sorry if that offends anyone, but minority religious views are (by definition) minority views, and less notable. They carry the appropriate weight that they've earned, especially in how they are presented in mainstream religious articles, for example Jesus, if they are notable enough to be presented at all. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 07:57, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you about applying WP:WEIGHT in those situations, but WP:FRINGE is not needed for that, and it's not appropriate there. WP:WEIGHT is enough on its own to address those concerns, and it does - there are several alternate views of Jesus in that article -not UFOs, but there are Buddhist, Hindu, and New Age/Theosophical paragraphs. Appropriately, they are short, since the have small weight in that topic.

But aside from that... This discussion (that you said you didn't read all of... ) was not about including unusual religions within articles about mainstream religions. This thread is discussing the idea of separate articles about topics of interest to minority religions, maybe even small ones, and that they should not be considered "fringe theories" because they are not science; they are separate philosophical topics that don't intrude on any other topics. There's no reason to delete their articles just because they are not mainstream. And that's what was shown in the AfDs that were tried - there was overwhelming support for keeping those articles.

For example, Master Jesus is a page about a belief of another religion, Theosophy, that considers Master Jesus to be an Ascended Master. It's not part of the Jesus page, so it does not intrude at all on Christianity's ideas and does not introduce any problems of WP:WEIGHT. Minority religion's beliefs should not be censored from Wikipedia as "fringe", as long as they are not inserted with too much weight into other topics, and as long as their separate topic is notable and verifiable (as was confirmed for the articles in the above thread with the AfD results). --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 09:09, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Completely agree with the above. However, that's pretty much WP:FRINGE in a nutshell. People interpret these guidelines in all sorts of weird ways, but WP:FRINGE is just an application of WP:WEIGHT. My comment was about how WP:FRINGE applies to fringe religious views (which it does), but that's more about fringe views in articles about orthodox religious topics rather than in stand-alone articles. Neither WP:WEIGHT nor WP:FRINGE call for deleting articles, that's WP:N. What you're describing above has nothing to do with fringe views, and is solely about whether the topic has enough notability for a stand-alone article, completely WP:N and not related to WP:FRINGE in any way. A fringe view needs a corresponding mainstream view and as a stand-alone topic there is none in the cases we're talking about here. In short, I agree.

I took the time to read through all the comments. There are so many things wrong here. "Walled gardens of woo"? Woo-woo (never understood why they called it that) is defined as

adj. concerned with emotions, mysticism, or spiritualism; other than rational or scientific; mysterious; new agey. Also n., a person who has mystical or new age beliefs.[1]

I understand the concerns about putting pseudoscience in context so that readers aren't misguided into thinking it is actual science, but when did Wikipedia become a vehicle or tool for promoting materialism? Who decided that material is mainstream and emotional, mystical, or spiritual beliefs that don't purport to be scientific is fringe? Wikipedia is not a tool to promote pseudoscience, but neither it is a tool for promoting scientism or atheism or general skepticism about strictly belief-related topics either. If you see an obscure term that's associated to a minor religion, and you don't know anything about it other than it's "woo-woo", leave it alone. It has nothing to do with you if your goal is just to protect science from pseudoscience. If your goal is to remove "woo-woo" from Wikipedia, that's no less pov-pushing than the pseudoscience pushers. Woo-woo (as defined above) is not automatically pseudoscience. The above rant is aimed at no one in particular, just a general irritation. I'm glad the AfDs weren't successful. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 11:19, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

what you say is correct, but you need to take into account that as a rule, it is the woo-woo side that doesn't respect the boundary between rationalism and irrationalism. The rationalists (materialists, atheists) are merely fighting in defence, trying to keep the "quantum quacks" off their turf. It is the the woo-woo side that usually has trouble understanding WP:TRUTH, while the scientifically minded are mostly perfectly aware of the limitations of a hypothesis. dab (𒁳) 12:34, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Is Wikipedia going to truly be "neutral" about world views, or will it adopt politically-supported conceptions of "mainstream science" as its "religion", and relentlessly persecute all other world views about the Universe as "fringe"??? I remind you again that if Wikipedia had been around a century ago, and embraced the politically-supported conceptions of "mainstream science" as they existed then, many people here would probably be agreeing that an argument for the sterilizing of non-whites is "neutrality", being backed by the "mainstream science" of 1908. "Science" today is being "sponsored" and misused just as much for political or ideological ends as 100 or even 50 years ago, and the majority of people around the world instinctively seem to know this, which is the real reason we see even today much frustration among "scientists" that so many fail to accept without question all their claims passed off as "undisputed scientific consensus" -- which "consensus" seems to still rest on the same ostracization tactics that have always been practised, rather than on the free and unfettered testing of independent hypotheses, or even acknowledgement of those who pursue these "unapproved" hypotheses. Blockinblox (talk) 14:43, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

A big part of the problem when religion wants to stick its nose in science, and claim it is scientifically based, or has scientific support for its claims. As long as religion does not claim to be science or to be supported by science, etc then there is no problem.

Once religion starts to claim it is science, there is a problem. Keep the religion out of science.

As an example: Suppose that churches were required to preach how inconsistent their beliefs were with science regularly. Would that be fair? I am sure you would object to having science intrude on your religion.

Fair: (1) No science in religion, No religion in science (2) Religion in science, Science in religion

Unfair: Religion in science

The current scenario which is causing problems is the unfair one above. Religion is trying to use science to push its beliefs. It of course causes problems. The solution? One of the two fair scenarios. You pick.--Filll (talk) 15:21, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Hough Riots: Commie conspiracy??

I ought to know because I (informally) study riots, but I'm having a hard time figuring out if this article is giving undue weight to the idea that this riot was "started by communists." Some of the sources cited seem really old (old sources on race-related topics tend to be problematic) --and not that great (a badly scanned pdf of something put out by a Cleveland church? ) Can someone stop by and share their thoughts on the quality of the sources? The communist theory should be mentioned, I'm asking about how much weight we should give it? futurebird (talk) 05:10, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

As it turns out there are major problems with the content of the article. I've tried to fix what I can, but I could really use some help. futurebird (talk) 23:05, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I seriously need help with this one. I can just start hacking away at it and removing most the "it was communists" stuff and hope I'm being fair about it, but I really would like some outside input on the quality of these sources first. I'll admit I have an view about this matter, and it is based on fact, but I don't want to act alone. So, I know it's tedious but could someone kindly stop by and see what you think of the sources that suggest that the riot was "communist" in origin. Thanks. futurebird (talk) 04:15, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism of Cannabis-related articles

There seems to be a fair amount of stoners putting forth original research. [2] [3] [4] The "cannabis resources" template is extremely questionable. At the very least, anything on that template without a citation (especially the "strains") should be deleted. Zenwhat (talk) 17:31, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• And the various articles on bongs, which are massive screeds of OR and HOWTO, should probably be merged. Guy (Help!) 11:16, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Waterboarding (2)

There is an ongoing difference of opinion as to how to interpret this on the article Waterboarding. Most editors are in favour of stating in the lead: Waterboarding is a form of torture. As I understand it the views on this are:

1. Most experts (>140) consider waterboarding torture,
2. A very small group experts (<4) and notable individuals consider it not torture,
3. The fact some oppose the majority view this is torture proves there is a dispute.

Regarding the above I am interested to hear how to interpret this. Do we, as in Intelligent Design, start with the consensus among experts (it is torture) and continue to explain in the article body what a notable minority thinks? Does opposing a similar stance as with ID violate WP:FRINGE/WP:WEIGHT? Respectfully Nomen Nescio^{Gnothi seauton} 16:09, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

As well as the individual experts considering it tortur is the Council of Europe. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:11, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

This question should be placed on the main noticeboard page, not on the talk page. Here on the talk page the discussions address how to organize and use the noticeboard. Comments here are not answered as quickly. I suggest you move your question to the main page at WP:FT/N. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 20:20, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

(moved here from talk page Nomen Nescio^{Gnothi seauton} 21:16, 2 January 2008 (UTC))

Fringe is often defined as at the edge or outside of the mainstream or prevailing view. Mainstream is typically seen as the most popular view, but I don't think that's necessarily always true. Take the debate on creationism for example. In America we have a large portion of the population who subscribe to the Christian religion and statistics show that apparently there are more people here that don't believe in evolution than those who do. The prevailing view, however, the one that wins out, is that evolution should be taught versus creationism. I don't think it's always a numbers thing, and instead should be looked at as which view is more dominant. I don't know which is in waterboarding, but I can give you a hypothetical example that might help. If there are more military experts who do not feel that waterboarding is a form of torture, but waterboarding is illegal and people have been prosecuted for doing it, then the prevailing view is that waterboarding is a form of torture despite that not being the popular view. I don't know if any of that is actually the case in waterboarding, it's just an example of what I'm talking about. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 22:58, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

This entire debate (over whether waterboarding is torture or not) is not really FRINGE. Both views have been expressed by multiple mainstream sources. This is a debate that is taking place within the mainstream and not on the Fringe. Blueboar (talk) 13:48, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

There is an issue that the term "torture" is defined through humanistic rather than materialistic constraints. The key here is the legal definition and precedent: if courts have ruled waterboarding to be "torture" and no court has ruled to the contrary, then you are in business for applying WP:FRINGE to the idea that waterboarding is not torture, for example. ScienceApologist (talk) 14:52, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

You mean, from the POV of the US courts. It is still an international debate. Nigel Barristoat (talk) 14:59, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

in fringe theories along the lines of "Troy was in Britain", it is neither the meaning of "Troy" nor of "Britain" that is under dispute, but the actual claim. What we have here is political hand-waving surrounding the term "torture", not fringe claims about what waterboarding is or is not. In this sense, this isn't about waterboarding at all, but about hte propagandistic uses of terms like "torture". We had a similar case involving "genocide" before. dab (𒁳) 16:18, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

In '67, prominent British philosopher Bertrand Russell convened the Russell Tribunal in Stockholm that was critical of US war actions. Numerous other prominent persons for instance Dr. Benjamin Spock were also outspoken critics of US foreign policy. No doubt the US government had a definite political interest in marginalizing such viewpoints by presenting them as "fringe", but our interest is remaining neutral, since the Russell Tribunal et. al certainly represented a significant POV at the time. Things in the world today have not changed much for the better since then, so naturally the dispute continues. Nigel Barristoat (talk) 16:33, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

One of the problems at Waterboarding is that one group of editors seems to think that any questioning that involves the use of water is both waterboarding and torture, since they can find many sources that do this confounding, while others object to this confounding and want the article to be about the specific (if vague) topic of waterboarding. htom (talk) 17:38, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

This content dispute contains issues for NPOV, RS, V and a host of other policies and guidelines, but not one for WP:FRINGE. The idea that Waterboarding is torture is simply not a Fringe theory... and neither is the idea that it might not be torture. These are both opinions that are discussed heavily by mainstream media, in the political arena, by religious leaders, etc. etc. etc. People may (and do) disagree as to whether waterboarding is or is not a form of torture... but there is nothing even remotely FRINGE about the debate. OK... The Waterboarding of Bigfoot by Illuminati Space Aliens to discover whether he was the second gunman on the grassy noll, might be fringe... but not the topic in general. I realize that the various parties to the dispute would like to be able to point to a Wikipedia Policy to back their particular view point... but this simply is not the right policy to point to. Blueboar (talk) 17:57, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Clearly my question was too vague. Confronted with a dispute consisting of 150+ sourced consensus against 2-5 people being unable take a position, does the 5- side fall within WP:FRINGE? Nomen Nescio^{Gnothi seauton} 18:17, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Not necessarily. In this specific case, no. Neither side in the dispute falls under WP:Fringe... because the entire topic itself simply isn't a WP:Fringe issue. What you are discussing is more properly a question of weight, two legitimate points of view that have an uneven number of adhearants. Blueboar (talk) 18:54, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Why isn't it a fringe issue if the scholarly opinion on the matter is fairly clear? (I know nothing of the issue, but I get the sense that this is yet another instance of a lively "popular" debate being mistaken for scholarly disagreement. We can't use the "debate in media" to gauge if an issue is settled among experts. Lots of things are debated publicly about which the experts see little need for debate. Could that be the case here?) futurebird (talk) 19:12, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, for one thing there isn't a theory involved here. Waterboarding isn't a theory, nor is torture. Whether waterboarding is a form of torture is not a theory... it is a point of view. And while published scholarly opinion may lean heavily in favor of a particular POV on the issue... you also have to take into account non-scholarly published opinion (such as political opinion, the opinion of the media, etc.) This isn't just a scholarly issue. It isn't Fringe to adhear to one view or the other... and it isn't a Fringe theory to state view either. Blueboar (talk) 20:05, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

(conflict)The problem (well, part of the problem) is that many of the 150 sources confound waterboarding with other water tortures, and so it may not be that they are actually talking about waterboarding (whatever waterboarding is; the definition of that seems to have changed several times over the last fifty years, but there are many other water tortures as well.) Since there are these many different things swept up in this popular confounded "waterboarding" it is only natural for people who know particulars about the things swept up into it to have differing ideas, it is not so much fringe as it is confusion. htom (talk) 19:22, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

←This is not an issue of WP:FRINGE, which applies to fringe theories of science, including social and political sciences. The policy that covers the issue you asked about is WP:NPOV, and in particular the section on undue weight, found here: WP:UNDUE.

