Talk:Ghost/pseudoscience

• This is an archive of discussions at Talk:Ghost regarding whether it should be described or categorized as pseudoscience.

Pseudoscience category removal

I think this tag should be removed. Ghosts is not a science, and has never been portrayed as a science, so the tag in inappropriate. Individuals may have claimed the existance of ghosts through unscientific and fraudulent means, but the at does not make "ghosts" a science or pseudoscience, only the person.

The only possible application of the tag is to smear people who believe in ghosts.

I do not "believe" in ghosts myself, so have no agenda here. --Iantresman 16:18, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

You wrote: "Ghosts is not a science, and has never been portrayed as a science" This is false. Ghost studies have been poprtrayed as scientific endeavors by any number of people. Spiritualist mediums, ectoplasm, etc. DreamGuy 19:33, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

So 'Ghost studies' are not ghosts. And 'any number of people' are people, not ghosts. --Iantresman 10:06, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Huh? You aren't making sense. "Ghost studies" are not ghosts, but they study ghosts... I mean, come on, duh. People try to study ghosts, have theories about ghosts, chase after ghosts with scientific equipment... Give me a break. So if I had an article about, say, reading palms, it shouldn't be put in the pseudoscience category because it's an article about reading palms and not about studying the reading of palms? DreamGuy 15:43, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

"Ghost studies" and "Palm reading" may well attract a pseudoscience tag. But "Ghosts" and "Palms" can not. Likewise, UFOlogy might attract a pseudoscience tags, but UFOs also can not. To overgeneralise that everything to do with ghosts and UFOs is pseudoscience is quite unscientific. --Iantresman 16:01, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

I've removed the Pseudoscience tag again on the grounds of:

• No reply to my previous comment
• Ghosts, per se, are not pseudoscientific in themselves.
• While the study of ghosts may be pseudoscientific, a study may also be scientific, and depends on a researcher, not on a ghost
• In general, there are no claims that suggest anything inappropriately scientific about ghosts, beyond a general "belief".

--Iantresman 18:16, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I've restored it, because it was already well explained. Ghosts are per se pseudoscientific in themselves, just like UFOs and so forth. Studies of other things can be scientific, but studying ghosts is psuedoscientific. DreamGuy 01:40, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

RfC: Request for Comments: Removal of Pseudoscience tag

Wikipedia Request_for_comments page

I propose (user:iantresman) that the article on Ghosts (and UFOs) should not carry the Pseudoscience tag, and am soliciting comments. I should mention that I do not "believe" in ghosts, nor subscribe to the UFOs/little green men camp. However:

• According to the Pseudoscience article, the definition is "any body of knowledge, methodology, or practice that is erroneously regarded as scientific". ie. It does NOT apply to a noun.
• Consquently, ghosts or UFOs per se, are not pseudoscientific in themselves. They are merely symantic designations which carry no judgement, nor improper claims.
• If we presume that ghosts and UFOs are intrinsically pseudoscientific, it implies that they can not be genuinely scientitifically studied. That would mean that to even consider their study would make someone a pseudoscientist, and that does not make sense.
• I accept that some people do study ghosts and UFOs and make unfounded claims; but this would imply that the study may be pseudoscientific, as long as the claim is made according to the original "pseudoscience" definition.
• I believe that the designation of ghosts and UFOs as pseudoscience comes across as pseudoskepticism, and, that it may appear as a perjorative tag designed merely to rubbish people who "believe" in ghosts and UFOs/little green men. Belief in itself is not grounds for pseudoscience.

Please Support or Oppose, together with a comment, and sign and date by either adding "--~~~~" (if you have an account), or your name and date if you don't.

Support - For reasons given above, --Iantresman 09:55, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Support - Ghosts is already tagged with Paranormal phenomena. That's a more specific term than Pseudoscience. By DreamGuy's argument, everything in Paranormal phenomena should also be tagged Pseudoscience. What if we just make Paranormal phenomena a subcategory of Pseudoscience? That should satisfy both parties. GRuban 20:02, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Comment - Category:Paranormal phenomena is a subcat of Category:Parapsychology, which is a subcat of Category:Pseudoscience, so Paranormal phenomena should not be made a subcategory of Pseudoscience. It is already in that chain.--Srleffler 00:17, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

That is ludicrous, the [Parapsychology Unit] at the University of Edinburgh will be delighted to know that "Paranormal phenomena", and all "Parapsychology" is implicitly labelled Pseudoscience. Again, that is pseudoskepticism at its worse. --Iantresman 08:23, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

What, a pseudoscientist upset that he's been labeled as performing pseudoscience? Say it isn't so! DreamGuy 22:06, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Support - for the same reason as GRuban (or rather, for the reason Srleffler gave). Using Category:Pseudoscience for Ghost is like using Category:Animals for Fox (which already is in Category:Foxes, which is in Category:Canines, which is in Category:Carnivores, and so forth until Category:Animals is reached). --Hob Gadling 17:22, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Oppose removal of pseudoscience tag, as it is being done out of misguided notions of what the words mean as well as clearly hoping to violate the NPOV policy. DreamGuy 22:06, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Can you provide more specific details? --Iantresman 22:31, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Support per taxonomic hierarchy reasons given by Srleffler. Also, while some aspects of ghosts and claims about ghosts touches on pseudoscience, ghosts are really more about superstition, folklore, psychology, and literature. To me, pseudoscience is more about things like bogus claims about science and technology -- perpetual motion, Lysenkoism, Scientology e-meters, stuff like that. Herostratus 07:51, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Support. It doesn't seem that ghosts area claimed to be science by anyone, so pseudoscience doesn't fit. "Paranormal phenomena" is much more appropriate. --jackohare 00:27, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

'Support', for taxonomic reasons given above by Srleffler, and because we're dealing with the noun, not the formal study of that noun. - Dharmabum420 00:47, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Request for Comments: Result

The RfC has been running for nearly two weeks, with no comments for four full days. Bar DreamGuy, the comments are unanimous, and DreamGuy has not responded to the opportunity to detail his criticism, although he has been active on Wikipedia during this time [1].

Consequently I am removing the Pseudoscience tag for the reasons given. This is endorsed by 6-to-1 in favour, and represents a healthy consensus. --Iantresman 11:29, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually, your reasons for wanting it removed were totally disputed. Further evidence showed that it's already in the category by virtue of being in a subcategory. Thus the consensus disputed your view that it should be removed for your reasons given. I did not feel the need to respond, though now that I see you made a statement at the bottom making deceptive comments about what the results were. Ghost is still listed under Pseudoscience, it just is in a specific subsection instead of being at the top. Thanks for playing though. DreamGuy 06:22, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I respect your right to disagree. But my reasons were not disputed, an alternative reason was given; they are not mutually exclusive. I also I disagree with the "sub-category" argument. Categories are "sets", and not hierarchical chains (although they can appear that way). By I digress. --Iantresman 10:20, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

What does this mean?

This unreferenced statement in the article appears to be meaningless:

"Spiritist séances together with pseudoscientific explanations like ectoplasm and spirit photography appeared to give a quality of scientific method to apparitions."

How on earth can an apparition have a "scientific method"? Colin4C (talk) 19:48, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I have to admit that is a very interesting sentence :) ...I sorta know what it is trying to say (??) But may as well remove and start from scratch I think. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:31, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

It is saying that in the 19th century, these seances were considered scientific experiments. The "pseudo" in "pseudoscience" says that they were not, in fact, good science. An "apparition" *Latin spectrum) can obviously be studied in a scientific way. We scientists refer to such study as "observation" within an "experiment". If the apparition has reproducible qualities, a "law" may be formulated. If not, not. --dab (𒁳) 20:56, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

For now, sentences that don't make sense can be removed or replaced.

I ask Colin to be patient. The paranomal stuff shouldn't be entirely forgotten, but I realised the more I thought about it that the paranormal stuff that we did have was getting in the way of writing the bulk of the article, which should be about ghosts in culture, folklore, psychology and whatnot. --TS 01:09, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Just to add that phenomena can be observed, and recorded without a requirement for a scientific explanation to give a rationale or prove that they exist. E.g. one can observe and describe cloud formations, without a scientific or ontological theory for them. The data of history, also, are usually recorded without benefit of scientific explanations...Colin4C (talk) 18:53, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

indeed. impartial observation is the prerequisite for any scientific theory. If you can see ghosts, you can observe them just like you can observe clouds, or just like you can keep a journal of your dreams, even before you formulate any theories. It is unclear which are the "sentences that don't make sense" Colin is referring to. Jung himself was capable of seeing ghosts at times, and he made perfectly rational use of his experiences. You can agree or disagree with Jung's views of the psyche, but it would be difficult to claim that his reports of his "ghost sightings" were just lies: you would need to reject all literature on dream studies, since obviously no account of a dream is ever verifiable. --dab (𒁳) 09:32, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I've been mulling your comment over for a bit. Carl Jung was "capable of seeing ghosts", and also reported a few other bizarre phenomena. In his writing he stressed the incidence of apparent confusion in human perception between the exterior and the interior, and aspects of his thinking converged with that of the later Copenhagen School of theoretical physicists, to the extent that appeals to Jungian interpretations and to quantum physics have both become touchstones of paranormalists. Having said that, Jung's thoughts on the paranormal, and on ghosts, haven't been so influential that ghosts (or the paranormal in general) are taken seriously as external phenomena. Modern psychologists are, I think, more likely to take the approach adopted by Richard Wiseman, [2], and test the hypothesis that ghosts are "all in the mind" (in this case, by seeing if people can predict what kind of ghosts will be reported in a given location). --TS 12:53, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

conflating this with the Copenhagen school etc. is pure quantum quackery. Obviously ghosts are "all in the mind" (or psyche), along with the rest of the known universe. --dab (𒁳) 21:40, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

PROPOSED VERSIONs

Scientific explanations

Some researchers, such as Professor Michael Persinger (Laurentian University, Canada), have speculated that changes in geomagnetic fields (created, e.g., by tectonic stresses in the Earth's crust or solar activity) could stimulate the brain's temporal lobes and produce many of the experiences associated with hauntings. This theory has been tested in various ways. Some scientists have examined the relationship between the time of onset of unusual phenomena in allegedly haunted locations and any sudden increases in global geomagnetic activity. Others have investigated whether the location of alleged hauntings is associated with certain types of magnetic activity. Finally, a third strand of work has involved laboratory studies in which stimulation of the temporal lobe with magnetic fields has elicited subjective experiences that strongly parallel phenomena associated with hauntings. All of this work is controversial; it has attracted a large amount of debate and disagreement. Sound is thought to be another cause of supposed sightings. Frequencies lower than 20 hertz are called infrasound and are normally inaudible, but scientists Richard Lord and Richard Wiseman have concluded that infrasound can cause humans to experience bizarre feelings in a room, such as anxiety, extreme sorrow, a feeling of being watched, or even the chills. Carbon monoxide poisoning, which can cause changes in perception of the visual and auditory systems, was recognized as a possible explanation for haunted houses as early as 1921.

Limitations of human perception and ordinary physical explanations can account for such sightings; for example, air pressure changes in a home causing doors to slam, or lights from a passing car are reflected through a window at night. Pareidolia, an innate tendency to recognize patterns in random perceptions, is what some skeptics believe causes people to believe that they have seen ghosts. Reports of ghosts "seen out of the corner of the eye" may be accounted for by the sensitivity of human peripheral vision. According to Nickell:

"...peripheral vision is very sensitive and can easily mislead, especially late at night, when the brain is tired and more likely to misinterpret sights and sounds."

Nickell also states that a person's belief that a location is haunted may cause them to interpret mundane events as confirmations of a haunting:

"Once the idea of a ghost appears in a household . . . no longer is an object merely mislaid. . . . There gets to be a dynamic in a place where the idea that it's haunted takes on a life of its own. One-of-a-kind quirks that could never be repeated all become further evidence of the haunting."

Scientific skepticism

The scientific consensus, as expressed by the National Science Foundation, considers the claimed ability of people to communicate with the dead, as well as belief in ghosts and spirits, to be pseudoscientific beliefs. They have included them in a list of ten items:

From Note 29: "[29] Those 10 items were extrasensory perception (ESP), that houses can be haunted, ghosts/that spirits of dead people can come back in certain places/situations, telepathy/communication between minds without using traditional senses, clairvoyance/the power of the mind to know the past and predict the future, astrology/that the position of the stars and planets can affect people's lives, that people can communicate mentally with someone who has died, witches, reincarnation/the rebirth of the soul in a new body after death, and channeling/allowing a "spirit-being" to temporarily assume control of a body."

Ghosts, hauntings, and related paranormal concepts have been characterized as pseudoscientific by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, a position endorsed by the National Science Foundation. Joe Nickell of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, wrote that there was no credible scientific evidence that any location was inhabited by spirits of the dead.

Pseudoscientific explanations

Further information: Ectoplasm (paranormal), Ghost hunting, and Paranormal

Some authors, beginning in the 19th century, have sought to explain hauntings scientifically. Authors such as Michael Persinger have speculated that changes in geomagnetic fields could stimulate the brain's temporal lobes and produce many of the experiences associated with hauntings. Other explanations suggest the effect of infrasound, or carbon monoxide poisoning,

Scientific interpretations of ghosts, hauntings, and related paranormal concepts have been characterized as pseudoscience by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, a position endorsed by the National Science Foundation.

Comments

I suppose you want comments here. all in all, this seems to be an improvement. however, I have two issues with it:

1. The first paragraph strikes me as oddly similar to fringe research for something that's supposed to be skeptical. I mean... the effect on human temporal lobes of minute changes in geomagnetic fields??? That's one baby step away from saying that people are get crazy under a full moon. I don't mind including this if it's all reputable research, but cant we rephrase it so it doesn't sound quite so... odd?
2. I like the second paragraph. no problems.
3. The CSI is not the NSF. Again, the sources I have seen seem to indicate that the CSI is an offshoot of the NSF designed to advocate for scientific reasoning and science education, but you cannot import the full weight of the NSF into this statement when the given source only refers to the CSI. I also have concerns about the weighting of this para - it seems awfully detailed for what it's trying to say, but once the sourcing issue is cleared up we can discuss that. --Ludwigs2 06:20, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

The first paragraph is not my creation, but is current content. Has someone claimed that the CSI is the NSF? Not that I know of. The NSF quotes them approvingly since they share the same POV. It's that simple, and let's keep it that way. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:50, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

ok, then we can revise the first paragraph to be something less silly.

re: "Has someone claimed that the CSI is the NSF?": has someone claimed that they are? still waiting on a source here... --Ludwigs2 08:28, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

my main concern is WP:DUE. It is perfectly possible to reference all sorts of confused pseudoscience, and then go into great detail of people debunking it as pseudoscience, but how relevant is this to the main Ghost article? It would be far more important to get a decent coverage of, say, the Jungian understanding. Any section on geomagnetics, infrasound and what have you that is in greater or even similar detail to the discussion of the Jungian point of view is way overblown. The proposed section is fair enough in term of content, but it is way too long and detailed. condense it into one or at most two very brief paragraphs with the gist "Pseudoscientfic explanations have been proposed. They have been debunked. The end." --dab (𒁳) 11:04, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I have condensed the paragraph into another proposal above. This is the very maximum of what I believe to be adequate. Any further detail will need to go to Paranormal articles. --dab (𒁳) 11:19, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi dab. I'm not trying to be a smart aleck, but the main Ghost article departs from its purely philosophical discussion of ghosts to address the investigation of or reality of ghosts in several sections, and in "great detail".

Examples spread throughout article.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
In 1848, the Fox sisters of Hydesville, New York claimed to have communication with the disembodied spirits of the dead and launched the Spiritualist movement, which claimed many adherents in the nineteenth century.[42] The rise of Spiritualism saw an increase in popular interest in the supernatural. Books on the supernatural were published for the growing middle class, such as 1852’s Mysteries, by Charles Elliott, which contains “sketches of spirits and spiritual things”, including accounts of the Salem witch trials, the Cock Lane Ghost, and the Rochester Rappings.[43] The Night Side of Nature, by Catherine Crowe, published in 1853, provided definitions and accounts of wraiths, doppelgangers, apparitions and haunted houses.[44] Spiritualist organizations were formed in America and Europe, such as the London Spiritualist Alliance, which published a newspaper called The Light, featuring articles such as “Evenings at Home in Spiritual Séance”, “Ghosts in Africa” and “Chronicles of Spirit Photography”, advertisements for "mesmerists” and patent medicines, and letters from readers about personal contact with ghosts.[45] Mainstream newspapers treated stories of ghosts and haunting as they would any other news story. An account in the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1891, "sufficiently bloody to suit the most fastidious taste", tells of a house believed haunted by the ghosts of three murder victims seeking revenge against their killer’s son, who was eventually driven insane. Many families, “having no faith in ghosts”, thereafter moved into the house, but all soon moved out again.[46] The claims of spiritualists and others as to the reality of ghosts were investigated by the Society for Psychical Research, founded in London in 1882. The Society set up a Committee on Haunted Houses and a Literary Committee which looked at the literature on the subject.[42] Apparitions of the recently deceased, at the moment of their death, to their friends and relations, were very commonly reported.[47] One celebrated example was the strange appearance of Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon, walking through the drawing room of his family home in Eaton Square, London, looking straight ahead, without exchanging a word to anyone, in front of several guests at a party being given by his wife on 22 June 1893 whilst he was supposed to be in a ship of the Mediterranean Squadron, manoeuvering off the coast of Syria. Subsequently it was reported that he had gone down with his ship, the HMS Victoria, that very same night, after it had collided with the HMS Camperdown following an unexplained and bizarre order to turn the ship in the direction of the other vessel.[48] Such crisis apparitions have received serious study by parapsychologists with various explanations given to account for them, including telepathy, as well as the traditional view that they represent disembodied spirits.[49][50] In the 19th century, spiritism resurrected "belief in ghosts" as the object of systematic inquiry, and popular opinion in Western culture remains divided.[53] Professional parapsychologists and “ghosts hunters”, such as Harry Price and Peter Underwood, published accounts of their experiences with ostensibly true ghost stories such as The Most Haunted House in England, and Ghosts of Borley. The ghost hunting theme has been featured in reality television series, such as Ghost Hunters, Ghost Hunters International, Ghost Lab, Most Haunted, and A Haunting. It is also represented in children's television by such programs as The Ghost Hunter and Ghost Trackers. Ghost hunting also gave rise to multiple guidebooks to haunted locations, and ghost hunting “how-to” manuals.

In my opinion, that's a lot of WP:WEIGHT that needs to be balanced by a mainstream view, and I agree that the section containing this view need be succinct, but I would avoid trying to make it "as short as possible". LuckyLouie (talk) 15:39, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, half of that isn't really scientific investigation (the first two paragraphs you cite are really just groups interested in sightings; it doesn't get pseudoscientific until the 'Society for Psychical Research' section). however, I do see your point. I'm tempted to suggest that we take the 'scientific perspectives' section and work it in with the material above, the way we would a 'criticism' section of other articles. give me a bit and I'll draft a proposed version. --Ludwigs2 16:11, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I mostly agree, and I also share the view that the Persinger/infrasonic stuff is somewhat cringe-worthy and doesn't really represent the mainstream view on the subject, so I'd be interested to see what you can come up with. - LuckyLouie (talk) 16:21, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to try my first proposal to at least divide the existing section into its parts by adding a heading, separating the blended elements into their respective subjects, and strengthening the new second section. I'd like to try that and see how it looks. Then we can continue with other proposals which may well tweak or alter it. Please consider it an attempt to improve the existing content. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:37, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I have implemented the changes and added mention in the lead. Now each section can be dealt with individually. Since it was a confused blend, it should be easier to tweak now. Note that I'm well aware that my version is no doubt a temporary improvement. Since what existed was such a mess, an improvement should at least be respected as such, and not reverted back to the mess. Now it is open to further improvements, which will make the article even better. The mainstream POV still needs further development. Improvements are welcomed! -- Brangifer (talk) 05:51, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

"Skepticism" now under "history"

LuckyLouie (talk · contribs) moved the paragraph.[3] While this may be a way forward, the current arrangement is still very awkward. We now have "History -> Modern period", and under "Modern period" first "Spiritism" and then "Skepticism". What is even worse is that the "pseudoscience" part is now represented upside down. A ghost story or belief in ghosts is not "pseudoscience", it is a story, or a belief. The actual pseudoscience (geomagnetism, infrasound, etc.) is now presented as if it was part of the rational skepticism out to debunk pseudoscience. This needs to be fixed. --dab (𒁳) 19:17, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I think the Spiritism section, with its claims of pseudoscientific investigation of ectoplasm and spirit mediums, is the natural place to follow up with the majority view on those subjects. The infrasound stuff is admittedly up for grabs. - LuckyLouie (talk) 19:22, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

ectoplasm and spirit mediums doesn't need to be "followed up" by criticism, this should be stated in the same paragraph. This is very difficult to get right. We should perhaps begin by fixing Spiritism and Spiritualism, currently two articles which both say they are identical in scope, but Spiritualism is labelled as a religion while Spiritism is cast in terms of the "study of phenomena". A religion cannot be pseudoscience because it doesn't pretend to be science. This means that mediumship, if taken as a belief, is not pseudoscience. Proposed mechanisms such as ectoplasm are clearly pseudoscience. The magnetism/infrasound stuff is in the same category as ectoplasm, i.e. the attempt to reduce ghost sightings, by definition non-corporeal, to a material explanation.

I think we will need to lose the National Science Foundation quote, as what the NSF terms "beliefs in pseudoscience" does not concern pseudoscience at all. They correctly define pseudoscience as "claims presented so that they appear [to be] scientific even though they lack supporting evidence and plausibility", but then they go on to include clairvoyance, ghosts, mentally communicating with the dead, and channeling. Why these items should be presented as "scientific" and by whom is not made clear. I would argue that clairvoyance, ghosts, mentally communicating with the dead, and channeling, as long as they are not bolstered by pseudoscience of the ectoplasm/geomagnetism sort are not pseudoscience at all but items of folk religion, and the NSF could just as easily have gone on to include belief in angels, or God, the only thing that stopped them was their cultural bias, knowing that they wouldn't get away with labelling theism as pseudoscience in a majority theistic society. --dab (𒁳) 19:42, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

To me, deconstructing the concept of pseudoscience isn't that helpful, but I respect your desire to get this article right. My view is that the article, especially the Spiritist section, touches on claims sourced to people like David Fontana and the Society for Psychical Research, and the opinions of the NSF per those subjects is very relevant. I've long been a fan of your work here and believe you have the best interests of the encyclopedia in mind, but I respectfully submit that it sounds like you are dreaming of an article entitled "Ghost (belief)" or "Ghost (legend)" rather than Ghost. - LuckyLouie (talk) 15:26, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

As I say, I think this is rather difficult, and I am trying to find the best solution by discussion, I do not have a fixed idea in mind. What I do have in mind is "Ghost (belief, legend, tradition, archetype)", a.k.a. "Ghost". The Society for Psychical Research is obviously of historical interest, and I really fail to see why the NSF in particular should be relevant to that. For some reason, it appears, people feel they need to counter-punch against spiritism much more than against, say, classical mythology. We don't need a dedicated section explaining that there isn't really a physical river known as Styx where the dead are ferried across, and that the NSF has denounced belief in classical mythology in stern words. So why should we need dedicated sections to "debunk" 19th century spiritualist movements? And if "debunking" is felt to be necessary, why in a separate "skepticism" section and not worked into the relevant portion of the article? If you feel Fontana or other works cited are less than encyclopedic, feel free to either tag them with {{verify credibility}} or just remove them. --dab (𒁳) 15:18, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

looking into the background of David Fontana, I expect he is going to be one of the more quotable paranormal researchers. --dab (𒁳) 15:48, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

well, if you ask me, we could probably dispense with the headings in the 'Modern Period' section and wrap the skepticism into the other material. essentially, we'd talk about all the funky things people have done in the 19th & 20th centuries to try to 'prove' that ghosts exist, close with a couple of sentences which say that all of that boils down to misconstructed pseudoscience, and drop the remaining material as superfluous. that is, unless you want to move the geomagnetic stuff up as a kind of ultra-modern form of pseudoscience... --Ludwigs2 17:15, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good in principle. I tend to favor integration rather than relegating the scientific skepticism to a "criticism ghetto". Also, if memory serves, the geo and infrasound stuff sources back to the Society for Psychical Research, so it could possibly be moved to parapsychology, ghost hunting, paranormal, or some other relevant article. As far as the NSF not being relevant, I don't agree, but some wider opinion on that matter would be useful. - LuckyLouie (talk) 18:33, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I don't think the NSF is 'not relevant' - I rather like the NSF (and not just because they've given me money - lol). I do think they just get misused a bit by WP editors. Would scientists as a rule generally hold that ghosts don't exist? probably yes. would the NSF say that there's no empirical evidence for the existence of ghosts? almost certainly, though I don't know if they have said that explicitly. would the NSF decry the belief in ghosts as pseudoscientific claptrap? doubtful - the NSF isn't given to indulging in speculation or social judgements of that nature. The NSF is going to very carefully distinguish pseudoscience as 'research modalities that fail to meet rigorous scientific standards', and isn't going to extend the scientific criticism to the related non-scientific belief structures. Ectoplasometry (assuming there is such a thing) is pseudoscience; seances and ouija boards aren't (unless someone tries to elevate them to the status of scientific proof). let me try a revision in a bit, and feel free to revise or revert if you dislike it. --Ludwigs2 19:38, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

NSF issues aside for the moment, I found the Persinger infasound/geomagnetic stuff actually sources to the BBC here and here, so it may have relevance to this article after all. - LuckyLouie (talk) 18:00, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Context of NSF statement

These comments are a continuation of discussions above....

