Talk:Faith healing

RfC about inserting content and category about pseudoscience

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Should we include content and category describing Faith healing as a pseudoscience? Raymond3023 (talk) 18:25, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Survey

• Support - I had added it years ago[1] but my edits were quickly removed.[2] But the fact remains that when much older and sophisticated medical systems like Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese medicine, etc. are categorized and described in their articles as pseudoscience, then Faith healing is clearly not an exception. There are enough reliable sources[3][4][5][6][7][8] that describe Faith healing as pseudoscience, more often than those who call Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese medicine a pseudoscience. Raymond3023 (talk) 18:25, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

  But then there is a reliable source that states that faith healing is unproven with many examples of fraud and deception, but with regard to pseudoscience, it reaches the following conclusion: Cures allegedly brought about by religious faith are, in turn, considered to be paranormal phenomena but the related religious practices and beliefs are not pseudoscientific since they usually have no scientific pretensions. So, it is not a consensus amongst the sources.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 04:45, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

  Your source mentioned "Faith healing" only once and your source dates to 1994. Not really a modern source. Usage and frequency of these labels (pseudoscience) are now different than what it was in 1994. Raymond3023 (talk) 05:24, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

  If you search for "faith healer" you will find a another on topic paragraph as well. That is a good point that it is an old 1994 source - I accept that is a weakness, but that has brought to my mind the age of your sources. All but one of your sources are old. Your sources above include one from 1998, another from 1985, another from 2007 and another from 2006. All but one of your sources are over 10 years old. So, really this means only one of your sources (the 2013 source) can truly be called a recent reliable source. So, that leaves only one source written within the past 5 years describing it as a pseudoscience, and if we use the 5 year rule for sources - which is preferred by Wikipedia sourcing guidelines - then that means only one source is in date for describing faith healing as a pseudoscience, but it means that in less than a year the source will be outdated and there will then be zero high quality sources for calling or categorising faith healing as pseudoscience. The real truth is there really is a drought of high quality sources to make or refute this claim of pseudoscience. There is very little discussion of faith healing being a pseudoscience by academics because it is not a pseudoscience (pretends or resembles but is not science), which is why you are also having to reach back to outdated old sources to support your claim that it is pseudoscience. Most academics simply don't view it that way. If they did we would have lots of modern high quality sources saying: faith healing = pseudoscience.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 06:00, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

  Raymond, I read the 2013 source and it says: "certain approaches to faith healing are widely considered to be pseudoscientific, including those of Christian Science, voodoo, and Spiritualism." I think almost everyone voting here would support including that text from the 2013 source summarised in the article as a fair compromise, just so long as the whole subject (including simple prayer to God for a sick relative or fellow Christian) is not categorised as pseudoscience. Since the only recent high quality source available states that only certain forms of faith healing is pseudoscience, then why are you asking the community - using a small number of outdated sources - to overrule the recent high quality source and declare the entire topic in the 'voice of Wikipedia' as pseudoscience rather than going with the opinion of the high quality recent 2013 source? Your own support vote isn't even following WP:RS and other guidelines/policies with regard to how to use your own selected sources.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 07:44, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

  Never mind your support vote not following WP:RS which advises using recent over old sources, what about this RFC and how the question is worded!? The wording of the RFC question combined with your posting of sources as if they support the RFC question violates at least the spirit if not the letter of WP:SYN, WP:RS and other guidelines and polices because you are posting a question and not explaining in your support vote that you are, I believe unintentionally, using old outdated sources to synthesise a conclusion to debunk a high quality 2013 source to support the RFC question immediately above your support comment. Your posting of the sources to imply this position in the RFC question is supported has influenced how many people have voted- how support voters rationalise their positions make it plain that they are heavily influenced by the RFC question and your support comment with display of sources immediately below the RFC question.

  The RFC question should have been worded, according to the 2013 source, something like: Should we include content sourced to the most recent high quality 2013 source describing some aspects of faith healing as pseudoscience or should we synthesise a conclusion by using much older sources to debunk a 2013 source to assert in the article body and categorise all forms of faith healing as pseudoscience?

  This whole RFC is biased and compromised because no one, until now, has realised that your RFC question and your support vote with sources (which is meant to form your logic and basis to the community of you posting the RFC question in the first instance) immediately below the RFC is compromised by the sources and how you have, unintentionally, misused them to support the compromised RFC question, thereby compromising people's perception of the evidence and causing over 250 kb of heated unnecessary drama.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 09:53, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

yup lots of text with you telling us all what we all mean.--Moxy (talk) 21:44, 28 March 2018 (UTC)]

Appearances can be deceptive, most of those are corrections of typos. If you want me to be short and to the point, if we assert and categorise faith healing as pseudoscience, that means we ignore WP:MEDRS and use outdated sources to assert and categorise all forms of faith healing as pseudoscience against what the only available MEDRS compatible 2013 source states.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 22:03, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

You sure your view on this is reflecting the situation accurately?....your saying the 20 or so academic sources by professors and the like are not complying with WP:MEDRS and sources from this decade are outdated vs the one you posted from 1994? So let ask you as the most verbal opposer..are you ok with the compromise reached below ....that is we say "Certain techniques of faith healling have been classified as pseudoscience (pick one or 2 of the many many source for this).....then source those techniques with the others sources.....or are you saying no mention at all? PS....don't care about category as categories are irrelevant and not used by readers.--Moxy (talk) 23:32, 28 March 2018 (UTC)--Moxy (talk) 23:32, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

MEDRS generally advises that sources are written within past 5 years, there can occasionally be reasonable sensible exceptions. My 1994 source is problematic because of it's age, but since we have a source from 2013, the 2013 source would be preferred, per MEDRS. To use an old source generally requires consensus and caution, if there is a content dispute whereas MEDRS compatible sources generally win the day. Yes, I am totally fine with a compromise that we state that certain techniques of faith healing are pseudoscience, because it is what the most reliable MEDRS 2013 source states, and I don't think any reasonable person (myself included) would dispute that. It would be completely POV pushing to not mention pseudoscience at all. The part that I am strongly opposed to is to assert that faith healing in all its forms - e.g. basic prayer - is a pseudoscience because it is an abuse of the definition of the term. I agree the category link is not a big deal, even though I voted oppose for it.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 00:02, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Moxy, you mention a or the consensus of a compromise, but a lot of it boils down to the summary and opinion of the closing admin. And the problem is support votes are ahead, but people have been voting support without realising that asserting faith healing, in it's entirety, is pseudoscience violates WP:MEDRS because it is using old outdated sources to debunk a high quality recent source that states only 'certain forms of faith healing' is pseudoscience. This MEDRS violation was only discovered yesterday by myself days before the RFC is set to close and long after people have stuck their name down to vote. If the closing admin adopts the consensus that you talk of and makes a MEDRS compatible closing summary, i.e., yes to using MEDRS 2013 source to state that certain forms of faith healing is pseudoscience and no to using outdated MEDRS incompatible sources to ignore the MEDRS compatible 2013 source and assert faith healing is pseudoscience. The "certain forms" is necessary, per NPOV and MEDRS to distinguish from simple prayer to God and belief in miracles practised and held by the vast majority of Christians and their leaders who endorse mainstream medical care and the other forms of faith healing that adopt a pseudoscientific approach. If this compromise is adopted by the closing admin then my argument above that this RfC was biased, compromised and not neutral while true would be in practice irrelevant and can be ignored, in my opinion.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 18:37, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

I thought the argument was that faith healing wasn't making scientific or empirical claims about recovery? If that were the case, MEDRS wouldn't apply, so it's odd you are trying to cite it. Since we are talking about medical claims though, the "5-year rule" in MEDRS is usually meant to encompass review cycles in more commonly published subjects. The spirit of that guideline is that we use the most up to date sources, but don't dismiss older sources unless there's been a major shift in scientific thinking. Plus, WP:PARITY comes into play, so it would also violate WP:PSCI to give your above arguments weight.

Also, please be mindful of WP:BLUDGEON at this point. You've already been alerted to the PSCI/fringe DS, and this section is meant for the initial survey or narrow clarifications. You really should be utilizing the threaded discussion section for how much you're posting here. Kingofaces43 (talk) 20:56, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Agree it is time for me to bow out of this discussion. You forget discussion below formed a consensus that discretionary sanctions cannot be applied here before the RfC result is known and you were admonished on the administrators noticeboard for threatening me with them although one admin thought they might apply, you need to stop threatening me with blocks, per WP:HARASS. Anyway, I'm not advocating for aspects of faith healing that are regarded as pseudoscientific, the article can demonise those aspects of faith healing as much as it likes for all I care, so those ArbCom sanctions don't apply to me.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 21:25, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support We have many sources that describe faith healing as a pseudoscience because it makes claims (many that cite specific diseases, such as cancer) to be medically effective. Note that mere faith in God isn't pseudoscience. But faith healing goes beyond that — and makes claims that following certain systems, practitioners, or procedures will produce scientific results. - LuckyLouie (talk) 18:57, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support. The right question is, why does RS say? From a quick look it seems many sources say this is pseudoscience e.g.[9]. So, Wikipedia should mirror RS.
  

[Add, after being reminded of this at WT:MED: Kingofaces43 further makes a good point that policy says we must be prominent in our labeling of pseudoscience. The "counter-arguments" such as they are seem to rest on an assumption that a preponderance of sources need to label FH as pseudoscience for Wikipedia to do so, but this is wrong – it is akin to saying that we should not categorize table salt as a "sodium mineral" because only a small number of sources do so - most are concerned with culture and food. By the argument that a preponderance must exist before pseudoscience can be asserted, even canonical pseudoscience such as homeopathy would not be called pseudoscience, since the majority of literature on that topic discusses effectiveness, and not its classification as a knowledge system. This, in fact, is a frequent argument made by WP:PROFRINGE editors for altering our homeopathy article! What counts for our purposes are sources which consider the question of whether FH is pseudoscience, which appear to be both respectable and unanimous on the question]. Alexbrn (talk) 18:39, 3 March 2018 (UTC); amended 17:19, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support Sources call it pseudoscience, so Wikipedia should call it pseudoscience. That it is based on magical thinking supports its classification as pseudoscience. Dimadick (talk) 20:21, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per User:WhatamIdoing in the last RfC: "There is a significant academic study of faith healing, and that academic study is almost entirely uninterested in pseudoscience." StAnselm (talk) 09:43, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

  No, Wikipedia cannot pass exception to personal opinion of editor on this subject. We will have to report what WP:RS state. Find some sources that prove Faith healing is not a pseudoscience. Raymond3023 (talk) 10:52, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

  No, in fact, you have made a positive assertion that it is pseudoscience with shaky evidence at best based on the personal opinion of some researchers cited as somehow authoritative when they are not. The study of a phenomenon is Not Pseudoscience. If it is, then study of Evolution, Anthropology, Psychology, and other fields are all pseudoscience. There is ZERO justification for this claim of pseudoscience except the shaky opinions of SOME researchers. desmay (talk) 06:32, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

  User:StAnselm see Quackery#Criticism_of_quackery_in_academia and the conclusion of this review: "God may indeed exist and prayer may indeed heal; however, it appears that, for important theological and scientific reasons, randomized controlled studies cannot be applied to the study of the efficacy of prayer in healing. In fact, no form of scientific enquiry presently available can suitably address the subject. Therefore, the continuance of such research may result in the conducted studies finding place among other seemingly impeccable studies with seemingly absurd claims (Renckens et al.42 2002). Whereas we have attempted to be scientifically and politically correct in our critique, other authors, such as Dawkins,43 have been humorous, nay even scathing, in their criticism." Jytdog (talk) 15:22, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support Arguments by supporters above are compelling, indeed it is surprising that the article is not an established and long serving member of Cat:Pseudoscience. -Roxy, the dog. barcus 11:12, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - You cannot state in Wikipedia's voice that "Faith healing is regarded as Pseudoscience." based on a couple of sources, and the other sources do not even support such a declarative statement. Faith healing is not pseudoscience for purposes of categorization any more than any other religious/spiritual/philosophical topic that professes certain beliefs. Pseudoscience is a claim, belief or practice which is incorrectly presented as scientific. Some faith healing claims may be pseudoscientific, but this subject as a whole is not. All of the participants from the last RfC should be notified of this one. That would not be canvassing. I can't help but notice that this was already advertised at FTN.- MrX 🖋 11:29, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

  You cannot use Wikipedia for fringe POV pushing. Don't cherry pick because every source described faith healing as pseudoscience. Others can also read if they have supported. Raymond3023 (talk) 12:34, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

  I'm glad we agree on that. Do you want to revise your list of cherry-picked sources, and perhaps change your wording so as not to imply that four of the sources say something that they don't?- MrX 🖋 12:37, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

  We need to follow sources yes. What we mustn't follow is own definition of pseudoscience and - particularly - our own ideas about how it applies in this case. Such an approach is not based on policy and so won't carry any weight. Approaching a select group of people with a predominantly known view would of course be very naughty. I must say I'm a little surprised that RS seems so clear on the matter; I live and learn! Alexbrn (talk) 13:04, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• Weak Oppose. Looking at the sources above by Raymond3023, some describe this as pseudoscience. Others use qualified statements (e.g. "certain approaches to faith science are psuedoscientific"). Others do not make such a claim (e.g. [10] - where these appear near, but no direct tie-in). Casting a wider net - it seems many sources treat this as a divine belief or religious belief - e.g. Britannica or The Encyclopedia of Phobias, Fears, and Anxieties, Third Edition, [11]. The question shouldn't be whether we can find sources describing Faith Healing as a pseudoscience - but what the majority of sources say about faith healing. Representing religious beliefs as a pseudoscience is a very slippery slope... As such presentations may be found regarding more significant religious beliefs.Icewhiz (talk) 15:09, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
• Speedy Close This is simply a repetition of this RfC where the community answered the above questions in the negative. We don't keep voting on a given question until we get the desired result. -Ad Orientem (talk) 15:15, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

  Well clearly this view is gaining no traction. -Ad Orientem (talk) 19:28, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

  A new RfC can be filed after every few months. The closure was problematic and the RfC was clearly not even popularized. See WP:STONEWALLING, WP:VERIFY, WP:NPOV and focus on content. Raymond3023 (talk) 16:05, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

  Filing RfC's on the same subject every few months would almost certainly be considered WP:TENDENTIOUS. As for the previous RfC it was extremely lengthy, and the close was reviewed and endorsed. -Ad Orientem (talk) 16:17, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

  It was closed based on the reasoning that the sources did not support calling it pseudoscience. This is clearly not the case now. I don't know if the change is the result of new sources being published or the result of existing sources being discovered, but there is clearly justification for a new RfC. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 18:02, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

  There is also the problem of this RfC failing to mention the previous one, which means it was not neutrally worded per RfC guidelines. StAnselm (talk) 19:20, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support as per Robert Cogan (Professor of Philosophy} (1998). Critical Thinking: Step by Step. University Press of America. p. 217. ISBN 978-0-7618-1067-4. Faith healing is probably the most dangerous pseudoscience.--Moxy (talk) 16:36, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

  No - Cogan's opinion should not be put into WP voice, and that is not enough for categorisation. StAnselm (talk) 19:20, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

  Perhaps something more basic Bill Leonard; Jill Y. Crainshaw (2013). Encyclopedia of Religious Controversies in the United States: A - L. ABC-CLIO. p. 625. ISBN 978-1-59884-867-0..--Moxy (talk) 04:02, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

  Yes, but that is talking about "certain approaches to faith healing..." StAnselm (talk) 04:04, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

  like the ones in the article. Why can we mention them but not there position in society.--Moxy (talk) 04:23, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

• Strong support The most reliable sources frequently use faith-healing as a visible, easily understood and widely recognized example of pseudoscience, and there is no logically consistent argument against doing so. An applied science is just as subject to misrepresentation as a basic science. The fact that it is religious in nature is immaterial; faith healing is not faith, full stop. Faith healing is not a ritual, full stop. Faith healing is purported to actually make changes in the world which can supposedly be measured. But when investigators attempt to measure those changes, they find either that there is no change, or that other factors produced it. This has all of the "red flags" of psueodscience, as well: practitioners use it to make large amounts of money while denouncing materialism. Practitioners fake results and avoid scrutiny. Practitioners accuse their critics of being part of a conspiracy. Believers pay lots of money, often in an attempt to avoid paying more money for the "services" provided. Believers go out of their way to accuse mainstream science (which rejects it) of pushing a dogmatic view, while pushing a dogmatic view themselves.

The "problem" with it being religion is the assumption that, because it's a common thing, it's a natural outgrowth of religion. It is not. It is a pseudoscience which has attached itself to religion for the purpose of avoiding scientific scrutiny. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:09, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support: The vast majority of reliable sources say that if someone prays for God to heal them, that's religion, not pseudoscience, but if they claim that God responds and that they were healed, that's pseudoscience. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:30, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose: The article defines faith healing as basically any prayer, laying on of hands and/or belief that faith in God or God can effect healing. Therefore, if faith healing is categorized as pseudoscience without qualification essentially Wikipedia will be saying that all Christians who believe in divine healing are making scientific claims rather than religious claims. That is not how most Christians think of healings-i.e. as making provable scientific claims-for many people healing is simply a divine act that is mysterious. Ltwin (talk) 18:18, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

  This contribution has no reference to sources or policy. Disregard. Alexbrn (talk) 19:01, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

  The article says "Believers assert that the healing of disease and disability can be brought about by religious faith through prayer and/or other rituals" Ltwin characterizes this as "belief that faith in God or God can effect healing". The healing either happens more often than random chance would predict or it doesn't. There are no sources that establish that the healing happens more often than random chance would predict, so by definition it is pseudoscience. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:24, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

  You are assuming that everyone who believes in faith healing also claims that prayer (etc.) will always result in healing. Most religious people do not claim that prayer must result in healing, only that it can. Also, most religious people would also believe in faith healing while also making use of modern medicine, so in many cases recovery gained through medical means would also be seen as an answer to prayer, thus faith healing. Are there some people out there who present faith healing in scientific terms? Yes, probably. But it would not be correct to say that all faith healing is pseudoscience. What ever happens, this distinction between different types of faith healing needs to be made clear. Simply believing that God performs miracles of healing (sometimes through means of prayer and other human actions) would not be psuedoscience. Ltwin (talk) 19:51, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

  Just looking closely at the sources linked at the start of this section: The Science Education link doesn't specifically identify faith healing as pseudoscience. Rather it lists a bunch of examples of pseudoscience like iridology and acupuncture and then goes on to identify faith healing as "based on paranormal beliefs." So, while faith healing presents many of the same problems as psuedoscientific treatments, the source identifies faith healing as paranormal not pseudoscience. The Encyclopedia of Religious Controversies in the United States says "Certain approaches to faith healing are also widely considered to be pseudoscientific" but it does not say all faith healing is pseudoscience. In Philosophy of Pseudoscience, faith healing is included in a longer list of concepts described as "either psuedosciences or at least lack the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously." Ltwin (talk) 20:27, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

  By that measure Haruspex or witchcraft would be pseudoscience as well. Pseudoscience generally requires disciples claiming to follow scitentific methods (while engaging in quakery). Most faith healers do not present themselves as a scientific endeavor.Icewhiz (talk) 19:37, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

  Exactly. If this passes, as I say in the discussion section, then the pseudoscience language and category should also be placed on Wish. Faith healing is prayer, it's a wish. Nothing physical exists or is passed along in the process. The definition of 'Faith' should be taken into account in the close. Randy Kryn (talk) 20:04, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

  Nah -- I don't see any sources for that. Wishful thinking, though? Why not? jps (talk) 16:34, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

• Strong support Faith healing is making a testable claim, just as remote viewing, mediumship or Nessie. Clearly pseudoscience.Sgerbic (talk) 19:34, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support, Alexbrn basically summed up my thoughts - it all depends on what the sources say. If it's mostly referred to as pseudoscience, why should we call it anything else? SEMMENDINGER (talk) 20:04, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support: Sources say: pseudoscience. Therefore Wikipedia says: pseudoscience. QED. --Hob Gadling (talk) 20:26, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support. It's absolutely pseudoscience if one attributes the therapeutic effects to supernatural causes. There is, on the other hand, some sourcing to support that it is a scientifically real placebo effect, and that placebo effects have a legitimate place in health care. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:32, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support. There are faith healers who make claims that their outcomes are empirically verifiable. However, upon investigation, no claims of any faith healers have been shown to be empirically verified. This is the sense in which faith healing stands as a kind of pseudoscience. Faith healing, of course, is a broad subject which can include aspects that are separate from pseudoscience. Many people who study faith healing may be uninterested in the pseudoscientific aspects of the subject. That does not mean the subject should not be categorized as pseudoscience. Since we have extremely reliable sources which identify the pseudoscientific aspects of faith healing, it seems reasonable to categorize it as pseudoscience in order to help the reader know where this lies in the epistemology of empirical claims. jps (talk) 20:35, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support. Sources peg it pretty squarely as pseudoscience as described above. An RfC really shouldn't have been needed for this. I know some people like to give some deference to religion and faith related subjects for avoiding the pseudoscience label as MrX pointed out above, but this is an empirical claim that falls under pseudoscience regardless of belief or not. Even talking about a potential placebo effect still puts this in the realm of pseudoscientific claims even if there's been academic study of the subject. The category is simply saying that the subject at least in part deals with pseudoscience. Kingofaces43 (talk) 21:03, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

  I did at bit more digging and I found a few more sources (unless I missed them being mentioned previously) that explicitly call out faith healing as pseudoscience.[12][13][14] At this point, trying to claim faith healing is not pseudoscience or removing that categorization is a violation of WP:PSCI policy, which needs to be enforced regardless of the outcome of this RfC. Kingofaces43 (talk) 01:37, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

  Please do not mess up this RfC with threats like that - rather, the outcome of this RfC will be about whether WP:PSCI policy applies to this article. As far as the articles you cite go, (1) does not explicitly state FH is PS: it merely mentions in passing that "faith healing's effectiveness is unproven..." (2) mentions in passing one particular "ancient form of faith healing" (the Royal touch) which "has adopted a pseudoscientific veneeer"; (3) merely mentions FH in passing. StAnselm (talk) 02:49, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

  WP:PSCI is policy, not "messing up" anything. Also please don't violate WP:PSCI by misrepresenting those sources. 1 talks about faith cures being "scientifically suspect", "based on fraud and deception", etc. in the context of pseudoscience, while 2 & 3 explicitly list faith healing as an example of pseudoscience. Otherwise, the threaded discussion where additional comments are appropriate rather than here is below. Kingofaces43 (talk) 15:43, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

  I'll tack on a bit to my original comment here rather than edit the original. I've gone through the oppose !votes and found them to carry very little weight if one is correctly understanding pseudoscience. There's a lot of special pleading that faith healing isn't making any scientific claims when it is clearly making an empirical medical claim (do X and result is healing). You only need to make a statement of fact about the natural world (i.e., recovering from illness) not grounded in science (i.e., claims that God healed you are unfalisfiable) to make it a pseudoscientific claim. That kind of special pleading actually happens a lot in psedusocientific/fringe topics, especially in religion, so it would violate WP:PSCI to give such arguments significant weight. Special pleading about religion being involved still violates WP:PSCI and contradicts sources that specifically call it out as such for the practice itself. We can't accept arguments that are used in defending pseudoscience to say a subject isn't pseudoscientific.

  The other is a claim I'm seeing is that most sources do not specifically say pseudoscience. This is another misunderstanding of pseudoscientific topics as while we usually do have sources calling it out in terms of WP:FRINGE, they do not always specifically use the word pseudoscience. There is a huge difference in terms of a fringe source calling a topic fringe/PS and having multiple sources say it is fringe with a subset specifically saying it is pseudoscience. WP:PARITY also applies in fringe subjects, so the closer has a lot to sort through here that's not really in line with policies and guidelines on fringe subjects. As it stands, WP:EVALFRINGE is clear in that when reliable sources claim something is pseudoscientific (and I have yet to see a source directly claiming it is not pseudoscience), we simply state that in Wikipedia's voice. Kingofaces43 (talk) 18:47, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

  Here's a source that directly says that it's not, since you asked:

  "Cures allegedly brought about by religious faith are, in turn, considered to be paranormal phenomena but the related religious practices and beliefs are not pseudoscientific since they usually have no scientific pretensions."

  To be fair, most books that discuss faith healing don't care about this question at all, but there are at least a handful that directly disagree with the claim that religion can be pseudoscientific. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:39, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

  I had already cited a source using that same line actually.[15] They label it as paranormal instead, which as discussed in other areas of this RfC, is the claim that the explanation for an empirical claim lies scientific explanation, a subset of pseudoscience (to which we have an excerpt from other source explaining here). The source you cite explains that the practice itself is not pseudoscience (e.g., the act of praying) but the pseudoscience/paranormal comes into play when you make the empirical claim of healing. In reality, the source is not saying faith healing isn't pseudoscience, so we need to be careful about that.

  As for "most books", WP:PARITY has already been mentioned a few times. It's pretty clear that fringe/pseudoscience topics tend not to get as much critical attention because people don't take them seriously. Kingofaces43 (talk) 01:54, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

  Kingofaces43, you are mistaken, I feel, per this diff of my reply to your assertion; it is plain the source is clearly stating that both belief that God can and does heal and the religious practice is not pseudoscience, although the source does equally state faith healing is unproven and there are many examples of fraud and deception.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 04:06, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

  Nope. That is taking the source out of context (not to mention a view that contradicts the majority of sources anyways). The paranormal is a subset of pseudoscience, which we even have an excerpt about at the article. The paragraph in question is pretty clearly pointing out that pseudoscience does not have to always have to be paranormal claims (no mention of the other way around) and that the religious act of praying is itself not pseudoscience unless it is making an empirical claim (in the context of this discussion being healed). Kingofaces43 (talk) 00:44, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Even if you are right and I'm not convinced you are, the problem remains, this article is not titled "cures from faith healing," it is titled "faith healing" and the RFC is about faith healing, not cures from it, so your argument doesn't really mean anything. This article defines faith healing in the first sentence as this: "Faith healing is the practice of prayer and gestures (such as laying on of hands) that are believed by some to elicit divine intervention in spiritual and physical healing, especially the Christian practice." Now that source states "the related religious practices and beliefs are not pseudoscientific since they usually have no scientific pretensions." So that means we have a source that says the subject matter is not pseudoscientific.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 01:17, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

• • Adding on another source to my main comment, but it looks like the pseudoscience label may even go so far as to satisfy WP:RS/AC. We do have sources specifically stating that nearly all scientists and philosophers consider faith healing pseudoscience.[16]
    • are either pseudoscience or at least lack the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously ... That's less than helpful it seems to me, since much of this exact debate is whether it is a pseudoscience proper, or simply lacks the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously, while not being a bonafide pseudoscience. GMG^talk 14:44, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose calling religious activities any kind science, pseudo- or otherwise. This feels like the endless battle, which will never end until a couple of editors get a pejorative term into this article.
  It happens that I was reading a fun article about something similar the other day, in which a minister suffered from frequent migraines for years, did a prayer ceremony, and the migraines stopped immediately and permanently. Now he's an atheist and says the timing was coincidental. (Migraines sometimes do just stop. I know someone who claims that her migraines were cured by getting a divorce.) I don't even know how you would actually study that kind of claim scientifically.
  I think that the big problem is that editors aren't thinking about what the word pseudoscience actually means. Here's a sample of definitions that were discussed in the last RFC:

1. a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method.- Oxford Dictionary
2. a system of theories, assumptions, and methods erroneously regarded as scientific- Merriam Webster
3. Pseudoscience includes beliefs, theories, or practices that have been or are considered scientific, but have no basis in scientific fact. - Your Dictionary
4. a discipline or approach that pretends to be or has a close resemblance to science - Collins Complete
5. A pseudoscience is a belief or process which masquerades as science in an attempt to claim a legitimacy which it would not otherwise be able to achieve on its own terms- Chem1.com
6. A pseudoscience is a set of ideas put forth as scientific when they are not scientific.- Skeptic's Dictionary

Note how different those definitions are from "anything that makes claims that could be measured empirically". I don't see anything in any high-quality sources that meets any of these definitions. If you've seen a reliable source writing, e.g.,

1. that most people think religious activities are based on the scientific method,
2. that faith healing is actually, but erroneously, regarded as scientific,
3. that faith healing is generally regarded as scientific,
4. that faith healing pretends to be or resembles science,
5. that faith healing masquerades as real science, or
6. that faith healing is put forward as a scientific activity,

then please share those sources, because I haven't seen any such sources, and I don't think that anyone else has, either. We've got a handful of sources that use the word sloppily, in a manner that is inconsistent with its definition, but I've seen none that make claims consistent with the actual definition. There is more to science than merely the ability to observe empirical facts.
On the question of WP:UNDUE, when a basically identical RFC happened a while ago (see /Archive 3), I checked a bunch of sources. Basically, >95% of books and scholarly articles that mention faith healing, even briefly, don't mention pseudoscience at all. "These faith healers are all ineffective frauds" may be a popular topic for certain skeptics, but people who write about faith healing as a primary subject seem entirely unconcerned with its (non-)relationship to scientific methods. For example, most medical professionals write about how religious beliefs like this affect patients' decisions (especially end-of-life decisions), but they don't say that these beliefs are mistakenly regarded as scientific and/or anything else that would match any definition of pseudoscience. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:16, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• • "Its religious!" is not a "Get out of pseudoscience free!" card. See Creationism 144.15.255.227 (talk) 17:23, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - this seems to hinge on the definition of “pseudoscience”... as I see it, faith healing does not pretend to be science at all... thus is incorrect to categorize it as pseudoscience. Is it Fringe? Yes, absolutely. Is it Quackery? Sure. But is it pseudo-SCIENCE? No. Blueboar (talk) 23:50, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

  [17], [18], explicitly claimed by believers writing in popular science mags e.g. [19]. Yup. There genuinely are people that deluded. Guy (Help!) 23:59, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

  I note that neither of these pages mention "pseudoscience". StAnselm (talk) 00:38, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support because (a) we have reliable third party sources for the statement, which is the end of it really, and (b) those are based on the provable existence of pseudo-scientific studies seeking to validate faith healing despite the absence of any remotely plausible mechanism by which it could work. Guy (Help!) 23:56, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support given the current definitions of the terms "Faith healing" and "pseudoscience" in Wikipedia. "Faith healing" has two components which are plainly stated in its name: faith and healing. Faith healing is not just prayer; critically, it is "claimed to elicit divine intervention in spiritual and physical healing". That healing part is absolutely a testable claim, which falls within pseudoscience's scope of claims made to be "factual, in the absence of evidence".--Gronk Oz (talk) 02:40, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

  The healing part may be testable, but the faith/divine part obviously isn't. StAnselm (talk) 02:54, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

  So write an article about faith alone and it won't be pseudo-science. But this article says "Believers assert that the healing of disease and disability can be brought about by religious faith through prayer and/or other rituals." Any time the proponents of something "assert that the healing of disease and disability can be brought about by X", that isn't a matter of faith, it's a matter of evidence. --Gronk Oz (talk) 14:37, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

  Gronk Oz, I think your very partial quote of the lead sentence is misleading. The whole thing says, "Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that are claimed to be scientific and factual, in the absence of evidence gathered and constrained by appropriate scientific methods". That's "claimed to be scientific AND factual", not just "factual" alone. Not all claimed facts are claimed to be scientific. You are setting up a definition in which every error of fact is pseudoscience. Let's say that I claim your real-world name is John. That claim is "factual, in the absence of evidence" (well, the absence of any evidence that I know about, anyway). Are you going to say that my claim is pseudoscience if I'm wrong (but maybe "science" if I'm correct)? I don't think so. But that's what you're arguing for here: "He claims that faith heals some people, and he's wrong, so that's pseudoscience". The logic is exactly the same as "She claims that X, and she's wrong, so that's pseudoscience".