After reviewing the article, my first impression was that the coverage space given to people saying it's not torture is out of proportion, because the vast majority of sources say that it is torture. But then I saw the poll that found 29% of Americans polled did not think it's a form of torture. Wow, that's an eye-opener! So I read the article about the poll, on CNN's website. Clearly it's a reliable source, so with 30% that's not a tiny minority, it's a significant minority and their views are relevant to the article in some way. But it should be in proportion - and, as someone above mentioned, it should only be in the part of the article about policy/legal debate.

There's no dout that the majority of sources defining it as torture among scientists and academics turns out to be much larger than 70%, so the minority view among the population in general that it's not torture should not receive undue weight. If you need stronger references, try using Google Books and Google Scholar, with search terms like "Waterboarding +torture +history" and other combinations. Instead of leaving the references on this to the popular press or political magazines, find some scholars to make it clear that there is no question about it being a form of torture, in any forum other than political debates where it is not truly a debate about the truth of what waterboarding is, the debate there is actually about whether or not the method can continue to be used. The only way it can be used is if it's not called "torture"; that's a clouding technique being used in the public forum and does nto apply to the actual definition of the procedure. That's why I suggest finding scholars discussing this from outside the present day policy arguments.

Here's a few sources I found that may be helpful - there are many more in the searches:

• NPR analysis
• google books Democracy in Chile: The Legacy of September 11, 1973
• google books The Phenomenon of Torture: Readings and Commentary
• google books Human Rights Watch World Report 2006

If the pages with the details don't come up in the link, just search for the term inside the book and they will appear. Apparently in Latin America, the call the technique "the Submarine". Good luck with the article. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 19:31, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

The NPR Report you list above is one of those that confounds waterboarding with water cure. htom (talk) 19:41, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

At some point, the harping on confounding becomes nitpicking. While is appropriate for Wikipedia to carefully disambiguate, it is not our place to discard sources simply because they haven't done as good of a job researching as we have. The standard for Wikipedia is verifiability and not truth, after all. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:50, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

At some point, the use of reliable but inaccurate sources becomes WP:SYN. htom (talk) 20:13, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Not really. It may generate problems with verifiability, but it's not original research. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:28, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

This should be easy to resolve, in theory. Simply state: "Waterboarding is considered by many groups to be a form of torture, though some have defended its use as a legitimate interrogation tactic." Of course, as Homer Simpson once pointed out, communism works in theory. MastCell ^Talk 21:06, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I would love for it to be so simple, but I don't know if that would fly at this point. Each conversation there now upon reading them can be summed up as d'oh. I can only imagine the state it will be in by November if water boarding stays a hot potato. Lawrence Cohen 21:16, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

It should be noted that this issue has been accepted by ArbCom. — BQZip01 — ^talk 05:42, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

The Bell

I've nominated this article about an alleged Nazi antigravity experiment for deletion. If sufficent notability could be asserted (I'm doubting this for the moment), a sober rewrite would be a fine alternative. Note that the article started quite opposite to its current state, but the reference on which that version rested is a dead link now. --Pjacobi (talk) 00:55, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

V.T. Rajshekar and Dalit Voice

I was involved in these articles a while ago when there was some very intense POV-pushing by a now-banned sockpuppeteer, but I never quite felt I knew what I was doing. One is a BLP of the editor of the other. Both really need attention from more editors who understand how to deal with very controversial issues. Dalit Voice probably qualifies as an extremist source, so should be "handled with care" even in the article about itself. I'm not quite sure what that care should be. It is incredibly easy to trawl through its online archive and pull out statements on all kinds of issues, much harder to do that in any systematic or balanced way. Itsmejudith (talk) 10:18, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

yes, i recall those issues a while back. generally this is not so much fringe issues, as reliable source and misuse of sources issues. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 17:40, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll ask for comment on the RS noticeboard. If anyone would like to cast an eye over it I'd appreciate it. Itsmejudith (talk)

Oh dear. I'll have a look. Relata refero (talk) 17:07, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Cydonia Mensae

Some fringe theories are being added at Cydonia Mensae. I've reverted it twice. Bubba73 (talk), 16:10, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Peter Duesberg references

Peter Duesberg is a scientist who claims that HIV is harmless and not the cause of AIDS. Needless to say, this view is universally rejected by the scientific community. We already give an undue amount of weight to his fringe views on Wikipedia (see Duesberg hypothesis, Peter Duesberg, and AIDS reappraisal). Recently, Eye.earth (talk · contribs) has been adding references to Duesberg's book Inventing the AIDS Virus, published by a small conspiracy-driven publishing house, across several articles. On Paul Gann, Duesberg's book is being used to refute the cause of death given by, among others, the New York Times ([5]). The same user is rewriting parts of our article on AZT in an impenetrable fashion, citing Duesberg's book as a source ([6]). Can I ask for some outside views and/or eyes, as this is clearly not a reliable source nor particuarly WP:WEIGHTy, yet is being used across several articles to contradict reliable sources or support questionable scientific pronouncements? MastCell ^Talk 00:52, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Take it to the Reliable Sources noticeboard (WP:RSN) and ask themn to declare i an unreliable source. Then you can simply revert additions that are only justified by it. Adam Cuerden ^talk 01:19, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Freemasonry

There is currently a discussion about whether the existing content regarding Freemasonry may be strongly biased in favor of one particular form of Freemasonry at Talk:Freemasonry#Systemic Bias?. Any party who has any interest in the subject is certainly more than welcome to express opinions there. Thank you. Also, there is a matter of some weight regarding this and all such societies which, by definition, keep their information confidential. How reliable, if at all, can sources from outside an organization, or sources who have since left the organization for some purpose or other, be seen as being? This is particularly important if the only other extant sources are the organizations themselves, or their adherents. Any input on that matter would be welcome as well. John Carter (talk) 15:11, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Kwanzaa is a racist holiday

The is an on-going dispute over if the view, espoused by Front Page Magazine that Kwanzaa "is a racist holiday" is notable or fringe. Thus far, no solid mainstream sources have been offered, but now there is an NPOV tag on the article because of this. futurebird (talk) 18:02, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Bah, not Ann Coulter again! That wretched woman causes far more trouble on Wikipedia than she's worth. Humbug!

More seriously - shrug. None of the sources that are directly cited would appear to be especially good ones, but that's nothing unusual. The article doesn't appear particularly POV, it just needs better sourcing. Coulter's opinion is worthy of inclusion in the criticism section, yes: she's a highly notable figure. Front Page Magazine - hmm, certainly not the world's most reliable source, and the opinion published there is doubtless fringe, but it may also be notable. I'll remove the POV tag and leave a note somewhere about improved sourcing. Moreschi ^{If you've written a quality article...} 12:09, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

While Coulter is notable for other stuff, her views on Kwanzaa may not be notable. Notability is in relation to the topic of the article, in this case Kwanzaa, not Coulter. Would this sentence make sense: "It is noteworthy that Ann Coulter criticizes Kwanzaa as being a racist holiday". No, not really in my opinion. Just being famous doesn't make one's views notable. They have to be notable to the topic at hand. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 21:52, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Coulter strikes me as just one of the most conspicuous of a large set of US far-right windbags. She has her own WP article, to which she's welcome. Within something purporting to be an encyclopedia, why must the article on her every target write up her nutty view about it? -- Hoary (talk) 12:55, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Nooo idea. Still, she's a notable US far-right windbag, and something's got to go in the jolly old criticism section. Wikipedia has worse problems than Ann Coulter over-representation :) Cheers, Moreschi ^{If you've written a quality article...} 13:00, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Looks like someone is wikilawyering in order to insert personal views onto an article.--Jersey Devil (talk) 16:13, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for posting this. This clearly violates WP:FRINGE and WP:NPOV. Frontpage magazine is not a "maisntream source," but fits the definition of "extremist sources of a political nature." Nevermind. Noting the political criticism of Kwanzaa as a racist holiday does not by itself violate WP:FRINGE provided that it's simply acknowledged as merely "criticism by Conservatives." To address possible NPOV issues, I added a lead. Zenwhat (talk) 20:47, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, Zenwhat. But, I noticed you took out Ann's name, I think it's more neutral if her ideas are attributed directly to her. Ie. Coulter writes that... blah blah blah etc. (Since she's not an expert on holidays or anything I still wonder if it's notable, but as long as we give the source properly it's not that big of a deal provided we don't give undue weight to these things.) futurebird (talk) 21:17, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

As much as Coulter is a moron, she's pretty influential, such that saying, "Coulter writes," would unduly marginalize her views. Generally that's a good thing, of course, but it violates Wikipedia policy. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 10:24, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

RfC

I hate to ask, but a lot of this RfC is dealing with actions taken back before this noticeboard was created, when battling fringe theories could be an even more lonely and thankless job. So I'd appreciate commentary on Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Adam_Cuerden Adam Cuerden ^talk 09:37, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

The Energy Machine of Joseph Newman

This article right now seems to go a bit overboard in attempting to describe the pseudoscience of this instrument. Some help would be appreciated. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:18, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

hmmm, the article is a bit rough....I don't have time to look into it today, but I'll try to check back and look again. It does appear that some folks are working on it the last few days, hopefully they'll make some headway also. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 17:14, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Fringe website used as a mainstream source

This is copied from Talk:Force

The link to an online copy of Maxwell's A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field points to a website run by an over-unity zero-point energy group. Admittedly, they are simply hosting a copy of Maxwell's treatise, but still... bad. I'll see if I can find a better site to link to tonight. At worst, we can remove the links altogether, since it's the book that's the reference, not the website. — BillC ^talk 19:19, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Good catch, Bill! We should also remove all the links elsewhere at Wikipedia. Here's a place to help us find them all: [7]. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:47, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Spontaneous human combustion

This article is a mess. (No flames, please.) Raymond Arritt (talk) 02:11, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Hey, at least it says that "The possibility that spontaneous human combustion takes place is remote." Take that, Brittanica! MastCell ^Talk 02:39, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

god bless america....that's quite a treatise on the subject....--Rocksanddirt (talk) 07:31, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Request for comments

I was toying with the idea of running for admin and since I often participate in discussions about fringe topics, I was hoping to get some feedback on my editing. Anyone interested can participate in my RfC at User:Nealparr/RfC. Thank you in advance. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 06:36, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Pre-Columbian fringe garden

From Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact sprouts another voluminous collection of articles all of the "rejected by the vast majority of scholars" kind.

