Talk:Socionics

Pseudoscience - 2

ADDED BY JACK: I think it reasonable for there to be a section underneath discussing the 'scientific' status of Socionics, but calling it a 'pseudoscientific' off the bat is unfair, given that the MBTI page doesn't begin this way. There exist whole communities of socionists who accept that the theory is not a 'science', but a theory that is being tested out by practitioners that is in need of greater academic and empirical attention. Only some communities, mostly in the east, falsely claim socionics to be a science, so this is tarring a theory with a very large number of different interpretations with the same brush. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Echidna1000 (talk • contribs) 01:52, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Socionics differs from MBTI (which itself suffers from a lack of scientific status) by the presence of the theory of relations between types, which makes it something like a modern divination practice. There are no proofs for the existence of its 16 types, the stability of these types over time, or the dichotomy of traits. --Q Valda (talk) 02:39, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

• after next revert like this - [1] - [2] - [3] - I will contact the administrators --Q Valda (talk) 12:17, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
  • In the ru-wiki, the socionics mediator Helgo13 decided to strictly apply the fundamental rule of Wikipedia WP:NPOV [4] By wiki rules,

"NPOV is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia and of other Wikimedia projects. It is also one of Wikipedia's three core content policies; the other two are" Verifiability "and" No original research ". These policies jointly determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in Wikipedia articles, and, because they work in harmony, they should not be interpreted in isolation from one another. Editors are strongly encouraged to familiarize themselves with all three. This policy is non-negotiable, and the principles upon which it is based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, nor by editor consensus".

Member Q Valda is trying to challenge this decision. He even threatened the mediator Helgo13, as the mediator Helgo13 himself defined:

“First, you have to stop having a discussion like this ('juggling ... will not end well”) if you don’t want problems when discussing your actions in a much wider circle than the local mediation. You seem to be a mediator, but instead of a solution, you create a conflict yourself, and out of the blue. Second, you were offered specific questions on SALW, but there was no answer to them. And something tells me that the answer to the specific question of whether the current wording in the article suits (this is exactly what worries me the most at the moment), we will never hear.- Q Valda 16:39, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

The wording in the article is not satisfactory, since it is not in accordance with the result. And I don't need to threaten me with a "broad discussion", you have the right to do so, as I have the right to use administrative powers. - Best regards, Helgo13 • (Obs.) 17:00, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

[5]

In the edits of user Q Valda about socionics, there is falsification and manipulation in the retelling of an authoritative source. This is an attempt to prove that the existence of psychological types is rejected by psychology. In doing so, he even tries to refer to an article that refutes this very point of view. In this work, 4 stable psychological types are identified. Even the title of the article by Gerlach M., Farb B., Revelle W., Nunes Amaral L. A. A robust data-driven approach identifies four personality types across four large data sets // Nature Human Behavior. - 2018. - No. 2 (September). - S. 735-742. [6]. In addition, the isolation of psychological types is one of the main scientific methods in psychology. In all other sources, which the user Q Valda tries to put in the preamble of the article, the word "socionics" is mentioned only once. Moreover, these sources are not written by experts, not psychologists and cannot be considered authoritative on the topic of socionics. In ru-wiki, these sources were rejected by the intermediary for citation on Wikipedia:

"To be honest, I agree with the bottom line. In terms of the fact that there is no reason to include this opinion in the preamble. There are too few sources that consider in sufficient detail the issue of pseudoscience of socionics (in contrast to the same NC). You can't even write a section on them properly, and in order to include this in the preamble, kmk, such a section must first appear. After all, the preamble is the summary of the article. --ptQa 11:36, 25 May 2018 (UTC)--"

[7]Sounderk (talk) 12:55, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

• • • An example of an academic tertiary source: Prof. Krysko V. Dictionary of Social Psychology. - SPb.: Peter, 2003 .-- 416 p. - ISBN 5-314-00021-0

"Socionics is a science that draws methodology from sociology, informatics and psychology and is focused on improving society, in which for each individual belonging to a certain psychological type there is a place in socially useful activity."

--Sounderk (talk) 13:31, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

• • • • 1) Krysko is the military psychologist, not reliable by default in the fields of differential psychology and science studies. As far as I know his next books on psychology (after Dictionary, 2003) did not mention socionics again. 2) existence of personality types is extremely controversial, according to RS. If they exist, they are not the ones postulated in socionics. 3) please answer the questions - where is the proof of the existence of 16 socionic types? of their innate and unchangeable nature throughout life? of dichotomy of personality traits? Unfortunately, none is available in the current version of the article --Q Valda (talk) 00:56, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Okay, but who are Mineev, Sergeev, Sokol'chik, Zhilina, Salpagarova, Podymov, Volkov, Ivashechkina, Ignatjev, and Abashkina? Are they more reliable sources than Krysko? Why? Are they impartial? Do their criticisms apply to Socionics in general or particular practices of Socionics?