Just to make sure we know what is being referred to by the NSF statement.... Here is the actual sentence they use before their reference 29:

• "Nevertheless, about three-fourths of Americans hold at least one pseudoscientific belief; i.e., they believed in at least 1 of the 10 survey items (similar to the percentage recorded in 2001).[29]"

Then comes our statement, based on that and their ref 29:

• The scientific consensus, as expressed by the National Science Foundation, considers the claimed ability of people to communicate with the dead, as well as belief in ghosts and spirits, to be "pseudoscientific beliefs".

Have I summarized that source wrongly? If not, then what's the problem? I consider the NSF to be a more reliable source than an editor's opinion. I see their statement as a pretty good summation of items that can be termed pseudoscientific beliefs. Any belief, including religious ones, that make falsifiable statements, are potentially pseudoscientific beliefs. Even if we could philosophically pick their opinion apart, they are a reliable source that should still be cited, and our disagreements with them would just be uncitable OR that shouldn't influence how we construct the article. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:10, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't think this is a question of whether you've summarized the source incorrectly. I do think you are giving too much emphasis to what strikes me as a casual use of the word 'pseudoscience'. strictly speaking, 'pseudoscientific belief' could only mean a belief derived from improper scientific claims: a belief in Deadly Orgone Radiation, for instance, would be pseudoscientific, because the scientific claims and research that look for orgone are clearly pseudoscience. However, it is not at all clear to me that most people's conceptions of ghosts owes anything to the pseudoscientific attempts to identify ghosts. Your analysis is far to broad - for instance, it would cast any belief in God as pseudoscientific, as well as any belief in life, or social structures, or identities. is that what you meant to do? --Ludwigs2 06:37, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm just quoting from the NSF's yearly document about pseudoscience, and that's a pretty notable source. What I mean about it is rather irrelevant. I must bow to the source. I suspect they understand the matter better than any of us. We just need to avoid OR in this matter, and using such a RS is a good way. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:24, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

OR is a tricky thing: you know that as well as I do. My concern here is that this quote is being used out of proportion to support a position that the NSF would not itself support, and one that is not explicitly outlined in this document. please note that this is not a 'yearly document about pseudoscience' but a yearly document about 'public attitudes and understanding about Science and Technology' - it is concerned with media and education, not with scientific standards, and doesn't try to outline standards for or definitions of pseudoscience. I don't doubt that the NSF would consider the idea of ghosts 'flawed' at best, and would consider most research into the topic pseudoscientific, but I doubt they would go so far as to condemn the very idea (given the utter lack of evidence surrounding the issue), and they certainly wouldn't support language that outright refutes conventional religious and personal beliefs. I don't dispute the quote, I'm just leery of over-reading it, if you see what I mean. --Ludwigs2 08:01, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that "... hold at least one pseudoscientific belief...[29]" is pretty clear language. Otherwise you're correct that it isn't the document, but the section Belief in Pseudoscience which they include each year. -- Brangifer (talk) 15:43, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

And Einstein once said that 'God does not play dice with the universe', which does not make him an opponent of legalized gambling. I hope you're not suggesting that we take a fundamentalist interpretation of NSF texts?

Look, if you really want to make this case, then I would expect to see some secondary sources which suggest that the NSF is actively engaged in researching and refuting paranormal beliefs. what you have here is a single primary source, and there are limits to how far that can be stretched. Clearly there's evidence that the NSF and scientists in general don't take it as far as you're suggesting they do: even with the uber-case of creationism, scientists were (for the most part) careful to distinguish creationism as a pseudoscientific theory from Christian religious beliefs more broadly put, despite the fact that they could have debunked the entire faith using the kind of logic you've used above. right? --Ludwigs2 16:36, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Ludwigs2 above, this is a very casual usage of the term "pseudoscience". The NSF is a United States government agency and was doing a survey of US demographics. This is notable exclusively in the context of "belief in ghosts in the USA", and of very limited relevance to the topic of "ghosts" in general. We already have a statement that "about 32% of Americans 'believe in the existence of ghosts'." If people insist, we can put the reference to the NFS next to that, and mention that the NFS lists this item in the class of "pseudoscientific beliefs". What we cannot do is use this survey in an argument on the nature of pseudoscience.

The reference cited does not, as claimed above, invoke any "scientific consensus" against "the claimed ability of people to communicate with the dead". I do not believe there can be any "scientific consensus against the claimed ability of people to communicate with the dead" any more that there can be a "scientific consensus against the claimed ability of people to communicate with God". There can only be a scientific consensus against specific proposals of underlying mechanisms that allow such communication. There is a world of difference between the two. The word "consensus" doesn't even occur in the source, so this is a clear case of misattribution. The only thing the source can be used for is the inclusion of "communication with the dead" under the class of "paranormal phenomena" (while, for some reason, nobody seems to be inclined to include prayer under 'paranormal phenomena'). I am not objecting to the NFS source for what it is, I am objecting to the misguided and tendentious use it is being made of in this article. --dab (𒁳) 17:57, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm in full agreement with Ludwigs2 and Dbachmann. In a nutshell, a sentence fragment, such as "pseudoscientific beliefs such as X", is not equivalent to the proposition, "all instances of X are pseudoscientific." For instance, suppose that the NSF had said the following: "Nevertheless, about three-fourths of Americans own at least one farm animal; e.g., they have a goose." This statement does not mean that all geese live on farms; it simply demonstrates the use of a descriptor ("farm") to indicate a degree of semantic coherency among the items it describes. Presumably, the NSF somehow, and to some degree, associates paranormal beliefs with pseudoscientific methods. But they probably do not mean that all believers are by definition pseudoscientists. Cosmic Latte (talk) 19:44, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

The comments above led to the creation of the following RfC... Brangifer

RfC: Context of NSF statement about belief in ghosts

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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A need has arisen for me to lengthen my closing of this RfC.

• NSF is a reliable source for stating that "belief in ghosts and spirits" are "pseudoscientific beliefs." However, this assertion should not be made in the article's narrative voice but rather, should be attributed to NSF in the article text itself (not only as an inline cite or note) and likewise qualified by any further, verifiably published assertions from NSF.

• The NSF statement should not be used to assert in the narrative voice of any article that such a statement is "the scientific consensus."

• Verifiable assertions which don't agree with NSF's published take on this may (and likely should) be cited to reliable, published sources. NSF's published take may be wrong (in that it's sloppy).

• This RfC close was meant only as a means to handle text and attribution in the article Ghost and shouldn't be extrapolated. It may not be taken as support for categorizing any article or topic. It may not be used in support of any site-wide policy, new or now standing. I never meant it as such, nor did I see the RfC as having to do with categories or wider policy: This close is supported by policy but it is not meant to support any further takes on policy, since any such discussions should happen on project pages having to do with any policies being cited.

• This close should not be taken to mean that belief in ghosts and spirits is in itself a pseudoscience, nor should it be taken to mean that any study of such beliefs is a pseudoscience. The notions of whether or not such beliefs exist among people, what such beliefs carry and how they arise are all falsifiable and hence could be the subject of an anthropological study done with scientific methodology, which would not be pseudoscience.

• Roughly speaking, only studies of ghosts themselves (not beliefs in them) which claim a scientific methodology targeted onto a falsifiable hypothesis where none exists (such as through deep flaws in the methodology) would be taken as pseudoscience. Only if a belief was then bolstered by a claim to such a (botched) study, could it be called "pseudoscientific" but even so, to put such an assertion into article text, a straightforward citation to a reliable source about this specific belief (there are many beliefs having to do with ghosts) would be needed, without synthesis.

Lastly, the sources show that we don't know very much about why folks think about ghosts in the ways they do. Hence, to be encyclopedic, the article should echo all the reliably sourced outlooks on this, swayed by WP:WEIGHT and keeping in mind that WP:FRINGE is not policy, it's a guideline and an often mistakenly cited one at that. Gwen Gale (talk) 10:50, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm closing this RfC as National Science Foundation is a reliable source for stating that "belief in ghosts and spirits" are "pseudoscientific beliefs." Editors should keep in mind that the NSF position on this is meaningful, notable, reliable and scientific. This does not mean that other verifiable and widely, reliably published outlooks cannot be cited, so long as WP:UNDUE has sway. Likewise any assertions as to current scientific consensus. The consensus may be wrong (research on how people come up with notions about ghosts may not be deeply understood), but en.Wikipedia is not about truth, it's about verifiability. Gwen Gale (talk) 15:40, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Rfctag 1. Please weigh in on whether the National Science Foundation is a reliable source for stating that "belief in ghosts and spirits" are "pseudoscientific beliefs".

2. Also please discuss whether their expressions can be considered to represent the current scientific consensus (in the USA) on that subject. -- Brangifer (talk) 16:52, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Note that the comments above this RfC laid the foundations for its creation. Some comments below refer to comments above, so read them too. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:24, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

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• Support. The NSF is clearly a reliable source for such claims, and their expressions can be considered to represent the current scientific consensus unless a significant number of other scientific organisations disagree. Verbal chat 17:09, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

• Support. Coming here from RSN. Verbal states it perfectly, and all I can do is repeat: The NSF is clearly a reliable source for such claims, and their expressions can be considered to represent the current scientific consensus unless a significant number of other scientific organisations disagree. THF (talk) 17:16, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

• Support. Yes, the NSF is a reliable source on this. The distinction between pseudoscientific beliefs and mystical beliefs is not hard and fast--a belief in the supernatural, in the absence of a scientific framework and standards to weigh evidence, is both. Ghosts are just one example. Tasty monster (TS on one of those new fangled telephone thingies) 17:39, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

• Support. I'll stick my oar in here to say I'm not convinced by arguments above that equate belief in ghosts to belief in God as a black and white proposition. Admittedly, it could be argued (by us) that a belief can't be a science, and therefore can't be a psuedoscience, yet the NSF report very clearly characterizes belief in ghosts and haunted houses as "pseudoscientific" so that's what I feel the article should reflect. I also think the NSF report is a very reliable source for scientific consensus as it applies to pseudoscience. - LuckyLouie (talk) 18:23, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

• Support. I agree that the NSF is a reliable source regarding concepts presented as science, in terms of whether they actually represent science or pseudoscience. While the sentence quoted above, taken out of context, raises questions about whether the present issue (of ghosts as psuedoscience) is being given undue weight for that source, a more complete reading of the cited text and the prior versions (e.g. 2002) make it clear that each of the claims (including belief in haunted houses and ghosts) is considered pseudoscientific. The text repeatedly refers to these claims as pseudoscientific. -- Scray (talk) 01:57, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• Support. The text of http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind06/c7/c7s2.htm#c7s2l3 is quite clear that it considers belief in ghosts to be one of the ten definitive pseudoscientific beliefs, and the NSF is a reliable source for this purpose (identifying what is a pseudoscience).

• To answer Cosmic Latte's goose argument, the equivalent statement would not mean that all geese live on farms, but it would mean that a goose is a farm animal, even if one happened to be in a zoo, the same way that man is a two legged animal, even if some men happen to have lost one or both of their legs. That does not make someone who believes in ghosts a pseudoscientist, but that's just because people who hold pseudoscientific beliefs are no more pseudoscientists than people who hold scientific beliefs are necessarily scientists; they can be astronauts or hairdressers. But a belief in ghosts is clearly considered a pseudoscientific belief.
• In response to DBachmann's comment about ability versus mechanisms, that is also not correct. There can absolutely be a scientific consensus that some things are not achievable by any mechanisms, for example travel faster than the speed of light. Communication with the dead seems to be one of these.
• Finally, in response to Lugwigs2, please note that belief in God is not mentioned in that document, so bringing it up is an irrelevant distraction to this specific question. The concept of God is much more complex than belief in ghosts; for one thing, most religious systems claim to be beyond not only measurement but even logic, so it's not clear that it's theoretically falsifiable. --GRuban (talk) 03:17, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• To that last point (about God) I think it's important to note that NSF specifically addresses beliefs presented as science. Any source presenting evidence for God as science would fall within the domain of the NSF and other reputable scientific bodies. -- Scray (talk) 04:37, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• Exactly. That's why normal religious and metaphysical beliefs don't qualify for inclusion in the List of topics characterized as pseudoscience, but some of their applications do. For example, the subsection about Religious and spiritual beliefs includes Scientology's Dianetics, and Fundamentalist Christianity's Flood geology, and should also include Christian Science. Other beliefs that are included elsewhere in the List are Vitalism, chiropractic's Vertebral subluxation, Innate Intelligence, and Applied kinesiology, as well as TCM's Meridian (Chinese medicine) and acupuncture points. These are all falsifiable beliefs being presented by professions as biological facts, and thus they are pseudoscientific. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:36, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• Support. The NSF report is unequivocally reliable for stating that belief in ghosts falls under the rubric of pseudoscience. Likewise, absent any report of similar reliability, this conclusion should be presented as scientific consensus; period; full stop. At the risk of furthering the very digression I would like to avoid - Brangifer, part of the above is quite a bit off topic, and even as an atheist I feel the urge to argue it (not strongly enough to actually do so, mind you, just the urge). - 2/0 (cont.) 10:52, 28 February 2010 (UTC) My distracting comment removed per 2over0's comment. Brangifer (talk) 04:31, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

• Disagree. no it isn't? A discussion isn't just about repeating your point as if it somehow became better the more you repeated it. It is also about trying to grasp what the other side is saying. The entire point is that ghosts by definition are not part of "the physical, testable universe" as Brangifer puts it. I would really deplore it if this now degenerated into your average online debate on naive concepts of atheism vs theism. As Scray acutely observes, the NFS specifically addresses "beliefs presented as science". When they say "belief in ghosts" under a heading of "pseudoscience", they implicitly mean "belief in ghosts presented as science". The NFS is not to blame if some people attach too much weight on a literal exegesis of their report. Belief in ghosts presented as science is pseudoscience (that's what the NFS states as a matter of course, and what I propose is a very obvious and undisputed point). Belief in ghosts as long as it is not presented as science cannot be pseudoscience, as the NFS is very well aware, does imply in its definition of pseudoscience, and expects its readers to realize as a matter of course.

if people insist on constructing a definition of "pseudoscience" based on the casual wording on the NFS report that flies in the face of the very definition of pseudoscience presented in the same report, this is a huge WP:REDFLAG, and will require excellent, published, peer-reviewed references addressing the definition of pseudoscience directly. So much time can be wasted on Wikipedia because some editors think they can present an isolated soundbite and then play at WP:IDHT. --dab (𒁳) 11:28, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• Sorry, dab. We're not allowed to do our own analysis of sources and decide they're self-contradictory. That's called Wikipedia:Original research. We have to wait for another reliable source to say that. By the way, the NSF report is an excellent, etc., reference addressing the definition of pseudoscience directly; that's exactly what we've all been asked here to weigh in on.--GRuban (talk) 15:06, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• I'm puzzled by dab's invocation of WP:REDFLAG. My reading of that guideline suggests that fringe theories require exceptional evidence. Refutation of pseudoscience by the NSF is certainly not a fringe theory; on the other hand, the existence of ghosts is. Thus, I'm not sure whether this guideline is being used to support the NSF's characterization (which would be appropriate) or to refute it. Similarly, the invocation of WP:IDHT seems to be a non-sequitur, since I see no evidence for a consensus against the point 2/0 is making. -- Scray (talk) 15:33, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• Disagree. [edit conflict] Well, pardon my jumping in, but if we're going to analyze the sources, it's better (I would think) that we do it on the talk page than that we do it in the article. The article seems to want to assume something like the following: A) The NSF includes a belief in ghosts in a list of surveyed beliefs. B) The NSF, in passing, refers to this list as a group of "pseudoscientific beliefs". C) The NSF may be taken as a valid representative of scientific consensus. Therefore, D) The scientific consensus is that a belief in ghosts is pseudoscientific. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that A, B, C, and even D are true. The problem is that, by the time we come to D, we've done too much work. More precisely, we have made "analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims about material found in a primary source", and we therefore have have violated a key part of WP:PSTS. Of course the NSF is a reliable source. We should be able to hold it in high enough esteem to suppose that, if the NSF wanted to say, "The scientific consensus is that a belief in ghosts is pseudoscientific", then the NSF would come right out and say this. But that's not what they said in the source provided. What they "said" about ghosts is fragmentary: Ghosts show up in a list, and the list shows up in discussion. If dab's argument is "original research", it is because he has taken the extra effort to show that the article's own original research--in addition merely to being original research--is flawed, insofar as the article has put together a dubious semantic puzzle from the pieces it has cut out of the NSF source. The dubiousness, he says, is in inferring that the NSF intended a simple equation--an axiomatic subject complement--of ghost-belief to pseudoscience. My A-D-C-D argument about WP:PSTS acquires the phrase, "in passing" from the arguments that dab and Ludwigs2 have set forth. But whether or not that phrase is warranted, the basic PSTS problem remains. If the scientific consensus is indeed that any belief--even a religiously based belief or a private conviction following some personal experience--in ghosts is pseudoscience, then surely somebody would have said so in a reliable, secondary source. As it stands, even the primary source doesn't explicitly go this far (i.e., as far as A, B, C, therefore D). Cosmic Latte (talk) 15:52, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• The splitting into parts A-D is a straw man. That the NSF is a reliable source is a criterion for using the source, not part of the analysis of the source. It is clear from that source that the NSF includes beliefs in ghosts/haunting as pseudoscientific. This is not WP:OR. -- Scray (talk) 16:29, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• That the NSF is a reliable source is implicit in its mere inclusion in the article. The OR (subtle as it may be) lies in the article's invocation of "scientific consensus". While there may be nothing wrong with the facts of this invocation, there is something disproportionate in the emphasis. The source, while incidentally reflective of scientific consensus, is not directly about that consensus--it's about popular beliefs, which (according to the source) contrast with other popular beliefs (i.e., popular respect for science contrasts with popular acceptance of pseudoscience). The NSF is not trying to set forth its own view (i.e., the scientific consensus) about what qualifies as pseudoscience; it's suggesting that the public has views that contrast with the public's other views. Speaking of contrast, if we interpret the source as making a blanket classification of ghost-belief as pseudoscience, then we force the source to contradict itself. The source states, "Pseudoscience has been defined as 'claims presented so that they appear [to be] scientific even though they lack supporting evidence and plausibility'". The source also refers to "pseudoscientific beliefs" held by the public. However, if we read "pseudoscientific beliefs" as having the same definitional force as the quote in the preceding sentence, then we pit one definition against another. The average believer in ghosts does not present his beliefs as science (does he?). A child who is afraid of ghosts does not attempt to justify his fear by scientific methods that he has yet to learn about! The source defines pseudoscience, and then refers to "pseudoscientific beliefs" that do not meet their own definition of pseudoscience, because these beliefs are not presented as science. I can think of only one reasonable explanation for the paradox: The NSF means different things by "pseudoscience" and "pseudoscientific beliefs". By the former, it means "claims presented so that they appear [to be] scientific even though they lack supporting evidence and plausibility". The latter, however, has to be shorthand for something like, "beliefs [by some people] in claims that have been presented [mostly by other people] so that that they appear to be scientific even though they lack supporting evidence and plausibility". The article is putting into scientists' mouths some fairly bold words that not only treat this shorthand as though it were longhand for something else, but which also contradict the longhand definition that the scientists already provide. Cosmic Latte (talk) 17:33, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I might suggest something like the following as a sort of compromise, though:

• Current version: "The scientific consensus, as expressed by the National Science Foundation, considers beliefs in an ability of people to communicate with the dead, as well as in ghosts and spirits more generally, to be pseudoscientific."

• Suggested alternative: "The National Science Foundation considers beliefs in an ability of people to communicate with the dead, as well as in ghosts and spirits more generally, to be consistent with pseudoscientific conclusions, and to contrast with the public's respect for scientific methods."

How about something like that? Besides, it might even allow a scientific method wikilink to sneak itself in. Cosmic Latte (talk) 17:46, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• The current version is far superior from an encyclopaedic viewpoint, gives the correct view of the scientific community, and is supported by the sources. Verbal chat 17:54, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• But, the alternative version is a horse's leg--and, in the preceding discussion, I've attempted to say why. Cosmic Latte (talk) 18:23, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• Support. [outdent] I agree with Verbal here. Of the two options listed above, the one labeled "Current version" is superior. The second engages in WP:WEASEL words so that it's more wordy with less said in the process. DreamGuy (talk) 18:16, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• Which words are the weasel words? WP:WEASEL cautions against excessively vague phrasing, not against lengthy albeit meticulously accurate prose. Cosmic Latte (talk) 18:23, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• Disagree. I need to point out that this RfC is badly formed, for the following reasons:

1. no one in the discussion (that I've seen) disagrees that the NSF is a reliable source for the given statement, which is a matter that is directly attributable.
2. no one in the discussion disagrees that the NSF is (in general) a good source for representing the scientific community.

The actual dispute point is over whether this NSF citation should be taken as a general statement that indicates the scientific community opposes pseudoscientific research (which everyone agrees with), or whether it should be extended to suggest that the NSF is actively engaged in efforts to refute or debunk paranormal beliefs broadly put (something which is not suggested by any scholarly sources). With that in mind I am closing this RfC as resolved, and ask that brangifer reopen the RfC on the substantive question. --Ludwigs2 20:31, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• I have reopened the RfC, I don't think you should unilaterally decide it's the wrong question when we all seem to think it's fine. Verbal chat 20:46, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• Agreed. Ludwigs2, your summation is itself somewhat flawed and uses straw man arguments. You fail to state in your summary that you and two other editors all thought that the NSF was just plain wrong, and that I was simply following the source, rather than engaging in such OR. You may have had something else in mind, but the arguments used by yourself, dab, and Cosmic Latte were dissing the NSF for its clear statement, and engaging in personal speculation and OR of why it was wrong, all heading towards removing it from the article. If that had ever happened I can't know, but it looked that way to me. Since such an important matter needed wider community input, I opened this RfC, which is supposed to do exactly that. We now have a number of previously uninvolved editors who accept that the NSF is a reliable source for such a statement, that it summarizes the scientific consensus, and that their statement is accurate. No one has claimed that they engage in "research". They don't have to. That's a straw man. They know of paranormal research, but they also understand the scientific method better than advocates and researchers of the paranormal, and thus they can state that such beliefs are pseudoscientific in nature. The RfC remains open for more comments. -- Brangifer (talk) 22:20, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• That deletion of this RfC has had a very disruptive effect, in that it triggered the bot to remove it from the three RfC watchlists on which it was listed. It will get relisted, but there can go many hours before that happens, during which time more input will be delayed. Unfortunately (but for good reason) it's not possible to revert those bot deletions. -- Brangifer (talk) 22:34, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• It looks like the bot restored it pretty fast, so not much disruption was caused by a long delay. "Good bot! Here's a doggy biscuit." -- Brangifer (talk) 02:25, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

look, if you guys want to have an RfC on the issue, feel free - I will myself agree with both of the points raised in the RfC question, as will almost everyone else. and then I will turn around and make exactly the arguments I made prior to the RfC about why the cite cannot be used in the way it's being used. the RfC does nothing to resolve that issue, and merely creates an opportunity for a whole lot of useless, off-topic discussion of broader pseudoscience issues.

I thought I was helping you guys focus on the correct issue, but by all means if you want the opportunity to vent about side issues, please continue. I will wait until this particular exercise in distraction and futility is over, and then I will go back to the original issue.

