Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council § Proposing a new WikiProject Intellectual Diversity. TarnishedPath^talk 06:42, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

Facepalm Bon courage (talk) 10:47, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

Obvious troll is obvious. Tercer (talk) 16:23, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

• The speech wars come for Wikipedia --Politico
• MAGA Melts Down Over Wikipedia ‘Blacklist’ --Yahoo News

"His 'Nine Theses' proposals would partly make Wikipedia more like a freewheeling social media site, with features allowing the public to rate articles, upload competing articles and post X-style community notes. Sanger also argues that sources like Fox News and Breitbart should be on more equal footing with the New York Times."

Also see: User:Larry Sanger/Nine Theses

"Acceptable sources are only those academic works and news articles of 'reliable' sources, which express what can be called an Establishment view. ... It simply does not matter if significant portions of humanity disagree; they may be disregarded or relegated to contemptuous dismissal as 'fringe,' 'extreme minority,' 'pseudoscience,' and the like. In short, Wikipedia is now biased in many articles, and by policy."

--Guy Macon (talk) 19:22, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

He's still upset that factual reality continues to disprove right wing conspiracies, huh? Silverseren^C 22:40, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

Larry is upset at so very many things...

"Sanger is a disaffected crank on the subject of Wikipedia. And he’s a far-right loon: Trump lover, global warming denier, anti-vaxxer, quack medicine, fundie Christian, anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion.

Jimmy Wales disputes his co-founder status, something Sanger keeps trying to leverage for personal gain. Sanger was an employee. Sanger has tried to build a bunch of replacements to Wikipedia and failed every time. Sanger has been bitterly criticizing Wikipedia since at least 2004. He is the online information equivalent of Patrick Moore, who uses his false claim of being a co-founder of Greenpeace to get money to spout climate change denial." Source: Medium

I still can't figure out why he says Homeopathy isn't pseudoscience. That's not usually a right wing view. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:09, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

It's because that is the subject that tanked Citizendium. He recruited a homeopath after said homeopath was drummed out of Wikipedia to help write the content on homeopathy at Citizendium where the idea was that "experts" would write about the topics they were expert it. Guess who was considered to be an expert in homeopathy? Only homeopaths!

Later on, some more, shall we say, sanguine members of the Citizendium community pointed out how problematic this was and a fight ensued. Eventually the homeopath left, but it damaged the reputation of that project so much that it never full recovered. Larry kept the Citizendium project at arm's length and pretended that he never really cared that much about it, but it's funny what past issues we can see reflected in his present interests. jps (talk) 02:32, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

• I don't know how to say this eloquently, so I'll just state my mind on it. The grifters in the U.S. have bundled together their various quackery so it is easier to sell. For example, Chiropractors push homeopathy because they can't prescribe real drugs. Getting into these professions is much easier then mainstream medicine, so lots of people find it accessible. Behind this, political organizations can elevate any voice that clouds the infospace to create plausible deniability and doubt.

GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 04:03, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s conservatives wanted to conserve the social order, so were predisposed to academic orthodoxy. Proponents of fringe ideas like homeopathy (and later dangerous lefty ideas like taking the UK out of the EU) were more likely to be on the left. These days these roles seem to be reversed. I don't know when or why this happened. Phil Bridger (talk) 09:09, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

I do think homeopathy is pseudoscience; I've never said otherwise. I just don't think Wikipedia should say it is. The view should be attributed to its owners. That is what neutrality means, although some people here have forgotten (or never learned). Larry Sanger (talk) 00:19, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

"...[T]the liberal, left-leaning view is the prevailing orthodoxy. Accounts that attempt to stray from this are often blocked, or they see their edits written off and undermined, claims Sanger. He gives as an example the fact that alternative medicines, such as homeopathy, are defined as pseudoscience and “proven ineffective”. This, he says, is not treating the subject truly neutrally," -- Larry Sanger: 'I wouldn’t trust Wikipedia — and I helped to invent it' --The Times (London)

Larry, you seem to have forgotten what happened on Citizendium while you were running it.

