Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of minority-opinion scientific theories


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   Delete; the list is fundamentally unsalvagable as unverifiable original research, to wit: All of those problems have been pointed out in the discussion, but no way to correct the failings have been found. Most of the keep commentary revolves around the observation that there is no place to direct the information to (the suggested merges are viewed by the consensus as improper); it may simply be a case that there is no proper place in an encyclopedia for such a list. &mdash; Coren (talk) 17:16, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The criterion for inclusion are vague and arbitrary: How is "minority opinion" defined? When is it defined? At the time of writing?  It is about general perception in academia (never mind how vague)? Sourced by who?  For that matter, whether items on the list are scientific theories to begin with is open to question;
 * the listed items are only loosely associated by definition; and
 * there are no sources to justify inclusion on the list (or exclusion) regardless of how well the items themselves are sourced.

List of minority-opinion scientific theories


The page's status was first proposed as a merge to list of pseudosciences and pseudoscientific concepts, which ran into some opposition. A more recent proposal was to merge it to fringe science. Some editors also believe that this is inappropriate.

There has been some discussion over what the best fate for the article is. My main objection is that it is a list with no objective inclusion or exclusion criteria. The list also includes a bit of an article that has casts some possible NPOV issues with the list.

Discussion

 * Delete the entire article, since there are problems with both merges. I would strongly oppose a pseudoscience merge, though some of the current members on the list are borderline pseudoscience.  SDY (talk) 01:41, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep (or rename to Scientific controversies "List of alternative theories in science") There is not a definitive source, but theories such as Multiregional hypothesis, Exogenesis, and String theory are all clearly not generally accepted, while being generally accepted as being valid scientific theories (or hypotheses) which have come from the scientific community. The article could be expanded and tidied, or even renamed, but I see no reason to just delete it. (disclaimer: I started the article) —Pengo 03:52, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete and salt. Outside of Wikipedia, I have yet to hear of such a classification as "minority-opinion scientific theories". This seems to be a WP:POVFORK of some sort. -- Levine2112 discuss 06:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * POV fork of what? —Pengo 09:52, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Of some sort. Perhaps of list of pseudosciences and pseudoscientific concepts (which in itself contains a huge POVFORK in its "Topics which notable skeptical groups consider to be pseudoscientific" section). -- Levine2112 discuss 18:30, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * These aren't pseudosciences and pseudoscientific concepts, and are not considered so by skeptics. —Pengo 23:32, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * And hence the fork. -- Levine2112 discuss 23:41, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * There is no fork.  Q ua ck Gu ru   23:43, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I understood your opinion when you stated it just below. I disagree with it. Outside of Wikipedia the category "Minority Scientific-Opinion" doesn't appear to exist. Perhaps I haven't looked in the right places. It's like we wanted to create a term to label things which we felt were fringe or pseudoscientific, but no one notable has come out and labeled it as such. Hence, this list article only seems to be perpetuating a categorization (and thus a POV) which is only published on Wikipedia. In this sense, this article could also be considered a WP:NOR violation as well and could be deleted just the same. -- Levine2112 discuss 23:50, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * If the problem is only the title it can be renamed.  Q ua ck Gu ru   18:18, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Then please suggest a title and convey inclusion criteria which isn't dependent on the judgment of Wikipedia editors, but rather based of some reliable source. For instance, if we were to rename this to "List of alternative theories in science", then - depending on the inclusion criteria - we would be required to find reliable sources which label various scientific theories as an "alternative theory" in order to populate our list. Otherwise, if we are depending on a made up label for list which is populated solely based on editor opinion, we are left with an non-NPOV article which violates NOR. This is what we have now with this list-article in its current form. -- Levine2112 discuss 00:22, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment If this was renamed to "List of alternative theories in science", we could avoid some of the problems, I think, while providing an informative article on areas where there is scientific disagreement. An article elaborating on scientific disagreement is necessary and encyclopedic. II  | (t - c) 08:19, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The concept of disagreements in science is encyclopedic (and covered in paradigm shift and other articles), but I don't really see how a list is necessary. Consider also that describing something as controversial when it really isn't has massive NPOV problems unless properly cited.  The existence of a controversy is a fact, so .  That renamed article could theoretically (ahem!) work, but given the amount of interest so far in the topic I doubt it would be anything but a mess of cleanup tags.  SDY (talk) 14:04, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep There is no POVFORK. We should not delete stuff that some editors don't like.  Q ua ck Gu ru   23:34, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete. I see several problems: What are the inclusion criterias. If a view is held by 5 percent of scientists in an area? or 33 or maybe 45 percent? What about areas with several "schools" but no dominant paradigm? MaxPont (talk) 15:05, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Renaming to "List of alternative theories in science" would overcome this perceived problem. However, note that this issue has never come up in 2 years, as the criteria is fairly clear on a case-by-case basis. (Minority implies less than 50% by the way) —Pengo 00:36, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, considering that this is basically an orphaned article, it's not surprising that no one has objected previously. It is absolutely unclear in many of the cases, as I stated on the article's talk page.  Most of the current members of the list are better described as fringe science.  In some cases there are multiple schools of thought on a topic, and all of them are "<50%" but are also all mainstream (nature and nurture is an infamous one).  Many of them aren't even theories in the scientific sense, just "ideas".  The public health ones are mostly disputing the mainstream view with no actual alternative.  SDY (talk) 00:50, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It wasn't orphaned until someone deleted it recently and turned it into a redirect, leading to inbound links being removed. —Pengo 02:49, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * That was me, since I objected to linking valid minority views to "fringe science" via the redirect. I'll de-orphan it till this is resolved. thanks, Jim Butler (t) 22:55, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Where all "ideas" are <50% then they are all minority. Can you name a particular case? And this is isn't even an issue with the proposed renamed. —Pengo 02:49, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * "Minority" in this context means to me something like 10%: high enough that it's not the sole domain of eccentrics (i.e. fringe science), but low enough that it's not a major school of thought. Listing every single disagreement in science is simply not a practical list to make, though the lack of deadline means that that page would not have as much of a problem.  My main concern with this list is that it sends the message that "This is valid and important and not fringe science" and I simply don't believe that the distinction between "fringe" and "minority" is something that's available in reliable sources.  It appears to be violating both WP:NOR (assigning the label when no reliable source does) and WP:NPOV (it gives the impression that some fringe ideas like rejection of climate change are more accepted in the scientific community than they actually are).  SDY (talk) 05:38, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It's not practical to make an article about every train station in the world, but it's being done. Your other problems are purely hypothetical. —Pengo 14:13, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * At least there an editor can say "the members of this list obviously belong here because they are all train stations." The term "train station" has some quibbles (is a light rail stop a train station?), but it must be a physical location that interacts with at least one train.  "Train station" is not a neologism created by wikipedia editors.  SDY (talk) 17:22, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete and redirect to fringe science. The list is a mess - only one topic facilitated communication is sourced and I have doubts re its science content. Two of the health controversies have sources and it seems this is just another place for people to push their fav controversy. Summary: blatant forkism and terminology not used outside of wikidom. Vsmith (talk) 21:41, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Multiregional hypothesis, Exogenesis, and String theory are not "fringe science". —Pengo 23:34, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Exactly. Those topics alone are worth it.  Given WP:PAPER, I don't see the need to go all deletionist here. --Jim Butler (t) 22:55, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep: better to keep than delete, but better to delete it than to redirect to something it clearly ain't, such as fringe science.  I agree that the criteria for populating this list aren't obvious, and that it will probably attract POV pushers a la teach the controversy, but IMO the reward -- a small but interesting list that can be expanded (no deadline) -- outweighs the potential hassle.  It's nice to have a place to put topics that are neither majority nor fringe nor pseudo.  While there is no pressing need for this list, it has the potential to be a fascinating collection of odds and ends.  And the concept of an "alternative, valid minority view" is hardly unique to WP; it goes by many names:  no need to be pedantic and insist that sources use the exact words.  Just the general idea suffices.  --Jim Butler (t) 22:55, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * While WP:INDISCRIMINATE doesn't explicitly mention the general idea of open-ended lists with no clear boundaries, I'm guessing that the general principle is the same, especially for meta-articles like lists that have no unique content. My interpretation of that section of WP:What Wikipedia is not is that "Why not?" is not sufficient justification for keeping an article.  SDY (talk) 23:08, 13 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete. It is very difficult to define what "minority-opinion" should exactly mean. The first problem here is the "opinion part". In many cases, scientists do not have a clear opinion at all. This may sound strange, but scientists are inherently skeptical about their very own ideas they are working on. This is how science works. So, the whole concept of "opinion" does not apply to the concept of "theory" in many cases.