I recommend to all participants in this RfC to please keep focussed on the actual issues raised by the RfC, and not let it stray into side disputes. that way the RfC can be finished fairly quickly. no one really disagrees with the points raised anyway. --Ludwigs2 00:57, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

• Instead of getting bogged down by dwelling on what seems like your version of IDHT (actually stated more like "I won't hear that and will ignore it..."), I'll focus on something you say that might help us make progress. (It wouldn't be very constructive if you choose to ignore this RfC and return to old errors.) Above you mention "...why the cite cannot be used in the way it's being used." Please elaborate. You didn't say why, but you have said it before, and none of the participants here have considered it a valid argument or worthy of comment. Try to rephrase it here in such a manner that they can respond to it. -- Brangifer (talk) 02:12, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

• Actually, I did elaborate, quite extensively, in the section immediately preceding the RfC. in that section, I made it clear that (1) The NSF did in fact say what you say it said (agreeing with point 1 of this RfC), and (2) the NSF is clearly a well-renowned source for scientific opinion (agreeing at least partly with point 2 of this RfC). The problem on this article is that the citation comes from what must be treated as a primary source, and that source is a statistical work on public attitudes towards paranormal beliefs (which is one section of a larger work about the status of science as a whole). aside from the one or two or three comments in this section, I do not think there any other mentions of pseudoscience in the primary source document, there is certainly no indication that the use of the terminology is anything more than an off-handed colloquialism, and there are no secondary sources whatsoever which indicate that the NSF is actively engaged in or concerned about paranormal 'beliefs'. Their main concern (which I think could be sourced extensively) is in combatting clear pseudoscience - claims that masquerade themselves as scientific research without proper testing procedures. As I mentioned above, The scientific community in the creationism debate restricted themselves to refuting the pseudoscientific claims of creationism; they did not extend the debate to attempts to debunk Christian beliefs as a whole. If you want to use the NSF quote on this article (which I have no objection to) it can only be used to counter actual efforts at pseudoscience; trying to extend it beyond that starts to violate wp:SYN. --Ludwigs2 02:36, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

• And that happens to violate OR. We can't close the RfC with you holding this attitude. If you can convince the community that there really is a SYNTH issue here, then try starting another RfC on that subject, but note that doing so might be considered stonewalling and further disruption. I guess it depends on how you word it. -- Brangifer (talk) 22:37, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

• Support. Response to the request for comment, NSF is a reliable source. It is very obvious, there is consensus, why are editors arguing about it? Please close this RfC, it is resolved. MiRroar (talk) 15:05, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

• Support. NSF is a reliable source and reflects the scientific consensus in the United States. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:16, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

• yeesh... can someone please close this RfC as resolved? I'd do it myself, but it seems that every time I try to do anything sensible on this article a number of editors start screaming and kicking like I took their favorite toy away. --Ludwigs2 16:29, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

• Your comments above (02:36, 1 March 2010) indicate that you have no intention of agreeing with the results of this RfC and will resume where you left off. The RfC can hardly be closed with such a threat hanging over the article. This RfC was supposed to result in less disruption and stonewalling, not IDHT and a return to the previous state of affairs. -- Brangifer (talk) 22:37, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

• Support. At the risk of adding another redundant comment, I think the consensus here is very clear. NSF are a reputable source on the topic of what fields of study are and are not science. It's very clear that NSF's opinion is that ghosts and ghost-hunting is a topic of pseudoscientific enquiry, and not scientific inquiry. I agree with User:BullRangifer. --Salimfadhley (talk) 15:19, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

• Support. To respond to the questions posed above: Yes, the NSF is a reliable source for stating that belief in ghosts and spirits is pseudoscientific, and yes, their expressions can be considered to represent the current scientific consensus. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:18, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

• Support. The NSF is sufficiently reliable to support those statements, and I don't know how people can't argue that it isn't. I am opinating here since people is still edit-warring over the sentence, this arguing about notability. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:00, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

• PLEASE CLOSE THIS RfC and the one at WT:NPOV, and then block those who then refuse to abide by the RfC consensus. This disruption, forum shopping, and the incessant harassment against myself here and elsewhere by these few editors are insufferable violations of multiple policies. This little gang needs to be placed in a wikijail for some time. How about topic bans for them all and letting them know that harassment, including revenge RfC/Us, will not be tolerated? -- Brangifer (talk) 19:24, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

• Object. This silly RfC is simply BullRangifer's attempt to push through inaccurate language supported by a misquotation. See Talk:Ghost#No less than three problematic lead sentences on ghost "research" and pseudoscience below for a (so far promising) attempt to get a real consensus version that addresses this problem and doesn't push any POV. Closing this RfC does not seem a good idea. The RfC was never about what it claims to be about. Everybody agrees about statements 1 and 2. The real issue is whether it is admissible to pick random claims out of random NSF documents in a quote-mining fashion (having to assemble bits from the main text and bits from a footnote to get what one wants) and then to present the resulting statement A as if an NSF commission had worked on such a statement for a year and then published a paper A holds! and made a press release about it. Unfortunately I see no chance that BullRangifer will be sanctioned for this gaming. Hans Adler 20:13, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

• Hans, that's a very deceptive misrepresentation of the facts, which are attested to by the multiple supporters of this RfC. I would never be able to fool them with such shoddy tactics as you propose. Your consistent failures to AGF are affecting your judgment. -- Brangifer (talk) 20:26, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

geez, you never stop, do you? Hans has it exactly right - give it up already. --Ludwigs2 23:37, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

• (ec) You seem to have missed that nobody contradicted the statements in your RfC, not even a single of your opponents in the underlying dispute. That's a clear sign that you haven gone off on a tangent unrelated to the dispute. What they did was "disagree" with the RfC itself rather than oppose the statements. Hans Adler 23:42, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

• I wish that were true, but it's not. Ludwigs2 even went so far as to claim "that the NSF screwed it up once", referring to the 2006 version. Somehow he can read the NSF's mind and says they got it wrong. That's pretty bold OR, and definitely not a legitimate ground to reject the source. There have been disagreements (all myriad repetitions from the same few editors) with using the NSF as a source for the topic of ghosts (one more just appeared below), and plenty of objections to the source itself, calling the statement absurd, a careless side note (or something like that) and inaccurate. No, there have been many objections to the statement and the source. The objections to the RfC as asking the wrong question might have some sort of legitimacy, in the sense that many questions could have been asked, but the solution to that problem is to start another RfC that asks the question you wish to ask. Even then, it wouldn't necessarily nullify the validity of my RfC. -- Brangifer (talk) 01:28, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

• Disagree. The National Science Foundation is a primary source with respect to its own positions. Such sources can be used with caution. The National Science Foundation is not a reliable source with respect to ghosts. It might incorporate expert opinion about the "study of ghosts" or possible pseudoscientific claims about ghosts, but ghosts, and belief in ghosts, are religious, cultural, and psychological phenomena, at least, and it is unclear that the NSF would have the expertise to form a scientific opinion about them. I'd want to look at specific examples and specific text to see if it can be supported by the primary source. --Abd (talk) 01:17, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

• This objection has been dealt with numerous times by several editors. It's a secondary source which uses several primary sources to come to its conclusions. Even if it were a primary source, this isn't about an article on the NSF where secondary sources must be used to establish its obvious notability. It's been deemed a RS, and this RfC has so far judged the application of the NSF statement to be proper. -- Brangifer (talk) 01:31, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Having reviewed this more extensively, I agree that the primary source argument is weak; the NSF is being used to show notability for the Gallup Poll. However, the NSF presented a clear definition of pseudoscience, then proceeded to use the word to mean something quite different. The source is, in that way, self-contradictory, and we are not obligated to follow such a source, and, in particular, this whole situation appears to be off the point. This is not an article about a pseudoscience, it's an article about ghosts. What are ghosts? What they are, ultimately, is unclear and, definitely, presenting any fixed conclusion on that would be highly POV (like, raising religious conflicts, we don't need that), but we can say, and the article does say what ghosts, are according to "traditional belief." Folk beliefs are not pseudoscience, per se. 'Nuff said, how about letting others comment, BullRangifer, isn't that what RfCs are for? --Abd (talk) 02:22, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

• Agree the NSF is certainly a reliable source for that. As for the "religious" argument, if fails, since there is a claim of interaction between the physical and spiritual world inherent with the concept of ghosts (manifestation) --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 08:54, 15 March 2010 (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.

OR and Failed verification tags added to lead

I have tagged part of User:Dbachmann's edit with tags:

• Beginning with 19th-century spiritism, various attempts have been made to draw conclusions about the existence of ghosts through scientific methods, but such efforts are generally held to be pseudoscientific.

I don't find anything even close to any of that in the source. -- Brangifer (talk) 23:17, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

To make it clear which elements are OR, there is nothing about "various attempts...through scientific methods", or about "such efforts" in that source. That subject isn't mentioned at all. That's pure OR, and is actually another subject that must use other sources as backing. Both Dbachmannn and Ludwigs2 have been pushing this OR interpretation of that source for too long. It is a legitimate subject, but it isn't mentioned in the source. -- Brangifer (talk) 00:43, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

To make it doubly clear, I have argued extensively above that this citation does not support any claims about the NSF's attitudes towards public beliefs, and trying to make it do violates wp:Syn. please leave my tags on the quote until you are willing to discuss the point that I have raise three times now. ignoring me won't make the point go away. --Ludwigs2 00:54, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Reverting in a BRD is edit warring. Self-revert immediately and stick to discussion. No one has been ignoring you. They just haven't been agreeing with you. The consensus in the RfC is totally against you. -- Brangifer (talk) 00:57, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

you're kidding, right? BRD isn't even a guideline. When you respond to my explanation of why this quote can't be used this way, we can discuss the matter. till then - have a nice day. --Ludwigs2 01:16, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

No, I'm not kidding. You have been warned, warned, and warned about edit warring before, but now you're ignoring those warnings again, again, and again. I previously (at your edit war at alternative medicine) tried to get you to promise to respect BRD in the future, but you refused to do so. You're a combative editor who fails to show any respect for our edit warring policies, guidelines, and the repeated advice and warnings you received against edit warring. Whether BRD is a guideline or not is irrelevant. It is still the only thing we have that defines the line between edit warring and not edit warring. You have crossed that line again and you have been reported. Even if what I have written here had no other merit, you are failing to show a collaborative spirit.

As to discussing it, the whole RfC discussed it! You are ignoring it. -- Brangifer (talk) 01:28, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

The RfC (as I said explicitly several times above) was not about the fitness of the use of this quote in the article. I voted in favor of your position on the RfC, for heaven's sake, because you constructed the RfC to ask about something trivially true. Don't blame me if you RfC'd the wrong issue. If you would like to have another RfC about whether this citation can be used in the article in the way you're using it, feel free. If you would like to discuss the issue rather than fly off on rants about my behavior, I'm good with that as well. till then, I will keep the usage tagged as inappropriate use of a citation and OR. --Ludwigs2 02:37, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Then let's make sure we're on the same page. Here's the statement, including your tags:

• The scientific consensus, as expressed by the National Science Foundation, considers the claimed ability of people to communicate with the dead, as well as belief in ghosts and spirits, to be pseudoscientific beliefs.

What have I included that wasn't part of what you agreed to in the RfC? Do they or do they not consider those beliefs to be pseudoscientific? Please point out the exact wordings that you believe are wrong. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:39, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

for the fourth time: the problem is not with what the quote literally says; the problem is that this is a minor quote from a small section of a primary source on a different topic that has no supporting secondary sources, and yet you are treating it as though this seemingly off-hand comment reflects an actual programme or policy of the NSF. As I said, even a casual analysis of secondary sources shows that the NSF and the scientific community at large do not have a practice of questioning people's beliefs; at best, they question efforts to elevate paranormal beliefs to matters of scientific fact. as I said above, even in the creationism debate scientists were careful not to call Christian beliefs into question, just the pseudoscientific claims being made by creationists. Using the quote as you do above is en claire synthesis from a primary source. so:

• are you suggesting this document isn't a primary source?
• are you suggesting this document is, as a whole, primarily about pseudoscience (or even carries pseudoscience as a major theme)?
• are you suggesting that there are (as yet unrevealed) secondary sources that support your claim that the NSF is engaged in a programme against non-scientific beliefs?

This seems to be blue-letter core policy, BR, but I await whatever argument you want to make. --Ludwigs2 06:08, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Edit warring and failure to abide by BRD

I see that Ludwigs2 has violated BRD by restoring a revert of a clear WP:POINT violation, even though the explanation was clear in the edit summary. The matter is clearly explained above. He is yet again ignoring the clear consensus in the RfC. The sourced statement is exactly what the RfC has supported. Self-revert and "Discuss" or you'll get reported. -- Brangifer (talk) 00:51, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Please see my post above - that fact that you type faster than me does not constitute a violation of BRD, and the fact that you have consistently failed to respond to explanations is not an excuse for you to continue pushing for insupportable material.--Ludwigs2 00:54, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

The fact that you reverted a Revert in the BRD cycle, rather than Discuss, is a clear violation. Talk about Deja vu! Period. Self-revert and continue to discuss. -- Brangifer (talk) 00:56, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

hiding off topic and uncivil personal comments
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I understand the disdain of constructive editors for Ludwigs2. He is disruptive. He likes to edit-war. It is understandable that editors do not pay attention to what he says. Nevertheless, here, he is correct.

The claim by the National Science Foundation is blatantly false. A belief in ghosts, goblins, spirits, spectres, fairies, elves, pixies, and so on is not a pseudo-scientific belief.

A mere belief is either scientific or unscientific. A mere belief cannot be pseudo-scientific. Only a process or a procedure can be pseudo-scientific.

A process or a procedure is pseudo-scientific if it appears to have some of the attributes of a scientific endeavor but does not satisfy the rigors of that endeavor. The reason for pseudo-scientific processes or procedures is always to bamboozle or hornswoggle someone.

The naked belief in some absurdity is not an attempt to appear scientific. People believed in ghosts for tens of thousands of years before they had any notion of science. Someone's belief in ghosts is not by itself bamboozling or hornswoggling anyone. Accordingly, the issues of pseudo-science do not arise in relation to a belief. To reiterate, a mere belief cannot be pseudo-scientific.

Accordingly, the expression used by the National Science Foundation is inappropriate. The citation should not be used. PYRRHON  talk   07:10, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you for displaying your blatant OR in contravention of the clear consensus in the RfC above. I'll take the NSF over your opinions anyday. We follow the sources, not the opinions of editors who don't like what the NSF says. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:18, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Pyrrhon8 seems to be arguing that ghost-belief is not pseudoscientific because some ghost believers do not even make a pretence of of appearing to be scientific. Pyrrhon8 seems to be missing the obvious point that many people actually do make this claim. Simply observe any 'ghost-hunter' type program and observe the self-proclaimed ghost-scientists attempt to deploy all manner of scientific-looking apparatus which can purportedly detect ghosts. This is very clearly a pseudofscientific belief. Let me draw an analgoy - creationism is pseudoscience regardless of whether you believe it on faith or because you believe what Dr. Dino told you.

If we were to apply Pyrrhon8's standard of pseudoscience then almost no field would qualify since pretty much any junk-field (e.g. aromatherapy, acupuncture, homoeopathy) could also be excluded from the defintition. Pyrrhon8 is effectivly trying to define the word pseudoscience away. I do not feel that Wikipedia is the right forum for this act of lexical recalibration. --Salimfadhley (talk) 15:30, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

The context of the NSF statements about pseudoscience, IOW the whole page, would seem to indicate that they consider any false belief arrived at through a lack of understanding of the scientific method as a pseudoscientific belief. They are basically extending the simplistic definition we often use so that it includes the very basis for pseudoscientific beliefs, which is a failure to understand the scientific method. They are using a more inclusive definition, rather than a superficial one. -- Brangifer (talk) 18:09, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Terminology is important in this connection. While it is proper to label anyone who holds false beliefs, and then engages in scientific research in attempts to promote and prove those beliefs, as a pseudoscientist, it would not be proper to label ordinary, naive believers as such. They are simply people who hold pseudoscientific beliefs. If they have been presented with the evidence against their belief and persist in it, then they become true believers. -- Brangifer (talk) 18:17, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Agree, in summary you do not have to be a pseudo-scientist to hold a belief which is pseudo-scientific. You do not have to engage in cargo-cult science, wear a lab-coat or make scientific-sounding claims. A simple failure of reasoning is enough. I think the NSF's point is valid & pertinent. Pyrrhon8's special pleading reminds me of how L-Ron-Hubbard re-defined scientology as a church to avoid criticisms of pseudoscience. Pyrrhon8's attempt to re-frame his belief in ghosts as mere spiritualism is no mor convincing than Hubbards's. --Salimfadhley (talk) 19:29, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

still waiting for you to respond to my points above. it's particularly disheartening that you would continue using this argument without first addressing the fact that I've disputed (well, pretty much refuted) it. You are close to crossing the line into IDHT territory. --Ludwigs2 18:13, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Are you referring to the "fourth time" comment? Total BS based on misunderstandings of wikipolicies, and therefore unworthy of reply. I accept the RfC's conclusions and you don't. That's about it. Right before your comment I had requested:

• What have I included that wasn't part of what you agreed to in the RfC? Do they or do they not consider those beliefs to be pseudoscientific? Please point out the exact wordings that you believe are wrong.

Instead of answering my questions, you evaded and made a long comment based on misunderstandings of wikipolicies. You should have answered my questions. Please do so now. -- Brangifer (talk) 18:27, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

hiding off topic and uncivil personal comments
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
ok, so now you are truly engaged in wp:IDHT - you can't even address my point in a sensible fashion. I ANSWERED your question, directly and explicitly. I TOLD you what the problem with using the cite in this way was, several other editors have AGREED and told you the same thing. you can can refuse to acknowledge the point until the cows come home, and you can continue arguing inconsequential points that no one disagrees with - it's your life, and I really don't care. But sticking your head in the sand and bleating like a sheep (pardon the mixed metaphor) doesn't make you correct; it just leaves your nether parts sticking out in the cold. --Ludwigs2 19:07, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I asked you questions and you haven't answered them. There is nothing after my entry there that deals with my questions. Your comment deals with other matters. Just answer my questions. Your stonewalling style is once again (extremely!!!) similar to that of User:Levine2112. Are you certain you are not allowing him to use your account? -- Brangifer (talk) 19:34, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

(e/c) I did answer your questions: would you like diffs? or maybe it will be clearer if you ask your questions again so that I can answer them again? I'm pretty sure I can just cut and paste from above. I'll expect, however, that you will answer my questions (clearly posted in the section above) in return.

I copied it above. What you provided doesn't qualify as an answer. I want a simple answer. Here it is again:

Then let's make sure we're on the same page. Here's the statement, including your tags:

• The scientific consensus, as expressed by the National Science Foundation, considers the claimed ability of people to communicate with the dead, as well as belief in ghosts and spirits, to be pseudoscientific beliefs.

What have I included that wasn't part of what you agreed to in the RfC? Do they or do they not consider those beliefs to be pseudoscientific? Please point out the exact wordings that you believe are wrong.

There. Please answer those two simple questions. Repeating what you've already written won't help. -- Brangifer (talk) 20:14, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

References

I've said this already, but I'll humor you: The first question of the RfC asked whether the NSF was a reliable source for the statement about pseudoscientific beliefs (which it obviously is; that's a matter of inspection); it asks nothing about whether it is a reliable source for scientific consensus on the matter. The second question does ask whether the NSF in general can be considered a reliable source on issues of pseudoscience (which, again, it obviously can), but does not ask whether this particular source can be taken as a source about pseudoscience, nor whether this particular cite can be taken as an important, substantive, or otherwise non-trivial statement in the document. do you see the synthesis problem here?

Thank you for agreeing with me. The rest is a diversion. I did not ask for you to answer questions which I did not ask. The rest of what you write is irrelevant to this matter, so I don't see the problem. Those are other matters that the RfC didn't address. If you try to force those issues onto this source, then you will be engaging in OR. -- Brangifer (talk) 01:04, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Now, you are obligated to answer my three simple questions - if you don't, then I will assume that you can't answer them without defeating your own position, and I will laugh at you.

1. are you suggesting this document isn't a primary source?

2. are you suggesting this document is, as a whole, primarily about pseudoscience (or even carries pseudoscience as a major theme)?

3. are you suggesting that there are (as yet unrevealed) secondary sources that support your claim that the NSF is engaged in a programme against non-scientific beliefs?

--Ludwigs2 23:45, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Now I'll answer you. (I have taken the liberty of adding numbers. I hope you don't mind):

1. Irrelevant. It's a RS. That's what counts. This is how we build an encyclopedia. We find V & RS sources that speak about a topic and quote them in context.

2. Irrelevant. It is a quote from a whole section on the subject of pseudoscience. It is not taken out of context or made to state some new or novel position that the NSF doesn't hold.

3. Irrelevant. They don't have to be engaged in any type of "programme against non-scientific beliefs." They are the supreme scientific body in the USA and are an authoritative source on anything related to science. Even if they were dead wrong, we should still quote them.

My answers will no doubt disappoint you, but that's my position. I see no violation of policy in any manner here. There is no synthesis of sources. It's ONE source quoted in context from the most authoritative source on scientific subjects. Since you don't like what they say, I suggest you take it up with them. If you can find more authoritative scientific sources that contradict them, then by all means let us know and let's see how we can also include the disagreement, because that's how Wikipedia works. Allowing your personal opinion and disagreement with them to control content would violate a number of policies. -- Brangifer (talk) 01:04, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

No, your answers don't disappoint me. in fact, I'm glad you that you've taken the time to express yourself fully without resorting to ad hominems. Unfortunately, however, your answers do violate both the letter and the spirit of wp:OR (and likely wp:V and wp:NPOV in lesser ways). You can't just use any old quote you can find to justify your own preconceived notions about a topic, and particularly not when you use that quote in a context alien to its intent in the original document. You know that as well as I do - you'd be the first to criticize any effort to use a primary source that supported alt med in this way. I mean really... you are basically claiming that all of wikipedia's sourcing policy is irrelevant in this context because they happen to prevent you from making an unsupported and largely unjustified claim. Is that what you mean to do? --Ludwigs2 02:14, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Nice try, but no, I never stopped beating my wife because I don't beat her. Your final question assumes that your previous comments are true, but they aren't. The NSF and the RfC are totally against your view on this one. You are the one engaging in OR and claiming that your personal POV is more accurate than the POV of the NSF. You even have the nerve to denigrate them! Why not take the high road and show that you can learn and bring your POV into line with the scientific consensus as expressed by them? I doubt that all those commentators in the RfC above failed to see the violations of our sourcing policies which you claim exist here.

No, you're way off base and desperately struggling to find some way to undermine the RfC and the NSF. You haven't come up with a single argument that puts the slightest dent in the (with the exception of yourself) unanimous consensus from that RfC. You don't like their conclusion, and you still threaten to continue to disrupt this article by not respecting that conclusion. In fact your POINT-violating tags you added and restored (a BRD violation), which are still in place, were placed in violation of the clear consensus in that RfC. That's just plain disruptive. Please stop it. -- Brangifer (talk) 02:56, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

as I said, this is a matter for sourcing - can you provide secondary sources that make the claim you are making? you obviously can't, or you already would have. without secondary sources you're basically without any standing here. if you like, we can open a new (correct) RfC on whether a primary source can be used in this fashion, but I'm not even sure that RfC would be meaningful, because I'm not certain how far an RfC can go against clear policy.

reliable secondary sources would be best - how much time do you need to provide them? --Ludwigs2 03:39, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

This is really bizarre. I've NEVER heard this type of argument in a situation like this, except for from one person...User:Levine2112. He has done it more than once in his classic stonewallings at the chiropractic articles, where he could waste our time for six months on one single little point! During the process he'd go through multiple RfCs, mediations, ArbComs, several editors getting blocked and banned, article lock downs, repeated edit wars, etc.. That's no exaggeration. It has really happened! Very few have equalled him for the ability to disrupt Wikipedia and use it as a battleground. (The expression "pusher of fringe POV" was invented to describe him, and you're his clone. It's really uncanny.)

You're misapplying the requirement for secondary sources. No one else here has considered this to be an inappropriate use of a primary source. NOT a single one! That rule is for other situations, usually related to BLPs and MEDRS. Please take this to the WP:RS/N. Until you get a ruling from them that overturns the RfC, you have no standing with these "arguments". This is bizarre!!!! -- Brangifer (talk) 03:55, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

damn, you have an odd memory - you can remember fights you had with other editors long ago, but not that three or four editors agreed with my assessment in the section immediately above the RfC. go back and look! nor am I 'misapplying' policy; this is exactly what policy says, and it's used exactly for this purpose. do you need me to quote policy at you, or will you go read it for yourself? I swear, brangifer, of all the editors I've had the pleasure of working with on wikipedia, you take the cake for failing to stay on topic. you just can't seem to resist getting in your digs, even if the digs don't make a whole lot of sense. it's bizarre... P.s. hell, even Pyrrhon8 agreed with me, and if there's anyone on wikipedia who dislikes me more than you do, it's him

also, this is the third or fourth time you've mentioned Levine2112, but I don't get the point you're trying to make. I edited a couple of pages he was on a long while back (I forget which ones, but probably paranormal pages). as I remember I it was hit or miss as to whether I agreed with him, and he was a bit touchy, but at least he could follow basic logic. Is this intended as some strange form of ad hominem attack? If so, I don't get it. --Ludwigs2 04:47, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I did get off track there. I'll try to stay more focused. Before the RfC you did have a couple supporters: Dbachmann and Cosmic Latte. Then, after the RfC, Pyrrhon made a comment which was quickly debunked. Note that several of the RfC participants debunked their comments, and none of the participants in the RfC agreed with any of you, but all agreed with me and the NSF. None found any problem with my understanding of the application of policies, most notably in this specific application. They all thought the current edit was totally justified. You were the only one who objected and they all found fault with your logic and understanding of policies. In the face of all that, you then pointedly tagged that RfC-approved content twice! Those tags are still there because I"m not going to edit war with you. ANYONE else may delete your tags, since the RfC approved that content.

Your persistence after the RfC has just been more disruption. There is a saying: "You're not paranoid if they're really out to get you." You seem to have trouble recognizing that you're on the losing side of this debate. NO ONE in the RfC supports you! You're welcome to continue to believe that you're right, but you are going in circles without convincing anyone. That's disruptive stonewalling. How about keeping that belief quietly to yourself, so that this article will no longer be your hostage? That way you can save face, still feel you're right, and Wikipedia will have one less battleground. If you hadn't started this battle by violating BRD and refusing to accept the unanimous decision of the RfC, we could all have been doing something more constructive. -- Brangifer (talk) 06:06, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

by the way, I've archived the (clearly off topic and uncivil) comments above one more time - if you unarchive them again I will report you to ANI for disruptive editing. does that work for you? --Ludwigs2 19:56, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

And I have archived your even more incivil comment. You're living in a glass house and are in no position to talk about incivility, so let's keep it even. -- Brangifer (talk) 20:14, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

This is getting silly. The comment about NSF regarding ghost belief as pseudoscience is currently in the skepticism section. NSF and CSI are both highly regarded skeptical organizations whose statements can be taken as very reliable summaries of what leading skeptics think of ghost-belief. Ludwigs2 makes a legalistic, philosophical point that "pseudoscience" might not be the best word to describe what may merely be just a crackpot spiritual belief, but this matters not a jot since the purpose of the section is to report what skeptics think and say, and not what Ludwigs2 thinks they ought to say. --Salimfadhley (talk) 19:55, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

@ Salimfadhley:

1. the NSF (National Science Foundation) is not a skeptical organization - it is a consortium of scientists with a government mandate. please...
2. I have no doubts that scientists as a rule don't by into 'crackpot scientific beliefs', but I see no indication that the NSF of the scientific community has an interest in attacking beliefs. scientists can distinguish between pseudoscience and non-science; if you can't that's a problem.