Information exists in discrete categories, such as being 'implicit' or 'explicit', 'descriptive' or 'prescriptive', etc. that are obvious enough that people don't even subject that to an empirical test. That's the whole basis in Socionics for there being different types of information metabolism. The 'personality types' of Socionics are not constructed in the same way they are postulated by the MBTI which relies on questionable claims about bimodal variation in obviously normally distributed constructs.

The chief claim made about people by Socionics, (and Jung) is the law of psychological asymmetry, i.e. that if you are invested and focused in one aspect of information, you are less invested and focused in other aspects of information. The more you are inclined to speculate on multiple alternative possibilities to the present moment, the less focused in the present. Is that controversial to say?

The second claim made about people by Socionics is that, while people certainly grow, realise new things about themselves, and develop over time, they don't change fundamentally into different people with opposite values to what they are now. That is an observation of people that is also not controversial to say. Echidna1000 (talk) 03:05, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Socionics have extraordinarily strong associations with workplace leadership and income (r² = 0.89) https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=socionics+correlation&oq=socion#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3DiXhEmR5T4jcJ , it seems outright stupid to completely and utterly denounce it, let's make the wording more subtle and included after the first couple of sentences in order to cushion the blow of the wording and make the data less biased Pogchampange (talk) 18:34, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Your link just goes to a set of search results. The top result (is that the one you meant?) is from a known predatory publisher. At any rate, it is important that readers have proper context for understanding the article, and that this is completely unaccepted outside of a small echo chamber of proponents is as important a detail as there could be. MrOllie (talk) 18:43, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

How to find consensus

My suggestion to all participants in the conflict and the war of revisions is as follows. According to Wiki rules, the definition of the subject of an article should be neutral,WP:POV. The preamble of the article should contain the generalized content of the article. The article contains a section of criticism, it is there the critical reviews of socionics should be placed. Now they are in the definition of the subject of the article, which is a violation of the rules. But their number is small compared to other sources cited in the article. Moreover, the weight and reliability of some of them are questionable. Therefore, they need to be further investigated. If these critical sources really have significant weight, on their basis the relevant information will be placed in the preamble of the article in accordance with the WP:RSUW.--ThesariusQ (talk) 17:56, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

That's a misstatement of what WP:POV requires. It requires that we follow the view of the sources, not that the article should express no judgment at all (see WP:GEVAL). Where lots of sources call a subject a pseudoscience (as is the case here) we must follow suit, and we must not tuck that away into a separate criticism section. Readers need context right away, and the level of acceptance of a theory is extremely important for that. - MrOllie (talk) 18:14, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

That's a misstatement of my proposal. Only the definition of the subject of socionics should be neutral, and the content of the article is determined by reliable sources and their weight.--ThesariusQ (talk) 23:07, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

When a theory is pseudoscientific there is no violation of the rules to call it what it is, see WP:PSEUDOSCIENCE — part of Wikipedia:Neutral point of view —

Pseudoscientific theories are presented by proponents as science, but characteristically fail to adhere to scientific standards and methods. Conversely, by its very nature, scientific consensus is the majority viewpoint of scientists towards a topic. Thus, when talking about pseudoscientific topics, we should not describe these two opposing viewpoints as being equal to each other [...] The pseudoscientific view should be clearly described as such. An explanation of how scientists have reacted to pseudoscientific theories should be prominently included. This helps us to describe differing views fairly.

So, "critical views of socionics" must be in the very first words of article. And of course, the whole article should be rewritten to make it clear that it is a pseudoscientific theory --Q Valda (talk) 20:50, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Based on what reliable sources do you classify socionics as а pseudoscientific theories? Please quote them.--ThesariusQ (talk) 23:53, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

you no longer see the footnotes? --Q Valda (talk) 08:44, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

You no longer see this analysis [8]? --ThesariusQ (talk) 09:33, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Your "analysis" (with false claims in the first words e.g. about "neutral user") means nothing when it contradicts the RSs. More precisely, it means that you are engaged in an unwarranted promotion of a pseudoscientific theory. Btw, the local administrator concluded that socionics article page falls under the regulation of pseudoscience (WP:ARBPS) — [9] --Q Valda (talk) 10:37, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