"As for the few experts that did join the project, they were quickly driven off by Sanger’s authoritarian policies. This opened the door for cranks with false credentials to promote their pseudo-scientific views. The most infamous example of this was when an article advocating homeopathy was featured on the main page. It should be noted that the article was written by Dana Ullman, who, in addition to being banned from Wikipedia, has no medical or homeopathic qualifications, and had been arrested for practicing homeopathy without a licence. As of now [Feb 2024], the project currently has a total of three active editors."

--Guy Macon (talk) 09:36, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

'Neutrality is what I say it is'. Yeah, Larry, of course it is... AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:41, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

By the same reasoning, Wikipedia should attribute "the Earth is not flat" to people who say it is not flat. And "the holocaust is a historical fact" to people who say it is a historical fact. And "the moon is not made of cheese" to people who say it isn't. And so on. This is crazyness. Wikipedia editors do not decide that known facts are just opinions. They leave the decision what is a fact and what is not, to the reliable sources. It's the rules, and they are more nuanced than "everything has to attributed". They say that if a statement is scientific consensus, attribution is not needed. If you do not like that, Wikipedia is not for you. --Hob Gadling (talk) 08:27, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

↑ This. A correct application of WP:YESPOV is particularly important for WP:FRINGE topics. It is a WP:PROFRINGE gambit to make knowledge appear to be serious contested (e.g. whether vaccines cause autism), when it really isn't. Bon courage (talk) 08:52, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

To be fair, the claim that "homeopathy is pseudoscience" is a difficult one to identify as an assertable fact precisely because there is no clear definition of pseudoscience. What is a fact is that homeopaths make claims that are empirically false, homeopathic remedies have never been shown to be better than placebos, and homeopathic principles defy basic principles of chemistry and physics to such an extent that they have resulted in wild speculation which was straightforwardly shown to be incorrect. Now, maybe that is synonymous with "pseudoscience", but others argue that pseudoscience has a different definition and we don't have a clear demarcation of the canonical pseudosciences in any case. Better, perhaps, to just be clear with the facts and certainly we can mention that it is one of the subjects that is most often labeled as a pseudoscience by those who are generally best-suited to make such judgement calls. Nuance can be important in these contexts. jps (talk) 17:58, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

The fuzziness of the borders of pseudoscience does not affect the classification of clear cases like homeopathy. Any definition of pseudoscience that excludes homeopathy is obviously garbage. --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:12, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

There are definitions of pseudoscience that exclude pseudomedicine in the same way that some argue medicine is something other than a science (while being based on science, or, if you prefer, evidence). According to this kind of approach, water memory would be the pseudoscientific argument while homeopathy would strictly be a pseudomedicine practice. jps (talk) 07:30, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Okay, but that position still says homeopathy is pseudo-something. The distinction between pseudoscience and pseudo-application-of-science is likely not what Sanger has in mind: if we say "the following experts say homeopathy is pseudoscience", followed by a list of a few thousand names, it does not imply that all the other competent experts say it is pseudo-something-else. And it is still a fact that homeopaths publish fake science and bad studies in scientific journals, so I will keep my "obviously garbage" stance. --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:43, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Fair enough, and I am basically agnostic as to whether we should, in Wikipedia's voice, WP:ASSERT "homeopathy is pseudoscience"; it is absolutely a defensible position. Since we are at the mercy of the sources, and it is clear that the overwhelming preponderance of reliable sources would not blink at an assertion like that, I am not one to stand in the way of a straightforward declaration. However, I also think Wikipedia is amazingly one of the last, best places online to make sure that legitimate points don't get painted over. As such, I also would not object to an approach that threaded the needle while carefully avoiding a demarcation argument. jps (talk) 13:41, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Diversity? This is DEI! Release the doges! --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:52, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

I had notice that, is Sanger another conservative who reads the words, but does not understand the message? Slatersteven (talk) 09:33, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

I think the diversity would been a positive note. ~2026-34360-03 (talk) 08:24, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

A lot of things sound positive at first then become less so when you find out what the people using the words actually mean. "Pro Life". Who would be against life? Skynet? "Pro Choice". Everyone want more choice, right? You can be a huge fan of socialism but not National Socialism. You might be very much in favor of love, but not the way NAMBLA defines it.

