Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Homeopathy

Statement by Baegis
This is a case that desperately needs to be reviewed by ArbCom. We have an editor, in Mr. Ullman, who is completely incapable of building an encyclopedic article about homeopathy and instead has taken it upon himself to be the consummate promoter of homeopathy in every conceivable article. He has brought editing at the Arsenicum album page to a complete standstill because he refuses to work with other editors, as he perceives we all have an "anti-homeopathic bias". The water memory page is rife with Dana's vitriol about citing every single positive result of any test for water memory, no matter how poorly executed. This is a trait that is also present on the aforementioned article as well. He tried to interject pro-homeopathic material in places where it was not needed (Charles Darwin, for example). He has tried to use his own website as an RS, among many other sins against the project. Dana has been acknowledged in the media as "homeopathy's foremost spokesman" so he is a classic case of WP:COI. He has canvassed off-site for more pro-homeopathic editors to join him. He has accused everyone and their brother of being a sock. He has also shown a complete disregard, as seen from the evidence presented by Shoemaker, of taking any criticism of the studies he wants to include in articles. He employs WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT so much that it could make an editor pull his own hair out. Basically, he is an editor that has touched the final nerve of nearly all of the editors on the homeopathic articles. I urge the Arbcom to take this case. If this issue is not promptly addressed, I fear even more editors will turn away from these articles or, worst case, leave the project.

Addendum
In response to the any questions about why an RFC has not been carried out regarding Dana, I merely should say that an RFC is not the be all and end all of dispute resolution. Other means have been tried to mediate the situation. An RFC would simply bring both sides of the homeopathy article camp and there exists more than an inconsequential amount of editors who will merely support those that have been on their side in the past. The pro-homeopathy crowd will cry that they are being picked on and the other editors will be accused of trying to railroad an editor they disagree with off of the project. The ONLY way for this problem to be rectified is for an ArbCom ruling. How is an RFC that will consist of a vast majority of people who have already commented on Dana's behavior going to help this situation? Frankly, it won't. Baegis (talk) 04:46, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Moreschi
I now strongly feel that I should never have consented to my original indefinite block of Dana's first account being overturned. This was a severe error of judgment on my part. Nothing I have seen since has convinced me that Dana is really interested in building an encyclopedia in accordance with Undue weight. He's turned up everywhere to promote homeopathy, including (bizarrely) Ludwig van Beethoven. I recommend acceptance and a lengthy ban. Moreschi2 (talk) 09:07, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Jehochman
I have tried to steer Dana away from trouble, including asking him to take a break from homeopathy to edit other things. Many attempts at dispute resolution have been tried, but the desired results have not been achieved, yet. Note that community-based article probation is in effect (Talk:Homeopathy/Article probation). If there is evidence of persistent trouble from any editor, they can be topic banned by any administrator. Jehochman Talk 14:11, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by ScienceApologist
User:DanaUllman had been adopted by User:LaraLove very ineffectively. The protection afforded to this particular user with regards to homeopathy has been extreme and inordinate. Administrators have fought administrators over whether Dana is being disruptive, tendentious, or just experiencing culture shock. It is clear to many involved in homeopathy probation that it has failed: the problems are not being addressed and Dana's behavior seems to only be getting worse. I encourage Arbcomm to consider this case and also evaluate the effectiveness of community-initiated article probation.

