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lhsi writes:
A petition on Change.org was created: "Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia: Create and enforce new policies that allow for true scientific discourse about holistic approaches to healing."
Jimmy Wales
responded.
No, you have to be kidding me. Every single person who signed this petition needs to go back to check their premises and think harder about what it means to be honest, factual, truthful.
Wikipedia's policies around this kind of thing 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.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Dale on Tuesday March 25 2014, @02:15PM
I like how certain groups want everyone to include their point of view in everything going on with evolution, climate, abortion, etc. However, when it comes to others wanting them to include their point of view they rattle on about free speech and such so they can continue to ignore the competing points of view.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by wjwlsn on Tuesday March 25 2014, @02:22PM
Next thing you know, they'll be asking for equal time on Cosmos.
I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
(Score: 1) by nicdoye on Tuesday March 25 2014, @02:32PM
Exactly. I'm religious and I notice all(?) religious articles on Wikipedia are presented as fact. I don't believe in homoeopathy, but others do.
How do we deal with unprovable and disputed areas of belief on a public site that contains the sum of human knowledge. Move belief to separate sections from fact? If so, where do we place theoretical physics or the Axiom of Choice/Principle of Well-Ordering, etc., etc. What if random-seemingly-insane-conspiracy-theory is true?
Many areas of history, social science and even national borders, are hotly contested. It's a can of worms.
I code because I can
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Tuesday March 25 2014, @02:59PM
"I notice all(?) religious articles on Wikipedia are presented as fact."
You'd need to expand on that, or provide some quotes / cites. I glanced at the Japanese Zen and Hinduism articles and saw a lot of stuff like this:
"Reginald Horace Blyth (1898–1964) was an Englishman who went to Japan in 1940 to further his study of Zen"
I don't think there's much disagreement about Blyth dying in '64, or going to Japan in '40. I also see some documentation of what various people reportedly believe.
Didn't see much along the lines of proselytizing or portraying mythology as fact.
The worst stuff I could find that might fit your definition, would be honest disagreements in opinion along the line of :
"Some of the more prominent Rinzai Zen centers in North America include ..."
I don't disagree with this particular detail, or think it a bad idea to try to categorize into more prominent and inherently not more prominent, but I can see how resentment could happen from not meeting the cutoff for being listed, or similar. And that's the worst I could find in a short search.
Even worse, I'm not religious, so I'd likely be inherently biased to search for falsehood, and I didn't find much worth noting in a short search.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RobotMonster on Tuesday March 25 2014, @03:10PM
Can you point to a wikipedia page where religious beliefs are presented as fact?
I looked up a few (Heaven, Hell, Garden of Eden), and found them to be quite scholarly and plainly discussing religious beliefs & traditions, not ascribing beliefs as facts. For example, the page on Hell starts out "In many mythological, folklore and religious traditions, hell is a place of eternal torment in an afterlife, often after resurrection. " - it does not say "Hell is where bad people go when they die."
The page on homeopathy is similarly scholarly, and covers the topic quite well from one end to the other, from a factual point of view. (Btw, how do homeopaths wash dishes? the more they wash them, the more powerful the dirt should become!)
You'll find Wikipedia pages for lots of random-seemingly-insane-conspiracy-theories -- information about them is freely available, Wikipedia just doesn't like to present unverifiable ideas as facts.
The pages on EFT and the other topics mentioned in the petition do seem light on details about the random-seemingly-insane-theories, but I'm sure if people added more information that didn't try to pass itself off as fact, the editors would let it stay. e.g. "TAT proponents believe that pressing in this special spot and going through this verbal exercise will help you feel better" instead of "pressing in this special spot and going through this verbal exercise will help you feel better." See the homeopathy page for a good example.
To me the petition seems quite close to step 9 of How to Sell a Pseudoscience [positiveatheism.org], "Attack Opponents Through Innuendo and Character Assassination." (I found this article in the wikipedia footnotes for the Tapas Acupressure Technique ;-)
I remember the general disbelief with the idea that Wikipedia could work at all, when it was first announced way back when. Today it is a truly amazing resource, and I'm pleased that Mr Wales responded in such a blunt manner to people who want to corrupt the tenets of unbiassed accuracy that has gotten Wikipedia this far.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by nicdoye on Tuesday March 25 2014, @04:56PM
You know what? You're right. It's clearly my brain filtering out the "according to" etc. at the beginning of each article. I agree wholeheartedly with the rest of your comment.