Beyond that, if you have a problem with wp:NOR, I suggest you take it up there. As it stands what I'm saying conforms to that policy perfectly. or do you want to argue that it doesn't? as I keep saying, I have no problem with using the quote itself, so long as the quote isn't used to imply or make claims that are well beyond what can be justified by the citation. --Ludwigs2 20:06, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

What in your opinion disqualifies the NSF from representing the skeptical opinion on this matter? Are you suggesting that only an explicitly skeptical organizations like CSI or JREF are qualified to hold a skeptical POV?

You say that you have no indication that the NSF has an interest in these beliefs, but the very quote you are disputing states precisely what the NSF's interest and belief is: They consider it to be pseudo-scientific. Unless you can demonstrate that this clearly stated view of the NSF is based on something other than a skeptical perspective or that the NSF's view represents a fringe position amongst the skeptical community then your argument fails.

Your other claim is that since ghost-belief is not a scientific activity then labelling it as "pseudo-science" is therefore unwarranted. Trust me, you do not need to keep making this point - we read and understood it the first time. It's still a flawed argument. The purpose of the quote is to illustrate the views of skeptical people. Whether or not this community have made an error by labeling it as pseudoscience is irrelivant: It's what they believe. Furthermore, some ghost believers, particularly those who "investigate" ghosts make scientific-sounding claims and use scientific-looking apparatus, and this case the NSF's point is clearly pertinent.

Finally, you have misunderstood the meaning of the wp:NOR - Citing a leading scientific body's view of a topic in no way constitutes Original Research. You seem to randomly accuse other people of violating all kinds of site policies, may I suggest that if you see yourself as an enforcer of Wikipedia's policy you should first become familiar with them. --Salimfadhley (talk) 23:10, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Salimfadhley: The CSI is a dedicated organization of skeptics, and I would certainly take their view on the skeptical perspective; JREF I don't know enough about to judge. I don't see any indication that the NSF is interested in disputing beliefs, period - if they wanted to dispute beliefs, they would clearly state that they are an atheistic organization, and they would be actively engaged in disputing, refuting, and debunking non-scientific beliefs. the document in question is a primary source document that mentions the word pseudosicence in a very minor and casual way in a small section of a chapter on public attitudes and media presentations. in this document they are not calling for the refutation of all non-scientific beliefs - they are asking for better public science education and better representations of science in public media, both of which are very good aims, mind you.

citing primary sources in a way that creates a new meanings (meanings not directly presented by that source) is the very definition of synthesis, which is a form of original research. the burden of proof is on you if you want to show that the NSF means to criticize beliefs themselves, and certainly with an organization as significant as the NSF there should be reams of other sources (secondary and primary) which demonstrate that the NSF takes this position. you'd have no problem finding such secondary material for the CSI, would you? so, you should have no problem finding it for the NSF. do so, and I'll cede the point. If you can't do so, then you ought to recognize that you're engaged in synthesis.

Finally, I will stop making the points I need to make when I stop needing to make them. your choices are to prove me wrong or accept that I'm right. simply ignoring what I say will cause me to repeat what I say. ok? --Ludwigs2 05:08, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Added a second ref and removed the tags.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:58, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Firstly the cited document is clearly not a primary source - it's a summary of research into pseudoscience and it's prevalence.

Secondly, the citation has not created 'new meaning': The document clearly states that belief in ghosts was one of the ten pseudoscientific topics that a survey investigated. The citation does not mis-represent the NSF's position on the subject of ghost-belief. It is not a "casual" detail of the document, it's part of the substance of the survey which the document is reporting.

Finally, there is no requirement that only "skeptical organizations" can represent a skeptical perspective: The NSF is a notable and reliable source of information about science. It is abundantly and unambiguously clear that they take a skeptical position on the matter of ghosts, spesifically that it is pseudoscience. --Salimfadhley (talk) 13:12, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

The guideline at WP:Disruptive_editing indicates that "sticking to an allegation or viewpoint long after the consensus of the community has rejected it, repeating it almost without end, and refusing to acknowledge others' input" is disruptive editing. The consensus of the community according to a RfC is here. On this talkpage, Ludwigs2 and I have reiterated the consensus of the community. The view of the Wikipedia community is that a ghost or a belief in ghosts is not pseudoscience. Rather, a ghost or a belief in ghosts is non-science or nonsense. The statement attributed to the National Science Foundation confuses the topics of pseudoscience and non-science in the same way that some people confuse astronomy and astrology. Characterizing Ghost as pseudoscience is inappropriate.

The article and this talkpage would be much improved if everything related to pseudoscience was removed, and the introduction was revised. Defining a ghost as a soul or a spirit is an example of ignotum per ignotius. Ignotum per ignotius is a rhetorical device which defines obscure terms by obscure terms. The device takes what is murky, and defines it by what is murkier. The device is contrary to WP:SPADE.

We should prefer a definition that tells us only this: ghosts are a consequence of make-believe or delusion. Nothing more is necessary. Anything more will ensnare us in insurmountable, definitional difficulties.

Ludwigs2 suggests that we define a ghost as an entity of myth and legend. I suggest we define a ghost as an "entity of fantasy or delusion."

In that regard, I dispute the definition of necromancy that is used here. Necromancy is not the attempt to contact spirits. Spirits are entities of fantasy or delusion. Necromancy#Modern necromancy is the practice by which someone pretends to communicate with deceased persons or deceased pets. PYRRHON  talk   18:11, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

@ Salimfadhley: to your points, above:

1. It is not research into 'pseudoscience and it's prevalence' it is social scientific research about public attitudes.
2. per above, the use of the quote in this way does indeed create new meaning
3. you're confusing scientific skepticism with philosophical skepticism. the first is a natural and healthy procedure that makes no claims whatsoever in the absence of evidence; the second is an irrational practice that asserts claims about the absence of evidence. very different things, sorry. of course the NSF uses scientific skepticism; that does not make them skeptics. --Ludwigs2 18:27, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

1 & 3 are simply not relevant to the question of whether this is an appropriate cite. 2 is simply wrong since , the list of topics is indeed from a Gallup poll, however Gallup describe these topics as "paranormal" and not "pseudoscience". The label pseudoscience was applied to the ten topics by NSF and nobody else. --Salimfadhley (talk) 23:10, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

NSF or Gallup?

Forgive me for starting a new thread, the old one was getting way to complicated for me to handle. Now that we have the Gallup survey summary which NSF cited in their S&E Indicators paper we note that the list of ten topics did indeed originate from an annual Gallup survey about American attitudes to the paranormal. The list did not originate with the NSF as originally stated. Gallup never described these topics as "pseudoscience", they only used the word "paranormal". So who was the first to apply the term "pseudoscience" to this list of topics, it appears to be the NSF. --Salimfadhley (talk) 23:25, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

probably so - no one doubts that the NSF in interested in the topic of pseudoscience. However, this is still a chapter on science and technology in the media and public viewpoint. Threre's good reason to assume that the NSF is talking about the portrayal of science in the public realm - e.g. Ghost Hunter type shows, series which depict wildly imaginative technology, movies that treat fantastic subjects (like vampires and werwolves) as though they were physiological realities, and other presentation which clearly involve pseudo-science. beliefs in general are not pseudoscientific because they make no particular pretension to being scientific in the first place.

In short, if you want to call the inverse relationship between pirates and global warming pseudoscience, I'm behind you 100%; if you want to call the Flying Spaghetti Monster pseudoscience (all blessings to his noodly crown) I have to demure. it's just a belief. frankly, the belief that the sun will rise tomorrow morning is pure and unadulterated pseudoscience by your reasoning, because in fact that statement is based on an entirely debunked cosmology. but it's a bit ridiculous to run around pointing it out. --Ludwigs2 00:26, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

You are attempting to infer what the NSF really means based on some kind of personal knowledge of what interests the NSF. I am merely pointing out what the document literally says. I think these are the relevant sections:

Paragraph	"Belief in Pseudoscience"	per Salimfadhley	per Ludwigs2
2	A recent study of 20 years of survey data collected by NSF concluded that "many Americans accept pseudoscientific beliefs," such as astrology, lucky numbers, the existence of unidentified flying objects (UFOs), extrasensory perception (ESP), and magnetic therapy (Losh et al. 2003). Such beliefs indicate a lack of understanding of how science works and how evidence is investigated and subsequently determined to be either valid or not. Scientists, educators, and others are concerned that people have not acquired the critical thinking skills they need to distinguish fact from fiction. The science community and those whose job it is to communicate information about science to the public have been particularly concerned about the public's susceptibility to unproven claims that could adversely affect their health, safety, and pocketbooks (NIST 2002). (See sidebar, "Sense About Science.")	They refer to "pseudoscientific beliefs" rather than the pseudoscience which misinforms it however they seem to use pseudosicence a more expansive sense than given by para 3. NSF explicitly labels the the cited topics discussed by Losh to be pseudoscientific beliefs, hence we can be certain that they are quite happy to label some non-science topics (e.g. astrology) as a pseudoscientific belief.	This passage is a commentary on the critical thinking skills (or rather the lack thereof) of Americans. Pseudoscience is not defined by this passage, but is brought in to demonstrate how badly we think.
3	Pseudoscience has been defined as "claims presented so that they appear [to be] scientific even though they lack supporting evidence and plausibility" (Shermer 1997, p. 33).[28] In contrast, science is "a set of methods designed to describe and interpret observed and inferred phenomena, past or present, and aimed at building a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation" (Shermer 1997, p. 17).	This paragraph provides one possible definitition of pseudosience. NSF do not appear to use this definition consistently.	This paragraph is the only direct definition of pseudoscience given in this section. If the author wasn't intent on using it, s/he would have provided others.
4	Belief in pseudoscience increased significantly during the 1990s and into the early part of this decade (Newport and Strausberg 2001) and then fell somewhat between 2001 and 2005 (figure 7-8 ). The largest declines were in the number of people who believe in ESP, clairvoyance, ghosts, mentally communicating with the dead, and channeling. Nevertheless, about three-fourths of Americans hold at least one pseudoscientific belief; i.e., they believed in at least 1 of the 10 survey items (similar to the percentage recorded in 2001).[29] In addition, 22% believed in five or more of the items, 32% believed in four, and 57% believed in two. However, only 1% believed in all 10 (Moore 2005b).	This paragraph talks about the prevalence of "belief in pseudoscience", presumably meaning beliefs which are to some-extent misinformed by what the NSF considers to be thinking which pseudosientific. They equate "belief in pseudoscience" with "pseudoscientific beliefs" and label the list of items in footnote 29 as such. It seems they are happy to label a belief as pseudoscentific even if it may be also misinformed by other factors (e.g. spirituality, insanity)	The paragraph immediately preceding this defines pseudoscience as "claims presented so that they appear [to be] scientific even though they lack supporting evidence and plausibility". Therefore, 'belief in pseudoscience' can only be taken to mean 'belief in claims presented so that they appear [to be] scientific'. This would exclude beliefs that are not presented, or intended to be presented, as scientific. see how you've taken the claim out of context?
Footnote 29	Those 10 items were extrasensory perception (ESP), that houses can be haunted, ghosts/that spirits of dead people can come back in certain places/situations, telepathy/communication between minds without using traditional senses, clairvoyance/the power of the mind to know the past and predict the future, astrology/that the position of the stars and planets can affect people's lives, that people can communicate mentally with someone who has died, witches, reincarnation/the rebirth of the soul in a new body after death, and channeling/allowing a "spirit-being" to temporarily assume control of a body.	These are ten survey-items (sourced from a gallup poll). These are described in para 4 as Americans hold at least one pseudoscientific belief; i.e., they believed in at least 1 of the 10 survey items, hence we can conclude that the NSF regards each of these survey items to be a pseudoscientific topic or belief.	This footnote merely spells out the ten list items given to participants on the gallup poll, which itself focussed on the paranormal, not on pseudoscience. further, it is a footnote to the above statement, which comes one line after the afore-mentioned definition of pseudoscience, so you cannot reasonably infer that this passage is intended to change the given definition (otherwise they would have simply given a more expansive definition to begin with).

note table has been updaed --Salimfadhley (talk) 22:37, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Bold emphasis added to the parts used as article content. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:13, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Oddly enough the Wikipedia citation on Ghost implies that the NSF are criticizing the scientific-process of the ghost-unters, when a close reading of this cited section reveals that they are actually labelling the belief as pseudoscientific. Ludwigs2, feel free to add additional rows & columns to the table, lets see how we differ on the interpretation of the document. --Salimfadhley (talk) 02:02, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Where are those words that "implies that the NSF are criticizing..."? That might need fixing. -- Brangifer (talk) 02:45, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually I was wrong, it's really quite clear, the text around the citation is: The scientific consensus, as expressed by the National Science Foundation, considers the claimed ability of people to communicate with the dead, as well as belief in ghosts and spirits, to be pseudoscientific beliefs - that's an accurate summary of NSF's position as revealed by the paragraphs I listed above. --Salimfadhley (talk) 18:07, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

(e/c) Salimfadhley: My issue here (as I have said previously) is that you are taking what is (to my mind) evidently a casual/careless use of the word pseudoscience as though it were an intentional/analytic use of the word. see my additions to the table above. The document itself gives a definition of pseudoscience immediately before the sections you are quoting which is far more restrictive than the one you are trying to offer. honestly, you are using quotes out of their document context in a fairly dramatic way. The intent of this chapter is to discuss Scientific literacy among the general public; it is not intended define or explain what pseudoscience is, but rather to point out that the general public is pretty vacuous about what science is. do you see the difference? --Ludwigs2 18:30, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

How can you be sure that this is 'casualness'? How do you presume to know the state of mind of the author? This seems like an over-bold interpolation to me. --Salimfadhley (talk) 22:37, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

hey, you guys are making the claim here, not me. You are trying to assert that the NSF means something by this passage beyond the passage's immediate context of critical thinking, so the burden of proof is on you. that being said, this usage seems to be unique to this particular section of this particular document. If it were more broadly used (across multiple publications, for instance) or if it was used as part of a larger argument (i.e., where other things that the NSF states depend on and/or follow from this 'pseudoscientific belief' idea) or if the research of NSF scientists habitually challenged people's beliefs, then there might be some reason to believe what you want us to believe - that there is a broader focus of concern in the NSF about people's beliefs. I don't see any such broader context, though, and so I can't see that this quote supports what you are trying to say with it.

Don't try to pull logical fallacies on me - you know as well as I do that a negative can't be proved. You say they means something specific by this, I say they don't; prove that they do. --Ludwigs2 00:31, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Your beef is with the NSF, not us. Contact them and ask them to publish a clarification in which they state that they didn't deliberately equate "pseudoscience" with "paranormal" when they quoted the Gallup Poll, and that it was a typo, and then get them to state that they don't consider those things to be pseudoscientific beliefs. Then we can use those retractions to modify any use of this quote at Wikipedia. Until then, you're engaging in a debate with them, and it's OR. -- Brangifer (talk) 04:43, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I am confused. Is anyone here attempting to claim that "research" claiming ghost exist is not pseudoscience? This ref [4] discusses the topic nicely.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:12, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

No. We are all agreed that it definitely is. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:15, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

(undent) so what does Ludwig want to change the line referenced to the NSF to? I by the way consider it fine the way it is. This ref from the NSF is a little closer to what we have but either should be good. [5] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:21, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

The problem with the way the quote is used in this article is that it tries to extend the NSF statement well beyond pseudoscientific research about ghosts - there is an unwarranted emphasis on beliefs about ghost, as though all beliefs about ghosts are pseudoscientific. This is clearly not true, and not what the NSF intended by the quote - it's a misapplication of an out-of-context quote. trust me, if they were restricting the quote to pseudoscientific research, I wouldn't have a problem with it.

Again, the problem here is that Ludwigs2 is inviting us to make an interpolation from the cited text in order to deduce what the NSF may have meant. What they wrote and published is verifiable, what they have intended to mean is open to debate. I can see the logic behind his theory. If our task were to deduce what the NSF meant to say I might reach exactly the same conclusion as Ludwigs2. I am sure you understand that would be original research and should have no place in Wikipedia.

I think this debate is approaching pointlessness, since we have established beyond doubt that NSF is Notable and Reliable. We've established they are qualified to discuss pseudoscience. We've established that even though the survey list originated from gallup, it was NSF who first applied the adjective pseudoscientific to the list. We've established that there is an apparent inconsistency in way the adjective is used. Beyond that, what more can we say without crossing the line of original research?

May I suggest that Ludwigs2 should start a new header and propose an alternate way of citing this document. Perhaps our fellow editor could show us an alternate wording and explain to us why it works better? --Salimfadhley (talk) 13:18, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm glad to see that you guys are working out a new approach to this cite, though I have to say it's cracking me up a bit. You seem to have taken a cue from creationism: i.e. that the absolute and literal reading of the text is the only viable interpretation of the text. unfortunately, your 'literal reading' isn't literal and isn't a reading - it's an interpretation of out-of-context sound bites.

with respect to a 'alternate way' of dealing with the cite... <sigh...> I've presented at least three alternate versions, at least 12 times in the discussion above. every time I do, unfortunately, it gets layered with half a ton of off-topic manure. I'm tempted to tell you to go find one of them yourself, but instead I will go through and dig one of them out (or marshall up a new one) later this afternoon when I have the time. --Ludwigs2 17:59, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

and by the way: asking other people what I mean is usually is problematic; asking the people I'm disagreeing with what I mean is a sure fire way to get misinformed. if you want to know what I'm saying, you'd best ask me for clarification. --Ludwigs2 07:25, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Agree per Doc James and Salim. Inhabiting philosophical rabbit holes is unproductive. If L2 and other dissenters post alternative sentences to BR's and use them as a point of discussion, we could soon see fast, fast relief. - LuckyLouie (talk) 14:41, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Please, pretty please - L2 show us the right way to do it! :-) --Salimfadhley (talk) 14:51, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

As a sidenote here, I actually find the way the NSF uses this interpretation of what is pseudoscientific to be refreshing and a learning experience. It shows they understand the term better than those who stick to a rigid interpretation (only strict and open claims of "scientificness") and that they are including the very fundamentals of why people come to hold pseudoscientific beliefs in their definition. The NSF understands this better and uses a better and broader definition. That raises my respect for them. -- Brangifer (talk) 15:26, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Reply to Doc: I agree, the NSF report repeatedly employs the phrase "belief in pseudoscience" in clear context with unmistakable intention. A section header reads How Widespread Is Belief in Pseudoscience? followed by the sub-header, Belief in pseudoscience is relatively widespread. Examples, including ghosts and haunted houses follow. Directly beneath those examples, they write: "Surveys administered periodically even show increasing belief in pseudoscience. Of the 13 phenomena included in the 2001 Gallup survey..." followed, again, by ghosts and haunted houses being cited as examples. They deliberately bracketed that section with the phrase "belief in psuedoscience". Nothing vague or haphazard about that. The emphasis on belief as pseudoscience comes from the NSF, not BRangifer. So (if I may suggest optional wordings here) our articles could report that the NSF characterized ghosts and haunted houses as pseudoscientific beliefs. Or, that the NSF included ghosts and haunted houses among beliefs that come under the heading of pseudoscience. That way we're just reporting what they said rather than trying to correct perceived errors in their logic. - LuckyLouie (talk) 15:30, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

(undent) I did ask Ludwig the wording he / she would prefer. I was not asking other people. Can you please in a section below add this proposed wording? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:15, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Please let me make clear my opinion and involvement in this discussion: Both NFS and Gallup are clearly quotable sources. Both are also US-specific sources, and their use should be strictly confined to a very small paragraph on "belief in ghosts in the USA". Discussion of these, for the purposes of the Ghost article, very marginal references, has already been blown far out of proportion. Just write a short pargraph about the US and be done, but don't let these points of US demographics dominate the entire article and/or talkpage. It is not acceptable that a large topic like "ghosts" should be taken hostage by petty ideological disputes surrounding the US "culture wars". It also is not permissible to give US-specific debates on "belief in pseudoscience" vel sim. more than passing mention in this article. This entire discussion of pseudoscience is completely misplaced. Please take it to Talk:Paranormal, and discuss whatever it is the NFS has to say about paranormal phenomena, of which "ghosts" is just one item in a list, over there. --dab (𒁳) 16:46, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

The sceptical inquirer is an international source which says the same thing. [6] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:54, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

um, no, it doesn't say the same thing at all. Your link suffers of none of the problems we have been discussing. For one thing, I fail to see any occurrence of the highly dubious term "pseudoscientific belief" in your link. In fact, the sceptical inquirer article can be used as a source illustrating belief in ghosts on one hand (Belief in such contact is called spiritualism) and a pseudoscientific approach to investigating ghosts. I see no problem with using the sceptical inquirer reference to establish that So-called “investigation” has ranged from mere collecting of ghost tales to the use of “psychic” impressions to a pseudoscientific reliance on technology applied in a questionable fashion while the NFS reference can be used as a source discussing US demographics. Please stop using a source focusing on giving demographic trends to make a point about the definition of "pseudoscience". Take the trouble to present a source that is actually making the point you wish the article to make. The NFS source is dealing with the rise and decline of USian belief in paranormal phenomena, and if we are going to quote it, we should quote it on exactly that. --dab (𒁳) 17:00, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Some interesting definitions of pseudoscientific belief show up in seaches. Including the 'recent study' cited in the NSF document ("Losh SC, Tavani CM, Njoroge R, Wilke R, Mcauley M. 2003. What does education really do? Skeptical Inquirer 27(5):30-35") reprinted here, where the phrase "pseudoscientific belief" is used several times. That same report even gives us a definition of the term: "Here, we define pseudoscience beliefs as cognitions about material phenomena that claim to be "science," yet use nonscientific evidentiary processes." I think that may answer a lot of the issues surrounding perceived internal errors and/or "what the NSF meant to say". Wd could even attribute that definition to the source given. - LuckyLouie (talk) 17:16, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Dbachmann, above you write "This entire discussion of pseudoscience is completely misplaced. Please take it to Talk:Paranormal, and discuss whatever it is the NFS has to say about paranormal phenomena, of which "ghosts" is just one item in a list, over there."

I find your ownership tone rather obnoxious. You do not own this article, and you have no right to force it to cover only certain aspects of the subject to the exclusion of others, exiling them to the paranormal article. Ghosts definitely are a paranormal subject, as well as sociological, literary, etc.. It is a broad subject and should cover all aspects, including the paranormal and pseudoscientific aspects. You are currently (again!) on a deletionist campaign that violates the consensus in the RfC we have just held. Adding more content is one thing, but actual deletionism is quite another. That's wrong. The RfC consensus was pretty clear that the NSF source was being used properly, yet you have just removed the small portion about pseudoscience which you dislike, in spite of the fact that it was a very little part of the article. Now you make it a sentence or so. I may start with an RfC/U, but I am prepared to make an ArbCom case out of this and seek to have you desysopped for your actions. I expect that Ludwigs2 and Cosmic Latte will pile on there and reveal their true selves, thus providing a nice opportunity to get them topic banned or blocked as well.