• Pre-Columbian Africa-Americas contact theories
• Olmec alternative origin speculations ("speculations" actually as part of the article title!)
• Timeline of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact -- note entries like "3500 BC - Japanese arrive at Ecuador after being blown off course" labelled with "A" for "ahistorical". Why do we need "ahistorical" list entries?? (fixed, c.f. history)
• Solutrean hypothesis
• Pre-Columbian Islamic contact theories
• Archaeology and the Book of Mormon (weighs 112k!)

mind, there is nothing wrong with mentioning this stuff, but we should not allow such non-issues to sprawl like that. A succinct Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact would be more than sufficient. Somehow, it appears Wikipedia is a free webhost for fringe authors after all, just as long as they stash a "rejected by almost everybody... nonetheless, alternative historians maintain their convictions" somewhere. I don't have the heart to tackle this, but it is a problem. dab (𒁳) 12:02, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Nazi UFOs (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

In 1939 the SS produced two prototypes of an EMG powered flying saucer called Haunebu I with a diameter of 24.95 meters and able to reach a speed of 4,800 km/h...
<eleland/talkedits> 19:45, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Help with an article

We meed people willing to push back against New Age psuedoscience pushers at Talk:Consciousness causes collapse. Thanks. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:08, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

quantum quackery, eh? That's soo 1980s :p dab (𒁳) 20:16, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

On first glance, the article in its 20:26 9 January revision looks reasonable. What exactly are the woo-woo crowd trying to push? <eleland/talkedits> 20:27, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Mostly, they're trying to argue against calling this subject pseudoscience. I've been fighting, but they're getting more tenacious. See, for example, User talk:ScienceApologist#Consciouness causes collapse. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:32, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

(i) Don't take the bait. (ii) It's now on my watchlist. Raymond Arritt (talk) 20:36, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

The issue seems fairly straightforward to me. But I'm often wrong. : ) SA has added this sentence: "This interpretation is generally derided in the scientific community as being pseudoscience." WP:RS since says: "Claims of consensus must be sourced. The claim 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." It would be great if someone could find a source; otherwise, it seems in violation of the guidelines. SA gives as a source a book, but doesn't cite a page where the authors say that there's a consensus. TimidGuy (talk) 20:40, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Victor Stenger has written in depth on this issue, but he's not "the scientific community". It might be better to say something like, "The hypothesis is contrary to both the dominant Copenhagen interpretation of the quantum mechanics equations and the minority Many worlds interpretation. Physicist Victor Stenger states that 'quantum consciousness has about as much substance as the aether from which it is composed.'" <eleland/talkedits> 20:54, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

In addition, even the quacks can't be ignored when they call for proper interpretation of WP:V. I don't see where the source SA cited directly supports his statement. <eleland/talkedits> 20:55, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Quacks have this tendency to not read sources but rather look for direct quotes and then make proclamations about direct attribution when it is painfully obvious that any reliable source that deals with their idiocy of choice is disputing it. They won't allow summarizing statements that are the backbone of this encyclopedia because they are afraid to have the extreme marginalization of the idea presented plainly in the article. This isn't about "interpretation" of WP:V. This is about playing wordgames and hiding behind citations to avoid simple reporting of facts. If you cannot see where the citation "directly" supports the statement then you too are missing the forest for the trees. ScienceApologist (talk) 21:09, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

If you mean to say that extracting "scientific community thinks it's bunk" from the cited source requires extensive interpretation and exegesis, I'm afraid that the source is inadequate, for Wikipedia's purposes, to support the statement. I've faced the same arguments you're making now from User:Biaothanatoi trying to push a conspiratorial POV on Satanic ritual abuse, I'm afraid. <eleland/talkedits> 21:28, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

No, no exegesis required. Just plain reading of the issue. Physics encounters consciousness. Attributing wavefunction collapse to consciousness is directly disputed in chapter 14, for example. ScienceApologist (talk) 21:52, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) I don't really feel like getting involved in the conversation at the talk page, but I'd like to hear from other editors if "Alternative theoretical formulations" clause of Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/FAQ#Pseudoscience applies to this case, because it seems to be an idea seriously considered by some physicists, and that would make some applications of the idea pseudoscience (mysticism, etc.), but not the idea itself. Call it a "curiosity killed Schrödinger's Cat" kind of question. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 21:13, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Is this issue against the Bohm_interpretation? I don't think really the scientific community has anything to do with an article on a pure hypothesis. Science is usually about empirical findings, and must present this in order to falsify it. If they can't, the idea should go uncriticized. Benjaminbruheim (talk) 00:48, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe this issue is not about Bohm but about frivolous scientists-metaphysicians. Martin Gardner wrote a good article on them.[8]. On the other hand, the Satanic ritual abuse article really needs a check-up by skeptical editors. In the past (I have not read it since the last year) it has been hijacked by conspiracy-theories buffs. —Cesar Tort 02:18, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I mean that alternative interpretations, such as Bohm, does not require a wave function collapse and thus can falsify the concept. But, yes Nealparr, this aspect pops up whenever someone tries to talk about how deep quantum physics is. Instead of trying to frame this as pseudoscience it should rather be stressed as a hypothesis. I have noticed that New Age people might take the hypothesis literally and I blame the media for this. If I understand correctly the wave of crazy theories in quantum theory is a consequence of the copenhagen interpretation having problematic consequences. These concepts, Schroedingers cat, branching universe etc, are not a direct result of empirical evidence. However they are not pseudosciences because they aren't trying to pose as hard science. Personally I feel this hypothesis is silly because it makes too many assumptions about the nature of quantum reality. And I am pretty sure some physicists have a better argument against it than me.

While I am on it, where is there a proper discussion on the term pseudoscience? It affects the policies and I can't see there is a clear consensus on what it really entails. Personally I feel it should be replaced with "not science" Benjaminbruheim (talk) 16:00, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

A bit of inconsequential discussion going on right now on ScienceApologist's talk page. TimidGuy (talk) 16:16, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Nice article Caser, btw. Jives with my ranting too. --Benjaminbruheim (talk) 16:11, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Water memory sidebox

Does this even reach the level of "Disputed science", like the sidebox prominently labels it? Adam Cuerden ^talk 09:50, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

the problem is with {{Infobox Pseudoscience}}. I am doubtful about this template. Can we treat pseudoscience as a topic of taxonomy, neatly labelling it with infoboxes? If we want to use this template, it should say "pseudoscience". But perhaps the template should be deleted, or turned into something else? dab (𒁳) 12:29, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Also, what about Wikipedia:WikiProject Pseudoscience? It doesn't give any parentage. Shouldn't it be merged with Wikipedia:WikiProject Rational Skepticism, and perhaps with Wikipedia:WikiProject Alternative Views and Wikipedia:WikiProject Paranormal? Wikiprojects are supposed as a platform for editors interested in the same group of topics, they are not supposed to separate these editors sorted by their opinion or point of view. dab (𒁳) 12:34, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I've deleted the sidebox. Let's see if that sticks. Adam Cuerden ^talk 06:37, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Guilty until proven innocent!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:September_11%2C_2001_attacks#Assumtions_are_unethical_and_a_disgrace_to_acedemics_which_use_wikipedia

Why is it that I have such difficulty trying to get these members to understand that it is unacademic to allow the article in discussion to assume the guilt of a certain part even though no court case has ever proved so? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Trek mambo (talk • contribs) 01:21, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Because your contention is irrelevant to the article and the point of view you're pressing violates WP:WEIGHT. And looking at the article talk page shows you're about a millimetre from being blocked for disruptive editing, so you might want to take some time for reflection instead of pressing the issue in the manner you've been doing. Raymond Arritt (talk) 01:34, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Penta Water

...God, this article is AWFUL. Adam Cuerden ^talk 04:58, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

When cruising around for background on water clusters I found this nice site.[9] It has a great quote:

The fact is that none of these views has any significant support in the scientific communities of chemistry, biochemistry, or physiology, nor are they even considered worthy of debate. The only places you are likely to see these views advocated are in literature (and on Web sites) intended to promote the sale of these products to consumers in the notoriously credulous "alternative" health and "dietary supplement" market.

It was specifically about the water cluster nonsense, but it could apply to any number of woo-woo nostrums promoted on Wikipedia. Raymond Arritt (talk) 05:20, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

"Adding Penta to Pap smear test samples increases the accuracy of cervical cancer screening"?! Please, let me have a word with the IRB which approved that particular study. Parenthetically, we should really have a bot which automatically slaps an {{original research}} tag on any article containing the words "It is important to note..." MastCell ^Talk 05:47, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Results 1 - 10 of about 4,620 from en.wikipedia.org for "it is important to note". Raymond Arritt (talk) 05:52, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I think the company may now be dead, many of the links are dead. I removed some sourced claims but there's a ton of work to do on this one. Mostly I think it should be trimmed, there's just too much weight given to the "theory" futurebird (talk) 06:17, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I've cut the two pages on questionable studies - they're mentioned and briefly discussed elsewhere in the article anyway, and it was just giving undue weight to them. Adam Cuerden ^talk 13:00, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I did a little bit also, the whole thing is poorly written and full of unencyclopedic commentary. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 16:01, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

It appears that the UK operation, at least, has been shut down as a result of regulatory action ([10]). Presumably there is still a US branch, unless it has died an unnoticed (dare I say non-notable?) death... MastCell ^Talk 00:05, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

US occupation of Taiwan fringe?

On the articles Political status of Taiwan and Legal status of Taiwan, there are a series of external links to sites that argue that Taiwan is technically an occupied territory of the United States. In the political status article, a section describes the attempt by certain individuals to have the US judiciary declare it as such. Now, I think the argument is clever but wrong (when one considers oppsing arguments it becomes obvious :-) ). The question is to what degree is it fringe and to what extent are the links producing weight issues. (A few months ago, I queried the people at WikiProject Taiwan, who noted that the links belong only at the political and legal status pages.) Their sheer number though still seems to produce weight issues. (1) Should the links exist at all? and (2) if so, should they be trimmed? Advice appreciated.Ngchen (talk) 05:21, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Info-gap decision theory

A new user is trying to push his view that info-gap is completely wrong, even though he agrees that his view is a minority opinion, supported by a single paper which he wrote himself. There is currently an RfC about this, but there seems to be fairly little interest in the article right now. I would appreciate another voice telling him that WP is not intended for POV-pushing. Thanks. --Zvika (talk) 05:57, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Mitt Romney

There is ongoing discussion on the talk page of the above page, as part of an ongoing RfC, regarding the amount of weight which should be given to the subject's adherence to the Mormon faith, and at least in my eyes some very serious questions raised about how much material should be included. One party has already indicated that the article should include references to Mormon underwear and indicate which planet the subject will, according to Mormon doctrine, possibly rule in a future life. Any reasonable input would be more than welcome. John Carter (talk) 14:16, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I've commented. Basically, it may be appropriate to mention that it's been a political issue, because I don't doubt it is, and to set out major talking points used in discussing it. However, we must take great care to attribute and present it neutrally. Adam Cuerden ^talk 18:44, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

This is a weird message board for this. I think WP:BLP/N might be a more appropriate forum. Cool Hand Luke 09:19, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Agree with all the above, except that suggestions such as Mormon underwear aren't seriously meant, I think. It's hard to read the talk page because people keep pasting in again old comments, and because of a general lack of civility. That said, the article isn't that bad. I changed 'Mormon' to 'LDS' a couple of places. Not that the word 'Mormon' can be avoided, but the ones I know generally call themselves LDS and don't much care for the word 'Mormon'. No point, for example, in saying that a non-Mormon isn't welcome in LDS temples when non-member says it as well.

Essentially the talk page shows disagreement on relatively minor points, and it looks to me like the eager participants can keep each other in check. The trickiest part IMO is wanting to state that Romney is out of the race before he himself has said that. --Hordaland (talk) 13:32, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Anti-Christian discrimination

The article is an absolute mess. Roughly 90% of the article is nonsense and I know veracity isn't Wikipedia's standard, WP:RS and WP:V are. But of course, since these claims are false, they either aren't cited or poorly cited.