Thank you for your time correcting me. Other people: mod RobotMonster's post up.
I code because I can
(Score: 3) by Kell on Tuesday March 25 2014, @11:25PM
It's posts like this, the "Thank you for your insights" posts, that make me glad Soylent is a thing! It seems we have selectively attracted people who want good discussion and useful debate, whilst leaving behind a lot of the trolls and partisans. Even thought Soylent is smaller than /., I feel like the quality is much higher. But perhaps this should not be too surprising when you think that the people who came to Soylent are the people who actually care about the quality of their news.
Polite debate on the internet - who'd have known?
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 4, Funny) by TheGratefulNet on Tuesday March 25 2014, @03:25PM
a simple fix would do it: anything that is not factual based should have their pages rendered with a purple background (which happens to be the exact color of unicorns). then, you'd know for sure you were reading fictional material.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2, Informative) by rcamera on Tuesday March 25 2014, @03:44PM
/* no comment */
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Boxzy on Tuesday March 25 2014, @03:37PM
This is the demand for 'tolerance' of anyone not in their religion that they be allowed to cram their belief system into science like the search for life outside the solar system, just so they can claim God did that too. Though if you demand that they include science in their unscientific beliefs, suddenly somebody is being intolerant.
These arguments are always won by the group that gets offended first and shouts loudest.
Go green, Go Soylent.
(Score: 1) by gishzida on Tuesday March 25 2014, @06:26PM
Wikipedia IS intolerant. I find that many of the pages at Wikipedia have crud edited into them which I find intolerant of my beliefs but there is no point complaining because "belief" on Wikipedia is subject to a "majority religious bias".
I myself find the "Christianizing" of Jewish belief or Jewish ideas a willing distortion on the part of the Editors. For example in the entry
Angels in Judaism [wikipedia.org] the sub-section entitled, "
Second Temple Period Texts (Not Part of Mainstream Judaism) [wikipedia.org] takes up two thirds of the whole entry and none of which has an basis in the Jewish bible. When you look at the references you'll find that at least three quarters of the references are to books which are not Jewish.
Or one could go look at the entry on Satan [wikipedia.org] where on the same page a majority rules kind of definition: "Satan (Hebrew: meaning "adversary,") is a term, later a character appearing in the texts of the Abrahamic religions who personifies evil and temptation, and is known as the deceiver that leads humanity astray. The term is often applied to an angel who fell out of favor with God, seducing humanity into the ways of sin, and who now rules over the fallen world."
Um... but then it says... "The original Hebrew term, satan, is a noun from a verb meaning primarily to, "obstruct, oppose," as it is found in Numbers 22:22, 1 Samuel 29:4, Psalms 109:6.[6] Ha-Satan is traditionally translated as "the accuser," or "the adversary." The definite article "ha-," English "the," is used to show that this is a title bestowed on a being, versus the name of a being. Thus this being would be referred to as "the satan."
The Satan of Christianity is not the Satan of Judaism yet the primary definition of "Satan" is the "Christian one". Or one might look at the Jewish definition of Messiah and then at the general definition. You will note that the Jewish definition excludes the Christian one.
These are not the only entries at Wikipedia where the "Christian bias" of the editors shows. The point is that the bias shown is that the "Christian Editors" of Wikipedia distort things in favor of their belief.
Science it its purest sense does not distort facts... except when acceptance of "new observations" counters "established science". Things which counter "established Science" tend to have an extremely high barrier to climb over. Cold Fusion, Psi, and "Unidentified Phenomena" are things which have not been able to scale those walls even when the "phenomena" continues.
One might add that Science even has its own low brow Brown Shirt Shock troops-- The Skeptics. Skeptics deny everything... and yet they too Fail at "doing science" because they use unreliable sources like Wikipedia or LiveScience [don't believe that Live Science has a problem? Go there and read their various articles about Jesus. For example this one [livescience.com]... Yup not scientific.]
