Talk:Fringe theory/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk · contribs) 13:59, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Overall this is a fairly well done article. I've got some specific comments below along with some suggestions which I feel might help the article cover the subject in a more comprehensive manner.

content

 * The first sentence is "A fringe theory is an idea or viewpoint held by a small group of supporters." but the definition Fringe theories are ideas which depart significantly from a prevailing or mainstream theory. is materially different, more specific and equally incomplete. The two components to a fringe theory are (roughly): few peopel subscribe and the theory departs from (or just doesn't speak to) a prevailing view.
 * "The conspirators are possessed of..." I'm not sure if this sentence served much purpose. We want to include conspiracy theories in a discussion of the constellation of nonsense around fringe theories. As well we should. But I don't think describing what conspiracy theories claim in general serves the reader. We should mention conspiracy theories in some way, but this seems unnecessary.
 * The "mainstream impact" section isn't really about mainstream impact. I think we might be well served by having a short section on mainstream impact and a longer section on evolution of various fringe theories. Like, the first paragraph talks mainstream impact and the remaining 4 talk about the evolution of various theories.
 * "Sometimes this change is not gradual; in such cases it represents a paradigm shift." While I understand the point this sentence is making (especially as it leads in to a salient example), it conflates "paradigm shift" with "fast" rather than using the more germane meaning of a mechanism by which a community accepts a theory which challenges mainstream assumptions. Paradigm shifts can be fast, but that's not what is important about that term.
 * "Such shifts between fringe theory and accepted theories are not always clear-cut." Is the only example we have here Fruedian psycholanalysis?
 * Similarly, while the NYT piece (+ reactions) is a good example of false balance becoming accepted, is it the only one?
 * "...others in the media condemned the Times..." Who? We're offloading this to Offit, but a reader might want to know.
 * "Because advocates of creationism want schools to present only their preferred alternative..." Creationist placement of ID/YEC against evolution as a two sided issue points to a failure of intellectual honesty. It's not super helpful to the reader to frame it as "because they're intellectually dishonest, they create a false balance".

Style

 * Article is well linked, well cited and overall fairly clear. No real problems.

additions?

 * I'm a little surprised to not see Kuhn anywhere. I admit, he's not exactly au currant in the history of science literature, but if we're talking about the demarcation problem and/or theories moving in and out of the fringe, his is an important (and widely cited) voice on the subject.
 * There's an (old) discussion on the talk page complaining about continental drift as an example. I don't think it should be removed, but the point there was about science as a meta-process. The argument goes that science falls in and out of love with concepts or ideas for non-scientific reasons (c.f. paradigm shifts) but that most ideas which were adopted later were not accepted at the time because they lacked a scientific mechanism. Continental drift as it was expressed at the time was rightly in the fringe. Now, I think this argument is pretty self-serving, but it's out there in the literature on how we discuss the topic.
 * Actually the aside on behavioral finance highlights the above problem. Behavioral economists were marginalized in the discipline for years for a variety of reasons. The main reason was that BE/BF didn't provide the mechanism for a tractable, testable general theory (I'll go find some sources on this). It wasn't properly "fringe" in 2002, but it certainly was in the 80s.
 * Sometimes theories which enter the fringe in one discipline (Fruedian pscyhoanalysis in psychiatry) become central to another--it's pretty hard to read Lacan and following work without seeing how critical theory adopted a method on the way out in another discipline and made it central.

Additional comments

 * Ed gives us a lot to work with... but I will add one other concern. The article tends to be dominated by discussion of two forms of fringe: conspiracy theory and fringe science.  We need more explanation of fringe theories in other academic areas (for example... while we mention pseudo-history in passing, we don't really explain what constitutes pseudo-history or give any examples). Blueboar (talk) 15:36, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi and. Additional comments are always welcome. I didn't notice until I completed the review, but the nominator hasn't been active in the past two months. I'm planning to place the review on hold for now. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:18, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Pure OR/SYNTH
How can a pure OR/SYNTH article can earn the "good article" status. Ed should try to find at least 1 source first, which clearly defines in detail what "fringe theory" is. By "source", of course, I don't mean the trivial or tangential stuff mentioned/discussed in the deletion discussion. Preliminary discussion here which led to the AfD, will also help to bring the problematic main elements into consideration once again. Logos (talk) 16:33, 15 May 2015 (UTC)