Examples:

• Discrimination is not the same as prejudice, the lead (and much of the article) treats them as if they are.
• The article invokes a slippery slope: "When anti-Christian discrimination becomes systemic, the result is the persecution of Christians."
• The terms Christianophobia and Christophobia are not NPOV nor are they widely used.
• The characterization of the terms Bible beater, Bible basher, Bible-thumper, and Jesus Freak are "hate speech," is original research.
• "Some elements of the black metal scene declare open hatred of Christianity"
• "The persecution of Christians is the religious persecution that Christians have endured as a consequence of professing their faith, both historically and in the current era."
• "The ruling Communist Party maintains tight control over all religions in China."
• Anti-Christian_discrimination#United_Kingdom
• Anti-Christian_discrimination#United_States
• Anti-Christian_discrimination#Canada
• Further reading:
  • David Limbaugh. Persecution: How Liberals are Waging War Against Christianity
  • Marvin Olasky. Prodigal Press: The Anti-Christian Bias of American News Media

Who wrote this article? Pat Robertson? I suspect this article was pretty decent in the past. Somebody just needs to dig through its history, find it, and then revert all this silliness.

For one thing, the article fails to note that many claim that so-called "anti-christian discrimination" is invoked when freedom of religion is upheld. You work at Macy's and you don't say, "Merry Christmas," and you're automatically a bigot. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 10:36, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

It's good for a laugh. --Hordaland (talk) 17:40, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

The article is not that great. I fact tagged a bunch, and removed some of the commentary, fixed some of the links intended to be refs, but the whole think needs some work. A start would be to either find sources or delete any of the unreferenced material, then see what's left. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 17:49, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I renamed the article Anti-Christian sentiment. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 22:55, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Mainstream science is 'dogmatic', 'materialistic', 'authoritarian'

Fruitful discussion seems to have stalled on the What the Bleep Do We Know!? article, and I'm looking for some suggestions as to what to do. We're getting into what I think are strange arguments about scientific philosophy (mainstream science being labeled authoritarian, among other things) regarding a relative straightforward content disagreement. We've put out RfCs to relevant wikiprojects, including totally orthogonal groups (wp:film, for example), but there hasn't been much real outside involvement. Any thoughts for how to proceed? I don't know if this is the best place to ask this question, but it's a place I'm familiar with so I thought I'd bring it up here. Antelan ^talk 19:14, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm actually in favor of deleting the article and salting the namespace.Kww (talk) 20:39, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

That's a funny idea but it won't work, it would be resurrected as What the ^%@$!# Do We Know!?...

Seriously though, I've been watching that talk page and have been having trouble even understanding what the dispute is. The artcle lead seems OK as it is now - it describes the film, says it's supported by new age people, and that scientists have criticized it as pseudoscience. Maybe I'm missing something obvious.... but what's the problem with that intro? --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 23:19, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I wrote much of the scientific part of the current lead, so I'm biased... I would try to summarize the arguments against, but to my mind, the arguments against keep changing, so I'm not sure I can faithfully recap those arguments. Antelan ^talk 23:37, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

In a nutshell: do we have sufficiently strong sources that we are able to simply say "What the Bleep is a movie that misrepresents science" and still satisfy WP:NPOV and WP:V? Or do we have to refer to it as a movie that has been "criticized for misrepresenting science"? Neither side cares much for the current lead ... when the RFCs went out, I lobbied pretty strongly for just freezing it, no matter what it said, so we could criticize a stable target. It's moot, now ... after ScienceApologist's last flameout, it's protected. Actually, Antelan, the arguments never change ... we've just been running in a circle for 12 weeks or so.Kww (talk) 23:42, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I forgot the sub-argument (which probably is the base argument, when you come down to it): is the article governed by the standards of science articles (where we are fairly rigid about whose say counts, and avoiding statements that give credence to fringe positions), or is it governed by the standards of pop culture articles, where Roger Ebert and Richard Dawkins have equally valid viewpoints?Kww (talk) 23:46, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I think the case could be made for either, depending on the tenor of the article. This one clearly draws heavily from both, and should comply with both sets of guidelines where appropriate. I might have missed some of the arguments since I had an exam earlier this week, but are people there actually saying that only certain guidelines apply there? Antelan ^talk 23:50, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Dreadstar has repeatedly said that WP:FRINGE doesn't apply, because its not an article about science.Kww (talk) 00:04, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Seriously, Kww can have most everything he wants besides saying that Bleep mis-represents science without any attribution. That is the sticking point, in addition to phrasing and arrangement that just underhandedly tries to bias. But basically, that is the main dispute. ——Martin^phi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 01:27, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, well, I forgot he wants to call it dirty names- can't have that either (: ——Martin^phi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 01:31, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, and to that end, Kww and others have provided RSes that have described the movie as pseudoscience and used other language to get that point across. What is the sticking point? Antelan ^talk 01:45, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't make the claims pseudoscience. It merely makes the movie accused of pseudoscience. Per paranormal arbcom such controversies should not make a conclusion, but rather be described. Benjaminbruheim (talk) 01:55, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying. Can you elaborate? Antelan ^talk 01:57, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

The movie is controversial, and wikipedia should abstain from making a conclusion to the controversy. Claiming that the movie is plain out lying, as some editors want to state, is completely POV. So even if some of the sources are considered by some to be authoritarian, they are actors in the controversy rather than arbiters of truth. Don't you see the problem?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Benjaminbruheim (talk • contribs)

The movie is controversial. The scientific claims are pseudoscientific, etc., as has been well sourced. That you consider the Physical and Chemical societies to be authoritarian is a problem that you have with the system, not a problem with the sources. Wikipedia is not a place to right great wrongs. This isn't the place to solve that problem. Antelan ^talk 02:40, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I just think a consensus will only exist as long as these are correctly attributed. Actually I think it would be better to focus on the criticism of specific claims in the movie instead of making sweeping statements. That some reviewer over at P&CS thinks it is pseudoscience is still an opinion of the reviewer, not a product of scientific inquiry. The movie is about unknowns in science after all. Benjaminbruheim (talk) 03:11, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I'm with you on one thing: I have long argued that we should attribute these statements, but Dreadstar keeps arguing that making such attribution in the lead makes for an inappropriately long lead, nevermind that the lead already disproportionately underrepresents the criticism section of the article. Antelan ^talk 03:15, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Good. I think the lead shouldn't contain more than an outline of the general criticism since there is really not much apart from "accusations of pseudoscience and claims that are unlikely according to mainstreams science" which is the problems. The criticism section could easily be cut down to only be about notable specific criticism instead of overall slashing of the movie, since these are the most relevant to the reader. But yeah, I think we can reach consensus once we move the "high-level" debate out of the article and refactor. :) Benjaminbruheim (talk) 03:31, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Let's keep our terms straight. I have no objection to citation: i.e. "WTB is a 2004 film that misrepresents science [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]". I have have objections to attribution: "WTB is a 2005 film that is criticized by some scientists as misrepresenting science".Kww (talk) 03:25, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

In my mind, the balanced position involves us stating which organizations have published articles stating that it misrepresents science/etc. This is what Dreadstar has disagreed with, which in my opinion has driven us to two extremes. Antelan ^talk 03:27, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Great, next up we could start editing Fahrenheit 9/11 to state that "F9/11 is a film that misrepresents the WTC attack" ... Should be easy to source that. Benjaminbruheim (talk) 03:36, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

And if this were about Fahrenheit 911, I would respond to that after carefully looking over the sources. Antelan ^talk 03:40, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Hehe, sorry for the rethoric, but I just think it would be the best for the concensus to attribute, instead of doing what kww suggests, which would pretty much be WP:POINT and making conclusion on basis of an active debate. Is attributing it so bad? It would be exactly the same in meaning! The article as it is already gives very little credence to the theories and states a minimal amount of actual points the movie raises.Benjaminbruheim (talk) 03:47, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Like I said, I've been advocating for that stance, and I've been getting shot down because people don't want this material in the lead, period. Antelan ^talk 03:49, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree it should be in the lead, because it is a notable exception. Not in the description sentence tho. Otherwise I agree with the majority of the current involved editors. Now if the overarching debates could be closed and moved somewhere else. Benjaminbruheim (talk) 04:04, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it's lead-sentence worthy, either. But the others disagree that this type of wording should be in the lead at all. They argue that "scientists have criticized" is sufficient, whereas several of us think that it is superior to say "X group says that the movie promulgates pseudoscience" or whatever the source says. We can't close the discussion, because others still disagree. Antelan ^talk 04:08, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

That's the racetrack we're on: write it my way, many say it's too blunt; write it with full citations, and people argue that it's too long for a lead; write it the "some scientists say" way, and it's too vague and mealy-mouthed.Kww (talk) 04:10, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

What dirty words have I encouraged using, Martinphi? Also, Wikipedia makes statements all the time. No one wants to say "What the Bleep is considered by some to be a film", and no one but me argued that we couldn't describe it as a "documentary" without attribution.Kww (talk) 02:13, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

The sticking point is WP:ATT. A sentence like "Bleep has been criticized as pseudoscience by scientists such as X and by other scientific reviewers" would be fine. The entire problem is those wishing to make absolute statements. But we can't do that here.

Kww: I meant words like "balderdash." Read WP:ATT your other questions are directly and explicitly addressed there. ——Martin^phi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 05:43, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Believe me, Martin, I've read it repeatedly. Please show me the part that says that statements to which all reliable and credible sources agree cannot be treated as facts.Kww (talk) 13:15, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I seriously think editors would do well to credit their readers with some intelligence. For all of the versions under discussion, it is clear that any readers who haven't their head stuck in a bucket of molecularly altered water will realize that this movie is so much shiny nonsense. Any one who refuses to admit as much, will do so no matter what our article says. dab (𒁳) 11:35, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

i agree with Dab. folks need to lighten up on labels, just present the information and let the gentle reader think for him or her self. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 16:52, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that some useful information has been removed from the article under dubious circumstances. We are discussing it at Talk:What the Bleep Do We Know!?#Here's a better version. ScienceApologist (talk) 13:43, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Guys, sheesh. I've linked prominently to Ramtha and JZ Knight, both useful articles, what more do you need? Our readers are not fools - we provide with the relevant links/info and they will work this one out. No need to unduly strain the point. Moreschi ^{If you've written a quality article...} 21:53, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Potassium dichromate

Lots of attempts to push a pilot study into this article, claiming it proves homeopathy works, after it got rejected over at the better monitored Homeopathy. Adam Cuerden ^talk 07:34, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Happened years ago. Never implemented anywhere. No impact on clinical practice. No currently published studies cite it or confirm it. Small sample size. Not interested. Antelan ^talk 07:38, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Still on your mission then, Adam [11] [12], still pushing your POV. The study published in Chest journal is entirely reputable and notable and should be kept. It does not attempt to prove homeopathy works, as you allege, it merely shows Potassium dichromate has been studied in a trial and the result published in a reputable mainstream medical journal. You clearly have no idea how difficult that article would have been to get published, or how rigorously the study would have been reviewed in order even to get published? Yet again you have no idea what you are talking about and the study should remain in the Potassium dichromate article. Yet again you have showed that you have no remorse and have learned nothing from this RfC or the arbcom. Peter morrell 08:07, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Peter, but your idea of proper behaviour means "sit back and allow fringe theories to spread throughout Wikipedia". I'm not going to learn that, sorry. Adam Cuerden ^talk 15:09, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I am a little concerned that homeopathy features so prominently in the article. Is it perhaps receiving too much weight? How do other articles on this compound compare (I'm sure the ACS information does not include anything on pseudoscience, for example). ScienceApologist (talk) 13:40, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Prominently? are you serious? 10.5 lines out of over 80 lines. That is less than 15%. I would hardly call that prominent. Peter morrell 14:08, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps it will be a more effective description if the number of letters used in discussing it as a homeopathic rememdy are diluted to a vanishingly small amount. Hal peridol (talk) 00:29, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Cheers! Tparameter (talk) 04:37, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

