[SharedKnowing] Episteme issue about Wikipedia appears

[A.A. Stos]

On reading this thread, I got really anxious. Is it possible that the
"H" article does not state clearly enough what is the scientific
status of this topic? Or is that status diluted to more than 12C with
too difficult considerations?

More generally, and more pertinently to this mailing list, one might
suspect that neutrality inherently means high level of complications.

So I started reading the article; it begins with "homeopathy is a
system of alternative medicine." I calmed down.
Then I noticed that "alternative medicine" is linked, so I clicked it.
In first few lines I read "practices not blessed by generally accepted
conventional medicine" or
"practices believed by medical regulators to be dangerous, deceptive
or ineffective."
Fair enough.

Now, let's take it from another perspective.
I'd find it frightening: an "authoritative" on-line resource where
some "experts"/"scientists" (whoever) would claim representing  the
"right" viewpoint.

Paradoxically, a good thing about the Wikipedia is that there is not
much reliability perception (this is at least what I see around me).
No "authority", just "some usefulness" (indeed, intuitively, a
resource "anyone can edit" can't be trusted too much.)

At least potentially, the CZ could be far more dangerous in this
regard. Now, some comments on and critics of the "homeopathy" article,
and the article itself, as well as some other developments, make me
believe that it's evolving in a good direction.

a.











2009/2/17 Anthony <skn at inbox.org>:
> On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 6:17 AM, David Stodolsky
> <david.stodolsky at socialinformatics.org> wrote:
>>
>> On 16 Feb 2009, at 19:30, Larry Sanger wrote:
>>
>> > I stand by my claim that this is a remarkably neutral article.  If I
>> > had to
>> > guess, the main reason that "geni" thinks the article is not neutral
>> > is that
>> > it does not excoriate homeopathy.
>>
>> It is also remarkably useless for anyone, but an academic interested
>> in the subject. You need to have an advanced degree to deduce that
>> homeopathy is quackery.
>
> You do?  I got to the line saying "In homeopathic theory, every person has a
> "vital force", with the power to promote healing and/or maintain good
> health" and had a pretty good inkling of it, which following the "vital
> force" link confirmed.  That was also about the point where the usefulness
> of the article to me stopped, though I can see how the "historical origins"
> section could be useful to someone studying history.
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