These links have nothing to do with psychology and the word "socionics" is mentioned in them only once. Except Mineev, who can be included in the criticism section. But his socionics is mentioned only once in the whole book. This means that this source is lightweight. Any neutral sane person will conclude this.--ThesariusQ (talk) 12:42, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Mentioned in them to call it Pseudoscience. There is no requirement that the sources have anything 'to do with psychology', whatever that means. Per WP:FRIND that these sources are outside the Socionics 'bubble' is a good thing and means they get more weight, not less. - MrOllie (talk) 12:52, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Even if they are written by students, philologists and others?--ThesariusQ (talk) 13:55, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Not a problem, if they are published in peer-reviewed journals. --Q Valda (talk) 15:03, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Doesn't the profile of the magazine matter? Are philologists competent in psychology?--ThesariusQ (talk) 18:30, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Socionics (with its information-processing theory that tries to predict outcomes of peoples interactions) is some kind of modern divination practice that has nearly zero level of validity and reliability. And since divination is not an accepted occupation in science, sources from other fields of knowledge are quite suitable. --Q Valda (talk) 21:40, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Show sources that confirm your personal opinion, please. You never provided them. It follows that such statements are a mistake or fake.--ThesariusQ (talk) 10:45, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Socionics is not a monolith. There are socionists that treat intertype relationships with care and avoid making predictions in any kind of detail.

The key relationship prediction is the primacy of Duality in beneficial relationships, and that is actually based in scientific research, specifically the body of evidence showing that high strengths diversity and low values diversity creates more effective teams.

Almost all notions of compatibility in Socionics stem from this well-researched proposition. Echidna1000 (talk) 01:27, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Sources pointing out socionics as "pseudoscientific" are declarative or speculative and not evidence-based. Also they merely list soicionics, not giving any sort of factual argument. In some articles the word socionics appear only once! how is it even relevant, when there is no argument? Some sources cited have even been reevaluated by the author himself, and have been purposely misquoted. Using any sort of opinions and including them as factual declarations is missinformative manupulation, specially when quotes are used out of context, and is undermining the theoretical approach under an unfair categorization. Socionics needs not to be considered as scientific, however declaring it to be pseudoscientific is even worse, since it's a lie, a speculation, appealing to an opinion. No opinions should be used as factual representations of reality. Furthermore using a speculative source to "support" the declaration, just because the source is published is a logical fallacy falling under "ad verecundiam" or appeal to authorithy. Knowledge should not be used under a fascist policy, and should not follow one or anothers view just because, without evidence words are but words, opinions are opinions, and should be share as opinions, otherwise we are purposely disrupting knowledge... such as it is happening here.

Any sort of criticism to a theory should go under the criticism section. The current status of the article is not only lacking neutrality, violating wikipedia's policy, but it is plain missinformative and deceitful, following some editor's whim. People don't deserve being missinformed under the view of a group, they need the facts as they are, and the article is countering this freedom. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Psyhence Phi (talk • contribs) 16:29, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Some context - I am a British Psychological Society member and business psychologist who actually uses Socionics in my role to coach and develop senior people in large banks. THE KEY ISSUE here is a failure to distinguish between practises and interpretations of Socionics that are pseudoscientific and those which are not. The sources listed seem to come almost exclusively from the East, where pseudoscientific practices, like Visual Identification, are commonplace. It is a different story in the UK and the USA, where Socionics is used much like the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, in order to help people with their development. Socionics provides useful insight by helping a person to identify the categories their strengths and weaker points fit into. It allows one to pick out where a person's natural focus is and what needs greater focus for a balanced set of competencies.

People here are saying that the facet of Intertype Relations make Socionics like "divination", but this is untrue. There is a scientific basis to duality available in the literature. Teams and relationships work better where people are 1. United in their values, and 2. Diverse in their strengths and capabilities. It's all there on Google Scholar and that is exactly what Duality is about: Same Values, Opposite Strengths.