Of course, in some cases, people or scientists do have opinions about theories. But then it is difficult to measure what that opinion is. Usually there are no reliable sources. The reason is, of course, that opinions don't matter much in science. In some cases, a theory may be very controversial for political reasons and then there may be polls, like e.g. all these infamous unreliable "polls" in about global warming. Count Iblis (talk) 01:18, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge. However, I do not think that this list should be moved to the list of pseudosciences and pseudoscientific concepts, rather I think it ought to be the other way around. The pseudoscience list is entirely POV biased; even the name itself implies a skewed perspective. At least this list has a name that is not inflammatory. This list needs to have a clear and objective outline for inclusion criteria. Then, any supposedly pseudoscientific theories can be moved into this list. As is, the pseudoscience list ought to be removed. This list needs to be improved.Wikigonish (talk) 02:11, 14 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete Being a POV-magnet is not an argument for deletion, but having inclusion criteria which describe about a Sagan of potential articles is. "Minority" is fine, but "theory", "acceptance", and "relevant community" make this list inherently intractable. Pretty much every scientific paper worth reading puts forth new ideas - should we list the debate in the Density functional theory modeling community between the approximation strategies of Local-density approximation vs. Linear muffin-tin orbitals vs. Generalized gradient approximation? At DFT, sure, but not here. Content relevant to individual articles should be saved, but the title is unlikely enough as a search term that I see no need for a redirect. - Eldereft (cont.) 02:28, 14 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Something I came across earlier that seems directly applicable to the discussion is strangely enough found at WP:NOTDIR:

"'Lists or repositories of loosely associated topics such as (but not limited to) quotations, aphorisms, or persons (real or fictional). If you want to enter lists of quotations, put them into our sister project Wikiquote. Of course, there is nothing wrong with having lists if their entries are famous because they are associated with or significantly contributed to the list topic, for example Nixon's Enemies List. Wikipedia also includes reference tables and tabular information for quick reference. Merged groups of small articles based on a core topic are certainly permitted. (See Lists (stand alone lists) - appropriate topics for clarification.)'" ::Seems pretty straightforward to me. WP:SALAT is also relevant here. SDY (talk) 16:13, 14 August 2008 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.