Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Skepticism/Archive 9

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Conversion therapy

I think this article fits this Wikiproject, if someone more experienced agrees please add your banner to the talk page. Thank you. Insomesia (talk) 20:48, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Is Psychiatry integrative medicine?

Is Psychiatry integrative medicine?

Discover Magazie just named this story as "Top 100 Science Stories of 2012" - The "Bible of Psychiatry" Faces Damning Criticism—From the Inside From that story -

"...the most recent attack comes from within the DSM-5’s ranks. Roel Verheul and John Livesley, a psychologist and psychiatrist who were members of the DSM-5 work group for for personality disorders, found that the group ignored their warnings about its methods and recommendations. In protest, they resigned, explaining why in an email to Psychology Today. Their disapproval stems from two primary problems with the proposed classification system: its confusing complexity, and its refusal to incorporate scientific evidence.

That is the very definition of pseudoscience in the Wikipedia article on the topic.

The resigning docs are quoted as saying -

"The proposal displays a truly stunning disregard for evidence. Important aspects of the proposal lack any reasonable evidential support of reliability and validity. For example, there is little evidence to justify which disorders to retain and which to eliminate. Even more concerning is the fact that a major component of proposal is inconsistent with extensive evidence…This creates the untenable situation of the Work Group advancing a taxonomic model that it has acknowledged in a published article to be inconsistent with the evidence."

Part of psychiatry is clearly evidence based and is science. But the field integrates this with pseudoscience and worse (forensic psychiatry and its associated fraud). Per the WP arricle, integrative medicine "integrates" evidence based medicine with the other stuff. Does WP:Spade apply here, or must there be a secondary source calling the spade a spade? ParkSehJik (talk) 23:38, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

The short answer is that yes you need good quality secondary sources to make these points and you need a sufficient number by medical/scientific academic publishers to establish weight. What constitutes a sufficient number is particularly poorly defined in the relevant Wikipedia policies. In all likelihood there isn't a sufficient number of sources which meet the inclusion guidelines for medical articles to support the contention that psychiatry or aspects of it - say, specific taxonomic categories - are pseudo-scientific constructs. Moreover, if the medico-scientific "community" or a majority thereof do arrive at the consensus position that a given psychiatric category is without evidential support in all probability that category is doomed in any case and will be replaced by another.

The other point is that with posts such as the above you're going to be accused of treating wikipedia as a forum for your views. That you regard psychiatry, or aspects of it, in this way is of course legitimate. Lots of people, here and elsewhere, entertain a variety of criticisms about psychiatric knowledge and practices. But that's irrelevant here. For an encyclopaedic article you need to represent the majority perspective from the most reliable and authoritative sources. As psychiatry is still the dominant discipline in terms of the production of knowledge about mental illnesses/disorders the preeminent psychiatric publications are, for Wikipedia, the most reliable and authoritative sources. Therefore, this encyclopaedia will largely, but not exclusively, represent the mainstream views within the discipline regardless of whether those perspectives correspond to the "truth" or not. FiachraByrne (talk) 01:13, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

And I suppose we define "mainsteam" as whatever DSM-whatever says it is, today? You know, DSM is a lot like what Bismarck said about laws and sausages-- if you want to retain any respect for them you shouldn't watch them being made. The same is true also of Wikipedia articles, and (yes) and medical and scientific concensus. Which is why we wait awhile for these things to happen in science, and try to avoid recentism like those speedy neutrinos that slowed right down again when the loose cable was wiggled back in. Which suggests you really should NOT pay any attention to a DSM until after it's 30 years old. Or more.

You know, once upon a time, the dominant mode of American psychiatry was Freudian psychoanalysis? I kid you not. You know, that had neurotics and psychotics and people with character disorders? And the neuroses were due to people with unresolved subconscious conflicts? It was all very interesting and it was all in DSM I and II. But then in 1980 DSM III came out and "poof" the neurotics and neuroses all disappeared. Like over night. Very much like the disease of gayness going away in 1974. Which had been a lot of fun for the Freudians with the penis envy and the anal fixation, let me tell you. But anyway, the neurotics all disappeared in 1980 and presumably the entire Freudian subconscious conflict, along with them. Or, at least, I think it did. I dream about all this stuff, sometimes, but when I wake up, it's all gone.... SBHarris 02:52, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Lol - sorry I missed this reply at the time SBHarris; I liked the comments very much on your dreams ... Yes, I'm aware of these points and once upon a time wasn't so long ago - American psychiatrists had to receive psychoanalytical training up until 1989. I have lots of opinions on psychiatry and even a little research but what you can do on Wikipedia is quite another thing. FiachraByrne (talk) 01:53, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