ScienceApologist (talk) 15:01, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by OffTheFence
I have neither the time nor inclination to return to editing the homeopathy pages at Wikipedia due in large part to the problems outlined by the editors above. However, I would like to take this opportunity to remind other parties that I had gone to the trouble and personal expense of obtaining of copies of both Cazin and Linde (1994) papers and could quote from them directly, something (with respect to Cazin) that DanaUllman seemed unable to do although he apparently also had a copy, yet I had enormous difficulty in getting DanaUllman to acknowledge their self-evident deficiencies. I see from DanaUllman's statement that he continues to refer to the Linde and Jonas work as if it was a well-performed meta-analysis whereas it was in fact an appallingly slipshod piece of work in which the authors reported an analysis of papers that they defined and described as being of "high quality" according to an arbitrary scheme, but where almost none of these allegedly "high-quality" trials were either randomised or blinded. While accepting that homeopathy is a contentious issue, any editing is made frankly exasperating when it requires a herculean effort to get a tendentious editor to accept even quite straightforward criticisms of the material that they are trying to foist upon an encyclopaedic entry. DanaUllman repeatedly tried to hide behind the idea that holding these papers to normal standards of scientific scrutiny was WP:OR. Editor DanaUllman could not rebut the criticisms being made, so instead resorted to exploiting a narrow and inappropriate reading of Wikipedia policies to force inclusion of defective material into an article. This appeared to be a deliberate attempt to create a misleading impression of the nature of the available evidence in the article. I was mistaken in trying compromise with him and create a version that cited these poor papers with at least some reference to their inadequacies and am grateful that other editors have now excised all reference to them. Cazin and Linde & Jonas (1994) papers are not of encyclopaedic quality and should be ignored. Editor DanaUllman either could not understand or simply would not accept this. In either case, his continued freedom to edit homeopathy pages is called into question. I would prefer he was not topic-banned for a significant period, but at the moment can see no other appropriate solution.OffTheFence (talk) 15:19, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Infophile
To be honest, I really wish arbitration weren't necessary here. The best outcome would have been for Dana to accept Wikipedia policies being what they are and to work within them, to provide us with an insider's perspective on Homeopathy. Even while he's been here, questions have been raised that it would have been nice to have a homeopath answer (one of mine had to do with how dilutions are started - is it a solution of a known molarity? Matching volume? Just a pinch into the solvent?), but instead, he works to try to sway these articles away from NPOV to a more pro-Homeopathy stance. Now, he doesn't see it this way, and believes the current versions are biased and he's pushing it towards NPOV (I'm assuming good faith here). Many, many editors have tried to explain to him how his interpretation is incorrect, but he just doesn't get it. It seems impossible to teach him absolutely anything here.

But getting Dana to work productively just hasn't worked. After that, the next best option would be to simply have him blocked (or at least banned from Homeopathy-related articles). However you look at it, he's a single-purpose account with a conflict of interest. He's here to promote his own profession; it's as simple as that. He was in fact previously blocked for the by Moreschi, but the block was overturned in favor of mentorship by Lara Love (although I disagree with this decision, I can't fault her for giving him a chance). However, at this point, mentorship has clearly failed, and Lara Love has washed her hands of Dana. Logically, shouldn't that mean we should revert to a block?

I raised the issue of Dana on ANI a couple days ago, hoping that we could avoid coming to arbcom if some admin would give Dana a stern warning or possibly a Homeopathy ban, but things kind of fizzled out there. The situation with Dana has become too murky for any admin to have the guts to take action, though I really doubt any admin acting now would receive any flak about it. Anyways, after that fizzled out, I pondered what to do next to handle the situation. After a brief discussion with User:Filll, I decided that an RFC might be the best course to take, though I doubted it would do any good (and still do). But before that could take off I noticed this RFAr, and here we are. Although I really wish things hadn't come to this, sadly, arbitration may be the only solution here. --Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 16:55, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Response to Charles Matthews
I certainly agree that there are other issues which could be addressed here. No one involved has acted perfectly. I was of the opinion on initially reading this RFAr that a lot of involved editors had been left out of the Involved Parties section (myself, given the recent ANI thread; Lara Love, given her past mentorship of Dana which affects a lot of this; Arion 3x3, whose unquestioning support of Dana exacerbates things, etc.), so it should be expanded there at least if/when the case is opened.

However, I'm a bit wary of expanding it too much. If it becomes a general Homeopathy case, then I fear that all we'll be left with is upgrading the probation to Discretionary Sanctions, with no specific remedies whatsoever applied. We need to look at specific editors' behavior here, otherwise we're just left where we started. --Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 18:29, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Uninvolved Ncmvocalist
Although my initial opinion on the case was that it should be rejected due to the lack of Rfc; I have since reconsidered this case, and have changed my mind (particularly after reading the above statement by Infophille). An Rfc on the editor would give him/her one last chance to clean up whatever it is they are doing that upsets other editors at this project, without suffering any potential consequences. However, in the case where the editor refuses to cease behaving this way over an extended period of time, despite being asked to by numerous editors in this same timeframe, it is indeed unlikely for the Rfc to yield any positive result, and arbitration becomes the only real solution that remains. This case, I feel, falls under such a category that excepts the need for an Rfc, and therefore, I am of the opinion that the case should be accepted. Ncmvocalist (talk) 18:04, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by User:Arthur Rubin
(Note for clerks: Could you remove "involved/uninvolved" tags again, as you have in other ArbComm requests.  This is ridiculous.)

I'm afraid this is a content dispute, but if ArbComm doesn't take over, the most probable result is a community ban of Dana, or at least an indefinite ban from Homeopathy articles. Would the matter then be ripe for an ArbComm review? I've had my disagreements with Dana, but feel he might be able to contribute if it's made clear to him that the only way he can contribute is to follow Wikipedia policies. &mdash; Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:34, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by User:Filll
I have watched this situation with Dana Ullman and some of his fellow homeopathy advocates like Arion 3x3 and Anthon01 and Whig and a host of others (several of who have been banned now for disruptive behavior) develop over the last few months. Dana Ullman is a famous person and obviously has special knowledge in this WP:FRINGE area.