  (Also, Wikipedia isn't a reliable source, so quoting six words out of a Wikipedia article isn't the best we can do for figuring out what a word means.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:28, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

  It's just not our job to select definitions we favour and crudely spin out an argument based on what we (mere Wikipedia editors) personally reckon about how it might apply. It is our job to get an expert source (i.e. from a philosopher of science who specializes in the demarcation problem) and see what that source says about pseudoscience and how it applies to faith healing. One such is Raimo Tuomela in: Tuomela R (1987). Science, Protoscience and Pseudoscience. Springer. pp. 83–102. ISBN 978-94-009-3779-6. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |editors= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help) — According to this faith healing is an obvious pseudoscience. Alexbrn (talk) 16:59, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

  It actually is the job – the primary job – of editors to use words accurately, so that readers correctly understand the subject. We could certainly support a sentence that says "Alice Expert says that it is pseudoscience", but if we say, in Wikipedia's voice, "This is pseudoscience", then it's very important for that use of the word to correspond with standard definitions and uses of the term. What we don't want is for a reader to read "This is pseudoscience", to go look up that word in a dictionary, and then to say, "Ah, according to my dictionaries, Wikipedia is saying that faith healing is based on the scientific method and has a close resemblance to science! I learned something new today!" WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:50, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

  What if we say......"certain approaches to faith healing have been classified as a pseudoscience"Bill Leonard; Jill Y. Crainshaw (2013). Encyclopedia of Religious Controversies in the United States: A - L. ABC-CLIO. p. 625. ISBN 978-1-59884-867-0..--Moxy (talk) 17:59, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

  The point is the demarcation problem is more complicated than can be solved with a cookie-cutter use of dictionary definitions by inexpert Wikipedia editors - which is why we need to follow how real experts address the exact question that is being posed here in reputable sources. Editors who really should know better are advancing their own views over those of relevant sources, and it won't do. Alexbrn (talk) 18:06, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

  RFCs are for getting comments about how to improve articles, which includes finding ways around needlessly binary initial questions. I think we can improve this article without merely saying "Yes, this is 100% pseudoscience" or "No, it's not at all". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:08, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

  @Moxy: I'm happy with putting that in the article. I suspect most of us feel the RfC is really about whether to call FH a PS in WP voice. (In this way, this RfC isn't nearly as well-worded as the previous one.) I certainly think we could mention pseudoscience, and your quote is an excellent one. StAnselm (talk) 19:06, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

  Moxy, I could support a sentence that "certain approaches to faith healing have been classified as pseudoscientific" (although it might attract a ^{[by whom?]} tag). I gather from the article that it would be equally valid to write "certain approaches to faith healing have been classified as bad theology", and I'd be happy to say that, too (with suitable sources, etc.). On a related point, the "Scientific investigations" and "Criticism" sections should probably be re-worked thematically. Maybe it should be organized approximately as ==Results== (apparently poor for objective conditions/there's a reason that people think a "miraculous" outcome isn't an everyday thing), ==Relationship to science and medicine== (mostly none, but it affects medical practice and patient decisions), ==Theology and philosophy==, anything else? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:08, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

  I like these two pages from the source above.....how it explains a bit science vs non scientific vs pseudo. Massimo Pigliucci; Maarten Boudry (2013). Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem. University of Chicago Press. pp. 30–31. ISBN 978-0-226-05182-6..--Moxy (talk) 21:21, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

  Yes, and it is Pigliucci - another expert on demarcation - who has said there is no simple "litmus test" for identifying pseudoscience. Nevertheless he says there is "remarkable agreement among virtually all philosophers that fields like ... faith healing ... are either pseudoscience or at least lack the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously". Which is why our article shall be clear on this matter. Alexbrn (talk) 21:58, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support This is a hoary old chestnut. I comment below in the threaded discussion JonRichfield (talk) 05:16, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose but for a lack of alternative. I don't know that faith healing practitioners regard themselves as doing scientific work. While definitely not science, it doesn't seem to belong in the pseudo-science category. I think it belongs in theological categories. Elmmapleoakpine (talk)
• Strong Oppose largely per WhatamIdoing. In order to assign such an obviously negative descriptor in wiki voice to a subject as widely discussed as Faith Healing we would need evidence that this is not just an opinion cited in one or a handful of RS sources, but a consensus view. In other words we need to be able to say that it is the mainstream opinion, reflected by clear use of that language in a majority or at least preponderance of the reliable secondary sources that faith healing is a specie of pseudo-science. Otherwise this is UNDUE at the least, and perilously close to POV pushing. That said, I do think it would be acceptable and well supported to say that FH is highly controversial and has been described by some as a form of pseudo-science. But we can't label it in those terms using wiki-voice. Nor can we assign that category to it unless we can honestly say that this is clearly the consensus view in RS sources, which I do not believe to be the case. -Ad Orientem (talk) 19:45, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
• Strong oppose Per WhatamIdoing and Ad Orientem who have provided the convincing arguments. The support arguments, I feel, are weak (I carefully considered them all in detail). Faith healing does not pretend to be scientific, nor does it claim to provide repeatable results (the scientific method); instead people simply pray to God in a group, almost always whilst embracing mainstream medicine as treatment at the same time. Praying and hoping for a divine intervention, either directly from God to the person or from God acting through doctors is a religious hope or belief - not a pseudoscience. Certainly there are, unfortunately, quacks and personality disordered people who present themselves as Christian and scientific for financial gain or the power of exploiting the vulnerable, who use pseudoscience to exploit the weak and vulnerable - such conmen exist everywhere. Only a tiny minority of faith healers actually present their practices in a scientific fashion that could be seen to be pseudoscience. The vast majority of sources, more than 95 percent of experts, do not consider faith healing to be a pseudoscience. For us to categorise faith healing would be a gross misrepresentation of the sources, by inflating a minority academic opinion to a majority viewpoint. In fact, the viewpoint that faith healing is regarded as a pseudoscience by experts could be argued (if we are to split hairs) a pseudoscience because the large majority of experts do not class faith healing as pseudoscience. It does seem to me that labelling faith healing as a pseudoscience is WP:POV pushing and gives excessive WP:UNDUE weight to minority academic viewpoints.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:56, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

  Could you comment on the book above we are talking about .....to quote ""Despite the lack of generally accepted demarcation criteria, we find remarkable agreement among virtually all philosophers and scientists that fields like astrology, creationism, homeopathy, dowsing, psychokinesis, faith healing, clairvoyance, or ufology are either pseudosciences or at least lack the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously".....--Moxy (talk) 00:22, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

  Yeah, the source does not state whether most experts consider it a pseudoscience or lacks credibility to be taken seriously. The source gives two descriptors, one as pseudoscience and the other as not pseudoscience per se and does not state which one applies to faith healing. Certainly the large majority of experts believe that convincing evidence, in support of faith healing being effective, is lacking. For such a widely written about subject, the fact that there are no existing good quality sources that specifically states in black and white that most experts class faith healing as a pseudoscience, makes me think that the support argument is weak. Moxy, you can't use a vague/unspecific statement to then, using the voice of Wikipedia, to authoritatively state - as fact - that faith healing is pseudoscience.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 00:39, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

  I would be mildly surprised if there were not thousands of discussions of FH in reliable secondary sources. There is no way we can attach a label like pseudo-science in wiki voice w/o strong evidence that this is a mainstream opinion, reflected by far more than the handful of cited sources. When Fidel Castro died there was a huge debate over whether he should be labeled a dictator in wiki voice. The community concluded that despite being so labeled in scores of reliable sources, that we could not do so w/o near unanimity. I'm not sure we need near unanimity, but a handful of cited sources out of likely thousands does not even come close to meeting the bar. -Ad Orientem (talk) 01:08, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

  I do like the oppnion of User:Literaturegeek. But I would ask why don't we explain that the academic community has difference views on this. I am simply not a fan of omission when we clearly have multiple sources describing the situation. Let's tell the our readers about the situation with sources so they can do more research on the topic......as this is the whole point of the project to guide our reader's to usable reliable sources.--Moxy (talk) 02:54, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

  Yes, I agree that the fact that some academics view faith healing as pseudoscience and others have not reached this conclusion should be mentioned in the article. If you like my opinion and feel the alternative is to acknowledge that the academic community have differing views then I think you need to switch your vote from support to oppose.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 03:15, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

  I also agree that the very controversial nature of FH needs to be mentioned. Nor, as I wrote above, do I object to mentioning that some have called it a form of pseudo-science. All of that is emphatically true and accurate, attested to in reliable sources. My strenuous objection is to any attempt to label FH as pseudo-science in wiki voice and to categorizing it as such which is effectively the same thing. There is nowhere near a consensus among RS sources to that effect. -Ad Orientem (talk) 03:44, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

  Ad Orientem, you are correct that faith healing is mentioned in thousands of potentially reliable sources, and >95% of them don't mention pseudoscience at all. 23:35, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose Had a little flick through the sources in this article, specifically clicking on the ones of a more skeptical bent. They generally don't use the word "pseudoscience" to describe it. Also per WhatamIdoing, it's not claimign to be science to be pseudoscience in the first place. Not everything in the world has to be framed in terms of some kind of grand rational skepticism Wikipedia battle all the time. Brustopher (talk) 09:52, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose - This again ? Do not be silly, this does not meet the category definition “claim or appear to be scientific”, or seePseudoscientific. As long as faith healing credits faith as the means then it is not claiming to be science. Claims that it works or submitting to a study does not change that laying on hands and calling on Jesus is not the scientific method. Markbassett (talk) 05:33, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

  p.s. It also is contrary to WP:PSCI as WP:UNDUE. When the vast majority of sources on the topic say no such thing, then it should not be in the article. Rare uses by someone that does have a noted prominence in discussions or gives detailed explanation may serve as a minority POV ... but random hits findable only by deep Google filters should tell you it is not DUE mention, and if you see it as a vague peroration and not detailed explanation or have to do interpretation instead of finding the word is just going to be OR. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 12:16, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support, but as pseudoscientific, not as a pseudoscience; it's not "a" anything; this is a catch-all term for a wide range of not-medical practice.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:13, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, there is no claim of science or scientific method, as "faith" gives it a religious or spiritual meaning. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:13, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

  Have you actually read the article, and looked at the studies it cites? The fact that purportedly scientific studies have been conducted in order to attempt to validate the effects of faith healing absolutely refutes your point. Not everybody claims it to be science, but enough do that it has been credibly identified by multiple independent sources as a source of pseudoscience. Guy (Help!) 14:34, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose as a category error. We can say that scientific trials have failed to demonstrate that it "works", but it is inaccruate to claim that it has pretensions to science in the first place. Mangoe (talk) 22:25, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

  Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.--Moxy (talk) 00:42, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

  Then, Moxy and others, if this passes you're going to have to put the same language and category onto both the Christian Science page and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures page. Are you going to put Wikipedia, as an institution, in that position? Christian Science is a religion, not a scientific organization, and Wikipedia should treat religions as such and refrain from sticking other-than-religion descriptors onto our articles. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:33, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

  Both those articles are clear that the belief system replaces most medical techniques, thus it's clear so no need to say more. We should be linking sources for our readers that cover this topic. To me it's simple....don't leave our readers in the dark. Omission of every source discuss this is not doing right by our readers. This is not some fringe topic it's simply a debate in the academic community as to its classification. So far a couple of proposals for the wording have been made and I think they're both good..... they're good because they link information for our readers. I would agree to any wording that gets our readers to academic sources.-Moxy (talk) 01:49, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

  Then such language could be added here in the Christian Science section if it's not already, and as you say, there would be no need to add more. I don't know why the content and category asked for in this discussion wouldn't be added to the Christian Science and book page if this "passes". Labeling a religious practice as widespread as faith healing (the belief in prayer and mental processing of reality-creation) with the psedo-science descriptor must first assume that religious-based faith healing is passing itself off as a science in the conventional sense. Randy Kryn (talk) 02:22, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

  Mary Baker Eddy's theories are extremely fringe and are unrepresentative of the most aggressive promoters of faith healing within evangelical/pentecostal Protestantism. Our article on Christian Science makes clear in the first sentence that she really doesn't have anything to do with mainstream Christianity no matter how broadly it is drawn. It is wildly WP:UNDUE to appeal to her notions. Mangoe (talk) 02:51, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

  Not everyone claims it to be science, but there are enough people who do that there is a non-trivial literature of pseudoscientific studies of faith healing. Which is why independent sources identify it as such. Faith healing is not in and of itself pseudoscience, but the study of it, its use in medical practice, and its promotion in quackademic medicine, absolutely are. Guy (Help!) 14:34, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

  I think that the editors opposed to this proposal are strongly agreeing with you that "Faith healing is not in and of itself pseudoscience". The proposal is to "include content and category describing Faith healing as a pseudoscience". The proposal is not as nuanced as your statement here, which indicates that it's not inherently pseudoscientific, even though it attracts nonsense/fraud/quacks/pseudoscholarship/whatever. I think that a lot of the opponents to this rather sweeping, oversimplified proposal would be satisfied by a more precise statement about "some, but not all". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:39, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

• Include content rather obviously (it is a problem that as of this writing, the word "pseudoscience" does not appear in the body of the article when that viewpoint is readily verifiable); meh on the categorization. Raymond3023 linked a number of RSs that characterize the subject as pseudoscience, so per WP:DUE, inclusion of content that discusses that viewpoint is not subject to editorial discretion - it is within the scope of this article. Some here seem to be making the argument that the mainstream view is not unambiguous to meet WP:PSCI regarding the categorization; that seems a stretch to me but there is at least room for discussion there. VQuakr (talk) 02:53, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose Praying for healing is not pseudoscience and it is inflammatory that this suggestion is even being made. Perhaps the article needs more, but we have Peer reviewed literature to support faith healing being effective in many areas, and credible eyewitness medical accounts that cannot be written off as hysteria per credible sources. If you must be a Materialist you can write it off as placebo effect plus random chance if you like, but the documented effect is real. But even then you are taking an ideological position to assert this. There is nothing scientific about any such assertion or belief. Furthermore, anecdotal reports of Faith healing failing are just that: anecdotal. There are anecdotal reports of failure and worse with all sorts of drugs, as well as documented negative effects of same. There is no scientific, or logical, or factual basis on which to declare this pseudoscience. Such an assertion is purely ideological and purely a matter of subjective opinion. desmay (talk) 06:25, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

  @Desmay: multiple sources have been presented that do classify faith healing as an example of pseudoscience, and per WP:DUE we are required to cover all significant viewpoints. Wikipedia is not censored, so whether content is inflammatory is not relevant. VQuakr (talk) 06:55, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support Enough sources call it pseudoscience (mentioned above) that it would violate our NPOV policy to not mention it and categorise it as such. AIRcorn (talk) 10:37, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

  No, there are not enough sources calling it pseudo-science. I doubt that the number of sources using that language would amount to even 1% of the RS coverage of this subject. Assigning such a negative term and category based on this level of opinion is UNDUE at best and POV pushing at worst. To label something as pseudo-science we need a strong consensus among reliable sources backing that language. We are not even close to that. -Ad Orientem (talk)

  It is not the number of reliable sources that use psuedoscience overall that matter, but the number of reliable sources that use psuedoscience relative to those that describe this practice as effective or non-psuedoscience. AIRcorn (talk) 19:45, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support. To the degree a claim is falsifiable, it is scientific. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 20:16, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

  Err, no. That is not anything like the dictionary definition of pseudoscience. Pseudo means resembling or masquerading as science or scientifically proven, when it is not. How does faith healing resemble or masquerade as science? Just because something lacks rigorous scientific evidence does not make it pseudoscientific.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 05:33, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

  Bearing in mind that the vast majority of people who engage in prayer for healing embrace mainstream medicine at the same time. Praying with the hope that God will heal or help doctors to heal them is hardly pretending to be scientific. Faith healing could be labelled as a form of complimentary medicine that lacks scientific proof.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 05:47, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

  The definition of faith healing, from Wikipedia's page: "It can involve prayer, a visit to a religious shrine, or simply a strong belief in a supreme being" Where in that definition is science, or any use of or claim of medicine? No matter how many sources this issue may have, it's still silly for the encyclopedia to brand the topic with the pseudo science or medicine label. There is no medicine! There is no science! And look at the other pages branded with the label, their entire lead paragraphs are covered with negative bias, totally destroying the topic's image and credibility in the minds of the reading public right up front. This source-used-to-blast good faith technique has also been extensively used on the pages of vegetarian and vegan diets and doctors, at times to an almost jaw-dropping degree (jaw-dropped in good faith of course). Is this what's in store for this page? Destroy-in-good-faith the concept in the lead paragraph? Again from the page, faith healing "can involve prayer, a visit to a religious shrine, or simply a strong belief in a supreme being". Please point out the claims to science or medicine in these mental techniques: "prayer" and "believing". If someone or something is well-sourced to be financially or emotionally exploitive of the people who believe in faith healing, then that aspect of a sham should be pointed out. But the term "faith healing" itself does not include the con-artists. It is a mental or emotion activity on par with making a wish. And, as I point out above, the first nine-word sentence of Wish sums up the concept better than the entire lead paragraph of this page. Randy Kryn (talk)

  This is the survey section so I'll keep it short, but for Where in that definition is science, or any use of or claim of medicine?, it looks like you forgot to also quote the sentence stating an empirical medical claim before the one you quoted, which essentially answers your own question. Kingofaces43 (talk) 01:32, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support High quality sources state it is pseudoscience, and it presents falsifiable theories. Ignoring the proven fact that it does not work makes it pseudoscience, even if some sources do not call it that. Carl Fredrik ^talk 12:07, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
  • User:CFCF, what exactly is the "falsifiable theory" here? How do you scientifically prove that a supernatural being doesn't exist and didn't ever have any effect on any person's health? Read this story from a hematologist (and an atheist). How exactly do you falsify the patient's hypothesis that the only long-term second remission known to medicine is a miracle? (Typical survival with best medical treatment is 18 months. This patient – and only this patient – has survived 40 years so far.) I know that most people in this discussion are a lot more comfortable labeling that situation a "spontaneous remission" rather than a "miracle", and that most of us would simply say that she's wrong, but I cannot figure out how you would actually, properly falsify that claim that her (undisputed) healing came from a divine being. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:23, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
    • Because in order to have a working hypothesis you need to have a mechanism which the term miracle contains as an abrogation of the way events occur in nature. I will take it for granted that the null hypothesis is preferred, so if we formulate the "miracle" hypothesis into a working explanatory framework, it would have to fit into our understanding of how the universe works. Maybe that would entail arguing on behalf of the existence of a fifth force intervening in the world that preferentially saves one outlier due to the precise interactions between the neural firings amongst the patient and the patient's family and friends and the etiology of the condition. Fantastic. Can we entertain such a thing? Nope. That's where the falsification happens. At the level of being unable to explain the rest of what we understand. Since null hypotheses remain when your convoluted alternative fails, that's what whence the falsification occurs. jps (talk) 00:52, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
      • User:CFCF, if you use the falsifiable theory analogy (which is actually original research on your part because that is not the definition of pseudoscience), then the whole human condition of hope where there is no hope can be claimed to be pseudoscience. For example, an atheist or even a religious person or a doctor who advocates that positive thinking can work in a situation where it can be proven it doesn't, does this make them pseudoscientists? Of course it doesn't because they are not trying to back their claim up with bad or false science. It just means they are 'wrong' not 'pseudoscientific'. Something has to be dressed up as science to call it pseudoscience. The tiny minority of sources found to label Christian prayer as a form of pseudoscience therefore suck and are making demonstrably poor quality sloppy claims.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 08:53, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
        • In fact there is quite a lot of pseudoscience around "positive thinking" and illness.[20]. When we have got the the point where scholarly, reputably published works are being rejected because they apparently "suck", we've got to the point of absurdity. Alexbrn (talk) 08:57, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
          • Source does not mention pseudoscience, unless my browser keyword search failed me. Positive thinking is often a nonsense which that source on a cursory glance seems to agree but that does not make it a pseudoscience.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 09:12, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
          • Many people who are voting support produce an argument that seems to run along the lines of confusing 'unscientific' and 'pseudoscientific' but often these RfCs are a numbers game and the facts don't matter, lol..--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 09:56, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
            • To accuse people who in good faith are reflecting what sources describe as "pseudoscience" as being "confused" is problematic. You should read more on the subject before making such categorical declarations. See [21]. jps (talk) 16:34, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
      • Josh, it doesn't work that way, and I'm actually disappointed that you'd even say that. If the rule were actually "it doesn't fit into our understanding of how the universe works", then a good deal of Einstein's work on physics should have been called "pseudoscience" when he first proposed it. And the germ theory of disease. And evolution. And quite a lot of what we now accept as perfectly good scientific information that just happened to overturn the then-prevalent understanding of how the universe works. You falsify something by testing it – not by saying that it doesn't match our current knowledge and beliefs. You determine that something is falsifiable by actually designing a test that could disprove it – not by just saying that you're sure any test would fail, because it doesn't line up with your worldview. If you want to say that the existence of miracles is a falsifiable claim, then you have to actually figure out how to disprove it. So far, all you've done is say that you don't believe in miracles, which isn't the same as being able to prove anything. (You can certainly deny grant applications based on current beliefs, though. That's done perfectly routine.  ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:59, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
        • The point that miracles don't fit into our understanding of how the universe works is one that corresponds to the point that the miracles which have up to now been claimed directly contradict observed features of our universe. This is not GR or evolution which explained the features of the universe already known, resolved outstanding problems, and made further predictions that were subsequently verified. This is talking about the way we observe the universe to work and what phenomena are explained. jps (talk) 15:10, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
          • The point is that you don't falsify an idea by saying that it doesn't fit your worldview. So we have an observed feature of our universe: with the best current medicine, there are no long-term survivors of relapsed AML. We have an explanation: AML sucks. And we have an unexplained, but still observed feature of our universe: exactly one person, who happened to engage in faith healing, has lived 40 years with this situation. Now I don't think this necessarily proves anything: coincidences happen, a lot of cancer patients pray, and it could be that the long-term survival rate happens to be on the order of one in a million, so there will be a second survivor if we just wait long enough. That would add evidence to the "it just happens sometimes" hypothesis (assuming that this second survivor didn't also report engaging in faith healing activities). But I don't know how to actually test the claim that she's making, and I don't really see any way around that. The claim made depends upon claim idea that some non-natural/supernatural thing exists. The existence of a supernatural being cannot – by definition – by falsified through observations of the natural world (i.e., in the way that Karl Popper meant when he said that scientific claims should be falsifiable). Religion is not falsifiable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:53, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
            • The question is: Can we formulate her claim into an empirical argument? I say we can. We can ask whether the existence of this outlier is surprising in a statistical sense. Now she might balk at such a suggestion, but as soon as someone make a truth claim it is up to others to decide how to evaluate it. Otherwise, we might as well accept the pontifications of those who believe the world is flat (and I don't mention this to be rude to the believer in miracles -- these points are complementary and need to be addressed). One can argue that a worldview that eschews a generalized empirical or scientific slant should be accepted on its own terms, but there is no categorical imperative to do this. So we need to see whether a scientific evaluation of the claim is possible. Since it clearly is (I can point to plenty of papers which look at this sort of thing rather plainly), it cannot just be a full-stop "no" on the question of whether science has anything to say about it. jps (talk) 15:39, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
            • In short, to say "Religion is not falsifiable" is making a blanket and unwarranted universalist claim about all religion in a highly problematic way. If someone says that their religion tells them the world is flat and therefore the world really is flat, the predicate of their argument is clearly a truth statement that we can falsify whether the believer thinks we should be able to or not. jps (talk) 15:42, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support We follow the sources, not draw our own conclusions. Sources say pseudoscience: so should Wikipedia. --RexxS (talk) 21:05, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
• support We follow the sources. Jytdog (talk) 15:24, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
• support per last 5 editors above--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 02:51, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support - (Apologies for length.) Much of the substantive counter argument seems to be that at some level of unsophistication, a thing stops being un-scientific and starts being a-scientific. There are undoubtedly things that rise to the level of being a-scientific. Many of these lie at the depths of existential thought, questions like whether or not we (or rather I) have really been in the Matrix all along. In religion, probably also the more theologically nuanced opinions on the nature of the soul, or the fundamental and otherwise unqualified existence of a supreme being. But these are a-scientific because of their sophistication and not because of their simplicity. They are... somehow... defined in such as was so as to make them in some key fashion outside of our "collective non-fiction comic book universe" for the purposes of science.

Having said that, I find it hard to believe we would be having an equally nuanced discussion if the question were whether the laying on of hands could fix your car, and whether we should consider that un-mechanical (as practiced by pseudo-mechanics) or a-mechanical in a way that is distinct from and complementary to the dogmas of wrench wielding automotive skeptics. The central question there would be whether it was being preached, practiced and investigated as if it were a legitimate form of vehicle maintenance when it wasn't. Certainly we can tick lots of boxes here with regard to faith healing as a form of "medicine" which makes medical claims of fact that are either supported or unsupported by the best available medical evidence, and then modified accordingly, or maintained in-tact despite what we've learned.

The argument that it is offensive is irrelevant. The argument that it does not claim to provide repeatable results is demonstrably false, albeit with all the accouterments of modern apologetics. The argument from a man-in-the-street majority view is a bald faced appeal to popularity. The argument that there is no consensus in RS has potential, but I don't think is convincing once you discount the weight given to it by people who are themselves proponents of fairly wildly inaccurate claims regarding medical efficacy. These are not RS for the purposes of determining pseudo-scientific-ness. Whether faith healing is actually, but erroneously, regarded as scientific is self evident if you instead ask whether it is actually, but erroneously regarded as effective medical treatment which it clearly is by a great many. Medicine is a science, and pseudo-medicine is pseudo-science, as it would be if we were talking about quarts crystals. That one comes with uncomfortable theological dilemmas and the other doesn't is immaterial. Plenty of people have found a way to make peace with it, and it doesn't change the basic assertions of fact. Maybe it's all true and we've just been doing it wrong. That's something empirical inquiry can investigate, but for the time being, if it's an effective medical treatment, we haven't figured that bit out yet, but that hasn't stopped its proponents from marketing it like we have, and that's the part that makes it pseudoscience. GMG^talk 14:24, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Some problems with this analogy: There is an important difference between pseudoscience and religious faith/hope which I will explain as I feel you are missing this point in your post. Except for the occasional fringe preacher or scam conman faith healer, mainstream Christianity (and other religions) do not promote prayer for healing as a medicine in the sense that it can produce predictable/expected results the way science based medical treatments do. Instead, they teach quite the opposite of pseudoscience in that God is not like a magic wishing well who is under your command to answer prayers (produce predictable results [scientific method]), but that God will sometimes choose to answer prayers of the faithful (by the grace of God). Another problem is there is no attempt by mainstream religions who advocate prayer for healing to engage in pseudoscience in academic literature the way transcendental meditation folk do. An example of a pseudoscientific religious organisation and practice would be transcendental meditation technique because they actually do infiltrate the academic literature with biased studies and widely promote their religion to the public as being scientifically proven, etc. Christians who say a prayer for healing do not engage in this behaviour because they have a faith/hope that God can and will sometimes unpredictably answer a prayer for a sick person to get better without any attempt to dress their belief up falsely as scientifically proven with expected/humanly predictable results. This is why they use terminology such as the miracle(unpredictability lack of science) of prayer and not predictability(pseudoscience) of prayer. Therefore, there is no resemblance or attempt to resemble science - so prayer and worship of God for healing is not a pseudoscience, per the actual dictionary definition of pseudoscience. If prayer is labelled a pseudoscience, the whole human condition of hope can be labelled a pseudoscience and where does it end. For example, if an atheist (or a religious person for that matter) believes and states that positive thinking can help effect change in a situation (e.g. illness) where it can't, does this mean they are pseudoscientists?--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 08:33, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

The question is not whether "prayer" is a pseudoscience, it's whether faith healing is. Alexbrn (talk) 08:48, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes, my message mentioned 'healing' from prayer which is by far the most common form of faith healing practised by perhaps a billion or more people to varying degrees. Obviously I am not talking about people who prayed for non-health issues like praying someone wins or loses an election.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 09:08, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Maybe a couple of points for context, since it seems like we're approaching things with some different base assumptions. I live in Appalachia, and I was raised Pentecostal. When someone who is Pentecostal (at around 300 million worldwide) talks about the laying on of hands, they're literally talking about cancers being pulled from your body. Now, I'll be the first to admit that the communal practice itself may have many positive benefits, but when I talk of faith healing, I'm not exactly talking about Lutherans doing the equivalent of a form of meditation and sending well wishes that the chemo goes favorably; I'm talking about people like Oral Roberts healing a girl in front of a crowd at a revival, and that kind of spectacle still goes on, a lot. You might argue that that's not mainstream Christianity, and I might be inclined to agree, but... it's a thing... a significant thing in the US, and I don't think you can dismiss it out of hand as "the occasional fringe preacher or scam conman faith healer". I think it's probably more like "a substantial minority of Protestants". GMG^talk 10:52, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Ok, so you are talking about a minority of Protestants, there lies the problem - this article is talking about all forms of faith healing; including the mainstream saying a simple prayer for a sick friend or relative or for people affected by a natural disaster. I watched the YouTube video and it does not look, to the trained or untrained eye, anything like science, so it can't reasonably be labelled a pseudoscience. A substantial minority is still a minority so it would be inappropriate to use a wide sweeping brush to label all faith healing according to what a minority do. I remain concerned that people voting support are thinking only of a small minority form of faith healing and are additionally confused what the definition of 'pseudoscience' is versus perhaps a more appropriate term 'unscientific'.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 07:44, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Template:Tq"... including the mainstream saying a simple prayer for a sick friend or relative ..." <- actually it's not about that, although you keep trying to argue the point. That is why our distinct Intercession article exists and is not merged in here. We probably need a hatnote here to point people off to that if they're after "simple prayer" type stuff. Alexbrn (talk) 07:52, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Mainstream prayer for healing of those affected by famine, a sick loved one, any healing prayer is faith healing per several mainstream dictionary definitions per this diff. Err an intercessory prayer, by definition, means praying for the benefit of someone else, so faith healing prayer is a form of intercessory prayer unless you are praying for one's own personal health. Lots of people voting support don't seem to have a good grasp of what relevant English language words actually mean, ugh.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 08:29, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Ugh. One could say that this is a tu quoque point. No one is claiming that faith healing is not a form of intercessory prayer. We are saying that the claim that faith healing == intercessory prayer is incorrect. "Faith healing" is a compound term as it is used in many of the sources that are discussing it in toto. Now, you are furthermore claiming that since intercessory prayer is practiced by more people than those who believe in faith healing (as I am describing it), therefore it is only right and good and proper to claim that faith healing == intercessory prayer. No dice. Return to the books written on the subject. They discuss it as the thing you assert (without evidence) is practiced only by a minority of Christians. I return to the question of what do the best sources describe faith healing as. I further ask, do these sources ascribe to it qualities of pseudoscience as described, broadly, in the best sources we have which deal with the question of what pseudoscience is. Until you are ready to have that conversation, I find your claims about the seeming lack of English language abilities of those who oppose you to be a case of WP:KETTLE. jps (talk) 18:00, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

I think this is a key point. "Faith healing" seems to overlap with "intercessory prayer" enough to make it important to define what we're talking about. Is this article supposed to encompass theatrics on television but not the nun who thinks she was healed by praying to the former pope? Or the other way around? Or both?

(And if the answer is money-grubbing television shows but not the nun, then is "pseudoscience" the most important word, or should we be using words like "unconscionable fraud perpetrated upon vulnerable people"?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:06, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

I think demarcating what is or is not faith healing absolutely can only be done by reference to sources. We can try to come up with a straightforward means to say yea or nay, but ultimately, there is no one thing you can point to which says one thing is faith healing while another is merely wishful thinking, or meditations on niceties, or sincerely held conviction that makes no further claims on empirical reality, or etc.... So I don't think your question has an answer we can point to cleanly, but that doesn't mean that faith healing is therefore inoculated against the pseudoscience charge. Things are complicated and we ultimately need to decide how they are discussed in sources. I do not buy the claim that faith healing is generally separated from pseudoscience. Intercessory prayer may be, but faith healing is another beast. C.f. the book search. jps (talk) 15:48, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support and either split or refocus the article. This root of the problem is that this article covers three different topics: faith healing, intercessory prayer, and healing narratives in religious texts (I'll just say "Biblical narratives," from now on, but this article would ideally include narratives from the Quran and Hadith if the Islam section was more developed).

Regarding Biblical healing narratives: whether or how Jesus healed people 2000 years ago is inconsequential to this discussion. You can call it a matter of faith, mythical, both, or whatever, but the stories of the healing miracles were historically studied both literally and symbolically. That material needs to be on its own page, covering all major historical interpretations, instead of presenting only one interpretation as being possible.

Regarding intercessory prayer: asking God to ensure success with science-based medicine (i.e. medicine based on the Natural Laws that He instituted) is a fairly mainstream theological position. Material about that position more properly belongs in the Intercession article.

Regarding what this article should focus on: when someone these days refuses to give their kid real medical treatment because "God will heal them," they are operating from at one or both of the following positions:

-that miracles are as consistent and reliable as scientific law

-that physical healing (perhaps other material benefit) ultimately comes from spiritual faith, not physical science

In the first case, even going with Aquinas's definition of miracles that includes "what is wont to be done by the operation of nature, but without the operation of the natural principles," faith healing is still unnatural (i.e. against natural law, or as it's now more commonly known, science). Both theology and science agree that miracles are not scientific and do not operate in a scientific fashion. In the second case, one would only make faith healing their primary care method if they believed that science-based medicine is unnecessary or even antagonistic to healing. Even if, as modern followers of Christian Science do, the faith healer adherent allows for science-based medical care as complimentary to faith healing, they are still saying that it's unnecessary on some level. Those who outright refuse treatment have been taught and teach that science-based medicine is somehow poisonous. Now, they're entitled to their beliefs and also to interpret the Biblical healing narratives as justification for their beliefs -- but we need not treat their interpretation as the only one. In either case, they are making false claims about the scientific reliability of their belief, or they are making false claims about the reliability of science. Ian.thomson (talk) 19:23, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

As a talk page discussion about faith grows longer, the chances of linking to Aquinas approach 1. GMG^talk 19:32, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

And by a Baptist, no less! Ian.thomson (talk) 19:37, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose. This should be a no-brainer. Faith healing as a practice makes no scientific claims. Faith healers don't claim to be doing science either. Even if some sources happen to mention "faith healing" in the same breath as a sentence about pseudoscience, I would say that calls into question the reliability of the source more than it suggests faith healing is a pseudoscience. It's a religious practice, plain and simple. As an analogy, you can find all sorts of sources that claim connections between quantum mechanics and ancient (or new-age) religions. Just because a source attempts to put a veneer of science over a religion doesn't suddenly cause the religion to qualify as psuedoscience. ~Anachronist (talk) 20:42, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
  • • "Faith healing as a practice makes no scientific claims." It absolutely does. It claims that it can produce the same results as (or even surpass!) medical healing. 144.15.255.227 (talk) 21:19, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

  It not sources which just "mention in the same breath", it's sources which directly and explicitly say FH is pseudoscience. You argument appears to be that your personal view should take precedence over sources - that's not how Wikipedia works and I'm sure you can see why! Possibly you're confusing faith healing with intercession? Alexbrn (talk) 21:04, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

  Not at all. WP:UNDUE takes precedence. That is how Wikipedia works, as I am sure you know. Most reliable sources on the topic don't characterize faith healing as pseudoscience. The fact that a rare source can be found here and there that does isn't relevant; using them as a reason for Wikipedia to characterize faith healing as pseudoscience violate WP:UNDUE. It's a minority viewpoint. I stand by my opposition. ~Anachronist (talk) 21:11, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

  There are strong on-point sources. Your undue argument is not right, as has been explained multiple times by multiple editors already. Alexbrn (talk) 21:19, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

  My undue argument is not wrong. "Strong" sources? Where? Is there a consensus among reliable sources? No one has demonstrated this in the discussion above, as far as I can tell. Simply put, there are insufficient reliable sources calling it pseudoscience. As I said initially, this should be a no-brainer. ~Anachronist (talk) 23:47, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

  Yes, there is consensus among reliable sources. Alexbrn (talk) 08:31, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose adding the pseudoscience tag to the article, Support including language about whether it is pseudoscience. Faith healing comprises such a wide variety of practices that categorizing them all as pseudoscience doesn't make sense, but there seem to be enough sources to say that some types of faith healing, or faith healing practiced under certain circumstances, are a type of quackery or pseudoscience. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 13:59, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose too many of the sources are using language that implies that FH is a-scientific, un-scientific or extra-scientific, all of which claims are fairly self-evident anyhow and which tend to work against it being pseudo-(ie falsely)-scientific. As others have said, certain practices and practicioners may be pseudo-scientific and there should be no objection to including text which identifies who, why and what has been so described. Religious faith is not inherently a 'fake' scientific view of the material world any more than conventional scientific wisdom is a 'fake' religion, dependent on belief rather than evidence. They are chalk and cheese. Do some 'healers' exploit the sick and vulnerable? Sure! But that does not make the whole subject p-s, not every conman is a pseudo-scientist, if they never claim a scientific basis to their actions in the first place. Also, as others have said, many people are going to approach FH in a spirit of "please God, make the medicine work" - which isn't fundamentally different from 'positive thinking'. Pincrete (talk) 09:46, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

  This is actually a good example of the special pleading that makes faith healing pseudoscientific, even for claiming that praying to God cured an illness. Claiming to be "extra-scientific" or outside the realms of human explanation due to supernatural forces in order to explain an occurrence in the natural world (i.e., getting better) is pseudoscience. It doens't need to be the more egregious cases of cons and fraud. One only needs to make a claim that a supernatural entity or force not able to be measured by science caused an observable effect in the natural world. Kingofaces43 (talk) 14:21, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

  Nope, because Pincrete is not trying to prove its effectiveness scientifically or otherwise. Your definition of pseudoscience is your personal definition Kingofaces - reliable sources, including dictionaries define it differently. You are confusing 'unscientific' with 'pseudoscientific' it seems.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 14:53, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

  According to your definition of pseudoscience, my three-year-old niece is a pseudoscientist because she holds a firm belief (that she tells everybody) that Santa Claus comes down the chimney to give her presents once per year and the Easter Bunny is going to plant chocolate eggs for her at Easter. It can be falsified by planting cameras to show it is her parents doing it. Certainly her innocent beliefs are unscientific and can be falsified but belief in Santa and the Easter bunny is absolutely not pseudoscience (looks like or pretending to be scientific). A paranoid delusion by a schizophrenic can be falsified by scientific testing but their belief is not pseudoscience (unless it resembled science which is unlikely in most cases).--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 15:07, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

  Please do not misrepresent my comments, especially in an area under discretionary sanctions. Sources already discuss how the appeal to the supernatural to explain natural phenomena falls under pseudoscience as mentioned previously. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:12, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

  There's no special pleading on my part because the article states explicitly that there is zero scientific evidence of effectivenes - as it should. In order to put 'p-s' in WPVOICE, there should be near universal agreement in sources that not only is it almost certainly ineffective (or only placebo-like in its effectiveness) - but also that it presents itself as having scientific credentials which are actually fake - ordinarily, or commonly ones that seek to discredit or displace established science. AFAI can see, 'f-h' fails the 'near universal' criterion, probably because it fails the 'fake science credentials' criterion. I would support including content as to who and why describe it as 'pseudo', I would also support inclusion of which specific practices etc. have been so characterised - and why. Such text would not only be more balanced than simply attaching the 'label' - it would also be a great deal more informative. Pincrete (talk) 23:30, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

but also that it presents itself as having scientific credentials which are actually fake - ordinarily, or commonly ones that seek to discredit or displace established science This is, as far as I can tell, a standard of your own invention. We have WP:PSCI which is Wikipedia's form of demarcation. Nowhere is "fake credentials" or the proposal that pseudoscience must "seek to discredit or displace" mentioned. More than that, we have plenty of sources which show that (1) faith healing is considered pseudoscience and (2) this is not the only possible definition of "pseudoscience". jps (talk) 16:50, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support The latest source found by Kingofaces clinches it [22]. If this can't be called pseudoscience then nothing can. zzz (talk) 15:13, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

  The source doesn't actually clinch it, it would be great if it did because I could pack up and go home, so to speak. The source states the following: "we find remarkable agreement that..... fields like astrology, creationism, homeopathy, dowsing, psychokinesis, faith healing, clairvoyance, or ufology are either pseudosciences or at least lack the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously" Therefore source does not state whether most experts consider it a pseudoscience or instead consider that it lacks credibility to be taken seriously. So the source gives two descriptors, one as pseudoscience and the other as not pseudoscience but lacking credibility and does not state which one applies to faith healing. Since almost all sources do not mention pseudoscience when describing faith healing I would assume it is the latter "lacks credibility to be taken seriously" that the author was applying, rather than pseudoscience because there is little expert support and few sources for calling all forms of faith healing pseudoscience. So it is a poor source to assert that faith healing is a pseudoscience because it is unclear and vague leaving the reader trying to guess which applies to which. Certainly faith healing lacks an evidence base and fails evidence-based medicine standards badly. Is this really the best source we have to assert and categorise faith healing as pseudoscience (which reliable sources show includes simple health orientated prayer that their mainstream medical care will be effective) that over a billion people practice?--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 16:22, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