@Fiachra - Yup, appearance of FORUM applies. I need to be more careful, or I will end up wasting alot of time on reverts to my edits based on forming an opinion of me, not my edits. I actually do not have views that I am aware of to be desiring a FORUM for, but I hoped instead to get thinkers with backgrounds outside of medicine involved in editing the psychiatry articles, by posting here. Re "sufficient number", I am going over the WEIGHT article to suggest improvements. There is also an academic legal community commenting on use of psychiatry in the courts, to base questioning "truth" on. I found it odd that every psychiatrist I engage with comments the same, that diagnoses like "bipolar" are "junk science" categories so easy to diagnose that it insures payment under an insurance billing code, and a critique that attorneys and insurance industries are hijacking the profession for money, and leaving the science in the dust, yet there is none of this universal self-criticism in the Wiki articles. ParkSehJik (talk) 20:03, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

List of common misconceptions

This article could use a thorough review by anyone interested.   — C M B J   09:22, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Rewriting the page for the "point of inquiry" podcast.

Working on the point of inquiry podcast. If anyone has suggestions or things they would like to see added please let me know. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RicWatts (talk • contribs) 17:29, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Traditional knowledge

Category_talk:Traditional_knowledge

I have made a request for comment on this category and also the main article associated with it. My objection is the use of the word "knowledge" in the title, and it's inclusion in the category Category:Knowledge. It seems to me to be completely inappropriate, as "knowledge" implies that one would be validly justified in believing it. My proposal would be to rename it to "traditional beliefs" or "traditional lore" and certainly keep it out of the knowledge category. However, there is a strong political climate against that. If we were to use their standard, "astrology" would also be counted among the knowledge category, which it certainly is not. So is it just me and my "scientific fanaticism" here? Or is this a serious WP:FAIL? In any case, I will be adding the Rational Skepticism banner to it. Greg Bard (talk) 20:21, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Requested move: Alternative medicine → Complementary and alternative medicine

Requested page move from Alternative medicine to Complementary and alternative medicine initiated. Relevant talk page discussion can be found here. Let the luddite bashing commence. FiachraByrne (talk) 02:27, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

I made a userbox.

Since I didn't see any scientific skepticism userboxes at Wikipedia:Userboxes/Philosophy or Wikipedia:Userboxes/Science, I made one:

This user lives by scientific skepticism.

What do you think?--Atlantima (talk) 18:45, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Ingo Swann - date of death

Hallo! I live in Poland and I'm pl-wiki editor. How do you know that Ingo Swann died 31 January? I saw 1 link in which date of death is 31 January ([1]). In others it's 1 February, for example: [2] [3] [4] [5]. Which date of death is correct and why? Mariusz Swornóg (talk) 07:47, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Book Article Improvements

I notice that there have been several book article improvements underway lately, in some of which I have been involved, so I'm refactoring this section to include discussions on improvement, evaluation, etc. of book articles germane to our topic. and maybe help some of these reach GA status. Nmillerche (talk) 22:36, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Bad Astronomy: Request for Re-assessment

The article Bad Astronomy has been substantially improved by Joshuafilmer and is a DYK. Please re-assess. MrBill3 (talk) 20:27, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Tracking the Chupacabra

Recently published an article on Ben Radford's Tracking the Chupacabra, and looking for an evaluation and any guidance regarding its improvement. Thanks. Nmillerche (talk) 22:36, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Goals of this WikiProject

The goals of this project are fairly well stated, are applicable to Wikipedia, and match those of rational skepticism in general. I do have a question about item #4.

"4. To identify cases of fraud and other unethical/illegal activities undertaken by religious and quasi-religious organizations, as they often go unreported."

What is the intent of this goal and how does it fit into the scope of Wikipedia? I am not denying that this is an honorable goal nor am I saying that it lacks merit. I am simply wondering about the intent of including it here on this WikiProject. Frederick Green (talk) 13:29, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

That does seem a little out of place. We're not here to right great wrongs; we're here to record what sources have said, and so we shouldn't cover anything that's "unreported" or put undue weight on things that have had only slight coverage by the media. bobrayner (talk) 15:02, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, that goal appears to exceed the scope of a WikiProject and seems to go against WP:RS if indeed the intent is to add "unreported" information. I move for its removal. Nmillerche (talk) 01:36, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

I definitely agree. It's not Wikipedia's place to report on things that are unreported elsewhere. I will take the step of removing that goal, as it seems it should be uncontroversial, but I'm open to restoring it if there's further discussion. MartinPoulter (talk) 12:02, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, MartinPoulter. I have also added a clarification to item 3, as WP:CRITS generally discourages the addition of a section dedicated to criticisms to an article in most cases, but it is within our scope to find reliably sourced criticism to ensure WP:NPOV is maintained. If anybody else has guidance to provide on this matter, I'd welcome it, but for now I've adjusted the phrasing to be consistent with WP:CRITS. Nmillerche (talk) 03:37, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