The bottom line line observation from a not particularly unbiased observer is that Jimmy Wales is talking out both sides of his mouth. He finds no need to add what he considers as unscientific to Wikipedia but does not much care that the European-English-American biased "Great-White-Christian-Brotherhood" model of history and belief is the primary Wikipedia editorial line.
One can use Wikipedia but check the references carefully.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 01 2014, @04:33PM
If the article is titled in part "(Not part of mainstream Judaism)", then what is your problem with it's lack of texts from the Jewish bible? The Jewish bible, when compiled, excluded troublesome writings just as the Christian bible did. There is evidence that several versions of Torah were in circulation before the Jewish bible was settled on and alternative scriptures are historically interesting whether rabbis approve or not.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by edIII on Wednesday March 26 2014, @05:07AM
While I agree with you, on this specific issue I think it's grossly misrepresented or a typo.
I happen to believe in a holistic approach to medicine, as it's described.
What does Jimmy think? All holistic medicine is 1 part per million miracle organic compound with the rest water?
Some holistic practitioners strongly believe in a spiritual aspect that must be considered. That's not unreasonable in many cases, and can lead towards understanding in the psychological and social aspects of a person's well being.
I guess it is more often referred to as something else with a suitable term, but that doesn't change the fact that plenty of "alternative" medicine is now recognized.
Acupuncture. Shit works. If it has absolutely no benefit of any kind, it at least has the benefit of a placebo. Nobody should underestimate the apparent power of the human mind and soul to heal itself.
There are other alternative medicines that are rapidly meeting the rigorous demands of science. Chinese herbal medicine is not even close to "magic water". I've had medicine delivered to me in wax balls while in China from a herbalist that was packaged no different than medical grade pharma back in the US. It also worked well. Whatever issue I had with my stomach was gone in about 5 minutes. Took it for a few days and my stomach ailment was gone.
The US loves Chinese herbs. God knows we use enough of it stupidly via energy drinks.
It seems that Jimmy is being a bit of an ass. Not everything is magic in a holistic approach in medicine, and does pass scientific scrutiny.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by wjwlsn on Wednesday March 26 2014, @06:15PM
At the time I read it, the parent post was rated (Score 1: Flamebait). The post is clearly written in a non-inflammatory style, conveys its argument in a clear and unambiguous fashion, and is generally polite and on-topic... so why did somebody mod it down?
This is an example of shitty moderating. Maybe it expresses a minority opinion here on SN, but that doesn't mean it has no value. In fact, that's why it has value in the first place. If you don't like what edIII has to say on the subject, then post an intelligent reply that addresses the points of disagreement.
I personally am extremely skeptical of "alternative medicine" - see, I put it in quotes because I have difficulty referring to it as medicine at all! Even so, I probably would have modded this up because of its positive aspects... maybe "+1 Interesting" or "+1 Underrated". I most certainly would not have modded it down!
I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 25 2014, @02:15PM
Holistic healing seems to cover a lot of things. In fact, sometimes it covers combining things. Aroma therapy, for instance. I can't say it works, but headaches do seem to disappear when you're surrounded with pleasant smells. Oil extracts - seemed pretty bogus to me, until someone convinced me to try it for my son. Didn't "cure" a damned thing, but the lavender oil seemed to help symptoms.
I'm no believer in this stuff, but I do see people that it seems to help. If it doesn't actually help them, just making them feel happier is conducive to healing.
Maybe someone should just start a holistic healing wiki, independent of Wikipedia? A lot of ancient old wives remedies are worthless, but some of them are still around because people thought they were worthwhile!!
As a side note, look at how many people are praising cannabis for it's medical properties today. I can't imagine myself toking up to cure a headache, but if the stuff makes people feel better about their ailments, hey, GO FOR IT!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Sir Finkus on Tuesday March 25 2014, @02:28PM
This looks to be more than old remedies, based on TFP. They want Wikipedia to include information on the benefits of things like "Energy Medicine", "Energy Psychology", "Emotional Freedom Techniques", and "Thought Field Therapy".
As for cannabis, its medical properties are rather well established scientifically, Especially for cancer and glaucoma patients.
