Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 01:50, 23 October 2021

Skepticism Project‑class

This page is within the scope of WikiProject Skepticism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of science, pseudoscience, pseudohistory and skepticism related articles on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SkepticismWikipedia:WikiProject SkepticismTemplate:WikiProject SkepticismSkepticism Project This page does not require a rating on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale.

This page was nominated for deletion on October 28, 2006. The result of the discussion was keep.

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Did you know nomination

Category:Anti-vaccination activists who died of COVID-19 has been nominated for deletion

Category:Anti-vaccination activists who died of COVID-19 has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. -- ke4roh (talk) 15:21, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Perspective article on Misplaced Pages and Skepticsm

For your own enlightenment and perhaps reflection: a critical essay by Brian Martin that directly references this WikiProject, and some of the topics under its purview. Martin, Brian (12 April 2021). "Policing orthodoxy on Misplaced Pages: Skeptics in action?". Journal of Science Communication. 20 (02): A09. doi:10.22323/2.20020209.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link) Abstract: Misplaced Pages has been accused of being biased against challengers to scientific orthodoxy due to efforts by editors having affinities with the Skeptics movement. Examination of Misplaced Pages, including entries on fluoridation, the origin of AIDS and vaccination, reveals several characteristics typical of a Skeptics sensibility, including the definition of scepticism, lists of deviant ideas, derogatory labelling of heterodox viewpoints, and categories established without reference to reliable sources. --Animalparty! (talk) 00:55, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Major Arcana#Requested move 20 August 2021

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Major Arcana#Requested move 20 August 2021 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. — Shibbolethink 01:59, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Evidence-based mapping

Hi everyone,
A recent deletion discussion on English Misplaced Pages has set an important precedent about the criteria that maps need to comply to in order to be used on English Misplaced Pages, and in which cases they may be removed from English Misplaced Pages per WP:OR, WP:UNSOURCED or WP:SYNTH. I've written a new essay, c:Commons:Evidence-based mapping, to help users to make accurate maps on Commons that will be acceptable for usage on (English) Misplaced Pages, to deal with existing inaccurate and unsourced maps on Commons, and to improve cooperation between users. I think some of you may be interested in reading this, because currently anyone can make a map based on no reliable sources whatsoever (and it cannot be easily deleted on Commons, unless it's an obvious hoax), and then used on any language version of Misplaced Pages, where they can easily mislead readers. Obviously we don't want maps without evidence to be misleading readers. If any of you think the essay can be improved further – especially where it pertains to the rules about reliable sources on English Misplaced Pages – feel free to make suggestions or corrections on the text here or its talk page. I hope this essay can be really helpful, and if many people agree, perhaps it can eventually be elevated to a guideline. Happy to receive your feedback! Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 17:29, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

You rock Nederlandse! Sgerbic (talk) 18:29, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at WP:RSN concerning a paper about COVID origins and bioengineering

There is a discussion at WP:RSN concerning this paper by Yuri Deigin and Rosana Segretto in Bioessays which may be of interest to the members of this WikiProject. See discussion here.

Segreto, R., & Deigin, Y. (2021). The genetic structure of SARS-CoV-2 does not rule out a laboratory origin. BioEssays, 43, e2000240. https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.202000240.

Thanks.— Shibbolethink 23:50, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Requesting some article expansion help

Greetings,

Requesting you to visit Draft:Irrational beliefs and Draft:Superstitions in Christian societies and help expand the same if the topics interest you.

Thanks and warm regards

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 06:30, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Re-rate Sean M. Carroll

Hello. In your project, Sean M. Carroll is rated C-class but the article has been expended vastly in the last 6 months. What about re-evaluating its class? --81.213.215.83 (talk) 20:35, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Evidence of absence

Evidence of absence needs work, esp. Proving a negative. I flagged the section, including adding CNs, and added it to this project. I also made a section on its Talk to discuss this. I found it because I got into an argument on Zoom about proving a negative (re god) due to absence of evidence - and the person points me at this WP article as proof you CAN prove such a negative... (So if you cannot prove god doesn't exist, he does). RobP (talk) 01:11, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

I have this arguments, they are just a giant circle. How bad is the article Evidence of absence, can we just say that there is no evidence that the page is bad so therefore the page must be in good shape? Sgerbic (talk) 06:36, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

That person is just mistaken in their interpretation of the article. See also Russell's Teapot and Hitchens's Razor. Another editor once disingenuously made the argument that because of a lack of evidence, we can state in Wikivoice that supernatural things "do not exist". This is also a mistaken interpretation of these concepts, as both positive claims and negative claims are both claims, and as such, both require evidence to be logical. MarshallKe (talk) 12:29, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Logic fail there, but anyway Misplaced Pages follows sources and if they say things don't exist (like qi), Misplaced Pages neutrally follows. Alexbrn (talk) 13:19, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not going to bring back the qi discussion because everyone talked until blue in the face. We didn't agree on what the sources said, and we didn't agree on which of us is failing at logic, and the consensus was to change your "does not exist" text to something less bad. MarshallKe (talk) 13:29, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

I think the point was we did agree (that "neither qi nor meridians exist as observable phenomena"), and I made a nice improvement to the text accordingly. Things (like The Death Star) can "exist" as fiction. So for qi. Consensus is a great force. Alexbrn (talk) 13:37, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Come off your high horse, Alex. You lost that discussion and the only reason the wording didn't go further against your favor is because you won through sheer frustration of everyone involved. MarshallKe (talk) 13:45, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Danth's Law strikes again. If in doubt, return to WP:FT/N for a reality check, although personally I wouldn't recommend it when the consensus text is good. Alexbrn (talk) 13:50, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Please see WP:BATTLEGROUND and WP:WINNING. We're all in this together. There does not need to be winners and losers. jps (talk) 13:26, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Havana Syndrome

Ok Skeptical folks... as years pass and and no indisputable evidence is uncovered proving the Havana Syndrome is the result of proposed but undiscovered sci-fi weapons, the likelihood that it is all due to mass psychogenic illness, the hypothesis put forward by the expert Robert Bartholomew, seems to be growing. YET, the Misplaced Pages page IMHO does not reflect this. And editors have kept this hypothesis totally out of the lead. What are we to do? RobP (talk) 01:50, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

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