David Gorski

Hello, I believe I am in need of assistance or advice. I'd been working on the David Gorski page and someone has come right behind me and deleted everything, the same person who tagged it for needing sources. I'm more than a bit confused. If I was doing something wrong I'd have expected some discussion on the talk page, but there was nothing. The things I added were sourced. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gorski So? Now what? Cap020570 (talk) 23:49, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

It looks like the restructuring is still taking place at the moment, and that a large portion of the removed content that was reliably sourced came from articles and/or interviews tied to the subject's skeptical activism. If after the restructuring is complete reliable sources per WP:RS that are not BLP violations are still missing, then I'd suggest restoring them. The subject's research career, impacts of publications on the field of study, etc should still be expanded. I will attempt to contribute more about the subject's professional career, as well. Nmillerche (talk) 00:19, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Help with article: Relationship between religion and science

This needs attention, I think, from any or all who are interested. -Darouet (talk) 02:14, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Nomination of Usage of acupuncture in the military for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Usage of acupuncture in the military is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Usage of acupuncture in the military until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.-- Brainy J ~✿~ (talk) 15:05, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Let's revitalize this project

This project seems to have been pretty quiet for the last few months. I am going to clean up the active user list. Should we put the inactive list into comment tags so that it does not display on the homepage but is still available as an archive? The list is pretty long and might be sending the wrong message to prospective members.

I would love to have someone else help update the to-do list and/or add the project banner to additional pages that fall within Rational Skepticism. Allecher (talk) 23:31, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I'd say just remove inactive editors, IRWolfie- (talk) 23:41, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I think a bot that scans Wikipedia articles for esoteric terms and things like crop circles would be a good idea. --Tobias1984 (talk) 12:12, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Probably best to just comment out the list of inactive members for now. We can always delete it later. Which is the more authoritative list: To-Do or Cleanup? Frederick Green (talk) 01:20, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Don't remove me! I wanna be on the cool team. Sgerbic (talk) 02:25, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I have moved all of the inactive users and commented out that section for now.

I'm happy to get involved, not long come across this project. AfD needs work, could the page be set up to automatically add Rational Skepticism listed AfDs? The last ones there were from 2007. Samwalton9 (talk) 11:11, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Have updated AFD page to be updated automatically by a bot. Seems to be working well. Samwalton9 (talk) 11:56, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

I would like to update the main page to simplify it a bit so that it is not so imposing looking to new members. I may have to remove the template that is transcluding all the sub-pages unless someone else can help figure it out. I guess I will start by trying to move the long member list to a sub page and then try to make the "articles by quality" more prominent. Allecher (talk) 23:08, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

That would be good. thanks. After this weekend I'll have more time to do stuff like this and will see what I can do. Samwalton9 (talk) 23:12, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

I keep running into problems reorganizing the main page because of the tabular format. I think I will copy the formatting of another project and replace the tables on this one. I'll do my best to retain all of the details but once I replace it feel free to help me get it all looking good. I just want to make it easier for new editors to find a way to help us. Allecher (talk) 23:03, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I have reworked a lot of it and I will come back to it tomorrow to finish up some the way some of pages are linked. Hopefully other editors can now see what my ultimate goal is and will suggest additional improvements or jump on in now that you don't have to navigate that darned table. Allecher (talk) 01:04, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Wow, it's looking much better, Allecher. To the rest of us trying to revitalize this project, I'm wondering what it would take to get this old chestnut running again? —-> Template:RationalSkepticismCollaboration

Nmillerche (talk) 03:30, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Definitely less scary page now, thank you Allecher.Joolzzt (talk) 00:07, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Nmillerche - I don't understand that bit. How can we add info under WP rules if an event went 'unreported', ie there are no citations. Agree it shouldn't be something we'd do.Joolzzt (talk) 00:07, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Great to see this work taking place. A while ago I did a similar overhaul of WP:PSYCHOLOGY, including the project page layout and the goals, so it might be worth a look (or not?) MartinPoulter (talk) 12:08, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Merge proposal

My proposal to help revitalize this project is to do a complete merge of Wikipedia:WikiProject Pseudoscience, a semi-active project, into this one. Greg Bard (talk) 20:16, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

That is an interesting idea. It does seem to fit well within our scope. Perhaps we could have two to-do lists (science and pseudoscience) to keep the lists more manageable? I'm sure many editors would work with both, though. Allecher (talk) 01:48, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

I am also intrigued. This could be mutually beneficial if organized well, as Allecher suggests. Nmillerche (talk) 01:56, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