However, Dana seems almost completely immune to appeals to get him to compromise with others that he disagrees with. Over and over, people have tried to get him to understand what NPOV is about and what reliable sources are and so on. He will sometimes acknowledge that we are here to make an encyclopedia and that all points of view should be represented, including the mainstream and critical points of view (as he has done here above), but then Dana acts in a completely different fashion. Dana essentially pays lip service to the principles of consensus and NPOV and NOR and RS, and then goes about pushing for an uncritical and partisan description on Wikipedia of the field he tirelessly promotes.

I have seen example after example of Dana Ullman spamming the talk page with the same set of studies, which were dismissed 4 or 5 or 10 times over a few days or a few weeks ago. Because of this kind of behavior, the talk page had to be automatically archived every couple of days at one point. Most editors, like myself, eventually became so discouraged that we abandoned work on this family of articles because it was too unpleasant to work there.

I have appealed to User: GTBacchus in a last ditch attempt to get GTBacchus to act as some sort of mentor to Dana Ullman and save Ullman from being blocked or topic banned or otherwise sanctioned. GTBacchus indicated to me that he would be willing to do so, but I fear GTBacchus has been so overwhelmed with activity in the real world that he has not yet engaged with Dana.

I have several times tried to stress how crucial it is to be cooperative to Dana Ullman and Arion 3x3 and other pro-homeopathy editors, but I have usually been met with rank derision or worse. I guess they do not believe that this is a serious issue that they need to pay attention to. Since they can be disruptive on the talk pages and essentially drive off mainstream and pro-science editors who become exhausted with the atmosphere, it might appear to them in the short term that they are winning. The article content will suffer in the long run however unless we change this situation.

I wish there were some way to get Dana Ullman to be more cooperative with the other editors. Some of our other pro-homeopathy editors are able to cooperate and be productive; for example, User: Peter morrell is able to work with others holding different views with no problem, without feeling the need to constantly "convert" others to his position and press his particular interpretations.--Filll (talk) 20:55, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by GRBerry
I agree with Charles that if you are going to take a case, it ought to be broadly defined, since the community has needed to put Homeopathy on topic probation. DanaUllman doesn't have enough edits to have been a significant fraction of the overall problem; he has only 183 article space and 385 talk space (and 4 deleted edits in all spaces, none of which are problematic). This mess has had all the typical problems of an ethnic/nationalist feud, except that the issue at the core issue isn't ethnic/nationalist. I note that the filing party themself is not on their first account, and believe that at least some members of the ArbComm already know the prior account. An RFC would be fruitless; we'd just see the two warring camps sniping. GRBerry 19:58, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Second Statement by Dana Ullman
I am not here to “promote my own profession.” I have a long history of academic writing and publication, and I consider myself a useful wiki-editor who tries to give reference to research that is from RS and is notable. If you review my contributions, I participate most often on Talk pages, and only selectively make changes in articles.

Although I made some editing errors when I first started to edit actively in late November 2007, I have learned to follow the rules here, to AGF, to remain civil, and to participate actively in the Talk pages.

I want to reiterate the fact that I have had content dispute issues with all of the editors above, with the exception of Moreschi, though as you will see below, I feel that his comments here show his own anti-homeopathy biases.

Moreschi notes that I sought to include reference to homeopathy in the article on Beethoven, which he considered “bizarre.” In the light of a new book written by a professor of psychiatry at the University of Ottawa and published by McGill University, I found that Beethoven dedicated two of his canons to Dr. Anton Braunhofer, a professor at the University of Vienna who prescribed homeopathic medicines to Beethoven. I did not engage in any edit warring, but instead, we had a lively conversation at the Talk pages. I was not disruptive or uncivil. I am not clear what “problem” I created. I am always open to learning, especially from people with whom I do not have content dispute issues.

It should be noted that LaraLove did not “wash her hands of me”. In fact, such a statement suggests bias by Infophile. She mentored me, she gave me homework to do, and she graduated me from her training. It is important that admins see the many useful discussions in which I have initiated. There are actually too many to list, though just in the past week, there’s, ,. The challenge that I (and wikipedia) face is that there are many editors here who have strong antagonism to homeopathy. Even when “positive” research is proposed, the many anti-homeopathic editors gang-up to attack it, often with mis-information or without any information about the study. This was witnessed here. The newest version of this study was published in 2004, was replicated in 3 university laboratories, and had a p-value = 0.0001. I gave a secondary reference to a New Scientist article that noted that the lead researcher, Ennis, was previously a skeptic of homeopathy (this is additionally notable).