Join our Folding@Home team! [stanford.edu]
(Score: 4, Informative) by SleazyRidr on Tuesday March 25 2014, @02:35PM
The placebo effect is well known and documented. Selling holistic supplements with the promise that they'll ease symptoms is ok. You don't need to "open up" Wikipedia to say that, it's already there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Complementary_ and_Alternative_Medicine [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 25 2014, @02:36PM
He himself has a false premise. There are so many junk journals out there and even the ones that are respected often have an agenda. Every postgrad knows that if you do research in an unpopular area then you wont get published.
Essentially, just because something is published does not mean that it is scientific, or even respectable, and just because journals wont publish specific works does not mean that they are not scientific and repeatable.
I am sure you can see by the time he resorts to ad hominem that he does not care about what useful facts are, merely what his organization chooses to believe in. I suppose that is a pretty good reason to add to the pile of why wikipedia is not a valid citable source itself.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Kilo110 on Tuesday March 25 2014, @02:50PM
I like how you whitewash holistic "medicine" as simply unpopular. No, it's insane. Holistic "medicine" has already been looked into many times. It's crap. Placebo at best, outright fraud otherwise.
(Score: 2, Informative) by ClownFactory on Tuesday March 25 2014, @02:50PM
Wikipedia is inherently not a citable source because it is an encyclopedia.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by kebes on Tuesday March 25 2014, @02:52PM
But in fact the effects you describe may very well be real. There are well-documented ways in which reducing stress can improve health [wikipedia.org], or conversely how stress/noises [wikipedia.org]/environment/etc. can both directly impact health, and indirectly (e.g. by affecting sleep [wikipedia.org] and resting). There are also well-documented ways in which placebos [wikipedia.org] operate: it is known that placebos can affect a person's mental state sufficiently to alleviate symptoms. (Placebos can be used successfully as part of a broader medical treatment.) And no one will deny that quality of life [wikipedia.org] is important: if someone finds that a particular aroma, colour, sensation, or activity makes it easier to cope with life, then by all means they should exploit that!
My point in peppering my reply with all those Wikipedia links was to emphasize that Wikipedia does provide coverage of the things you mention, of all the benefits of such treatments. It doesn't need to provide special coverage/inclusion of holistic medicine: the bits that are shown to work will be absorbed into medical science, and will in turn be reflected in Wikipedia's medical articles. (Indeed some aspects of medical science--e.g. particular drugs--can be traced back to Ancient remedies that were shown to be effective.) The bits that don't work will be mentioned on Wikipedia as placebos or frauds, as the case may be.
I'm not saying that Wikipedia is perfect; nor are science or mainstream medicine perfect. But they do a pretty good job, and if some holistic treatment is truly effective, then the proponents shouldn't have much difficulty conducting a study to show that it is indeed effective. As such, I have little sympathy for their call for "scientific discourse" on the pages of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and they have a clear policy that states that only verifiable information is to be included. The proponents of a given treatment shouldn't be trying to have a "scientific discourse" on Wikipedia: they should be having that discourse in the scientific literature. If their ideas have merit, they will prevail.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Kilo110 on Tuesday March 25 2014, @02:55PM
They likely want it on wikipedia pages so they can sell more healing crystals, eye of neut, or whatever has a 1000% profit margin.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 26 2014, @12:33AM
Eye of newt, ball of neut.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 26 2014, @07:56AM
Hey, Ig Nobel prize winning research shows that expensive placebos work better:o bel-prize-for-study-on-placebo.html [blogspot.com]
http://psychologyofpain.blogspot.com/2008/10/ig-n
Ethically it might be dubious but since we're talking about scientific discourse and healing, you can see there's plenty of science to prove it that in enough cases it works better than no treatment. It may not be science or results you like, but it's still science :).
