See below. Note the view that NLP is pseudoscience now appears to originate with myself and Headleydown (rather than the scientific community). Incredible. How long can this go on?

[As an aside, I am in correspondence with a reputable scientist who has a concern about the whole NLP thing and its implicit support on Wikipedia. This will eventually go public - more later]

I see OM's dialing the drama all the way to 11 these days, as opposed to his usual setting around 9 or 10.

Sic continuat:



The whole arbitration of which this is a sideshow is completely absurd. Because Arbcom cannot make judgments about content, they are trying to distinguish science from pseudoscience by the behaviour of the editors.

OM has historically aligned himself with cliques which use the tactic of trying to discredit or suppress ideas by the "guilt by association" of connecting them with banned users, so it's somewhat amusing to see that tactic being used against him now. Sauce for the goose and the gander, and all that...

Ow! Ouch! Scratch.

What a cry baby. "Baseless", he said. Laughable. OM is a joke. Good to see Jp let go of the leash... if he ever really held on to it to begin with.

Oh, yes. Very much like USSR-style Communism and Lysenko. After your Vavilovs are killed, your crops begin to fail, since plants don't respond to political mojo.

But it's amazing how long you can keep this game up, if you have enough new Russians or Chinese to feed the scheme. There's one born every minute.

Why hasn't OM's "mentor", JPGordon, intervened in this discussion? His absence is telling. If I were FT2, I would be emailing JP and asking, "Where are you? Aren't you supposed to be, like, mentoring OM? Are you unsure as to what that is supposed to mean?"

So the consensus on this forum is that, based on FT2's behaviour (polite and reasonable) and OrangeMarlin's behaviour (rude and arrogant) pseudoscience wins over science?

Yes, this is a key issue. They (the cliques which I think you're referring to) claim to be 'SPOV' but adopt highly illogical and irrational arguments to advance their point of view- which is not very 'scientific', ironically. They are also highly inconsistent, happily promoting POV's that others might see as 'pseudoscience', with fair reason (claims about cognitive behavioural therapy, for example, which is VERY similar with certain tenets of NLP, ironically).

Having said that, the other main problem here is the use of the word 'pseudoscience' which is a mere construct and one that has problems of both validity and reliability in the multiple ways in which it is used. It is more often just used as shorthand for 'quackery' (another problematic word), as is the word 'fringe'- all highly unstable linguistic constructs often used confusingly, and/or perjoratively and in ad hominem ways (to prejudice people's views about something).

So- for example, recent studies on the efficacy on carnitine in people with 'CFS' was dismissed as 'pseudoscience' (elsewhere- not on WP) recently, because carnitine is sold in health food shops! The fact that at least scientific principles were adopted in the study (not necessarily well- but nevertheless, they were attempted) meant nothing: Use of carnitine is 'alternative medicine' and therefore 'pseudoscience' per se!

NLP SHOULD absolutely be critiqued for it's neglect and sometimes cynical mis-use of the scientific method, its frequent inability to be falsified according to Popperian method, and its use of ideology and polemic (and yes, logical fallacy) in attempting to gain status as a practice. But then, so should CBT, psycho-analysis, probably all psychotherapies, and possibly psychiatry too (and don't even get me started on 'stress' research!).

But calling NLP pseudoscience is problematic- and looks like ad hominem. I'm not saying Peter is necessarily doing this- but he, like OM and all those trying to get a more critical appraisal of NLP on the wikipedia pages, need to become more consistent in their approach, because the risk of making logical fallacies is greater when polemic is relied upon- even in those claiming to be SPOV. Calling things pseudscientific- without a clear understanding of why the word is so problematic- weakens the case.

THIS seems to be why perhaps OM is not succeeding against FT2 so well. OM is a "I'm right, I'm a SCIENTIST" bull-dozer- but with no apparent understanding of the complexities of the issues around claims to scientific authority. FT2 is able to sound more reasonable because OM- and others like him- do not. They're inconsistent at best, and rely on 'poisoning the well', guilt by association, appeals to authority, and strawmen fallacies to advance their argument.

OM recently put words on jdwollffe's talk page to the effect of he wanted to be let loose on the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome article to get rid of - I think it was 'cruft' he said. This chilled me to the bone- because OM tramps around wikipedia like some (to paraphrase Moulton's very funny comment on Wikiversity about someone else) a testosterone filled jabberwocky, causing intellectual chaos in his wake. He's not the only one though. The thought of him working on the CFS article is just terrifying- because he is not someone who can be relied upon to be neutral or even truly scientific in his approach, and CFS sufferers have already been devastated by bad science- and public dissemination of bad science - as it is.

I say all this because I do understand Peter's frustrations about the NLP article- some of which I share.

FT2 of course has never resorted to poisoning the well, guilt by association, appeals to authority and straw man.

Oh- on the contrary. I've seen exactly the same sort of thing from him- on a number of subjects. In fact- calling him on them more could considerably strengthen your arguments (as long as you refrain as much as possible from same in good faith of course- maybe that doesn't even need saying).

I say this as someone who did try logical argument at wikipedia - only to find irrationality and power games winning the day and me being 'excommunicated' - so personally I still think you are fighting a losing battle at Wikipedia. That's only my opinion though. I do think it is sad, though, that people like OM help create the very problems they get so irate about.

But I do see how awful the NLP situation is over there. It's very frustrating. Emblematic of WP though in many ways.

No. Through that may be the consensus in your post.

The consensus in this post may be that the consensus in wikipedia is as you describe. Which is about as useful as any instance of mistaking a correlation of words under screen names for "consensus".

As far as I'm concerned, the whole argument doesn't have much to do with pseudoscience at all. It looks to me like OM is engaged in yet another pissing contest.