  The full sentence is "Despite the lack of generally accepted demarcation criteria, we find remarkable agreement among virtually all philosophers and scientists that fields like astrology, creationism, homeopathy, dowsing, psychokinesis, faith healing, clairvoyance, or ufology are either pseudosciences or at least lack the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously." That is about as conclusive as you are going to get for any prospective pseudoscience. zzz (talk) 16:29, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

  Actually, the Tuolema source (mentioned above) is even more definitive: "Such examples of pseudoscience as the theory of biorhythms, astrology, dianetics, creationism, faith healing may seem too obvious examples of pseudoscience for academic readers ...". There really is no dispute in RS. Alexbrn (talk) 16:56, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose categorization but support discussion and inclusion of the sources cited that do categorize some faith healing as pseudoscience. The primary issue is that many of the sources quoted so far (properly) recognize the tremendous diversity of beliefs around and in this topic and only classify some of them as pseudoscience. I also find the arguments that many faith healing believers make no pretensions toward or about science persuasive. So it does not seem advisable to categorize this entire subject, to the extent that it can be considered one subject, as pseudoscience. However, there are definitely enough sources addressing this topic that it must be discussed in the article. ElKevbo (talk) 04:59, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support - There seems to be sufficient sources to include this statement. Seanbonner (talk) 07:53, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support - As long as faith healing claims to be something other than a result of the Placebo effect, it will be a pseudoscience. Beyond My Ken (talk) 15:31, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Faith healing is non-scientific, not pseudoscientific. There are no scientific claims made, which would be necessary for something to be defined as pseudoscience. Natureium (talk) 18:28, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

  Medicine is a science. zzz (talk) 19:00, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

  Saying a simple prayer that mainstream healthcare will be effective (the most commonly practiced form of faith healing practiced today) is not science or a pseudoscience, it is a form of religious faith, hope and comfort.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 19:20, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

  Who are you talking to? Keep your random WP:FORUM-style opinions to yourself, thanks. zzz (talk) 20:35, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

  I was replying to you and my point was that faith healing nowadays is not performed as a medicine nor an alternative to medicine as your message suggested. Please be civil, I have as much right to express an opinion as you do.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 20:47, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

  (ec) Do you have sources for this claim? Because the following source say faith healing is one of the most prolific and dangerous forms of alternative medicine.Hoyle Leigh -Dean of Medicine (2012). Biopsychosocial Approaches in Primary Care: State of the Art and Challenges for the 21st Century. Springer Science. p. 204. ISBN 978-1-4615-5957-3...--Moxy (talk) 22:43, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

  Moxy, this diff by ltwin shows sources that define that simple prayer for healing is faith healing (which could then include up to a billion people), it does not have to be from a faith leader. Going by those sources that define simple prayer for healing as faith healing I am aware of no evidence that any significant percent of the up to a billion people who practice a simple prayer reject mainstream medical care. However, your source separates intercessory prayer (simple prayer for another sick person) from faith healing which they appear to define as being performed by a fringe type of religious leader, other sources do not do this. I think this is a major locus of the dispute because different sources define faith healing differently, very differently - some incorporate all forms of prayer for healing whereas others only the faith healer who claims to have the special power to heal (often instantly) through invoking a divine power. Personally, I am very sceptical of faith healing and have never seen one, in the sense of how that book defines a faith healer - I always resort to science and mainstream medicine for illness. I agree that the extreme forms of religious faith healing belief, often by a cult like leader or charlatan, are a dangerous form of alternative medicine, especially when they encourage rejection of mainstream medical care; and this article quite rightly points this danger out where deaths have occurred. I wouldn't be surprised if another RFC is requested six months from now in how to use the different sources and apply them to this article. Perhaps some compromise or solution to these different definitions reliable sources express can be found soon.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:30, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support. Since faith healing claims to have observable, measurable, real-world effects, it's within the domain of science. --Calton | Talk 06:26, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. The problem here is pre-labeling all Faith healing under pseudoscience. It is usually a poor idea to negatively subjectively "label" concepts, places or people. Should we label Bill Clinton as a person who used his office for sex? How about labeling "Philosophy" as Secular Theology? Angola is not exactly a tourist magnet. How about labeling it as a "s**thole"? It seems more encyclopedic to label each objectively. "Clinton"="President of the US"; "Philosophy" = "School of Thought." "Angola"="Country in Africa." The fact that there are so many people arguing here seems to suggest that there should be a main section that deals with criticism that Faith healing is a pseudoscience. But no pre-labeling of data that might be added later. An encyclopedia is not supposed to be trying to brainwash readers, but to inform them so they can make their own choices/write their own papers. Student7 (talk) 17:05, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
• Weak Oppose - Think I agree with User:WhatamIdoing and User:Natureium's lines of reason. Strikes that me that faith healing just doesn't meet the classical definition for a pseudoscience. In my mind, for something to be a pseudoscience, there has to be a claim or impression that it's based on scientific method. I don't think many adherents of faith healing would make that claim. Yes, there appear to be a few sources which do use the word "pseudoscience" in association with faith health, but it's not clear to me that we're not just cherry-picking those sources. I think it's reasonable that a bunch of folks do feel we ought to call it a pseudoscience, but if a subject doesn't fit comfortably within a category, why use the category at all? NickCT (talk) 20:01, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, for the reasons stated by Blueboar, MrX and others. François Robere (talk) 17:30, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support per HammerTrousers. L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 18:25, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support – multiple reliable sources describe faith healing as pseudoscience, so this article should as well. (Summoned by bot) —MBL ^talk 11:48, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
• Weak Oppose as per Blueboar; for it to be a pseudoscience it would first need to purport to be scientific. Chetsford (talk) 05:03, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support - Adding the category is valid even if only some of faith healing can be classified as pseudoscience, and adding content which shows some (or all, but that seems unlikely) of it to be pseudoscience is clearly justified if reliable sources exist... and they appear to. For example, something like "Faith healing can be classified as a spiritual, supernatural, or paranormal event, and, in some cases, belief in faith healing can be classified as magical thinking or pseudoscience" might be what you end with. --tronvillain (talk) 15:41, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
• oppose Categories should be used only in unambiguous cases: "Categorizations should generally be uncontroversial; if the category's topic is likely to spark controversy, then a list article (which can be annotated and referenced) is probably more appropriate", as WP:Categorization states. As there is this much ambiguity among sources and controversy among editors, the better approach would be to explain the sides of the question, i.e. The difference between intercessory prayer and a claim that faith healing is an empirically verifiable approach to medical treatment, the difference between a non scientific claim and a pseudoscientific claim, and so on. The whole discussion above should be trimmed to a tight paragraph or, at most, two. Clean Copy^talk 12:18, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

  Out of the many thousands of sources that discuss faith healing, only about half a dozen sources, (spread out over many years, even decades apart) have been found that carelessly attach the label pseudoscience to faith healing. To categorise faith healing as pseudoscience violates NPOV and categorisation guidance because reliable sources fail to "commonly and consistently define the subject" as pseudoscience, per WP:Categorization. I fear WP:Categorization invalidates or reduces the weight of many of the support votes.

  From WP:Categorization it says: "Categorization must also maintain a neutral point of view....... editors should be conscious of the need to maintain a neutral point of view when creating categories or adding them to articles."

  "A central concept used in categorising articles is that of the defining characteristics of a subject of the article. A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define[1] the subject as having —such as ....."--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 12:48, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

  So far 20+ academic sources vs dictionary meaning of a word .....still not one source refuting all the others. Why is this?...because we study faith-healing under this notion--Sadri Hassani (7 May 2010). From Atoms to Galaxies: A Conceptual Physics Approach to Scientific Awareness. CRC Press. pp. 641–. ISBN 978-1-4398-8284-9.........Moxy (talk) 13:20, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

  Hi Moxy, 20+ sources, many going back to the 70's, 80's and 90's, not all are recent... Because academics are too disinterested in whether it is a pseudoscience to bother countering the small number of clumsy labelling by a miniscule number of academics. It is not a research topic, never has been. Sources rarely actually explain why an author thinks it is a pseudoscience, when they do you can see they are misunderstanding what pseudoscience is like your book reference; when they label faith healing as pseudosciene they just use the word carelessly as a way of saying there's no scientific proof it works. Like I say, certainly there are a few good quality sources to state in the article body that faith healing, or at least certain forms of faith healing, is regarded by some authors as a pseudoscience. The argument that Wikipedia should categorise and assert that faith healing - all forms including simple prayer for a sick relative - is pseudoscience, is not strong enough and violates NPOV and WP:Categorization. I just read that book page reference, another clumsy academic misinterpreting the definition of pseudoscience, the author has even labelled (alongside faith healing) 'a belief we have been visited by UFO's and psychic ability' as pseudoscience (a belief, just believing something that is not true is pseudoscience - now all children who believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny and all schizophrenics who believe something is true when it's not are pseudoscientists instead of just being children or mentally ill) - clearly the author is confusing fringe belief or nonsense with meaning pseudoscience (masquerades as or resembles but is not science). Unfortunately, per WP:NPOV and all the support votes, we will probably have to include sloppy academic opinions in the article because it is not up to Wikipedians to question conclusions of sources with regard to whether to cite them in an article, especially when the community is so divided on this issue.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 14:07, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

  What this RfC has proven to me is that there are a small number of academics who have misused and perhaps sometimes even 'abused' the term and definition of 'pseudoscience' in their books to discredit a belief or practice as being bogus.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 14:22, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

  We present sources over the decades to show presidents and the norm. Thus far there's no sources refuting all the others..... all we have is the opinions of anonymous editors versus multiple academic sources. Just claiming that every source is BS over and over again without providing any sources just your POV is not how we do things here. if as you claim all these academic sources are wrong why is no one disputing them in other sources?--Moxy (talk) 14:27, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

  I answered your question in the 2nd sentence of my large reply above.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 14:39, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

  Not so much an answer as it is a rationalization. --Calton | Talk 15:20, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support Quote: Faith healing is probably the most dangerous pseudoscience — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.220.7.244 (talk) 00:42, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support per sourcing. I definitely understand the opposes, in that Faith healing often doesn't even rise to a pretense of scientific. However when it does, it would be perverse not to report that. It may be reasonable foro the text to specifically relate the word "pseudoscience" to where Faith Healing is making claims. Alsee (talk) 05:19, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose – Faith healing is baseless poppycock which is responsible for killing thousands of people who are dissuaded from seeking medical attention, or who wait too long to seek it. But if we rely on the definition of Pseudoscience as "practices that are claimed to be scientific and factual" (emphasis added) and on the definition of Faith healing in this article, then it is not pseudoscience if there is no claim of scientific basis. Similarly, I would say that Exorcism and Prayer are not pseudoscience, because no scientific mechanism is claimed, and their lack of effectiveness is irrelevant. That said, if it appears that the clear preponderance of reliable sources agree that it is a pseudoscience, using the same definitions as used in these two articles, then I would change my vote. (If the majority of sources don't use the same definitions as the articles, then we need to change the articles.) Mathglot (talk) 07:03, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support Summoned by bot. It's simple, go with the majority of sources. It doesn't matter what our personal opinions may be. Jschnur (talk) 05:01, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

But how do you know it's a majority of sources? StAnselm (talk) 06:28, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Mostly from the fact that there have not been ANY sources brought forward where experts of pseudoscience say "faith healing is not a pseudoscience" (or even "faith healing is a-scientific" whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.220.7.244 (talk • contribs) 08:55, March 27, 2018 (UTC) (unsigned where are you signbot?) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jschnur (talk • contribs) 23:31, March 27, 2018 (UTC) I'm here, I'm here!

• Admittedly I have not checked every source. I did look at six or seven and they all unambiguously confirmed the assertion of pseudoscience. This was enough for me to assume that these are in the majority. (BTW the previous comment above is not mine - where is signbot when you need it).. Jschnur (talk) 23:31, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Here is a source that states that faith healing is not a pseudoscience: "Cures allegedly brought about by religious faith are, in turn, considered to be paranormal phenomena but the related religious practices and beliefs are not pseudoscientific since they usually have no scientific pretensions." Jschnur, there are many thousands of sources that discuss faith healing, but only a microscopic minority attach pseudoscience as a label to faith healing. This is because pseudoscience means pseudo/resembling science, which obviously faith healing does not resemble science, faith in God having the ability to heal people is not 'resembling science.' WhatamIdoing lists above definitions of pseudoscience in her oppose vote. It is not as clear cut an answer as you seem to think it is. There is a legitimate concern that a very small number of academics/authors have labelled faith healing as pseudoscience without carefully considering what the actual definition of pseudoscience is.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:58, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

The same source separates faith healing from pseudoscience by classing it as paranormal because the source also says the following: One practical reason is that people with pseudoscientific and paranormal beliefs may be at greater risk than those who are not. For example, iridology, acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, and therapeutic touch are all based on pseudoscientific theories yet they have unproven thera- peutic value. 22 The same thing can be said of therapies based on paranormal beliefs. For example, faith healing's effectiveness is unproven and in many instances is based on fraud and deception. 23 Sick people who rely on these practices might well be neglecting therapies that are more reliable and proven, thus indirectly harming themselves. Moreover, actions based on pseudoscientific beliefs - for example, that massive doses of vitamins have therapeutic value - can directly harm people.

There is no doubt that there are faith healers who are out and out criminals, but there are also genuine religious people who believe in the power of prayer and that God can perform miracles without any attempt to dress it up as scientifically based or proven, so the whole article topic can't in all intellectual honestly be classed as pseudoscience. Many mainstream definitions of faith healing include any attempt to pray for healing, so would include a husband praying for their terminally ill wife or a church leader praying for one of their congregation. Certainly, there are some aspects of faith healing or certain criminal faith healers who might adopt pseudoscientific ways to promote themselves or faith healing in general, but care needs to be taken in asserting in Wikipedia's voice that even basic prayer for healing is pseudoscience/resembles but is not science.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 00:19, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

If you are going to rest your case on that source, then we are at the point that the article needs to state "faith healing is a pseudoscience or a paranormal fraud." I would be OK with that. 67.220.7.244 (talk) 01:18, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

You are misrepresenting the source: the source does not say it is fraudulent, it says faith healing is unproven and points out there are many instances of fraudulent faith healers and healings (everyone voting here, as far as I can tell, accepts these facts). The source also says that cures from religious faith (faith healing) is not a pseudoscience (other equally reliable sources states faith healing is a pseudoscience, so there is a degree of controversy regarding if it is pseudoscience).--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 01:36, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

"The same thing can be said of therapies based on paranormal beliefs. For example, faith healing's effectiveness is unproven and in many instances is based on fraud and deception." We have multiple sources saying "yes it is pseudoscience" and the one source you have that you are trying to use to claim that we cannot call it pseudoscience specifically lays out that it is mostly paranormal fraud. So we are at "Faith healing is a pseudoscience (multiple sources shown on this page ) or mainly a deception and fraud (your source)." 67.220.7.244 (talk) 01:56, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure the or bit is even needed since the two sources aren't really contradicting. Because of of WP:PSCI, we generally ignore the hair splitting proponents of pseudoscience try to use to make it seem like something isn't pseudoscience, but outside of personal editor opinion making claims of not pseudoscience, I still haven't seen actual sources contradicting each other here yet. Kingofaces43 (talk) 02:32, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Literaturegeek, this has already been mentioned elsewhere, so I'm not going to reiterate it more here, but using that source to say faith healing is not pseudoscience is taking it out of context. It essentially says praying is not pseudoscience, but claiming it healed your illness is. Kingofaces43 (talk) 02:38, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

I have studied that paragraph in that source carefully and am convinced you are mistaken. The first sentence says "It should be noted that there is no necessary connection between par- anormal phenomena as defined by Braude and pseudoscience as charac- terized above." The author then gives an example of a pseudoscience - chiropractic, that does not "posit paranormal phenomena" but is "considered by many to be a pseudoscience". Next, to further prove the point that paranormal and pseudoscience do not need to be connected, the author gives an example of something (faith healing) that is paranormal but is not pseudoscience. The source then makes plain that both belief (that God can and does heal) and the religious practice is not pseudoscience. The key to avoid misinterpreting the context of that paragraph is to keep the the author's introductory sentence of that paragraph in mind.

I'm not trying to play a game of gotcha, I genuinely am convinced you made a mistake here kingofaces43.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 04:05, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

This is a good source for the inclusion vote.... as it clearly specifies techniques mentioned in this article as pseudoscientific. Think the best way to deal with the denial is to simple source the techniques mentioned here that are specific to this classification. As Literaturegeek keeps mentioning not all fall under this class.....but the problem is that when we get down to specific techniques is when we run into the problem....like psychic surgery, therapeutic touch, Christian Science teachings etc. So fast mention....as described above.....some techniques are classified as pseudoscientific....and then source theses problem areas. Zero mention would be harmful to our readers....so let's say something brief with links to our many many sources we have.--Moxy (talk) 00:51, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

• Describe in text Faith healing when religion is not pseudoscience but when claiming to be science is pseudoscience. I would propose describing this distinction within the text based on sources. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:59, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose since makes no pretense of science. If faith healing meets criterias of what could be labeled as pseudoscience, then that would also apply to theology, religion, worldviews, human rights, etc., if we extend that logic in absurdum. Chicbyaccident (talk) 23:51, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
  • "no pretense of science"? - just claims that people's medical conditions get better through paranormal means because of specific actions taken.
• Weak support. It'd be bad both ways. I know it's a pseudoscience, but if we list it as one we might cause some super-religious Christians to start a crusade. Don't think that will happen though. ⌤TheMitochondriaBoi⌤^(☎) 15:34, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

• Do they claim it is science or just faith?Slatersteven (talk) 18:31, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Almost all claim empirically verifiable outcomes. That is a scientific claim. jps (talk) 03:51, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
    • Source for this statement? The article includes sourced statements from believers that people may not be healed. Ltwin (talk) 20:32, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
    • The question about the claim of faith healers is significant. From following the linked notations in this survey (thanks for the ease of access and clarity of your message), many do view it as pseudoscience. To strengthen the article, I believe it could serve well if the claims of empirically verifiable outcomes were as clearly notated. Thanks to all and happy editing.Horst59 (talk) 05:32, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
    • Jps's statement is wrong. Many things are empirically verifiable but not scientific. Example: Jps has changed his username several times over the years (nothing wrong with that, and, personally, I like the current Sinhalese script better than the previous random character string). The history of the username changes is an empirically verifiable fact (especially if you hang out at the username change boards), but "Josh has changed his username several times" is not actually a scientific claim. Empiricism is an important concept for science, but it is not the whole of science. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:27, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
      • In the context of faith healing, the empirical claims are the purview of scientific evaluation. To parse this otherwise is sophistry. My name is not a scientific fact. Whether I have a malady is. jps (talk) 03:47, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
        • AIUI the claim made isn't whether you have a malady (although you do). The claim seems to be whether the (sometimes verifiable) disappearance of a malady was due to natural or supernatural causes. Or – the claim isn't that this one lady survived a relapse of AML for 40 years. Everyone's agreed on that part. The "faith healing" part comes in because that's her personal explanation for her survival.
          My point, though, was that there are a lot of "empirically verifiable outcomes" in this world that are not scientific claims. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:20, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

If you read our accounts of faith healing, it is pretty clear that there are a variety of claims which are subject to evaluation by a scientific means. Though it may be possible to infuse enough plausible deniability to insulate oneself from such investigation (of the sort of "magic after the fact cannot be verified" variety), it is also not true to declare that faith healing is immune from scientific critique. So. To bring this back around, Wikipedia categorization is not a zero-sum game. There can be aspects of faith healing which are pseudoscientific and we can categorize this article as Category:Pseudoscience without claiming that every single claim ever made in the context of faith healing is a pseudoscientific claim. jps (talk) 19:38, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• Comment: This is a rather dubious RfC - it really ought to have mentioned right at the start that this very question was discussed in an RfC a couple of years ago: Talk:Faith healing/Archive 3#RfC: Is faith healing a form of pseudoscience and should it be labeled as such either in the article or by assignment of category pseudoscience? It was a long discussion with a close that was reviewed and endorsed. The consensus was against Faith healing being labled as pseudoscience or being placed in the pseudoscience category. Although consensus can change, it would need a thorough-going consensus here to overturn the previous one. Also, all participants of the previous discussion should be notified. StAnselm (talk) 09:36, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
  • It was rather more than two years ago (Oct 2015). WP:CCC and the previous consensus does not influence this one. Contacting the previous RfC participants would probably be WP:CANVASSING. Alexbrn (talk) 10:57, 4 March 2018 (UTC); amended 06:43, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Canvassing? Nonsense. As long as they are all contacted and there is no cherry picking it is simply a courtesy notification to editors who have shown an interest in the subject. That aside, this should be closed. We have been down this path and we don't keep voting on issues until we get the right outcome. -Ad Orientem (talk) 15:19, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Indeed. I am completely puzzled as to why I keep seeing editors making claims about canvassing that directly contradict what WP:CANVASSING actually says. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:30, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Yup, my mistake: I see there's an exemption for editors who have take part in previous similar discussions. Alexbrn (talk) 06:43, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

I think it is certainly "appropriate notification" per the guidelines, and I will take the bull by the horns and ping all the editors in the previous discussion: @Ad Orientem, Brustopher, ZuluPapa5, Jerodlycett, Ozzie10aaaa, JzG, WhatamIdoing, RockMagnetist, SPACKlick, Markbassett, Immortal Horrors or Everlasting Splendors, BoBoMisiu, Maproom, Martin Hogbin, MrX, Kingofaces43, JonRichfield, Richard27182, John Carter, and Count Iblis:, with closer User:AlbinoFerret. StAnselm (talk) 19:17, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• I have posted courtesy notifications at WP:FTN and a number of wikiprojects that are likely to have an interest in this discussion. -Ad Orientem (talk) 16:18, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

I think you are using a different definition of canvassing. Notifying people who voted before, and posting on Wiki-projects that show interest in this topic would not be canvassing.Sgerbic (talk) 19:33, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• • There is no use pinging retired editors. For example User:AlbinoFerret has not made a single edit since 2016. Dimadick (talk) 18:38, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
• Comment: The whole matter is a hoary old chestnut and weary, weary nonsense. FH has long been established as PS, and meets all the criteria of a range of pseudoscientific attitudes and activities, whether for purposes of quackery or superstition or prejudice or plain malice. Those who claim in good faith that it meets the definitions of a "science" don't understand the concepts of science and in particular of experiment conception, design, interpretation, and performance. Even if some competent experimental or philosophical work has been done nominally in the field, that does not make it "a science" any more than scientific investigation of pigments makes "art" a "science". What it would take to justify calling it "a faith" is another question, but we can ignore that for the present. JonRichfield (talk) 05:22, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Hang on - who's calling it "science"? I had the impression that everyone opposing the proposal is doing so on the basis that FH is a religious belief/activity. StAnselm (talk) 05:34, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Forget it mate! It is whatever the most recent apologist wants to make of it until his next foray, which can be the opposite or both in the same breath! If you destroy the "science" argument, FH is religion and you are evil; if you point out that it is blasphemous and materialistic, then they try to say it is science because someone claimed to have tried something, which makes it an experiment, and experiments are science, aren't they? The purest, typical quackery. JonRichfield (talk) 15:05, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

I would be ok if the article notes specific forms of faith healing that have been identified as pseudoscience. My issue is labeling all faith healing (which includes simple prayer for healing, without any scientific claims) as pseudoscience. Some religions present faith healing as simple request for divine intervention; some religions present it as science. Ltwin (talk) 18:35, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

While I generally see a disconnect between the Peter Popoff-style of faith healing and the act of praying for well-being during illness, and while I agree with you that the former is pseudoscience while the latter is not, the literature generally does not draw this distinction. I'd be quite happy to follow this suggestion, but I just don't see how we could. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 04:55, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

• Comment: Looking at Google Books, the most significant academic work on faith healing appears to be Shawn Peters, When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children, and the Law (Oxford University Press, 2007), and it doesn't say anything about faith healing being pseudoscience. StAnselm (talk) 03:36, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Well, with only 47 cites, I would say that it doesn't really compare to Marc Galanter's Cults: Faith, Healing and Coercion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), which has 465 cites, and which explicitly refers to Deepak Chopra's claims about faith healing as "pseudoscience" on page 192. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 03:51, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Article is not on Deepak Chopra, so that one is not relevant. PS is not the term commonly used with faith healing, the label “faith” seems to be felt clear enough. Markbassett (talk) 04:39, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

The book is on faith healing, as was the subject Deepak was "explaining" when the author decided to call it pseudoscience. I gave a book link that you can click on and read what he actually says. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 04:42, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

• Question Out of curiosity: has anyone encountered a source that actually makes the argument that faith healing is not pseudoscience? ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 05:39, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

  Not outside of religious works. I've seen some claims for a psychological/placebo effect; i.e. that the relief brought by being believed to have been subjected to healing "energies" is a stress reduction, and less stress promotes better and faster healing a little. I haven't even seen anything like that in serious literature in a long time, but I also haven't gone looking for it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:10, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

  The Placebo Effect is already settled science. The question is whether faith healing shows results in a Double-blind experiment. It does not. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:20, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

No, that's not the question at all. Few FH adherents would believe that it would necessarily show results in a double blind experiment. They would say that FH is not science and the Holy Spirit doesn't work that way. "The kind of healers who are the subject of this book mostly reject such studies; their approaches are too spiritual for quantitative proof." "The problem with studying religion scientifically is that you do violence to the phenomenon by reducing it to basic elements that can be quantified, and that makes for bad science and bad religion." StAnselm (talk) 22:15, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

My personal opinion is that the real pseudoscience are the double-blind studies on intercessory prayer. StAnselm (talk) 22:19, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

This personal opinion should disqualify you from writing anything that relates to science whatsoever. jps (talk) 18:02, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Really? Maybe we should just call it "stupid" then. Think about it from their own POV: The typical proponents are claiming an all-knowing, all-powerful being, but they think that they can somehow trick it into healing some people, but not others, by randomly assigning them to different groups, and then asking that all-knowing, all-powerful being to heal some of them. And not one of these proponents is smart enough to think that this all-powerful being could, I dunno, maybe control how the dice fall and therefore who is in which group? Or reject their little game and ignore them all? (This reminds me of the "poof of logic" scene in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:28, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

And Last Thursdayism may be a logically consistent position, but it is no basis on which to write an encyclopedia. There is a reason we have WP:CIR as a suggestion. jps (talk) 19:27, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• Right MjolnirPants, see [23], still no response but we are still having so many oppose votes. Raymond3023 (talk) 12:35, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

"Belief in faith healing causes people to refuse science-based medical treatment and die sooner and more painfully than they would by taking medical treatment.Christopher H. Whittle (2003). On Learning Science and Pseudoscience from Prime-Time Television Programming. Universal-Publishers. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-61233-943-6.--Moxy (talk) 12:49, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

• The whole thing is a category error. When people are saying that prayer and such can be answered through miraculous cures, this is not a scientific claim: the whole notion of the miraculous relies upon a belief in the natural order upon which science also depends. If you have faith in a natural order which forbids such exceptions, well, that faith is not science itself, and any basic study of philosophy will say so. It is sufficient to say that scientific inquiry fails to ratify the efficacy of prayer, and leave it at that. Mangoe (talk) 22:22, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

  I agree, Mangoe. In the middle of the "votes", there's a discussion about whether it might be reasonable to back off from maximalist statements ("everything religious about healing is always pseudoscience") and come up with an accurate description that everyone could live with, such as "Some types of faith healing have been called pseudoscience".
  Also, while I'm in this section, User:MjolnirPants, you'll want to look above for the book I just linked above, which directly says faith healing is considered a paranormal activity but not pseudoscientific. (Search for "paranormal" to find it; the term hasn't come up very many times on the page.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:47, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

• Comment and question, If Wikipedia uses language and categories to label this page pseudoscience, how about Wish? It's the same context. "Faith healing" is a shared wish. Nothing is being transferred, because it is solely a belief system. A belief, a wish, in prayer or whatever name each individual calls it. Again, there is no "science" or "pseudoscience" involved. Randy Kryn (talk) 19:54, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

@Randy Kryn: WP:OTHERCONTENT. That article should discuss mainstream interpretation of wishes as pseudoscience, in rough proportion to the number of sources that characterize it as such. Which sources identify wishing as pseudoscience? VQuakr (talk) 20:36, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Probably none, because as your edit summary says, "Silly". And no matter how many sources label faith healing as a pseudoscience, even though the first sentence of Wish sums up - in nine words - the lead paragraph of Faith healing, putting that label on this page is just as silly. Randy Kryn (talk) 20:42, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

A number of RSs identify faith healing as pseudoscience. None have been presented that say the same for wishing. We follow the sources. VQuakr (talk) 20:48, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Is there anyone who actually believes that wishing for things makes them happen? I am sure that some exist, but I suspect that they use a different term instead of calling what they do "wishing". On the other hand, there are many, many people who actually believe that faith healing actually works. They even claim that their favorite miracle monger has documentation of miraculous healings, but are never actually able to supply said documentation. And that's what makes it pseudoscience.

Free tip for identifying fake faith healers on TV: If you gather any random collection of people in wheelchairs, you will see a lot of customization. Some have leather pouches on the back. Some are in custom racing wheelchairs. Some are motorized. Some have custom paint jobs, and most have custom seat cushions. On some televised "healing services" you see a bunch of people in identical low-cost wheelchairs. Then you see the faith healer tell them to stand up, which they do. What they don't tell you is that they were offered wheelchairs and a seat up front when they came in with a cane. There are videos of these faith healers loading up a truck with wheelchairs after the healing service. For an especially egregious example, see our article on Peter Popoff. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:09, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

And none of those faith healers claim to be doing science, or even doing anything remotely scientific. Therefore, it's nonsensical to apply the term "pseudoscience" to their activities. ~Anachronist (talk) 23:58, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Try reading the SEP entry on science and pseudoscience and then come back and see whether your categorical demarcation is fair. [24]. We'll wait. jps (talk) 17:50, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

That is not an official definition and source does not appear to be peer reviewed.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 18:01, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

(1) It is peer-reviewed. (2) There is no "official definition". A perfect storm of incorrectitude. jps (talk) 18:05, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Peer reviewed by who? A university who don't specialise in matters of pseudoscience? Who were the experts who peer reviewed it? WhatamIdoing in her vote provided excellent high quality accepted mainstream definitions. Why is this one better? It seems to change the definition of the word 'pseudo' and open the path that everything that does not agree with science is pseudoscience.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 18:16, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

This is how peer review happens. To claim that Stanford University is unable to provide experts on this subject is, to put it mildly, startling. The article is merely pointing out how the term is used. It isn't arguing for any point. You can disagree with this direction, but that's not an argument to litigate here. This is the status quo, I'm sorry to say. You and WhatamIdoing don't get to thumb your noses at it just because you are sticklers for how you think such demarcation should happen. (And I happen to know that the author of said piece is personally none too happy that the definition of pseudoscience has morphed into the monster that it is today, but acknowledges that this is a fight to fight in another venue). jps (talk) 18:24, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

• I just want to highlight the oppose arguments here. I've seen three, feel free to correct me if I'm missing some.

1. Most of the sources don't refer to faith healing as pseudoscience, only a minority do. That makes the claim that it's pseudoscience a minority view.
   That's not true. What would make it a minority view is if the majority claimed it were not pseudoscience. In order to make even the case that calling it pseudoscience is controversial, one would need to show at a minimum that an equally sizeable minority argue that it is not pseudoscience. In fact, no sources have been presented thus far which argue that it is not pseudoscience. I refer editors to the argument I made below. Only a minority of the sources used in the article Red claim that red is CMYK(0,99,100,0). But we can tell it is by both comparing CMYK(0,99,100,0) to other shades of red (read: comparing faith healing to other varieties of pseudoscience) and by noting that there are no sources at all which argue that CMYK(0,99,100,0) is not red.
2. It is a category error to apply scientifically-oriented terminology to a religious practice such as this.
   No, it is not. Not to be too succinct, but anything which can be measured is science. Healing can absolutely be measured. Just because the healing is claimed to be miraculous doesn't mean we can't check to see if the healing really happened, and if so, to what degree. Sure, the claim that a person "miraculously" converted to Christianity is an unscientific claim, and it would be improper to call that pseudoscience (although I'm sure some psychiatrist will disagree, I still contend that matters of the heart are inherently unscientific). But that's because we can't measure a person's belief. It's an ephemeral and subjective thing.
3. It's not pseudoscience to pray/wish for healing when one is sick.
   No, it is not. But this article is not titled "People who pray for healing." While that's a variety of this phenomenon, and it is clearly not pseudoscientific, that's not the entirety of this phenomenon. People who pray for healing while acknowledging that "the answer to their prayers might be no," and seeking medical care anyways because "God helps those who help themselves," are not pseudoscientists. (More or less) Rational religious faith is not pseudoscientific, and yes: some practices of that do fall under the purview of this subject. But that does not mean that Peter Popoff was not presenting those pseudoscientific claims, the debunking of which helped make James Randi famous. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:45, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Nailed it. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:32, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Peter Popoff could be described a pseudoscientist, with a loose definition of pseudoscience, because of his continuous psychopathic, fraudulent actions that he presented as able to produce repeatable results (much like the scientific method), but only a microscopic minority of people who pray for healing are like him.

Yes, agree on point 1: I concede that a pretty big weakness to the oppose votes is that we do not have reliable sources that say it is not a pseudoscience. I don't think it has ever been studied by a panel of experts whether it meets the technical definitions of pseudoscience before. Like I and others have said, whether faith healing is a pseudoscience is an area academics mostly seem disinterested in. Not convinced by point two: WhatamIdoing provided good arguments against this. In point 3, you give strong support to the oppose argument because you accept that rational religious people who pray for healing, but who understand the answer might very well be no and embrace mainstream medicine, is not pseudoscience because the overwhelming majority of faith healing is just that. The reality is, the vast majority - almost every person who prays for healing/faith healing and in fact most faith healers - are the 'rational religious' people, as you put it. This article does not focus on religious healing frauds and scams, it includes the topic pertinent to perhaps a billion or more ordinary people and ordinary honest religious leaders praying for the wellbeing and healing of sick people.