THAT IS WHY I think we need a much more nuanced article. Have a section on pseudoscientific practises in Socionics, but don't start your article by declaring Socionics to be a pseudoscience as if all its practises and interpretations are a monolith. You wouldn't start a Wikipedia on Islam with the interpretation used by ISIL, because that would be a gross, unfair generalisation that leaves out the majority of peaceful Muslims in our world. Please hold a similar standard for Socionics and all other complex multi-faceted disciplines, ideas and beliefs. Echidna1000 (talk) 11:48, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Echidna1000, The Myers Briggs Type Indicator is pseudoscience as well. The concept that 'personality types' exist at all is highly controversial, let alone the idea any particular type classification has any predictive power. Socionics is a house built on a foundation of pseudoscience. We don't have a more nuanced article because the sources (and the science) don't support that. MrOllie (talk) 14:39, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

I should add that the basis of 'personality types' in Socionics is a lot more robust than the MBTI. It's not based on asserting bimodal variation in four dichotomies. It's the logical conclusion of there being distinct types of information, and accepting that different people process different kinds of information differently. You can use Socionics without asserting any kind of bimodal variation at all, because it doesn't make the same claim as MBTI. It only looks like it's the same claim because there are 16 types. It's not controversial to say that people have hierarchies of motivations, values, strengths, and weaker points. Socionics sets out how based on the way that information (not people) can be categorised reliably, that these various hierarchies exist in finite combinations in people, and the profiles exist to describe the different ways in which these combinations may manifest in a person. It is controversial to say that a person can only be either a social 'Extrovert' or a reflective 'Introvert', which is what MBTI does, but the way Socionics actually works, it's not controversial to say that there are types of information metabolism.

The only predictive claim made by Socionics is around inter-type relations, and this is actually grounded in the science. If you look at the research on diversity in successful teams, you will find that high strengths diversity is desirable because that complements and high values diversity is not desirable because that was found in studies to clash. THAT is duality. Echidna1000 (talk) 02:46, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

MrOllie Sure, my point is that when you look at the MBTI Wikipedia page, it doesn't start by saying "MBTI is a pseudoscientific...." It starts by saying that it is a self-report tool for determining personality type. Later, it points out that the MBTI has been "criticized as pseudoscientific". Why can't we do the same for the Socionics page? The mention that there is criticism is fine, absolutely include that, but to simply start with "Socionics is a pseudoscientific..." is unfair treatment when compared to similar theories and tools. It is also taking a clear intellectual position rather than providing all available information with opinions for the reader to compare and form their own view. Wikipedia is meant to inform, not instruct. As I have said before, there are practices of Socionics that do not rest on unproven synthetic claims about our world and are just frameworks for making sense of what we can already see in an meaningful way. There are overreaching uses of Socionics and there are modest but still valuable uses of Socionics. It's misinformation to treat Socionics as a monolith like that. Maybe we can have a discussion about this in person sometime, as this is a very obscure, niche field and it's easy to not know of the diversity of opinions within that niche. I am one of the more outspoken western voices and take a very different approach to the range of differing approaches in the east. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Echidna1000 (talk • contribs) 15:35, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

It seems like MBTI article should also start with "MBTI is a pseudoscientific[1][2][3]...[10]" so if somebody is ready to move critic reviews to the top of that article and then fend off unwarranted attacks from scammers such as MrOllie who earns through pseudoscience and doesn't want this pseudoscientific status to be mentioned at the top of the page, as his bank clients are so busy they won't bother reading the rest of the article -- it could be very useful, including for his clients QuantumBorg (talk) 06:21, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

It does? Of the three paragraphs in the lead section of the MBTI article, two of them are about how it is pseudoscience. Contrary to your unsupported accusations, I have no problem with that at all. - MrOllie (talk) 14:33, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

It doesn't in the same way. The Socionics article right at the beginning says "Socionics is a pseudoscientific theory". The MBTI waits until the third paragraph to say "Though the MBTI resembles some psychological theories, it has been criticized as pseudoscience and is not widely endorsed by academic researchers in the psychology field."

That's a MUCH fairer way of introducing the theory to a reader. That accounts for the criticisms that have been made without biasing the reader and undermining the reputation of Wikipedia as an authoritative source of information. Echidna1000 (talk) 02:21, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Welcome back! Perhaps you didn't notice that the comment you responded to is more than a year old. It is long since time to WP:DROPTHESTICK. MrOllie (talk) 02:46, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Plain text symbols

▲ △ ■ □ ● ○ ▙ ◳ (the latter two need improvement) Tuvalkin (talk) 14:37, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Lead sentence again

