> acceptance of pejorative labels
What's the rationale for the 'anti-fringe' camp to intentionally lower Wikipedia's credibility?
And why would Jimmy Wales et al. accept that?
What's the rationale for the 'anti-fringe' camp to intentionally lower Wikipedia's credibility?
And why would Jimmy Wales et al. accept that?
In this case, you may not talk someone out of believing in homeopathy, particularly if they've invested a lot of time or money in it. You may have better luck with people who are first hearing about homeopathy, visiting the article, and seeing that it's junk.
I've seen this play out in other subjects, like global warming (there's not a real "both sides"; climate scientists nearly universally believe in it), evolution (almost no biologists believe in Creationism), chiropractic (there's no plausible mechanism of action; studies fail to show that it works for anything beyond some back pain), the "electric universe" (cosmologists universally think it's dumb), and many others. Diehards are gonna diehard. People on the fence can benefit from a solid dose of reality.
Are you sure? Why? Because they told you it is? Because you donated? Because you see the people that make edits and articles?
What if it a community labor site? How would you as an outsider be able to tell the difference?
It's also possible I misunderstood and was only seeing the removed edits because of HTTP caching, but I did know about that at the time...
Or maybe you were so annoying you'd got yourself added to the automated filter list? I guess that's unlikely for a random twerp but who knows.
Are you trying to make the point that it is impossible to deceive you that Wikipedia could be ideologically and politically manipulated?
You’ve made an excellent point for me. Is entirely likely, that at Wikipedia is some level deceiving its users and we can’t know.
I'm not quite sure what the advantage is over labelling it 'disputed'.
Nope, it was still pseudoscientific at the time, even if it gained scientific evidence later.
Wikipedia is a purveyor of facts, not of judgments, but sometimes the two are inseparable. As long as it's a fact, it's ok if it's implicitly a judgment too.
Right, but how does that relate to pejorative labelling policies?
i.e. If even just 20% of readers will misinterpret the label, then why go with the label instead of something like 'disputed' which has a mis-interpretation rate close to 0%?
What does 50/50 mean in this context?
If you mean a 50% probability of the article ultimately proving to be mostly true, then that would genuinely be the case for some small fraction of homeopathy articles?
Like climate change, or creationists trying to claim evolution is disputed at a scientific level. It isn't, but they'll tout lists of "experts who doubt evolution" to try and make people think there's more doubt than there really is.
(Leading to things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Steve as response.)
Yes I understand, what I'm saying is that is genuinely true for some small fraction of articles. Obviously not anywhere close to 100%, but the amount of people who would actually read 'disputed' as anywhere close to 100% of articles have 'significant camps' is almost 0.
That "if" is doing a lot of work there. Never has any effect of homeopathy been shown in double blind studies, and the proposed mechanism of classical honeopathy is absurd in all its parts.
There's not a universe where modern physics and chemistry can coexist with homeopathy. Either you can treat the flu by drinking water with zero likelihood[2] of containing a single anti-flu molecule, or you can have working CPUs. No world can have both. I don't want the world I live in to have policymakers who believe in something so inherently impossible.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathic_dilutions: "10*(−400) -- Dilution of popular homeopathic flu preparation Oscillococcinum"
Still, the advantage of an editable wikipedia is that when homeopathy has a repeatable significant trial result, when mind to mind messaging has the same, and when a mouse is levitated on demand the wiki articles can be updated to reflect the facts.
Even if this is true (no study has shown it is, many have shown there is no effect) why doesn't the mechanisms employed by homeopathic medicine match this theory?
Many homeopathic medicines are available in pill form. Not water pills but sugar pills. What is the scientific basis for water memory that lines up with using sugar pills?
Additionally dilution is expensive and not actually done by homeopathic medicine manufacturers. Instead unpurified water is ran through a container which is shoken and emptied completely. The assumption being that upon refilling the container a 1:100 dilution will be created.
Once more I point out, what does this have to do with the proposed scientific basis?
Even if there were a "method to the madness" with regards to Homeopathies "less than one molecule in all of Earth's water" dilutions: the reality of homeopathic medicine creation is they don't even use fresh water for each dosage often reusing the same water to save on fresh water costs.
So the best you can say is while the psuedoscience might be pseudoscience and not just made up (note it is certainly made up) however the manufacturing industry is unable to even reach that low bar of psuedoscience.
Instead the manufacturing here is simply abusing a whole in FDA regulation made by a questionable ruling by the Supreme Court. "As long as the magic words 'Not for the treatment of any disease' exists you can put any unregulated substance next to regulated medicine".
An article that "objectively" lays out the claims and though processes of homeopathy and then simply states that there is zero supporting evidence and no experimental setup has ever been able to establish any effect above placebo, gives much more credibility to Wikipedia because it suggests to the reader that the wording has been challenged by proponents of homeopathy, but the factual statements about the lack of evidence could not be removed on objective grounds.