It's its own section. That's prominent. It may deserve, for example, to be completely excluded from this article since this is a mainstream scientific article. See WP:FRINGE. After all, even though head-on uses it, there is so little of it in head-on we probably could list thousands of other products that contain a greater amount/concentration of it. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:23, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

It would be disingenuous for us to claim that it is contained within that product if it, in fact, is not. Antelan ^talk 16:59, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

This is going again over old ground...read the edit history and talk page and you will see. Peter morrell 16:33, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Homeopathy on mainstream articles

I am going to begin a concerted effort to remove homeopathy from mainstream science articles per WP:WEIGHT and WP:FRINGE. There is no reason why we cannot have mention in pages that discuss homeopathy as a pathological science the various implications for substances they use, but for the most part, such uses do not belong on the articles' pages themselves. This is the so-called "one-way linking principle" that was first delineated in discussions of mainstream astronomy versus fringe ideas. Succinctly, it is perfectly legitimate for a fringe theory to link to a mainstream article. However, in order for a mainstream article to link to a fringe theory, it needs to be established that there is enough mainstream notice of the fringe theory in reference to the mainstream topic. In other words, in the article about onion we should not be mentioning homeopathic remedies since the vast majority of sources that have information on onions do not include homeopathic remedies in their discussions. Only in cases where homeopathy has actually been mentioned in the mainstream discussions (for example, the malaria article) should the idea be mentioned. I would appreciate any and all help I can get with this mammoth task. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:47, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Great idea. When homeopathy discussion was a significant percentage of the total article content on hair of the dog, then there is clearly a problem. Tparameter (talk) 18:56, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

seems reasonable. I would caution to err on the side of leaving a link to the relevant homeopathic article, when cutting down the overweight sections. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 20:40, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm actually doing this by looking at what links directly to homeopathy. Undoubtably, I'll miss some places that fail to wikilink to that article or wikilink to a related article. Fortunately, homeopathy has not blossomed into too large a walled garden yet and so I'm fairly confident I found most of the issues.

Also I noticed in more than a few cases people confused folk medicine with homeopathy. There may be a few instances where I mistakenly removed a reference to homeopathy when it was actually about folk medicine use. I'm inclined to think that folk medicine use is relevant for inclusion in the article because chewing on the bark of the willow tree is not the same as diluting some distilled substance past the point where any molecules of the substance are left in the solution.

ScienceApologist (talk) 20:44, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Holy cow, this kind of thing is long overdue. <eleland/talkedits> 21:53, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Can someone check out the Asthma article? Adam Cuerden ^talk 21:57, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I was looking at that article earlier today and couldn't decide what to do with it. I think there is a real danger that Wikipedia may be presenting misleading information about the efficacy of alternative medicine treatments (not just homeopathy). However, the paragraphs asserted that alternative treatments for asthma were somewhat popular and, if true, we definitely should discuss them in the article, if for no other reason that to provide accurate information about them. Perhaps you should hit up Wikipedia: WikiProject Medicine. ScienceApologist (talk) 22:13, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

well, hm, to be fair, hair of the dog is exactly the same principle as "homeopathy". Of course we don't want an entire section on homeopathy in the "hair of the dog" article, but mention of the principle of homeopathy is probably warranted. After all, it's not as if "hair of the dog" was a venerable academic mainstream topic. dab (𒁳) 22:30, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Mentioning it is fine as long as you can find a reliable source that does this. Once that's done, go ahead and write something on it. ScienceApologist (talk) 22:44, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I understand you are fed up with homeopathy. No need to WP:RS me, I wasn't going to push this. My idle observation that "hair of the dog that bit you" is an actual example of the principle of "homeopathy" stands. I am not going to allege that it is actually a good idea to treat dogbites with dog hair though. dab (𒁳) 16:37, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

The same principle as homeopathy? I think not. A nice bloody mary always helps a stubborn hangover. I'm not sure that a bloody mary diluted to 0.0001% of it's original content, then put into sugar tablets, would have the same effect. Tparameter (talk) 23:17, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

There are two things 1) homeopathy in the etymological sense, which is the same as "hair of the dog", the treatment of like with like, opposite of allopathy. And 2) homeopathy as it is usually practised, where substances are usually (but perhaps not always?) diluted to the extent that they are pure water. If homeopathy is mentioned in the hair of the dog article then this can be clarified. There must be thousands of reliable sources to cover it, e.g. handbooks of family health, textbooks for nurses. Itsmejudith (talk) 23:12, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

So, should we also add a couple-paragraph section to hair of the dog about fighting fire with fire, since it is also a remedy for a problem that has a somewhat similar solution? In a body shop, if you have silicone exposure in the shop, there may be "fisheyes" in a finished paint-job - so, you can add silicone to the paint mix before-hand to help prevent those problems. The fight fire with fire remedy is ubiquitous, which is exactly why it's cliche - but, we shouldn't have gigantic articles that list every instance of every other form of the phenomenon. Instead, each article can stand on its own. Tparameter (talk) 02:57, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

See UK National Health Service pages for a simple intro. Itsmejudith (talk) 23:16, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Related conflict of interest

the conflict of interest noticeboard. Please comment. I think this user may not be aware of WP:FRINGE and WP:NPOV issues. He has now reverted my removal of homeopathic uses for various plants and chemicals twice with the claim that such were "POV edits". The more people that can coach this user the better. ScienceApologist (talk) 00:41, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Is homeopathy pseudoscience?

copied from Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Appeals and requests for clarification

Per Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience#Generally considered pseudoscience et seq., is homeopathy generally considered pseudoscience, or just questionable science? MilesAgain (talk) 12:54, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience#Generally considered pseudoscience makes a reference to scientific versus nonscientific evaluations and treatments of the human mind where there is a great deal of uncertainty and where the term pseudoscience should not be used lightly. Homeopathy by contrast makes claims about chemistry that are illogical and have been dis-proven by science and that no scientist takes seriously. Homeopathy is clearly pseudoscience. Does ink get more ink-like if you dilute it? Does sugar-water gain calories if you add water? Is blood serum better to give as a transfusion if you add more water? When you take Vitamin C, is it more potent to dissolve in water and take less? Does gasoline for your car give more energy if you dilute it in water? Diluting a substance decreases the qualities of that substance. WAS 4.250 (talk) 13:42, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Even the article itself states (with good references) that "Claims for the efficacy of homeopathy are unsupported by the collective weight of scientific and clinical studies. Ethical concerns regarding homeopathic treatment, a lack of convincing scientific evidence supporting its efficacy, and its contradiction of basic scientific principles have caused homeopathy to be regarded as "placebo therapy at best and quackery at worst".Nergaal (talk) 14:11, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

You using a wiki article to prove a point? The article is a point of contention and a work in progress. Homeopathy is currently the subject of much research by reputable scientist. The research methodology is evolving (improving) as is common with topics worth scientific review. Anthon01 (talk) 14:15, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Your claim of "reputable scientist [sic]" conduducting research is somewhat false. What reputable studies have been done show no basis other than the placebo effect, and those that show some other benefit have major flaws (lack of control and small sample sizes to name but two) LinaMishima (talk) 14:31, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

(ec) The present article is not NPOV in the opinion of a number of editors. Homeopathy does not make claims about chemistry, contrary to WAS statement above. It is not obvious pseudoscience, it may be an alternative theoretical formulation. —Whig (talk) 14:17, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, they often do make such claims. There are entire (unreliable) journals devoted to "water memory" and "quantum" effects. If one uses the terminology of science, one must be prepared to defend oneself against it. LinaMishima (talk) 14:31, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

The claims have to do with the physical structure of water and are consistent with quantum electrodynamics. This is not chemistry, however, and as you note this is a content issue not properly resolved here. —Whig (talk) 14:39, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Um, no QED has nothing to do with water memory. This is completely bogus, and I have the benefit of a PhD in mathematical physics and several years worth of graduate study in QFT.--Filll (talk) 03:50, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

They are most certainly not, if you actually understand the science involved. The scales at work with homeopathy are such that said claims have no basis remaining in fact. But that is a discussion for elsewhere. I shall have a search for specific discussions, but for now try reading [13], [14], [15], [16], [17]. I certainly do not agree with the overly aggressive tone of some of these, but their content is generally sound. If you wish to discuss this further, it would probably be an idea to head over to my talk page LinaMishima (talk) 14:51, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Additionally, serious scientist are researching homeopathy.[18][19][20] Anthon01 (talk) 14:28, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Read the commentary attached to the BMJ article. This points out a number of flaws, and shows that conclusions cannot be drawn at this time. There is a common misunderstanding that scientists do not investigate pseudoscience. The difference between science and pseudoscience is that scientists are happy to investigate fully any claim, and are willing to change their opinion on a subject based upon the evidence. The evidence currently for Homeopathy is extremely lacking, and furthermore there is no means for any method of action to actually exist, given the dilution beyond the Avogadro limit. Again, to conclude, investigation does not automatically lend merit. LinaMishima (talk) 14:50, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

content dispute: as much as I have a professional opinion on this matter, this is clearly a content dispute, and as such I'm not sure if it is really an appropriate matter for ArbCom. LinaMishima (talk) 14:31, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I would like to apologise to ArbCom, the Clerks and other uninvolved parties for being part of a discussion which is really off-topic here and belongs elsewhere. Sorry. LinaMishima (talk) 15:08, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I was distracted by the fact that Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience#Generally considered pseudoscience is clearly a content guideline, so I thought to ask here. On reflection I realize this question should be asked on WP:FTN and I will copy the discussion there. MilesAgain (talk) 04:56, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Anthon01 says that serious scientists are investigating. Should they have any new conclusions which contradict the established duck Test results, then we might revisit this, but I think that mucking with the definition of Pseudoscience to exclude one Fringe topic means opening the floodgates to any Fringe science, which I doubt even the supporters of homoepathy want. ThuranX (talk) 06:57, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

The "theory" and "science" underpinning homeopathy is generally discredited and can probably be safely described as pseudoscience as it has no rational, proven/provable basis. The grey hand behind much health-related "pseudoscience" is the placebo effect which appears to be scientifically valid and yet also completely unexplained. There is quite possibly an invisible hand at work - but it probably resides in the undiscovered mind, not in the various Wikipedia articles edited by proponents of the various pedestrian theories currently afoot. Franamax (talk) 07:16, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

some homeopaths themselves reject the scientific method - surely evidence of a pseudoscience. Dan Beale-Cocks 12:49, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, one counter-example is found in most of mathematics, where the scientific method is "rejected". Evidence is worthless in proofs of theorems, for example. But, I see what you mean anyway. Tparameter (talk) 16:28, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

But most people do not think mathematics is science. So...--Filll (talk) 16:36, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Not sure if "most people" is accurate - but, I get your point. My bachelor of sciences in applied math from the department of mathematical sciences, within the college of sciences, suggests that at least someone out there thinks math is a science. Tparameter (talk) 04:43, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't know where you are getting that idea from, but it is blatantly false! Logic and mathematics is the very basis for the scientific method. As most mathematical proofs deal with infinite ranges of numbers, raw evidence simply cannot be found. That is were the various types of proof and disproof come into play. This very fact is why we have the concept of the scientific theory. LinaMishima (talk) 17:57, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

From scientific method, "Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses." We know in mathematics that experiment proves exactly nothing. While in many fields of natural sciences, the whole foundation may be built from experiment/verification. My point is that math doesn't use the scientific method in general, because it is pure logic. Theorems require rigorous proof. Experiment may support a conjecture - but it will never prove a theorem. And, for the record, I'm definitely NOT equating math with homeopathy. ;] Tparameter (talk) 04:43, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I think that this description of research in pure mathematics is quite wrong. Mathematics does have empirical evidence - examples, calculations, sometimes even predictions from quantum field theory, old conjectures - and then attempts to provide proofs of these phenomena. This even applies to parts of algebraic number theory and algebraic geometry, which currently have strong interactions with mathematical aspects of string theory. The debate about the pseudo-scientific nature of homeopathy is not helped in any way by this complete misrepresentation of the nature of "pure" mathematical research. Mathsci (talk) 21:37, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Compare and contrast:

1. "Claims for the efficacy of homeopathy are unsupported by the collective weight of scientific and clinical studies. Ethical concerns regarding homeopathic treatment, a lack of convincing scientific evidence supporting its efficacy, and its contradiction of basic scientific principles have caused homeopathy to be regarded as "placebo therapy at best and quackery at worst"
2. "homeopathy is a pseudoscience"

Which is the strongest statement? which is more acurate? Indeed which is more scientific? Which is likely to boost the credibility of wikipedia? --Salix alba (talk) 12:32, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

This is a false dichotomy. I can see rationale for wanting to have both descriptions in a good article on homeopathy. There will be people reading our articles who will not understand the first formulation but who will understand the second. Why should we not help them? Wikipedia: Summary style is relevant here. Being longwinded may seem helpful at some times, but sometimes it simply confuses the issue. ScienceApologist (talk) 12:36, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Domestic sheep

In Domestic sheep, it claims that homeppathy, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and herbalism have been proven to work for some ailments, citing a statement in a couple books. I checked the scientific literature, and found this which says veterinary homeopathy has not been proven, and so deleted the statement that it had been.