James Randi is a great guy for exposing and stopping the psychopathic behaviour of Peter Popoff and his wife. I have seen that James Randi exposè and love his work exposing frauds and charletans, watched many of his videos.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 02:57, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Electrochemistry is a branch of physics. A huge proportion of electrochemical reactions in the world is the neurological activity of living organisms, which is a branch of biochemistry. Does that then make electrochemistry a branch of biochemistry? No, of course not. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 02:51, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

"people who pray for healing but understand the answer might very well be no and embrace mainstream medicine is not pseudoscience, because the overwhelming majority of faith healing is just that" <- where is the RS for this? Isn't this just "prayer"? The definitions of faith healing I'm seeing don't gel with this assertion. A person having a quiet prayer is not normally said to be a "faith healing" or engaged in "faith healing" are they? Alexbrn (talk) 02:54, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

I don't need a high quality reliable source to say the sky is blue and this is a talk page RfC discussion, so do not need to reference everything. I am of course referring to the general public. A large percentage of the population pray when they are faced with a major health crisis. Are you then suggesting large chunks of society would not call an ambulance if they were having a heart attack or refuse medicine because they went to church and said a prayer? Do you have a reliable source to argue the sky is not blue? Works both ways.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 03:08, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

What is the difference between praying and hoping God will intervene and heal and faith healing? I thought they are the same thing? Unless I am mistaken Alex... I dunno.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 03:13, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Huh? "A large percentage of the population pray when they are faced with a major health crisis" -- sure. But that doesn't make them a "faith healer", they're just praying. Faith healing is the (purported) application of a method to treat disease (maybe "alleged healing through the power to cause a cure or recovery from an illness or injury without the aid of conventional medical treatment. The healer is believed to have been given that power by a supernatural force" - Mosby's Medical Dictionary). This has quite specific aspects apart from just common-or-garden "praying". Alexbrn (talk) 03:19, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

That's more or less my point. A lot of the oppose arguments here are claiming that simply praying for healing is not pseudoscience, with the implication that it's a form of faith healing. Well, technically, yeah, it is. But it's a subset that has very different characteristics than any other kind of faith healing. It's an odd duck. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 03:56, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

I think there is an issue with exactly how we are defining faith healing. It could be simple prayer. It could be ritual (anointing of the sick, laying on of hands, etc.), it could involve belief in a charismatic healer, and it could but doesn't have to include rejection of medical treatment. Some definitions pulled from https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/faith+healing thefreedictionary.com]:

• "sundry types of prayer-based efforts to alter the disease course" (Farlex Partner Medical Dictionary)
• "The treatment of disease by means of prayer or faith in divine power" (The American Heritage Medical Dictionary)
• "alleged healing through the power to cause a cure or recovery from an illness or injury without the aid of conventional medical treatment. The healer is believed to have been given that power by a supernatural force" (Mosby's Medical Dictionary)
• "An alternative form of healthcare in which therapy consists of entrusting the healing process to a “higher” (God in the Judeo-Christian construct) or other power(s) through prayer. In faith healing, active medical or surgical interventions are generally not administered, and if the patient deteriorates or dies, it may be viewed as the will of God" (Segen's Medical Dictionary)
• "Therapy involving prayer and manual interventions" (Medical Dictionary for the Health Professions and Nursing)
• "An attempt to cure disease or to improve the condition of a patient by the exercise of spiritual powers or by the influence of the personality of the healer. An important factor in determining the outcome of an illness is belief, or faith, in the probability of recovery, but ‘miracles’ attributed to faith healing are presumed to be due to some natural process. The psychological effect of such rituals can be powerful, and unjustified hopes for miraculous cures are commonly aroused" (Collins Dictionary of Medicine)
• Brittanica offers this introduction to its faith healing article: "Faith healing, recourse to divine power to cure mental or physical disabilities, either in conjunction with orthodox medical care or in place of it. Often an intermediary is involved, whose intercession may be all-important in effecting the desired cure. Sometimes the faith may reside in a particular place, which then becomes the focus of pilgrimages for the sufferers."

It is not necessary that there be a "intermediary" such as a charismatic healer involved. If you are sick and you pray to get well, you are engaging in faith healing. While some sources say a healer must be involved, others offer a more general definition--essentially any attempts to get well through prayer or religious belief. It would also include things like pilgrimage to Catholic shrines. Ltwin (talk) 03:27, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

So by all those definitions it is more than just a "quiet prayer", often a lot more. Alexbrn (talk) 03:39, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

I think we need to steer clear of only applying the term to stereotypical types of healing prayer. Sure, Benny Hinn is a faith healer, but what about the Catholic priest or Methodist minister or Episcopal rector who "quietly" prays for healing? What about the family who gathers around a loved one to quietly pray for healing? What differentiates Benny Hinn from these other cases? The article as it stands does not distinguish between these different types. It lumps all prayer for healing into the faith healing category. We have sections for "New Testament", Catholic, Pentecostal, Christian Science, Mormon, Islamic and Scientologist healing practices all in the same article. Ltwin (talk) 03:58, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Several of those definitions include what would be defined as a quiet prayer because you are praying to alter a disease course.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 03:47, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

I have to agree here. Quietly praying for healing would fall under the first or second definition there, quite obviously. The second one notably, because it doesn't specify that it be the only treatment used. But this just reinforces my point: You have to find something that is, by far the most rational thing that could be considered faith healing to present as an example of how it's not pseudoscience. Simple prayer may be the most commonly practiced method, but it's just one particular method among a rather long list. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 03:56, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Ltwin brings up the case of the Roman Catholic priest who prays for healing, and this page has three categories that mention Catholicism, so I decided to look up the official RC position on this. It is here:[25]

The specific passages that demonstrate that the official RC position is pseudoscience include "In the course of the Church's history there have been holy miracle-workers who have performed wondrous healings" and "There is abundant witness throughout the Church's history to healings connected with places of prayer (sanctuaries, in the presence of the relics of martyrs or other saints, etc.)". --Guy Macon (talk) 05:52, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

@Guy Macon:, essentially your argument is the following:

• if you believe in a god and you believe in prayer and other ways to invoke that God's aid
• and if you believe that prayer and other ways of invoking that god actually work
• then you believe in psuedoscience?
• so if you believe in a god and that prayer, etc. to that God does not work you believe in religion?
• Sorry, I don't understand how we are taking "believing that prayer works and that miracles happen" to "mistakenly regarding prayer, etc. as being based on scientific method." By your definition, all people who actually believe that god or a god or whatever actually works are engaging in pseudoscience, but I think most people would categorize that as simple religious belief. Ltwin (talk) 13:21, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Guy, I am afraid that is a religious claim on the Catholic website. Pseudoscience is something along the lines of academic fraud or quackery dressed up as science, for example, through misquoting scientific sources, falsifying test results or using scientific jargon to try to prove something is scientific when it is not. I don't know much of Catholic views, I have never set foot in a Catholic church in my life, but I do know that, for whatever reason, you appear to not know what pseudoscience actually is or means. I suggest you open up a dictionary, otherwise we are going to go around in endless circles.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 13:38, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Transcendental Meditation technique is a good example of a pseudoscience because the religious organisation behind it has conducted, for many years, a well orchestrated campaign, with some success, to produce biased pseudoscientific papers written by their own staff and get them published in peer reviewed journals. They do this to promote their religious yoga as scientifically proven for an array of conditions and symptoms.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 15:06, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Claiming a belief in God is not pseudoscience. Claiming that God can -in principle- affect the world is not pseudoscience. Claiming that God has affected the world in a measurable way as a direct result of actions one has taken and in direct contradiction to published empirical data on similar claims is pseudoscience, even if you invoked God and frame it as a belief or ritual. As I said in my !vote: faith healing (in general) is not an aspect of religion that has made itself a pseudoscience, but a pseudoscience that has wormed its way into religion. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:36, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

But we have editors claiming that going to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes because you believe the water could miraculously (not scientifically) heal you is a pseudoscience. If that is what pseudoscience is, then all religion is pseudoscience. Essentially, what I hear you saying is if you think something miraculous happened to you because you invoked a deity then you are by definition advocating pseudoscience. I disagree. You are advocating for the existence of a miracle (God stepping outside of natural laws to intervene). Just claiming that the miracle is true doesn't make it pseudoscience. It could of course be complete nonsense, but that is not the same as pseudoscience. To simply state it, I think many religious people see faith healing as simply belief in miracles. There is no attempt in many cases to create a scientific or scientific-like explanation. Now, obviously, cases like Christian Science would be different; it is psuedoscientific. But the Catholic Church? No, they just believe in miracles. Ltwin (talk)

And there are many people who believe that acupuncture is a matter of faith. And your claim about there not being a scientific-like explanation is pure imagination: Any assertion of a physical phenomenon is a scientific claim, and any methodology applied (such as : go to the sanctuary, immerse yourself in the waters and pray) is a scientific method. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 22:58, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

No, it is not. "Go to Lourdes and you might be touched by God" is not science, and no one claims that it is. "God healed me of an incurable disease" is not a scientific claim. It is a miraculous claim. Now, if I said (as Christian Scientists do), that sickness is a mental error and that by following universal spiritual laws you and everyone else can be cured that could be classified as pseudoscience. Ltwin (talk) 23:27, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes, it is. I've explained it already. I'm not going to get into a "Yes, it is!" "No, it isn't!" back and forth with you. Either address what I've said, stop arguing, or be ignored. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 23:31, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Edit break

Dr. Douglas Duncan University of Colorado seems to define things well as an academic vs the dictionary and editor definitions we have above. Common Elements of Pseudoscience .--Moxy (talk) 06:48, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, and it talks about written works that are pseudoscientific but masquerade as scientific works and how to spot them - exactly how I think of pseudoscience. That link favours the oppose voters. I'm not seeing the relationship to praying for a loved one, not at all. Sorry.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 07:09, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps best we go back and quote all the sources...

How to tell if something is Pseudoscience. Beware if it…

• Is based on Post-diction, not Pre-diction (story is made up after the fact)
• Explains things people care about that may not have other explanations (avoids the scientific response, “We don’t know,” which people often find unsatisfactory)
• Uses scientific-sounding language and jargon (often incorrectly; e.g. “energy flows”)
• Does NOT use the scientific method of clearly stating the hypothesis and then making a test
• Usually has an explanation even when the idea fails (e.g. “astrology is only a tendency,” “the faith-healing treatment must have been started too late,” etc.)
• If it contradicts known scientific principles or is not generally accepted, the originator of the theory claims to be “persecuted by the scientific (or other) establishment,” is not recognized because “the jealous establishment,” etc.

. --Moxy (talk) 07:20, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Many people who say a prayer do use the 'don't know' approach. Lots of people pray and then say: 'I don't know if God answered my prayers or I was lucky in my response to medical treatment..... but I am grateful to be alive and recovered from e.g. cancer.' People who say a prayer do not use scientific jargon because, wait for it, hold on to your seat firmly, they are not pretending to be scientific! Also, typical Joe Bloggs (or even a typical church minister) saying a prayer for his sick wife does not attack and blame scientific establishments when someone's prayer isn't answered.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 07:33, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Sorry not sure I understand your POV and the relevance to the source....your talking about prayer that is its own article.--Moxy (talk) 07:48, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

As for the part in your source that does talk about faith healing being pseudoscience: Yes, some faith healers definitely can be and are pseudoscientists and meet the criteria for being pseudoscientific. I agree with that source that if a practitioner of faith healing adopts a position like as follows: the faith-healing treatment must have been started too late,” then they are pseudoscientific because they are not considering other possibilities and are believing that faith healin if timed right can produce definite/repeatable results (the scientific method). The problem is that most people who say a prayer do not think or behave like this. But you are trying to say that this is evidence that all forms and actions of faith healing meet the criteria of pseudoscience? I assume this because your vote is still registered as 'support'.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 07:59, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Moxy, if you scroll up ltwin has posted a list of dictionary sources and it is clear that prayer is faith healing if the prayer is aimed at treating a disease or illness, physical or psychological. Prayer is the most commonly practiced form of faith healing, almost all faith healing would fall under prayer.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 08:03, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

I take it you missed the conversation about the source and wording I proposed above. [26].--Moxy (talk) 08:05, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

OK, yeah, I missed it. Is the editing break meant to relate this? Not sure what editing break is for. Assumed it was to discuss a source in relation to faith healing being pseudoscience.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 08:23, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Sorry edit break was simply to help with scrolling..--Moxy (talk) 08:32, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

• WP:STICKTOTHESOURCE If the specific word is used as the common and technical category it fits, in DUE WP:WEIGHT — and if not it does not. Please cease trying to WP:OR argue the language fits or showing a 20-year old www.csicop.org (skeptics org) article exists. Markbassett (talk) 12:45, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Possible wording

Let's suppose there the RfC closes as consensus to "include content" about pseudoscience. For those who oppose the RfC, is there any wording that would be acceptable that does not state that Faith Healing is Pseudoscience in WP voice? E.g. "It has been characterised as pseudoscience on the basis that it..." Would this be acceptable to those who support the RfC? Does anyone have wording to finish off the sentence (i.e. why it's pseudoscience) and a suitable citation. Help me out; I'm looking for a compromise position here, folks. StAnselm (talk) 03:27, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Well, first of all, we can't have this discussion without knowing what the proposed sources are, because we cannot engage in original research when proposing content for an article.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 06:23, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Per the RfC it should categorized as pseudoscience. It should also be WP:ASSERTed to be pseudoscience, since there is no serious dispute (i.e. in WP:RS) over that. Alexbrn (talk) 16:36, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Some questions for the oppose !votes (or "do we need to split the article?")

Of the sources that almost entirely uninterested in pseudoscience, are those sources about Biblical healing miracle narratives, or the rather mainstream theological view that it's safe to ask God for assistance with science-based medicine (i.e. medicine rooted in the Natural Laws instituted by God), or are they about New Thought derived claims that physical healing comes from prayer (and that science-based medicine is either unnecessary or antagonistic to this healing)? These are different things.

Of the sources studying the claim that prayer renders medicine useless, are they studying the efficacy of that claim, or are they studying the anthropological relationships and sociological implications of the communities that accept this idea? Because, again, these are distinct concepts. The anthropological and sociological approaches, while completely legitimate on their own grounds and approaches, belong to the humanities department and are useless as WP:MEDRSs.

And how, exactly, is "If you follow my religion, you will not need science-based medicine to recover from physical ailments" not a scientifically testable claim? Per 1 John 4:1, I would implore any fellow Christians to not leave that claim untested.

And if a religious claim plainly contradicts proven science, and there are sources that label the claim as pseudoscience, why should it not be called it pseudoscience? What about charlatans who disguise their quackery with religious trappings? While I do not suggest that all (or even many) faith healers are necessarily not earnest, should those who knowingly lie be excused if any of their victims believed the faith healing to be real? Per Deuteronomy 18:20, I would hope that fellow Christians would not enable charlatans.

And will additional sources change your answers to these questions? Because this issue isn't just what the article has been but what it can be.

Again, I see three topics in the article:

1) Biblical healing miracle narratives - I totally agree that it's inappropriate to call this pseudoscience

2) Asking God for assistance with medicine - I'm inclined to agree that it's hasty to immediately label this as pseudoscience, as it can be fairly nuanced

3) The claim that healing comes from prayer and that science-based medicine is either unnecessary or antagonistic to healing - I'm failing to see why this couldn't be called pseudoscience assuming sufficient sourcing was present

We already have Miracles of Jesus and other articles for the stuff in 1, the stuff in 2 would be better off in Intercession, and that would leave this article to focus on the stuff in 3.

Ian.thomson (talk) 23:49, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree that the main source of the dispute is trying to label all of #2 as pseudoscience, without nuance or limitation.

Your #3 doesn't feel right. People put all kinds of religious-based limits on medical care, and nobody calls their decisions and beliefs "pseudoscientific". If you decide to pray about your heart attack instead of calling for an ambulance, that's probably ineffective and foolish, but it's not pseudoscience.

I'm not sure that "If you follow my religion, you will not need science-based medicine" is actually the relevant claim. I think the relevant claim might be more like "Divine miracles sometimes happen", and I really don't see how that could be disproven (or proven) scientifically. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:05, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Are antivaxxers not peddling pseudoscience? Because there's a good deal of overlap between the #3 position and antivaxxers. While their reasoning may be theological, this leads them to pseudoscientific or even antiscientific positions. Modern Astrology is also another point of comparison: its origins were ultimately theological, and some of its advocates still tie it to theology. But it still looks science in the eye and says "you're lying!" Creation science and Intelligent design are also cases where we look at religious beliefs that balk at science and label them pseudoscientific as such. We can and do label religious beliefs, no matter how pious or earnest, that make scientifically disproven claims and respond to this with by arguing that science is wrong.

"Divine miracles sometimes happen" would overlap 2 and 3. There are those in position 3 who would insist that if your faith is strong enough, then the miracle must happen and that if it didn't happen, it's because you're not believing hard enough. Ian.thomson (talk) 19:34, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

That is different because antivaxxers often misrepresent science and present a biased distorted cherry picked scientific evidence to debunk evidence based science. For example, they will commonly correctly point out very rare serious side effects from vaccines but will fail to explain that, for example, the flu itself causes the same adverse effects but more frequently and many more serious adverse health outcomes including death meaning the risk benefit ratio very much favours influenza vaccine. Personally, I briefly bought into anti-vaccine theories many years ago until reading the actual evidence - I now take my yearly flu jab because I know the risk-benefit ratio favours vaccination, very much so. Faith healers (including the traditional Church minister offering a prayer for the sick) and practitioners of faith healing do not run about the place presenting fake or distorted science, they instead talk in theological terms, such as 'I believe God can answer prayers.', 'I believe in the power of prayer,..... in miracles and/or God will help the doctors heal' etc., so the comparison with intelligent design and creation science is not a good comparison. It can be perfectly scientific to say (and some scientists do say): "I believe God created the laws of physics but I accept science cannot prove or disprove this and science does not yet have a definite answer (to the origin of the laws of physics)." It would be pseudoscientific to misrepresent scientific research to claim that say the world is only 6,000 years old, or that science proves the existence of God, although if talking in theological terms without framing it with science it could be described as religious belief.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 10:27, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

You seem to be under the belief that practitioners of faith healing are not making any comparisons to medicine or scientifically verifiable results. I cannot find substantiation for this. In most contexts when claimed healing is mentioned by faith healers, it is explicitly claimed that the healing is done miraculously and often with hyperbolic terms such as "cannot be explained by science". e.g. jps (talk) 17:41, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

For the love of G-- (or science or both)

PLEASE try and keep the discussion as concise as possible. Make your points, cite policy and or guidelines where possible and above all BE BRIEF! When you have made your point... move on. This RfC is already deep into what most people would label as WP:TLDR territory and some unlucky admin is going to have read through it and try to make enough sense to close it. -Ad Orientem (talk) 00:03, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

I take your meaning, but I think this discussion is somewhat important in its free-form. We have to come up with a way to referee the boundaries between different epistemic communities and this article is right there straddling the border. That religious/religion/philosophy editors are clashing with science/fringe/medicine editors is an object lesson in the messiness that is a catch-all project like Wikipedia. We need to have this discussion and we need to figure out how to deal with these issues moving forward because they're going to come up again and again. jps (talk) 15:33, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes, have the discussion. And that discussion will be far more constructive if people on both sides make clear, concise points without rambling. Having said my piece, I will sign off now.--Gronk Oz (talk) 04:27, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

This Rfc is not about whether Faith healing is true, or effective

This Rfc is not about whether Faith healing is true, or effective. It seems that some of the votes on either side are proxies for whether the editor believes that Faith healing "works" or "doesn't work" based on their personal beliefs or on whether the editor believes that reliable sources agree that Faith healing "works" or "doesn't work". But that is not what this Rfc is about. The Rfc is about whether we can say that it is pseudoscience in Wikipedia's voice. According to our own article, something that claim[s] to be scientific and factual, in the absence of evidence gathered and constrained by appropriate scientific methods, is pseudoscience.

Typical of some cases of confused reasoning above, are statements like this one: "Ignoring the proven fact that it does not work makes it pseudoscience, even if some sources do not call it that." No; this conflates effectiveness with pseudoscience, and that is absolutely not what pseudoscience is about.

It is perfectly consistent to vote Oppose while believing that Faith healing is dangerous poppycock, (or even conversely, to vote Support while believing it to be effective at curing illness); the key is, or should be, whether Faith healing makes claims about scientific mechanism being the basis for it, not its effectiveness. Even if 100% of sources state that Faith healing is provably ineffective by scientific method, this would have no bearing on whether it is pseudoscientific or not. For that, you have to refer to what reliable sources say, and to the definition of pseudoscience, as several editors have already noted above.

Among those who have elucidated this most succinctly, are Randy Kryn, Mangoe, and Natureium; I can't improve on Natureium's comment: "Faith healing is non-scientific, not pseudoscientific." Failing to understand that distinction, may lead to an invalid argument or conclusion. Mathglot (talk) 08:39, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

"Faith healing is non-scientific, not pseudoscientific." is pretty much the standard mumbo jumbo that pseudoscience practitioners and promoters try to cling to when their pseudoscientific practices come under the microscope. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.15.255.227 (talk) 15:45, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• And now back to an academic view Department of Physics, College of Natural Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin. --Moxy (talk) 04:59, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Suggest moving the Pseudo-Science Panel to the bottom.

I don't recall seeing a category panel in the top right corner of an article before. I think this should be moved to the bottom so long as the article remains in the pseudo-science category. Elmmapleoakpine (talk) 18:43, 5 March 2018 (UTC) I would do it myself, but I am not sure how. I will leave it to someone else. Elmmapleoakpine (talk) 18:46, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

The WP:SIDEBAR, Template:Alternative medicine sidebar? Those are normally at top-right. VQuakr (talk) 06:59, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

You will need to get consensus on the template's talk page for that. Raymond3023 (talk) 11:40, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

User:Elmmapleoakpine The panel was only added somewhat recently, 31 May 2017 by OccultZone without mention in the TALK. You could revert it as a non-consensus action, but I would suggest pinging them here for some explanation of it being in the article. The location if included does not seem open to change. Cheers. Markbassett (talk) 13:02, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

D/S template

Why we are edit warring over a template[27]? Template says "The use of discretionary sanctions has been authorized by the Arbitration Committee for pages related to pseudoscience and fringe science, including this article. Please consult the awareness criteria and edit carefully."

Doesn't matter what will be the outcome of the above RfC, the template will remain. Raymond3023 (talk) 10:23, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

The current consensus of the community is that this article does not deal with pseudoscience or fringe science. That may or may not change depending on the outcome of the current RfC. Until then the previous one remains in effect. Why are people placing a template claiming that DS applies to an article that it doesn't? -Ad Orientem (talk) 10:30, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and undone the inappropriate removal of the DS template. Those DS are imposed completely independent of the RfC by ArbCom. Pseudoscience is obviously being discussed on this talk page, and sources are also obviously discussing pseudoscience (even moreso the fringe science aspect) in relation to faith healing. The template informs readers that pseudoscience and fringe science discretionary sanctions are in effect because of that and no more. An article directly described in mainspace as a series on "Alternative and pseudo‑medicine" is also going to be under DS. If someone wants the ArbCom decision reversed, they'll need to take that up there instead. As it stands, the template will remain regardless of the RfC outcome since fringe and pseudoscience has become an area of major discussion. Kingofaces43 (talk) 15:48, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Ad Orientem is right and you are wrong. If someone on the article talk page calls the Germ theory of disease pseudoscience you would keep re-adding a pseudoscience DS template? That one also has sources discussing pseudoscience; see Germ theory denialism for a list. We do not tag an article with a pseudoscience discretionary sanctions template until there is a consensus that the article is indeed pseudoscience. ---Guy Macon (talk) 16:39, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

If pseudoscience is being legitimately discussed in the context of the article, then it falls under such DS. The DS make no claim that the subject itself is pseudoscience, which is a different situation than the current RfC. Kingofaces43 (talk) 19:19, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

No. You do not get to decide whether an article falls under DS. The consensus of the community decides that, and that decision has been made by RfC -- at least until another RfC demonstrates a new consensus. An exception to the "community decides" rule is when Arbcom specifically puts an article under DS, but Arbcom has never ruled that faith healing is or is not pseudoscience. To be blunt, you are ignoring Wikipedia policy on WP:CONSENSUS here. You are free to argue in favor of ignoring policy, but if you continue to edit the article to reflect your POV you are very likely to end up blocked. Please wait until the current RfC is closed. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:03, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

You're right, I don't get to decide. That application of the DS was already automatically determined when sources started talking about it an editors brought the topic up for discussion. Again, there is no reason to wait for the RfC to close as it has no bearing on whether the DS apply to this topic. We theoretically can leave this open for awhile in case someone believes they can claim they don't apply, but at this point, no one can realistically claim there isn't discussion of pseudoscience going on at this page or in sources. It's a bit of a WP:SNOW situation in terms of consensus policy. Kingofaces43 (talk) 01:22, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

You also don't get to decide that "that application of the DS was already automatically determined when sources started talking about it an editors brought the topic up for discussion" No Arbcom ruling says or even implies that. You just made it up. This has been explained to you by multiple people in this discussion. Please stop repeating your unfounded assertions while ignoring calls for evidence that back up your claims. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:33, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

• I have removed it again. If we have consensus to include it, fine - otherwise, it should be taken up with ArbCom. StAnselm (talk) 18:45, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Again, if you do not like that this article falls at least in part under the pseudoscience and fringe DS, it is your burden ask ArbCom to overturn it. However, please undo the your edit warring removing the template notifying editors of those DS. You've made others plenty aware you do not think this subject is pseudoscience, but regardless of the result of the RfC, the DS are still in effect for subjects that involve pseudoscience and fringe discussion to at least some degree. Kingofaces43 (talk) 19:02, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

It does not fall at least in part under pseudo-science etc. because the community expressly rejected that here. Unless/until that is expressly overturned it is the last word on the subject. For now re-adding the DS template is editing against community consensus and is disruptive. This needs to stop. -Ad Orientem (talk) 22:45, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Nothing in that RfC contradicts ArbCom's DS designation in topics related to fringe and pseudoscience (nor can it really). If anything, it validates that the subject of pseudoscience comes up in this subject more than just currently, and the DS apply when discussing pseudoscience/fringe aspects. You seem to be confusing the category comment in that RfC with pseudoscience/fringe DS (nor does it say pseudoscience does not come up in this topic). People could have RfCs every month saying faith healing is not pseudoscience and the DS would still apply. Besides that, the reality also is that sources still regularly discuss faith healing in a fringe aspect with respect to the empirical claims (i.e., healing), with some of those sources referring to it specifically as pseudoscience. There's no getting around that DS apply in that regard and previous discussions, so the only way to make them not apply is to have ArbCom overturn the case decision. Kingofaces43 (talk) 23:07, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Kingofaces43, the template was never there until you added it a few days ago. AFAIK, ArbCom has never made a decision about this particular article. StAnselm (talk) 00:02, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

No one ever claimed any of that. ArbCom decided that topics where pseudoscience or fringe science come up (something you've been discussing extensively even) are under DS. There's no avoiding that pseudoscience is a topic that falls under discussion in this topic by editors and sources (separate from saying the topic itself is pseudoscience). The only way to remove those DS are to get ArbCom to amend the PS/fringe case. If an editor is making arguments the DS shouldn't be applied because of the separate RfC issue of actually classifying faith healing itself as pseudoscience with the category (an essential WP:WEIGHT issue in the context of WP:FRINGE), that can safety be ignored in order to comply with WP:CON policy for missing the distinction. Kingofaces43 (talk) 01:22, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Evidence, please. Please cite the exact place where you believe that "ArbCom decided that topics where pseudoscience or fringe science come up (something you've been discussing extensively even) are under DS". --Guy Macon (talk) 01:40, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Hey you know what's really great for answering that question? The template that you're opposed to including. If you click on it, it takes you to the case decision, namely the DS remedy, which states, Standard discretionary sanctions are authorised for all pages relating to pseudoscience and fringe science, broadly interpreted. Any uninvolved administrator may levy restrictions as an arbitration enforcement action on users editing in this topic area, after an initial warning. Both pseudoscience and fringe are directly topics of discussion on this talk page and by sources. No claim by ArbCom that the subject itself is pseudoscience, a subject only need have some connection. We arguably wouldn't even need the broadly construed section for this subject, but since it is, there's really no question that discussions about pseduoscientific claims fall under the pseudoscience DS. Kingofaces43 (talk) 03:13, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

"All pages relating to pseudoscience and fringe science, broadly interpreted". This page isn't related to pseudoscience or fringe science. That was settled by the previous RfC. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:24, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Guy, we can't confound processes, which ends up inadvertently misconstruing my comments (hence me continuing to try to clarify here at this point even though it's no molehill I intend to die on). That RfC said nothing of the sort. For one, it only addressed pseudoscience, not fringe to which the DS also apply. Even for pseudoscience, it doesn't matter the outcome of either RfC. Pseudoscience was still the topic of discussion there and in sources, and that makes the page related (in addition to fringe that was untouched by the RfC). The DS simply say fringe or pseudoscience come up in this topic, and for the nth time, it is not a label or category on the topic itself that would contradict the last RfC. We can't go outside the scope of an RfC to essentially make claims pseudoscience or fringe don't come up under this topic by removing the template (as opposed to saying if there was sufficient weight to call the subject itself pseudoscience per the last RfC). Kingofaces43 (talk) 14:53, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Please don't write things like "the template will remain regardless of the RfC outcome since fringe and pseudoscience has become an area of major discussion." and "sources still regularly discuss faith healing in a fringe aspect" then complain when you get replies addressing fringe.

You have failed to cite the exact place where "ArbCom decided that topics where pseudoscience or fringe science come up are under DS." All you have done is asserted that they said that, but you have no evidence that they actually did. As far as I am concerned, this discussion is closed. Feel free to ask Arbcom for a ruling at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests#Requests for clarification and amendment but until you do that please stop trying to apply Arbcom rulings that you made up out of whole cloth. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:28, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Again, please do not misrepresent my comments. I linked you directly to the remedy imposing DS on pages relating to fringe and pseudoscience, broadly construed. If it's still somehow not clear how the fringe/pseudoscience DS apply to discussions of fringe and pseudoscience, you already provided the link for where to do that. Until then, the DS are going to apply regardless of the template being there or not. As Alexbrn mentioned below, we'll just end up notifying editors individually on their talk page when needed instead of giving editors that come to this talk page a heads up about the DS before posting in pseudoscience related discussions (of which the RfC is one). Why anyone wouldn't appreciate prior notice is beyond me though. Kingofaces43 (talk) 18:27, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

• Guys: You realize that the RfC is heading for a very clear "support" close, right? There's 21 "Supports" and only 12 "Opposes" and the supporters have presented RSes to support their claim, while the best the opposers have done is point out that it's not unanimous among the RSes. Just relax. We're not in a big hurry. We don't need the D/S notice right now. It will end up on there eventually. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 03:27, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

See WP:NOTAVOTE. If this gets labeled as pseudo-science based on opinions expressed in less than 1% (probably a lot less) of the RS sources that address the subject, then we have a much bigger problem than a misplaced DS template. -Ad Orientem (talk) 15:41, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

See my comments below. I bet you that significantly less than 1% of sources used at red identify it as CMYK(0,99,100,0), yet there's no controversy there. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:21, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

That's because Red's CMYK is actually not controversial, whereas assigning a highly prejudicial descriptor to one of the more widely discussed subjects out there most definitely is. Unfortunately this seems to be rather a good example of the depth of argument thrown out by the supports. -Ad Orientem (talk) 18:35, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

The categorization of FH as pseudoscience as pseudoscience is not controversial. There is literally no decent "contra" voice to the assertion that has been found. The only opposition seems to be from a few Wikipedia editors here, and for consensus purposes that doesn't count as arguments need to be rooted in sources and the WP:PAGs. Alexbrn (talk) 18:39, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

• • I cast one of those support !votes. Nonetheless, until this RfC closes the consensus is, by definition, the result of the previous RfC. This is an important issue. We cannot allow Kingofaces43 to behave as if his actions are supported by consensus prior to the current RfC closing. Until it closes, the result of the previous RfC is the consensus. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:24, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Well, I'm not here to "disallow" anyone to do anything. I'm just pointing out that the D/S notice is going to end up on this page eventually, so there's no point in arguing about it now. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 06:47, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

• Agreed. That template must not be used until the previous consensus is changed. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 06:42, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Agree with BullRangifer. One of the basic features of the Wikipedia system -- a feature that stops us from descending into endless bickering -- is that an RfC settles a content dispute. You can challenge the close, and you can wait an appropriate amount of time (usually at least six months) and post a new RfC, but you must accept the result of an RfC until it it overturned. This is how we settle disputes and move on. This is important. That's why I insist that we abide by the previous RfC until the new RfC closes even though I !voted to overturn it. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:59, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

15 opposes actually, presumably you missed the two opposes that are not bolded and the vote to include content describing it as pseudoscience but meh to the categorisation of it as pseudoscience. It could still go to no consensus because support arguments are poor.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 03:44, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Fixed the lack of bolding per WP:TPOC. I get 21 supports, 14 opposes, and one Meh. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:11, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Good job Guy Macon fixing that. I calculate the same.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 17:04, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

You say the support arguments are poor, but the support arguments include "there are RSes asserting it is," and the oppose arguments pointedly do not include "there are RSes asserting it's not." I saw one argument saying "the most-cited source doesn't call it pseudoscience" and when I checked it out, I found a source with 10x as many citations that does. In short, the opposes are arguing for a position that literally no RSes take, and which a number of RSes disagree. How strong of an argument can that possibly be? ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:21, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

The oppose arguments are essentially 50 shades of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. On the DS question, regardless of whether FH is pseudoscience or not, it is most certainly fringe medicine, so DS's apply on that basis. Alexbrn (talk) 17:29, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes, but as I said above: they're going to end up on this page anyways. I don't see a ton of D/S violating edits occurring while this discussion is ongoing, so there's no rush. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:31, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Agreed. And in actual fact it's not a terribly useful template anyway, since individual editors need to be alerted to DS's before they can be applied to that editor. Alexbrn (talk) 17:32, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

To answer your question to me above: No sources specifically state that it is a majority academic viewpoint, that faith healing is a pseudoscience; this is what's needed for a strong argument. It is a very heavily written about subject matter, so it is not surprising that a small number of reliable sources are available that sloppily state that it is pseudoscience. A few authors have used that term loosely without thinking carefully about what that actually means. Let me be very clear, there is no opposition from me for the inclusion of the descriptive term pseudoscience in the article body sourced to reliable sources. I am opposed to faith healing being categorised as a pseudoscience because there is no evidence at all of a consensus by experts that this is a pseudoscience and the vast majority of sources are uninterested in whether it is a pseudoscience, probably because most authors know the actual dictionary definition of pseudoscience and know faith healing is not pseudoscience. The support votes probably will win on numbers, but yes, their arguments in my view are weak. I just think it is silly for Wikipedia to state, Jack prayed for a miracle that his beloved Jill would get better and that her chemotherapy would work and help her aggressive cancer go away - and categorise hope, belief or faith as 'pretending to be scientific' or 'resembles but is not science'. I am not opposing the label pseudo-medicine for example, because, although negative, I can at least understand the logic behind it being classed as pseudo-medicine and alternative medicine, because research has not shown a proven benefit from faith healing. At the end of the day, I don't give a big care whether some pseudoscience category wiki link at the bottom of the list exists, most readers won't even see it or think/care about it. I have an opinion and I am enjoying the intellectual debate and mild drama, whatever the outcome. I do think there are some people here who think it is cool to attach an inaccurate negative label to people who believe in prayer, and don't care what the actual definition of pseudoscience is. Pseudoscience is a word, it's definition is straight forward and the oppose votes are heavily influenced by the actual definition of pseudoscience; this is one of several reasons why our arguments are stronger. Dictionary definitions are neutral, no bias and in this instance seriously weaken the support votes.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 17:56, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

I do think there are some people here who think it is cool to attach an inaccurate negative label to people who believe in prayer I think that's the heart of the matter. See my breakdown of the oppose arguments above regarding this. Yes, you could classify praying for healing as faith healing, and praying for healing is not pseudoscience. But the rest of the activities that fall under this heading do constitute pseudoscience. Acupuncture practitioners sometimes sterilize their needles. Since sterilization of any instrument used in a medical procedure is clearly not pseudo-medicine, does that make acupuncture not pseudo-medicine? No, I don't think so. I think this is a proposal which rankles because (I agree) it implies something derogatory about religious people. But while I agree that's unfortunate (despite being an atheist, I have a great deal of respect for a large number of religious people, and would never argue that religion is necessarily bad, or religious people necessarily stupid or anything like that), that's just an unfortunate effect of having an encyclopedia. I also thin kit's unfortunate that we can't state "Donald Trump is the most racist president in modern history," and that we have to state "Religious people have been found to give more to charity than secular people," in the relevant articles, but I'm not going to change them because, as unfortunate as highlighting those things might be, they're true. Just like the claim that a televangelist can pray really hard and cure someone's cancer is pseudoscience. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:16, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

No sources specifically state that it is a majority academic viewpoint <- this is the bit where you're making up policy. There is no requirement for sources talking about "a majority academic viewpoint", though that is the requirement for WP:RS/AC. By your argument, literally nothing in Wikipedia would be categorized at pseudoscience. We have impeccable RS which considers the exact question of whether FH is pseudoscience, it says it is, and so Wikipedia shall too. That's neutrality, folks! Alexbrn (talk) 18:32, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Just a quick note since this off-shoot is off-topic for this section and more related to the above RfC, but do read WP:PARITY (namely the 3rd paragraph) with respect to sources being "not interested". That fringe subjects tend not to get as much scrutiny in some cases is something already dealt with in the fringe guidelines. Kingofaces43 (talk) 18:37, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