As it is, it would be good to figure out the limits of what placebos can and cannot do.g ery-study/ [cnn.com]
And what can be defined as "placebo" - does sham surgery count - it definitely makes some changes to the body: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/26/health/knee-sur
And there's also the Hawthorne effect - where people behave differently when they believe they are being observed.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday March 25 2014, @03:09PM
That's a nice and long response, but a short summary would be something like:
"Real medicine works better than a placebo even if no one involved has blind faith in it."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by kebes on Tuesday March 25 2014, @03:56PM
(Score: 2, Insightful) by spiritfiend on Tuesday March 25 2014, @02:58PM
It's unfair to lump marijuana in with holistic medicine. Due to it's classification, there have been limited opportunities to actually test it's effects in a controlled scientific manner. There's a difference between not testing something that has anecdotal because it is not economically feasible to do so, and risking your freedom to test something that has anecdotal benefits.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 26 2014, @02:04PM
I'm not sure, really. There was a time, when many, many medicines included marijuana or hemp extracts. Snake oil salesmen included it in all sorts of preparations. Marijuana does have some verifiable benefits, but marijuana also has a lot of undocumented claims and uses in it's history.
There used to be a site on the web, kept up by some old graybeard, with photos of medicine bottles, and their contents and ingredients listed. Recipes, uses, and claims for "cures" for all kinds of things. To bad his site was taken down, there was a LOT of information on the site in addition to his photo pages. I simply cannot believe ALL the claims for marijuana that I read on that site. I'm sure that some of those snake oil salesmen just made sure that the mixture of alcohol, cannabanoids, and other ingredients were mildly to highly intoxicating so that the victim - errr, I mean patient - was sure to "feel good" after drinking it.
Yes, there is science behind the use of marijuana, but there is a lack of science behind many of the claims made for it.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Skarjak on Tuesday March 25 2014, @06:23PM
Demanding proper evidence before you will believe something does not make you close-minded. It just means you're not gullible.
(Score: 2, Funny) by EETech1 on Wednesday March 26 2014, @03:10AM
A Wiccapedia of sorts....
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Sir Finkus on Tuesday March 25 2014, @02:17PM
I guess Jimmy Wales doesn't mince words. Kudos to him for being so frank and honest.
Alternative medicine is one of those things that really pisses me off. It's one thing for someone to say they can channel dead relatives, but it becomes much more dangerous when people make dubious medical claims. People die because of this crap.
Join our Folding@Home team! [stanford.edu]
(Score: 1) by Buck Feta on Tuesday March 25 2014, @04:18PM
I've always wondered what percentage of "alternative medicine" providers know they are charlatans, and what percentage actually believe in it themselves. Furthermore, what causes this second group of people to exist?
- fractious political commentary goes here -
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TheloniousToady on Tuesday March 25 2014, @05:25PM
I've long held the theory that all successful charlatans must believe in what they do to some extent - otherwise they wouldn't be successful at it. In effect, they must engage in some sort of doublethink. In that regard, charlatans are distinct from con artists, who, by definition, do not believe in the snake oil they're selling.
The same sort of thing applies to politicians: you can't be truly successful at lying unless you believe your own lie. Or, as the old saying goes, "The key to acting is sincerity: if you can fake that, you've really got it made." In that regard, it's not so surprising that a B-movie actor, Ronald Reagan, turned out to be quite a successful politician. I think he was better at believing his own lies than just about anybody.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hatta on Tuesday March 25 2014, @08:52PM
I've long held the theory that all successful charlatans must believe in what they do to some extent - otherwise they wouldn't be successful at it. In effect, they must engage in some sort of doublethink. In that regard, charlatans are distinct from con artists, who, by definition, do not believe in the snake oil they're selling.
In the first sentence you assert that one must believe in what they're selling to be successful.
In the second sentence you assert that con-artists do not believe in what they are selling.
Are you arguing that all con-artists are unsuccessful?
(Score: 2) by TheloniousToady on Tuesday March 25 2014, @10:09PM
Good point. I retract the comment.
(Score: 1) by terryk30 on Tuesday March 25 2014, @06:39PM
As many as 2/3 True Believers? OK, maybe 1/3 1/3 with the other 1/3 just having slipped into the racket somehow, and just parroting things (for what little difference that makes).
