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by the
Natural Philosophy Alliance, and the third is published in the Astrophysical Journal. A quick peek at the reputation of the Journal and the Alliance is enough to tell that one is likely to be the mainstream view, and the other not well accepted by the scientific community. This page helps the process, by providing a landing page for re-directs from the names of the individual organizations. This purpose used to be served by pages for each of the organizations, but many felt they were not (individually) notable enough. But some quick way for assessing where an organization stands on the spectrum of scientific concensus is very helpful.
249:. What constitutes "fringe science" is difficult to say as there aren't many authoritative works on the subject. Certain attempts have been made in the sociology of science literature, but those have generally focused on specific instances rather than attempting to make an exhaustive accounting or identify easy-to-discern criteria to determine when a topic is "fringe" and when it is not. Besides this, one could look at the history of science to see instances of when certain excluded ideas became mainstream and vice-versa, but this is rather far afield. No, I think there isn't a decent source out there which would allow us to write
612:. What we would really need to keep it, in addition to clear inclusion criteria, are a bunch of reliable sources which treat these organizations as a group so as to make such a list notable. Fringe science is notable, the topics they cover are notable, and some of the organizations are individually notable, but as a group it's less clear. —
1039:. I don't agree that it's inherently OR to characterize organizations that are widely acknowledged to be outside of the mainstream as fringe, and I don't think the word is necessarily pejorative either. Don't agree there are no sources to verify these organizations as fringe. Here's an article in LiveScience (
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demarcation, but
Knowledge explicitly forbids it. I used to lament this, but now I see that it serves a purpose. The problem is that obscure or uncommented upon ideas/organizations are simply not worthy of inclusion at Knowledge at all. By attempting to do the work of secondary sources in identifying
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to deletion. This page serves a very useful purpose. For example, suppose a casual reader wonders if the idea of a cosmological ether makes any sense. They go to google scholar and type in 'cosmological ether' (without the quotes). On the first page, the first reference is to an article published
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defines it as "an inquiry in an established field of study which departs significantly from the mainstream theory in that field". You would have to argue that spherical earth, relativity, big bang, and so on are mainstream theories. (If needed you could cite any number of high school science texts
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have a well developed "criticism" section in that article supporting the claim of "fringe". We are looking at a resultant list of two entries right now (three if "Natural
Philosophy Alliance" gets spun back out) (and more can be created from these list entries) but anything short of that falls into
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states, "If reasons are given, "usefulness" can be the basis of a valid argument for inclusion. An encyclopedia should, by definition, be informative and useful to its readers. Try to exercise common sense, and consider how a non-trivial number of people will consider the information "useful".". I
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Almost all the organizations mentioned in this article have third party references describing how they go against the scientific mainstream. So in theory, you could call the article "Organizations promoting non-mainstream science" and the verifiability question would be met. But I the best word
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but there has to be a better name. I approached this article from the standpoint of a reader and found it to be quite useful and fascinating. I am not suggesting that it should be kept because it is liked or not liked. A category also exists with this name and with the same 'name'
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This is an article that is passing off as a list, but the problem is that the criteria is over-broad. There aren't any third-party references which identify these particular groups as being related and, as such, Knowledge by hosting this collection is effectively promoting its own
978:. There is no doubt that these organizations exist. It only took me a few minutes, for example, to find several articles in major newspapers (The Guardian, New York Times) about the Flat Earth Society. The problem is not that the organizations aren't notable, it's that finding
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not only for the organization existing, but also that it's out of the mainstream of scientific thinking. We need to find sources of similar quality for the other entries in this list, or remove them. And, as others have pointed out,
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Most people have come to accept the idea that the sun, the earth, and the moon are all spheres but one group of people, the
International Flat Earth Research Society, contends that such an explanation is merely part of a gigantic
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is a loaded word, so the article really needs a better title. But, finding consensus for a better title isn't a blocker for keeping the article, and can be conducted on the article talk page after this AfD is over. --
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to show that this is the case). And there are references to the organizations mentioned here that show their departure from these theories. No synthesis whatsoever, this is derived straight from the definition of
1049:. Without going through the rest, I'm guessing other organizations have similar articles on them. However, this page lends itself much more to a list rather than an article, since that would require synthesis.
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just says that "useful" alone is not helpful, so be sure to state your arguments as to why/why not the article is useful. I think I've done that, but if you disagree feel free to explain your reasoning.
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was merged into this article last year. If this article is deleted, that should be undone and, if necessary, the other article nominated. (It was not merged as a result of a proposed merge or afd). —
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which identify each organization as a fringe science organization. That's something I haven't yet seen that we have. It may be that such sources exist, but so far no one has pointed me to them.
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I think your explanation basically aligns with a claim that the list is useful, but that's not what the inclusion criteria for
Knowledge is. The inclusion criteria has to be that the list is
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is not easy. Such sources do exist, but the effort needs to be put into finding them and being careful to not say more here than is supported by the sources. For example, I found a
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491:. Seems to me to be a pretty clear example of "fringe science". You may find it difficult, however, to fight the proponents who ask you to explain why it is fringe. Then we have the
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that tries to list which organizations are "fringe science" and which ones aren't regardless of how obvious it may seem to the casual reader.
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and remove entries that do not have third party references? I am willing to bet, for example, that we could find sources for inclusion of
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policy the page could be blanked. An independent source must show for each entry it is fringe. That's not what is being done here.
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discussions concerning how to handle such topics and such a list. If kept, this article is likewise headed for
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Just does not feel encyclopedic. You might as well include organizations promoting the theories of
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According to which independent sources they are fringe science organizations? None? The title is
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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below.
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Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's
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728:- Inherently POV name. That needs to be changed if this winds up in the keep column.
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nature. Where are your sources which indicate that all these are "fringe science"?
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True, but perhaps it would be a good idea to merge it to another article like
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I'm afraid it's not quite so simple (would that it were!). To be clear, I'm
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which organizations are fringe and which are not, we would have to allow
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Notable enough topic, though the article could use better sourcing.
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list of organizations characterized as promoters of fringe science
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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate.
844:. General consensus seems to be that items in this type of list
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since they are no longer taken seriously by mainstream science.
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I don't really see any sources which condemn the organizations
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to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
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to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
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Actually, 'useful' IS one of the criteria for inclusion. As
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think the argument I made follows this prescription.
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903:Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,
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529:list of Organizations-related deletion discussions
43:). No further edits should be made to this page.
1080:). No further edits should be made to this page.
814:, above. Thanks for the good idea. Good luck, —
503:(they're affiliates of AAAS!)? And so forth....
1009:I think it's pretty clear we can call that a
958:List of topics characterized as pseudoscience
604:- the latter article has been the subject of
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499:. How are they to be labeled? What about the
388:. I don't see that this burden has been met.
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245:"Fringe science" is a bit of a Knowledge
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.