Talk:Immanuel Velikovsky/Archive 4

The word 'pseudoscientific'
The article now says that Velikovsky's work is pseudoscientific. While I'm pretty sure I agree, I think this is the sort of widely agreed-upon judgment that isn't entirely neutral and that an encyclopedia should put in quotation marks. Compare someone who is generally regarded as evil or honest. I think it's not too controversial to suggest that sentences like "He was evil" or "He was honest" are out of place on Wikipedia. Instead it would be better to say "He is widely regarded as evil" and "He is widely regarded as honest." For that reason, I'm going to change the article to say "His work is often described as an example of pseudoscience." If you believe that his work is pseudoscientific, I think you should prefer this approach, since it makes the article sound more credible. Making the point too dogmatically may actually backfire and cause readers to be suspicious of the article. Omphaloscope talk 18:10, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Nothing dogmatic about that. We follow the sources. In the cases where expert opinions are slightly divided, we do use the approach you recommend. But that is not the case here. Anybody who suggests Velikovsky was not a pseudoscientist would be immediately laughed out of town. --Hob Gadling (talk) 05:24, 12 February 2020 (UTC)