Instead of allowing me to add this multi-center study added as a reference, this reference was deleted. One editor (Baegis) compared the New Scientist with the National Enquirer. Shoemaker arbitrarily asserted that discussion of research after 2002 didn’t have a place here. Despite feeling that I was wronged (again), I didn’t engage in edit warring. I continue to remain civil, despite having had to deal with many uncivil editors and many socks.

I am more interested in what uninvolved admins have to say about this situation. The above editors who claim to have “tried to teach Dana” is more than a tad presumptuous because I feel the same way. I’m glad that some uninvolved admins see the need to review the entire community who are editing on homeopathy, and I am not surprised that some editors want to avoid this scrutiny. DanaUllmanTalk 20:15, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by LaraLove
I mentored Dana in the first two months of this year. His classroom assignments are here, pretty much everything else is archived in his talk page. I gave Dana assignments to help him understand policy and to give me an idea of where he stands. It's my opinion that he has no problems understanding policy, rather problems following it. He's persistent enough to wear others down in disagreements, repeating the same information after it's been rejected multiple times. It's noted above that Dana has a fairly small amount of edits, thus he could not have contributed significantly to the topic probation currently in place. This is true. He was already banned from article space, by me, at the time the probation was put into affect, and had done little editing before that. However, it is worth pointing out, I believe, that there must be significant issue with his editing to cause this much exasperation for so many editors and disruption with so few edits.  Lara  ❤  Love  21:57, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

In response to Infophile, when I ended mentorship with Dana, I did not "wash my hands" of him. Dana had made progress in the mentorship. There were still some disagreements between him and other editors, but at that point, from his classroom assignments, I knew he understood the relevant policies and I felt there wasn't much else I could do. There is a difference between mentorship and babysitting. Once he had the knowledge, there was no need for me to supervise. That's why I told him he was on his own and wished him luck. So, basically, I don't know the specifics of his recent edits to be able to give an opinion on whether or not he should be blocked, but the block should not be restored simply because his mentorship ended.  Lara  ❤  Love  22:05, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Skinwalker
Mr. Ullman is a single purpose editor whose purpose here is to promote homeopathy and obfuscate its implausibility and lack of acceptance by the medical community. I first encountered Mr. Ullman during the fall of 2007, when he repeatedly removed cited research from homeopathy without discussion on the talk page, and edited his biographical article in an apparent conflict of interest. (Full disclosure: I nominated his bio for deletion, but withdrew it when notability was better established). I tried repeatedly to engage with him on his talk page (as can be seen here), with little success. I also sought assistance at WP:COI/N, but got no response. Mr. Ullman was eventually blocked for revert warring at homeopathy. During his block, he canvassed offsite for aid in editing his biographical article and the homeopathy article, both of which experienced subsequent disruption by new single-purpose accounts and IP addresses. Mr. Ullman was unblocked on the condition of mentorship, and he has ceased most edit warring and been mindful of the letter of COI, if not the spirit. His edits to Ludwig van Beethoven, Charles Darwin, and James Manby Gully revolve around his recently published book about the supposed use of homeopathy by historical figures. He does not cite his book, but his edits have been designed to bolster his at-times controversial claims that homeopathy aided these individuals. I am concerned presently with his repeated misrepresentation of sources, as documented above, and the apparent failure of the community-based probation on homeopathy and related topics. Very well-documented concerns about Mr. Ullman's use of sources have been posted at the probation/incidents page for days, with no action (or even comment) from admins. I suspect this is a case of too long, didn't read, but oh well. I urge that something be done about his behavior, either through the community probation or a formal arbcom sanction. Skinwalker (talk) 22:21, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by PhilKnight (formerly Addhoc)
I banned Dana for a week in the latter half of March, and given the comments by Moreschi and Jehochman, who are uninvolved admins, we could issue a longer ban. The community recently banned Whig for 6 months, and given that Dana is slightly less disruptive, we could possibly ban Dana for 3 months under the existing community probation. PhilKnight (talk) 22:25, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Arion 3x3
This appears to be a clear case of a content dispute with another editor, in which there has been frustration that the other side is not conceding points on the discussion pages. I suggest that Shoemaker learn that to win a debate, you should not seek to eliminate the other side of the debate, but you should seek to come up with more convincing evidence and logic. Arion 3x3 (talk) 22:27, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Jim62sch
My involvement with Dana Ullman has not been as extensive as that of other editors above, but I too have noticed a very uncooperative, quasi-authoritative and tendentious nature to Dana's editing. That he may believe he is merely trying to improve the encyclopedia I will not address, but his actions and his edits certainly seem to belie such a belief in the eye of the observer. There's little need for me to point out specifics, as that has been admirably done by others, rather I will note that by everything I have seen, Dana hasn't the slightest clue what WP:NPOV, WP:RS, WP:V, WP:CONSENSUS or WP:COI mean, nor does he seem predisposed to learn their meaning. Therefore, I urge the arbcom to address this matter, as it has a bearing not only on Dana, but by extension (i.e., the appeal to authority) on the entire project. &#0149;Jim 62 sch&#0149; dissera! 22:44, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by User:Enric Naval
Dana has not followed WP:OR and WP:NPOV. He has ignored advice to follow policies, to take a rest, or to stop making edits about the studies that he has been promoting again and again. The contributions by Dana since his mentorship ended have not contributed significantly to the articles, and have caused disruption on the talk pages by barring any advance that could possibly cast any doubt on homeopathy effectivity, and promoting several dubious studies over any objections. This user needs a lengthy ban on homeopathy articles, since he's preventing the improving of those articles. This is not a content dispute at all, but simple POV pushing. --Enric Naval (talk) 01:53, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Second statement by User:Enric Naval
This case should cover all "civil POV pushers" that make other editors waste time arguing endlessly on the talk pages about minor points, discourage other users from editing, insert POV indirectly by always oposing any edit that goes against their opinion, and are careful to never make a 3RR violation that gets them blocked. There is a generalized problem with admins not blocking or at least topic banning this sort of editors, and it can be addressed here. --Enric Naval (talk) 02:04, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Raul654
This is *EXACTLY* the sort of case the arbcom needs to accept, and use to lay down some far-reaching, well-written, solid, effective principles for dealing with POV pushers who are civil (or more precisely, not-uncivil-enough-to-justify-a-ban). It's about time the arbcom stopped abdicating its responsibility (thrusting the hard work onto the few admins who keep a careful eye on these articles) and actually did something helpful. Raul654 (talk) 02:18, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Satement by Sarcasticidealist
I just want to echo everything Raul said above (and I'm not one of "the few admins who keep a careful eye on these articles"). We need to show that we take WP:NPOV as seriously as we take WP:CIVIL, and be prepared to issue sanctions against the POV-pushing as severe as the ones we take against the uncivil. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 05:26, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by uninvolved Action Jackson IV

