Category talk:Advocates of pseudoscience

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Are young earth believers, and creationists the only people who are pseudo scientists? The planet is crawling with whackos and hucksters. Melanin theory anyone? The list needs to be more comprehensive.Aestiva 10:43, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Drs. Paul Beifeld and Thomas Townsend Brown should be removed from this list for the following reason: According to the Wikipedia entry for Biefeld (which appears to be correctly documented and footnoted), Dr. Biefeld and Dr. Brown are the co-discoverers of the "Biefeld-Brown effect". According to the Wikipedia article regarding this effect (also appropriately footnoted), the effect is a genuine discovery with real-world applications, not false or psuedoscience. However, the effect has been siezed upon by some UFO believers as evidence of the existence of UFOs. In the course of this, the effect has been incorrectly described or understood. The error is in the understanding of those who sought to prove a point using Dr. Biefeld's and Brown's work, rather than some error by Biefeld or Brown themselves. While Dr. Brown participated in some research involving UFOs, Dr. Biefeld did not, and Dr. Brown has made other discoveries that show him to be a true scientist. Therefore, describing them as "psuedoscientists" appears inappropriate.

Chris Raine, machrisr2000@yahoo.com

It seems that contrary to what you imply, Brown at least did make some extremely dubious claims about alleged antigravity and UFOs. I don't know much about Biefeld (not "Beifeld", right?) so you just might be at least partially correct about him, in which case I'd like to redress the problem. But this is an area where quite frankly misrepresentation and outright lying is commonplace. In accordance with WP:VERIFY you'll need to provide pointers to reliable documentation.
In particular, please note that pointers to partisan and highly unreliable sites such as The Townsend Brown Group, TTBrown, American Antigravity, etc., simply don't count as reliable and independently verifiable sources. (I trust you agree that these and other sites prominently mentioning Beifeld-Brown are cranky.) It makes little sense to cite one WP article as verification for another WP article, especially since the one you cite has frequently been edited by users pushing cranky points of view.
Can you point to verifiable obituaries in mainstream physics journals, or documents at mainstream professional organizations which would support your contention that Biefeld was a mainstream if minor scientist who had the bad judgement/luck/whatever to coauthor a paper with someone who later (?) turned crank? (Note that journals like Galilean Electrodynamics and organizations like California Institute for Physics and Astrophysics are not mainstream.) I recognize that this might be quite difficult, since Biefeld and Brown are very obscure figures (except to antigravity crowd) and are long dead, but still the fact remains that claims must be verifiable before they can be used in WP.
BTW, by mentioning an email address in WP you are practically begging to be spammed to death, so I highly recommend that you immediately remove your email address from this page. If you register an WP account (free!) and enter your email and verify a query, you can arrange for other Wikipedians to email you via WP without even knowing your actual email address. Just another nifty benefit of registration.---CH 09:20, 21 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How NPOV is this page ?

I think that this page is suffering from a POV problem, of which the discussion above is an example, but by no means the only case. Pseudoscience is defined as being "portrayed as scientific but diverges substantially from the required standards". I don't think many would argue with the inclusion of fantasists like von Daniken or Graham Hancock, who co-opt scientific language to lend credence to wild theories for which there is no scientific basis; similarly, it makes sense (IMO) to include people who attempt to use scientific language to defend a religious or political viewpoint (such as creationists).

However, this page includes a number of people who have a reputable scientific background, are credited with mainstream scientific work, but also happen to have explored areas that are seen by the scientific community as lacking in validity, such as anti-gravity or cold fusion.

For example, putting Martin Fleischmann on this page includes an implicit assumption that Cold Fusion is not science. I don't think that this assumption should be made in an NPOV environment. There is a fundamental difference between Pseudoscience and just being wrong. Even eminent scientists can be wrong, but to be a pseudoscientist requires being a charlatan, and I don't think that's a brush with which people should be tarred lightly.

Just because an accredited scientist such as Thomas Townsend Brown is associated with anti-gravity isn't (IMO) sufficient cause to describe him as a Pseudoscientist. If every scientist who dabbled in non- mainstream science was described as a pseudoscientist, this page would have to include luminaries such as Newton, Galileo, etc etc. Which I don't think would be right.

Eliot 12:42, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For more or less the same reasons, the German equivalent of this category is being considered for deletion now. --84.137.54.58 12:44, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
People can be categorised as more than one thing. A person can be a scientist and a pseudoscientist. They're not mutually exclusive. McLerristarr | Mclay1 08:50, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Definition

I changed the definition from someone who advocates pseudoscience to someone who falsely claims to be a scientist. The previous definition was illogical. Someone who advocates science is not necessarily a scientist. "Pseudo" means false or fake, a pseudoscientist is therefore a false or fake scientist. What they advocate would have nothing to do with it. --Lee Hunter 15:57, 28 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is this category anything but rude and pointless? If so, I'm not seeing it... I vote for deletion. Admiralblur 06:49, 7 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Count my vote too if it ever comes up. It's only used to dump people into a category so their views can be minoritised and disregarded in articles. There's no such thing as a "Pseudoscientist". Someone either has the credentials of a scientist or they don't. Objectively I don't think anybody should even be labeled a scientist but rather as e.g. biologists or physicists, etc. Unfortunately the general scientist category is still needed to group the other categories but people should certainly not be named under it. Biofase flame| stalk  01:12, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

opinionated just like - organizations designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups

Same as - Pseudoscientists - according to who? is needed to explain the label - delete this attack category - Mosfetfaser (talk) 05:43, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps it would be best to keep the category after all. It could be the best possible ammunition against wikipedia admins one could ever hope for - because what you just correctly stated is the perfect illustration for all new users of how there is a tiny pushy and vocal minority cabal running through the adminship with nothing but utter contempt and derision for what the "masses" think and do - a minority of vocal admins using their toolboxes to further their minority extremist agenda that is, as you say, much like the Southern Poverty Law Center and gives Wikipedia much the same "flavor" as SPLC in the experience of billions of users. 71.127.135.136 (talk) 12:02, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The scientific consensus is, by definition, not a minority. Wikipedia is a place of facts. McLerristarr | Mclay1 08:53, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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