• Depressingly, the arguments (note plural!) are about several different topics mingled without discrimination. Until that is resolved, this wall of text is largely futile, if it isn't futile anyway. Some say faith healing is not science, therefore it is (or therefore is not) pseudoscience; some say it is not scientific, therefore it is (or therefore is not) pseudoscience. Some say it is prayer, therefore it is not science, therefore it is (or is not) pseudoscience. The fact is that not only do different people have different definitions, both for science and pseudoscience, but they instance different examples with different aspects. Some rightly point out that FH makes factual claims, and that science is concerned with subject matter that is subject to factual (or anyway, to material) investigation, not noting that the fact that it makes testable claims does not make it either science or pseudoscience. (Note that pseudoscience does not have to be some kind of clear, logical item-by-item opposite of science; it commonly is simply incoherent, but with some of the supporters claiming scientific merit or justification for the practice or term in question or aspects thereof.) Some say no, it isn't anything to do with science or pseudoscience; it is just people coming together to pray or do rain dances to heal people who need healing; actually it is both less than that and more: faith healing as she is spoke or practised is incoherent; not only do definitions differ, but the definitions generally are internally inconsistent and individual people are self-inconsistent in the definitions they use from time to time or in the same breath. For example, some say they are just praying, but add that it heals (placebo-schmacebo!) and some accordingly charge for it or for products that promote or support it, which makes it pretty clearly quackery, pseudoscientific or not. If you wish to discriminate definitively between quackery and pseudoscience, then by all means change the term used to "quackery", but no one has usefully made that distinction yet in any practical context. As I said, it is a hoary chestnut and won't go away because it keeps propagating; wishful thinking Trumps other thinking time after time in each generation. JonRichfield (talk) 06:03, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Here on Wikipedia we have a solution to the "some say this, some say that" problem. We post an RfC, and uninvolved editor writes up a summary, and then we all abide by the result of the RfC until it is superseded by another RfC or a successful RfC challenge. Conflict resolved, everybody moves on. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:21, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
    • Sounds like a good idea. Conflict resolved, they move on do they? Like in the foregoing? Great stuff! Should patent it. JonRichfield (talk) 18:15, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
      • We allow a bit of leeway for editors who are not willing to abide by an RfC (or in this case not willing to abide by a previous RfC while waiting for the current RfC to close), but if they are too persistent we report them at ANI, with the typical result being a warning, and if they still persist, a series of blocks with escalating durations. The system really does work. Abiding by the result of an RfC is not optional, even if we do allow a bit of complaining. And of course some RfCs do get overturned, so the complaining may very well have merit. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:28, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Either way, this discussion of RfC results is off-topic from this section and belongs in the threaded discussion of the RfC. Kingofaces43 (talk) 21:39, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Seeing nothing in the above discussion that would exclude the DS applying here even after some time (especially now that the separate RfC is done and should settle things down), I've gone ahead and readded the template. As mentioned above, it doesn't satisfy formal awareness, but reminds editors that DS are in effect for topics related to pseudoscience when they come to this talk page at least in order to hopefully preempt potential issues rather than react to them. Kingofaces43 (talk) 23:54, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Major lead sentence change without discussion

The lead sentence, which has been stable, has been changed without discussion from "Faith healing is the practice of prayer and gestures (such as laying on of hands) that are claimed to elicit divine intervention in spiritual and physical healing, especially the Christian practice." to "Faith healing is a form of alternative medicine in which the treatment of illness is meant to be effected by supernatural powers." I'll change it back and then editors can actually discuss such a major shift of emphasis. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:13, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Agree with the revert. While faith healing is something that can be viewed through the lens of alternative medicine, the vast majority of sources do not define it or deal with it in such terms. Sources tend to discuss it as a religious practice. It's very rarely framed as something making a medical or scientific claim. Not everything in the entire world, is about rational skepticism all the time. Imagine the article on transubtantiation started "Transubstantiation is a scientifically impossible pseudoscientific process that religious numptys claim occurs during mass (they are wrong)." That's what this reads like. We should 100% point out the scientific studies demonstrating this stuff doesn't work, but this is merely a PART of the article, not the main focus, as the reliable sources do not treat it as the main focus. Brustopher (talk) 18:40, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Err, so why are we citing some random religious website when we have relatively recent academic textbooks published by university presses available? Seems a bit POV-pushy. A review of WP:RS might be helpful ... Alexbrn (talk) 19:17, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Umm, the "random" website (please consult a dictionary for the proper use of the word "random") cites The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion. Is there some reason that that source is not deemed reliable for content about a religious subject?- MrX 🖋 19:57, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes, because we don't know whether this website is accurately representing the supposedly good source. If there is a RS book, find it and cite it. But - we have an academic reference book from OUP in 2006. I suggest we cite a respectable scholarly reference, and not a web site (an unreliable tertiary source in this case). Alexbrn (talk) 15:52, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Association of Religion Data Archives is an academic association funded by several universities. There's no reason whatsoever to believe that they can't accurately cite sources. I'm not sure what source you are referring to, or why it should be given prominence over this one, but I would be happy to take a look.- MrX 🖋 17:27, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

It has no evidence of editorial oversight, is not scholarly and is a tertiary source built on submitted work by anonymous "investigators". It is even odder this is promoted as the "sole" definition and is not cited anywhere outside the lede. To be very clear, are you seriously saying you prefer this web site to a secondary scholarly source such as the one Randy Kryn removed? (that is the point of this discussion). Alexbrn (talk) 18:10, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

FYI, this is now being discussed[28] at FT/N. Alexbrn (talk) 18:32, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Thearda.com harkens back to a time when people were desperate to get stuff online that wasn't online. It was a pet project and is of interest for historical purposes, but is no longer the high-quality we would demand of reliable sources. My library does not have a copy of HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion and I question why we would rely on a single source that is 20 years out of date. jps (talk) 18:48, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

If you doubt the reliability of the source, or the source that they cite, take it to WP:RSN. WP:NOTINMYLIBRARY and WP:SOURCETOOOLD are not Wikipedia guidelines.- MrX 🖋 19:38, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

If you can't understand basic editorial arguments, maybe butt out? jps (talk) 21:21, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

See WP:PSTS and WP:V. This is already at one noticeboard and I notice nobody seems to share your enthusiasm for thearda.com. We should favour scholarly secondary sources per the WP:PAGs. In any event we are going to need a bigger "Definition" section and then the lede can sync with the body as it is meant to. Alexbrn (talk) 19:42, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

I was not saying that the cite and words shouldn't be used, but you removed the entire first sentence, replaced it with yours, and thus changed the entire tone and direction of the article. The stable tone of the first sentences should be kept, and not discredited (the topics that should be discredited are those people who make prey of "believers" and fleece them in direct cons). The main emphasis of this page is the topic of faith in prayer, a hope for recovery that some people have for themselves or their loved ones. That this is "alternate medicine" (although no medicine is involved?) is certainly not the primary lead topic, which you made it. That could be focused on later in the lead or body of the article. Randy Kryn (talk) 20:00, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Whatever we have, we need to follow the WP:PAGs. What you restored goes against a load of them. Alexbrn (talk) 20:03, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm pretty familiar with our policies. Perhaps this snippet from WP:PSTS escaped your notice: ""Reliable tertiary sources can be helpful in providing broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources, and may be helpful in evaluating due weight, especially when primary or secondary sources contradict each other." - MrX 🖋 21:10, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

theard.com is not a reliable source; the underlying tertiary source may be - but nobody knows exactly what it says. Alexbrn (talk) 21:27, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Why can't we have both? Seriously, they both speak to different aspects of the topic. We need MORE sources rather than arguing about which single source to use. jps (talk) 21:21, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

I didn't suggest that we should only have one source, or even that the current lead sentence was ideal. I objected to removing the only source.- MrX 🖋 21:38, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

I object to relying on a source (the HarperCollins encyclopedia) which no Wikipedia editor has read. I think it's intellectually dishonest. Alexbrn (talk) 21:41, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

But we're not citing that source.- MrX 🖋 21:54, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

But your defense of theard.com was that it was using that source! Are you now saying the authorless, editorless website is an RS itself? (and in that case why do we have this weird "citing" bit in the reference?). This is also intellectually dishonest. Alexbrn (talk) 22:09, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

I gave valid reasons for trusting the source. That doesn't mean that their source has to also be verified by us. What specifically in the first sentence do you believe is not factual or not verifiable?

Faith healing is the practice of prayer and gestures (such as laying on of hands) that are claimed can elicit divine intervention in spiritual and physical healing, especially the Christian practice.

- MrX 🖋 22:18, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Can someone just WP:Resource Request the page? It's obviously fair use. jps (talk) 22:13, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Actually, if a load of definitions have been copy-pasted out of a source (which is possible) there may be a copyvio/copylink problem here too. Our text isn't even supported by thearda.com anyway ("gestures"?). I have raised at RS/N. Alexbrn (talk) 22:22, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Why don't we do some good writing and blend the two. After reading the lead to Medicine I'm more inclined to say that medicine applies. I was under the impression that the definition of medicine refers only to liquids and pills and other physical well-defined objects. Seems it extends to stuff like prayer. So let's blend the two concepts into an acceptable sentence or two that the participants of this discussion can all agree on (a true consensus means everyone agrees, which I wish - a form of prayer if done right - was used more on Wikipedia). And in a perfect world I'd personally add right in the lead paragraph something like "Hustlers and con artists, who prey on and take monetary advantage of believers in faith healing, should be dragged across the coals", if it is well-sourced of course. Randy Kryn (talk) 22:32, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Seems like a plan to me. Someone want to try out a lede sentence? Incidentally, citations in the lede are typically a bad idea anyway. We should be summarizing the article and the sources should be in the body. jps (talk) 22:35, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Definitions

(List will grow)

• Galanter, Marc. Cults : Faith, Healing and Coercion, Oxford University Press, 1999:

Most often, we apply the term faith healing to treatments used in cultures whose fundamental beliefs are alien to the contemporary values of scientific medicine.

Alexbrn (talk) 22:46, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

• Carroll, Robert Todd. The Skeptic's Dictionary http://skepdic.com/faithhealing.html 3 Nov. 2015:

When fraud is not involved, faith healing is a cooperative form of magical thinking involving a healer and a patient in which (a) both healer and patient believe in the healing power of spirits or other mysterious healing mechanisms; (b) the healer consciously or unconsciously manipulates the patient into believing he or she has cured the patient's ailment by prayer, hand movements (to unblock, remove, restore, etc. some intangible "energy"), or by some other unconventional ritual or product; and (c) the patient validates the healing by giving signs that the healing has worked, such as walking without a brace for a short period, breathing freely, feeling relief from pain, or simply thanking the healer for the "miraculous cure."

jps (talk) 22:50, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

• Encylopaedia Brittanica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/faith-healing

Faith healing, recourse to divine power to cure mental or physical disabilities, either in conjunction with orthodox medical care or in place of it.

• Smith, Jonathan Z., ed. The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion, HarperCollins, 1995, p. 355:

A term usually limited to the Christian practice of restoring health by means of prayer, a transfer of divine power, or the intervention of the Holy Spirit.

(HarperCollins quote supplied pursuant to request at WP:RX by jps on 14 March 2018) --Worldbruce (talk) 00:26, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

Okay - I think something like "Faith healing is a form of attempted medical treatment which invokes divine or supernatural power with the claim it can cure illness or infirmity" ? Alexbrn (talk) 07:56, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Alex, I would incorporate the third reference and say this: "Faith healing is a form of attempted medical treatment, used in conjunction with mainstream medical care or rarely in the place of, which invokes divine or supernatural power with the claim it can cure illness or infirmity."--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 15:35, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

"Rarely" is original research. jps (talk) 15:46, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

I know, I wrote in my edit summary for that post that a source is needed regarding frequency of refusal of medical care during faith healing.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 15:50, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

So, until we know what the frequency is (compared to what, exactly?), I would object strenuously to the inclusion of any modifier about how often faith healing, when it is used, is used in place of medical treatment. Just remove the modifier. jps (talk) 16:25, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree. Probably I shouldn't have put it forward as a suggestion without first having a source. Good point about compared to what; would be problematic if a source were found, for example, talking about a fringe form of faith healing or followers of a certain cult figure who had high frequency in the 1950's for rejecting medical care. Your suggestion of just removing the modifier might well be the best suggestion.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 18:09, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

There are plenty of examples where faith healers argue that their flock should seek out medical care. One can ask whether this is to shield them from possible lawsuits or accusations of practicing medicine without a license. Of course, the reason for that is because some faith healers have been exposed to such legal action. To that end, it would be irresponsible for us not to mention that faith healing can be done in either way, but we need to leave the details of how, when, and why to the body of the article. jps (talk) 18:14, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Faith healing is not intercessory prayer and it is not just claimed miracles

I'm surprised that this hasn't been made more clear. "Faith healing" is a compound term and when it is treated as such it is referring specifically to a kind of practice that takes dead aim at a particular disease or affliction in a particular individual. It is not the same thing as when a person attributes their recovery to a miracle. Faith healing involves a practitioner who claims to work either with the benefits of on behalf of a divine magical power. The malady is identified ahead of time and the healing is claimed. It is often done in the context of a religious service. jps (talk) 13:57, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

You are wrong. See this post. A simple prayer for a sick loved one is faith healing too.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 19:14, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

There is a rather wide difference between the mainstream theological position that it's fine to ask God for success with science-based medicine, and the New Thought derived position that healing comes from prayer (and that science-based medicine is either unnecessary or even antagonistic to this). Lumping them together, as this article does, makes about as much sense as treating Theistic evolution and Young Earth Creationism as the same thing. Ian.thomson (talk) 19:24, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm serious here, what term do we use for "God, please let Grandma's chemo work" and what term do we use for this? The skeptical literature I've read generally refers to this as "faith healing" and "God, please let Grandma's chemo work" as just "prayer." Ian.thomson (talk) 19:43, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

It can be mainstream religion too to believe healing can come from prayer alone on rare (miraculous) occasions. What is not mainstream is to say healing will likely or definitely come from prayer alone, so don't go to your doctor and don't take medication. I am serious too, I see no evidence of pseudoscience in that Benny Hinn video - instead I saw theatre, placebo, mass hysteria, evidence suggesting either he is a con man or a crank and it is clear he is practicing a bizarre form of faith healing that would be rejected by all mainstream religions. Now to the pseudoscience bit: if someone were to suggest that Benny Hinn's bizarre rituals and theatre show could or does - to the untrained or unsuspicious eye - resemble science and could be mistaken for science by an untrained eye is crankism in and of itself. Faith healing is actually unscientific rather than pseudoscientific, because of the lack of a convincing evidence base and because it does not resemble or pretend to be scientific.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 07:14, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

To answer your question about 'grandma' and 'Benny Hinn' - both are faith healing per several dictionary definitions and thus are both the subject of this article. One would be mainstream because you are requesting an intervention of God whilst the other is taking command of God and instructing God to behave a certain predictable way under the command of a man as if by magic which would not be mainstream religious thought and maybe the latter could then, with a very big stretch of the definition of pseudoscience, be labelled pseudoscience. The problem is is that faith healing does not generally present itself as scientific (produce repeatable predictable results nor try to use scientific jargon or falsified/misrepresented evidence in scientific journals or websites) so pseudoscience is the wrong label. Maybe 'unscientific' is better term because of the lack of convincing evidence.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 08:14, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

With regard to the title of this section: an intercessory prayer is, by definition, a prayer for the benefit of someone else. Therefore, someone praying for the healing of someone else (faith healing) is an intercessory prayer. A repeated problem I keep seeing again and again is that people voting support have a poor grasp on English language definitions of key words in this discussion (key words definitions commonly misinterpreted by support voters: pseudoscience versus unscientific, intercessory and of course faith healing itself). I don't like to be offensive, but it is what it is.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 08:49, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

I think you have a poor grasp of the history of ideas. That linguists would see fit to shoehorn faith healing with prayer is not surprising. But there are entire books written about faith healing [29] which conform to what I'm saying in this section. jps (talk) 11:48, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

I know full well that, for obvious reasons, books focus on fringe anti-science/anti-medicine faith healing cultic and con man faith healers and a small number of these books have then used the word 'pseudoscience' without carefully thinking of the implications of use of such a term. That does not change the fact that the vast majority (like 99% I guess) of faith healing is indeed normal - at home or at church - simple mainstream prayer for a sick wife, disaster or famine relief because multiple dictionary definition of faith healing includes this defintion. Of course there are books that define their topic focus on aspects that are of public interest, but this does not change the English language definition or meaning of a word and thus what this Wikipedia article includes and covers and should cover.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 12:23, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Just because you want faith healing to be treated that way in the reliable sources doesn't mean that's how it is treated. There is a more academic term for creationism too, but it is drowned out by the reliable sources who use the term to describe pseudoscientific evolution denial. We go by the sources, not by the wishes of the editors. jps (talk) 13:00, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

We go by sources indeed, and dictionary definitions and scholarly definitions of pseudoscience can help us weed out unreliable sources that 'support voters' are misusing. My argument is support voters refuse point blank to acknowledge how reliable sources define the meaning of pseudoscience and it is like talking to a brick wall.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 13:36, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

That's because we go by how sources address the question of how pseudoscience applies to FH, not by what some editors think. Get your thoughts published by a university press, then they might have some relevance to this discussion. Alexbrn (talk) 14:24, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

I think the 'oppose voters' are missing WP:DICDEF. I didn't start this game of insulting the intelligence of the other users, but if we're going to go down that route, I'll point out that there seems to be a lot of thoughtful and intelligent editors who are supporting the lean in towards looking at the pseudoscientific aspects of this topic. When I pointed out that the plurality if not majority of books deal with what we all acknowledge to be the aspects of faith healing that are most in tuned with opposition to medical science, I am dismissed because someone looked up a definition in Merriam Webster's. Yeah, that's the level of discourse right now. jps (talk) 15:01, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

And I'm surprised at reading the lead and not finding anything about proven fraudulent use of faith healing by many public and private individuals who use the hope and promise of a healing for profit or publicity. People who pray is one thing, and prayer circles in churches are very common for either a sick member of the church or their relatives and friends. This is faith healing at its core, and maybe if someone is very good at creative visualization then something may shift (see Lourdes and other "miracle" sites for setting up a context for healing to occur). But public fraud has occurred, via hidden microphones and pre-knowledge of life events deemed "inspired" instead of data-mined or detected by paid employees of the "healer". There should at least be a sourced warning about such practices somewhere within the end of the lead paragraph or two without changing the language describing the practice without bias or adding language debunking the faith of those who pray and hope. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:14, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Free Advice

User:Literaturegeek, you may find my essay at WP:1AM to be helpful at this point. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:31, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Nice essay. Good job writing it, thanks for sharing.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 18:56, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

This talk page needs a laying on of hands. Or at least a round or two of communal wine. In fact, taking the x=y logic of some editors in this argument into account, since faith healing (which they think of as imaginary science and imaginary medicine) would be labeled real enough to list as a form of science and medicine, shouldn't the Meat template include "communion" and "communal wine" since they are imaginary body parts? Randy Kryn (talk) 13:39, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Non Christian faith healing and overlap with other practices

Does anyone else feel that the article, by concentrating so extensively on certain Christian practices fails to deal with other forms of faith healing which often have overlap with Shamanism or other aspects of spiritualism? See for example these sources [30] [31] [32] [33] [34]. As shown by some of those sources, even when major religions like Islam come into it, overlap with more traditional practices can occur, and they can go in the other direction too. See for example, this which originated from a protestant Christian [35].

I'm not saying we should include all aspects of these, some of them could be called more "magic" than "faith", nor everything someone calls faith healing. But a number of these clearly include aspects of divine or supernatural intervention so I think there should be at least some mention with links to other relevant articles where appropriate. I'm also not saying the Christian part isn't important, heck while researching this I found several refs which claim quie a large percentage of Christian converts in China arise at least in part due to faith healing.

But we also shouldn't be stuck in the trap of only covering Christian or major religions because the others aren't "real faiths". I appreciate finding sources for this may be difficult. (I looked at the talk history but couldn't find that much relevant discussion. I was suprised about how much of it is dedicate to whether or not faith healing is a pseudoscience.)

Nil Einne (talk) 14:28, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

I am also concerned with the lede identifying faith healing as a primarily Christian practice. It's older than Christianity and practiced by many, many groups of people (and there are lots of Christians who think it's no good). I think "for example, Christians" or "such as Christians" would be more appropriate than "especially Christians." Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:03, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Adding text, per Sandstein's closure summary

My reading of Sandstein's closure and summary of the RfC was that the differing academic viewpoints should be included in a neutral fashion, per WP:DUEWEIGHT. I have created what I believe to be a neutral summary of the evidence. Neither POV side will be entirely happy but that is what WP:NPOV is all about, not taking sides:

An expert described faith healing as a scientifically unproven treatment with cures attributed to it being considered to be scientifically suspect; and suggested that determining whether it can be proven that a person was sick and has been cured in the first instance or whether spontaneous remission has occurred may offer better explanations. There are, in fact, many examples of faith healing fraud and deception. Alleged cures from faith healing are considered to be paranormal phenomena, however the religious beliefs and practices associated with faith healing are not generally considered to be pseudoscientific because they do not usually have any pretensions of science. However, other experts disagree and have asserted faith healing is a form of pseudoscience. Another expert stated that only certain forms of faith healing are pseudoscience, e.g., Christian Science, voodoo and Spiritualism. Another expert described faith healing as a form of paranormal belief that is based on fraud and deception. Faith healing has been described as probably the most dangerous type of pseudoscience because it can cause people to reject mainstream medical care with increased pain and suffering and an earlier death being real potential consequences.

Comments are welcome :-)--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 06:57, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose - It gives more weight to faith healers and not the actual science. It shows that faith healers are more trusted while scientific community is isolated and probably ignorant of faith healing. The first sentence of the lead must mention it as pseudoscience without any undue rebuttal per my edit from 2016. Raymond3023 (talk) 09:20, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Can you explain more Raymond. Is this "An expert described faith healing as a scientifically unproven treatment with cures attributed to it being considered to be scientifically suspect; and suggested that determining whether it can be proven that a person was sick and has been cured in the first instance or whether spontaneous remission has occurred may offer better explanations." the part that you are opposing? We already have a section on the actual science, Faith_healing#Scientific_investigation which is effectively completely negative about faith healing. This is about it being pseudoscience and academic opinion on this.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 09:40, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm not convinced it should even be mentioned in the lead because it is a tiny minority WP:FRINGE academic opinion. Just look at the small number of sources found describing it as pseudoscience. Compare that with homeopathy or intelligent design which has hundreds, perhaps thousands of sources asserting they are pseudoscience.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 09:58, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Yup, the above "draft" can be dismissed as pretty clear WP:PSCI and WP:UNDUE violations (in part due to WP:GEVAL). The diff you mentioned appears to be adequate and simple enough, though we could add in more sources that have come up in the RfC discussion. This source also satisfies WP:RS/AC, so we could add the additional qualifier to phrase the statement "virtually all philosophers and scientists." Better to stay focused for now and flesh things out more later. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:54, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Unsoruced rants should not influence our interpretation of the many many sources.--Moxy (talk) 20:38, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

That is a bit rude and disrespectful to my WP:GOODFAITHed attempt and well sourced attempt at forming consensus.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 20:44, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

?? What you wrote way above looks fine to me. Why would you think its about you in this oppose section someone else started.--Moxy (talk) 21:14, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Moxy, I'm not sure what you're referring to here with respect to unsourced. Were you referring to my specific post or something else (maybe you intended something else with your threading)? We already had a huge RfC discussing these sources, and the introduced text has such major WP:GEVAL issues, so I'm a little confused as to what you're referring to. Kingofaces43 (talk) 21:37, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

This is the statement in that source that you are referencing: "Despite the lack of generally accepted demarcation criteria, we find remarkable agreement among virtually all philosophers and scientists that fields like astrology, creationism, homeopathy, dowsing, psychokinesis, faith healing, clairvoyance, or ufology are either pseudosciences or at least lack the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously" my problem with it is that it lists multiple fields of which one is faith healing, but then says the various fields are "either pseudosciences or at least lack the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously," so the author with the use of the word 'or' does not clearly state which statement he attributes to faith healing and which to the other fields. I believe it can't be pseudoscience because so very few academics/sources attribute that label to faith healing. Therefore, the author must be applying "lack the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously" to faith healing. The author would need to be quoted in context and I think it is inappropriate, per WP:NPOV, to use/misrepresent that source to allow only one academic viewpoint into the article and goes against the spirit of the closing admin summary of the RfC imho.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 20:17, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

This particular comment can be more or less dismissed in terms of WP:PSCI. The RfC is over, so we're not arguing about whether something is pseudoscience anymore. Pretty much all sources discussed so far agree on the fringe/pseudoscience aspect, so it's spurious to claim too few sources or claim the author must be talking about something else. If someone wants to overturn GEVAL, they need to do that at the policy page, not at this talk page. Until then, it's a policy because the very thing it cautions about happens a lot of pseudoscience/fringe topics.

Just to tack on a bit, but you're currently citing Pigliucci and Boundry that talks about pseudoscience or epistemic warrant (i.e., saying everything listed at least falls into WP:FRINGE), which in turn cites Hines that talks about pseudoscience, paranormal, etc. that you've also brought up. It's pretty clear a lot of your discussion about them as well as the draft text about takes them out of context, but when there is confusion (which there reasonably shouldn't be here), we look at sources that cite those in question. Of those citing it and mentioning faith healing, this source flat out calls faith healing pseudoscience while citing Pigliucci. Professors in a society publication are much more reliable than personal editor opinion at least. Nothing in those citations would particularly validate what you are trying to claim about the sources though. Not to mention that Pigliucci and Boundry had another book where they discuss things like faith and having prayers answered within the broader context of pseudoscience without the demarcation of paranormal being something other than pseudoscience. Given that these specific viewpoints of yours were already addressed in the RfC as having PSCI issues, it's time to drop the stick on them.

What we need right now is to at a minimum craft content that faith healing is considered pseudoscience by philosophers and scientists without competing statements in order to comply with PSCI and GEVAL. We could get into how claims that faith healing isn't making scientific claims ironically makes it a pseudoscience or that there have been distinct cases of fraud associated with some claims of faith healing, but better to do one thing at a time considering how text heavy these talk discussions have been getting. Kingofaces43 (talk) 22:27, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

In my view, I've summarised the sources neutrally. I think you are misrepresenting the closing summary of the RfC, please read above the third paragraph of Sandstein's RfC summary and you will see that the result of the RfC was not to declare faith healing pseudoscience without summarising any academic differing opinions. As far as I'm concerned, it is you who is the one trying to cherry pick and make the references say what you want them to say or make the sources agree with your 'favourite source' and you are doing so by ignoring, dismissing and playing WP:IDIDNOTHEARTHAT with me and wiki-lawyering. I happen to care about this encyclopedia and neutrality and have taken many articles to good article status, so I know how to interpret and apply sources neutrally.

Given we cannot agree on the interpretation of one particular source, I would not be opposed to simply quoting the entire sentence: there is "remarkable agreement among virtually all philosophers and scientists that fields like astrology, creationism, homeopathy, dowsing, psychokinesis, faith healing, clairvoyance, or ufology are either pseudosciences or at least lack the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously."

As for the two sources in your comment, one is a newsletter and I would be concerned that better sources are available and the other source does not mention 'faith healing,' so probably not appropriate that we use these sources when we have better or more specific sources.

If you are so convinced that I am not representing the sources or academic opinions properly/fairly, why don't you put forward your suggested text for the article for consideration.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 22:22, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Nope, we currently don't have significant differing academic viewpoints to describe right now. Saying otherwise is a direct violation of WP:GEVAL as already shown. There was no mandate to include such viewpoints from the RfC, just consider it (implied in terms of considering GEVAL). Sources pretty squarely describe it directly as pseudoscience in general (including discussion of the one you were quoting), so that is what we will do until we find adequate sources saying otherwise in terms of GEVAL. The repeated attempts to not characterize faith healing as pseudoscience need to stop as your arguments have been personal opinions in contradiction with what actual secondary sources have to say.

I already mentioned that Raymond's diff they provided was at least a bare minimum for including the text, so I've gone and added essentially that with a few updated sources from the RfC since no one has added anything yet. I'm still open to tweaking wording according to sources while not creating undue weight for making it seem like faith healing is not primarily described as pseudoscience, but we've also reached the point that it's time to start complying with PSCI policy. Kingofaces43 (talk) 05:21, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

@Literaturegeek: See this. I think we are clearly done here. Raymond3023 (talk) 05:26, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

It is not necessary to dispute the label (pseudoscience) unless it was directly disputed by one or more reliable sources. Raymond3023 (talk) 06:11, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

You keep misrepresenting the source (and other sources throughout the RfC) and added text without consensus. It doesn't say virtually all scientists class it as pseudoscience. The source says virtually all scientists regard it as either pseudoscience or don't take it seriously. The key words are 'either' and 'or'. The problem is you misrepresented the source and then are applying GEVAL. In fact, the source that says "Another expert stated that only certain forms of faith healing are pseudoscience, e.g., Christian Science, voodoo and Spiritualism." comes from a source that Raymond posted for the RfC and we all considered before voting. Now you say this text must be excluded. The secondary sources are posted in my first post in this talk section, it is not my opinion, please stop misrepresenting me.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 06:40, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

It is like finding a source saying in England most left leaning voters vote for either the labour party or the liberal democrats, then chopping the statement up to say most left leaning voters vote for the liberal democrats (which is actually a very small party that gets a small percent of the vote) when actually labour gets the lions share of left leaning votes in England. Chopping statements in half and making an assertion is a gross misrepresentation of a source. But anyway.....--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 06:50, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

As already discussed, sources that put Pigliucci & Boudry in context for us instead of relying on editor personal opinion cite that faith healing is put under pseudoscience by Pigliucci & Boudry that use the virutally all scientists and philosophers language. If someone wants to try to support your personal interpretation of the epistemic warrant language (which is often used as a qualifer, not a separate category), they'll need sources to support that. Currently, those citing Pigliucci & Boudry and mentioning faith healing do not support your personal interpretation by either flat out opposing it or just not mentioning such a distinction, so we stick to what the sources have to say.

As for the Christian Science, voodoo and Spiritualism comment, you were severely changing the context of that source by saying only certain forms of a faith healing are pseudoscience. I even specifically quoted that source in the text I added as Certain approaches to faith healing are also widely considered to be pseudoscientific, including those of Christian Science, voodoo, and Spiritualism. That source is just pointing out some of the more prominent examples, but makes no limitations on what is or not pseudoscience with regards to faith healing. Again, your particular content arguments have been getting into WP:OR territory lately, so it seems like we've about reached a point where the content should be more or less settled at this point based on the plethora of discussion here. Kingofaces43 (talk) 14:48, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

"by nearly all scientists and philosphers" may not be an accurate summary. Only "nearly all scientists and philosophers" considers it to be pseudoscience? I don't have an accurate summary right now but we can think about making it better. Raymond3023 (talk) 15:50, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

That's more or less the language used by Pigliucci & Boudry in the cited ref, Despite the lack of generally accepted demarcation criteria, we find remarkable agreement among virtually all philosophers and scientists that fields like astrology, creationism, homeopathy, dowsing, psychokinesis, faith healing, clairvoyance, or ufology are either pseudosciences. I went with nearly instead of virtually so as not to run into copyvio problems. I'm open to changing things around a bit if we've got a better way of phrasing it though, but when we get into WP:RS/AC territory, we want to stick pretty close to how the source intends to portray it. Kingofaces43 (talk) 16:13, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Homeopathy: "Homeopathy is a pseudoscience – a belief that is incorrectly presented as scientific."

Ayurveda: "Ayurveda medicine is considered pseudoscientific."

Chiropractic: "Its foundation is at odds with mainstream medicine, and chiropractic is sustained by pseudoscientific ideas"

Acupuncture: "and acupuncture is a pseudoscience."

It should be easy to remove "nearly all scientists and philosophers". We can engage in very long debates about each of these alternative medicines I have named here, that they are not pseudoscience according to some/many/most (depending on the med) sources. But their articles have made no efforts to marginalize the label (pseudoscience), backed by multiple reliable sources. Raymond3023 (talk) 16:49, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

I actually just want to closely paraphrase what sources say, like any good wikipedian. It is you kingofaces who is engaging in original research and more specifically WP:SYN. Your approach to editing and use of sources has got me concerned about whether this is isolated or whether you misrepresent sources as a matter of routine. We recently had an editor called Barbara doing as such before she was topic banned from medicine orientated articles. But anyway...--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 16:58, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

At this point, please remember this topic is under ArbCom discretionary sanctions. Please stop casting aspersions about editors. We follow what the sources say, not personal editor opinion. When your personal interpretation of a source is contradicted by a secondary source citing that same source, the source pretty much always wins out against us anonymous editors. As it stands, sources contradict what you are trying to claim about Pigliucci & Boudry, which then becomes both undue weight and original research. Especially due to WP:PSCI, an even harder stance is taken against that in these topics.Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:14, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Raymond3023, it seems like you're mistaking the intent, but the nearly all scientists and philosophers language is even a stronger statement that the topic is pseudoscience. Stating academic consensus is about as strong as we can get, which is why we have WP:RS/AC to help editors with that idea. It's basically the opposite of watering down. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:14, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

My comments were mostly speaking of general writing style that almost every other alt-med article seems to have used. Whatever you have written here maybe more perfect than what has been written on other articles, so I have no objection with current wording, nor any objection with modification if anyone else is interested. Though I am opposed to any rebuttals on lead. Raymond3023 (talk) 19:08, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Adding text per close

I think we should leave the first paragraph as is, but add a sentence about this pseudoscience use of the topic (and the charlatans) within it. I don't know where what's being discussed above is meant to go, but certainly the lead will be balanced (as the above discussion was). From reading the close it seems that this page has not been handed over to the fringe project to do with as it will. I believe that it should contain everything it does now, the already described points of view, but add in some of the naysaying to the mix. Randy Kryn (talk) 20:58, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, the lead does need to be balanced. We can't really talk about the lead without first figuring out the article text since the lead is meant to be a summary of the article body. Most editors on the FRINGE project are good editors who can and do edit neutrally. I wouldn't tar everyone on that project with the POV brush.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 22:30, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Balance is not needed on lead. After seeing output from dozens of editors, I have not actually observed if there are any direct rebuttals coming from one or multiple reliable sources. Policy is WP:PSCI, which means that we are still good without providing any undue balance whether on lead or section. Raymond3023 (talk) 06:38, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

• Comment: the text that has been added is not supported by the references. As has been repeatedly pointed out here, "we find remarkable agreement among virtually all philosophers and scientists that fields like astrology, creationism, homeopathy, dowsing, psychokinesis, faith healing, clairvoyance, or ufology are either pseudosciences or at least lack the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously" means that FH might merely "lack the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously" - and so there is no basis for saying "nearly all scientists and philosophers" regard FH as PS. StAnselm (talk) 19:34, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Please refrain from WP:OR. We've already discussed how the idea that faith healing "might" only fall under the epistemic merit and not pseudoscience idea is false. As already mentioned, editors do not get to claim a source means X when secondary sources directly say Pigliucci & Boudry treat faith healing as pseudoscience. We can't be claiming that particular source may treat it as something else at this point. Kingofaces43 (talk) 00:24, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

I did this: [36]. Does that help? --Tryptofish (talk) 00:32, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

I almost had an edit summary together, but it basically creates undue weight and misrepresents in the intent of the source. Part of the problem interspersed in the above talk sections is that some editors have been trying to claim that because the either or language is used, faith healing isn't a pseudoscience or that such Pigliucci & Boudry can't be used to claim it is one. That is in opposition to what we commonly see in descriptions of fringe material where someone will say it's a pseudoscience and also have a qualifying sentence saying it just isn't taken seriously while not considering it waffling.

When you look for secondary sources that cite the source in question, the former viewpoint that it might not be described as a pseudoscience is contradicted since that source explicitly says Pigliucci & Boudry treat faith healing as a pseudoscience. With that in mind, we need to be really careful about what ends up being weasel wording that can make it appear Pigliucci & Boudry don't treat faith healing as pseudoscience. Because it's possible to get lost easily in all the above discussions, I included quotes for those last two citations in question as well as others. Feel free to check them out if something isn't clear. Kingofaces43 (talk) 00:44, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

I think I do understand what you are describing. I included "at least" at the beginning of the quote for that reason. That way, it doesn't imply that they don't regard it as pseudoscience, but rather that they regard the epistemic aspect as a sort-of "minimal" reason to regard it as nonscientific. And my reading of the RfC is that it is within due weight to indicate that there is an argument that it does not measure up to being scientifically testable. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:55, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm kind of ok with the current version you edited, though sources 12 and 13 in the lead are tied together to basically have a WP:RS/AC type statement without needing the added epistemic language (primarily based on WP:PSCI issues that have been discussed plenty already). I'm still in favor of just keeping it simple without the epistemic language since we have a secondary source that clarifies the intent, but I'd have to think about how the refs would be arranged if we went this route instead.