 * 1) Completely NPOV, encyclopedic articles.
 * 2) Civility that would rival the Queen of England at the dinner table.
 * 3) A free encyclopedia.

Choose two of the three.

As the recent scuffles over at AN/I reveal, we have a group of admins more concerned with making Judith Martin happy than maintaining a functioning encyclopedia, leading to a situation where the feelings of a backwoods neo-Nazi are held at a premium over the comfort of actual good-faith contributors to the encyclopedia. This is absolutely non-fucking-sensical, and every whiny Wikilink to AGF or WP:CIVIL brings us closer and closer to Wikipedia: Jimbo's bag of agenda-pushing trivia that anybody can edit, so long as they say "please" and "thank you". I would hope that the ArbCom not merely vote to examine Homeopathy, a narrow focus of articles that any person with even the barest shred of an education can summarize in their entirety by staring at for fifteen minutes, but rather would agree to work towards a ruling suitable - and meant - to be applied across the entire body of the Encyclopedia. --Action Jackson IV (talk) 20:15, 18 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Response to Mr. Jim Butler
 * Yes, a very expert reduction of my statement you have there. --Action Jackson IV (talk) 04:04, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by User:Jim Butler
I'm too busy to be able to do the research necessary to comment on events within the last couple of months, but I have done some editing at a few homeopathy-related articles, including Dana's bio. I have a history of fruitfully mediating disputes on WP among alt-med and science types, and have real-life experience in both worlds.

With regard to Dana: in my experience, he has been willing to learn about WP policy and abide by it. To the extent that others have had a different experience, one explanation may be that Dana has been "poked repeatedly with a sharp stick" (to use a metaphor that I first heard from User:MastCell). Dana's bio has been repeatedly hit by proxy IP's making non-BLP-compliant edits designed to make Dana look like a fool. No wonder he's felt piled upon and backed into a corner, and made mistakes. Who wouldn't? It sounds like Dana has had some significant differences with others over process and content, but in my experience, I've told Dana stuff he probably didn't want to hear, but he did hear it, and that may be because I treated him with respect.

