I’ve been a Wikipedia editor with various degrees of activity for… checking now… wow… 16 years. I’m somewhat unresolved about the cadre of editors that work on all things “alternative medicine” there (mostly people with the userbox linked here). My current model is that they’re not granular enough about various degrees of alternative, it’s too binary the way they Like there’s currently two buckets on Wikipedia (alternative and not-alternative) there should be a few buckets:
(1) evidence decidedly against—it’s been studied and was found to be categorically harmful.
(2) evidence mixed—it’s been studied and is a mix of helpful, harmful, or neutral.
(3) evidence low—it’s been studied and evidence exists but is low on the hierarchy.
(4) literally no evidence—there’s only mechanistic speculation or hypotheses put out by various people, but it’s never been tested.
(5) good evidence exists—multiple large RCTs, meta-analysis, etc.
There are probably other relevant categories, but I think those would be an improvement.
There seems to be more—specifically on the massage, it says “is not supported by good evidence,” which seems to be a different category from pseudoscience, but I agree with you.
I’ve been a Wikipedia editor with various degrees of activity for… checking now… wow… 16 years. I’m somewhat unresolved about the cadre of editors that work on all things “alternative medicine” there (mostly people with the userbox linked here). My current model is that they’re not granular enough about various degrees of alternative, it’s too binary the way they Like there’s currently two buckets on Wikipedia (alternative and not-alternative) there should be a few buckets:
(1) evidence decidedly against—it’s been studied and was found to be categorically harmful.
(2) evidence mixed—it’s been studied and is a mix of helpful, harmful, or neutral.
(3) evidence low—it’s been studied and evidence exists but is low on the hierarchy.
(4) literally no evidence—there’s only mechanistic speculation or hypotheses put out by various people, but it’s never been tested.
(5) good evidence exists—multiple large RCTs, meta-analysis, etc.
There are probably other relevant categories, but I think those would be an improvement.
There seems to be more—specifically on the massage, it says “is not supported by good evidence,” which seems to be a different category from pseudoscience, but I agree with you.