You are resuming your previous edit warring and being disruptive by doing this. I suggest you back down and accept that the RfC consensus was not favorable to your limited interpretation. I will start to restore some of what you removed/vandalized, and I'll do it in such a manner that the article also covers the pseudoscientific aspect, and that any attempt by you to once again remove it will be seen as clear evidence of your nefarious intentions to cover up the fact that the NSF clearly labelled belief in ghosts "pseudoscientific beliefs". Note that I will do it even more thoroughly this time, and will not do it carelessly, so you will have no excuse to just revert it. Since it has been discussed before and the RfC consensus was that it was a proper way to use the source, your first revert will be counted as an act of edit warring, and not a part of the BRD cycle. It will be so clearly against policy that it will be clear to all and usable as evidence. Consider this a warning. I have no intention of edit warring over this. If you persist, I'll start an RfC/U, and if necessary proceed to ArbCom, since there is already plenty of evidence against you in the edit history. You have unbalanced the article by removing that very tiny bit of mention this subject had. I am restoring the balance, but not completely. If we were to balance this article properly, according to our WP:FRINGE and weight guidelines, the coverage of this as a fringe and pseudoscientific subject would be much larger. I'm not going to attempt to do that. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:01, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Well I respect dab's editing I do think the NSF is still significant enough to belong in the lead.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:28, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

(I suspect you mean "while I respect...") If you knew his editing history (edit warring and OR use of the source to say something it never mentions, and which I have once again removed from the lead), I suspect you'd have a different opinion of his editing. I have restored the RfC approved content, enhanced it by using exact quotes, and attributed the content to USA consensus. It now has the appropriate weight for where it is mentioned. Its mention in the lead is only one sentence, which is so small it violates FRINGE and WEIGHT, but that's life. I'm satisfied with even this small mention. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:49, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

this is rather rich. You are the one trying to "own" this by insisting on your unhappy wording. I do not insist on any specific wording at all, I am requesting that you appreciate the point that has been made. The point is that the topic of this article is not the pseudoscience of "ghost buffs". It is undisputed that this is pseudoscience, so stop trying to pretend that this is the point you are trying to make. You are actually trying to establish that "ghost buffs" and their pseudoscience are relevant to the topic of ghosts by debunking them prominently. Before you prominently debunk something, you need to establish that it is notable in the first place. You cite a source on US "belief in pseudoscience", of which "belief in ghosts" is just one item in a list. You may use this source, but only in the context of the source itself. If you want to discuss ghosts and pseudoscience, use a source that actually explores this, such as the SI article linked above. If you absolutely want to insist on the phrase "scientific consensus" pray present a source that actually uses it. You are welcome to make your point, but you are required to present sources that actually make your point for you, just like everyone else.

once condescend to appreciate this point, we can seek a compromise solution. This is what BRD is about: you don't indulge in bone-headed reverting to your own version, you seek compromise solutions that actually improve the article step by step. I am sure the point you want to make in the lead can be made, professionally and encyclopedically, if you just let people help you make it. E.g. by using a reference that actually addresses the point you want to make. If you can explain what you believe belongs in the lead without insisting on your precise wording, I will be happy to make a suggestion of how to put it. This is a concept also known as "collaboration". --dab (𒁳) 08:51, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

And your complete revert was collaborative? As an admin, you should know better than to display such ownership of this article. Instead of going directly to an ArbCom, I think a prominent RfC/U would be better. That will not only focus attention on your disruptive editing and ownership here, it will also bring even more prominent editors to this article to rescue it from you. You're holding it hostage. -- Brangifer (talk) 14:49, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I'll comment about this removal. Placing it on the lead is US-centric, so this removal was good. The section "Scientific skepticism" should have a short mention of the NSF's position, and the full explanation of the poll should be under the "US" section. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:06, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Then do that, since Dbachmann's complete revert was an act of edit warring that was against the wording supported by the RfC. Note that the content I included was not completely identical to the previous content, but was an improvement which addressed concerns mentioned here. I set a trap and he fell into it. His blind reversal shows that he didn't actually study the differences between the previous content and the new content. -- Brangifer (talk) 14:49, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Brangifer, whatever the RfC may or may not support, it certainly does not support your complete failure to grasp the issue. If you simply cannot or will not understand what is being said to you, there can be no meaningful discussion. Try to consider the possibility that the problem is at your end: you are not in dispute with me, so far you don't even have an idea of what it is I am saying. Please try to find somebody who can help you represent your point of view with a minimal amount of communicative skills. --dab (𒁳) 16:23, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

oh, he knows what you're saying; there's just a distinct advantage in pretending that he doesn't. It's the same tactic the Republicans have used in the US for a couple of decades now: never acknowledge your opponent's position, and make the most extreme claims you can make without offending people, in the loudest and most hysterical voice you can use without offending people, in order to give the impression that there is no other opinion than yours (no matter how unreasonable your opinion is). it's a sophisticated version of the argument style that 8 year olds habitually use, and it's very effective. The only way to deal with it effectively is to be patient, plodding, boring, and as much as possible repeatedly force the argument back to logic and reason. That works with 8 year olds, anyway, because they learn how to reason; adults don't seem to learn it, but they do eventually lose the hormonal steam that this argument style demands. --Ludwigs2 16:53, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

All I will say is that neither one of you has convinced the majority of editors who support the content and use of the NSF statement as I proposed it in the RfC. You are simply stonewalling and failing to convince me or anyone else. Your arguments are in violation of policy and go against the clear consensus in the RfC, and they are vacuous, dealing with other issues, instead of sticking to the point of the RfC, which even Ludwigs2 admitted was correct ("no one really disagrees with the points raised anyway") and then asked for the RfC to be closed ("yeesh... can someone please close this RfC as resolved?"). He thought it was improperly formed and has continually tried to discuss other aspects than the plain fact, agreed to by a majority of editors, that the NSF did in fact call belief in 10 named ideas to be "pseudoscientific beliefs". Stick to that point instead of trying to divert the discussion to other issues and engaging in OR in your attempts to denigrate the NSF and its position on paranormal=pseudoscientific ideas. -- Brangifer (talk) 02:19, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

The position of other scientific bodies in other parts of the world if these exist would be interesting.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:32, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Definitely, but lacking such information would not be a legitimate reason for not using what we have. The editors who constitute the majority at the RfC need to make their views known by more comments and by ensuring that the will of the consensus is maintained on the article. Right now it's being held hostage by the two disruptive editors who refuse to accept the results of the RfC. -- Brangifer (talk) 04:02, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

In fact, brangifer, that does seem to be all that you can say. 95% of your comments in talk are about how much other people agree with you and how those people who disagree with you are 'bad' in one way or another. you haven't actually advanced anything approaching reasoned analysis since I first arrived on this page. frankly, it doesn't really matter to me that I haven't convinced you, because I don't believe anything could convince you; You don't respond to reason with reason. All we can really do here is to keep repeating the same reasoned arguments and nullifying the irrational responses you dredge up - not to convince you, mind you, but with the expectation that you will eventually tire of talking nonsense, and then reason will prevail. Now, if you want to continue to misrepresent my view (like you did in the paragraph above) and misrepresent the core of the problem (like you did in the paragraph above), I can't stop you. but I will continue to correct you. shall I do so now, or do you want to step back from it? --Ludwigs2 04:43, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Look, you seem to get some sort of pleasure hearing yourself repeating yourself. Stonewalling against the RfC consensus doesn't really make you look very good, nor does it impress or fool very many, but if it turns you on, whatever. It's all evidence that will be used against you. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:17, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

The results of the RfC were crystal clear and in Brangifer's favour and I'd suggest that if this nonsense continues that arbitration be sought. Xanthoxyl ^< 06:13, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

@ Xanthoxyl: I haven't the faintest idea what you are talking about. which results of which RfC are crystal clear about what? we have had one RfC about a non-contentious non-topic, and another RfC that somehow got tangled up with an RfC on a different topic on a different page, and neither of them speaks to the actual problem under discussion here. can you clarify what you mean?

The results of the RfC above. You are arguing that the respondents don't understand the issue (the use of that particular reference to back up that particular statement), but the responses make it clear that they do. Furthermore, you are indulging in quite severe incivility. Xanthoxyl ^< 06:44, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

@ Brangifer: I don't like repeating myself, but I don't mind, and if repeating myself is what I have to do to bring this discussion (repeatedly) back on topic, I will do that. and you know, this is maybe the fourth or fifth time I've heard you make veiled threats like 'evidence to be used against me' and 'people are watching', and etc. what's up with that? If you're going to go all 'secret police' on me, you'd do better without the 'keystone cops' overtones. Get on with it, or get over it. --Ludwigs2 06:31, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Ludwigs2, don't play dumb. You know perfectly well that the only RfC held on this page is this one. The other was an announcement. The one above is overwhelmingly in my favor. As to evidence against you, I'm referring to the same thing that Xanthoxyl has mentioned. You have been disruptive for far too long, and you've been given plenty of rope to hang yourself with. Playing dumb isn't going to help you. You have been warned many times that you're being disruptive by refusing to accept the results of the RfC. That you have Dbachmann in your corner doesnt' help him either. You'll both get into trouble. -- Brangifer (talk) 06:40, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I went ahead and checked the most current version of the Science and Technology Indicators, which does not contain this language. that obviates the entire discussion - your source is outdated... also, if you threaten me one more time I will take you to ANI - I am not going to sit here and listen to your incessant personal attacks forever, you know.

<-- Ludwigs2, this is not about scientific research, where new findings replace old and outdated ones. The NSF report changes slightly from year to year. In the absence of any evidence that they have changed their POV, the contents of ALL the NSF reports are legitimate sources. The part that's relevant and fits the ArbCom wording exactly (to be used as a ref at NPOV), is found in the 2006 version and possibly others. Just because the NSF declared belief in ten concepts to be "pseudoscientific beliefs" in 2006, doesn't mean they are suddenly not pseudoscientific beliefs today. What you say really doesn't matter. It's just another diversionary attempt. The National Science Foundation is a legitimate source and my simple proposal has overwhelmingly passed muster in two different RfCs. I invite you to bow to the consensus as any good Wikipedian does.

But.... if you really are a masochist and wish to suffer the consequences of filing an RfC/U, like you're threatening to do on User talk:Dbachmann, the gun is in your hand. Go ahead and shoot. It's not my fault that it is pointing at your own foot. You've been given ample rope to hang yourself. If you hadn't been edit warring and had consensus on your side you'd have a case, but all you will achieve is that your edit warring, OR, and blatently tendentious editing (seemingly written by someone describing your behavior) will be noticed and get its due reward. Violating consensus isn't taken lightly here. -- Brangifer (talk) 08:05, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

NPOV attribution in lead removed by User:Dbachmann

User:Dbachmann has removed the NPOV attribution from the lead.

Here was his existing content which violated WP:FRINGE, by stating as fact that souls and spirits actually exist. That wording also violates NPOV:

• "A ghost is the soul or spirit of a deceased person, taken to be capable of appearing in visible form or otherwise manifesting itself to the living."

Here is the version after I added the attribution required for such fringe statements (with bold emphasis on the added part):

• "A ghost is considered by believers in the paranormal to be the soul or spirit of a deceased person, taken to be capable of appearing in visible form or otherwise manifesting itself to the living."

Dbachmann removed it with the edit summary:

• ""fringe opinion" such as that of OED and Britannica? This is very close to vandaliism now. Please try to understand what was discussed."

We are not writing OED or Britannica. We have different rules, among them NPOV. Attribution is not only helpful here, it is required if we are to retain the existing wording. We can't state something that is a scientifically fringe belief as if it's true. It is patently obvious that those who don't believe in the paranormal or souls or spirits do no believe in ghosts, and that believers in the paranormal phenomena of ghosts do believe that "the soul or spirit of a deceased person, taken to be capable of appearing in visible form or otherwise manifesting itself to the living."

An argument could be made for some religious believers in souls and spirits who therefore believe in ghosts. Some of them might also believe that those souls and spirits may appear to the living as ghosts. An inclusion of that fact would be appropriate, whereas the deletion was improper. Here is a possible wording that would satisfy policy:

• "A ghost is considered by believers in the paranormal and by some religions to be the soul or spirit of a deceased person, taken to be capable of appearing in visible form or otherwise manifesting itself to the living."

Note that there are other types of "ghosts" which are entertainment phenomena. They may scare some children at amusement parks and in movies, without those children believing in them as actual entities (disembodied spirits).

Whatever the case, the deletion and the edit summary don't hold water, either logically or according to policy, and they should be reverted.

Likewise I have tagged the NSF ref in the last sentence of the lead. It is Dbachmann's OR and misuse of the NSF source. Anyone who has actually read that source will see that it contains nothing relative to that sentence, and therefore the tags and ref should be removed. Likewise there is no source at all for the first phrase (19th century), so it should either be sourced or removed. It had previously been removed as it really adds nothing. -- Brangifer (talk) 02:00, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree that attributing these beliefs to someone is important as they would not be held by the general public. I think it could be shortened to to believers in the paranormal and by some religions to be. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:30, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Doc James, is there a large typo above? I suspect a copy and paste got screwed up. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:20, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

No typo at all. It's actually easier to read in the wikitext, which doesn't allow the signature to be confused with the proposed snippet of text, and which sets off the snippet with bolding. On the other hand, I believe I'm Doc James. Don't you? Doesn't everyone? Oh. Never mind! To each his own. --Abd (talk) 17:47, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The reason I question it was because it's an exact quote of my wording. It doesn't propose any shortening or anything new. It seems like it was a copy and paste that went wrong. (and no, you're not Doc James ;-) -- Brangifer (talk) 04:46, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

well that's silly. everyone (even people who don't believe in ghosts at all) know that they are supposed to be the soul or spirit of a deceased person. restricting it to people who believe in the paranormal is a complete misrepresentation. --Ludwigs2 06:34, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Did I write unclearly? That's possible. We can't have unattributed opinions like that in the article. They have to be attributed to whoever holds those opinions. Otherwise they stand as statements by Wikipedia. See WP:ATTRIBUTION. Since there is no scientific evidence for the existence of souls or spirits, per WP:FRINGE we need to frame the statement properly. By adding the few words I added, the statement still properly describes the meaning of ghost, with the added benefit of clarifying who holds those beliefs. I'm not saying my wording was the only or best way to do it, but the statement, as it was, violates policy. I fixed it. -- Brangifer (talk) 06:48, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

not every phrase in wikipedia needs to be attributed - if all of them were, wikipedia would be an unreadable mass of pointless citations. We attribute where we need to verify that a contested statement was actually given by a source, or where a contested viewpoint needs to be localized to a particular person or perspective. In short, attribution is to aid the reader in verifying what's written in wikipedia; attribution is not a system to prove things to the reader. There is no contested viewpoint here. Even you don't have a problem with the given definition - e.g. the disembodied soul or spirit of a deceased person - you simply want to make the argument that such things don't really exist. I agree with you that they don't exist, I agree with you that the article should make it clear that there is no scientific evidence for their existence, but I disagree with your obvious efforts to cram a skeptical viewpoint down the gullet of what you must see as a rather stupid public. Dude, c'mon: nobody believes in ghosts (outside of that kind of wistful Anne Rice sort of thing, or campfire scare-each-other silliness) - this pedantic insistence on saying they don't exist is like having your mother-in-law in the back seat, warning you about every stoplight you come to. it just makes wikipedia look stupid. --Ludwigs2 07:57, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I stumbled across this discussion, and did not read it all ... Belief in ghosts is integral to many of the older religions and is related to concepts like angel and djinn in the Abrahamic religions. The article should be sensitive to these widespread beliefs. It would not be appropriate for an article on Bhuddism or Christianity or Islam to say that, of course, there is no scientific evidence for many of the elements of the belief, such as life after death. Better to just describe who holds the belief and what the belief consists of. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:29, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I definitely agree that we should "describe who holds the belief and what the belief consists of", and I did it in a very neutral manner. Right now Ludwigs2 is denying that we should even say who believes in ghosts, and then he introduces a diversionary tactic by claiming that we're trying to "say they don't exist". That's another subject, which can only be done by citing sources of criticism. This immediate discussion is not about that, but is about noting who believes in ghosts, and he's not allowing it. He's even vandalized the lead by removing mention of the NSF's position, which was properly sourced, and even the other ref. That violates the rules for WP:LEAD, which require that significant content in the body of the article be mentioned in the lead. It's all a whitewashing POV push.

What's really odd is that he contradicts himself above. He has been fighting for limiting any mention of the NSF's concept of "pseudoscientific beliefs" to that which overtly makes claims to be scientific, IOW such things as ghost hunters and parapsychology. He's satisfied to maintain a limited and rigid definition, with no other nuances. Yet above he's saying that no one believes in ghosts anyway? What happened to the pseudoscientific pushing by those who believe in ghosts and try to use scientific methods to prove them? Suddenly they're gone! I'm beginning to think he actually believes in ghosts and the paranormal and is trying to whitewash this article from any criticism by the National Science Foundation, which labels them as "pseudoscientific beliefs". No one but a true believer would act this way. -- Brangifer (talk) 15:05, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

What utter nonsense, Brangifer. If you have read any of the points I have made you have spectacularly failed to grasp any of them. Do the editors of the OED secretly "believe in ghosts and the paranormal"? I don't think so. The problem is you and your false dichotomies. --dab (𒁳) 12:12, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

RfC announcement: Using the National Science Foundation as a reference at NPOV

See: Wikipedia_talk:Neutral_point_of_view#RfC:_Using_the_National_Science_Foundation_as_a_reference

Please weigh in THERE on whether a statement by the National Science Foundation is a reliable source to use as an illustration for a portion of an ArbCom statement used in the NPOV policy. This is especially important for members of the Arbitration Committee, since it relates to an ArbCom ruling.

I'm announcing this here since it is very relevant to the RfC we have just held here. Please do not discuss this here. -- Brangifer (talk) 08:06, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

RFC

I am going to launch one. First time I have done it, so bear with me if I screw up. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:48, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Is this a pseudoscience topic?

1. Should this article should be categorized as a pseudo-science topic?
{{collapse top|original second question}}2. How much emphasis should be given to the spiritualist / skeptic debate as opposed to other aspects of the subject? <small>collapsed because mixing two questions in one RfC can confuse results, and there is no pollable answer to this second question. --Abd (talk) 03:23, 17 March 2010 (UTC) </small>

I concur with the above comment by Adb, so am withdrawing the request for comment on the second question. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:59, 17 March 2010 (UTC) {{collapse bottom}} Aymatth2 (talk) 20:58, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

{{collapse}} hid everything beneath it at wp:Requests for comment/Religion and philosophy. As User:Abd might be taking a break, I've gone ahead and "fixed" it.—Machine Elf 1735 (talk) 14:50, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

• This article is obviously not primarily a fringe article. Ghosts (not necessarily belief in ghosts) are part of mainstream culture, have been so since practically forever, and that in practically all cultures throughout the world. There is some fringe going on around ghosts, probably most of it pseudoscience (some of it is religious fringe). I am a strong supporter of WP:UNDUE and WP:ONEWAY. There is some ghost-related fringe that is sufficiently notable to be mentioned here, but I reject all attempts by the pseudoscience group (BullRangifer, Verbal, QuackGuru and some others) to make the fringe aspects take over this article. I also reject the categorisation of this article as pseudoscience. Via Category:Ghosts it is already categorised in Category:Paranormal. Most of paranormal stuff is pseudoscience, which is why the paranormal category is a subcategory of Category:Pseudoscience. Therefore this article is already in a sub-subcategory of the pseudoscience category. Given how marginal the pseudoscience aspects are in relation to the entire vast topic of ghosts (for most of history and in most cultures there is simply no relation), this is just the right level of indirection. Hans Adler 21:46, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

1. Hans, I agree with most of what you've said in this volumous debate, but I don't agree that most of the "paranormal" is "pseudoscience" unless you define it that way. Any physical manifestation of spiritual power or godly power, including all miracles (all the miracles in the bible, for example, and all the miracles associated with saints in the Roman church) are "paranormal" by definition. But none are testable, none claim to be scientific, and the idea that they are thereby "false-science" (pseudoscience) is just wrong. Read the wiki on science for the best definition of what things are claimed to be sciences (meaning natural sciences in this context), but are not. The power of prayer is not inherently scientifically testable (though some have attempted it) because there's no guarantee that God Almighty will cooperate. Basically it's the same with ghosts (they don't have to cooperate). The fact that they are claimed to affect the physical world is therefore not inherently a "scientific claim" unless they are claimed to effect the physically world reproducably, which I don't think is claimed by anyone! If not, they become like miracles and prayer. Sometimes you see them, othertimes not. But seeing them is not claimed by anyone to be gotten down to a "science." SBHarris 23:21, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, I am far from an expert on paranormal (as I mentioned above I didn't even know that's a noun), so I would be prepared to believe you. But it seems to me that quite a lot, quite possibly most, of the stuff in Category:Paranormal is in fact pseudoscience. Of course this may be due to accidents in our coverage or in the category structure. In any case this doesn't seem to affect my argument. Hans Adler 23:38, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

In that case, I'm not sure what your argument is. The words "paranormal" and "supernatural" are not used rigorously and perfectly (however much WP wants them to be), but the usual sense of them is that the supernatural is stuff that goes beyond physics: god, religous miracles/effects of prayer, spirits, and ghosts. It's not testable with scientific methods, sort of by definition, because these methods are based on physics, and also the supernatural entities are presumed to have the power to appear/work, or not (both of these fouling up reproducibility). In this sense, "ghost" on Wikipedia should be part of the supernatural.

As for paranormal, it basically has to do with the unexpected, but it's sometimes used to include all the supernatural, and sometimes reserved for all the unexpected BUT the supernatural. Poor definition! And not easily fixed! In the latter sense of "paranormal" we get all the scientifically-possible and physical, but not supernatural, stuff-- like aliens in saucers, ESP, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. Most of this has problems with reproducibility also, since you can't just see Bigfoot or Gray Aliens, on demand.

However, beware of trying to use Wikipedia to define the English language (look at the article on matter and its TALK page, if you think you use Wikipedia this way). Beware of even using categories if you can't define the dang word!

Anyway, regardless of which of the possible definitions of paranormal you use, almost NONE of it is "pseudoscience." We reserve that to a small group of things that the proponents claim will work reliably (if it's not reproducible, it's not science), but which on testing, we find do not work (ala the James Randi tests). Like some claims of dowsing, homeopathy, and acupuncture. I don't even think astrology makes hard and fast and testable claims-- it's too wishy-washy. SBHarris 01:05, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually, there was a scientific test of astrology back in the 1980s. They got astrologers recommended by the American Astrological Association (or whatever) & agreed the arrangements with them. The whole thing was supervised by someone both sides trusted. The procedure was that the astrologers would be given a horoscope & 3 personality profiles, or vice versa. 1 was the correct one, the other 2 random. The astrologers predicted, modestly, that they'd identify the correct 1 about 1/2 the time. The scientists of course predicted 1/3. They actually got a little over 1/3, not statistically significant. This was reported in Nature, or Scientific American, I think. Peter jackson (talk) 10:40, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Request from nominator I strongly suggest to all who have been involved in debates on this page (I am included) to take a break, maybe take this page off their watchlist for a week, refrain from comment, and quietly learn what the broader community has to say on the issue. I should have put this request in before I launched the RFC. It is my first - a learning process. Let's get fresh views rather than rehash the stale arguments. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:54, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

• Comment Bad idea to present two questions in one RfC. Suggest withdrawing the second question, people aren't responding to it anyway, and it's not designed to get a crisp answer. In fact, since it hasn't seen clear response, I'm going to collapse it with this edit. Aymatth2 is welcome to revert me, but if people start commenting on it, it can't then be deleted. As to arguments that have been presented before, arguments relevant to an RfC should be presented at the top of the RfC, or in it, as soon as possible, so that editors commenting are adequately informed as to the nature of the issue. At this point, the Not Pseudoscience side may have been adequately presented (if not, someone should add more), the Pseudoscience side hasn't shown up yet. They should not be discouraged from briefly making the case here. What's a problem is arguing back and forth, over and over. Thanks for starting the RfC. --Abd (talk) 03:23, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Abd. Agreed. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:59, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Comments

• Not Pseudoscience. The topic of this article is not pseudoscience, as clearly defined in the pseudoscience article, the ArbComm finding, and the NSF reference. The NSF, interested in the prevalence of superstition and other nonscientific belief, in 2006 listed belief in ghosts as a "pseudoscientific belief," that was dicta; a single document cannot revise the English language, in particular when it defines the word itself in the standard way, which does not cover mere superstition or nonscientific belief! The NSF report neither intended nor took any pains to discover the consensus of scientists about pseudoscience and ghosts, it did not report on that; the survey was about public belief. By the loosest standard defined by ArbComm, allowing the use of the pseudoscience category, only a, strong, reliably reported consensus of scientists that "Ghosts" were "pseudoscience," i.e., non-science pretending to be science, as described in the definitions, would allow use. In spite of claims, the 2006 NSF report is a primary source on the "pseudoscience" issue, at most; and as to the Gallup poll, commissioned by the NSF, it's not independent, so the NSF report remains technically primary. I have, however, no objection to the use of noncontroversial statistics from the poll, primary sources may be used with caution. --Abd (talk) 00:08, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
• Not usually pseudoscience I think the general topic of ghosts is not pseudoscientific. It doesn't purport to rely on scientific principles; it doesn't use scientific topics in a non-standard way to explain things. It's the same reason the Bible isn't pseudoscience, since it's not relying on a claimed scientific foundation. However, I think that certain subtopics related to ghosts are pseudoscience... specifically "ghost hunter" type stuff where people go around with gaussmeters and laser thermometers and purport to produce empirical evidence of ghost presence. Gigs (talk) 03:57, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
  • I was asked to comment by Aymatth2. I agree with Gigs: I think the topics is so far removed from science that it cannot be labeled pseudoscience. It's mysticism/religion/superstition or some such thing, none of which have any relation to science at all. Pseudoscience refers to things that pretend to be science. Some aspects of psychic research involving ghosts can conceivably be pseudoscience, like an attempt to design an experiment to prove them real, but that's not usually the way the subject is discussed. DGG ( talk ) 04:16, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
• Mostly not pseudoscience - my views would align with Gigs and DGG. I did edit this page a bit before but have ducked for cover with the torrent of words preceding this. Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:56, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
• Not Pseudoscience. While ghost "hunting", etc., might be pseudoscience, ghosts are not. The label better applies to that article, not to this one. This is folklore. Today is St. Patrick's Day, so I wonder when the Leprechaun article will be labelled as pseudoscience. Eastcote (talk) 11:43, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
• The RfC above addressed this issue, we should follow the WP:RS. Verbal chat 12:24, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
• Not Pseudoscience. I remember dipping my toe in this article a few years back. The article itself is much better now, but I'm amazed to see that this debate is still going on! I think it's a mistake to see Wikipedia as a project to determine which things "really exist in the real world" by categorising them into things we have scientific evidence for and things which either don't claim to really exist or that make claims which have been described as "pseudoscience". It's just not an appropriate medium (haha). I don't personally believe in ghosts, but neither do I think that the history of how people have tried to study them somehow stains them with this "pseudoscience" label. The methods of investigating something should not be confused with the thing itself. Applying this label would also distract from the way in which ghosts most certainly DO exist, as an idea with a rich history in many cultures. RadioElectric (talk) 12:38, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
• Leaning towards Pseudoscience  : The article is full of references to 'Ghost Huntling' like tools. How is ritual binding, reburial, and the Spiritualist movement any different, except with the tools of the period? All are attemtpts to reconcile the mystical with physical tools. Is a seance really any different than EVP? Guyonthesubway (talk) 15:01, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
  • "The article is full of" such references? Really? I can see such references only in the following two sections: "Spiritualist movement" and "Scientific skepticism". That's precisely where they belong. The rest seems to be perfectly fine in this respect. The two pseudoscience sections (4 and 2 paragraphs, respectively) are a bit too long in comparison to the rest of the article, but that doesn't mean the entire article is contaminated with the topic. Hans Adler 16:40, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
• Depends - If the main article is refactored along the lines of Ghost (belief) then pseudoscience doesn't apply. But if it broadly includes concepts such as Ghost train (spiritual entity) ("recorded events of ghost trains appearing in places where no tracks ever existed") and Spirit photography ("attempts to record images of ghosts") then pseudoscience certainly applies. - LuckyLouie (talk) 15:15, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
• As somebody pointed out, the article is ultimately in a subcategory of the pseudoscience category, so adding the pseudoscience category itself would be superfluous. On the broader issue, I've already expressed the opinion that a broad interpretation of the term "pseudoscience" is less artificial and creates fewer problems, but I can live with a more parsimonious interpretation. --TS 19:33, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