With regard to homeopathy in general: two months ago I concluded that the article probation was not working very well. It had just become another banstick with which to threaten others, and did little to promote reasoned discussion. See here, for example. My sense is that the scientific community has always been dubious about homeopathy and that its skepticism has been increasing with the publication of meta-analyses; still, some editors here seem overeager to stick a fork in it before it is done. In general, I think a lot of editors on both sides of the debate know a hell of a lot less about the issues involved than they think they do.

So, this case is a pretty good example of the biggest thing that's wrong with Wikipedia: there's no expert oversight to break impasses and correct Wikiality. There are editors who are qualified to be on review boards of real journals, and Dana is one of them, as are some of the editors who think homeopathy is BS. But they have their hands tied behind their backs, and WP doesn't provide them with an adequate framework with which to work out reasonable solutions. You can go ahead and take this case, and maybe issue some ad hoc principles as you did in WP:PSEUDOSCIENCE, and that might keep the leaky boat afloat. But until Wikipedia fundamentally changes its core principles, nothing will really change.

Peer review is a wheel that's already been invented, many times. I urge ArbCom to lobby the Foundation to adopt a Citizendium-like approach of "gentle expert oversight", especially in areas like science and history where experts are best equipped to determine proper weighting of minority views. --Jim Butler (t) 01:05, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Comment on statement by Action Jackson IV

 * I'd like to add that I'm not so sure a free, neutral encyclopedia would be within our grasp if only we were allowed to say "fuck" more often in order to resolve disagreements with other editors. --Jim Butler (t) 20:53, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

"Claims of consensus must be sourced": this applies to WP:PSCI, right?
In WP:PSEUDOSCIENCE, the ArbCom provided some good principles to use when deciding when to categorize a topics as pseudoscience. Those principles, now incorporated into the NPOV FAQ at WP:PSCI, say that a topic may be categorized as pseudoscience if it is "generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community".

I request that ArbCom clarify that meeting the above threshold requires an adequate source, per WP:BURDEN and WP:RS. The latter says:
 * "Claims of consensus must be sourced. The claim that all or most scientists, scholars, or ministers hold a certain view requires a reliable source. Without it, opinions should be identified as those of particular, named sources."

The only way to know for sure that a scientific consensus on a topic exists is if it is documented, e.g. in one or more statements by a scientific academy or other non-self-selected group of scientists. Such statements are typically issued on well-known topics such as intelligent design.

Some editors (cf. most of the sources listed here, and much more at archived Talk:Homeopathy) have argued that because one or more eminent scientists have said that homeopathy is pseudoscientific, scientific consensus must exist, and we can use the category. Two have even gone so far as to argue that for editors to argue otherwise is disruptive (again, an instance of topic probation having jumped the rails). I disagree: not all topics are equally pseudoscientific, or equally demonstrably so. We can adequately represent majority views without prematurely enshrining them as consensus views (e.g. by categorization).

I don't believe that it is inappropriate to add such nuance to topics that some or most scientists consider pseudoscientific. Rather, doing so is part of portraying various POV's fairly.

At the moment, I know of only one scientific-consensus source stating that homeopathy is pseudoscientific. From that, it's reasonable to infer that homeopathy may be considered pseudoscientific by the scientific community, or at least that such consensus is in the process of emerging. So, should one such source suffice to meet the "consensus" threshold?

Note that User:Art Carlson (a physics PhD, who knows his stuff on scientific sourcing) was topic-banned for discussing precisely this issue. Read the diffs cited by the banning admin (in immediately preceding wikilink); they do not support the assertions he makes about Art's behavior. That ban was a mistake. (People make them; I want to address the underlying attitudes, not slap the admin who erred.) Wikipedians should be considering these issues rationally and openly. Thus, it would help if ArbCom commented on sourcing claims of consensus, e.g. whether one or more than one statement of consensus from a scientific body is necessary to meet WP:PSCI's "generally considered pseudoscience" threshold. thanks, Jim Butler (t) 02:58, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by User:Colonel Warden
I dabble with this article in a small way from a truly sceptical POV - I mistrust both the homeopaths and those who condemn them in an absolutist way. From what I've seen, the critics are too severe and so the proponents like Dana are more sinned against than sinning. It does not seem wise to allow one side a monopoly of the truth since it seems they will push matters to extremes. The competing POVs should be both presented and the reader left to form their own conclusion. This is what we are supposed to do in the case of controversy, is it not? Colonel Warden (talk) 19:23, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
 * As an example, my recent edits to the Homeopathy article have been obstructed by editors who seem quite unwilling to allow any credence to the subject. I cited a source which they used themselves and quoted it directly and extensively to ensure the context was fair.  I consider the actions of these editors to be disruptive and unhelpful since they fail to respond to the talk page section in which I explain what I'm doing.  I can well understand that Dana would have difficulty working with such editors.  The proposal that he should be banned rather than engaging with his views seems outrageous.  Colonel Warden (talk) 09:09, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Guido den Broeder
This seems to me an abuse of procedure with the sole intent to further attack another user under an innocent-looking header. This article and similar articles are continuously plagued by users who simply demand that homeopathy etc. is fake, and who will try and make life difficult for anyone who says different or is merely willing, like I am, to see both views properly presented. The occasional overemphasizing of evidence to the contrary is then a natural reaction, which should not be confused with the cause of this problem, the mindset of unchangeable unbelief.