It's been restored. What now? Adam Cuerden ^talk 07:25, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I tried to help. I think the problem is sources. VanTucky probably has excellent sources on sheep but these sources are probably not particularly up on the scientific issues associated with alt med in general. That certain sheep producers anecdotally report success is probably what the source means. I doubt there have been extensive scientific trials on the efficacy of homeopathic cures on sheep. ScienceApologist (talk) 07:41, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

By the way, this is an excellent example of an article that should mention homeopathy (unlike potassium dichromate, for example). Van Stucky was able to point to a guidebook about sheep which mentioned it explicitly as being used by various sheep producers, but being met with skepticism. This is the kind of good sourcing I have been discussing all day. We need independent sources that establish the promience of homeopathy with respect to the subject at hand. What we should not use are primary sources written by homeopaths that assert prominence in other fields. ScienceApologist (talk) 08:16, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

9/11 conspiracy theories

On what basics are theories added to 9/11 conspiracy theories , the whole article seems to be WP:OR ,WP:NPOV and WP:Nonsense Gnevin (talk) 15:48, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Brahmanical See

I think this is a hoax. But the background is amusing, involving another page of dubious quality.

• original form by a hapax IP. Note the disarming "has begun to fall into disuse" for something that isn't even a neologism yet.
• "See Also" added (with text) to another OR-ish page.

• wikified text from "See Also" link, by a hapax account, unobtrusively tacking on the text to a copy-edit.
• At this point, a now banned account gets involved, triggering a brief revert-war and, given his OTT antics, probably convincing others that this is a legit article under troll attack that "needs" references.
• Duly provided by a hapax tris account.
• My {{prod}} tag got reverted (rightly, as it turned out), obliging me to track these references down. They are, of course, bogus.
• Meanwhile, my attempt to remove the "link" on the Maharaj page has been reverted by someone who seems quite convinced that the text should stay.

I'm not sure how to proceed. AfD for Brahmanical See seems pretty clear cut, but what to do about the disinformation on the Maharaj page? rudra (talk) 10:51, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I created the AfD discussion. As for misinformation, any misinformation should be removed. Generally, if you think a claim is false, throw a {{fact}} template on it. Since this nonsense has persisted for so long, the stuff on Maharaj can be removed. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 22:53, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Radionics

It's been a while, we probably have a chance at fixing this article at the moment. Adam Cuerden ^talk 05:58, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Probably a little urgent,a s Martinphi has marked all the criticism with fact tags, and wants to remove it if it isn't sourced soon. Adam Cuerden ^talk 06:55, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Looks like there is an appropriate reliable source available and you have promised on the talk page to add a number of references to it. Is there anything you suggest that readers of this page need to do with the article at this point? Itsmejudith (talk) 11:36, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, my source is a bit old, so... you know. If anyone knows of more modern sources, I'd like to use them. (Radionics is one of those warmed-up 1920's quackeries) Adam Cuerden ^talk 17:06, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Samuel Hahnemann

My gods, this could practically stand as a POV-fork of Homeopathy at several points. Lots ofdubious facts and aggrandisement. Adam Cuerden ^talk 17:07, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

The China Study

I have nominated The China Study for deletion on notability grounds and because it may constitute the unwarranted promotion of fringe theories. The article presents only one source/POV--that of the book's authors. The fringe theory issues come from the authors' advocacy of strict veganism in association with claims such as:

1. Nutrition can substantially control the adverse effects of noxious chemicals.
2. The same nutrition that prevents disease in its early stages can also halt or reverse it in its later stages.

Also, there are the remarks of Chris Masterjohn, a principal critic of The China Study. Here's an example (emphasis added):

Only 39 of 350 pages are actually devoted to the China Study. The bold statement on page 132 that “eating foods that contain any cholesterol above 0 mg is unhealthy,”5 is drawn from a broad—and highly selective—pool of research. Yet chapter after chapter reveals a heavy bias and selectivity with which Campbell conducted, interpreted, and presents his research.

I want to be clear that I don't consider veganism to be a "fringe theory" per se. Please consider commenting on the AfD page here. --DieWeisseRose (talk) 06:27, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

First of all what do the rest of you think of this source? Is http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/525483/description#description NUTRITION RESEARCH] a solid academic journal. It looks like one to me. Well it seems that the findings of this book were reviewed in the journal in this article. So it looks like this book was taken seriously. I can't read the article to find out if it was reviewed in a negative or positive way, but I don't see any evidence that having an article that outlines the findings of the book and the response from solid academic sources would be a problem. futurebird (talk) 06:46, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Article is crying out for merger with China Project and then much more information needs to be sought about the project's scientific origins and funding, the involvement of universities and government, whether there has been any publication in scientific journals etc. etc. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:40, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Futurebird, it is incorrect that "the findings of this book were reviewed" in Nutrition Research. The article you linked to was published in 2002 and The China Study was published in 2005. If that were not enough, there is no mention of the book or the study in the abstract or keywords. It is also very interesting to me that The China Study is not included among the numerous publications listed on the China Project web site. --DieWeisseRose (talk) 23:20, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Makara Jyothi

Resolved

I asked third opinions in many places on removing tags issues in it. But no comments/consensus formed yet. Please verify the article & leave your comments. --Avinesh Jose  T  08:30, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

AfD discussion needs some additional input

To establish consensus, this AfD discussion needs additional input. Thank you. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:44, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Paranormal articles

A new Wiki for paranormal topics is available here. I think all interested editors and readers should consider strongly contributing there.--Filll (talk) 05:30, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

well....except that I'm the only one on recent changes there....actually, if the articles their can be tidy up into real essays, they might have some value as commentary for our paranormal articles. The wee little I've seen, it will take some work to make that happen. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 00:01, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes you are correct, it will take a bit of work. I have noticed that most "cranks" seem unwilling to put in the work, and want to alter articles here on Wikipedia to suit themselves, since these articles already have high google rankings, and some measure of "respect". They do not want to put in the work from starting out in a new place with a low ranking. Also, I think many of them are driven to stamp out the scientific interpretation since that is a threat (see homeopathy), or to just get into fights and produce nothing (they are only here to fight, not to write).--Filll (talk) 14:01, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about fight not write, but certainly many "pure fringer's" don't feel like putting up the work to make decent articles. I have some fully OR idea's as to why, but my mother always said, if can't say something nice....--Rocksanddirt (talk) 03:58, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Bicameralism (psychology)

is this a full-fledged crackpot theory, or a respectable, if eccentric, academic minority hypothesis? dab (𒁳) 13:01, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

The Dennett quote, the post at Princeton and the Penguin publisher point to respectable speculation.Itsmejudith (talk) 13:05, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

that was in the 1980s. The idea has a certain charm prompting you to go 'hm, interesting thought' the first time you hear it. I shouldn't have said "crackpot". It was briefly given some attention in the 1980s. But is there anything left of it today, or will you just be laughed out of court if you mention bicameralism with a straight face in 2008? I am not trying to suggest you will: I genuinely don't know. I just noted that the man is still around, and there is a "Julian Jaynes Society" still arguing the 1976 idea, and that a volume entitled Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited appeared in 2007 (published, it should be noted, by the Julian Jaynes Society)[21]. I suppose I'll have to search for reviews of that. dab (𒁳) 13:31, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I observe that lots of psychology ideas take a while to move in and out of the "academic consensus" mostly as it takes so long to do any meaningful research on most of the ideas, so....it might still be a valid area of work, even though maybe a minor one. I really have no idea. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 16:03, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I would put it under "out there but a little bit interesting" - one of those things that pops up and almost immediately falls by the wayside. Mostly now it is interesting as a picture of the zeitgeist of 1976 and how far neuroscience has come in forging itself as an actual science. Frankly, our minds are not lateralized to the extent necessary for this to occur, and neither in the article nor that I have ever heard (IANA neuroscientist) is ever put forth a convincing explanation for why early humans would evolve this way or what forced the integration. Interestingly, there *is* actual research suggesting that our minds are not nearly the unified self it usually feels like. A patient who had a particular area of her brain stimulated laughed, explaining that she found highly amusing 'just the way you people are standing around' or 'that picture over there'; apparently, she was rationalizing her behavior after the fact (without cognitive dissonance, no less). And, of course, there is all the fun with presenting words or colors to only one half of the visual field so the halves of the brain are getting different stimuli.

Unless someone is pushing it in a way of which I am not aware, I would just file it under pop-psychology and move on. Eldereft (talk) 18:17, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I tend to agree. Nobody is pushing it, I just stumbled on it and was wondering. It would be nice, however, to add some pointers to actual (current) research into this direction. dab (𒁳) 18:39, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I added lateralization, which explains how left-brain/right-brain dichotomy actually works. Any other ideas? Eldereft (talk) 02:15, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

<undent>My impression is that it is controversial, but of historical interest and was quite influential in some circles. It still is influential among those who suffer from "hearing voices syndrome", since it is sort of one of their bibles. If I remember correctly from a documentary I heard, more and more people are turning up who "hear voices" but few of these are actually bothered by the voices or pay attention to them, and therefore are not classified as psychotic. With the internet, these people can find each other and network and form support groups, leading some academics to study them. And this bicameral mind material features prominently in the therapies of those who "hear voices" and is referred to by those in these support groups as a way to "explain" this symptom (probably the wrong explanation, but oh well).--Filll (talk) 13:57, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

This appears to be a notable fringe theory. I changed the word "theory," to "hypothesis," since it hasn't been widely accepted. It is often referred to as a "theory," but this is an incorrect, colloquial usage. As an example, the Sapir-whorf hypothesis is broadly accepted by Sociologists, but obviously it isn't a "scientific theory."