• Do not put in Category:Pseudoscience, and remove the giant box about it from the talk page. First, the subject matter of this article has little to do with science. Attempts to use supposedly scientific tools to address the subject (such as modern Ghost hunting) could be accurately described as pseudoscience, but this article is overwhelmingly about the history and varieties of folk belief. Pre-scientific beliefs of the ancients are not "pseudoscience" and it is an abuse of language to call them such. Second, the category system has a hierarchy. To the extent that ghosts are related to pseudoscience, it is as an example of paranormal phenomena, for which there is a distinct sub-category. We don't shove individual articles into a parent category when they belong in a sub-category instead. Finally, a footnote in a single report from a single body (however respected) is not the source of "scientific consensus", especially when the focus of the report was not defining what is or is not pseudoscience. The NSF was reporting on social trends related to science, and the report should be used for that information, not for classifications so incidental that they weren't even in the main text. Discussion of belief in ghosts being considered pseudoscientific belongs in the article, but with sources that discuss that more explicitly, not just one seemingly chosen for the prestige of the publisher rather than for substantial relevance. Note that ArbCom did not cite the NSF article, but the box placed above earlier this month (long after the ArbCom ruling, and not by anyone associated with ArbCom) makes it sound like ArbCom has endorsed the particular designation of topics from that article. (The unmodified version of the box can be viewed at Talk:Pseudoscience.) It is inappropriate to put up a non-standard talk page notice in an attempt to sway a content dispute. (Side note: The recent addition of the category to Witchcraft should also be removed. It is even more ridiculous there than it is here.) --RL0919 (talk) 21:16, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

• • It will still be in the PS category even if the PS category tag isn't on the page. The box isn't about the category, but about covering pseudoscience, and this article covers pseudoscience in relation to Ghosts quite clearly. Verbal chat 22:08, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

• Not Pseudoscience By all means, there is plenty of scope for articles which relate to ghosts which would fall under pseudoscience, such as ghost hunting. Pseudoscience has a particular meaning which we should not maintain an understanding of which departs from establishedusage. Unomi (talk) 01:27, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

• Mostly not pseudoscience the "spiritualism" and "scientific skepticism" sections deal with pseudoscience-related aspects of the subject. The rest is spiritual or superstitious, mythological, literary, etc. The stuff about the NSF study could be moved to the scientific skepticism section. I find Kim D. Petersen's conclusion that the "religious" argument "fails, since there is a claim of interaction between the physical and spiritual world" unpersuasive. The assertion that Jesus walked on water also describes such an interaction, but IMO most people would nonetheless consider such a belief to be religious. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 01:35, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

• some parts of it, specifically Ghost#Scientific_skepticism and Ghost#Spiritualist_movement. I'll support Hans in that the arbitration case does not cover the whole article, just the parts that deal with actual pseudoscience (and, of course, any edits that deal with pseudoscientific stuff anywhere in the article). Come on, this is common sense. --Enric Naval (talk) 01:16, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Enric, the question is whether or not the entire article should be categorized as pseudo-science. We can't categorize just the bit that deal with a few hundred ghost-hunting cranks and skeptics, but have to categorize the whole article, which could be a bit insulting to the 1.5 billion or so Hindus and Buddhists who believe in ghosts as a basic part of their religion (admittedly their views at present get less coverage than the cranks and skeptics). What is your recommendation? Aymatth2 (talk) 01:48, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Here is what I suggest, we spin off the pseudoscience bits into child articles. This would ensure there is a more clearcut demarcation. Unomi (talk) 04:01, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

If any of them don't define ghosts as the disembodied spirits or souls of the dead, they should be exempted from the category. (Casper the Ghost, little children at Halloween, etc.) Others which use the regular definition of ghost deserve the categorization per NPOV Guideline 2 and NSF. It is those aspects that are classed as "pseudoscientific beliefs" by NSF. -- Brangifer (talk) 04:32, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

BR, the stuff about disembodied spirits of the dead is not pseudoscience either, when it's presented as a supernatural phenomenon and not a scientific one. My grandmother believed in ghosts because (she told me) she had personally seen one, of my deceased grandfather, sometime after he died. She was not a scientific person, she didn't care at all about science or whether her "ghost" had a scientific explanation, she was somewhat religious, and it's just ordinary common sense to understand her "ghost" belief as having been spiritual and/or religious rather than as pseudoscientific. That is the type of ghost most of the article is about. I wish you would stop overreaching with your push poll about the NSF study. The NSF calls something pseudoscience to distinguish it from science when it claims to be science. It doesn't attempt to distinguish pseudoscience from something that makes no claim at all to being scientific.

Unomi, I think completely splitting out the pseudoscience bits into a separate article isn't going to work--a top-level article has to address all the relevant aspects. However, the pseudoscience stuff is possibly overrepresented in the current version and could be scaled back a bit. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 07:02, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Note that the NSF statement doesn't claim that ghosts (or any of the other in the list of ten) are pseudoscience. I don't know why people keep getting confused over this. Everything gets twisted into a discussion of pseudo-science, when the NSF statement under discussion is about "pseudoscientific beliefs", not about pseudo-science. Of course they're related, but when we use a source, we must not misquote it. The NSF was concerned about how people come to hold pseudoscientific beliefs and described why. Then they listed ten examples of pseudoscientific beliefs, not ten items that are "obvious pseudoscience", to use the NPOV and ArbCom wording in Guideline 1. I even have a thread on my talk page where you are welcome to come and discuss this in a casual and friendly manner. There I have described in detail my understanding of this matter. In fact, it's entirely possible to hold a pseudoscientific belief in something that isn't strictly a pseudoscience. Now doesn't that make you curious? BTW, please sign in. Using an IP in this manner is against policy. It also lessens your credibility. IPs aren't taken seriously here. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:29, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

IPs aren't taken seriously here?! When did that happen? Unomi (talk) 08:17, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Wow. Didn't you lecture me about AGF recently? Something about enforcing it? If you believe this IP has an account and simply doesn't log in for some reason, WP:SPI is the place to go. If you on't have sufficient evidence for that, you are supposed to shut up. Character assassination is not an acceptable alternative. Hans Adler 09:15, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

"Character assassination"??? I only admonished the IP to sign in. I didn't say anything incivil or about the IPs character, and I still replied to the IP's comments. Me thinks you are overreacting. -- Brangifer (talk) 14:36, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

How is an IP user who does not have, and does not want to have, a user name, supposed to sign in? You could have told the IP to create an account, but you simply assumed that the IP already has one. Perhaps you thought the IP is a user who doesn't want to act under their usual name, i.e. basically a sock? In any case that wasn't OK. Hans Adler 18:28, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

BR, belief in ghosts (or in anything else) can only be pseudoscientific if the belief is presented as a scientific belief. It's an overreach when you claim that the NSF "pseudoscience" label applies to any beliefs when they are not presented as scientific, and that's why you're having such disagreements with various other editors. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 08:48, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Mere belief in an idea like time cube or parapsychology cannot be pseudoscience UNLESS you claim it is a science - that's why "pseudoscience" category tags should be removed from ghost hunting, ghost hunters don't claim it is a sceince. Oh wait a minute the tags are removed anyway. Never mind. Thank you!!24.91.158.85 (talk) 14:23, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

66.., that's too simplistic an understanding of my POV on the subject. Go to my talk page where I detail my view. If it's not a falsifiable statement, it doesn't qualify for accusations of pseudoscience, and even if it does, it doesn't necessarily qualify. It is the falsifiability aspect which makes a statement a potentially scientific statement. There isn't any black or white thinking here. -- Brangifer (talk) 14:36, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

In this case I agree with BullRangifer about the result, for a change. (I don't agree with the argument. That doesn't seem to make sense.) There is no one generally accepted definition of pseudoscience, only many reasonable ones, and they are generally up to interpretation. But there seems to be general agreement that ghost hunting is normally practice of pseudoscience. Whether we have sufficiently strong sources for this is another matter. I didn't immediately find something that would have allowed me to put ghost hunting on List of topics characterized as pseudoscience. Hans Adler 14:44, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Guys, it's already on category "Paranormal", which is a subcategory of "Pseudoscience". It's already categorized as pseudoscience. If you don't like that, then make separate articles for Ghost (belief) and Ghost (paranormal). --Enric Naval (talk) 12:24, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

The more I look at the Category:Paranormal the more it seems as though it shouldn't be a child of Category:Pseudoscience. There are a great number of articles that inappropriately become grandchildren of Pseudoscience for that reason. Witness Afterlife, Dragon, Xian_(Taoism), Category:Fictional_ghosts, Category:Ghost films and many many more. Category:Pseudoscience seems to have been neglected badly and lacks proper subcategories which the truly pseudoscientific articles could be attached to, but this overly broad inheritance of Category:Paranormal seems to be in error. Unomi (talk) 12:47, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Category:Fictional_ghosts and Category:Ghost films aren't paranormal subjects. They don't belong in the Psi category. -- Brangifer (talk) 14:36, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

That's normal, we have that with many subcategories and trying to fix is hopeless. It's not really clear what categories are, but they certainly don't define a hierarchical ontology or anything like that. Except for the few categories that are primarily perceived as labelling (e.g. pseudoscience, murderer, terrorist), they are really no more than a navigation tool. E.g. CBM's tools that maintain the mathematics articles rely on categories because the mathematics project traditionally doesn't apply its project banner to unrated articles. This only works because it cuts off subcategories of subcategories etc. at some point and CBM manually excludes certain sub-subcategories that lead very far outside mathematics. Hans Adler 13:12, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Irrelevant and frivolous comment: I wonder what the Dalai Lama would have to say? He is, after all, a leading expert on the subject. I suspect he would just laugh and shake his head, and agree that attempts to use machines to detect ghosts are indeed pseudo-science. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:22, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

We could create Category:Paranormal pseudoscience (subcategory of both Pseudoscience and Paranormal), and remove Paranormal from Pseudoscience. (of course, since the current Ghost article contains both kinds of paranormal, it would be listed at both categories :P ) --Enric Naval (talk) 14:35, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Not Pseudoscience. The arguments posted against the pseudo classification above are coherent, even if they all seem to be rooted in an agnostic perception that while intelligent isnt really up to date with the research conducted in this field.

Approaching this from a scientific perspective, the article would not even be partially pseudo science if it were much more positive about the scientifically demonstrable existence of ghosts or at least ghost like incarnate spirits. Scientists have been able to verify their existence with repeatable experiments. Researchers have consistently found positive results for over a century now. But only in the past decade or so has the methodology been refined to the point where no room is left for sceptics to plausibly argue for non supernatural natural explanations; the triple blind protocol pioneered by Archie Roy is especially impressive in this regard. You can read a summary of the recent quantitative work in the first couple of pages of this paper over at the Windbridge Institute. You're need journal or at least Scopus access to read most of the actual research papers, but you can see at least the abstract of one of the triple blind studies here at ScienceDirect

Im not proposing we distress wiki skeptics by integrating the actual science into the article. The Holy Bible does in several places imply that the sprits mediums contact arent really the souls of dead folk but deceptive entities, possibly fallen angels. But one has to question whether its encyclopaedic to allow a skeptic source to verify the claim in the articles lede that "such efforts are generally held to be pseudoscientific". It would be more NPOV to omit the problem sentence or if we dont mind a litle tautology to qualify it as "...held to be pseudoscientific by skeptics." FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:17, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

• Comment + Oppose: I would like to remind everyone that this question is about categorizing the topic. Categories are not labels we apply to topics because we believe they deserve to be labeled that way. Categories are labels we apply to topics because they are helpful to the reader. Would someone interested in learning about ghosts find it helpful to look at a category page that contains things like magnetic healing bracelets, rife machines and orgone boxes, AIDS denialism, phrenology...? Unlikely. Compare that with Category:Spiritualism, which someone interested in ghosts would find very apros pos. This isn't about labeling the concept of ghosts as pseudoscientific (which is the main purpose of the proponents); this is about creating a proper category structure that readers will find helpful and appropriate. --Ludwigs2 15:41, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I support Ludwigs2's view. See Creationism, Evolution and Creation–evolution controversy. The first is in religious categories, the second in scientific categories, and the one in between, mentioned by both parents, is under "Creationism", "Evolution and religion" and "Intelligent design controversies". We seem to be missing an article such as Ghost research that discusses the research mentioned by FeydHuxtable and the skeptics view of such research. Maybe if we had that, with a short summary in Ghosts, we could shift the pseudo-science war over to that one, and free up this one for badly needed expansion to cover Ghost concepts in non-western cultures, religions, books, movies etc. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:58, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Good points – from that point of view the pseudo cat would be useful to some if the article ever includes significant coverage of the science, as some do admittedly reject it. But as well stated by others the existing article is much more about the cultural / historical aspect etc. Im not sure whether its worth the possible drama to start the ghost research article however as skeptic wikipedians may object to a fair and neautral presentation of the very strong science in this area. FeydHuxtable (talk) 16:10, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I was thinking of starting one, checked and found Paranormal#Paranormal research. The content in this article is a fork. Material that is not in Paranormal#Paranormal research should be moved there, and content in this article reduced to a short summary. That fixes the problem, as far as I am concerned. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:24, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

• A technical trick: it is quite easy to automatically include the summary of a sub-article in the main article. That discourages forking. Example from Indian ghost movie:

Indian ghost movies are popular not just in India but in the Middle East, Africa, South East Asia and other parts of the world. Generally the movies are based on the experiences of modern people who are unexpectedly exposed to ghosts. Some Indian ghost movies, such as the comedy horror film Chandramukhi, have been great hits, dubbed into several languages. They usually draw on traditional Indian literature or folklore, but in some cases are remakes of Western movies, such as Anjaane, based on Alejandro Amenábar's ghost story The Others.

Click on "Edit" to see how this is done. Not difficult. Any changes to the intro to the Indian ghost movie essay will be automatically included on the parent pages. With an article like Ghost that seems so controversial and with so much risk of forking, this is a good approach. Fight the wars in the sub-articles, and let the main article automatically reflect the current position on each topic. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:40, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

damn. I have to say, that's super-cool. does the colon restrict the transclusion to the first section or the first paragraph? --Ludwigs2 02:11, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

The sub-article brackets the content that goes in the main article with <onlyinclude> and </onlyinclude> markup. That is, the sub-article says what should be included when it it treated like a template. Check the sub-article source. This approach does not exactly conform to general policy on summary articles, but I think is useful for ones like this that somehow have become controversial. Aymatth2 (talk) 02:41, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

This is in fact a very bad practice, mainly because it gives a misleading impression of what previous versions of the article are saying. Imagine that you transcluded a summary into an article on January 2009, and that summary got completely rewritten a year later (January 2010). People looking at the old version of the article as it looked on January 2009 will see the summary from January 2010, which may completely contradict other parts of the article! This is also true for templates such as infoboxes and navboxes, but this is not so much of a problem. But when people start transcluding actual text, then things rapidly fall apart in terms of being able to trace the history and development of an article (unless you cross-reference with the history of the template, but how do you cross-reference with the history of a summary transcluded from the lead of another article?). Carcharoth (talk) 17:32, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

• Not pseudoscience, and Category:Pseudoscience should be removed. Ghosts (in the sense relevant to this article) are folklore/mythical beings, like witches, gnomes and so on (although they have a more important role in modern culture). There ain't no such thing as a 'pseudoscientific being' per se, as pseudoscientific refers to the claim that a concept is scientific or supported by scientific findings contrary to the scientific consensus. While beings are just beings, in themselves they can't be characterized as pseudoscientific, even though some considerations on them are. It would be unacceptable for us, on the basis that a concept has been studied/analyzed/considered in a pseudoscientific manner, to characterize or even categorize it as such; we should do so only if it has been considered only or most notably and massively in a pseudoscientific context (by extension) - which is clearly not the case for either ghosts, reincarnation, haunted houses or witches. Although I reckon this paper (subject of discord) is a bit misleading in this respect, it restates the definition of pseudoscience as "claims presented so that they appear [to be] scientific even though they lack supporting evidence and plausibility", so it is evidently not directly applicable to beings, a being is not a claim ! and per above, neither by extension. Nonetheless they indeed refer to beliefs in those as pseudoscientific, but it is not clear what they mean by 'pseudoscientific belief'. If they meant by that, belief in pseudoscience, then it would be too much a shortcut especially for ghosts, reincarnation, haunted houses, witches, as they're not purely pseudoscientific concepts and believing in them doesn't imply believing in them as scientifically valid; and indeed that (pseudo)scientific aspect was quasi-irrelevant hundreds of years ago (while not relevant to the paper, it is to us as we must take a historical perspective). So I don't consider the source to be valid for this, as plenty of other sources consider those subjects without any reference to pseudoscience, and don't refer to them or categorize them as such. To put it in another way, pseudo-scientific does not mean extra-scientific. Ghosts, reincarnation, haunted houses, witches, are extra-scientific concepts (in their physical reality), but can't be described as pseudo-scientific on their own. Actually scientific research has been done on those subjects (most obviously historical research, social research, etc), and it's clear the cultural impact is massively more important than any pseudoscientific consideration of them. So those are in no way essentially pseudoscientific concepts; they originated in folklore/tradition from hundreds or thousands of years ago, and science, if existent, was irrelevant to them; pseudoscience developed around them in modern times and are only a small aspect of it. We need to put things into perspective, per our policy of neutral point of view, and it would be incompatible with it to push those subjects as pseudoscientific or the pseudoscientific aspects or them (which appeared very recently on a historical scale and are ridiculously unimportant compared to the cultural significance). As an illustration of why we shouldn't classify 'targets' of pseudoscience as pseudoscience themselves, consider that some people believe that the earth is flat, should we then categorize earth in pseudoscience ? and TVs, because they allow communication with dead people ? Obviously no, and the same goes with respectively, fictional, (genuinely) scientific or cultural concepts (examples in order: Parallel universe (fiction), Wormhole, Will-o'-the-wisp, all subject of pseudoscientific considerations). On the other hand, modern views of telepathy and astrology, channeling, extrasensory perception, clairvoyance and communication with dead, are considered pseudoscientific theories, though they also have a historical and cultural significance that needs to be covered with due weight. Cenarium (talk) 05:06, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Further comment in the section #Lead, on the question of belief in particular. Cenarium (talk) 20:52, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

• Not Pseudoscience per points made by Cenarium and others above. --EPadmirateur (talk) 16:21, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

• Not pseudoscience. See my post below, which I wrote before I saw this. Beliefs in ghosts and lucky numbers and the power of black cats are superstitions. Nothing to do with science or pseudoscience. Pseudoscience concerns the alleged subversion of scientific method. It's not about fearing seven years bad luck when you break a mirror. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 11:27, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

• Ugh I didn't even realize that the Pseudoscience wars were still ongoing... everyone who is on the pro or anti pseudoscience crusade should be permanently banned from the project. Dlabtot (talk) 04:59, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
  • BullRangifer moved my response to a new section #Resumption of discussion about NSF and RfC without even the basic decency of leaving a pointer here. Hans Adler 07:46, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
  • In addition, this way of expressing your disapproval of the mere fact that there is a conflict is not acceptable because it is in no way constructive and treats an asymmetric situation as if it were symmetric. A small number of editors are on an obvious crusade to spread the word "pseudoscience" all over Wikipedia, including to articles where it simply doesn't fit. Unfortunately they are being enabled by a large number of editors who don't look at the matters at hand – presumably because they are thinking in terms of a "pro-science, anti-pseudoscience" camp and a "pro-pseudoscience, anti-science" camp and make incorrect assumptions about which is which. Pushing indiscriminate inflammatory terminology for irrational beliefs into an encyclopedia is not pro-science/anti-pseudoscience. It is anti-science, because it denies the basic premise of science to stick to precise language and to give reality precedence over one's own wishes about reality. (Such as: "I want everything I don't like to be called 'pseudoscience' because I am emotionally attached to the term.") It is neither pro- nor anti-pseudoscience. And if you think that trying to contain this nonsense is banworthy, I must ask you to pursue one of the appropriate avenues. Hans Adler 08:02, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I stand by my comment. Whether you think it is 'not acceptable' is unimportant to me. Dlabtot (talk) 13:35, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

• Not pseudoscience I don't see how this article can be considered pseudoscience when there is little science in it, good or bad. The article stats off by saying 'according to traditional belief' which sets the tone for the rest of the article. It isn't an article about a fringe view of science or a poor scientific method, it's an article about various belief systems, legends and stories. Calling it pseudoscience elevates the discussion beyond it's stature. Weakopedia (talk) 08:41, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

• Not pseudoscience in general (if I shudder in the dark because I think there's a scary monster under the bed, am I being pseudoscientific?). There may be some purported methods of ghost-hunting that could be called pseudoscience if the reliable sources do, but I suppose the question then becomes: who cares? People aren't going to think it's good or bad or true or false because someone somewhere has called it pseudoscience. SlimVirgin ^{talk contribs} 02:18, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Is the Paranormal pseudoscience

A discussion has been started at Wikipedia_talk:Categorization#Is_the_paranormal_pseudoscience.3F. Unomi (talk) 05:52, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Lead (NSF again)

(continued from #Context of NSF statement)

I've not been involved in this before, so I'm sorry if it has been talked to death already, but I want to say that the sentence citing a webpage from the National Science Foundation, and calling this "pseudoscientific belief" is really not appropriate for the lead. If you read the source, it's using the term "pseudoscience" broadly and inconsistently, and includes people thinking they have lucky numbers. Its own definition of "pseudoscience" is "claims presented so that they appear [to be] scientific even though they lack supporting evidence and plausibility." So if I were to claim that seven is my lucky number, it seems I would be "presenting a claim that appears to be scientific ..."

I think the authors meant "superstitious," which is not quite the same thing. The source is making an argument, rather than writing in an informed and disinterested way, because it's engaged in advocacy. In citing it so prominently our lead is also so engaged. And please don't interpret that to mean I think ghosts exist or that seven is a lucky number. :) I just think we need to limit the sprawl of the word "pseudoscience," because it's often used in ways that are meaningless, and this is one of them. People who won't walk under ladders or who read their horoscopes aren't making scientific claims in the first place. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 11:22, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

That's very interesting OR and personal opinion, none of which are becoming for an editor, or especially an admin, to use as substitutes for "verifiability, not "truth". Try some policy-based arguments, rather than assuming the supreme scientific organization in the USA made a mistake. That's a pretty bold assertion, and definitely OR. Also, when articles quote sources that are advocating a position, the article is not advocating, it's just following our sourcing policies. The quote must be attributed and framed properly, but this is perfectly proper. Since this is a subject governed by WP:FRINGE and WP:WEIGHT, it is especially proper to give the mainstream POV prominence in the lead.

I really doubt that their use of the phrase "pseudoscientific beliefs" was a mistake they made every other year since 2000 (!), when "The National Science Board Members were closely involved in all phases of the preparation of this report." As Gwen Gale wisely put it (above), "Editors should keep in mind, reliable sources may not be true and often may be lacking, but en.Wikipedia is not about truth, it's about verifiability." That was immediately after stating that the "National Science Foundation is a reliable source." Now that's an opinion based on policy, and I can respect that.

Note that this discussion is totally muddled because the discussion focuses on the rigid, black/white definition of "pseudoscience" (which is a correct definition), but the NSF quote under discussion was about "pseudoscientific beliefs", which aren't exactly the same thing as "pseudo-science", even if related to it. Undocumented topics are "beliefs", and if they are held because of a lack of scientific insight or critical thinking, they are "pseudoscientific beliefs". (This is a relatively modern phenomenon, since "pseudoscience" couldn't really exist in the pre-scientific era.) Read the whole 2006 report where they discuss why people end up believing wierd things. That's why. A false belief cannot be a pseudo-science, but it can be a pseudoscientific belief. There's a difference, and the apparent lack of understanding of this difference is confusing this discussion.

The 2006 NSF report dealt with this commonly used expression ("pseudoscience" coupled with "belief" in various forms), using it numerous times. They understand the wider nuances of this subject, nuances which aren't covered in the rigid, black/white definition. It's a broad topic. My talk page has a discussion about this, and you're welcome to join in. -- Brangifer (talk)

BullRangifer, you are seriously overstating the relevance of this document, in particular with reference to the topic of pseudoscience.