What should strike me the most though is that when someone knowledgeable comes along, users will flock together to get him out of the way. By now, however, I have seen this happen on Wikipedia many times. There is something very wrong here. Guido den Broeder (talk) 08:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Scientizzle
I really wasn't interested in getting involved in this, but the complete degradation at Talk:Potassium dichromate (and subsequent inanity surrounding the Dana Ullman topic ban) have impelled me to act if only to get a few things off my chest and offer any push towards positive change...

Initially, I was very wary of the effort to reign in or oust Dana from editing. He is an expert in his field and his utility in clarifying aspects of homeopathy with which non-homeopaths, like me, are unfamiliar. I even appreciate that he edits under his own name—something I myself choose not to do (c'mon, who could give up this nom de plume?) —and believe that works in his favor to partially reduce WP:COI concerns.

However, Dana is often exceptionally frustrating to deal with, no matter how civil he presents his statements. I fear that his efforts, particularly recently, have done more to stifle useful discussion than to promote it, and I interpret some of his actions as outright dismissive of Wikipedia policies and guidelines (given his time and efforts here, and his mentorship under a well-established editor, I find any potential explanation based on ignorance to be insufficient). There are other editors that have misbehaved to various extents—Mr. Ullman is certainly not the only one at fault—but Dana's contributions highlight the inadequacy of dealing with "civil POV-pushers" in our current setup.

I do think some of the concerns and evidence presented various editors here is possibly (at least partially) motivated by a desire to gain an upper hand in the generalized content dispute (likewise with the counter-claims), but that doesn't overshadow the clear behavioral issues that have overwhelmingly exacerbated the problem and driven away many well-meaning, useful contributors. A framework for appropriately responding to these type of editors, those that push into the gray areas of tendentious editing, would be useful not only in the homeopathy articles, but in most every contentious arena in the 'pedia. &mdash; Scientizzle 22:35, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Wanderer57
1) Since I first looked into the Homeopathy article in mid-2007, there has been a pattern of trying to get rid of pro-homeopathy editors, by blocks, by RFC's (actually requests to ban or block, though not called that), through AN/I, and now through ArbCom.

2) The Talk:Homeopathy archive shows that the POV/NPOV debate has been a constant since the article was initiated. It is not the fault of any one person.

3) It is agreed in general terms that NPOV requires some sort of balance between pro and anti homeopathy statements. However there is frequent debate as to whether this balance has to apply sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, section by section, or over the article as a whole.  I think that a "ruling" or constraint on the article on this point would reduce the amount of back-and-forth discussion and argument.

3) Another recurring argument is whether sources are reliable. This discussion rages over and over. If ArbCom could provide a framework for a neutral mechanism to resolve such issues it would be very helpful.

4) At least some anti-homeopathy editors are absolutely convinced that homeopathy is folly or fraud (or somewhere in between). I think this belief makes it difficult for them to concede on ANY point of discussion. They also usually outnumber the pro-homeopathy editors. It is not surprising that discussion is difficult.

In general, there is a shortage of AGF. This aggravates issues into major problems.

Wanderer57 (talk) 19:06, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Peregrine Fisher
The pro-science side goes way to far in enforcing what they feel is the WP:NPOV. No clue what can be done about this. If you can come up with something, it should apply to all WP:FRINGE theories, not just homeopathy. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (Contributions) 01:19, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Evidence subpage
Can someone please advise what happened to the Evidence subpage for this Arbitration. It seems to have vanished.