I would say that, apart from the fact that the article is too long considering the its encyclopedic goal and relatively small importance of socionics, we should approach socionics more like psychoanalysis. In the article about the psychoanalysis, the dispute about its status as the field of science is moved to its proper place - to the criticism section. Similarly to psychoanalysis, socionics is based on some unfalsifiable models, but it seems to work in practice, if used to proper problems by reasonable, intelligent people. I would say it is very distant from hard science (as, for example, Jungian depth psychology is also distant from modern science). I do agree that many socionists - people who devoted their lives to building socionic models and using socionics in their psychological practice, mainly in Russia and Ukraine - present socionics as a scientific theory, especially to unsuspecting common people. Therefore, they are making pseudoscience out of it, and they are unethical. I would say that socionics per se is neither science or pseudoscience, but most people use it pseudoscientifically. Rather than labeling it pseudoscientific in the overview, I say that criticism section should be used for this purpose. Because if we label socionics pseudoscience right away, the same should be done with depth psychology and with psychoanalysis. Moreover, the article is just too long and overloaded with references from sources too closely related to the topic in question. --Pancarlos (talk) 14:04, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Pancarlos, Wikipedia-wide consensus is that criticisms should not be relegated entirely to a separate 'Criticism' section, as that causes severe neutrality problems. In the case, the fact that virtually no one outside of a few practitioners accepts that Socionics is legitimate science is extremely relevant context, and readers need to know that right away so they can understand the rest of the article. MrOllie (talk) 14:31, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

You say that no one outside of a few practitioners accept that Socionics is a legitimate science, but have you considered that hardly anyone who is English-speaking even knows what Socionics is? Sample size is important when making statements such as this. There are only a tiny number of English-speaking psychologists who know what Socionics is, and none of them maintain that Socionics is a science or a pseudoscience. It is a philosophy that presents tool for interpretation of data, not for empirical predictions. Do you know of the School of System Socionics? Do you know of the World Socionics Society? If you do not know of groups such as these, which are well established and take a scientifically responsible approach to the use of Model A, by not trying to use it predictively, but ad hoc on information already gathered, then how can you assess whether the sources you are collating on this subject are reliable or not when speaking of Socionics as a monolith? Echidna1000 (talk) 02:36, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia follows the sources, and in this case we happen to have 10 of them. MrOllie (talk) 02:41, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

If that were true, the article would say both that Socionics is a science and a pseudoscience, because there are plenty of sources claiming the former, as well as the 10 claiming the latter. Evidently, someone hasn't included these sources for whatever reason. The point is, sources that support a one-sided narrative have been picked at the exclusion of other sources, whether accidentally or deliberately. At the same time, simply 'following the sources' implies that this is not an interpretive exercise, when it clearly is. After all, and if had 11 sources claiming Socionics is a science and only 10 claiming Socionics is a pseudoscience, you wouldn't say that 'Socionics is a science'. You'd still probably have the article call it a pseudoscience.

Of course, I'm not saying you should claim Socionics is a 'science' either, it's obviously not. There are definitely people in Russia and Ukraine who have vested interests in calling Socionics a 'science' publicly. I've had heated discussions with these people, particularly Alexander Bukalov. However, there are multiple groups such as the World Socionics Society and the School of System Socionics, and other practitioners who see the value in Socionics but don't claim that it is a science, but rather an ad hoc analytical framework for making sense of a person's values and strengths, using commonly accepted methodologies such as self-rated questionnaires and interviews. Their approaches are different and by the definition of 'pseudoscience' meaning something erroneously claimed to be a 'science' that means that these approaches to Socionics are not pseudoscientific. Now, if it's simply the case that these sources haven't been provided and taken into consideration, alright, maybe we can accumulate those sources to make the case.

Would you be willing to concede the point and allow the article to be made more nuanced if I provide these sources? At the moment, the article is a heavily disputed mess and will always be a mess until we work together to clear things up. It's obvious to me that no socionists are involved in the decision-making on the information available, so we have people who don't have that insight making decisions on how to present things they don't yet understand. Echidna1000 (talk) 12:05, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Sourcing isn't a vote. Sources written by people who are making their living off Socionics (such as the groups you mention) are weighted far below the independent sources. The independent sources are quite clear, this is pseudoscience. That no socionists are involved in the decision-making is a feature, not a bug, just as it is a benefit that no flat-earthers are making decisions for the Flat earth article. MrOllie (talk) 12:13, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

There are two sets of double standards that are implicit to what you suggest here.

1. Many articles are dependent almost solely on sources by people who are an expert in that field. Do you have a rule on the ophthalmology article that no sources be taken from ophthalmologists, who obviously make money from the field so cannot be trusted? Obviously you don't, because that is a science. However, you have already categorised socionics as a 'pseudoscience' in your head, so you are applying a different rule to the one that would be used for an established science. Am I right?