• The document itself does not claim to speak for the NSF, it is written by the National Science Board, a body that is somehow associated with the NSF and consists mostly of statisticians. These statisticians have written the SEI 2006 as an executive report about science-related statistics, for politicians. Detailed questions of whether a belief is a "pseudoscientific belief" are well outside the scope of such a document, and well outside the professional competence of the chapter's main author. (Melissa F. Pollak of the Division of Science Resources Statistics; results ofmy Google Scholar searches suggest she is not normally interested in anything relevant for the pseudoscience debate [7].)
• There is nothing in the paragraph + footnote that you are relying on to suggest that the NSF, or even just the (unqualified) NSB want to put their authority behind the claim that these beliefs are "pseudoscientific beliefs". They are just drawing this connection casually.
• The SEI has an influence on the funding of science in the US. If the NSB wants to get money for fighting pseudoscience (i.e. creationism), they have an interest in overstating how prevalent it is by treating subjects that most of the politicians won't like (e.g. for religious reasons) as if they were pseudoscience. It is not appropriate to take a political statement out of its original political context and present it in a scholarly context as if it was a serious contribution to scholarly debate – not even with attribution, because along with attribution we would need a discussion of the political context, giving the whole matter about a hundred times the weight it deserves. We simply can't fill our articles with careful exegesis of casual remarks in our sources, exegesis that surpasses the original remark in length.
• I think I am beginning to understand your careful distinctions regarding "pseudoscientific belief": Since it's not a well-defined term, it can be regarded as very fuzzy, allowing it to be potentially much more general than "belief in pseudoscience or belief that is held because of pseudoscience". This idea makes your sourcing slightly more reasonable, but it also makes the resulting claim even less relevant to all those articles where you put them.

Ultimately, Wikipedia is about truth. We use reliable sources for approximating the truth. A fundamentalist approach of following the sources when we all agree that they are wrong would be unethical. In particular, given X (e.g. ghosts, reincarnation) which is generally not regarded as pseudoscience, it is extremely misleading and verges on lying, to say that some high authority has called belief in X "pseudoscientific belief". The readers will draw the conclusion that therefore X is pseudoscientific, especially if we link the word "pseudoscientific" to the pseudoscience article or fail to explain that nobody actually calls X itself pseudoscience. (And we can't do that because we have no sources for that. It wouldn't be desirable anyway, especially for X which does have some marginal aspects that are pseudoscientific without any doubt.) Hans Adler 10:42, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Furthermore, we need to maintain historical perspective. Pseudoscience has appeared only recently on a historical scale, and it has been connected to our traditional, folkloric and religious heritage because some people tried to explain those in a pseudoscientific manner, but it's actually only a very small aspect of those subjects, to which we should not give undue weight. The NSF source on the other hand was only concerned with the modern aspect of those and interpreted them narrowly in the context of pseudoscience, which we should definitely not do ourselves. It termed those beliefs 'pseudoscientific', but it can't be accurate, and plenty of sources have discussed those beliefs in depth and never termed them in this way, those are traditional, religious or superstitious beliefs, and still nowadays. I'm sure that only a small minority of the respondents actually believe in their pseudoscientific explanations, or are even aware of them, so this really can't be termed pseudoscientific belief (and the same goes for other items like reincarnation, astrology and so on, although the pseudoscientific aspect may be more important for some; on the other hand, beliefs that could definitely be termed pseudoscientific are those in brain gym, radionics and co). Cenarium (talk) 20:51, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

BR, there are two issues here:

1. You wrote, "Undocumented topics are 'beliefs', and if they are held because of a 'lack of scientific insight or critical thinking, they are 'pseudoscientific beliefs'." I don't know what an undocumented topic is, but to argue that any belief held because of a lack of critical thinking (which applies to most of our beliefs most of the time) can be classed as pseudoscientific is clearly false. The benefit of having a large vocabulary is that one can draw useful distinctions with it, such as the distinction between superstition, irrationality, and pseudoscience. You're asking us to proceed as though we can't understand that those concepts differ.

2. What matters is whether the source is appropriate for the lead of this article. The article is about ghosts. The source is not an expert on ghosts. If you were writing about The Holocaust, you wouldn't use some webpage as a source in the lead unless it was written by an expert on the Holocaust. And if someone objected to it as inaccurate, you would hopefully ditch it and go to the library instead. What you're doing here is deciding for yourself that ghosts fall under pseudoscience, and that therefore a source you see as an expert on pseudoscience (though I question that too) is an expert source on ghosts. But that's cheating; it's OR. And I'm not arguing that the sources have to be ghost hunters—there are philosophers, historians, sociologists, and psychologists who've written about the origin and function of beliefs like this. Instead, someone has found a government-related webpage with no byline that mentions ghosts in passing. It's being used not to bolster an uncontentious factual claim (e.g. x percent of adults in America say they believe in ghosts), but to impose a value judgment (ghosts are pseudoscience), with the value term so poorly defined that you may as well be saying ghosts are blah.

We should be using the most appropriate sources, scholarly ones if we can find them, to write an educated article in a disinterested tone. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 14:39, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

The prefix pseudo is from a Greek word meaning false. Something can only be false science if it pretends to be science. Religious beliefs, superstitions &c don't usually make any such claim so don't count as pseudoscience. Where they do, as in The Science of Creative Intelligence, they do. Peter jackson (talk) 11:10, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, can't find a link under any variant of that. Something to do with ISKCON or some such. Peter jackson (talk) 11:13, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, Prabhupada did write a book called The Science of Self-Realization. That would be an example. Peter jackson (talk) 11:17, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Resumption of discussion about NSF and RfC

(This section has been moved from above where it threatened to get an existing thread off-track. This is a separate issue and should be dealt with separately. -- Brangifer (talk) 04:07, 7 April 2010 (UTC))

• This war was restarted recently by BullRangifer when he found a weak source that contradicts common sense and does not agree with any other reliable sources, and then added it to the leads of many articles. See User:Hans Adler/NSF disruption for the extent of the problem. Hans Adler 05:11, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

• Hans, don't bring that issue into this one. This is forum shopping. The source I found was published on the National Science Foundation's website and authored by the National Science Board. That's hardly a weak source. Two RfCs (one on this page) have resoundingly approved of the source and the manner in which the content was phrased. You have now resumed your edit war against that source and somehow it's my fault? Stop the forum shopping, personal attacks and character assassination. -- Brangifer (talk) 06:08, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

• No, Bullrangifer, you abused the source, mangled and misinterpreted the two RfC's, and edit-warred this pure balderdash in all over the project. you should be ashamed of yourself, but you're not. that says (IMO) all that needs to be said. --Ludwigs2 06:35, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

• Your (both of you) objections remind me of a saying we once had where I once worked. Our supervisor was bipolar (and she regularly failed to take her meds) and would often curse, swear and yell at the top of her lungs in front of patients. Needless to say there was constant tension in that workplace until she ungloriously "left"! We wished we could say to her "Since when has YOUR lack of planning become MY emergency?" Well, Hans and Ludwigs2, "Since when has YOUR lack of understanding of the subject of pseudoscience, YOUR failure to abide by "verifiability, not truth", YOUR attempts to use personal OR disagreements with the actual statement they made, YOUR refusal to abide by the clear and overwhelming consensus in two RfCs on the use of this source, and YOUR edit war against the NSF/NSB, become MY problem?" The NSB/NSF said what they said, and that's a Verifiable fact. That you don't like it is not a policy-based reason to war against it. -- Brangifer (talk) 14:30, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

• Pot calling the kettle black. you're failure to appreciate the basics of scholarly reasoning is noted, and I have offered to work with you on it to improve your understanding. the offer still holds. --Ludwigs2 16:44, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

• BullRangifer, you really need to stop lying about the outcomes of the two confusing RfCs that you started. They both established that the NSF is a reliable source for saying something if it bothers to say it. They did not establish that the NSF actually said anything in any meaningful sense. Hans Adler 23:12, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

<-- Hans, don't make such accusations. That's a gross violation of policy. You may not believe me, and even though I've read and understood what you've said many times and still don't believe you (so don't accuse me of IDHT), that doesn't equal "lying". Keep it civil.

The RfC above makes it pretty clear who's telling the truth here, including the closing admin's conclusion:

I'm closing this RfC as National Science Foundation is a reliable source for stating that "belief in ghosts and spirits" are "pseudoscientific beliefs." Editors should keep in mind that the NSF position on this is meaningful, notable, reliable and scientific. This does not mean that other verifiable and widely, reliably published outlooks cannot be cited, so long as WP:UNDUE has sway. Likewise any assertions as to current scientific consensus. The consensus may be wrong (research on how people come up with notions about ghosts may not be deeply understood), but en.Wikipedia is not about truth, it's about verifiability. Gwen Gale (talk) 15:40, 15 March 2010 (UTC) Rfctag 1. Please weigh in on whether the National Science Foundation is a reliable source for stating that "belief in ghosts and spirits" are "pseudoscientific beliefs". 2. Also please discuss whether their expressions can be considered to represent the current scientific consensus (in the USA) on that subject. -- Brangifer (talk) 16:52, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

The resulting consensus overwhelmingly supported both points in my proposition, which is why I could then state that it was considered to represent the scientific consensus. (The consensus had stated that it was the scientific consensus.) The closing admin summarized it very nicely.

I'm not lying, but in light of what is written above, I'll let others decide whether you are being disingenuous.

Why should YOUR lack of understanding of the subject of pseudoscience be MY problem? Why should YOUR refusal to accept the consensus be MY problem? Well, it's not my problem, but you're disrupting Wikipedia by making such an issue of it, and that makes your behavior a problem for Wikipedia.

Gwen Gale summarized the key issue quite succinctly in both RfCs:

• "en.Wikipedia is not about truth, it's about verifiability" (above)

• "I'm closing this as National Science Foundation is a reliable source. Editors should keep in mind, reliable sources may not be true and often may be lacking, but en.Wikipedia is not about truth, it's about verifiability." [8]

That has been my contention all along. Whether what the NSF/NSB says is true or not is totally immaterial to the real issue here. We are to follow our policies and guidelines, and we must base our content on verifiable sources, and this is clearly verifiable content. Your placement of a "failed verification" tag at Pseudoscience was obviously totally off-base, and its removal by an other editor (not myself) was perfectly proper, and his edit summary was based on the verifiability policy. -- Brangifer (talk) 03:59, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Collective stupidity is not actually better than individual stupidity, you know. the fact that you confused people into voting for the wrong thing and then misinterpreted their responses in your favor destroys any validity the RfC's might possibly have had. and even if (by some wild stretch of the imagination) I might have bought that the RfC's were valid, I would automatically {{wp:IAR|]] any such RfC that produced such a mind-bogglingly unsupportable claim as the one you keep making. sorry. --Ludwigs2 05:41, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, that pretty much sums up your approach all along. You IAR, assume bad faith, make personal attacks, ignore the consensus, IOW you admit you are disruptive. Thanks for putting it so clearly. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:45, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm starting to get the impression that the real problem here is loose use of language by "reliable sources". You often come across this in the humanities, but here we seem to have a scientific example. Peter jackson (talk) 11:03, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

In what sense do you mean that? (Note that I'm well aware that Wikipedia's definition of a RS includes and covers more than the usual definition in society. Here it's used as a policy.)

The real problem here is a failure to admit "verifiability, not truth". Personal objections (that the NSF/NSB were wrong, IOW "untrue") are being used to demand that a statement in a V & RS, made by the supreme scientific body in the USA, not be used. Gwen Gale recognized this was a key policy-based issue and pointed this out in both RfCs, and numerous other editors have done the same. The verifiability policy is carefully written in that manner to prevent V sources being rejected based on editors' conflicting personal beliefs of the truth or falsity of a statement. It's simply a fact of life that editors frequently disagree on such matters, so "truthiness" is not a legitimate argument in this situation.

I obviously believe the statement is clear and true, and will take the word of the illustrious members of the National Science Board, who claimed close involvement "in all phases of the preparation of this report", over the objections of two fringy editors. ("The National Science Board Members were closely involved in all phases of the preparation of this report.") They totally failed to convince a large number of editors who !voted against their arguments in two RfCs and approved of the source, the formulated statement (using the exact NSF/NSB quote), and that it represented the scientific consensus in the USA. Read the comments of those who approved. They are right up above on this page. Hans Adler and Ludwigs2 lost two RfCs and still stubbornly refuse to abide by them. Their actions since then constitute disruption.

No, the objections of these two editors don't cut it. Gwen Gale was right:

• "I'm closing this RfC as National Science Foundation is a reliable source for stating that "belief in ghosts and spirits" are "pseudoscientific beliefs." Editors should keep in mind that the NSF position on this is meaningful, notable, reliable and scientific." (Emphasis original.)

Brangifer (talk) 14:02, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Gwen Gale later clarified that she only meant the closure to mean that the NSF is a reliable source for this statement if it actually makes such a statement. Your RfC was begging the question. It simply assumed that your source makes this statement and, starting from this assumption, asked whether the NSF is good enough. That was ridiculous. It doesn't matter whether someone is "illustrious" and qualified to say something if the real question is whether they actually meant to say it in the first place.

BullRangifer, are you really unable to see the difference between the following two situations?

1. The NSF creates a scientific committee for deciding what is pseudoscience and what isn't. On the committee there are several leading philosophers of science as well as established researchers from various scientific fields. They publish a report with the title "The Pseudoscience Demarcation Problem – Some Example Cases Decided", whose main finding is: "We found the following 10 fields to be examples of pseudoscience." The bibliography of the report reflects the committees careful examination of the existing scholarly literature. Any apparent contradictions to the existing literature, and to a plain reading of established definitions of pseudoscience is justified by means of careful discussion.
2. The NSB, a body of the NSF whose main purpose it is to produce bi-annual reports for politicians about science policies, mentions pseudoscience marginally in two or three of these reports, each time citing Gallup polls or similar third-party polls, whereas in the main part of the report they use data from polls that they commissioned themselves. The Gallup poll cited is actually about paranormal, and most of the ten fields used by Gallup as proxies for belief in paranormal fail the "purports to be science" aspect of all all respectable definitions of pseudoscience, including the one that the report has cited itself (from a popular, not scholarly, book). The main author of the chapter in question is a statistician with hardly any publications, and it is not clear who else worked on it. (But most authors are statisticians.) There is no attempt to explain why a list of ten paranormal fields is treated as if it was a list of ten pseudoscience fields – consistent with a confusion between paranormal and pseudoscience which, for the purposes of the report, is justified, but for the purposes of encyclopedic articles about pseudoscience or any of the ten fields is not justified at all. The claim that belief in any of the 10 fields is pseudoscientific belief is implicit in the report, but is not made explicitly.

Seriously, if you are unable to see the difference between these two situations, and why the report in the first example would be useful but the one in the second (the one we are in) is not useful. And if you think the weakness of the source can be overridden by an abuse of Jimbo's "verifiability not truth" dictum (which said that some truths may not be included because they are not verifiable, not that some untruths may be included because they are "verifiable"), excessive spamming of the claim to the leads of roughly 15 articles for none of which it is particularly relevant, and generally disruptive behaviour. – Then I must tell you that a cooperative project to build an encyclopedia may not be the best choice of hobby for you simply because you lack the most basic instincts required for such a scholarly endeavour. Hans Adler 14:43, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

1. Please provide the exact quote and diff for what you claim to be Gwen's "clarification" ("if it actually makes such a statement"). The NSF/NSB's exact quote is their exact quote. Period! It's as simple as that (and your words "if it actually makes such a statement" explicitly deny they made their exact quote). You and Ludwigs2 are the only ones who dare to make such a mind-bogglingly ludicrous assertion. It simply defies all logic. Gwen would never do that. Please provide a diff for that "clarification", because I now have enough (disappointing) experience with your thinking and debating tactics to know that the context needs to be examined carefully before ANYONE can even begin to entertain your statements (in more and more regards) as being remotely connected with the truth. I really doubt that she would have made the very clear statements she actually did make, and then contradict herself, and I think you should apologize to her and us. Don't make her a part of your disruption. I suspect any statement she made is being taken way out of context.

2. Your statement ("whether they actually meant to say it in the first place") is at least closer to the truth, because it actually implies the truth (that they did make the statement), but that you have personal OR concerns about their intentions. Well, lacking any other statements by them to the contrary (and we have none), we shouldn't assume their intentions contradict their plain statement, so we are thus obliged to take their statement at face value.

3. As to your claim that the RfC "simply assumed that your source makes this statement", that's obvious nonsense. With the exception of yourself and Ludwigs2, no one would claim a direct quote is not a direct quote. What part of their quote was not part of their quote?! Please enlighten us with yet another interesting example of your twisted hermeneutical skills. (Believe me, it is truly entertaining to collect these examples.)

As to your "two situations", you start off with a condescending false assumption ("Seriously, if you are unable to see the difference"), when I obviously can "see the difference" (without getting fooled). In this latest example from you it's like the classic trick question: "When did you stop beating your wife?" It's a deviously worded juxtaposition you've set up. How can I take you seriously when you speak condescendingly, use straw man arguments, etc.? Only respectfully stated arguments based on facts, and above all policy, will do.

1. Your first example would sure be nice to have, but it will likely never exist, IOW you're setting the bar conveniently too high (convenient for defenders of fringe POV). Scientific bodies rarely ever mention pseudoscience, so, per WP:FRINGE and the FRINGE ARBCOM, on the rare occasions when they actually do they should be taken seriously. Their failure to write much about it should not be used to undermine what they actually do say, but that's what your whole campaign against the NSF/NSB has been doing.

2. Your second example is simply a straw man argument based on gross misrepresentations of the facts.

If you wish your arguments to be taken seriously you'll have to be completely honest, stop using straw man arguments, and drop the condescending tone. It reeks of WP:PA and a failure to AGF. I know you can do better than this when you wish to and aren't so emotionally involved in the issue. You're grasping at straws, but you've pulled out so much straw from the straw man that he's getting pretty skinny! This leaves you little left to do but to be more and more "creative". In case you don't understand the irony of me lecturing you about your typical condescending tone while engaging in a small bit of it myself, well, I've gotten so tired of it that I thought you deserved to feel a bit of what it's like to be on the receiving end. Call it "pointy" if you will, but you've been asking for it for some time, and Ludwigs2 even more so. I hope it gives you a bit of understanding of how you're coming across and will reform. An apology for all of it would be appreciated. -- Brangifer (talk) 02:34, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Re your first 1: "There is a consensus that NSF is a reliable source. There may not be a consensus as to how you want to cite that source" [9]

Also see User talk:Gwen Gale/archive17#RfC closure on Talk:Ghost for context, where she was still confused about the context and probably thought I was pushing a POV, and said the same thing with guarded language to protect against that. Only when you started complaining to her did she understand that you were trying to overstate the RfC result by far, as I had predicted, and said it more directly. Hans Adler 06:18, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Does Gwen Gale understand that the NSF is a beaurocratic government funding agency, and not ipso facto a reliable source, if you know anything about them? Statements by their 25 person board of directors (The National Science Board) are a reliable source when they're speaking as the Board ex cathedra, if you will, but that's about it. It would certainly be nice if the people who opined on these things knew something about them. Has Gwen Gale ever applied for an NSF grant? Met any NSF people? SBHarris 16:32, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for providing the diff. That does indeed reveal that your statement isn't supported by her words. She's speaking of a totally different matter. She doesn't in the least intimate that "if it actually makes such a statement". Not in the least. In fact it continues to back up her previous statements confirming that they did make the statement. You are conflating two very different matters. -- Brangifer (talk) 14:01, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

And why is it that we're considering that every last word published by the NSF, no matter what its purpose, is to be considered an official statement of the NSF, as though it had ITSELF been carefully reviewed by the National Science Board that directs the NSF, who had officially signed off on it, and so on? Remember, most of what the NSF does is simply act like any government agency, doling out money for projects and writing. Even their own publications aren't reviewed by their entire board of directors, and if they occasionally say something that seems to be definitional, in the service of some other pursuit (as here, where the object is in trying to see what fraction of Americans are superstitious) that doesn't necessarily mean it's an official finding of the National Science Board. The NSF per se is not NIST or a relevant part of the National Academy of Sciences. Only the NSF Board has any real scientific cred, and even there, it very much depends on the issue.

I'll bet a quarter if you wrote to the NSF and confronted them with this particular statement, they'd say: "Look, you can't take us that literally about everything we print. Give us a break." The author of THIS article ended up quoting Michael Shermer of SKEPTIC magazine for the definition of "pseudoscience," and then didn't end up following it! Come on! SBHarris 03:54, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Ugh, this is such a textbook case for why wp:BURO is so important. Brangifer has basically created a mire of misapplied policy, malformed and misleading RfC's, and etc., and is tendentiously clinging to these procedural points in order to hammer through an absolutely inane and unsupportable misconstrual of the NSF's document. If it were a joke, it might be funny, but as a reality it's just sad. unfortunately, I suspect there is nothing in this universe that will make him back down and see reason at this point (he's far too committed to the cause). How do we deal with an editor who has simply sacrificed rationality to achieve a goal like this? --Ludwigs2 06:47, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Bull, you asked what I meant. The answer is rather simple. I have to say first that I haven't carefully studied the enormous word count on this topic in various fora, so my impression may be mistaken. However, that impression is that the NSF called these things pseudoscience but didn't really mean it. Obviously, as a matter of common sense, it's absurd to call Buddhism, Hinduism & fundamentalist Protestantism pseudoscientific simply because some people claim to have scientific support for some of their ideas. It's those claims that are pseudoscientific: psychical research, reincarnation research & "creation science". The NSF is a proper authority for that, but not for the other. Unfortunately they don't seem to have made that distinction clear.

So, as a matter of common sense I tend to agree thus far with the other 2. However, there's no law of nature that says Wikipedia policy must accord with common sense. Your interpretation may very well be correct, though there's always IAR. Peter jackson (talk) 17:19, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

You say "However, that impression is that the NSF called these things pseudoscience but didn't really mean it." The NSF didn't call anything anything unless it did so policy-wise, which would mean the National Science Board, which directs them, did it officially. Otherwise, their editorials and side-statements are rather informal, and have to be. This whole discussion is sort of like finding some statement in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano and deciding that, due to its source, it's authoritative and must represent an infallible teaching of the Roman Catholic church. SBHarris 18:04, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

@ Sbharris: exactly. --Ludwigs2 18:20, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Peter and Sbharris, it's so nice to have a reasonable discussion without all the personal attacks! I can respect that. Thanks. It's appreciated, and I understand what you mean.

Peter Jackson, you're right that the NSF/NSB statement didn't make the distinction very clear. That's true, and it would have been nice if they had. I still have no problem with the statement because I (following the rules of hermeneutics) interpret statements so that internal consistency is maintained. The whole page on which the pseudoscience section is found discusses the reasons why pseudoscientific beliefs exist and are accepted uncritically, and I interpret the list in that light. They seem to be referring to current beliefs, not ancient superstitions. While they only use the words from the Gallup Poll list, IOW a very simple wording, each word can be interpreted, and I believe they should be interpreted so that they make sense in the context. When they mention witches, they are obviously not referring to little children in Halloween costumes, but to the very real beliefs in the power of witchcraft held by some modern Wiccans and others. Even our article recognizes this and the word witch redirects to witchcraft. There are definitely modern individuals, who because of lack of critical thinking and lack of scientific knowledge hold to such beliefs, and their belief in witches can rightly be labelled "pseudoscientific beliefs". The other words that are questioned should be parsed in the same manner. As to your mention of "Buddhism, Hinduism & fundamentalist Protestantism", they don't go there and neither do I, so in this context it raises a straw man example that should best be left out of this discussion. I do appreciate your well-reasoned comments and welcome them. Please continue.

Sbharris, our policy regarding RS doesn't require that all sources be policy statements. I don't believe, have never claimed, nor even intimated that this was some kind of policy statement. It's a V & RS statement from a notable scientific organization. They publish the SEI document every other year. That's all it is and it doesn't need to be anything more than that to be usable. What's notable about it is that it's the only place on the NSF website that uses the word pseudoscience, so, per FRINGE and the FRINGE ArbCom it's notable enough for use and should be taken seriously. As to infallibility, nothing in science is infallible, and we constantly use fallible statements from RS. Is it a violation of the RS policy to use fallible statements? I think not. "Verifiability, not truth" means that statements from RS must be verifiable, but not necessarily even true, since one editor's "truth" is another editor's "error". Wikipedia doesn't sit in judgment, it just reports, and it can report this statement. On that basis there is no reasonable cause for eliminating the source and statement from Wikipedia as Hans Adler and Ludwigs2 seem intent on doing in such a disruptive manner. Ludwigs2 has even expressed a desire to "dispose of the word pseudoscience entirely" in our editing at Wikipedia! That tells us where he's coming from, but fringe advocacy editors don't deserve support for such a mission. In fact, such a mission violates the whole idea of this encyclopedia. In this regard Ludwigs2 and the banned User:Martinphi are pretty much twins in their thinking, mission here at Wikipedia, and their attempts to tweak and change our most fundamental policies in favor of fringe and paranormal ideas (often correctly labelled "pseudoscience"). Sbharris, I enjoy your comments and hope you will continue to discuss and enlighten. This is the only way toward a meeting of the minds. -- Brangifer (talk) 01:17, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, I never see anybody use the phrase "verifiability, not truth" (which is not in any current policy), without them defending some oddity which is of verifiable provenance, but of dubious truth! Our citation sources per WP:RS are supposed to be "reliable" and that MEANS "likely to be true," so it's not a "this, not that" thing. In this case, the question before us is the "true" definition of a word. Who do you go for, to get reliable definitions? So what would our reliable sources be, here? This is not really a scientific word. The word does not fall under the authority of the International Committee for Weights and Measures, nor is it defined by (say) IUPAC. So who do we go to? The [10] Glossary of the American Council on Science and Health says that "pseudoscience" is "Any activity, practice, system, methodology, or theory that simulates science, or that is described as science, but lacks a scientific basis." Well, that wouldn't be simple belief in ghosts. My own friend Michael Shermer of SKEPTIC mag, a well known authority on pseudoscience (having published many books on the subject), says much the same. Merriam-webster.com says the word dates from 1844 and is: "a system of theories, assumptions, and methods erroneously regarded as scientific." Okay, that leaves out simple belief in ghosts. In fact, the only place I've been able to find that assumes that the belief in ghosts is "pseudoscience," is the NSF publication you're using.