As for your not being scientifically testable comment, I'm not too sure where you're going with that. A number of editors did make unsourced comments about that in the RfC that can be largely ignored, but in terms of that topic, I did include a source that directly addresses that (ref 7 in the lead). As long as we attribute that someone saying it isn't scientifically testable equates to it being pseudoscience, we should be in line with the RfC. Kingofaces43 (talk) 01:53, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

That comment was just my clumsy way of describing the view that there is an alternative to using the word "pseudoscience", so it's not worth parsing. My advice is to not push for the shorter version of the sentence, that just says that it's pseudoscience without including the epistemic part. It really doesn't matter, and it's not worth having a dispute about. --Tryptofish (talk) 02:17, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

I've thought it over a bit while looking over previous talk page discussion, and I've removed the newer text. It's very clear it's been used to by editors to claim FH isn't pseudoscience as part of original research, and since it doesn't change the meaning of the source excluding the latter half with the epistemic language, it's better to be on the safe concise side for now. As it stands now, we shouldn't have any dispute in terms concerns that have legitimate weight under WP:CON. Any concerns has been brought up in quite some time with [this version] or cited sources discussed before that have run afoul of original research and other policies, so I think we should be fine to leave things as is for now and move along to other things. Kingofaces43 (talk) 23:35, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

I, for one, won't edit war with you about it, but I think that you were wrong to make that edit. I'll go so far as to urge you to self-revert. And I'm not seeing the consensus that you claim, either here or in the RfC close. I don't care whether or not "it's been used to by editors" to make claims, so long as the actual text on the page doesn't make inaccurate claims, which it didn't. It added further nuance, and I think that made the page better. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:48, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Trypto, what exactly are you seeing as out of line with the RfC with the text? There was consensus to include sources describing FH as pseudoscience. The second part was that we avoid doing it in Wikipedia's voice (which we do through an RS/AC type statement). We also don't have sources arguing that FH isn't making a scientific claim (to the contrary rather), so the GEVAL or due weight aspect of Sandstein's close seems to be satisfied too. I'm happy to hammer out details if something is out of line with the RfC close, but I'm not seeing anything obvious at the moment, hence my asking. Kingofaces43 (talk) 00:02, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

I have reverted it. How words are used on the talk page is a poor reason for removing them from the article. Kingofaces43, multiple editors have argued for the insertion of those words, and you're the only one opposing. Although they are "newer", the addition of the text without this qualifier has been disputed, so if you're arguing that we should wait for consensus, the whole sentence should stay out. StAnselm (talk) 01:38, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

I am pleased that StAnselm reverted it, and I strongly urge all editors to refrain from any more reverting. And I think that paragraph 3 of the closing statement unambiguously says that it is appropriate to include that part of the sentence. There is an element of WP:RGW going on here: Wikipedia should indicate the nuances of opinions in the sources, and should not be trying to force readers to conclude that there is a single "correct" view of the subject. I hope that my editing history leaves no doubt that I am no fan of pseudoscience. I would probably be taking a different position if the disputed material said that faith healing was actually not pseudoscience, but it does not say that, only that faith healing fails the scientific or empirical requirement that a claim must be testable and potentially disprovable. That's entirely true that it fails that; indeed, the opposite (mainstream) view that faith healing lacks medical efficacy is entirely testable, and is supported by overwhelming evidence. --Tryptofish (talk) 02:03, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Just to center things a bit, here's the relevant part of that paragraph from the close and how it breaks out, Many opposing editors are primarily opposed to Wikipedia simply stating in its own voice that this practice is pseudoscience, in part because some cite sources making the argument that it is not scientific to begin with. But there is support by several of those opposing the proposal for describing in the article how reliable sources characterize faith healing in terms of it being pseudoscience or not. This approach is explicitly proposed by some editors, and it does not seem to be clearly incompatible with most of either the "support" or "oppose" opinions. I therefore consider the most "consensual" outcome of this discussion, and recommend that editors work out how exactly best to implement it.

The first main part is not using Wikipedia's voice. That's taken care of by the nearly all scientists language (albeit even stronger than using Wikipedia's voice). The second is how reliable sources characterize it as pseudoscience or not. All sources so far agree on it being pseudoscience or at least do not dispute it. There's no need to include the not taken seriously language bit as it's redundant (though still included in the ref quote).

The rub has been editor claims that the source using the nearly all scientists language wasn't directly claiming FH is pseudoscience because it could have fallen only into the not taken seriously category only and not pseudoscience. That's getting into OR territory or extreme hairsplitting we would normally dismiss in PSCI topics anyways, but I looked for sources citing the original source. Any that do mention FH in the context of the source treat it as pseudoscience explicitly or do not mention this personal alternative viewpoint at all. That means those making this claim are pitting personal editor opinion against sources, and since not being pseudoscience has been a stated intent of including that language, we need to be really careful that such a viewpoint doesn't come across to readers as well.

With that all in mind, what issues do you specifically see with not including the not taken seriously language or why it should be included? If there are legitimate issues in either regard, I'm totally on board with going with crafting different language than my current version, but nothing in these discussions has really approached that level yet. Kingofaces43 (talk) 02:48, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Setting aside the debate about the broad definition of pseudoscience, how you misuse academic sources and synthesise conclusions that are not in sources ironically is the very definition of traditional narrowly defined pseudoscience. Synthesising conclusions from multiple sources is original research and going beyond what sources say, like your pattern of editing and talk page soap boxing and wikilawyering, can cause enormous damage to this encyclopedia and is antisocial and disruptive and disrespectful to other editors who waste time and energy dealing with this, especially as you accuse your opponents of engaging in what you yourself are doing.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 04:32, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Again, please do not misrepresent the sources. You already started by trying to claim Pigliucci & Boudry may not be calling FH pseudoscience as part of the virtually all scientists language, and I merely responded to that WP:OR claim by showing that sources that cite them do not give any credence (which you're ironically claiming to be OR) to your personal viewpoint at all. They instead contradict it. Also, please remember to WP:FOC. Kingofaces43 (talk) 05:02, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

My response to that source was to support closely paraphrasing the statement, not chopping it in half to reach your personal POV. Your misrepresentation of my good Wikipedia editing is not very nice, it is abusive.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 05:11, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

I don't believe I've ever made my personal POV known since I've just been following the sources (maybe it would surprise people), but again, WP:FOC is policy. I already paraphrased the core part of the source in question, so I have yet to see a legitimate policy concern brought up yet with my edit. Kingofaces43 (talk) 05:21, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

For me, the key question that I now have is what is the exact meaning of the sentence But there is support by several of those opposing the proposal for describing in the article how reliable sources characterize faith healing in terms of it being pseudoscience or not. That is of course something apart from the "Wikipedia's voice" issue. I'm understanding it to refer in part to such things as the "epistemic" portion of the sentence that is in dispute. If I am correct about that, then we need to include it. But perhaps I'm mistaken. So I want to know very precisely: what exactly does that sentence in the close refer to? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:28, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

What happened during the RfC was a large number of people opposed classifying FH as pseudoscience. That was never substantiated in sources though (in some cases even misattributing sources in the rare case someone mentioned a source), so it looks like Sandstein was just giving an option if such sources were ever found (they commented on lack of sources for that viewpoint in the second paragraph). Basically if new sources come to light, figure it out under due weight and GEVAL. No one's brought anything up that passes muster in terms of weight though, so we're left with sources that either explicitly say pseudoscience or make general comments about the fringe nature of the subject without contradicting that it is pseudoscience. The epistemic warrant text doesn't really come into to play with that particular part of the close. Kingofaces43 (talk) 20:48, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Please remember that I was one of the editors who responded to the RfC. I agree with you that the position that it should not be classified as pseudoscience was argued by some editors, but clearly rejected in the consensus. But I don't think that Sandstein was saying what you think. It's a plain reading of the language that the sentence is about the underlying reasoning behind whether or not it is pseudoscience. That encompasses, in part, the argument that even if one supposes for the sake of argument that faith healing does not unambiguously meet the definition of pseudoscience because it does not claim to be science, it still cannot "be taken seriously" on broader epistemic grounds. And the most "consensual" outcome of this discussion means clearly that it is consensus to do that now, not as waiting for other sources to show up. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:38, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

I missed this reply earlier, but Sanstein's comment can bit a bit ambiguous. One way it can go is that is there are sources of sufficient weight, say how it is or is not classified. When we do dig into the sources that have been used to claim that though, they still generally agree on the overall classification, just tweaking within (see my climate change comment below for a parallel). Without appropriate sources, we are bound to do nothing with respect to that part of the close. If we go the route you're thinking more of basically just describing why it falls under pseudoscience, we can do that while satisfying what seems to be the overall intent of Sandstein's close. It can be a little trickier considering some sources just say FH is pseudoscience without why (and the issue with the demarcation problem), but I'd have to dig through the sources again to see what kind of content we could craft in that regard. That could be a sentence added directly after the propsed FH is considered PS language. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:13, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

It doesn't really matter whether Pigliucci & Boudry regard FH as PS - the issue is the supposed claim that nearly everyone else does. StAnselm (talk) 01:01, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Kingofaces, firstly newsletter sources are poor quality sources, but anyway - the newsletter source that you are referring to actually just cites Pigliucci & Boudry to say "a precise definition of pseudoscience is not possible" and that is all they say about Pigliucci & Boudry source, nothing else. You have then misrepresented the source and synthesised support for the edit you want to make to this article. What they next say is "broadly we assume it (pseudoscience) to include homeopathy, astrology, crystal healing and faith healing..." The 'we' is the authors of the newsletter source assuming that position as two individual people. You have synthesised a position to bizarrely state that this is somehow saying almost all experts blah blah. I remain very concerned about how you interpret and apply sources KoA.

"While a precise definition of pseudoscience is not possible (see Pigliucci & Boudry 2013 for numerous concerns and a discussion of the “Demarcation Problem”), broadly we assume it to include homeopathy, astrology, crystal healing and faith healing, among many others, which have no significant statistical support from studies."--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 01:06, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

There's nothing poor quality about the source since we're dealing with an academic newsletter of a society even without invoking WP:PARITY. Also keep in mind that the source is citing Pigliucci & Boudry while completely contradicting your personal interpretation of the source that they aren't treating faith healing as pseudoscience. At the end of the day, we have sources satisfying WP:RS/AC that state nearly all philosophers and scientists treat FH as pseudoscience, so we will reflect that to comply with various policies. Kingofaces43 (talk) 01:53, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

This edit by Tryptofish is attempting to lower down the impact of faith healing as pseudoscience. What is the problem? Do we really want to argue against the label (pseudoscience)? Are there any reliable sources that argue like this? Raymond3023 (talk) 11:27, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

While I do want to state that I don't think Trypto is trying to water things down at all (and that edit is a bit out of date now), I'm mainly holding off to see how they respond to my most recent response to them. That being said, maybe the simplest way to close the book on this is to include the epistemic language, but change or as "at least lack[ing] the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously" to and "lack[s] the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously" in order to deal with the undue weight concerns that make it seem like the source isn't classifying it as pseudoscience. That would take care of all my concerns at least, and I imagine it would yours too? Kingofaces43 (talk) 15:02, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes that would be a nice compromise but then why we will need "by nearly all scientists and philosophers"? It looks like a clear underestimation. I am waiting for further explanation before taking this back to WP:FTN. Raymond3023 (talk) 16:44, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Partly, it's not using Wikipedia's voice per the RfC close, but as I mentioned before, that's an even stronger statement this way per WP:RS/AC, not the opposite. To state that there is an academic consensus (or nearly all scientists agree) for things like global warming, GMOs, etc. is perhaps the highest tier statement of WP:WEIGHT we can make in topics involving science, hence why we specifically require sources stating something to that language. We can have a statement like the example you mentioned above that "Ayurveda medicine is considered pseudoscientific.", but that's a step below saying that virtually all scientists agree. Does that make sense? Kingofaces43 (talk) 16:57, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes that statement also sounds like it could be superfluous while current statement on the lead of this article reads like a fact. I also agree that "and "lack[s] the epistemic" will be more neutral. Raymond3023 (talk) 17:09, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Maybe I'm just misreading your post, but are you saying the nearly all scientists language is superfluous? If that's the case, removing that language would weaken the statement that FH is pseudoscience, not strengthen it (and it doesn't sound like that is your intended effect at all). We'd also need to be mindful of PSCI policy in not weakening such statements too. Unanimous is never used to describe scientific consensus if that's the word you're looking for, so the convention in stating scientific consensus is that statements like this source make are as strong as we can get. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:27, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

By "that statement" I was referring to one of the example of the alternative medicines that you have mentioned (Ayurvedic one) after I had provided a few of them above. That's why I agreed that "current statement on the lead of this article reads like a fact", in comparison with those examples I had provided that. Raymond3023 (talk) 17:37, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Ah sorry, I just got confused by what you were referring to. That sounds pretty spot on then. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:45, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Raymond3023, I'm not trying to water anything down. I was the filing party in the ArbCom GMO case, and I was the primary editor behind WP:GMORFC, where I wrote most of the language that was adopted by the community, saying that there is a scientific consensus that eating GM foods is safe. I am not someone who attempts to undermine how Wikipedia presents scientific fact.

About the "epistemic" part, I'm quite receptive to the idea that we could include something about it, but paraphrase what is now a direct quote in order to make it more accurate in context. If so, we need to be clear about what is, or is not, a direct quote. As of now, it's a verbatim quote from the source, but it does not have to be. Similarly, I see that KofA moved the citation for the quote to the end of the sentence, but I believe that as long as we keep using the direct quote, we should keep the corresponding inline cite directly after the quote. On the other hand, if we stop using a direct quote, I think it might be best to move all of the citations to the end of the sentence. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:28, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

On moving the references, the virtually all scientists and philosophers text is pulled from the same source as the quoted epistemic language, so that's why I moved them back to indicate where that text was sourced to. Kingofaces43 (talk) 20:48, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

OK, that makes me increasingly believe that we should (1) paraphrase, and (2) move all of the cites to the end of the sentence. That way, we don't interrupt the sentence, and we are basically saying that an abundance of sources all take this position. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:25, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

I've got to duck out for the day (beer awaits), but I'm fine doing that. If we go with the and instead of or language Raymond and I were just discussing and paraphrase the currently quoted epistemic language portion, does it seem like we'd only need those minor tweaks to the current framework we have up? Kingofaces43 (talk) 21:33, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

That depends on what other editors think. Cheers! --Tryptofish (talk) 21:40, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

I guess I'm skeptical - I'd like to see the wording of the paraphrase before I agree to it. In any case, I don't see what footnote 13 is doing there - it doesn't support the quote (which is from footnote 12) or even the claim. StAnselm (talk) 22:53, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

As stated many times on the talk page already, ref 13 (SAFS) is only there because of OR claims on this talk page that ref 12 (Pigliucci and Boudry) did not treat FH as pseudoscience, so we looked at sources citing ref 12. I don't think we need to rehash that again (and again) since that claim violated PSCI, but ref 13 itself in the content isn't required. It was mostly there for good measure. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:32, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Tryptofish, I haven't seen your edits outside this article. It's good you participate in GMO subjects, I will look into them someday but right now the concerns with the lead of this article remains unsolved. I am not a fan of using quotes, and not especially for lead. Do you at least agree that we can change the present lead to and "lack[s] the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously"?Raymond3023 (talk) 12:25, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

In terms of paraphrasing, how about Faith healing is regarded as a pseudoscience and lacks the justification to be taken seriously by nearly all scientists and philosophers. with references at the end (the SAFS source wouldn't be needed at this point if we're paraphrasing). That should be enough paraphrasing to get rid of quotes, and epistemic warrant basically "translates" to justification, verifiability, etc. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:32, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

No, because you've changed the "or" into an "and" - and there's a big difference. StAnselm (talk) 19:03, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

As I have already said, I'm fine with changing the wording, so long as we either use a verbatim quote or use a paraphrase. I think what KoA just said comes very close to being the right solution, and I'm open to arguments for either "and" or "or", or both. I'll suggest tweaking that wording to Faith healing is regarded by nearly all scientists and philosophers as a pseudoscience and/or as lacking epistemological justification.^{[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]} I don't know if "and/or" is acceptable, but if not, we need to get to where we agree on one of them. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:14, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Tryptofish, the word 'either' must be included otherwise the source is being misrepresented. The word 'or' must also be included. Deleting 'either' and 'or' is misrepresenting sources, original research and POV pushing and I am shocked to read your posts where you are even considering this as an option. Don't forget the use of this one source is already POV pushing because there is a source that says 'certain approaches to faith healing are widely regarded as pseudoscience' implying that simple prayer for healing is not a pseudoscience. Why is this equally valid source not being summarised for the lead? Because some editors WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT?--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 19:23, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm open to either "and" or "either... or". I'll support whichever one editors agree better describes the source material. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:26, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Odd reasoning, why not say you will support what the source says?--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 19:28, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm saying that I want editors to agree on which option actually is what the source says. It would only be "odd" if I were to have said that I don't want the text to match the source – and I did nothing of the sort. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:32, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

We’re required can ignore this as WP:PSCI and WP:OR violations in terms of consensus as you’ve been told many times on this talk page. Kingofaces43 (talk) 19:48, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, you keep flashing PSCI at me, and I am familiar with it. Nothing in PSCI that says we should misrepresent what a source says.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 19:56, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

And versus or

It looks to me like we are at a decision point between making the sentence in the form of "and" or in the form of "either... or". I'm making a section break to focus on which one of them is the more accurate. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:32, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

The source says most experts regard it as either pseudoscience or lacks justification to be taken seriously. It is as simple as that. You delete the word 'either' and you delete the word 'or' and it becomes something far removed from what the source says or means. We follow the sources and not add our original ideas via synthesis or soapboxing to change meanings of authors.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 19:41, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Your most recent version looks good, though we need to remove the or language in order to not create undue weight for the perspective that sources say FH isn’t pseudoscience (which we don’t even have sources for). The use of and shows the two phrases are not contradicting, and that’s important for avoiding the PSCI issued we’ve had on this talk page. Kingofaces43 (talk) 19:46, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes we do have a source that states the pseudoscience label is mostly limited to "certain forms of faith healing are widely regarded to be pseudoscience, e.g., Christian Science, voodoo and Spiritualism."[37]. The reason for the confusion here is because sources are being selectively used and individual sources misquoted.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 20:07, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, you’ve been cautioned about misquoting that source many times. It does not restrict FH pseudoscience to only those types, only pointing out that those ones were of note to that source. That doesn’t contradict the proposed language I had one bit, so we can’t make that source seem like it does. That violates WP:OR. Kingofaces43 (talk) 22:26, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

I quoted 'e.g.' which means examples, so every reader over the age of 10 will know that it is not limited to those three examples. You have been misquoting and synthesising sources and when an editor quotes a source properly you accuse them (without evidence) of 'misquoting.,' which of course is a WP:BATTLE tactic.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:07, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Yup, this is purely disruptive behavior for an article talk page. Please remove this comment. Kingofaces43 (talk) 00:32, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Since the source restricts itself to certain approaches to faith healing are widely believed to be pseudoscience, that means not all approaches to faith healing are widely believed to be pseudoscience, which does contradict your proposed wording.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:13, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Yup, that’s pure WP:OR again. Please don’t waste our time (and talk page space) repeating that when you’ve been cautioned multiple times about that source. Kingofaces43 (talk) 00:32, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

And this source says: "the religious beliefs and practices associated with faith healing are not generally considered to be pseudoscientific because they do not usually have any pretensions of science." [38] --Literaturegeek | T@1k? 20:16, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

That would violate WP:PSCI to use the source in that way since FH is making scientific claims (i.e., healing), and that’s already documented in sources we already use. That sources talks about FH as part of the paranormal, which is a sub branch of pseudoscience. This had already been addressed in the RfC and shouldn’t be any surprise. Kingofaces43 (talk) 22:26, 21 April 2018 (UTC)←

My point was that you are wrong to state that no source claims faith healing is not pseudoscience. I was not saying it was the most authoritative source on the matter.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:07, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Nope, we can’t use he source to do that since it classified it under paranormal, which is pseudoscience, not to mention GEVAL still applies. Kingofaces43 (talk) 00:32, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

• Support "and/or". But we should also retain "epistemological warrant", so we might as well keep the quote. StAnselm (talk) 21:21, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
• First of all, it looks to me like a stalemate here, with editors taking firm and opposing positions. We may need to look for an alternative way to resolve the disagreement. But first, I've gone back and looked some more at the passage from the source: we find remarkable agreement among virtually all philosophers and scientists that fields like... faith healing... are either pseudosciences or at least lack the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously. So the issue rests on how one should read "or at least". That phrase, "or at least", is neither "or" nor "and".
  • One way that I could paraphrase it in my own words would be: fields like... faith healing... are either pseudosciences or effectively the same thing as pseudoscience because they lack the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously. That interpretation would be compatible with "and".
  • Alternatively, I could paraphrase it instead as: fields like... faith healing... are either classified as pseudosciences or as something that just falls short of pseudoscience but still lacks the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously. That interpretation would be compatible with "either... or".
• And quite honestly, after thinking hard about it, I don't see any objective reason to choose either of those interpretations over the other, based solely on the quoted passage. Perhaps seeing a couple of pages from the source, surrounding the quoted sentence, would help put that sentence in context. But the sentence in isolation probably cannot resolve the question. And neither can editor opinion based on an overall view of other sources. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:29, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

And quite honestly, I can't understand how anyone could read it as "and". That's simply not the plain English meaning of "or at least". StAnselm (talk) 09:02, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

There was no need to repeat my wording like that. "Or at least" is neither exactly "and" nor exactly "or". --Tryptofish (talk) 16:06, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Sorry - reading it over it does sound a bit snarky. StAnselm (talk) 18:59, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, no worries. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:40, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

• "and" would be better. Not "or", "or at least", "and/or". We don't have to lower down its impact as a pseudoscience. Raymond3023 (talk) 16:24, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

All I'm seeing here is editors repeating their fixed opinions, without any movement towards consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:28, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Wall of text incoming since I'll try to summarize everything contested so far. Unfortunately we're in a topic where we need to be more cautious of PSCI policy and making it seem like sources say something isn't pseudoscience, but I do share the sentiment this should be much easier. That being said, we appear to be looking at a rough WP:CONSENSUS (policy, not vote counts), among the five editors active here so far. Raymond, yourself, and myself have agreed on a rough framework (or at least heading towards consensus as Raymond and I appear on-board with similar language, and you also are considering treating the source as saying psuedoscience and epistemic warrant phrases are not opposing). When it comes to StAnselm and Literaturegeek's comments, they've been personal editor opinion about a source that contradicts how secondary sources use it in addition to trying to claim FH isn't pseudoscience, so we are required to ignore those comments per WP:PSCI and WP:OR in assessing consensus policy. We don't need to satisfy all editors here, especially when there are policy issues with content-based opposition. That's difficult in controversial topics, but something we need to keep in mind unfortunately.

So with that in mind, the rough concept you are trying to get across in the first iteration is more or less in line with the sources. Though to directly state in-text that the epistemic warrant language and the pseudoscience classification are the same, we should have a secondary source saying explicitly that even though the context of the sources imply it. When we look at the sentence in question, they cite Hines 2003 saying that the paranormal are a subset of pseudoscience, of which faith healing falls under. The rest of the chapter is dedicated to the demarcation problem, but doesn't really gleam anything else for our particular conversation. In a way, it's a similar situation to climate change/denial where there's overall agreement on the conclusion, but tweaking points within the overall agreement is inappropriately seen as broad disagreement by contrarians. Here philosophers have talked a lot about how to exactly classify pseudoscience, but no one of sufficient weight is disputing FH is pseudoscience. I'm not sure if the demarcation problem discussion is what caused your questioning on the rest of the context, but that's a fair parallel to view it as.

What we do have though is a look at secondary sources that satisfy WP:DUE by showing they treat FH as pseudoscience while citing the source in question in talking about faith healing.[39] That's where the SAFS source came from. The other first Boundry source doesn't directly discuss anything of direct relevance to this conversation, but does have interesting commentary on how "God has cured me" type statements try to make themselves unfalsifiable to escape scientific scrutiny, which is nearly stating pseudoscience in concept anyways. The remaining sources don't directly talk about faith healing (putting quotes around faith+healing doens't work for a wikilink), but the second Boudry source conclusion section among others I've read now never seem to use the two phrases as separate categories, but rather that something has epistemic evidence or else they describe it as pseudoscience. No one treats the or language in the P&B 2013 source as being distinct categories at least, so we have no reason to assume the or distinction being made by others in assessing weight. In terms of assessing the weight of sources, we seem to be in a fine position for the and concept at least since the quoted source is both citing and being cited for statements FH is pseudoscience explicitly.

With that, I still think my previous version, Faith healing is regarded as a pseudoscience and lacks the justification to be taken seriously by nearly all scientists and philosophers. is most in line with the sources without potentially stretching them too far or diminishing them, but your first bullet in concept is a potential other avenue. I'd have to think of how we could tweak the paraphrasing though. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:01, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the detailed reply. I just want to clarify something first. You make it sound like I am on one "side" of this, with you and Raymond, and against StAnselm and Literaturegeek. That is not where I stand. Up to this point, I've really been in the middle, with my opinion shifting back-and-forth a bit, but basically ambivalent, and being very interested in seeing whether there can be a compromise. But that might change.

Within that post, it looks to me like you buried the lead. When I got to this source: [40], I really took notice! It's the same authors and, although they are mostly discussing pseudoscience in general rather than faith healing in particular, they repeatedly use the exact phrase "epistemic warrant" that is under discussion here, giving numerous instances where we can look in context at how they see "epistemic warrant" in relationship to pseudoscience in general. I'm going to take a bit of time to read it further, and think about whether they see these as separate or identical. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:21, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not intending to place sides, just that Raymond and I came to a rough agreement and that you were in a middle ground considering text like I had among other options. No worries there. There's a lot of stuff buried in all that previous reply, but it has been a snowball effect once you start summing everything up that's been addressed individually already on the talk page (though the source that interests you is relatively new). I personally put a little more focus on how P&B 2013 cite Hines 2003, but both are good context. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:30, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Of course, Kingofaces43, you don't need to ignore my comments, because you won't be assessing the consensus here - that would require an uninvolved editor. StAnselm (talk) 19:03, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Since we can't come to a consensus, I think we just need to stick with the quote in the lead. I realise that's not something we normally like to do, but we have to put accuracy above stylistic concerns. StAnselm (talk) 18:59, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Tryptofish, the personal viewpoint of the authors of epistemic warrant and pseudoscience isn't relevant and is not what what the issue in dispute is. The issue is what those authors said about epistemic warrant and virtually all scientists and philosophers. So not sure why you got excited about that source. Maybe I missed something.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 19:08, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm still thinking about what the bottom line will be, but the issue isn't their personal opinion of epistemology. It's what they actually meant when they said that about epistemic warrant in the cited sentence about virtually all scientists and philosophers. And yes, that's very important in terms of how we cite that sentence. Obviously, if that sentence were taken out of context in a way that obscured its actual meaning, we would need to correct that. Everyone else should feel free to look at that source too. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:45, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

What they meant is what they said: they said virtually all scientists and philosophers view faith healing as either a pseudoscience or at least lacking the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously. I urge you to abandon attempts to resynthesize the authors conclusions/change what they wrote. If this ends up going to a content RfC there is no way the community will endorse resynthesizing their conclusions.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 03:59, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Boudry et al (i.e., Mahner)

I've now read this source: [41] multiple times and thought carefully about it. I think that it's important in terms of how we treat the "and/or" issue about the pseudoscience sentence, because the decision about "and/or" depends on the intended meaning of "or at least" in the sentence Despite the lack of generally accepted demarcation criteria, we find remarkable agreement among virtually all philosophers and scientists that fields like astrology, creationism, homeopathy, dowsing, psychokinesis, faith healing, clairvoyance, or ufology are either pseudosciences or at least lack the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously that is cited for the sentence. The same authors wrote both sources, and in both they describe what they feel makes pseudoscience pseudoscience, and in both they use the "epistemic warrant" terminology.

I've looked carefully at what I think is every instance in which they both: (1) discuss how pseudoscience differs from science, and (2) discuss that in terms of some sort of epistemic insufficiency. I'm looking for whether they treat some instances of lacking "epistemic warrant" as being characteristic of something that does not qualify as pseudoscience, in which case we would have to treat "or at least" as being like "either... or" – or whether they consider "lack [of] epistemic warrant" as essentially the same thing as pseudoscience, in which case we should treat it as equivalent to "and". In the source, they are talking about pseudoscience in general, and do not mention faith healing by name, but the sentence that sources our page also lists faith healing as just one example in a general list, so it's not treating faith healing as a separate case.

On page 7, they say: For example, it is something of a stretch to treat medieval alchemy and astrology as "pseudosciences," even though they may suffer from similar epistemic problems to the ones we are concerned with here, and would certainly be branded as pseudoscience today. That's fairly similar to the cited sentence that mentions faith healing, in that it sounds like something can have "epistemic problems" but it would be "a stretch" to call it pseudoscience. But they are clearly saying that in terms of history, because these things "would certainly be... pseudoscience today." (Note that both sentences include astrology, so they are comparable in terms of the kinds of pseudoscience-like things being discussed.) It's still open to reading both ways.

But everywhere else, they clearly treat "lack of epistemic warrant" as being (along with claiming scientific-like effects on health or on other things) what pseudoscience is defined by, not as being a separate category.

On page 2: Pseudoscience, as the etymology of the word suggests, is a form of imitation or fakery. It exhibits the superficial trappings of science, but all it offers is epistemic fool's gold.

On page 7: If we want to develop an evolutionary model of pseudoscience, we should take into account partly different selective pressures. If we accept that the cultural success of pseudoscience is not a function of its epistemic warrant, there must be other factors at play.

On page 12: Pseudoscience, as well as many forms of religion, has sacrificed intellectual integrity for intuitive appeal. In science, extremely counterintuitive ideas have won general assent, even among the public at large, in virtue of the epistemic warrant accorded to them. However, a hidden assumption in this argument, which needs to be spelled out more clearly, is that lack of epistemic warrant is a problem in the first place.

On page 13: Beliefs without epistemic warrant, by their very nature, cannot benefit from the boons of empirical evidence and conceptual rigor in virtue of which scientific beliefs stabilize in a population. Pseudoscience caters to our cherished intuitions, but the world does not care about our intuitions. For belief systems that promise the one and final truth about the world, such as religions and grand ideologies, falsehood and contradiction form a serious concern... Pseudoscience, in particular, mimics the outlook of science and openly boasts of its scientific pretensions, including the deference to evidence and reason. Epistemic warrant, however, is hard to fake, for the simple reason that it depends on factors outside of our control.

On page 17: Epistemic support and intuitive appeal can be modeled as two inversely correlated and compensatory sources of cultural stabilization. Science, on the one hand, by bowing to the demands of evidence, tends to become hard to swallow for laypeople and even scientists themselves... Pseudosciences, on the other hand, by tuning in on comfortable intuitive representations of the world, have an edge in terms of popular acceptance. The reason for their success, in spite of their epistemic deficiencies, is their intuitive appeal (and other more local and contingent factors). Pseudoscience has traded intellectual respectability for intuitive allure.

Taking all of those together, it becomes clear that the authors consider epistemic insufficiency to be the quality that distinguishes pseudoscience from science. They are not treating stuff that "lacks epistemic warrant" as something that needs to be differentiated from pseudoscience itself. That's very clear. The correct way to understand the sentence that we cite is as: fields like... faith healing... are either pseudosciences or effectively the same thing as pseudoscience because they lack the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously. These authors occasionally write sentences where they don't spell that out, so it's understandable that editors (including me!) could look at the cited sentence and think that it means "either... or". But once one takes seriously how the authors write about the topic, one cannot argue for "either... or" without cherrypicking the sentence and misrepresenting the source as saying something that it doesn't.