2. It has not been established that any of these sources are 'independent' though, only that they are not socionists. They could very well be people who benefit from bringing the entire field into disrepute. Any psychologist who uses methodologies that compete with socionics will fall into that category. Have you checked for that possibility? People don't tend to just write articles saying that Socionics is a pseudoscience without some kind of axe to grind. What is the process to ensure that there is no conflict of interest on the other side? Several of the sources themselves are not substantiated by data, but are opinions, or passing remarks, rather than concerted attempts to determine if Socionics is a pseudoscience or not. So, not only are you listening to opinions by people who could very well have a conflict of interest against socionics, but you are then shutting out more informed opinions by those who have dedicated their lives to understanding this field.

I don't think it's a benefit that you don't allow flat earthers to contribute to the flat earth article. It reads as a very biased article that wields the scientific consensus to obstruct an exploration of the flat earther's ideas. Just because an idea is not true, that does not mean that their perspective should not be understood as much as possible on the article dedicated to exploring them, and to do that, you actually need the flat earther's, in the same way you have ophthalmologists. The agenda of this article is to tell the reader to not believe flat earthers, rather than being to tell the reader informatively about flat earther's and what they believe. I don't like that at all, and I'm not a flat earther or a fan of flat earthers.

I'll tell you what though. I actually do know some independent sources that verify what I have been saying. I'll put those in. Echidna1000 (talk) 00:14, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I have another question. Wikipedia accepts the existence of protoscience as something different to pseudoscience. Is it acceptable to link to independent sources that recognise some approaches to Socionics being protoscience, rather than pseudoscience? If so, would it be acceptable to represent that nuance in the introductory paragraph? Echidna1000 (talk) 01:57, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

You have an obvious WP:Conflict of interest here. You should not be writing about yourself or trying to cite your group as though it is an independent source of information. Really, you should not edit this article at all. As to your speculation that there is some secret cabal operating to bring down socionics, there is no evidence of that. There is plenty of evidence of people with a vested interest in promoting this stuff (as you well know). The 'agenda' of Wikipedia is to present what the best independent sources say about a topic. Proponents of fringe ideas are rarely happy with that, but it is how Wikipedia operates. MrOllie (talk) 02:57, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Too few people are interested in Socionics to be both 1) independent, 2) knowledgeable about it, and 3) inclined to write and publish on it, so your priorities in this context are a recipe for a misleading picture, and will inevitably be dominated by those who are not socionists, but have a desire to publish against it for whatever reason. I never said there had to be a 'cabal', just people who stand to gain, and so go to the effort of publishing. It's too obscure to be done justice by a system of decision-making that inevitably prioritises those with a bias against X over those with a bias in favour of X by incorrectly confusing the former with the virtue of 'independence'. Not being part of the club doesn't necessarily confer objectivity.

Nevertheless, if you are depriving me of the ability to use what I know to improve the article, then I would ask you to make the edits instead, as I assume that you are independent, and therefore, will not turn away good sources of information even if they contradict what is currently argued. Evidently, if I go around suggesting that other people make edits, I cannot pay them to do so, as that would immediately become a conflict of interest. They would have to want to spend the time doing it out of a Kantian sense of duty to writing and providing good information. Hard to find such people, although you appear to be of this rare breed. If as you claim you are not biased against Socionics, then surely you will be obliging to any information I can provide you.

For example, have you looked at Pietrak K, The foundations of socionics – a review, Cognitive Systems Research 47 (2018) 1-11. DOI/10.1016/j.cogsys.2017.07.001 ?

Karol Pietrak is not a socionist. He is a good and VERY RARE example of someone interested in the theory and with enough of an academic background to write on it academically, without in any way standing to gain from it, and to do so in English. In this article, published in a peer-reviewed journal, he clearly concludes that "At the most general level, socionics may be classified as part of the cognitive sciences." (p.18)

As you say, sourcing is not "a vote". That's good, in which case, can you really say that this article in a peer-reviewed journal is the inferior of the ten sources arguing the opposite? Are the ten sources even peer reviewed? Some are clearly not, but are books, not articles. Others are in journals whose peer-reviewed status I am unsure of. If you are not already sure, you might want to check. If it's the case, that none of these ten sources are in a peer-reviewed journal, then Pietrak's article is the superior source, and therefore, you would need to remove "pseudoscientific" from the introductory paragraph. At the very least, you will need to acknowledge in the Wikipedia article that there are high-quality, independent sources that directly contradict the opening statement. Echidna1000 (talk) 11:56, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Pietrak is a mechanical engineer. He's an expert on heat transfer, not psychology. MrOllie (talk) 12:31, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Now you're contradicting yourself. Pietrak not being a psychologist means he's independent. He has no horse in the race. His writing on the subject was nevertheless authoritative enough to be accepted by a peer-reviewed journal.