CBHA (talk) 01:21, 1 June 2008 (UTC)


 * It had to do with private personal information, I think. I just don't understand why we can't permanently wipe off those privacy concerns. Wiping out the whole page concerns me; it makes it seem as if there's a cover-up. Can anyone explain to me why the private personal information can't be edited out? ImpIn | (t - c) 01:26, 1 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Unless it's only in the edit summaries, it would violate GFDL to do it conventionally, as we don't have the capability of editing revisions, only of deleting them. However, if we were to make the assumption that each person only edits his/her own section (or, at least, that only such edits are left in the text), it might be possible to create a clean version with the list of editors being put in the edit summary.  I don't know.  It is problematic to not allow further evidence to be submitted, even at this late step of the process.  &mdash; Arthur Rubin  (talk) 14:42, 1 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Agreed. And why can't it just be oversighted like any other attempt at outing? Shoemaker&#39;s Holiday (talk) 15:14, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Request for clarification: /Homeopathy
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
 * N/A

Statement by Shoemaker&#39;s Holiday (talk) 03:58, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
This is just a reminder that the evidence page is still deleted. As this is pretty much a gross deviation from the norm, and as the last statement about it was Flonight's over a week ago, I figured it was time to go here. Shoemaker&#39;s Holiday (talk) 03:58, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Clerk notes
Closing per User_talk:FloNight — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 11:38, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrator views and discussion

 * As I replied to a query on my user talk page, I asked on ArbCom and got good replies about the reason. I'm still looking into the situation so I can make a good choice about what to include in the undeleted version. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 21:59, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Notifications section
For ease of verification, this page should probably have a "Log of notifications" section, as is used at ARBPIA. Would one of the clerks monitoring this page please add it? Or if no one has objections, I'll go ahead and add it? --Elonka 19:48, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Shoemaker's Holiday
Just another reminder that this page continues to lack the evidence page. You did say you'd get to that. Shoemaker&#39;s Holiday (talk) 16:39, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * MBisanz, that's very well, but, if it's who I presume it was, he had explicitly drawn the connection for months, gave a stated reason for the change that only involved his signature, and only sought to conceal the connection in retrospect well after I linked. I don't want to reveal too much information, obviously, so I'll say no more. Shoemaker&#39;s Holiday (talk) 14:17, 24 September 2008 (UTC)


 * (to FloNight, mv from arb section)...**Is this to do with linking to the request for comment or whatever it was under one user's old username? Because said username did not appear to have any apparent real-world connection, and that the change happened was freely stated in several places, including a publicly-filed request for the change that mentioned no issues with the previous name. Shoemaker&#39;s Holiday (talk) 13:56, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Comment by east718
I took a quick look at the deleted history of the page and don't think restoration would be prudent. in addition to the breach of your own privacy by (which as far as I'm aware has been oversighted), there is also an "outing" of another contributor present in a non-trivial amount of revisions. The page serves little purpose now for dispute resolution or maintaining the institutional memory around here, so it's not really worth taking the time to sanitize the history and make it public again. east718 //  talk  //  email  // 22:10, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Comment by MBisanz
I've also reviewed the deleted page, independent of east718, and the outing of another contributor jumped out of the page nearly as soon as I started reading it. Ignoring GFDL concerns, I do not see how a coherent page version, let alone a page history, could be formed without creating an odd looking set of evidence. Since the case is well over, and all that stuff is water under a bridge, I don't see a need to try and piece the past together.  MBisanz  talk 22:16, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Just to quote from the WP:OUTING policy:
 * It also applies in the case of editors who have requested a change in username, but whose old signatures can still be found in archives.
 * I am not aware of the facts and circumstances of that editor being renamed, but from the context of the deletion, comments then, and subsequent comments, it appears that quote may be relevant.  MBisanz  talk 14:07, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrator views and discussion

 * The problem was tit-for-tat "outing" - in which you the requester was involved, I should say - going back to very early revisions of the page which would be almost impossible to clean up. The deleted revisions may be accessed if necessary for any future arbitration issue. --bainer (talk) 01:00, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

NOTE: The user strongly objects to the above statement, and asks for it to be retracted. It misrpresents events very badly. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 19:47, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Not having the evidence readily available is not ideal but necessary in this instance, at least for now. The task of making the evidence viewable to all users in is some form will be difficult and time consuming. It will remain on my to-do-list, but do not expect it to be done anytime soon as it is a low priority item compared to my many other Committee tasks. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 13:57, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This request appears resolved per discussion above. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:43, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

A proposed amendment to a sanctions remedy
A motion has been proposed that would amend a sanctions remedy in this case. It would replace the remedy in this case that allows administrators to unilaterally apply sanctions to editors within the designated topic area with a standardized remedy that essentially allows for the same thing. Any extant sanctions or warnings made according to the older wording found in those decisions (as applicable) remain unaffected. To comment on this proposal, please go to Arbitration/Requests/Motions. NW ( Talk ) 20:40, 18 October 2011 (UTC)