I now support changing the sentence on the page to: Faith healing is regarded as a pseudoscience by nearly all scientists and philosophers. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:26, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Puzzled, have only read your statement. Why include 'philosophers' at all? It's an unusual stretch to ponder a group of philosophers sitting around conferencing of "Is Faith Healing a Thing?" The best they could do is philosophize about why people trust faith healers, it seems a judgement on its effectiveness is outside their field. Scientists should surfice. Randy Kryn (talk) 22:43, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

That's a good point. The phrase comes from a direct quote from the source, but we don't need to quote it directly. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:45, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

"Philosophers" is pulled from the source's long list of the profession's thoughts about six or seven matters, and maybe adding 'faith healing' to that list was the place where it was being stretched. The seminal paper "The Inner-Turmoil When Given Over to Faith Healing: To Trust or Not Trust in the Divine" has given philosophers the mental run-around for eons, but their opinion on the subject may not rise to inclusion alongside scientists (how about "chefs"?). Randy Kryn (talk) 23:06, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Actually, the phrase is "virtually all philosophers and scientists", not the long list of pseudosciences. Currently cite 12 on the page. But – I don't want to get sidetracked by that right now. The issue is whether or not to include the phrase about "epistemic warrant", as though it described something other than pseudoscience. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:14, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Tryptofish, normally editors just paraphrase what an author(s) write. It is a bit of an eccentric approach, and generally poor editing practice to attempt to perform an original reanalysis to then justify chopping in half a statement to say something different than what they wrote. But anyway, we are where we are. I read what you wrote tryptofish and I think you are confused by the fact that yes pseudoscience "lacks the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously" but so too do a wide range of subject matters that are unscientific or scientifically not credible/no evidence of effectiveness, but are either not pseudoscience at all or not universally seen to be pseudoscience. If they were the same thing then they wouldn't have added the words 'either' and 'or' to their statement. The correct way of interpreting the sentence in lay language is therefore "virtually all scientists and philosophers regard faith healing as either a pseudoscience or at least as not scientifically credible and therefore not justified in being taken seriously."--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 04:39, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Their use of the words "either" pseudoscience followed by "or at least" means the authors are firstly differentiating by the use of the words 'either' and 'or,' then secondly with their 'at least' wording they're very clearly saying something less than pseudoscience, something falling short of pseudoscience demarcation. Really there is no doubt what the authors meant. Tryptofish, you are just flat out wrong. Can you comment on why they said "or at least" and how you have now turned this into "the same as". As far as I am concerned, you are removing the authors differentiation by removing 'either' and 'or' (and you did so in the main article text of this article,[42] please revert) and you are removing their assessment of "at least" to create an original synthesis and perversion of what they wrote. You (and kingofaces43) need to man up and accept you're mistaken and abandon this original research quest to reinterpret what an author wrote and get back to mainstream Wikipedia editing style which is closely paraphrasing what authors wrote. That is how Wikipedia works I am afraid.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 05:16, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

So with this, it seems like we're approaching more of a policy-based convergence that to claim the "either. . . or" language is distinguishing from pseudoscience rather than making a complimentary statement is going to run into trouble with misrepresenting the source (and those citing or being cited by it as I mentioned in the above subsection) as well as run into issues with WP:PSCI? We've got reams of text on this talk page, and it doesn't look like anyone has shown a reason that could stick as to why the proposed language is problematic at least. I'm not going to reinsert the text yet, but is there any more "stress-testing" you can think of that might be needed? Kingofaces43 (talk) 06:24, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with policy - it is about interpreting a phrase in its context. But it looks like we're going to need an uninvolved admin to close the discussion. You keep on referring to WP:PSCI, but really that is irrelevant for this particular issue. StAnselm (talk) 07:40, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Probably Sandstein should be approached since he reviewed and closed the RfC, if we need to go down that road.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 08:20, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Sandstein is not an editor but an uninvolved admin. He can't do anything for this content dispute and the closing statement was long enough to make things clear cut. If you really want to discuss how we should paraphrase you have no option except using appropriate noticeboards. I had already said above I am willing to take this to WP:FTN. Raymond3023 (talk) 17:25, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

No to the idea of WP:FTN, because the issue is a lot more complicated than interpretation of sources. You started the RfC misrepresenting sources, for example, this source (that you listed below the RfC question) does not actually say faith healing is a pseudoscience and this source (that you listed below the RfC question) restricted faith healing to only certain approaches were pseudoscience and this source (that you listed below the RfC question), that we are debating now, points out clearly that academic opinion is not universal as to whether it is a pseudoscience - this academic lack of consensus was not made in your comment immediately below the RfC question. It is clear by some support comments, that they read your first comment and felt there was no academic controversy or limitations on faith healing being a pseudoscience in sources. Then when the RfC ended it became clear the sources did not support what some support voters (who read your misrepresentation) thought they did and so drama and battlefield behaviour appears to have emerged. There is also the issue of what I believe is relentless misrepresentation of sources by kingofaces43 and battlefield conduct as well as edit warring. Kingofaces43 has posted regularly on FRINGE noticeboard so has 'friends' there and also it is not the job of editors on such a noticeboard to interpret and judge deceptive behaviour. There are only really two options at this juncture, ARBCOM enforcement which is my least preferred option or a content RfC where we get a diverse range of opinions from around Wikipedia. I really want to avoid ARBCOM because that means we become enemies and can hold grudges if someone gets blocked. I want to be on friendly terms with my fellow editors or at least only have temporary minor fall outs over content. I also don't want to have to accuse tryptofish of original synthesis in even more public settings because he is a fellow medical editor and I do like him. This is just not a good situation all around. So lets avoid things getting nasty, let's just keep trying to resolve it for a bit longer here before trying to escalate it?--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 18:45, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd have problems with taking this to FTN for the same reasons - that would be WP:CANVASSing. It's not about fringe or pseudoscience or anything like that - it's about whether and how to paraphrase a source. We either (a) say "no consensus" and keep the status quo (though we might argue about what that is; (b) ask someone to close the discussion; or (c) start and RfC on this particular point. StAnselm (talk) 18:52, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

StAnselm, what policy or guideline or project suggests an editor or admin can close a discussion (with a uninvolved opinion)? I think Raymond might be correct that there is no such thing and it is not an option.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 19:07, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

My sources support the label (pseudoscience) and you don't have to doubt about that since there are many other sources supporting the label. You can escalate it to wherever you want but given RfC was closed in favor of me and Kingofaces43, you really don't have a strong argument. There is no canvassing if we were taking this to WP:FTN. There are other noticeboards too but which one you will suggest? Starting another RfC is not bad either. Raymond3023 (talk) 19:36, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

And here I was thinking the RfC was closed in my favour... StAnselm (talk) 19:50, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, Wikipedia:Closing discussions. The obvious "noticeboard" is Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure. StAnselm (talk) 19:41, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks StAnselm.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 22:08, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

I don't think the RfC did close in your favour Raymond IMHO because it required the sources to be summarised neutrally and academic disagreement to be included. You and kingofaces have deep problems accepting that whereas myself and StAnselm want to play by the rules and summarise the sources fairly.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 22:00, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

RfC closed in my favor because I proposed the inclusion of content and category and article supports it now while you and StAnselm had entirely opposed any categorization or content. Raymond3023 (talk) 08:29, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

@Raymond3023: That's simply not true. StAnselm (talk) 21:37, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

That's just an excuse, given your original vote.[43][44] Clearly you didn't wanted even a single mention of pseudoscience in article. Raymond3023 (talk) 10:03, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm going to try to WP:AGF and assume you and Literaturegeek were making a really bad joke with respect to canvassing (please remember that kind of stuff on a talk page often results in sanctions even outside DS topics), but this also isn't the place for such jokes. FTN is a logical next option since we are talking about a fringe topic (alternative medicine) and whether something is pseudoscience or not according to sources. That's pretty square in their core domain. Kingofaces43 (talk) 02:17, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

No, it was not a joke - it really would be canvassing. And the question is not whether FH is pseudoscience - it's about how to state the fact that it is considered to be pseudoscience. StAnselm (talk) 05:25, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Sandstein is independent of this drama/dispute and his post on this page suggested an RfC, so I think that is preferable to FRINGE noticeboard. As far as DS sanctions, you have edit warred and behaviour is not impeccable. You really should relax. Thick skin is needed for Wikipedia. We should all be friends and keep trying to resolve this.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 22:15, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

I was asked to comment. I don't think I can offer any very helpful advice here. When I closed the RfC I assessed consensus such as I considered it to exist at the time. As I indicated in the closure, I anticipated that establishing consensus for an actual wording would require additional discussion, such as the one in which you all are engaged here. If you ask me to comment on which (if any) consensus exists based on this additional discussion, I'm sorry to say that it's a bit too long and unstructured for me to assess without spending an amount of time incommensurate to my rather faint interest in the topic; and I'd probably get things wrong because I haven't read all the sources you all have. But as far as Wikipedia content discussions about controversial topics go, this one looks remarkably constructive, so I think you'll come up with something eventually. You could for example try another RfC to allow for a structured evaluation of the variants proposed so far. Sorry that I can't help you out more. Sandstein 21:42, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for commenting Sandstein. Having only faint interest can be good because it means you can be neutral, but I understand about the length of text to read and your related concerns. Hopefully we editors here can work something out over the next week or two and avoid the need for an RfC. :-)--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 22:00, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

• As I said earlier, there are two potential ways to understand the sentence that has been cited:
  • One way that I could paraphrase it in my own words would be: fields like... faith healing... are either pseudosciences or effectively the same thing as pseudoscience because they lack the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously. That interpretation would be compatible with "and".
  • Alternatively, I could paraphrase it instead as: fields like... faith healing... are either classified as pseudosciences or as something that just falls short of pseudoscience but still lacks the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously. That interpretation would be compatible with "either... or".
• I started out leaning towards the opinion that the interpretation as "either... or" was the correct one. It did indeed seem to sound that way. I came to this discussion with an open mind. You can easily see that I edited the page and commented here in talk in support of "either... or". But I was not comfortable with that, because the cited sentence is ambiguous: "or at least" is not the same thing as "or". "Or at least" can sometimes mean something like at a very minimum, it's this, but it's pretty much the same thing. So I felt that it was important to look some more at what the authors say about it. What the authors say, not what I say. There's no original research on my part here. I've explained it very clearly above. To say that we must only consider one sentence as meaning one thing and we need to disregard everything else that the same authors have said about the same topic, that's original research. If some editors want to hyperventilate about how they think I'm wrong, and keep repeating that "either... or at least" is the same thing as "either... or" no matter what else the authors have said, well, that's not only cherrypicking, but it's POV-pushing. I've had plenty of experience dealing with POV-pushers, so I'm not intimidated by editors telling me to "man up". This page is under discretionary sanctions, per the ArbCom pseudoscience decision. If you don't like what I'm saying, WP:AE is that-a-way. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:53, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

I am not POV pushing, I don't think I have ever edited a religious article in my near decade of Wikipedia editing and faith healing had no real meaning to me (I never thought about the subject) before this RfC flashed up. What motivates me is that I have seen what I view as POV pushing and misinterpretations/misrepresentations of sources and I am trying to achieve some neutral agreement through close paraphrasing of the sources. I don't see you wanting to include other sources like certain approaches to faith healing... I am the one saying, lets include all the sources, see my very first post summarising the sources several sections up. We are just probably going to have to disagree on this one. I'm not trying to intimidate you but persuade of the facts, we disagree and that is that. I do not want to report you to ARBCOM, don't think you have done anything to warrant that. Maybe I should just take this off my watch list and let you guys do what you gonna do and use my time more productively.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:17, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Don't forget trypto your support vote you cast in the RfC vote was made with strong emotion and a firm POV opinion that faith healing is "absolutely pseudoscience". I expressed firm opinions as well. I am just thinking of WP:KETTLE.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:26, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

I don't really think what I said in the RfC was emotional, but yes, I said that, and then I subsequently was quite open to an either-or nuancing of that. Anyway, I'd be a lot happier to just discuss these content issues without everyone getting angry with one another, and I really do hope that you and I and the other editors can come to a thoughtful agreement. Much better that taking "sides" and digging in. The discussion just below looks good to me. Peace. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:34, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Struck out "strong emotion". Yeah. Okay, peace trypto! :-)--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:41, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Agreed. With PSCI and discretionary sanctions in play, we are supposed to take strong stances against claims that something isn't psuedoscience unless the viewpoint is extremely well sourced and of sufficient weight (string theory comes to mind). We don't have anything that approaches that level, and since we already went beyond the pale even before this most recent post on yours, we would be more than justified in dismissing the claim that the source is saying FH isn't pseudoscience. To do otherwise would violate the WP:WEIGHT of all sources it cites, that cite it, and other sources Pigliucii et al. wrote that use similar language.

That being said, maybe the next step should be asking for more eyes from WP:FTN since we're clearly working with material about a fringe topic and pseudoscience? I'll note I'm going to at least completely ignore the blatant aspersions by others above[45][46] related to that for now. It is difficult to get others up to speed with all the information we've covered (as you can attest to), so maybe re-centering with a new heading stating the proposed language and why while linking to your original post in this section would help focus things. As I've said before though, it seems like we've established WP:CON even though some editors have made it clear they do not want the language (that's how the policy works sometimes). We need to follow policy one way or another though, especially PSCI, so we should think about how to keep moving forward. Kingofaces43 (talk) 02:19, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Once again, the issue is not whether FH is pseudoscience. The question is whether "nearly all" philosophers and scientists" think that it is. StAnselm (talk) 05:21, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

We might be able to work something out ourselves over the next week or two. I suggest: let's keep trying a bit longer because if we drag more people here with an RfC or noticeboard it is just going to be 100's of kb more talk page drama. We are not that much of a hopeless bunch according to Sandstein's post, he thinks we can work it out. Have faith that we can heal our differences folks!--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 12:35, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

I spent some more time reading tryptofish's anaylsis, and correct me if I am wrong, but the passages that tryptofish posted are the personal opinion of the individual authors, whereas the disputed sentence is relating to a summary of a wide range of different authors/professionals, so Boudry et al's personal opinion is actually not all that relevant to this dispute IMHO. I still think this is the correct interpretation of the source: "virtually all scientists and philosophers regard faith healing as either a pseudoscience or at least as not scientifically credible and therefore not justified in being taken seriously."

My interpretation of the source is of course incredibly negative about faith healing, so I really do not think I am POV pushing. If I am missing something, well that is possible and am open to criticism.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 18:04, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

• I just did something that I wish I had done several days ago. The citation on the page does not include an online link, so I decided to see if I could find the book online, and look in context at the passage that was quoted. Here it is: [47]. For one thing folks, guess what? Whoever put this source on the page got the authors wrong! Pigliucci and Boudry edited the book, but the quote is from a chapter written by Martin Mahner [48].

Anyway, the sentence that was quoted is in a chapter about how difficult it is to define demarcation criteria, and I think we agree that for this page that broader question of demarcation is off the point. But it's part of a paragraph that basically is arguing that, even though Mahner does not think that there are good demarcation criteria, he believes that pretty much everybody recognizes pseudoscience when they see it. The quoted sentence starts the paragraph. Then comes this sentence: As Hansson (2008, 2009) observes, we are thus faced with the paradoxical situation that most of us seem to recognize a pseudoscience when we encounter one, yet when it comes to formulating criteria for the characterization of science and pseudoscience, respectively, we are told that no such demarcation is possible. So in context (and that includes the rest of the chapter, not just that one paragraph), he is not writing about pseudoscience and something that is similar to pseudoscience, but not quite the same as it. He's comparing science and pseudoscience, and he argues that philosophers seem unable to define demarcation criteria, but pretty much everyone knows the difference when they see it. The point he is making in the quoted sentence is that pretty much nobody looks at faith healing and all those other things and thinks they are science. I think that's a pretty thin branch to hang the "either... or" interpretation on. He simply is not writing in any detail about something intermediate between science and pseudoscience that "lacks epistemic warrant" but isn't pseudoscience.

If the problem here is that if we want to say "nearly all scientists and philosophers", then we also need to pay close attention to the rest of the sentence, how about we find an alternative instead of saying "nearly all scientists and philosophers"? There seems to me to be plenty of sourcing in the other sources to say something like "Scientists generally agree that faith healing is pseudoscience". Or something like that. It's not worth dragging this dispute out over such subtle distinctions. I'm happy to see Literaturegeek saying that we can and should work together on this. I agree. In my opinion, we should have a simple sentence about pseudoscience, but also add something about the assertion that it does not claim to be science. That makes a lot more sense to me than struggling to describe some thing that "or at least lack[s] the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously". --Tryptofish (talk) 23:25, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

That's a good catch on the authors. I just let the reference template autofill, but I'm not sure why I had ISBN instead of url while including it for the other sources. In terms of text though, we're essentially dealing with a WP:RS/AC statement saying there is virtually no disagreement that FH is pseudoscience (i.e., a different degree than just general agreement). As long as that's getting across, we're good. In terms of not going with the current iteration we've been discussing, what do you see as precluding that version in terms of paying close attention to the rest of the sentence? It still seems like our best option so far policy-wise, but if we have a good reason to ground additional changes by, that can help direct things too. Kingofaces43 (talk) 00:47, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing it. I'm trying to see whether we can simplify the sentence by leaving out the "epistemic warrant" part and just making the sentence about pseudoscience, but also by adding something about not claiming to be science. I hope it's a way to get editors off of the dug-in positions about what to say beyond it being pseudoscience, trying as best as I can to think of a reasonable compromise. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:42, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

I guess what I'm trying to suss out from you is do you have a specific content or policy-based problem with the virtually all scientists and philosophers consider to pseudoscience idea? I'm just double checking since it seems like we've all confused intent a time or two now, but it sounds like you are at least on board with the idea that the epistemic warrant idea is more complimentary or explanatory rather than contradictory to being a pseudoscience? Not to mention the sources being cited by Mahner strictly saying FH is pseudoscience with no other sources they cite saying otherwise, but that also sounds like an argument that the epistemic part of it is unneeded here.

Maybe it's just because it's late while I'm rethinking about this, but I realized I'm not sure if you're suggesting just dropping the epistemic warrant language while keeping the nearly all philosophers and scientists concept, or else avoiding a paraphrase of Mahner's statement in general. If it's the former, I'm on board with that. If it's the latter (what I had been thinking you were saying), the answer to the question I posed in my last reply could help move things for that direction if it's based in content or sourcing. Hopefully that explains why I'm not sure if wires are being crossed or not now. That's also understanding there can be a separate potential pragmatic component to the latter, but I'm still operating under the concept that, so far, opposition to including the virtually all scientists and philosophers consider FH pseudoscience phrase hasn't been grounded in the WP:WEIGHT of sources. Kingofaces43 (talk) 05:03, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Here's how I would break that down. I have come to be convinced, based on the actual nature of the source material, that the "epistemic warrant" phrase should be left out. There simply isn't enough source support to justify implying that something lacking epistemic warrant is anything different than pseudoscience in a way that requires us to treat it as two different things (maybe it belongs on some page about the philosophy of these things, but not here). On the other hand, how we treat "virtually all scientists and philosophers" is something that I feel very flexible about. I recognize that "virtually all" is an accurate description. But I also see that editors here are disagreeing about the degree to which we write the page in a way that allows for it being less than 100% (and pretty much nothing like this is ever exactly 100%). So I'm trying to find language we might be able to compromise on. (So, yes to compromising on "virtually all", and now no to compromising on "epistemic warrant".) An editor pointed out earlier that we could leave out philosophers and just say scientists, and that makes some sense to me. And I don't care how strongly we say "virtually all" so long as we make it clear that it's the preponderant view. Because the sourcing for "virtually all" and for "epistemic warrant" is the same source, I can see that some editors might insist that if we have one, we must have both, so I'd like to avoid that. I think a good way to get there might be to find an equivalent alternative to "virtually all". --Tryptofish (talk) 18:22, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Okay, I thought we had some divergence, but what you're saying is more or less where I am too. I've only been focusing on the virtually all scientists and philosophers language because that's a stronger statement in terms of RS/AC than just saying something like scientists consider it pseudoscience. I understand the concerns about how consensus language gets tricky (e.g., climate change denial confounding unanimity and consensus).

That being said, I'm also to the point where I think we should work on closing the book here with decent placeholder language and work on stronger academic consensus statement language at a later time. How about, Scientists and philosophers consider faith healing to be pseudoscience. as a starting point for now with most of the sources currently already used in the old language? Thinking about paraphrasing, I we maybe could just use Mahner's words "virtually all" at the beginning without quotes. Nearly all can sound a little weaker or more confusing in reference to your comments about <100%, so virtually all is the best qualifier I can think of at the moment to try to make that clearer. I'm still in favor of including philosophers because they deal a lot in the demarcation subject in these sources (and it's stated in Mahner). The main thing though is that it follows the RfC close and avoids directly saying faith healing is pseudoscience in WP's voice. If that base sentence works out, how would you want to tweak it at this point if at all? Kingofaces43 (talk) 20:50, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

It might be worth looking for a poll of scientists, and I'm not sure whether we need to include philosophers. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:47, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

I haven't seen anything like that yet, even with some fair searching during the RfC, but usually we just stick to using that language if the sources use it (things like the 9X% of climate scientists polls are rare for most topics). Aside from keeping an eye out for such a source though, does the sentence otherwise seem ok? Kingofaces43 (talk) 23:03, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

I just spent a lot of time looking for a relevant poll of scientists, and didn't come up with anything. I had remembered that poll of how scientists and the public view GMOs and other things differently, but it never asked about faith healing. So I think I'm becoming more friendly now to saying "virtually all scientists", sourced to Mahner, and without using quote marks. I'm ambivalent about including philosophers. I need to think about this some more before I'll be comfortable committing to a given sentence structure. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:33, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Science, or not claiming to be science

Now having said what I just said, I do see something in the source material that would be entirely appropriate for the page to point out as an alternative to pseudoscience. Boudry et al. take the position that pseudosciences (a) lack epistemic legitimacy, and (b) make science-like claims. They say, for example, that claiming that one sees ghosts lacks epistemic warrant but isn't pseudoscience because it does not claim to be science. So – if there is reliable sourcing indicating that some proponents of faith healing say that they should not be called pseudoscience because they make no scientific claims but instead base it purely on faith – I'm fine with adding that to the page. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:03, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

• Do these sources help?
• the religious beliefs and practices associated with faith healing are not generally considered to be pseudoscientific because they do not usually have any pretensions of science.[49]
• Another expert stated that only certain forms of faith healing are widely regarded as pseudoscience, e.g., Christian Science, voodoo and Spiritualism.[50] Cheers.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:34, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

That looks very good to me! I think that this is a promising approach. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:36, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

I just went through those two sources, and I simply cannot find those two quotes in them. I don't think that the second is really even relevant to the specific issue of faith healers asserting that they make no scientific claims. The first includes "Cures allegedly brought about by religious faith are, in turn, considered to be paranormal phenomena but the related religious practices and beliefs are not pseudoscientific since they usually have no scientific pretensions." That's not at all the same thing. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:01, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

As previously discussed a few times already, these sources cannot be used for this purpose. The second does not state only certain forms of faith healing are pseudoscience, only that they chose those ones as prominent examples (and it doesn't need to be repeated yet again that the former is a misrepresentation the source). The first source lists it as paranormal, which is a subset of pseudoscience. To claim that either say faith healing is not pseudoscience would get us in trouble with WP:PSCI again. Kingofaces43 (talk) 01:44, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Some authors do indeed class the whole subject of paranormal as pseudoscience whereas others do not. The source in question clearly takes the position that paranormal is not pseudoscience and gives faith healing as an example of something that is paranormal but is not pseudoscience. I previously pointed this out in the following diffs: [51], [52] Yes the word 'only' was added by me because if the authors meant all approaches to faith healing were pseudoscience they wouldn't have said 'certain'. As far as I am concerned, it is basic English and I don't think I am misinterpreting.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 12:29, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Why, KoA, is it that every source that disagrees with your position needs to be 'reinterpreted' to mean something else than what it says? Why can't we just add to the article "certain approaches to faith healing are widely regarded as pseudoscience?" Why does the other source you dispute need to be 'reinterpreted'. If you read noticeboards, e.g. Wiki Medicine, no other editors have this problem of having to reinterpret sources, except exceptionally rarely. Why are you so unlucky with sources?--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 12:42, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Because we do not engage in WP:OR and take sources out of context and use that to support a fringe point of view like FH is not pseudoscience or weaken that language. That has been the problem you have been running into and why editors are pointing out the context of the sources while cautioning you about original research repeatedly (and it's not helpful to turn around and claim OR by editors trying to respond to the primary claims made by OR). If you follow noticeboards like WP:FTN or Wikiproject Medicine as you mention, editors are generally expected to take a strong stance against this since it is enshrined in some of our core policies. That's all the more I'm going respond to that personalization. Kingofaces43 (talk) 21:36, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

This is already dealt with to some degree in the sourcing for the language we're discussing earlier. Basically, the claim faith healing isn't making scientific claims is a form of special pleading common to pseudoscience because in reality it is making an empirical claim (i.e., getting better because of faith). We already have a source that states There are also activities that, although not classified (or claimed) as science, have implications that trespass into the scientific territories. Examples of this category of activities are the claim that we have been visited by aliens riding unidentified flying objects, all pyschic phenomena, and faith healing. We study the nature of all these activities under the general heading of pseudoscience. . .[53] Also from previous discussions, we have Hines 2003 (cited by Pigluicci et al) which states The paranormal can be thought of as subset of pseudoscience. while mentioning faith healing in that subset[54] In terms of PSCI, we do need to be guarded against special pleading and be wary about sources classify paranormal in terms of weight (also goes back to PSCI). In most sources we have so far, we don't get discussion of how faith healing falls into psuedoscience or how it's subsetted into paranormal, just that it is. At best, we'll get sources talking about the interplay of pseudoscience and paranormal, but that's best left for the respective articles. Kingofaces43 (talk) 01:44, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

• If we used these sources and included the text what has been proposed by those who believe that faith healing makes no scientific claim then you would find this article to be more about debunking the prevalent notion that it is a pseudoscience and we can't do that per WP:PSCI. Raymond3023 (talk) 08:42, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Well, the result of the RfC was that we "describe in the article how reliable sources characterize faith healing in terms of it being pseudoscience or not" and that this may involve "mention sources opposing" the pseudoscience characterisation. Are you now saying that we should set aside the previous RfC because it contradicts WP:PSCI? StAnselm (talk) 09:51, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

These two sources are not even directly disputing the label of pseudoscience. My comment was focused on these sources and the proposed wording, by using these two sources. Raymond3023 (talk) 10:49, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

I'll just tack on that an RfC also does not allow us to override policy such as WP:OR or WP:GEVAL (though that wasn't the intent of the close either). If we explicitly had sources saying FH isn't a pseudoscience (or within a sub-branch of pseudoscience) they would have an uphill battle to overcome GEVAL since the topic has been classified as pseudoscience. As we don't have such sources at this time, there isn't anything to particularly act on for that part of the close essentially saying apply WP:DUE or GEVAL. We would need significant dispute in sources to pursue that further. Kingofaces43 (talk) 21:09, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

KofA, you have me facepalming over the point about it being special pleading. Of course it's special pleading! That's why we will not say it in Wikipedia's voice. There is nothing wrong with saying that faith healers assert such-and-such, on a page about faith healing. I agree that we should be careful not to create the impression that this argument actually demonstrates that it isn't pseudoscience. But we can still describe what faith healers say. Take a look at Modern flat Earth societies. Surely, there is nothing in modern times that is more scientifically ridiculous than claiming the Earth is flat. But the page repeatedly quotes what flat-earthers say. That doesn't mean that what they say is right! And readers are not being misled. I don't know how special this is, but I have a plea of my own. Can we perhaps solve this entire editorial dilemma by saying that faith healing is pseudoscience, but some faith healers claim that it doesn't try to be science? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:40, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what you mean by facepalming in this instance (could be eureka or that I put my foot in my mouth), but either way, I am on board with what you just said. I was just putting my initial cautions out there before pursuing. I maybe would avoid having this new text in the lead (something for later), but in the body we could have a separate sentence somewhere after the pseudoscience language saying something like X claim faith healing does not to make scientific claims, but the implications of faith healing trespass into scientific territories.

Obviously that's just my initial partial copy and paste version we'd want to do more paraphrasing on, but that's the intent to get across. We might just be fine with that source, but we could add in a source that explicitly says "faith healers claim Y" too. I don't have great text in the sources that come to mind for that right now. We also have a source talking about how the religious act of praying, etc. is not pseudoscience[55] (it crosses over when it claims someone was healed), but I'd have to think more about how to make that explicit in the context. Kingofaces43 (talk) 00:11, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

I meant that it would be a mistake to oppose mention of not claiming to be science, because it previously sounded like you were opposing any mention of it because it is special pleading. Maybe I misunderstood. Anyway, I'm happy now that we are in agreement. We can wordsmith it as we go along. (I'd rather not say "trespass".) I see this as something that is cooperative with the editors who are unhappy with simply saying it is pseudoscience, but also something that really is supported by sources. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:49, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Yeah sorry if my initial comment came across as unclear (I actually talked about doing exactly this many words ago). "Trespass" was copy and pasted directly from the source, but that's also why I'd want to paraphrase the later phrase. As long as we're saying essentially that the claim that FH isn't making scientific claims is false, we should be good in concept. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:05, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

• Support the use of the term "or". Not sure the term "either" is needed. Does have to be claiming to be science before it can be described as pseudoscience. This is similar to how most religions are not typically described as pseudoscience. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:47, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

But "or" seems to be giving contrary impression that faith healing is not really a pseudoscience. This is not a religion, but an alternative medicine influenced by religious elements. Raymond3023 (talk) 11:26, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Doc or Raymond, this fits more into Talk:Faith_healing#And_versus_or, so you may want to move that there. This is more about separate language. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:05, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Starting a new sub-thread here, but after comments so far, it seems we more or less agree on two main ideas in that we want to include both that some people claim FH is not science, but that ultimately is special pleading because FH makes claims that "trespass" in the realm of science.. That Hassani source I just cited encompasses all of those ideas, so I'm going to suggest at a bare minimum (even if it's just placeholder text while more language is fleshed out), While faith healing is sometimes not purported to make scientific claims, a claim of healing by faith has implications that traverse into the purview of science. while citing Hassani. Potential areas to flesh out could include citing a source more directly showing someone making the not science claim, which I'm suggesting addressing after agreeing on this rough baseline or tweaks to that first for a step-by-step process. The source also says this special pleading is also what makes it pseudoscience, but I'm holding off on additional phrasing on that for now since we have the previous sentence we're working out. If folks agree to this rough idea, we can ratchet up pieces of text from there if need be. Kingofaces43 (talk) 21:10, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure if we should fit all of that into one sentence, and it might be better to clarify who does the purporting. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:50, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

At least as far as the source goes, they don't go about saying who's doing the claiming, purporting, etc. and more or less handle the same concept (aside from their list including faith healing) in one sentence, so I'm not seeing issues so far that preclude us from doing it too. I'm just mirroring the source for now. If we're good on the gist of that sentence, we look at ratcheting in new language by adding something like proponents of faith healing along with a source at the comma, but there's not an absolute need to add that either since everything is sourced to Hassani as a bare minimum. I basically just want to establish if we have something passable first before additional fine-tuning. Kingofaces43 (talk) 23:01, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

I found this source: [56]. In the paragraph starting with "Naturally, this result has provoked bitter complaints from many believers who assert that God should not be put to the test", there are specific examples of faith healing proponents who assert that it should be regarded as a matter of faith and not science. I think that's as good as we are going to get in terms of verifiably documenting those claims. Then that source and the Hassani source provide the rebuttal about it essentially being special pleading. So I think we can structure something around that. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:22, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

That looks good to me (normally I'd avoid a blog source like that, but it's fine for WP:PARITY). Just building off my old draft: While proponents of faith healing sometimes claim faith healing is not making scientific claims, the claim of healing by faith has implications that traverse into the purview of science. I can see some room for tweaking, but it seems like a start. Kingofaces43 (talk) 01:58, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, after sleeping on it, I agree that's a good start. I do want to do some tweaking, so I'm about to start a new subsection below. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:06, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

References

Suggestion

I'd like to suggest something like the following as a resolution of this entire discussion:

Although some faith healing proponents assert that it makes no scientific claims,^{[ ]} scientists consider it to be a pseudoscience.^{[ ]}

I haven't put in the citations yet, but I figured I would see what the rest of you think. This would replace the existing sentence about pseudoscience at both places on the page. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:30, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

I have two questions: (1) is it just proponents who assert that FH makes no scientific claims? (2) Which scientists - all of them? StAnselm (talk) 01:05, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

To take one of your favorite terms, that is burying the lead (though not horribly) with respect to pseudoscience. However, focusing on the more recent idea of what to do about the claim that it isn't making scientific claims, it's probably better to deal with that in its own sentence. Basically, the idea that it is not claimed as science, but actually does make scientific claims (i.e., trespassing into scientific territory), does a bit better being fleshed out than trying to condense everything into once sentence. I know this is an attempt to kill two birds with one stone, but we have two somewhat separate (though related) ideas to work with here. Kingofaces43 (talk) 02:31, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Replying to both of you here, I would be perfectly happy with anything along the lines that you propose. (That's why it's a suggestion instead of a proposal.) Starting with StAnselm, my short answer to both of your questions is: I don't know. I wrote it with just the word "scientists" in order to skirt the question you raised, but we could get more specific with appropriate sourcing. I am not convinced that we need to give an exact percentage of scientists, because this is a "pretty much all" kind of situation. We could go with "virtually all" sourced to that source, or maybe there is a Pew or AAAS poll that would give a more specific result. I would welcome editors looking for sourcing for that, as well as for whether there are any non-proponents making the claim.

Now to KofA, I got a smile out of your response to me. I'm fine with making it two or more sentences, if other editors do not object to having a sentence that calls it pseudoscience, full stop. I'd like you to take a look at the first paragraph of Faith healing#Scientific investigation, because the rest of that paragraph does go into those issues, and I thought the suggestion I made would flow right into that. We could also use different wording in the lead versus in that section.

Would other editors like to make alternative suggestions? --Tryptofish (talk) 15:58, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

That's really called burying the lead. We should not bother what proponents think. My proposal is: "Faith healing is regarded as a pseudoscience[6][7][8][9][10][11] and lacks the epistemic warrant to be taken seriously by nearly all scientists and philosophers." Raymond3023 (talk) 19:28, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Absolutely not. Please pay attention to the previous discussion about epistemic warrant, and stop doubling down a fixed position. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:32, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Part of WP:FRINGE is to call out fallacious viewpoints, especially when sources call it out. That's why in the above subsection I talked about how people try to claim FH isn't making science claims, but in reality it is. Kingofaces43 (talk) 04:28, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out that section. I forgot about the second sentence in the first paragraph after I inserted the pseudoscience language. At this point, I'm going to try to craft a more concrete second sentence than my previous draft on the claims of being science idea in the next few days, but I'd rather deal with that in the above subsection.

As for the pseudoscience sentence, I'm not beholden to the epistemic warrant language, but the virtually all scientists and philosophers language is more where my focus lies for due weight. I'm doing a little digging into sources that cite Mahner and use the same epistemic warrant language to basically say the lack equates to pseudoscience in the abstract, but I'm away from my university connection for a bit to see what they actually have to say in the article for the time being. Kingofaces43 (talk) 04:28, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Going first to the point about fringe, since the page topic is a fringe one, I think we can and should present what the fringe views of faith healers are, but do it with attribution and not in Wikipedia's voice. Simply not reporting it at all because it is fringe seems wrong to me, and unnecessary. Nor should we "lecture" the reader about it as if the reader cannot figure it out. As for "epistemic warrant" and "virtually all", I just commented on that above. Where I want to go with all of this is to (1) find a strong statement about pseudoscience that editors can come to consensus on, (2) leave out the "epistemic warrant" thing entirely, and (3) give a fair presentation of the assertion that no scientific claims are being made. In part, the "no scientific claims" aspect is a compromise in return for leaving out "epistemic warrant", and it part it's just the right balance to take in terms of encyclopedic content. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:33, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Kingofaces43, I am also not ready yet.

Tryptofish, I have read the discussion. When you said "sourcing indicating that some proponents of faith healing say that they should not be called pseudoscience because they make no scientific claims but instead base it purely on faith – I'm fine with adding that to the page", you were talking about lead or section? Raymond3023 (talk) 16:43, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

It could be either the lead or the section, or both. I'm still very open to different possibilities. Obviously, there is more room to go into details in the section. How much we include in the lead depends on what other editors think about whether anything in the lead needs to be said about it after the statement about pseudoscience. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:53, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Suggestion version 2

As of now, I would like to approach it as follows:

In the lead section, change the existing sentence to this:

Faith healing is regarded as a pseudoscience by nearly all scientists and philosophers.

In Faith healing#Scientific investigation, revise the first paragraph to:

Faith healing is regarded as a pseudoscience by nearly all scientists. Some proponents of faith healing assert that faith healing makes no scientific claims and thus should be treated as a matter of faith that is not testable by science. Critics reply that claims of medical cures should be tested scientifically because, although faith in the supernatural is not in itself usually considered to be the purview of science, claims of reproducible effects are nevertheless subject to scientific investigation.

References
References

I think that best represents the available source material. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:42, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose - eight citations and none of them back up the claim. If you really want to include "nearly all" you need at least a million more. StAnselm (talk) 21:00, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

And the people cited in footnote 9 are not necessarily proponents of FH and it would be a BLP violation to suggest that they are. StAnselm (talk) 21:04, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

As I first started taking part in this discussion, I was quite sympathetic to your position, but I'm getting less and less so with time. The RfC consensus does not invalidate those eight citations. And one of the sources says explicitly "virtually all philosophers and scientists", as I'm sure you know. And the source cited for the proponents quotes them responding to a criticism of faith healing as being pseudoscience – they were not speaking more generally about religion and science. If you want, I could go along with changing "proponents" to "defenders". And if you'd like more about the "no scientific claims" material in the lead, I can work with that. But I find myself less sympathetic when I see no real effort by you to offer an alternative version, following the large amount of time I spent looking for sources. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:34, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, we've been over this lots - the authors themselves believe that FH is PS, but they qualify their statement about "virtually all philosophers and scientists" doing so. If you were serious about alternative versions, you would post one that you knew we could all agree with, and two of us have made it clear that this one is not acceptable. (The best wording I've seen is what is currently in the article, so there is no big incentive for me to suggest a worse one.) StAnselm (talk) 22:46, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

I sincerely do not want to get into a tit-for-tat argument over that, but please understand that I am serious about finding consensus here. But I'm being guided by the sources, and I've become convinced that some earlier versions that we have discussed are not supported by the source material. As I see it, what is on the page now is going to change, so one should not assume that it won't. I'm willing to compromise on what I suggested here – that's why I called it a suggestion – but I do not feel obligated to leave the page unchanged. If changing "proponents" to "defenders" and adding some sort of balancing material to the lead is insufficient for you, then we have an impasse, but it's not for lack of accommodation on my part. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:57, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

It's still a BLP violation. Lawrence refers to the "infantile theology that God is out there ready to miraculously defy the laws of nature in answer to a prayer" - there is no way you can get from that to Lawrence being a "defender" of faith healing. StAnselm (talk) 00:05, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

I decided to track down the original source from which Lawrence's quote was taken. Here it is: [57]. He refers to "when you design a study to see if God answers your prayers", and the Times article is about studies of whether people get better from medical conditions as a result of prayers. He was asked to comment on those studies. So he was absolutely commenting about faith healing, and saying that it should not be tested as if it were science. So it comes down to whether that constituted "defending" it. It sounds to me like he was defending it against criticism based on scientific testing, but I'll go along with the possibility that he was not endorsing faith healing more broadly than that. So I would be fine with changing "Some proponents of faith healing" to "Some opponents of the pseudoscience label". Would that work for you? --Tryptofish (talk) 00:21, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I'd be very happy with that. Now the only thing left is the unqualified "nearly all" claim. StAnselm (talk) 00:26, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

By coincidence I was writing about that simultaneously with your reply here. I said: I was slow to pick up on this, but I just realized that your reference to "at least a million more" meant that eight citations do not add up to "nearly all", as if each of those eight sources consisted of one single scientist or philosopher expressing that opinion. But that is not what the sources are, at least not all of them. The source about "virtually all" says explicitly that it is their interpretation of the field of study as a whole.