I haven't been able to find a source for this fringe theory, but I looked in both my intro to psychology and abnormal psychology textbooks, and it isn't cited in either one of them, which is a red flag. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 17:16, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

The whole article needs better sourcing anyway, but this appears to have generated quite a flurry at some time, so that shouldn't be too hard. To me this looks like an eccentric development of oldish theories proposing a drastic split down the middle in the functions of the human brain, an idea which is, AFAIK, not nearly as influential as it once was. Lateralization looks to explain this quite well. Moreschi ^{If you've written a quality article...} 21:29, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

It's an awfully beguiling idea, isn't it? I do note that it seems to have had a certain amount of literary influence, especially among cyberpunk authors. I'd say we're dealing with a single individual's eccentric idea, but an idea presented within the academic framework, i.e. no POV-pushing or claims of censorship, and at least the acceptance of possible falsification. Relata refero (talk) 08:32, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

"lateralization" in general is a perfectly valid topic (as Eldereft notes above). The cranky aspect here is the idea that the "collapse" happened suddenly, as recently as at the Bronze Age collapse (the driving inspiration appears to be that Homer still records the pre-collapse situation). If you move the "collapse" back to the emergence of behavioral modernity (Upper Paleolithic), the scenario would become ever so much more plausible, but sadly you'll then be left with the Homeric deities (the theory's original motivation?) being deeply post-collapse. dab (𒁳) 12:22, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Seagrave's Yamashita's gold

There is a long, slow burning conflict on that page between opponents and proponents of including extensive information from a book called Gold Warriors by Sterling & Peggy Seagrave. The claim is that a massive Imperial Japanese hoard of looted gold was secretly discovered during the Cold War and used as the lynch-pin of American "dirty tricks" and CIA activities in Asia for decades. The Seagraves provide enormous volumes of documentation, none of which actually proves their key claims, which might as well be sourced to "that guy, what was his name, Dave I think?, in the airport bar at 2 AM." And they literally claim that the conspirators are out to kill them. <eleland/talkedits> 18:11, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I've looked at the page. The page is about a cache of gold that may or may not have existed, and if it existed may or may not have been removed, and if it was removed may or may not have been removed by the Japanese to fund their postwar miracle, the CIA to fund the Cold War, or the Marcoses to fund Imelda. It is a Historical Mystery of the type that belongs on pop history channels at 2am, and, as such, I hardly think that the CIA-gold theory, which spawned a dozen bestsellers and random programmes, is irrelevant. You might as well remove speculation from Jack the Ripper. (I see someone did, but only to spawn a couple of daughter articles and a category. The point remains, though, that notable speculation belongs in an article about a subject notable for speculation, and this particular speculation is notable.) Relata refero (talk) 17:05, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I failed to find a dozen bestsellers that supports the conspiracy theory birthed by the Seagraves’s novel that the United States military intelligence operatives located much of the “loot”; colluded with Hirohito and other senior Japanese figures to conceal its existence, and; used it to finance US covert intelligence operations around the world during the Cold War. Jim (talk) 22:30, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Seagraves' book, however, does meet our definition of a reliable source. Therefore, instead of trying to throw out the book as a source, the article should simply reflect all of the reliably sourced viewpoints on the subject, Seagraves's and any others, as we have done in countless other articles. Cla68 (talk) 23:13, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Arsenicum album‎

Have a look at the ridiculous "Scientific evidence" secrtion Dana Ullman added, and which homeopaths are fighting at all costs to keep in the article. Adam Cuerden ^talk 00:01, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Adam, I respect what you're doing a lot. You should already know that. However, to avoid clutter, can we make a main Homeopathy section on this noticeboard and when you find multiple articles, then create sub-sections? There's the same kind of clutter at WP:RSN on Islam and it makes using the noticeboards difficult. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 12:18, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

It might work, but this one is particularly bad, so I'd suggest a look. Adam Cuerden ^talk 21:13, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I see one of the sources is [eCam] which is obviously not self published and is a peer reviewed scientific journal. This seems to me to be a reliable source. --Blue Tie (talk) 21:38, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I see another source is something like Science of the Environment. It is not clearly stated that this is a peer reviewed journal, but I note that there are guidelines for reviewers. I looked at those guidelines and the way the reviews are scored, and it appears to be a scientific peer reviewed journal also. --Blue Tie (talk) 21:50, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

The problem is cherry picking. VEry small studies being presented as the end word on the subject. Adam Cuerden ^talk 22:01, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, you are saying above that the sources are ridiculous. They do not appear to be ridiculous but you appear to be overtly biased and not assuming good faith. More importantly though, if you believe that there is an alternative view, then find other studies and present them. Then both sides of the issue should be presented according to the guidance of NPOV. But I note that where there are peer-reviewed journals that specifically have studied this issue, these should not be called "ridiculous" and "particularly bad". --Blue Tie (talk) 23:19, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Adam, I don't mean to sound like Jimbo here, but if they're cherry-picked studies, then dig out references to dispute them. Yes, I know it's tedious but it's policy, so w\e. You can't claim, "Such and such is not reliable," on your own basis, because all claims about sources have to be cited in sources, themselves, in accordance with WP:NPOV. If you think something is disputable, you can get rid of it while you try to find stuff to verify it, but you can't just remove it if it looks like a reliable source without having an additional source to back up your claim.

The only exception is the really wild fringe theories where there won't even be any papers on mainstream journals ridiculing it. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 23:16, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

These are fringe theories, and I've added plenty of studies generally refuting homeopathy in the lead. However, these are tiny studies published in very low impact journals or CAM journals, and as such, there does not seem to be specific comment on most of them outside of this Wikipedia article, and even the New Scientist reference seems never to have been picked up again. Adam Cuerden ^talk 02:03, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

The relevant standard here would appear to be WP:V#Exceptional claims require exceptional sources -- claiming experimental scientific validity for a concept that gives every appearance of violating all known theoretical science would appear to be sufficiently "exceptional" to require absolutely bulletproof substantiation. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk 02:42, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I do not agree that this is so. As wikipedia's goal is to disseminate information, part of the information includes studies -- one way or the other. Both sides can get some review and peer reviewed journals are good sources. Moreover, before you can declare that research to be "contrary", you must show research that is contrary to it. --Blue Tie (talk) 04:17, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with hrafn, generally. If these are real studies, but small...we need to say that. If they indicate that it works, say that. In health, especially, very little is super rock solid under any circumstance....so....Say what's what. "some small studies indicate success, most larger one's don't and the theoretical basis doens't fit with most science." --Rocksanddirt (talk) 04:04, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I do agree with Rocksanddirt's approach, however the "most larger ones" need to be cited. --Blue Tie (talk) 04:19, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Then it becomes a WP:DUE weight question, and the majority of weight would need to be placed on the larger, more reliable, studies. Where the size/reliability disparity is sufficiently large, the smaller studies should be ignored altogether. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk 04:48, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

First you must find the larger, "more reliable" studies that studied this matter specifically. So far, I have not seen ANY other studies but those that are cited here. You cannot claim that the studies identified here should be done away when you offer nothing in response. --Blue Tie (talk) 05:40, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

well....if the smaller ones have an intersting result (like efficacy waaaay over expectations), we might want to keep them anyway. but yes, REFS FOR ALL! --Rocksanddirt (talk) 19:04, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

But these "interesting" results are generally because the experiments were "waaaay" unreliable, so should be excluded -- as I pointed out above, exceptional claims require exceptional sources. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk 01:57, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I think this is exactly the point being made, and tend to agree with it. The statement "homeopathy has medical merit beyond a placebo" is an extraordinary statement, and in the absence of absolutely bulletproof evidence for it, we should not make it — even in the qualified form that "Study X said that homeopathy has medical merit", since that gives the false impression that there is a body of literature out there which provides substantial scientific evidence to support the extraordinary claim. --Haemo (talk) 02:02, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Where is there a study that has reviewed this Arsenic Album and found it to be ineffective? If the only study you can cite is one that generically lambastes homeopathic remedies but is not focused on Arsenic Album, then it would be undue weight to give that study too much sway above studies that are specific to the subject (Arsenic Album) in an article about Arsenic Album. At the same time, wikipedia does not have to advocate homeopathic remedies. Just report the facts. --Blue Tie (talk) 05:44, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Articles on right to self-defense and gun control

There's a number of really horrible articles on this, but they're in horrible shape. This isn't a "fringe theory" persay, but editors are operating with the same essential modus operandi of POV-pushing, so I thought I'd post it here for you folks to comment.

Some good info, but POV fork:

• Justifiable homicide
• Make My Day State
• Make My Day Law

Need to be merged\distinguished:

• Right of self-defense
• Right to bear arms
• Imperfect self-defense (in particular, look at the "see also" section [22])

Other relevant articles:

• Castle Doctrine

Also, the article on gun politics is bad, too. Not POV for gun control. On the contrary, it's cluttered with dozens of bad sources with the intent of opposing gun control. Somebody posted on WP:RSN and I commented in the talkpage about it. Check it out.

☯  Zenwhat (talk) 01:30, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, they really are awful. What about tagging for experts or bringing them to the attention of people who edit United States law articles. US-centrism is a huge issue here. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:35, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Which POV do you think prevails? Tparameter (talk) 12:25, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

POV is not the main problem. Plagiarism is the first thing that needs to be checked out, followed by sourcing and, as Zenwhat says, deciding where articles need to be distinguished and merged. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:36, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Nevertheless, he mentioned POV-pushing - so, I'm wondering which POV prevails. Tparameter (talk) 13:10, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Tparameter, it doesn't particularly matter which POV prevails, only that all POVs are removed and the article reflects the NPOV, based on reliable, verifiable sources. The fact that you'd ask such a question is absurd. To answer, though: there is POV-pushing on both sides. As noted above, overall, there are several Wikipedia articles that were apparently written by some Europeans, "Oh! Those horrible Americans and their horrible guns!" But then, on the other hand, on gun politics, you have some gun nuts typing "gun rights" into Google and flooding the article with the first articles they come across. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 19:49, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

an example of the problems involved is that the 2nd paragraph of Imperfect self-defense is a pull quote, sourced to answers.com 01:47, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Wow. An absurd fact. Interesting oxymoron. Hadn't heard that one before. Well, anyway, I was just curious if one side or the other was currently prevailing in their POV pushing - absurd or otherwise. Tparameter (talk) 01:33, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

"Jewish women did never come from the middle east to begin with"

An IP editor is campaigning against genetics research included in Palestinian people, which relates to a particular genetic marker "167delT, which appears specific to Israeli Ashkenazi and Palestinian populations."

This user is arguing an originally researched reason why this information is not valid; he attempts to discuss population genetics but does not appear have the slightest idea of what he is talking about (see above.)

The article has been the subject of Israeli-Palestinian POV wars but I don't even know which side this guy's on, if any. It's just a matter of science versus fringe theories. Please keep an eye and make sure the information doesn't get suppressed by an Internet kook. <eleland/talkedits> 08:52, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree, and I thank Eleland for their as usual diligent and highly valuable efforts, to uphold Wikipedia's integrity and standards. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 20:26, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, this is a classic anti-semitic conspiracy theory. It's true that Ashkenazi Jews have a lot of non-semitic caucasian DNA (hence the reason why Iraqi and Iranian Jews look so little like Ashkenazi Jews). However, using that to push the claim "they're not real Jews," is absurd, because their still genetically of partially semitic origin. The claim "they're not real Jews," is generally used as a basis to support anti-semitism. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 01:40, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, though, one thing I would add: The entire section on genetics should be deleted. Scientists do not recognize the idea of a "race" based on genetics and genetics are occasionally used by Kahanists and anti-Arab racists, too, to argue "There's no such thing as a Palestinian people."

Well, yes. This is true. But based on the same data, there is no such thing as a Jewish people. It's all based mostly on social convention, not DNA. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 01:42, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Scientists frequently use genetic comparisons of populations, put them together with genetic drift and compare that to linguistic data to try and establish the evolution and movement of ethnicities. That isn't fringe at all, actually. Relata refero (talk) 22:32, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Monetary crankery on Monetary policy of the United States

User:Gregalton brought this to my attention.

