Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Skepticism

State atheism

This page has come across my computer. What do you think? Seems like it needs some special attention. State atheism Sgerbic (talk) 21:46, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

I just completed a total citation cleanup on the article: verifying claims to sources should now be a simple affair. Cheers. TP ✎ ✓ 16:15, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

For the record, this article is a presentation 'as fact' of the atheist atrocities fallacy (aka pinning all the world's ills on 'atheism'). Article neglects to mention origin, purpose and use of the 'State atheism' concept-designation, and since next to no mainstream reliable sources use the term to describe the events the article recounts, the article seems to be mostly WP:SYNTH. Especially egregious are the 'Mexico' and 'East Germany' sections. Cheers. TP ✎ ✓ 08:15, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

Netoholic and Blueboar: you had previously warned ThePromenader at WP:NORN not to continue to WP:FORUMSHOP to convince people of his denial of state atheism, but a year later, his continues to post on forums like this one to gather sympathy from others [1]. Could you both address this tendentious behavior? Perhaps a topic ban on religion and atheism articles would be in order? desmay (talk) 02:22, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

That's (again) one hell of a misrepresentation of an episode dating from almost a year ago, and we're talking about a single, low-traffic low-importance article (so... total topic-ban?) here? But a contributor feeling 'threatened' enough by this trifling attention that they feel a 'need' to a) follow the 'threat's contributions then b) manipulatingly plead for (select) admin 'help' whereever they speak of the ('their'?) article speaks pretty well for itself. TP ✎ ✓ 06:26, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

• I think may be some fringe issues with this article. I have cross-posted to WP:FT/N to see if we can broaden consensus. Alexbrn (talk) 06:48, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

Thanks - not much has happened in that direction, but someone there seems quite intent on that article not getting any attention. TP ✎ ✓ 14:56, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

It's been a while since I've touched this, and perhaps it's been long enough that an objective going-over could be timely. Cheers. TP ✎ ✓ 10:31, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Tito - RPM AfD discussion

Up for deletion Tito Mukhopadhyay - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Tito_Mukhopadhyay Sgerbic (talk) 21:56, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Larry Bissonnette AfD

Continuing with the discussion of people using Facilitated Communication - we have many Wikipedia pages that are in AfD including this one for Larry Bissonnette. Can Bissonnette's art stand alone without his words, enough that he is worthy of a Wikipedia page? Anything that is claimed he has said about his work, was not his voice but that of his facilitator. So how can we know what he feels about any of this attention. How does anyone know what his true intent is for his artwork if his artist statements are facilitated? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Larry_Bissonnette Sgerbic (talk) 22:11, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Ball lightning

The article on Ball lightning needs a more balanced viewpoint. I started a discussion on the talk page but so far there is no reponse. PopSci (talk) 16:00, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

The discussion is now underway. Thanks. PopSci (talk) 16:14, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes. We are biased.

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, once said:

"Wikipedia’s policies around [alternative medicine] are exactly spot-on and correct. If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals – that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately.

What we won’t do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of 'true scientific discourse'. It isn’t.[2][3][4][5]"

So yes, we are biased.

We are biased towards science and biased against pseudoscience.
We are biased towards astronomy, and biased against astrology.
We are biased towards chemistry, and biased against alchemy.
We are biased towards mathematics, and biased against numerology.
We are biased towards medicine, and biased against homeopathic medicine.
We are biased towards venipuncture, and biased against acupuncture.
We are biased towards cargo planes, and biased against cargo cults.
We are biased towards vaccination, and biased against vaccine hesitancy.
We are biased towards magnetic resonance imaging, and biased against magnetic therapy.
We are biased towards crops, and biased against crop circles.
We are biased towards laundry soap, and biased against laundry balls.
We are biased towards water treatment, and biased against magnetic water treatment.
We are biased towards electromagnetic fields, and biased against microlepton fields.
We are biased towards evolution, and biased against creationism.
We are biased towards the scientific consensus on climate change, and biased against global warming conspiracy theories.
We are biased towards geology, and biased against flood geology.
We are biased towards medical treatments that have been proven to be effective in double-blind clinical trials, and biased against medical treatments that are based upon preying on the gullible.
We are biased towards astronauts and cosmonauts, and biased against ancient astronauts.
We are biased towards psychology, and biased against phrenology.
We are biased towards mendelism, and biased against lysenkoism.

