Directory:The Wikipedia Point of View/Dealing with pseudoscience

Why Wikipedia cannot claim the earth is round

1. X's paper on 'scientific fallacies' contains only passing reference to the 'flat earth fallacy'. WP:NPOV says "Even with well-sourced material ... if you use it out of context or to advance a position that is not directly and explicitly supported by the source used, you as an editor are engaging in original research."
2. The flat-earth theory is not amenable to scientific approaches and methods.
3. Flat-earth theorists are pragmatic. They are not interested in what is 'true', they are interested in 'what works'.
4. Scientist X, who claimed the flat-earth theory was nonsense, clearly had not read the literature on the flat-earth theory.
5. Scientist X was not trained in flat-earth theory, and therefore could not make an expert judgment.
6. The criticisms made by scientist X were valid only against Rosencrantz' version of the flat-earth theory, long since outmoded. They fail to address Guildernstein's improved version of the theory.
7. You must not say 'the earth is not flat' but 'according to critics of the flat-earth theory, the earth is not flat'.
8. X Y and Z are hard-line skeptics about flat-earthism. They often publish in skeptics magazines and take a hard line with any approach to any theory which is not empirically verified.
9. There is no reliable source for the statement that 'flat-earthism has entirely been ignored by reliable sources'
10. The statement 'there is no scientific consensus for the flat-earth view' has no scientific consensus.
11. X's statement "Informal soundings amongst scientists revealed an almost total absence of awareness of the flat earth theory" is mere opinion. X is using personal experience as evidence. This is not a scientific evidence and is therefore mere opinion.
12. The statement 'The earth is round' has reliable sources in scientific literature. The statement 'If the X is round, X is not flat' is a valid inference that can be sourced from any reliable logic textbook. But 'The earth is not flat', while a conclusion validly yielded by these two reliably-sourced premisses, is a violation of WP:SYNTH: "Even if published by reliable sources, material must not be connected together in such a way that it constitutes original research".
13. There has been no serious study of whether the earth is flat since 1493. Therefore we cannot claim in Wikipedia that earth is not flat, only that a study in 1493 came to this conclusion.

Civil POV pushing

Wikipedia, and specifically the dispute resolution process, has a difficult time dealing with civil POV pushers. These are editors who are superficially polite while exhibiting some or all of the following behaviors:

• They often edit primarily or entirely on one topic or theme.
• They attempt to water down language, unreasonably exclude, marginalize or push views beyond the requirements of WP:NPOV, or give undue weight to fringe theories - pseudoscience, crankery, conspiracy theories, marginal nationalist or historic viewpoints, and the like (PCCTL for short).
• They revert war over such edits.
• They frivolously request citations for obvious or well known information.
• They argue endlessly about the neutral-point-of-view policy and particularly try to undermine the undue weight clause. They try to add information that is (at best) peripherally relevant on the grounds that "it is verifiable, so it should be in."
• They argue for the inclusion of material of dubious reliability; for example, using commentary from partisan think tanks rather than from the scientific literature.
• They may use sockpuppets, or recruit meat puppets.
• They repeatedly use the talk page for soapboxing, and/or to re-raise the same issues that have already been discussed numerous times.
• They hang around forever wearing down more serious editors and become expert in an odd kind of way on their niche POV.
• They often make a series of silly and time wasting requests for comment, mediation or arbitration again to try to wear down the serious editors.

Other arguments

• They try to claim that a fringe viewpoint is 'controversial', as though there were a minority but substantial view held by serious scientists or academics, in controversy with the mainstream.

Here is a partial list of the kind of complaints one might get, from multiple editors who have a FRINGE agenda on a controversial article, and often in a CIVIL fashion:

• To disagree with an editor with a FRINGE agenda is claimed to be unCIVIL, a personal attack (violation of NPA), a violation of BITE or a violation of AGF
• It is claimed that any sources that disagree with the FRINGE POV cannot be used since they violate NPOV
• It is claimed that sources that disagree with the FRINGE POV cannot be used if they reflect poorly on any living people that are proponents of the FRINGE POV (such as critical book reviews, etc)
• It is claimed that the "N" in NPOV means that no negative or critical or mainstream material can appear at all in the article, since it is not neutral
• It is claimed that any critical or negative material cannot appear in an article since it is biased
• It is claimed that it violates WP:SYNTH or WP:OR to include any negative or critical material in a FRINGE article
• One should use only primary sources. Relying on secondary sources is POV.
• It is claimed that trying to balance positive content with negative content for WP:UNDUE is censorship.
• It is proposed that negative material be forked off into another article, or relegated into a "criticism ghetto" or criticism section or removed from the LEAD. It is said that one always states the idea first before criticizing it.
• It is claimed that the reader will not understand the idea unless it is described without criticism.
• It is stated that readers are smart enough to know that FRINGE ideas are nonsense without including any negative or critical material or sources.
• It is claimed that NPOV or NOR are faulty and must be changed or reinterpreted for this particular article. For example, recently someone on a controversial article claimed "If we follow WP:NOR, our article will be exactly as divorced and ridiculous as the reliable sources".
• It is claimed that only the proponents of the FRINGE position understand NPOV or NOR or RS, not the experienced editors with tens of thousands of edits, and FAs and GAs to their credit.
• It is claimed that there is a conspiracy against the FRINGE position and anyone who opposes an uncritical article about the FRINGE position is in on the conspiracy, has been bought off, is breaking the rules of Wikipedia, is just plain evil, etc.
• There is wikilawyering to try to redefine a FRINGE position as nonFRINGE, or the mainstream position as the FRINGE position instead.
• Some claim that sources with negative views are forbidden since they are unencyclopedic, or that an article containing critical material is unencyclopedic
• It is claimed that any negative or critical material is unusable since it is just opinion and not fact. Of course the sympathetic material in sources is usable since that is not opinion and is factual.
• There are attempts to use mainly primary sources and to reject secondary and tertiary sources, or to redefine the preferences for secondary and tertiary sources in policy.
• It is claimed that any source that has not written articles that are supportive and uncritical of FRINGE positions are not suitable as tertiary sources. For example, recently at a controversial article, someone argued "Actually, those really shouldn't be used as sources on this topic because (to my knowledge) they haven't written anything pro-X, and hence really can't be considered third party."
• There is a lot of evidence of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. Arguments that are rebutted and dismissed, sometimes with extensive references, are repeated over and over and over, sometimes just with a cut and paste approach. Sometimes they are presented by the same person dozens and dozens of times spread out over days and weeks and months.
• It is claimed that any critical material in an article is unfair, or violates Fairness of tone.
• Writing material using facts in the same context as reliable sources do violates NPOV since they are following a "narrative". We must instead choose facts which no source describes as relevant to allow our readers to decide which "narrative" should be chosen.
• There are no facts. If a fringe minority, not present in any reliable sources, disagrees with a widely accepted fact it violates NPOV to state it as a fact in the article. Every statement of fact should be attributed, no matter how universally accepted.
• Reliable sources claims to know certain facts which I believe are impossible to know. Thus, they are not reliable sources.
• Common sense dictates that we should ignore core policies like WP:V or WP:UNDUE.

Often CIVIL POV pushing is done by a group that support each other and egg each other on. The mainstream NPOV position is assaulted using a variety of the arguments listed above, over and over and over and over.

• stopping anyone from doing what they want on Wikipedia violates their rights to free speech
• applying standards like NPOV amounts to censorship.
• claiming that having more than 1 or 2 references is a violation of WP:NOR or WP:NPOV