As to what causes the True Believer group to exist, one thing that was usually apparent from even somewhat knowing a few of them (yes, I'm being anecdotal - the irony is not lost...) was that in their formal ed they had taken the bare minimum of STEM-like subjects; no surprise of course. To not give formal ed too much credit, let's just say this is correlated with having little appreciation for (a) the cumulative nature of scientific progress (vertical and interdisciplinary), (b) the confidence of a verified quantitative model, (c) the web of expert authority at all levels and how to evaluate it, (d) how human failures do not invalidate the whole enterprise, etc.
In short, they don't have an accurate idea of why we claim to know what we know scientifically. More relevantly, they hated chemistry and what little exposure to stats they had, and didn't "get" or retain even a layperson's overview of either. Now they're open to any set of claims with shoddy or gobbledegook arguments. In some cases, throw in some postmodern deconstructivist critique of "western" science from the 80's or 90's (again, with essentially no countervailing inquiry) and it all makes sense to them.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tathra on Tuesday March 25 2014, @02:30PM
there's already 'true scientific discourse' on holistic medicines - they're bullshit that fail to help in a statistically significant way, and thus that's all that can honestly be said about them. if they worked, they'd just be called "medicine".
(Score: 4, Funny) by WizardFusion on Tuesday March 25 2014, @02:40PM
Maybe if we paid them less attention they would go away. ... I'm just saying let's remove all the warning labels and let the problem sort itself out"
Like the saying goes: "I'm not saying we should kill all the stupid people
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 25 2014, @02:47PM
The Hawthorne and Placebo effects are quite strong.
If you really want to talk about "scientific" there's plenty of replicable evidence that the placebo effect can heal significantly more than "no treatment" in many cases (but not in all cases of course).
After all if the placebo effect didn't work, it would be far easier to figure out whether various medical treatments worked or not- you only need to have "no treatment" and "test treatment". But in so many scientific studies they need to test against placebo too.
By the way, too many new drugs don't seem to do that much better than placebo as compared to the old drugs: http://www.forbes.com/sites/harlankrumholz/2013/09 /03/is-no-worse-than-placebo-good-enough-for-new-d iabetes-drugs/ [forbes.com] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/03/new-drugs -effectiveness-old-medicines_n_3380347.html [huffingtonpost.com]?
And the other thing is even when patients know it's not real it can still work: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-22/placebos- help-even-when-patients-know-what-they-get-harvard -study-finds.html [bloomberg.com]
But maybe this is because the placebo pills used are actually not as inactive as the researchers think. Sugar pills have an effect. There's some concern that placebos used in some studies might not be inactive enough.
"scientific healing" is messier than Mr Wales and others think.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 25 2014, @06:42PM
Also medicines often have sideffects. Therefore, compared against some medicines, administering a placebo can also be perceived as doing less harm.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 25 2014, @03:06PM
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While turning gay the other day,
A thought occurred to me.
I'd like to try most every guy
From here to "Timbuk-tee".
Oh, there's so many men around the world
Of every shape and size.
I want to nibble on Jamaican jerks
And teriyaki thighs.
I want to French-kiss a Frenchman
And spoon an English duke.
'Cause frankly, dear
To not be queer
Just makes me want to puke.
So find yourself a man
Who'll want you in the sack.
I recommend our dear old friend...
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Moe:
Letters don't lie!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 25 2014, @03:12PM
is there a holistic medicine wiki somewhere else on the internet? if not, just make one. screw jimmy whales and wikipedia.
i like jimmy whales and wikipedia, i'm just saying the solution is simple if the goal is to aggregate and disseminate knowledge. this seems more like a strategically picked political battle.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Kilo110 on Tuesday March 25 2014, @03:46PM
They couldn't care less about having a wiki, they stated they want the publicity that comes with having a wikipedia article.
Most likely to peddle more of their snake oil to gullible and desperate people.
(Score: 0) by chris.alex.thomas on Tuesday March 25 2014, @05:00PM
exactly! KNOWLEDGE! not bullshit.
so wikipedia is doing a the right thing....ignoring the ignorant lunatics.....
