User talk:Guy Macon/Yes. We are biased.

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This page in a nutshell: Saying that "Wikipedia is biased" or that "Wikipedia fails to follow its own neutral point of view rules" is not a set of magic words that will cause Wikipedia to accept your favorite conspiracy theory, urban myth, pseudoscience, alternative medicine or fringe theory.

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The purpose of this essay

I wrote this essay to be a teaching tool for those who believe pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, urban myths, and other things which are not supported by any actual evidence.

For example, the reader may be someone who is a True Believer in magnetic water treatment and who strongly objects to the "bias" in our article on that topic. The same reader is likely to not be a True Believer in laundry balls or phrenology. My hope is that the reader, by seeing all these other pseudoscientific areas where Wikipedia is "biased" right next to his pet fringe theory, will come to an understanding of why it is that Wikipedia is "biased" against fringe theories in general.

Of course we know that in many cases this list will fail in that goal, because no argument will convince the fringe theorist. In such cases the secondary goal kicks in. This list also helps those who are responding to accusations of bias. All you have to do is to simply cut and paste the list into a talk page discussion with an edit summary of "Yes. We ARE biased." No need for attribution -- I released it under CC0 specifically so that you can use it as if it was your own. This cutting and pasting has been shown to take the wind out of the sails of many fringe theorists who think that they have found the magic words ("Bias!") that will magically cause Wikipedia to start promoting things that are not true. In general, cutting and pasting the list is more effective than linking to it, because promoters of pseudoscience have trained themselves to ignore the usual links to WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NPOV, etc. --Guy Macon 19:15, 21 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"Have been thinking good and long about this essay and Wikipedia:Lunatic charlatans, and I'm coming around more to the POV expressed in them... I am a little bit of a bleeding heart for the True Believers™ but in the balance between skepticism and wonder, it does make sense for Wikipedia to be biased towards skepticism. That's how it's always been most useful to me. --User:Scarpy 18:30, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"[This essay] makes clear to everyone what editing Wikipedia is about. So, pseudoscience POV-pushers will be blocked or they will avoid pushing POVs, that choice is entirely theirs. But it makes crystal-clear that they will never prevail here. So, this is about establishing boundaries. Some people are honestly not aware that Wikipedia is WP:NOTFREESPEECH." --tgeorgescu 15:59, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"[If you don't like this essay] then let's have a competition: You try to keep more pseudoscience out of articles with your own method, whatever it is." --Hob Gadling 19:28, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that this entire essay is a conspiracy to keep me chain-reading article after article about interesting malarkey and its empirical refutations. Thanks a lot, Guy. I'll just clear my calendar. Yours from the rabbit hole, Laodah 18:34, 15 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Curses! You have uncovered my Evil Plot! The only thing I can do now is to send you down a deeper rabbit hole. [ https://tvtropes.org/ ] BWAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!! Guy Macon (talk) 00:03, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think the correct mad-scientist laugh goes more like "MUHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!" --Hob Gadling (talk) 13:57, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Magnetic therapy bias

Maybe you should actually look into things befire you take abuased stance against them, eh? This essay makes you look like an idiot in a few other places, too.

https://podcasts.ufhealth.org/magnetic-nanoparticles-can-increase-cortisol-production/ 2603:8000:1B01:866D:D4B3:70D1:3A25:B663 (talk) 12:31, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The above is a typical pseudoscientific alternative medicine argument. See Magnet therapy. Just because magnets are involved in one kind of experimental treatment (injecting a gland with magnetic particles then causing them to heat up by applying a rapidly alternating magnetic field), that does not establish that a completely different kind of treatment (permanent magnets, no injected particles) has beneficial health effects. Such claims are unproven and no effects of magnets on health or healing have ever been established.

As for your childish "idiot" namecalling, I refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:23, 23 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Help needed

I would like to ask my loyal ~~minions~~ ~~sycophants~~ ~~fanbois~~ ~~henchmen~~ ~~talk page stalkers~~ talk page watchers for assistance.

Through the invaluable assistance of others, most of the entries on this list have links to places where someone claimed we are biased against, say, laundry balls.[1]

Three items are missing such discussions:

We are biased towards science, and biased against pseudoscience.

We are biased towards psychology, and biased against phrenology.

We are biased towards Mendelism, and biased against Lysenkoism.

Can anyone find discussions claiming we are biased against phrenology, Lysenkoism, or pseudoscience?

Discussions on Wikipedia would be ideal, but even an obsure plog or twitter discussion about how Wikipedia is biased against phrenology would be sufficient to establishe that someone claimed we are biased on that topic.

If you can fix this, you can expect a little something extra in the paychecks we all get for supressing the TRUTH[2][3]... --Guy Macon (talk) 04:28, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

For pseudoscience there's this, although it mainly claims that we may wrongly classify certain topics as pseudoscience.

I couldn't find any claim that we were biased against Lysenkoism (maybe it doesn't have many adherents today?) but I did find the opposite claim. (t · c) buidhe 02:50, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Fascinating article on "Wikipedia’s Lysenkoism", but in my opinion completely wrong. The author, while fighting for their preferred definition of such terms as "sex" "gender" and "female" (ignoring the easily observed fact that word definitions and usage change over time) completely mangles the meaning of "Lysenkoism", redefining it as "any deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable" (it actually refers to one specific set of wrong opinions by Trofim Lysenko and to Joseph Stalin making those wrong opinions the only acceptable biological science in the USSR). Interesting, but not much use in this essay.

On the other hand, the jcom.sissa.it paper is just what I was looking for. In seems to be quite clearly claiming that Wikipedia is biased against pseudoscience. Example: "their scepticism is applied asymmetrically, always against beliefs contrary to scientific and medical orthodoxy and, and their efforts are invariably against groups espousing those beliefs". The paper even lists Breibart.com as the first citation! Good find. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:01, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]