And we are not going to change. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:22, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Somatotype and constitutional psychology

hum, ...could benefit, imo, from some unbiased tlc, per WP policies and guidelines. Tks, 86.172.7.182 (talk) 20:37, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

• I've now tagged the page as {{alternative medicine sidebar|fringe}} and categorized it under [[Category:Pseudoscience]] (etc), but I'm not sure whether there are other such listings that need to be added in somehow. 86.172.7.182 (talk) 21:03, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Proposal to blacklist Natural News

There is a proposal to add Natural News to the spam blacklist on the reliable sources noticeboard. If you are interested, please participate at WP:RSN § Natural News. — Newslinger talk 22:38, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

"Great Replacement" move discussion

Interested users may wish to join a requested move discussion at Talk:The Great Replacement that concerns this project. Thank you. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 09:03, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

update: there is a new move discussion regarding whether to move Great Replacement → Great replacement conspiracy theory Nblund ^talk 19:12, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Proposal to merge WikiProject Alternative views into WikiProject Skepticism

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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WikiProject Alternative views and WikiProject Skepticism have substantially similar, if not identical, scopes. The description of WikiProject Alternative views appears to indicate a more favorable perspective on non-mainstream theories. However, having two WikiProjects with similar scopes and different outlooks means that one of them is a point of view fork, and should be removed.

Between these two projects, WikiProject Skepticism is more active, with more pageviews, higher talk page activity (here vs. Alternative views), and a more active assessment department (Skepticism vs. Alternative views).

From this, I am proposing to merge WikiProject Alternative views into WikiProject Skepticism. — Newslinger talk 21:35, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

• Support merge Agree with Newslinger's analysis. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:47, 20 October 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. The scopes of the two projects are quite different. WikiProject Skepticism is specifically "focused on scientific skepticism and clarifying the distinction between science and pseudoscience". WikiProject Alternative Views is more general, encompassing articles about "alternative views in every field, from the sciences to the humanities". Tim Smith (talk) 06:28, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
• Meh. WikiProjects are only as successful as the participation they get. This one is busy, while WikiProject Alternative Views is dead. It might seem to be a useful "tidying up" to merge them, but in practice it doesn't matter. Alexbrn (talk) 06:45, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose Agreed with Tim Smith's analysis. The scopes are actually quite distinct, and there is nothing wrong with overlap wherever it may be found. SEMMENDINGER (talk) 14:42, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose Alt views is alt views. Skepticism embraces mainstream scientific views against non scientific alt theories, as an example. CatCafe (talk) 21:26, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose No, the two are completely different projects. And it is really sad if you say that Project skepticism is the active one, because it is mostly dormant. Sgerbic (talk) 04:57, 9 November 2019 (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.

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool

Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:24, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

RfC on whether Quackwatch is a self-published source

There is a request for comment on whether Quackwatch is a self-published source. This RfC also concerns the application of WP:BLP § Avoid self-published sources (WP:BLPSPS) to content from Quackwatch. If you are interested, please participate at WP:RSN § RfC: Quackwatch. — Newslinger talk 00:04, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!

Hello, Please note that Brain Electrical Oscillation Signature Profiling, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of Today's articles for improvement. The article was scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Today's articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by — MusikBot talk 00:05, 9 December 2019 (UTC) on behalf of the TAFI team

Die Glocke

• Die Glocke (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

This article had accumulated a lot of cruft from fringe authors such as Henry Stevens, Jim Marrs and Gerold Schelm. The topic is a classic WP:FRINGE theory (secret Nazi antigravity technology, occultism, flying saucers, etc.) and requires WP:FRIND independent sources in order to maintain an objective article. So I've cleaned out the fringe sourcing and expanded the WP:RS sourcing: Before. After.. Unfortunately, this article is a popular drive-by target for fantasy and fringe advocates, so I hope a few folks here will put it on their watchlist. Also, if anyone has access to CSI articles that may have been published on the topic, please let me know. Thanks, - LuckyLouie (talk) 21:07, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

The Goop Lab

I have added evidence-based criticism to the article about this Netflix show. I expect push-back from Goop's loyal fans. Please monitor the situation! RobP (talk) 15:23, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

Climate Feedback and InsideClimate News on accuracy of claims by proponents of climate change denial

There is a noticeboard discussion regarding the use of Climate Feedback and InsideClimate News to describe the accuracy of claims made by proponents of climate change denial. If you are interested, please participate at WP:BLPN § Accuracy of claims made by climate change deniers. — Newslinger talk 10:49, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

RfC: Race and intelligence

There's an RfC at Talk:Race and intelligence#RfC about lede to Race and intelligence about NPOV in the first paragraph of the article. More editor input is needed. Thanks. NightHeron (talk) 02:00, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

More eyes needed at Talk:Race and intelligence

Editors who watchlist the article Scientific racism might be interested in looking at the related article Race and intelligence, which has been an area of contentious debate and edit-warring. (It is currently locked down for 3 days.) While Scientific racism is, I think, a good example of how Wikipedia handles fringe, the article Race and intelligence has a very different tone and content, as is clear from the first paragraph of the lede. See also Race and intelligence#The Jensenism debates. I'm putting this notice on all the WikiProjects that list Scientific racism as of high importance, in the hope that more editors will participate in discussions at Talk:Race and intelligence and help make the article compliant with WP:NPOV and WP:FRINGE. The problems at Race and intelligence were discussed off-wiki here: [6]. Thanks. NightHeron (talk) 13:41, 31 January 2020 (UTC)