(Score: 1) by The Archon V2.0 on Wednesday March 26 2014, @03:33AM
They had a few. As far as I know they're, heh, mostly dead now. (There was one called Wiki4somethingorother and I seem to recall a controversy about some homeopath quack being chums with the guy who ran Wikipedia-killer Citizendium and being made expert in charge of the medical articles.)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Serial_Priest on Tuesday March 25 2014, @03:44PM
The proponents of "holistic" healing are making the exact logical mistake found with creationists and religious literalists: assuming an answer, dismissing counterexamples, seizing upon relatively weak justifications, and ignoring or maligning alternative (and generally better-fitting) explanatory theories. It reflects a general weakness in human thinking: a desire for elegance, patterns, completeness. But honest scientific theories are necessarily incomplete, partial, and tentative (which is why they are so unsatisfactory to primate brains.) The key here is that there are better (more reliable, more suited to the medical and physical evidence of the universe accumulated thus far) theories for all the phenomena described by the "holistic" crowd, and that these theories (e.g. placebo effect) are already well represented on Wikipedia's extensive alternative medicine section.
Encyclopedias are the quintessential Enlightenment project - compiling the results of human experiments, exploration, speculation, etc. But they themselves are not places for "discourse" or "debate" - that occurs elsewhere, as noted above, in scholarly journals, in popular media, in the broader intellectual culture. It would be one thing if Wales was saying that all reference to alternative medicine should be banned. But all he is asking is that they be discussed honestly. The fundamentalists should not ask the encyclopedists to be their advocates.
(Score: 0, Troll) by freetown on Wednesday March 26 2014, @01:30AM
When will people stop the rubbish about theories, theories, theories. If you jump off a building, you will go DOWN. That is a fact. Why? Due to the LAW of gravity. It is NOT a theory. Just because we may not know the absolute exact definition of a law and so we then reduce it to something supposedly unproven such as a theory? This is the reason why we have bad science in certain quarters. Then there are principles which are true anytime and anywhere such as the principle of the conversation of matter. Please stop equating theories about the definition of a law to the law itself.
Since when does one pour billions of dollars into a project on the basis of a theory? No, men were sent to the moon on the basis of reliable laws, not unproven theories. Keep calling these laws theories and you get people who will be willing to risk everything on theories and those who would like to exploit them.
(Score: 3, Funny) by mmcmonster on Tuesday March 25 2014, @04:22PM
The petition just asks that he create a place for the discourse about the holistic approaches to healing.
Nothing in the petition is asking that this be on a Wiki Foundation website. And this would go against the Wiki Foundation declaration that they are a repository of knowledge, not a place for discourse.
What the petition is asking for is Jimmy Wales to create a forum site for them. Maybe they don't know how to do it or just need someone else to do it for free.
Maybe charlatan.org? Website isn't taken (yet).
(Score: 2) by ancientt on Wednesday March 26 2014, @12:57AM
The whole point of trying to compel Wikipedia to do something is to take advantage of the good reputation that Wikipedia has earned when they cannot earn the same reputation themselves.
I get your humor. It is worth saying just for the entertainment value.
Still though, this crosses a line.
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(Score: 1, Offtopic) by wantkitteh on Tuesday March 25 2014, @05:33PM
Allergic to bullshit! Merely allowing bullshit into Wikipedia will, in the minds of the easily impressed, add weight to the claims these quacks make, no matter how many banners you spray over the page proclaiming these claims are unsubstantiated.
For anyone who hasn't seen it already, Tim Minchin's "Storm: The Animated Movie" (short, 10m38s) is an awesome beat poem that far more people need to see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by weeds on Tuesday March 25 2014, @06:09PM
Hari Seldon
Get money out of politics! [mayday.us]
(Score: 2) by zim on Tuesday March 25 2014, @10:37PM
And that's what the 'holistic' crap falls under. It too requires faith and belief to work. It too can't be proven in double blind studys.
And it too has the loudest screeching harpys telling everyone it's absolute true.
I still don't understand why religion isn't treated as a mental illness. Or maybe a virus. It could fit into either catagory.
Walk around believing an invisible guy is watching everything you do and telling you what you should do.... We tend to lock you up for that. Call that invisible guy god. And ohhhhhh now it's ok.
Pretty fucked up imho.
One of the largest remaining hurdles left to human society before we can really advance.. Getting rid of religion.
Shame i won't live that long. It would be interesting to see what that change alone could bring.