The way Larry defines "Intellectual Diversity" is this: He is fine with X and Grokipedia only allowing far right content and deleting and banning when someone expresses any far left views. But on Wikipedia we are supposed to relax our standards in order to allow in far wing content.

"Sanger is a disaffected crank on the subject of Wikipedia. And he’s a far-right loon: Trump lover, global warming denier, anti-vaxxer, quack medicine, fundie Christian, anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion." Source: Medium

--Guy Macon (talk) 14:15, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

@Guy Macon Could Medium be used as a source of this? ~2026-34360-03 (talk) 16:23, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Medium posts are self-published, therefore not reliable sources, per WP:MEDIUM, even if all that is true. Carlstak (talk) 16:59, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

There are three kinds of things you can write on a talk page. Many people (in general; I am not talking about this specific conversation) misunderstand this and attempt to apply Wikipedia policies that are only for articles to talk pages. The three general kinds of things you can write on a talk page are:

• Your opinions and conclusions. I can say

"Oneiromancy is garbage, Dreams do not predict the future".

on a talk page, but I could not place such an unsourced editorial opinion in an encyclopedia article. But, here on a talk page, you are free to decide whether what I say makes sense. (There are other restrictions, such as the statement being related to improving the encyclopedia, which a conversation about where WP:RS applies certainly is.)

• Claims from unreliable sources. I can say

"Dreams can predict the future. The brain a probabilistic neurobiological machine. During dreaming, it uses tiny clues about what we experienced the previous day. Then it builds accurate simulations about the future."

Source: Your dreams can tell the future. If you’re ready to listen. --Medium

Not usable as a citation in an article, but allowed on a talk page. It is up to you to decide whether what the author wrote in Medium makes sense (it doesn't).

• Claims supported by citations to reliable sources. I can say

"In one limited sense, the content of a person's dreams may be a predictor of future cognitive deterioration in Parkinson’s disease"

Source Do dreams tell the future? Dream content as a predictor of cognitive deterioration in Parkinson’s disease --Journal of Sleep research

Allowable in an Article (There are other restrictions, such as WP:WEIGHT).

All three are allowed in talk page comments. Only the third is allowed in an article --Guy Macon (talk) 05:31, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Not going to lie, that Journal of sleep research article is going to give me nightmares... GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 06:03, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Seems to me that Michael Barnard might be a subject-matter expert for some subset of the points being made here. We would, of course, want to attribute this opinion to him, but the fact that he self-published it does not mean it is unusable unless we determine that his opinion is not relevant to whatever situation for which we are intending on using this source. jps (talk) 17:51, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

It is not using Wikipedia as a forum to remind Sanger of why that would be misleading and of the relevant WP policies. What is proposed is a type of censorship, avoiding to inform of a vital fact. And giving equal weight between sales pitches, random subjective opinions of anyone, and between experts who understand why the system could never work. Thus, promoting a false balance, as if every claim or opinion were of equal validity. In reality, some knowledge is not just opinion but evidence based, obtained through intelletually honest tedious research and reproduced results. The relevant policies here are WP:GEVAL and WP:PSCI, part of WP:NPOV. ~2026-33889-87 (talk) 02:06, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

I suggest you post that on Sanger's talk page or the proposal or somewhere else appropriate. Other than the ANI, I see very little chance Sanger is paying attention to any of these notifications. It's not like they made them, so there's no reason to think they would. Nil Einne (talk) 04:42, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

Larry Sanger posted to the discussion above, so it is reasonable to assume that he has read it. --Guy Macon (talk) 09:41, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

wp:npa even applies to banned users. Slatersteven (talk) 14:19, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

As Sanger can no longer respond, can we please stop? Slatersteven (talk) 09:40, 16 July 2026 (UTC)