Okay, so how about we do this for our NPOV exercise. You take the first ten dictionary entries you can find for the word, and say something like: "Although the simple belief in ghosts is not "pseudoscience" in the following list of ten sources and dictionaries, one article published by the NSF considers it so: "NSF stuff". And then go on.

That will fix your article writing problems, but not your categorization problems. Unfortunately, that is not as ammenable to two-valued thought, because you have to pick one thing or the other. So that leaves you kind of stuck. NPOV doesn't work when it comes to the internal syntax WP works by, because this often cannot be fuzzy. However, this is WP's problem, not mine. I didn't make up the silly rules around here. I personally would have done it differently. SBHarris 03:24, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your whole point is. It seems to be a new discussion, rather than a response to my comment. I will comment on one thing. "Verifiability, not truth" is pretty fundamental to our Verifiability sourcing policy: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—what counts is whether readers can verify that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source (see below), not whether editors think it is true." That's what this boils down to. Gwen Gale cited this in her closing of both RfCs. Of course we strive for truth, but since editors often have totally differing opinions about what is the truth of a matter, as in this case, Wikipedia withholds judgement and just cites V & RS. -- Brangifer (talk) 04:31, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

You are missing the word "threshold" here. Verifiability is the threshold that something needs to cross before it can be included. It doesn't follow that we have to mention everything that is "verifiable" in our technical sense. Especially if it's neither notable nor correct, as in this case, we simply leave it out. It's not the purpose of an encyclopedia to spread non-notable misinformation. Hans Adler 15:54, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

"Non-notable misinformation"? You have a very short memory:

I'm closing this RfC as National Science Foundation is a reliable source for stating that "belief in ghosts and spirits" are "pseudoscientific beliefs." Editors should keep in mind that the NSF position on this is meaningful, notable, reliable and scientific. ... en.Wikipedia is not about truth, it's about verifiability. Gwen Gale (talk) 15:40, 15 March 2010 (UTC) (All emphasis original.)

The majority of editors in two RfCs and the closing comments by Gwen Gale all disagree with you. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:18, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Wrong. The NSF is a reliable source for stating such a thing. Nobody doubts that as far as I am aware. Gwen Gale later clarified that she did not mean to say that your particular NSF NSB source actually states this. And in fact it doesn't. Your RfC begged the question. If this was an acceptable technique I could simply start an RfC on whether disruptive spammers and misquoters should be banned (giving you as an example without stressing that that is what it's really about), with the predictable result that yes, they should be. And then claim that all the time it was clear that the RfC is about you. It doesn't work that way, and it shouldn't. You will be banned or topic banned the proper way, but it's going to take time and effort. Hans Adler 07:41, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

@ brangifer: you know, I'm still amused at how you can accuse someone of attacking you, and turn right around and attack them in turn. have you ever hear the term noblesse oblige? You can accuse me of being a Fringe advocate all you like - any time I need to I can demonstrate (as I have before) that I have a far better understanding of scientific reasoning and scientific practice than you do. That is a matter of demonstrable fact. I'm sorry that you are so convinced of the rightness of your position that you can no longer appreciate proper scholarly reasoning, but that is not my problem. --Ludwigs2 04:11, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Pot. -- Brangifer (talk) 04:31, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what distinction you're trying to make here.

1. Reincarnation is
   1. part of traditional Hindu & Buddhist doctrine
   2. claimed by some people to be susceptible of scientific investigation/proof
2. ghosts are
   1. part of traditional Buddhist cosmology (not sure about Hinduism)
   2. part of folklore &/or "superstition" in many cultures
   3. claimed by some people to be susceptible of scientific investigation/proof
3. the creation of the world a few millennia ago is
   1. a dogma of many Protestant fundamentalists
   2. claimed by some people to be susceptible of scientific investigation/proof

Now, which of these do you think count as pseudoscientific & which not, & why? Peter jackson (talk) 13:47, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Here is the answer according to BullRangifer: 1 and 2 are pseudoscientific because he found a super-turbo excellent source for this (more precisely: belief in 1 or 2 is pseudoscientific according to the source; I must say it in this way because otherwise BullRangifer would attack me for being imprecise), but not 3 because he doesn't have such a source in that case.

Of course what really happened is that in the Bush era the NSB tried to get money out of US politicians for fighting against creationism. It wouldn't have been wise to say that clearly, so they just talked about pseudoscience in general, and instead of giving the most obvious example they listed some paranormal topics as if they were all pseudoscience – presumably in the hope that even fundamentalist Christian politicians would not be opposed to fighting belief in ghosts and reincarnation. Hans Adler 15:29, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Hans, don't speak for me. I hadn't gotten around to answering that, and I wasn't even sure whether I should since it isn't about building the article, but is about personal beliefs. We've all indulged in that too much and it looked like a trick question. It's also about whether these are "pseudoscientific" (something which has a clear definition), not whether they are "pseudoscientific beliefs" (something that is much broader), which is a slightly different topic. This whole debacle isn't supposed to be about "truth", or whether anyone of us believe or don't believe in ghosts, but about whether the NSF/NSB said what they said. That's what editors are supposed to focus on, not whether they agree with the source. Did the NSF/NSB's exact quote state what it stated, or was it deserving of your inaccurate (downright false) "failed verification" tag? It was properly removed with the edit summary stating "the list of ten items is clearly in the cited reference." Your overreaction to that removal is what got all this started again. I hadn't touched the subject for some time. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:11, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

The "failed verification" tag was my proposed compromise, to give you time to understand that you are wrong and it is in fact a misquotation. What we normally do with misquotations is remove them altogether. I had assumed, incorrectly it seems, that by now you had cooled down and were seeing things more clearly. Obviously I was too optimistic.

By the way, do you have any comments regarding the latest news about your infallible oracle? See #NSF. Hans Adler 07:21, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Why is this discussion being "resumed", or kept alive? Brangifer has had ample opportunity to demonstrate his exasperating cluelessness. Nothing of interest will come from this. At some point, it is best to just let it be. --dab (𒁳) 18:14, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Dbachmann. I've been wondering the same thing, but it was resumed by Hans Adler. His inaccurate tag was removed by another editor, he overreacted by removing the entire section, and now we're here. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:11, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

That's easy to answer. it's being kept alive because otherwise brangifer will continue to push this silliness into more and more areas of wikipedia (if you think this stops with 'ghost', you're mistaken). Ignoring the symptoms is fine if you're convinced the cause will go away in time, but that seems unlikely in this case. --Ludwigs2 18:34, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I hadn't touched the subject for some time. This all started again when Hans overreacted to the removal of his inaccurate tag by another editor. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:11, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

NSF

Each of the following of the Science and Engineering Indicators refers to belief in ghosts explicitly as a pseuoscientific belief.

"SEI is prepared by the National Science Foundation's Division of Science Resources Statistics (SRS) under the guidance of the National Science Board (Board). It is subject to extensive review by outside experts, interested federal agencies, Board members, and NSF internal reviewers for accuracy, coverage, and balance."

2002 Chart from 2002 2004 2006 Chart from 2006

Forgive me if these are already referenced. Perhaps spend a moment to read them. Guyonthesubway (talk) 21:43, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

It's not as if this hasn't been discussed before. See User:Hans Adler/NSF disruption to get an approximate idea of the extent of the disruption caused by BullRangifer spamming this source to more than a dozen articles. See User:Hans Adler/Science and Engineering Indicators for my analysis of the 2006 source – an extremely poor one for the statement you want to use it for. The other two aren't better. Hans Adler 21:50, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

The document is subject to "extensive" peer review and clearly references ghosts as a pseudoscientific belief. Case closed. (btw, I'm not interested in your opinions of another editor, thanks.) Guyonthesubway (talk) 22:01, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

The three documents don't claim to be establishing novel claims about philosophy of science, and the claim that ghosts are pseudoscience is obviously false when taken out of the original context (where it is merely sloppy) and doesn't appear anywhere else. Case closed. Hans Adler 22:04, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

PS: Thanks for the links to the two charts. I was not aware that these charts are part of the NSB's SEI reports. They clearly (and correctly) put certain ghost-related beliefs under paranormal beliefs, which is obviously correct and not contentious at all. What is contentious (surprisingly, as it is so obviously goofy) is the claim that belief in ghosts is a pseudoscientific belief. In most cases it has nothing to do with anything that could be confused with science, so this is obvious nonsense. One can say that something is nonsense without scientific foundation and not stretch the word for a particular type of such nonsense beyond all reason. The English language is rich and allows us to express nuances. Encyclopedias are among those places where it is most important to get these nuances right. Hans Adler 22:16, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Yup, the Gallup organization terms this beliefs as 'paranormal' while the NSF terms them Pseuoscientific. So it would be correct to say 'Gallup terms these beliefs as paranormal' just as it would be correct to say 'NSF terms these beliefs as pseudoscientific'. The more reputable source on terminology here whould be NSF, the science body, as opposed to the consumer polling company. Unless you think Gallup is a better authority....Guyonthesubway (talk) 22:24, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Guyonthesubway (talk) 22:24, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

They are both V & RS which we often cite. While Gallup can only be cited as stating they are paranormal, the NSF can be cited for stating that these paranormal beliefs are pseudoscientific beliefs, which makes sense. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:41, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

The SEI is not a magical document that is somehow right about everything, including things far outside its focus. It is created under time, resource and political constraints: [11]. This incident also demonstrates that if something disappears from SEI, this may well have a reason such as the NSB thinking it shouldn't have been there in the first place. The pseudoscience section of SEI currently talks only about belief in astrology. Hans Adler 03:54, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

According to an NSB member, the pulled questions that the report is about were "flawed indicators of scientific knowledge because the responses conflated knowledge and beliefs". I am not sure I can agree with the NSB in this specific instance, but they had previously pulled the paranormal stuff from the "pseudoscience" section in 2008 [12], and they did in fact suffer from the described problem by conflating Buddhists etc. with pseudoscience believers. Hans Adler 04:33, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

I'll just note, so no one gets confused, that your comment is regarding the failure to mention evolution and the big bang in the 2010 SEI report, not anything about pseudoscience or the current subject. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:31, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

The news report I cited is about the NSB withdrawing language it used in earlier SEIs, because they now consider it incorrect. They would not normally have made this public, but someone noticed a paragraph was removed from the draft, didn't like it, and brought it in the news. This shows that your infallible source isn't actually infallible and that removal of information from the SEI, from one version to another, may be a sign of the NSB noticing problems in the earlier version. As people keep telling you. But it would have been a misquotation even in 2007, i.e. before the 2008 version without the list of 10 paranormal items came out. But of course to see this a scientific, rather than pseudo-scientific quote-mining mind is required. Hans Adler 09:34, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Our job is to follow the sources. If you find a RS that documents this OR of yours, the situation will change and we'll document it. Until then we use what we have, regardless of whether you think it's "true" or not, per WP:V. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:42, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

yes, our job is to follow the sources, not misrepresent them. that's the point you keep missing, BR. --Ludwigs2 06:45, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

"Misrepresent them"? In what way is using the NSF/NSB statement to document that the NSF/NSB wrote what they wrote a misrepresentation? That's my main concern. That's about as NPOV a manner to use the statement as I can think of, and neither of you will allow that NPOV usage. Take a look at the way it's used at Pseudoscience. It's attributed properly so it's presented as their opinion. What's wrong with that? -- Brangifer (talk) 15:42, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

As I explained at WP:RS/N#Science and Engineering Indicators 2006 the problem is that (1) it's not at all clear that it's actually their opinion, because it only appears in passing in a report about something completely different, and (2) even if it was an opinion, it would still be an extreme violation of NPOV to put it in the leads of our articles, because that gives it a lot more significance than the NSB itself gave it. Encyclopedias summarise the published facts and opinions. If you think we are in the business of inflating published opinions then you are confusing Wikipedia with a blog. If you want to respond I suggest that you move this discussion to WP:RS/N, so that we finally get a centralised discussion. It's no fun to repeat the same things over and over again because the same questions keep coming on different pages. Hans Adler 15:57, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

There is now a centralised thread at WP:RS/N#Science and Engineering Indicators 2006. I suggest continuing all discussions there. I also suggest that those of us who are already heavily involved give fresh eyes a chance to judge the situation. I think the major arguments have already been outlined by BullRangifer and me. Hans Adler 08:27, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

I share your interest in centralizing the discussion, but I disagree about the location as that's not the purpose of RS/N. It is only for discussing whether a source is a RS, not for whether a statement is true. (Keep in mind that even patently obvious lies, as established by the majority of RS, are used here at Wikipedia simply because we use them to document that a POV exists. Their framing is of course very imporant.) What other step in DR would be appropriate? -- Brangifer (talk) 18:02, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

I thought I had made it clear that the question I put before WP:RS/N was whether the SEI 2006 is a reliable source for what you are attributing to it (or rather the NSF/NSB). Of course the original context and the Wikipedia context cannot be ignored for this purpose. However, I would not object to moving the discussion to a subpage of WP:Centralized discussion and advertising it as an RfC or something in WP:CENT. It doesn't seem to get much attention in its present place anyway. Hans Adler 18:12, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Maybe I have misunderstood you, so I'll ask you a question. What do you mean by "for what you are attributing to it"? It's not a trick question, but an attempt to make sure we are "on the same page." -- Brangifer (talk) 22:31, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

I mean the things you are putting in the leads of articles. If, for example, you make the lead of the ghost or pseudoscience article say "According to the NSB, belief in ghosts is belief in pseudoscience", then the context is set as follows:

• ghost = the subject of ghosts in its full generality, including all its cultural connotations
• pseudoscience = pseudoscience in the technical sense as defined in the article: "a methodology, belief, or practice that is claimed to be scientific, or that is made to appear to be scientific, but which does not adhere to an appropriate scientific methodology, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, or otherwise lacks scientific status."

This is not something they have said explicitly. They merely assumed it, even though they are not using a single source that claims it. It's also absurd, which makes it especially important not to misquote them. Note that in RationalWiki, for example, or in a book called something like "dictionary of pseudoscience", the situation is different because the context is explicitly set up so that the pseudoscientific aspects of all things are in the focus. In such a context Hamlet and other literary uses of ghosts are a marginal distraction, while in our context they are one of the main aspects, and certainly not pseudoscientific.

There is also the issue of what it means that the SEI 2008 and 2010 don't have the relevant section any more, especially in the context that they have pulled similar material as incorrect, for a reason that might apply here as well, but didn't publish that reason proactively. Hans Adler 05:12, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

As a related issue, see WP:LINKING#General points on linking style: "Items within quotations should not generally be linked; instead, consider placing the relevant links in the surrounding text or in the 'See also' section of the article."

The reason for this rule is that linking a term in a quotation often constitutes a misquotation, because in the original context the word did not have (necessarily) exactly the same meaning. Putting a literal quotation that uses the words ghost and pseudoscience in the lead of the ghost or pseudoscience article has the same effect as linking it and therefore can also constitute a misquotation. Hans Adler 05:18, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Your first line contains a quote that you attribute as my doing. Did I really write something like that? Where did I do it? That doesn't look right as it's not their quote. I don't recognize that. If I did it I'll gladly fix it. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:23, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Your last paragraph about linking (I assume you mean wikilinking) is something I vaguely remember. It can be problematic, so if there's a place where it creates a problem, let me know and I'll take a look. Thanks. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:26, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Random break 1

<- I don't quite get the motivation here. There are a lot of people attempting to discredit a source to avoid the use of a single term.... Guyonthesubway (talk) 00:28, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Fortunately it's not really "a lot". It just seems that way because Hans Adler and Ludwigs2 have been making lots of noise. It's basically lots of repetition, and when two do it the result is twice as much as my replies, which gives a false impression. Rereading the two RfCs is very interesting. Not only have these two been repeating arguments that were shown to be fallacious back then, some of the other opposers in the RfCs seem to have not even understood the issue (i.e. don't understand basic English), including one admin, and yet they mouthed off and revealed their confusion. That's really sad. The other admins, and even an ArbCom member, understood very well and supported the RfCs. The fact that these two remain a distinct minority should be raising red flags in their minds, but apparently not. Everyone else is wrong, and they only are right? Hmmmm.....-- Brangifer (talk) 02:15, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

As I said above, I agree with those 2 to the extent that I'd say that their view is the common-sense one. Whether it's also in accordance with WP policy I'm not going to bother arguing about. Peter jackson (talk) 10:50, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

And then there is also Dbachmann, who initially was involved in the issue at this talk page, and now also DGG and SlimVirgin at WP:RS/N. Hans Adler 12:28, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I would fight in exactly the same way against anyone trying (with my knowledge) to force a quotation concerning "a river of orange juice" into our article river. This is about accuracy of the encyclopedia and normal (not even especially strict) academic citation standards. The only way in which the whole pseudoscience/scepticism debate is important to the dispute is that it makes some people automatically assume the worst about anyone who doesn't agree with them. Hans Adler 12:28, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Ok.... but nither of your opinions of what is or isn't common sense are permissable here. NSF clearly sees ghosts within pseudoscience. Its right there in your face. The source is persmissible. It clearly says Ghosts are pseudoscience. I'm going to leave the interpretation of the term up to the people that do that sort of thing for a living. I can only assume that you're trolling, or attempting to inject your definition of the word into the article. Neither is laudable. Guyonthesubway (talk) 13:29, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I can only assume that you are trolling or lack any ability or experience with scholarly work. But these personalisations really don't help. Hans Adler 13:47, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

What does this have to do with contributing here? Please show me the guideline that restricts editors to those that persue 'scholarly work', or gives your opinion any more weight under your scholarly abilities. I guess I thought it had something to with 'verifiability' and 'no original research'. You're giving your opinion weight over a good source, therefore either you're pushing a point of view or you're trolling. Cloaking yourself in 'expertdom' would tend to suggest POV, maybe you're not a troll. Guyonthesubway (talk) 15:40, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Ah.. read the various RFx... you're a POV pusher, and this has already been decided. Guyonthesubway (talk) 20:48, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

No, it hasn't. Confirmation bias at work. The RfCs were closed basically with "NSF is a highly reliable source", which is unrelated to the dispute itself. This happened because BullRangifer didn't formulate the questions appropriately and instead chose to beg the question.

However, it is true that there was a lot of cluelessness, failure to actually read the source, and assumptions of bad faith in both RfCs, leading some editors to fully agree with BullRangifer, and explicitly so. But not enough for a consensus. Hans Adler 21:08, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Hans, you can basically disregard anything Guyonasubway says - I've run into him before, and his only real purpose in life is to stir up aggravation. If you ignore him politely, he goes away, so wp:DNFTT. --Ludwigs2 21:54, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

My problem is a lack of time, same reason I don't read half of the condescending nonsense that comes out of either of you. Guyonthesubway (talk) 23:48, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

If you don't have the time to read the sources that BullRangifer is abusing, then don't abuse those who do. Hans Adler 05:49, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

There is nothing to indicate he hasn't read them. In fact, some of those who objected in the RfCs gave evidence that they hadn't read them, and SlimVirgin and DGG possibly as well. -- Brangifer (talk) 06:21, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

GS, it's not Hans's definition. Here's the Wiktionary definition:

Any body of knowledge purported to be scientific or supported by science but which fails to comply with the scientific method.

Does anyone seriously claim that Buddhism, folklore & "superstition" purport to be scientific or supported by science in their belief in ghosts? Peter jackson (talk) 09:39, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Ghosts are an explanation for perceiving something.

Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is comprehensive information on any subject, but the word is especially used for information about the physical universe

You heard/saw/smelled X, and you explain X with by saying "there is something that can defy the laws of physics, and it is the spirit of the dead". Ghosts are explanation of a physical phenomenom, but lacking a scientific grounding. "That chair just moved because of a ghost" is the spontaneous appearance of energy with no source. If we put this same conecept in a lab, it might be cold fusion, or perpetual motion. Ghosts are just older and steeped in tradition. So we have "science" (information about the physical universe) and "fails to comply with the scientific method" The NSF sure seems to think so.... Guyonthesubway (talk) 13:45, 13 April 2010 (UTC) Sorry...irrelevant original research. It's hard to suspend the "this is common sense let me explain" reaction. Guyonthesubway (talk)

Ha ha! Very understandable. It's hard not to reply to OR without using more OR. All of the objections refuse to follow our V & RS polices, but are instead based on personal belief objections about the truthfulness of the statement. -- Brangifer (talk) 14:00, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

BullRangifer, you are practising WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. I will say it for the last time, and the next 150 times I have to say the same thing again because you again prove that you didn't listen, I will simply create a section heading here and link to it:

Original research is perfectly proper when it is done for the purpose of evaluating the fitness of a source for presentation in Wikipedia, as opposed to putting the result of the research in an article.

Hans Adler 18:11, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

When I referred to OR I was referring to your OR personal opinions for disagreeing with the consensus in the two RfCs. I'm not talking about typical OR. You have been using your own reasoning in the absence of RS which mention and disagree with the NSF/NSB's statement. Such use of personal opinion to reject a source is a form of OR POV pushing. It violates "verifiability, not truth". Your idea of truth must not be used to deny the verifiabilty (the threshhold for inclusion) of the statement. You have even gone so far as to use a "failed verification" tag on the statement! That was truly bizarre. By doing so you directly invoked the verifiability policy and violated it because your addition of the tag was based on your lonely POV on the truthiness of the statement. If you had V & RS that expressly commented on the exact 2006 SEI statement and questioned it, then we could at least cite that at the same time, thus documenting that there was a disagreement among RS, but you don't even have that kind of source to back up your POV. It's just your idea of truth, while others have their ideas of truth. None of those ideas trumps verifiability. -- Brangifer (talk) 01:59, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

BR, this is a poor source for the claim, period. V not T doesn't mean that every single source must be used in every WP article to which it could possibly apply, no matter how inappropriately. It looks like a press release (is it? does anyone know who that specific webpage is aimed at?) with no byline, citing some Gallop polls and someone's unusual opinion that walking under ladders and having lucky numbers is pseudoscience, which is silly. If it's not silly, please find some other reliable sources who make that claim. If there's no difference between pseudoscience and irrationality, then we may as well use the latter and be done with the former. If the former is going to retain any meaning, it shouldn't be used as loosely as this. SlimVirgin ^{talk contribs} 02:07, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Random break 2

<-Peter, none of those things are mentioned in the quote and no one is questioning the standard definition of "pseudo-science", which, BTW, isn't the only definition. The Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience (right here beside me) makes it clear that the concept is a broad one with no absolute definition and it's used in many different ways.

That's not what this is about. This is about what the source actually says, not whether we agree with it. Our verifiability policy explicitly disallows our personal beliefs about the truthiness of a statement being used as a reason for excluding it, especially when its truthiness is hotly disputed by only a few editors who lost two RfCs which determined the statement was true and proper. Hans Adler's claim about the way the RfCs were "basically closed as" is totally false. The RfCs were closed very explicitly as the statement was true and the source reliable for making that exact statement:

I'm closing this RfC as National Science Foundation is a reliable source for stating that "belief in ghosts and spirits" are "pseudoscientific beliefs." Editors should keep in mind that the NSF position on this is meaningful, notable, reliable and scientific. ... en.Wikipedia is not about truth, it's about verifiability. Gwen Gale (talk) 15:40, 15 March 2010 (UTC) (All emphasis original.)

Note that the quote under discussion is about "pseudoscientific beliefs" (a broad concept related to faulty thinking), not "pseudo-science" (a more narrowly defined concept related to claims). They're related, but not exactly the same. The source page quotes arch skeptic Michael Shermer's definition favorably. It's an excellent definition with which I fully agree. The page also liberally discusses pseudoscientific "beliefs" and expresses deep concern for the causes of such beliefs: lack of scientific insight, lack of critical thinking, in short just plain muddled thinking. This is discussed at length. The use of the term "pseudoscientific beliefs" is no accident, and it isn't in conflict with the definition of "pseudoscience" since it's a slightly different concept. If you forget that, the discussion becomes muddled and confusing.

The quote is an exact quote (with the necessary added attribution) published on the National Science Foundation website in the 2006 SEI Report prepared biennially by the National Science Board, whose membership is rather illustrious. Just follow the verifiability and reliable source policies without getting into OR discussions about the truthfulness of the statement. It makes a huge difference if one seeks to understand the statement in the context of the page, or whether one seeks deliberately, as is being done by the objectors, to make it look like the writers hadn't a clue and were internally inconsistent. If one follows the standard principles of hermeneutics, one should seek to interpret everything on the page in a manner that maintains internal consistency, IOW one should bend and twist one's own understanding, rather than bend and twist the source. That's where the learning really happens! -- Brangifer (talk) 13:49, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

BullRangifer, you are practising WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. I will say it for the last time, and the next 150 times I have to say the same thing again because you again prove that you didn't listen, I will simply create a section heading here and link to it:

The quotation is literal and a misquotation. Yes, that's possible. And yes, that's what you have done.

Hans Adler 18:07, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

That's your lonely opinion. -- Brangifer (talk) 02:02, 14 April 2010 (UTC)