From the article [23]:

Additionally, one notable myth debunker documents how the Federal Reserve system is audited and cites numerous instances of independent inspection of financial documents by private accounting firms and the Government Accountability Office. {{Cited in Geocities This debunker's website then also lists the legal exemptions to outside audit, "Exemptions to the Scope of GAO Audits:The Government Accounting Office does not have complete access to all aspects of the Federal Reserve System. The Federal Banking Agency Audit Act (31 USCA §714) stipulates the following areas are to be excluded from GAO inspections: "(2) deliberations, decisions, or actions on monetary policy matters, including discount window operations, reserves of member banks, securities credit, interest on deposits, open market operations." The same author also can be quoted in one related article as saying "in terms of monetary policy, the most important power is ... open market operations." The GAO certainly does have the power to conduct audits, but one author noted that 'the GAO audit is extremely limited: it can only examine the Fed’s 'administrative expenses.'" {{False citation [[http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-0305100-180653/unrestricted/Ch.5.pdf here} see page 142}} As the New York Times summarized in 1989, "such transactions are now shielded from outside audit, although the Fed influences interest rates through the purchase of hundreds of billions of dollars in Treasury securities." {{Okay citation in the New York Times''', but a little silly and somewhat used improperly with the rest of the paragraph above}}

On that last source, newspapers themselves have occasionally played up monetary crankery to sell papers and generate ratings. A boring lecture on the Federal Reserve isn't all that scary and is actually better if it's independent doesn't catch your attention, like, "THE BIG EVIL BANKERS ARE PRINTING MONEY AND STEEEEEEEEEALING IT FROM YOU! WE MUST TAKE AMERICA BACK! RON PAUL, 2008"

Similarly, you sometimes see newspapers misrepresenting science by implying in some of their stories that there is a genuine "debate" over intelligent design and global warming. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 20:01, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

My biggest issue is the use of a (credible) ecological economist's paper -- not on monetary policy -- to support a statement that is both loaded and obscure on monetary policy. Now, with all due respect to ecological economics, it is not mainstream, and certainly not notable on monetary policy. There has been an RfC, but few straigthforward comments that in a discussion about monetary policy, ecological economcs is hardly a core reliable source.--Gregalton (talk) 20:27, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

First.... The title of this noticeboard section ("Monetary crankery") is loaded, and somewhat disparaging to me, personally, as I am the primary editor behind the alleged "crankery."

Next, it seems there are two separate issues here:

1. dispute over audits, and
2. dispute over the ability to quote an expert economist who discusses things that are not related to heterodox theories in a reliably-published source.

Is this section about 1 or both? BigK HeX (talk) 04:25, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Meh ... I'll go ahead and assume both. BigK HeX (talk) 04:39, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

The article is slowly being re-written, so a lot of this will go out the window over time. --Haemo (talk) 04:41, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Also, .. what does this mean? "{{False citation blahblah see page 142}}

The citation should be appropriate according to Wikipedia:REF#Say_where_you_found_the_material, no?

Dispute over comprehensive audits of the Federal Reserve

Well ... this one is easy. If the NY Times article is in question, then we can quash that right now. Quoting from WP:V, "Material from reliable non-academic sources may also be used in these areas, particularly if they are respected mainstream publications. The appropriateness of any source always depends on the context. Where there is disagreement between sources, their views should be clearly attributed in the text. The policy strongly implies that, if there is a conflict or contradiction here, then the best that should be done is to include any conflicting view. The wiki article already (somewhat) attempts to do this (although I highly doubt that any reliable source states that monetary policy transactions have ever been verifiably audited by any independent party). I make no mention of it in the wiki article for NPOV reasons, but even the Fed's own Office of the Inspector General serves only at the leisure of the Board, unlike the "true" OIGs imposed onto other agencies of the government. BigK HeX (talk) 04:39, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Dispute over use of non-heterodox statements from a proponent of heterodox economics

One particular editor continues to dispute the usage of a source from Herman Daly, even though the source was academically vetted and published reliably. No editor involved in the dispute has provided a conflicting "mainstream" view, so WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE would not seem to apply yet. As posed in the RSN page, does a person's vigorous support of a non-mainstream theory, 'taint' everything else that an otherwise acknowledged expert ever says in his field of work, even when not related to his fringe theories? BigK HeX (talk) 04:39, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually more than one editor. The question as put above does not faithfully represent the dispute. I would rephrase as "can an expert's views be used as a core source when the subject matter is not that experts area of specialisation?" Some might say "it depends": to which I'd add the following info: a) expert in question is a leading figure in a branch of economics that is (by admission of the expert himself) heterodox; b) the source in question that is being cited is not on monetary economics, but on ecological economics, so to use as a reference in a Wiki article entitled "Monetary policy..." is inappropriate; c) the specific formulation is not found in mainstream texts. On point c) alone I would say that this is undue attention to an approach that has no visibility.

In addition, the editor who insists on keeping this source has frequently said that mainstream texts say "the same thing"; feel free to provide.--Gregalton (talk) 05:10, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Err .. what? The expert's field *IS* economics. You keep using this "specialization" rationale as if he were a some lowly office-clerk waxing philosophic on the nature of the Universe or something. The author is a noted expert on economics and the material I quoted was on the topic of economics. By your qualifications, apparently an organic chemist is "unreliable" when discussing the "inorganic chemistry" of combining baking soda and vinegar. I'd say Gregalton's protest in this case is quite heavily contrived. BigK HeX (talk) 17:34, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Right! Lets quote Marx! And Hayek! And, while we're at it, LaRouche! Please. The paper states in the beginning that its about ecological economics, that that is not part of neoclassical economics, and WP has no business at all putting anything non-neoclassical on pages not devoted to evaluating those other marginal theories. Relata refero (talk) 22:35, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Did Marx draw any widely notable and informative conclusions about Monetary policy in the US that were reliably published, too? Hmmm ... if so, we definitely better get him in there. Isn't this type of hyperbole fun, Relata? BigK HeX (talk) 01:39, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

One way to resolve this might be as follows: economists of various orthodox and heterodox schools disagree about the nature of money itself and the way that money works in a developed capitalist economy. So present all those debates in the articles about money, money supply, monetary policy in general. US monetary policy is just one specific case to which those principles debated by economists are applied. At the moment I find the article virtually impossible to make sense of because there is constant slippage between the facts about what the US policy in relation to money is or has been, and the theory-derived arguments about whether this is what its policy should be. In other words the article has been allowed to take a normative tone. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:49, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Really though, I have *yet* to understand why neoclassicism or even ecological economics keeps being brought up as some sort of legitimate challenge to this source. The text in question is not derived from either theory. Instead the text is simply a (fairly obvious) conclusion drawn from the way that monetary policy is used today. Its not delving into IS-LM Models or any such theoretical underpinnings; it is really not theoretical at all. BigK HeX (talk) 00:30, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Marx was not a trained and qualified economist. Neither is LaRouche.Wjhonson (talk) 23:07, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure why we are talking about Marx in the context of an article about US monetary policy but just to quibble, in his day he was as trained and qualified as anyone else writing about political economy. At least he had a PhD which is more than you can say for Smith, Ricardo, Ure and the rest of the giants whose shoulders we aspire to stand on. And Hayek - an absolutely indispensable figure to mention when discussing monetary theory in general, but by no means a primary source for US policy in the 21st century. "WP has no business at all putting anything non-neoclassical on pages not devoted to evaluating those other marginal theories" is one of the weirdest statements I have read for a long time, and by Relate refero too, an editor whose work I've been mightily impressed with until now. Are we supposed to be policing the whole of economic theory to make sure that it conforms with someone's criteria of orthodoxy? No. Do we make sure we reflect the range of academic opinions about the major debates in the field? Yes. Surely there's enough being written about US monetary policy to quickly knock up an NPOV article on it that does not have to go into delve into theoretical issues that are better covered in their own articles? Itsmejudith (talk) 00:11, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Marx's PhD was in Philosophy not Economics. There's no indication he really had a good grasp of economics even by the standards of his own day. His work is full of bizarre ideas that simply do not and could not work. None of the communistic systems set-up actually follow what he actually said. Marx was mentioned above, I'm just pointing out that bringing up extreme statements in this discussion does not lead to resolution. And coming to a consensus is why we're all here.Wjhonson (talk) 00:19, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Itsmejudith, we don't have to police economic theory: they do a good job by themselves. Anything non-neoclassical announces itself as such in the abstract, like the piece that BigK is trying to quote does. Economists make it clear what part of what they produce is mainstream work, and what part is abstract speculation or heterodox theory. They even make it clear when they are using mainstream theory to try and get heterodox conclusions. We don't have to do anything.

We do have to, however, take them at their word, and ensure that our economics pages - which are terrible, really, and its only because each time I try to fix them MBAs come along and revert them to some kind of odd business-speak - are not over-run by people who've read pop economics.

About Marx, Hayek and LaRouche: Marx is invaluable to the study of the history of political economy and of philosophy. As an economist, use value and exchange value is considered fringe now in economic analysis (I can actually remember when it was not), so not very helpful there. The others, we all know have determined adherents who'd want them on every econ-related page if poss. We can't allow that.

About what is written by US monetary policy: pretty much everything in an RS that does not announce that it is fringe is fair game. The problem is that this editor has gone about and found something published in an RS in which a respected economist has published something that says: "look, here's another way of thinking about these things, I know none of you thinks like that, but isnt it interesting to look at these problems in a different and novel way" and is using that as a significant minority opinion when its actually nothing of the sort. Relata refero (talk) 08:37, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Dissertation?

I don't know enough about economics to follow this dispute very well, but a citation in the blockquote at the top of the section appears to be from a doctoral dissertation: [24]. It's cited in the current version of the article as footnote #42. Doctoral dissertations are not really peer-reviewed publications, and in general shouldn't be used as sources in Wikipedia articles. --Akhilleus (talk) 01:41, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

The dissertation is actually a secondary source of the quote that is used in the wiki article. The primary source is

Kettl, Donald F., Leadership at the Fed, New Haven: Yale University Press {{citation}}: External link in |title= (help); Unknown parameter |published= ignored (help).

Unfortunately I must follow Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Say_where_you_found_the_material. BigK HeX (talk) 01:53, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Since when are doctoral dissertations "not peer-reviewed," according to Wikipedia guidelines? My goodness, for anyone who has received a doctorate or for anyone who knows someone who received a doctorate (especially in the United States), they would realize that doctoral candidates have supervisors and sometimes co-supervisors, not to mention a fairly rigorous defense of their findings every step of the way against doctoral committees. This subject comes up quite often on the reliable source noticeboard. Unless the consensus recently changed, editors usually agree that dissertations constitute reliable sources. J Readings (talk) 02:18, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

"Peer-review" is a fairly elastic concept, I suppose, but I usually take it to mean the kind of double-blind review practiced at many academic journals. The kind of editorial control exercised by a dissertation committee is of a different sort: the director is usually someone who is personally acquainted with the dissertation student, ditto for the rest of the committee. In the fields I'm familiar with, dissertation work is a kind of rough draft of the articles or monographs that the student will publish once s/he gets a position. They're far from finished products, and they haven't been subjected to the kind of scrutiny that an article or manuscript receives as it gets reviewed.

If it's common practice in economics to use dissertations as sources for journal articles, then perhaps it's ok to use Mitchell's diss; but take a look at the articles in journals in classical studies, ancient history, or religion, and I think you'll find that there are no citations to doctoral dissertations. That's because in these fields dissertations aren't regarded as very good sources. (I can think of exceptions, but they are usually unpublished dissertations from German universities in the 19th/early 20th century, or the dissertations of scholars who went on to become prominent after they got their doctorates.) --Akhilleus (talk) 03:04, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Never let it be said that I'm not open-minded (^_^). I take Akhilleus' point regarding his field of study (classical studies, ancient history, religion, etc.) and happily concede his experiences to be true. Speaking from my own personal experiences, however, and realizing that this comment is still anecdotal, I've found the social sciences to be a bit different depending on the subject matter and the academic. For political science, political economy, and sociology, I *have* come across cited doctoral dissertations in academic works from reputable university publishers. Would that make Mitchell's dissertation acceptable? I would lean towards thinking so, but I haven't read the Mitchell dissertation to form an definitive opinion of what's being cited. J Readings (talk) 04:09, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

About BigK Hex

On List of conspiracy theories:

The Federal Reserve is a plot to bankrupt the United States

Please see my posting on WP:ANI. [25]

On the talkpage, he admits to being blatantly biased and fooled by fringe sources. Then when his behavior is challenged, he suddenly accuses others of attacking his "reliable sources" in order to "censor" him.

Now, he manages to dig up one heterodox economist to prove the fringe claim that the Federal Reserve is a conspiracy (see WP:SYNTH). When he did this, he gave the reference the inflammatory title "slamdunk_bwhahaha_booyah" [26]. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 09:39, 2 February 2008 (UTC)