I really do think that it does back up the "nearly all" language. And I've commented at length about the "epistemic warrant" issue in #Boudry et al (i.e., Mahner) above. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:34, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Yes, of the eight citations, only one is actually backing up the claim (the other seven are redundant) and that one is qualified (as argued above). I disagree with your interpretation of "epistemic warrant". StAnselm (talk) 01:18, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

I have an idea. For the lead, add to the sentence above: "Faith healing is regarded as a pseudoscience by nearly all scientists and philosophers, although there have been objections to subjecting it to scientific testing." The latter part of the revised sentence could probably be tweaked some more. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:46, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

I think that’s getting into undue territory. We really should have the pseudoscience statement in its own sentence. Your first version statisties all the main policy issues we’ve discussed before, so I’m good with that. The only thing I might change is mention of proponents and critics. I guess I’m fine just saying the claim is occasionally made without needing to say who (it may not always be proponents). Basically, sometimes X is claimed, but this is false. Something to that effect could more concise, but I’m not going to oppose this version over it either. Kingofaces43 (talk) 03:41, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

KofA, I feel that way too. But I think we need to find some way to get past the impasse we are in here. I'd be most happy with the lead version that I posted at the top of this subsection. But if it would break the logjam, I'd agree to "Faith healing is regarded as a pseudoscience by nearly all scientists and philosophers, although there have been objections to subjecting it to scientific testing" or even "Faith healing is regarded as a pseudoscience by nearly all scientists and philosophers, although there have been objections to subjecting it to scientific testing and there is evidence that it can have a placebo effect" or "Faith healing is regarded as a pseudoscience by nearly all scientists and philosophers, although there is evidence that it can have a placebo effect." But I'm going to have to see a substantive reason for going back to the "epistemic warrant" thing.

And, @StAnselm: that means that you need to realize that I am offering you some compromises, and that we need to come to some agreement about what to do. If you can agree to any of the alternatives that I have offered, please say so. And if you cannot agree to any of them and insist on "epistemic warrant", you need to explain that better than just "I disagree with your interpretation of "epistemic warrant"." If you disagree, please go above to #Mahner, read what I said from there to the bottom of that subsection, and provide specific rebuttals based on what the source says. If you do that, I'm happy to work with you. But if not, there will come a point where I will conclude that consensus has gone against you you are being tendentious. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:57, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Except that I'm not sure you understand how consensus works. It won't be up to you to conclude what the consensus is - that would be an uninvolved editor. I'll probably provide some specific rebuttals later, but the fact remains that you haven't convinced everybody - so we still need to find a solution acceptable to all parties. StAnselm (talk) 21:14, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

I've corrected what I said about consensus. I hope you are happy now. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:09, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Looking it again, though - the problem is that you've missed the point that Mahner is describing what other people are saying. And I don't think you can interpret the "epistemic warrant" phrase by looking at what other authors in the volume are saying. None of your other quotes are by Mahner himself. StAnselm (talk) 21:42, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Please be more specific. I said to look at #Mahner. That's not the entire section. Click on the link; it goes to an anchor within that discussion. I don't make any quotes there. I simply repeated the sentence, written by Mahner himself, that comes after the cited sentence. The earlier parts of the discussion have been made moot by what I said after tracking down the original source, so we can disregard any quotes I made earlier. So which quotes are you talking about? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:16, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Remember that we don't work by consensus here, but WP:CONSENSUS. We don't need all parties to agree, especially when the main reasons for opposing something run into problems with policy like PSCI and other policies. It also looks like you may be unfamiliar with WP:RS/AC. We don't engage in WP:SYNTH, which is what you are suggesting by needing "at least a million more" citations. We just rely on sources saying there is a consensus, etc. We might want more than one if there was some opposition to it, but pretty much all sources agree FH is pseudoscience/fringe. Kingofaces43 (talk) 03:05, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Once again, you have misinterpreted pretty much every policy and guideline you've cited. None of them mean what you think they mean. StAnselm (talk) 08:45, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

I guess the "epistemic warrant" issue is connected to a bigger one - we've made a big claim ("nearly all") based on a single source. The fact that there is dispute about the meaning means we need to either (a) find another source that says the same thing, or (b) tone down the claim. The stronger the claim, the stronger the evidence required. So here's my question: if we leave aside the "nearly all" source to one side for the moment, what's the next strongest claim made in reliable sources? For example, is there are source that says "most"? "Widespread"? StAnselm (talk) 21:21, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

I'm fine with changing "nearly all" to something else (although I honestly doubt that, at least for scientists, there are a significant number who feel otherwise, per Moxy's quote immediately below). I'll look for a source, and you are invited to look for one too. But I'll assume from this point on that you have rejected my offer to add a separate clause to that sentence, so we are going to wind up with: "Faith healing is regarded as a pseudoscience by [... ] scientists and philosophers", full stop. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:22, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Two sources for "most scientists":

1. [58]: "Most scientists view faith healing as a means of eliciting the placebo effect."
2. [59]: "For example, most scientists dismiss the notion of faith healing...".

--Tryptofish (talk) 23:49, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Would anyone else object to changing "nearly all scientists" to "most scientists"? --Tryptofish (talk) 00:05, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

For that matter, do editors think that there is a meaningful difference between "nearly all scientists" and "most scientists"? --Tryptofish (talk) 00:09, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Based on that, I'm starting to think:

Most scientists dismiss faith healing as a pseudoscience.

--Tryptofish (talk) 00:16, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

(a) Yes, I would see a meaningful difference between "nearly all scientists" and "most scientists". It's like 55% vs. 98%. (b) The problem with the two quotes you offered is that neither mention "pseudoscience". StAnselm (talk) 00:35, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

I guess they are dismissing it as good science then. 55%, huh? --Tryptofish (talk) 00:38, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

This is actually a good example of why we want to stick to the sourced virtually all or nearly all language so someone doesn't mistakenly think not being pseudoscience is a significant minority view. I agree it creates a meaningful difference, but that good-faith attempt can inadvertently violate WP:PSCI. Kingofaces43 (talk) 03:05, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Why not use another source from the RfC that say "faith healing may seem too obvious examples of pseudoscience for academics.--Moxy (talk) 22:24, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Trypto, I'm not suggesting going back to the epistemic warrant text at all. I'm just thinking of ways to streamline the second a third sentences with a few minor tweaks. I'll keep thinking on that, but as this text currently stands, I don't see any major issues with it since since it stands up to pretty much any criticism that has been thrown at it so far. In terms of WP:CON (not full agreement of all editors), we should be pretty close with this version. Kingofaces43 (talk) 03:05, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Wow walls of text with zero new research done...wow. Why is the sentence editors discussing in the RfC not the one used? "Certain approaches to faith healing have been classified as a pseudoscience".--Moxy (talk) 03:56, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Nothing like that was mentioned in the close, nor do we have sources saying only certain approaches are. Ultimately, we’re summarizing what the sources do say. Kingofaces43 (talk) 04:21, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Walls of text to decide what to do after the RfC when you're not even reading the sources or the RFC it's self......Bill J. Leonard; Jill Y. Crainshaw (2013). Encyclopedia of Religious Controversies in the United States: A-L. ABC-CLIO. pp. 625–. ISBN 978-1-59884-867-0. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |trans_title=, |laydate=, |laysummary=, and |authormask= (help).--Moxy (talk) 04:56, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Moxy, for myself, I have indeed been doing more researching for sources, and I've already read the one you just linked. The reason for the wall of text is that a couple of editors are dug-in to their positions and are absolutely unwilling to budge, so they keep repeating that they support X and oppose Y, or oppose X and support Y, and it keeps going round and round. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:40, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Moxy, I would suggest looking through the talk page where I know I've been directly quoting the RfC quite a few times. We've been working on following the RfC where: 1. We mention that sources describe faith healing as pseudoscience (policies like WP:PSCI and WP:GEVAL that come with that). 2. Sandstein's third paragraph being the other key point that essentially summarizes to apply GEVAL/due weight to the idea that FH isn't pseudoscience. So far, this version is addressing all that without any issues being grounded in policy to oppose it.

As for the source you mention, I already included that source in the current language as examples of specific types of FH. The source says Certain approaches to faith healing are also widely considered to be pseudoscientific, including those of Christian Science, voodoo, and Spiritualism. In case there is confusion as there has been before, that source is making an e.g. statement, not a limiting i.e. statement. Kingofaces43 (talk) 02:03, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

• Support proposed lead. I will look more into the section, but for now I am confirming my agreement with the lead. Raymond3023 (talk) 09:41, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Tryptofish, how about:

Faith healing is regarded as a pseudoscience by nearly all scientists and philosophers. Faith healing is sometimes asserted to make no scientific claims and thus should be treated as a matter of faith that is not testable by science. While faith in the supernatural is not in itself usually considered to be within the purview of science, claims of reproducible effects, such as medical cures, are nevertheless subject to scientific investigation.

References
References

I can merge citations say after Zerbe and add Erzinclioglu (more on that in version 3 comments), but I want to check in on the text change that's now the second sentence. For the first sentence, I'm not picky about where philosophers go for lead/body if it's in the article somewhere. This gets across what I was thinking about tweaks for streamlining. Basically, the proponents/critics tit-for-tat is something we usually try to avoid, especially when our sources aren't really doing it either quite as much. This takes care of that while keeping some of your fleshing out. If it looks like a slight improvement, great. If not, I still think your original version in this section gets the job done too, so I'd still fully support that. Kingofaces43 (talk) 04:52, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Maybe I'm missing something, but I just don't see how that would actually improve anything. If I nitpick, "is sometimes asserted to make" uses the passive voice and is less well-written from a purely writing style perspective. It also is vague about who is doing the asserting. I don't think that the versions I've been working on are really "tit-for-tat". And I don't think that those versions come anywhere near to giving equal weight to the proponents of FH. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:19, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

It's relatively minor, but the intent was to make it more passive. I didn't think your version really cast undue weight, which is why I was fine with it, but I was just looking at some fine-tuning. Sources also don't call out who is doing the asserting, just that it's sometimes claimed. Ultimately, you don't need who's saying what when you have a sentence(s) stringing together the idea that the claim is sometimes made, but it's still actually subject to the purview of science. Either way, it was just a potential suggestion, so if that seems more trouble than it's worth, I'm fine with your previous version. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:55, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Suggestion version 3

I'm taking into account the responses to version 2, but I'm also convinced that we need to keep moving forward here:

In the lead section, change the existing sentence to this:

Most scientists dismiss faith healing as a pseudoscience.

In Faith healing#Scientific investigation, revise the first paragraph to:

Most scientists dismiss faith healing as a pseudoscience. Some opponents of the pseudoscience label assert that faith healing makes no scientific claims and thus should be treated as a matter of faith that is not testable by science. Critics reply that claims of medical cures should be tested scientifically because, although faith in the supernatural is not in itself usually considered to be the purview of science, claims of reproducible effects are nevertheless subject to scientific investigation.

References
References

--Tryptofish (talk) 00:54, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

I like the actual wording - the only problem is the references to back it up. We definitely have to mention "pseudoscience" (per the RfC result) but there are so few references to back up the claim. I'm a bit worried that we're doing original synthesis with the Erzinclioglu reference, for example. And we should not include any that fail to address the claim - e.g. Cogan has to go. StAnselm (talk) 01:02, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

OK, I actually am bothered by the long string of nine citations myself. I does come across as overkill. If you or other editors would make a list of the cites to remove, I'm fine with that. But I am strongly convinced that the wording is backed up by the cites. I disagree that it is synthesis, and I've been going over this stuff with a fine toothed comb. If more editors feel that there is a problem with matching the sources with the text, I'm open to persuasion. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:09, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Include Erzinclioglu, Leonard & Crainshaw, and Mahner. Remove the others (though Hassani will be later in the paragraph). StAnselm (talk) 02:34, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

I'm going to piggyback off this as part of version 2 as well, but all those references were originally added as discussion points since they all make the pseudoscience claim. For the first sentence, Peña is fine going out since I only included that one as being the only journal article. Otherwise, there's no reason to remove Cogan, Crainshaw, Zerbe, and Pitt as they are good sources that clearly state the foothold pseudoscience in addition to Mahner. If we're concerned about those five still being too long, two or three can be condensed into a multi-ref (SAFS could still be included in that). Refs in the remaining sentences looks good though and reiterate the pseudoscience language as well.

As for Erzinclioglu (go forensic entomology), we do need to be careful since that quote can go into fringe territory (and violate PSCI) if we say there is evidence for faith healing in general. Are they maybe referencing the placebo effect? Without context like that, the two sentences are otherwise contradictory. I don't have access to the book aside from that small excerpt though. While we don't have that detail, that context shows it can't be used as a claim that FH isn't pseudoscience at least. We already have Mahner that more than satisfies RS/AC, but adding in this source with that caveat works as additional "padding" to the consensus language even if we're going with the virtually all language. Kingofaces43 (talk) 04:01, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

I do not have a strong opinion about which sources to include, and which not to include. Speaking specifically to KofA's point about "evidence", I would agree if we were to say that in the text, but it's a part of the source that does not wind up in the paragraph. I really wish I had access to more of that source, but I'm guessing (could be wrong) that in context Erzinclioglu is just saying that, in spite of a few largely discredited studies that were claimed to show efficacy, "most scientists" recognize FH for what it is. Alternatively, I already offered this source too: [60], so feel free to use that one instead or in addition. Anyway, I don't have a strong opinion as to how many or which sources we include, but I do think nine are probably too many. I think other editors should decide about those sources, and I'll go along with whatever other editors want to do. But that does mean that other editors have to actually work it out with one another. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:32, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

I'd be opposed to this one over version two, partly because it takes into account some of the responses about version two (I'll be replying about those issues later). While the authors didn't seem to intend anything of the sort (one doesn't explicitly talk about pseudoscience), "most" can be misconstrued to mean there is a significant minority viewpoint as opposed to fringe. The virtually or nearly all describes the sources better in this case, so I would exclude this version as having potential PSCI issues even though it obviously wasn't intended in the proposal. We have sources using the virtually all language while specifically mentioning pseudoscience, so that seems most appropriate for making weight, etc. as clear as can be. Kingofaces43 (talk) 01:55, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

• "Most scientists" is misleading because not everyone is aware of the correct definition of pseudoscience and no scientist claims that there are medical benefits in FH. Raymond3023 (talk) 08:32, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

I think the objections to "most" are without merit. Unfortunately, StAnselm made a big deal of "most" being different than "nearly all" and being like 55%, and maybe that makes other editors feel like they would be "losing" an argument, but that's just not what "most scientists" really means. Here are dictionary definitions of "most": [61], [62], [63], [64], [65]. Note specifically that the Cambridge Dictionary says "most" and "almost all" are the same thing.

There is a limit to my ability to "be in the middle" of this discussion. To Kingofaces43 and Raymond3023: please convince StAnselm that you are correct. To StAnselm: please convince Kingofaces43 and Raymond3023. Or the three of you can find a compromise. Or some of you can take others of you to WP:AE. Or maybe I'll take all three of you there. Whatever. But this impasse is getting ridiculous. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:47, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

"Most" can mean 51% to 99%. StAnselm hates to accept that FH is a pseudoscience and he has often misrepresented himself to mislead people.[66] He is not giving up his unconvincing claim that FH is not a pseudoscience because "so few references" call it. He wants every reference to call FH a pseudoscience. How WP:AE will help? No one is edit warring or making even a minor PA. You don't have to give up, I think your opinion matters a lot until we don't have more editors that would take interest in this discussion. Who is correct according to you? I and Kingofaces43 or StAnselm? Raymond3023 (talk) 16:49, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for saying that my opinion matters. Since you've asked me, I think the most correct position in this debate is the position that I have taken in suggestion 3, and I think that KofA is the second most correct because he is making some effort to be flexible, but I still have a few disagreements with him. I think that StAnselm is wrong for insisting that we do not have enough appropriate sourcing, and I think that you are wrong when you say that most can be as little as 51%. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:10, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

@Raymond3023: Please stop your personal attacks. StAnselm (talk) 19:57, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

@StAnselm: How? You claimed that RfC closed in your favor by supporting inclusion of category and content of pseudoscience. Your votes were totally opposite though.[67][68] You were never in support of inclusion of any word like "pseudoscience" in this RfC or the one that happened years ago. Raymond3023 (talk) 07:29, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

@Raymond3023: Once again, please stop telling lies. I think it's time for you to walk away from this discussion. I have already provided you with the diff which shows that I was one of the editors who explicitly proposed the position that the closer accepted as the consensual position. The time has come for you to walk away from this discussion. You have come here with a WP:BATTLEGROUND mentality and have repeatedly made personal attacks. I can't believe you had the temerity to say something like "No one is edit warring or making even a minor PA." I cannot work with you under these conditions, and I ask you please not to interact with me on this or any other page. StAnselm (talk) 08:04, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Where's the proof that I was wrong? You opposed any mention of "pseudoscience" in form of category and/or lead sentence and RfC went against you. Falsely accusing me of personal attacks while calling my correct statements a "lies" is all good with you? You really need to read what is WP:NPA. Nothing has prohibited me to reply you or participate in this discussion. Until now, I, Tryptofish and Kingofaces43 have agreed on multiple versions but you are not agreeing with any. Why can't you just agree with Version 2 or Version 3? Raymond3023 (talk) 11:42, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Raymond3023: You need to stop this. StAnselm has been making a good-faith attempt to work with me on this. You, on the other hand, have only been disruptive here. Cut it out. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:26, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

@Tryptofish: But where? He is only working on getting rid of any mention of "pseudoscience" or giving undue with to fringe position. There's a lack of "good-faith attempt" with misleading comments that RfC ended in his favor when the outcome was totally opposite and hostility that he has shown so far. Even you had agreed that StAnselm is "being tendentious".[69] I am not sure what you are attempting to prove, but if we follow StAnselm, then we need to get rid of any mention of "pseudoscience" from the whole article, since he believes that every reference must explicitly describe FH as pseudoscience. Raymond3023 (talk) 16:10, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

This isn't about who is "right" or "wrong" on the content issue. It's simple: comment on the content, not on the editor. If you think anyone is being disruptive, there are administrative noticeboards for that. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:34, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

I understand how frustrating dealing with this can all be, but there's no "winning" going on my mind. While I personally agree with you in how "most" basically means all in cases like this, it's also easy to have undue doubt cast on language like that (again, climate change denial where uncertainty in consensus language is easily overestimated by those not familiar with how it works). Some definitions in sources you list do say a simple majority, so opposition to most is just being really careful about accidentally making room for fringe claims. It would be a lot simpler if we could just link to scientific consensus as a self-explaining way to get around all of that, but we don't have sources using that language.

PSCI is pretty strict about not letting fringe viewpoints affect statements of being pseudoscience, consensus, etc., so that's where my perceived lack of flexibility is based. When someone tries to bring in a viewpoint that tries to cast that kind of doubt, we're supposed to tamp down on that and provide language that gives those kinds of viewpoints as little room as possible to get in. That's laid out in the policy, so that shouldn't be implied as battleground behavior or anything of the sort on my part. We're just dealing with a strict policy wall that makes "meeting in the middle" tricky at best, if not sometimes contradicting policy. Either way, I'm focusing on crafting content most in line with the sources and the policy issues I've mentioned. Once we've solidified that for maybe versions 2 and 3 (I think we're as close as we'll get with those two?), the next logical step might be getting more eyes from a place like WP:FTN or dealing with it in other processes as you mentioned. I do agree that it's time to move ahead one way or another soon. Kingofaces43 (talk) 18:30, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

I'm trying to keep my options open here, but I do take WP:PSCI very seriously. So I'd like to ask: @StAnselm: given that WP:PSCI is part of WP:NPOV, and of course WP:NPOV is a fundamental policy, and the RfC has established that WP:PSCI should be applied to this page, how do you see WP:PSCI applying to "most" versus "nearly all"? --Tryptofish (talk) 18:44, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

When deciding between words like "many, "most", and "nearly all", we have to (a) follow the sources, and (b) take into account how the average reader will interpret those words. Now, WP:PSCI is really talking about the pro-FH position, which we should not represent as an equal-and-opposite position to the "scientific" position. But this is not what our discussion is about - we're talking about the "FH is not pseudoscience" position which is not necessarily pro-FH, and may well be equal and opposite to the "FH is pseudoscience" position. (Don't forget, the article did not mention pseudoscience at all until recently!) Now, the RfC determined that some people regard FH as pseudoscience, and we need to mention that. We have ONE source that explicitly mentions numbers ("virtually all") in regards to pseudoscience but that is qualified ("or at least..."). (Actually, we have Leonard and Crainshaw as well, with "widely considered", but that is also qualified - "certain approaches".) My personal feeling is that the number is "most", but I'm still looking for a good source. So here's the thing: WP:PSCI is not talking about the minority opinion of "FH not being pseudoscience" - it's only talking about pseudoscientific viewpoints ("we should not describe these two opposing viewpoints as being equal to each other", emphasis mine). It's very important not to confuse the two. StAnselm (talk) 20:13, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for that answer. If you would like more time to look for a better source, that's fine with me personally. I guess I'm having trouble getting a handle on the concept of something that is (a) not pro-FH, and simultaneously (b) opposed to calling it pseudoscience, particularly if that is a concept endorsed by some scientists (since we would be attributing it either to scientists or to scientists plus philosophers). Of course I know that there are some persons of faith who say that it should not be judged as science but who do not necessarily endorse FH per se. But are there reliable sources about scientists who reject FH but accept it as something like science, or at least as something (what?) that is not pseudoscience? I feel like I would need to see a reliable source that describes such a concept. (The closest that I've seen is philosophers, not scientists, saying that if it is not pseudoscience then it is at least lacking epistemic warrant. I cannot get a mental picture of what such a thing would be. Mediocre science that is lacking epistemic warrant?) Otherwise, I'm just not seeing the sourcing to provide a rationale for saying that some significant number of scientists regard it as other-than-pseudoscience. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:42, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

But what we will do if such a source doesn't exist? (I've looked, and I haven't found it.) I think we would need to stick with Mahner and quote him. But I know you disagree. StAnselm (talk) 21:24, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks again. I recognize that you are trying here, and I appreciate it. I've just spent some time looking, and I cannot find it either. I do feel that Mahner either isn't saying that at all or is saying it in such an unclear manner that it's not enough for us to either say it in Wikipedia's voice or say it in the text with attribution to Mahner. Maybe there's an option here to have something in a footnote? --Tryptofish (talk) 21:32, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

As I think about it, maybe a footnote could be the solution here. I'm thinking about going back to the "nearly all" language, but putting a template:efn-type footnote immediately after "all", and putting the sentence from Mahner there. That way, we use the "nearly all" language that three of us (I'm now one of those three) prefer, but we also alert the reader that there is something more to know about the "nearly all" characterization, and we present the Mahner quote without any commentary in that footnote. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:47, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

OK, I think I could live with that; not sure about Literaturegeek. StAnselm (talk) 22:09, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks very much! @Kingofaces43: and @Raymond3023: Would that be OK with you as well? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:28, 2 May 2018 (UTC

I forget whether we settled on nearly or virtually all (slight preference to using virtually), but that footnote would just be doing the same thing we already do in the reference that also quotes the text. A footnote is not really needed in that case, but doesn't also significantly change anything from version two either. I'd be fine with either approach. Kingofaces43 (talk) 03:44, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I've started thinking the same thing about "virtually" instead of "nearly". There is little reason for anyone to object to one of those in favor of the other. I'm actually leaning towards splitting the difference, by saying "virtually all scientists and philosophers" in the lead, and "nearly all scientists" in the section. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:31, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

And I have another question, this one going to Kingofaces: Could you please draw up a list of the sources that you think should be cited for the first/lead sentence, perhaps pruning it down from 8 or 9 to a much smaller number (or, alternatively, combining some of the references into a single inline citation)? --Tryptofish (talk) 18:50, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

You can take a look at my most recent suggestion in version 2 where I changed the ref order too. It goes in order of Mahner, Pitt, and Zerbe for ones I'd use as main refs, while Cogan, Leonard, and SAFS would be fine in a single ref tag. If we add Erzinclioglu to that sentence, which I'm perfectly fine with, I would probably boot SAFS to cut down on space. I can put a formal draft of the refs together later this evening if need be. Kingofaces43 (talk) 19:10, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Amid all this tl;dr, I have to admit that I completely missed that you had already done that with the references. I think once we settle about "most" versus "nearly all", that will make clear what to do with the ones that you say "if" about. But I agree that, as a number of citations, that looks very good to me. Regardless of what we decide about that, I think I prefer the "dismiss" sentence structure over the older one, and I consider the "opponents of the pseudoscience label" language in the section to be necessary for purposes of accuracy. That's getting us pretty close. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:20, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

So if I'm on track with everything so far, here's the current draft of the first sentence with updated references (I'm fine with this in the body and omitting philosophers in the lead):

Nearly all scientists and philosophers dismiss faith healing as pseudoscience.

I decided to merge Zerbe into the multi-ref as well to keep it down to four ref numbers. Looking at Template:Efn, reference tags really are just another type of footnote, so I just moved the reference up in place of where the proposed footnote would go. Is that essentially the same as intended with the footnote conversation? Kingofaces43 (talk) 04:24, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

References
References

Can you explain why Cogan is there? How does he back up the statement? StAnselm (talk) 04:48, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

• Support "Nearly all scientists and philosophers[1] dismiss faith healing as pseudoscience.[2][3][4]" I think the statement sums up a lot and doesn't give false weight to opinion of proponents. Raymond3023 (talk) 07:29, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
• Support "Nearly all scientists and philosophers[1] dismiss faith healing as pseudoscience.[2][3][4]" I can't believe how long this discussion has gone on, frankly. One thing I would like to know though, @StAnselm:, is the exact nature of your opposition to the use of Cogan. All I can see are assertions that this ref shouldn't be used. What's the beef? Famousdog (woof)(grrr) 12:20, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Mainly because he doesn't back up the statement at all. He says nothing about what scientists and philosophers believe. StAnselm (talk) 19:18, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

• Obviously, I support this approach. I do not know if the Robert Cogan who wrote the source is this Robert Cogan, but that one is an expert on music but not pseudoscience. Depending on who the source author is, I would be OK with substituting a different source for that one. Also, although KofA suggests a regular <ref></ref> for the Mahner cite, I had been thinking of it, and discussing it above, as an {{efn}} footnote, in the same way as the Bruce Flamm note in the section, and I think that would be better – and maybe also to put it after "all" instead of after "philosophers". Please note that it was discussed that way. Also, is it "pseudoscience" or "a pseudoscience"? (Oh, and Famousdog, +1 on how long this has gone on! ) --Tryptofish (talk) 17:50, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

No, it's a different Cogan. StAnselm (talk) 19:18, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

That being the case, and it also being the case that it is a book about critical thinking, I believe it is safe to conclude that he is a reliable source about critical thinking. On that basis, my opinion is that we should definitely keep him in. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:02, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

In fact, he is a Professor of Philosophy (emeritus): [70], [71]. Absolutely appropriate as a source about philosophy. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:09, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Indeed. After all this time, no one had brought up issues with using Cogan in the drafts as far as I’m aware. It’s a pretty straightforward description of FH being pseudoscience while focusing on it rather than just listing a bunch of pseudosciences. Kingofaces43 (talk) 20:22, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Well,, the issue has been flagged lots of times, namely that (a) there were too many citations and (b) so few of them actually supported the claim. (a) has been somewhat resolved but we should still eliminate any citations not directly related to the claim. The problem is not with Cogan being a reliable source (I think he's probably notable and I'm surprised there is no article about him) but in the irrelevance of the citation. StAnselm (talk) 21:09, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, no preference on how we do footnote formatting, I was just getting the gist of the reference layout drafted. For placement, don’t we want it after scientists and philosophers since that whole phrase is cited to Mahner? It doesn’t seem like it would change the intent of the footnote as discussed. Also, I think just pseudoscience is fine since the a is mostly redudnant unless we have a reader somehow thinking FH is the only pseudoscience out there. Kingofaces43 (talk) 20:22, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Obviously, I drafted the version below before I saw your comments here. I think the version below addresses the specific concern about "virtually all" versus "most" by using the footnote where it is, but Mahner overall is cited at the end of the sentence. About "a", I don't care either way. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:02, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Near final draft

At this point, we basically have consensus, and I want to keep things moving. The remaining issues appear to all be minor tweaking stuff, so I'm incorporating the loose ends from part 3 into this:

In the lead section, change the existing sentence to this:

Virtually all scientists and philosophers dismiss faith healing as pseudoscience.

In Faith healing#Scientific investigation, revise the first paragraph to:

Nearly all scientists dismiss faith healing as pseudoscience. Some opponents of the pseudoscience label assert that faith healing makes no scientific claims and thus should be treated as a matter of faith that is not testable by science. Critics reply that claims of medical cures should be tested scientifically because, although faith in the supernatural is not in itself usually considered to be the purview of science, claims of reproducible effects are nevertheless subject to scientific investigation.

References
References

I'm pretty sure that's ready for prime time, but we should check it over one final time. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:57, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Drop the "a" and drop Cogan and we're good to go. StAnselm (talk) 21:18, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

I've dropped the "a". I cannot agree with dropping Cogan because he is clearly an expert in philosophy, and because it sounds like the other editors here agree with me that he should remain. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:30, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

But once again, how is the citation relevant? How does it back up the claim? StAnselm (talk) 22:09, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

A Professor of Philosophy, saying "Faith healing is probably the most dangerous pseudoscience." Clearly, a philosopher who classifies FH as pseudoscience, when we are saying in part that philosophers classify FH as pseudoscience. It seems pretty obvious to me. Does anyone else here object to including that cite? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:30, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

But it's just one person; it doesn't come close to "nearly all". We should restrict the references to those that indicate the consensus. StAnselm (talk) 00:03, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

My individual opinion is that it is unnecessary to make that restriction. But if there is a consensus to remove it on that basis, OK. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:30, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

To flesh out why I feel that it is unnecessary, I think that we need to have sufficient sourcing to support what we say, and we do, and that must include sources that support all of it (to avoid synthesis), but once that threshold is met, there is nothing wrong with including further sources in support. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:36, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Make sure your not removing access to researchable information ( academic links) just because some are concerned about wording in the article. Does the link expand someone's knowledge on the topic at hand in the manner represented in the article.... this is what is to be considered first. We are here to facilitate access to information.--Moxy (talk) 00:45, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Looking at policies and guidelines in this area, I see that WP:BUNDLING insists that "each source applies to the entire sentence". I also see in the Wikipedia:Citation overkill essay, the following: "Or, if the additional material is not quite encyclopedically pertinent to the article but provides useful background information, add it to the "Further reading" or "External links" section instead of citing it inline in a way that does not actually improve verifiability." This may be a useful way forward. Since Cogan devotes a couple of pages to faith healing, he can go in the "further reading" section (which doesn't exist yet, but can be created). I also notice that Cogan is already cited elsewhere in the article (currently footnote 96 - though the citation is incomplete). StAnselm (talk) 00:55, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Well, what do other editors think? --Tryptofish (talk) 01:36, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

I like bundling I did this at ......See source 2 at Jared Taylor first in the lead or note style at Joan Crawford note 1 in lead.--Moxy (talk) 01:43, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

And the Jared Taylor one is very appropriate - and here's the thing: all the citations are directly related to the claim. StAnselm (talk) 02:09, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

I'm not seeing a strong need to do this (combing all refs into one rather than the subset we currently have). We sometimes use see also type refs in other consensus statements like Genetically_modified_food#Health_and_safety (first sentence, ref 8 for those not familiar with it). I'm not entirely opposed to a complete bundling, but I'm just not seeing a reason for it when this version seems adequate in terms of convention. Sometimes it is useful to have a few references on their own rather than present a reader with a wall of bullets for all sources instead. Kingofaces43 (talk) 03:36, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

I'm fine with this version. On Cogan, I would object to removing it as a violation of PSCI, namely that we don't obscure mentions of a topic being pseudoscience. Cogan clearly calls FH pseudoscience, so that obviously fits into a sentence describing FH as such. That ref is also at the end of the sentence describing pseudoscience, not the all philosophers language footnote. That was partly the point of the footnote to separate the refs for such a demarcation, so it seems like we're just going back in circles by suddenly going to this last minute. If anything, the version mirrors the reference placement of the GMO consensus language I linked above. Since that removal is a non-starter policy-wise, and this version seemed to address all other concerns out there, I think we'd be fine going ahead with this version aside from the minor bundling formatting question. (talk) 03:36, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

And this is precisely why this was an issue for me - per the result of the RfC we are not "describing faith healing as pseudoscience". We are only reporting on such descriptions. StAnselm (talk) 03:44, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

And it's not a "non-starter policy-wise" - it's following the Wikipedia:Citing sources guideline. StAnselm (talk) 03:47, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Per RfC, we should be "describing faith healing as pseudoscience" as well as per WP:PSCI because FH is a pseudoscience. We can't give undue weight to fringe position just because you believe that FH is not a pseudoscience. But given that we have already tried enough to teach you this simple fact and you are clearly not getting it. I think we should discuss this on WP:FTN. You had discarded that solution as "canvassing"[72] but we don't really have any other solution. Raymond3023 (talk) 16:19, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

I am sooooo tired of this discussion going around in circles. StAnselm, I think that you have expressed your rationale about the Cogan cite very clearly and everyone here understands it. But I don't think that anyone agrees with you. And I, for one, have been making a very strong effort to listen to you and to cooperate with you; there's a lot in this version that reflects requests that you have made. (I also read WP:Bundling and WP:Citation overkill before posting this comment here.) I think that, although we do not have unanimity, we have what any uninvolved editor would recognize as consensus for the overall language proposed here. Keeping or deleting the one line about Cogan in the footnote is something that can continue to be discussed, even after implementation of the rest of the language. I am going to implement it now, because it's time. That doesn't mean that it cannot be further edited, of course. If anyone wants to bring up the issue of the Cogan cite somewhere else, that's fine with me. (WP:RSN could be an alternative to WP:FTN.) --Tryptofish (talk) 18:51, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Agreed. I wouldn't expect that idea to get any traction as noticeboards, so since WP:CON is not a unanimous count, I think we're in a good position to let this tired old dog rest. Kingofaces43 (talk) 20:16, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Once again (because some people have still not understood), the RfC consensus was not to "describe faith healing as pseudoscientific" but "include text indicating that there are sources describing faith healing as pseudoscientific". There is a very big difference. Tryptofish, I'm not sure there is a consensus when there are !votes arising out of that misinterpretation. StAnselm (talk) 18:59, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Please feel free to pursue that concern, as you see fit. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:05, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Final draft?

In Faith healing#Scientific investigation, revise the first paragraph to:

Nearly all scientists dismiss faith healing as pseudoscience. Some opponents of the pseudoscience label assert that faith healing makes no scientific claims and thus should be treated as a matter of faith that is not testable by science. Critics reply that claims of medical cures should be tested scientifically because, although faith in the supernatural is not in itself usually considered to be the purview of science, claims of reproducible effects are nevertheless subject to scientific investigation.

References
References

Please view my proposed slight change to Tryptofish's proposed near final version. Good to see that some progress is being made. I feel that, in the scientific investigation section, the reference to Martin, Michael needs to be included after reference 5 before I can consider offering my support to including this body of text in the article. I am still not entirely happy, but I am interested in reaching a compromise and avoiding another RfC.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 15:11, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

So if I understand correctly, that consists only of adding the Martin citation directly after the Popular Delusions one. I think that's an excellent idea, and I would be happy to do that. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:22, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

Yup, you understand correctly. :-)--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 15:30, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

Good! For my understanding, it that this Michael Martin? --Tryptofish (talk) 15:32, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

Not sure.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 15:47, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

I just looked at the source, and it says right at the top that he is. I can't think of any reason for anyone to object to it, so I'm going to make the edit now. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:50, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

 Done. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:56, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

I remembered having discussed this source during #Science, or not claiming to be science, above, and that made me take another look at it. Looking carefully at what Martin said, he is not objecting to calling FH pseudoscience, but rather saying that the associated religious beliefs cannot be considered pseudoscience. For that reason, I've moved the position where the source is cited, to just before the Stephen J. Gould cite. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:06, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

Faith Healing is an Art

I appreciate all the fair consideration given to faith healing as a science; however, common sense says it an Art (with the patient being the muse). So, when sources appear to justify faith healing as an art, then due weight should be given. Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 19:52, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Are there sources for that? --Tryptofish (talk) 19:54, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

There may be a few. (The search has me wondering when Con artist will have the pseudoscience POV pushed into it). Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 20:41, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

As for con artists, the sources that I see say that it isn't pseudoscience unless it makes scientific or science-like claims – so a con artist who claims people can trust him with their money is not making a pseudoscientific claim. And when there is sourcing that classifies something as pseudoscience, then that's not POV-pushing. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:46, 2 May 2018 (UTC)