If you want an expert on the subject, I'm an expert, but I'm not good enough because I'm not independent. How can you be 1) an expert in a field, while also being 2) independent from a field?

It's not even the case that being a psychologist gives you relevant expertise in Socionics. After all, if it is legitimately psychology, which is a science, then Socionics is a science. If Socionics is not a science, then how can it be psychology? If Socionics is not psychology, why can only a psychologist be deemed an 'expert'? It all seems like a catch-22 to me.

Nevertheless, I am going to hold these other sources to the standards you have laid out:

Are the writers of the 10 sources saying socionics is a 'pseudoscience' psychologists? A.G. Sergeev isn't a psychologist, he's a mathematician. V.N. Sokolchik isn't a psychologist, she's a philosopher. V. A. Zilinha, A. B. Nevelev, and A. Ya. Kamaletdinova all three are philosophers. L. A. Salpagarova? surprise surprise, ANOTHER philosopher.

Finally we have a psychologist in Volkov, but the source is not published in a peer-reviewed journal. It's part of a collection of materials that he used at a conference. It's his opinion, without peer-review. The opinion itself is an off-hand remark and part of a list of multiple fields, showing NO expertise in Socionics. The fact he is a psychologist is more circumstantial than relevant.

Meanwhile, although E. Ivashechkina appears to be art an historian (I'm not sure about this) G.A Chedzemov is in the social sciences, although likely not still a psychologist. The article, however, appears to be a well-researched source, based on more than a passing knowledge of Socionics. I cannot really fault this article, except that it treats Socionics as a bit of a monolith again, and evidently these people have never heard of me, despite it being 2019, which means they are not familiar with the developments in the west over the past decade and have not factored this into their analysis. However, it is clear in this article that Socionics is seen a 'science in development', rather than a pseudoscience. They do not use "pseudoscience" at all in the article. Socionics is described as going through different stages of development, and that while claims of it being a 'science' are premature, there is a trajectory of the approach becoming more scientific over time. The key criticism is that the results are currently hard to falsify. That is not an argument for Socionics being a pseudoscience, but rather a protoscience.

Ignatyev, another philosopher (although someone of the same name appears to be an engineer)

Abashkina's article does not seem to even be relevant to the discussion. Maybe there was a translation error. It certainly is not about psychology, but semantics.

If your standard for accepting sources is that people have to be psychologists, you have to scrap almost every source there, except for one article where the pseudoscientific nature of Socionics is mentioned in an offhand remark in an essay that isn't even peer-reviewed. Echidna1000 (talk) 14:10, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

That's a nice straw man argument, but it doesn't have much to do with what I said. Being a psychologist is one way (but not the only way) to be reliable enough to make a determination that something is a pseudoscience. A mechanical engineer who gets an article in a low-rank interdisciplinary journal that mostly publishes articles on AI isn't a way to do that. Using the example of Flat earth again, many people are experts in Astronomy, Geology, Cartography, Physics, Philosophy of Science, etc. They are all qualified to say that flat earth theories are nonsense for a variety of reasons. That none of them are specifically flat earth 'experts' (I feel like you really mean 'adherents' when you use that term) does not mean that they are unqualified. On the other hand, somebody like a medical doctor - though they are no doubt an expert in their own field, the human body, really aren't qualified to say much about celestial bodies. MrOllie (talk) 14:14, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

How does a philosopher, a non-scientist, have a field of expertise more appropriate to determining whether Socionics, a field adjacent to psychology, is a pseudoscience or not, than a mechanical engineer, who is an actual scientist? I am fortunate enough to have degrees in both philosophy and psychology, and I can tell you that philosophers don't normally receive training in what is a science or not. That comes with psychology and definitely comes with the hard sciences. Nevertheless, you are comfortable with these articles, refer to them to add weight to the position stated in this article, and yet are not comfortable with Pietrak's contribution. Why?