I am willing to do the work. One of the things that would make it easier for me to merge them is if we just renamed it "Skepticism" and came to the understanding that it's about Scientific skepticism, and not about deep epistemological issues. That way the merges won't require a lot of deletion of existing pages, but rather just simple moves, editing and redirects. Then we can get a bot to tag talk pages with the appropriate banner.Greg Bard (talk) 03:12, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

This sounds like a great idea! Cap020570 (talk) 11:11, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Wow, that changed sooner that I thought. I guess I'll have to get used to the name "Skepticism" as opposed to "Rational Skepticism". Did we lose the member list in the changeover? How do we update/merge the talk page templates for both projects? Allecher (talk) 21:48, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

My goal is to make sure that nothing is lost. The membership list is under the link to "Join the project." This list includes people who signed up for the pseudoscience project. I have made a request to move the template banner, and I will keep people updated on that. If there are any issues, please do contact me, but please, also be patient. Greg Bard (talk) 22:37, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Okay folks, things have stablized since the move. There are about 6 bots that are affected, and they seem to have made the adjustment. Everyone was very patient about it, so everyone can stop being patient now and let me know if there is anything that should be addressed. Obviously people should feel free to change things around to suit their needs (it doesn't have to be grey, and nav tamplate can have different links, etc.) The only other idea I want to float out there is to turn all the "WikiProjects to monitor" into taskforces of this project. Greg Bard (talk) 19:55, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Moon landing conspiracy theories

Is Moon landing conspiracy theories something that this project should cover? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 02:31, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

I would say that it does because we specifically include pseudohistory in the project description. --Allecher (talk) 02:52, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Is there anything I need to do to add it to the project other than put the banner on the talk page? Is there a list of articles to watch or anything? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:34, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Putting the talk page banner on there will be enough to add it to the Project. Samwalton9 (talk) 22:40, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Whoops, I failed to realize that it was already there! Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:00, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Anything where skepticism is relevant is on topic. That includes conspiracy theory articles in general, IRWolfie- (talk) 23:52, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Pseudophilosophy

Greetings folks, I finally created Category:Pseudophilosophy, as I have been meaning to for a while. The creation of this category has made it possible to classify all of the non-scientific claims which are pseudo-scholarship. For a long time I wondered whether or not the Philosophy project was strong enough, to deal with having this category. Already, we have an editor, (User:Lerr) who has depopulated the catgeory, and prodded it with the claim that "there is no such concept" as pseudophilosophy. Well, I think all of the serious philosophy editors know that not just anything is philosophy, and are frustrated and alarmed at some of the impressions of non-academically oriented contributors in the area of philosophy. Some guy handing out photocopied sheets of paper with a tiny font and misaligned text on a street corner in San Fransico is not philosophy. Please help sustain the integrity of academic philosophy and Wikipedia in general, by monitoring this category. Greg Bard (talk) 22:18, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not interested in drama so I'm not getting into it, but Ayn Rand, Objectivism (and prominent objectivists), LaRouche movement and Lyndon La Rouche are perfect examples of pseudophilosophy and belong in that category. Sædon^talk 22:23, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Agreed (on all counts). I have added them. Greg Bard (talk) 23:06, 2 July 2013 (UTC) --- ... and the LaRouche movement was immediately removed form the category by User:Collect. Perhaps what we need to do is get on record as ahving a consensus for the inclusion of certain members of that category. This category could create a series of on-going battles. Greg Bard (talk) 23:16, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I have some sympathy with the view this is a problematic category, but perhaps it could be clearly determined to apply if a belief system terms itself a "philosophy" whereas mainstream philosophical scholarship does not. I'm thiking, for example, of the ideas of Rudolph Steiner. However the problem with applying a category is that it needs to be clearly demonstrable that the category has been used as a principal defining characteristic of the topic in question, by reliable sources. Is "pseudophilosophy" even a word that sources use much? Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 02:54, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

What's really important here is whether or not we have sources as it's hard to use editor discretion on contentious topics (even if it's not contentious amongst experts). And though I could think of 100 things that should be listed as pseudophilosophy I mention those above specifically because I'm almost certain that they have all been referred to as such in high quality sources. If I have time this weekend I'll do the research myself. Sædon^talk 07:07, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Eidetic memory

Is there a skeptical position on Eidetic memory? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:16, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I've looked it up on google books, read various psychological books on it and found it at least plausible then tried to find skeptic viewpoints on it, did get a little and there must a be at least something worth adding in the article. Have you found any? I didn't spend much time searching... -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 17:06, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

A friend asked me if skeptics had debunked this. I briefly searched Skeptical Inquirer, Skeptic magazine, and Skeptic's Dictionary and I didn't find anything. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 17:55, 3 July 2013 (UTC)