Well, I'm an expert in Socionics, but I am not an adherent to Socionics. There are a number of things in the original setting out of the theory that I disagree with and change in my application, as well as education of others. I don't adhere to the theory, I understand, practise critical thinking and develop the theory to be more accessible and aligned with what we can see and observe. That is how we do it in the World Socionics Society. A good example is getting rid of determinations of 'conscious' and 'unconscious' which are vague and either easy to disprove or else impossible to falsify depending on the parameters set. Echidna1000 (talk) 14:49, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I am quite surprised that a philosopher hasn't heard of Philosophy of science before. MrOllie (talk) 14:56, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

A branch of philosophy in which there is no consensus and which amounts to different opinions without an empirical mediator. You are now relying on something that is not scientific in order to determine what is scientific and what is not. As I said before, to be a philosopher you also do not need the remotest training in scientific methodology, and the other works of those publishing these articles do not convey an expertise or focus in Philosophy of Science as a field.

The structure of your rationale for not including a peer-reviewed, independent, relevant article is arbitrary and internally inconsistent, and does not reflect well on Wikipedia as an institution. How can you yourself claim to be impartial with such a gerrymandered definition of source acceptability? Echidna1000 (talk) 15:51, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I think, MrOllie, that your approach to this is a violation of NPOV, whether you are currently willing to acknowledge this or not. Sure, I understand the COF point, and will avoid making direct edits as a result, particularly where referencing myself. Naturally, I understand why you should have independent people making edits, while sourcing their information from experts with publications in peer-reviewed journals. However, I do not understand why you then decide to reject a peer-reviewed article from a journal with an Impact Score of 3.5, putting it in the top 20% of journals, when you have accepted non-scientific articles from journals that are less credible to the support the sentence at the heart of our debate.

The basis of your argument seems to be a hierarchy (of your creation, I cannot see Wikipedia spelling this out in their policy, although they do spell out a clear attachment to Neutrality, where "significant minority views" are also given weight) where Philosophers are better able to decide the status of a field as a 'science' or not than many scientists. Lots of issues here. Philosophy, even Philosophy of Science, is not a science. It does not function like a science. A philosopher cannot be an expert of anything except their ideas. Some are experts of another philosopher's ideas, largely due to closely reading that person's works. Their field does not depend on obscure facts that are only acquired by repeated opportunities to observe, but on ideas and rationales, that people are free to critique and reject with their own reasoning. That is why there is no consensus in the field on its central arguments. The merit of a philosopher CANNOT stand on expertise, and MUST stand on the strength of their analysis and argumentation. That is why it is a humanity, not a science. As already mentioned by several people here, every occasion of Socionics being called 'pseudoscience' by these sources has been done so WITHOUT argumentation. The one source there to have a clear argument does NOT use the word 'pseudoscience', and details a sequence of events that better fits a 'protoscience'. Therefore, these sources, bar the one, should be deemed a less-than-reliable source, and that one should be interpreted less extremely. The claim that a philosopher of science, or even 10 philosophers are better able to decide on the status of a field they have no demonstrable close familiarity with, than a scientist with a demonstrable close familiarity with the field (the familiarity is clear from the article itself), who happens to have a background in a very different scientific field, does not hold water.

To decide whether Socionics is pseudoscience or not, you need two parts. Yes, you need to know 1) the definition of a 'pseudoscience', which philosophers of science have already provided. However, you also need to know 2) the totality of relevant facts about Socionics to see if it meets the criteria of a pseudoscience or not. These philosophers have not made a clear argument, and have not demonstrated their knowledge of that second part. At the same time, 1) is such common knowledge that being of the field that first defined 1) should not confer any special knowledge there either. In the same way, you shouldn't need a doctor to find out if you should eat your vegetables and engage in regular light exercise.

Think this over. I'm not going to let this go while I believe the matter is not being treated fairly, and will persist until you either 1) realise that this is unfair, or 2) reassure me that your approach to this is coherent and in line with an impartial Wikipedia policy that I can work constructively within. Echidna1000 (talk) 02:47, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Criticism?

The section labeled criticism is, in fact, a series of statements by those who believe in this pseudoscience that criticism is not uniform. It appears to be uniform in the mainstream sciences - but this is not apparent. I believe there is a whitewashing attempt by promotors of this belief and leave this as a placeholder for more involved editors to comment. Ifnord (talk) 22:07, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

The problem is that the Criticism that does exist of Socionics has not been properly discussed in the article. All the criticism has been stuck as a series of sources behind the word 'pseudoscientific' in the opening sentence, rather than discussed in the appropriate section, making the section confusing to read. I say these criticisms should be discussed openly and transparently, not hidden in an attempt to poison the well. Echidna1000 (talk) 02:50, 22 May 2022 (UTC)