167 Skepticism on Wikipedia
This goes out to Kickstarter backer Susan Gerbic!
Susan is the organizer of the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia group (facebook), arguably one of the most influential skeptical programs out there. She personally trains science-minded people to become wikipedia editors, and they put in a lot of volunteer hours. To date she has trained 112 editors in English, Portuguese, Russian, Hungarian, German, Italian, and Spanish. Yes, she does have an evil laugh. Quietly behind the scenes they’re been having a huge impact, such as checking over Bill Nye’s page leading up to the big debate (before, after).
Pseudoscientists like Rupert Sheldrake and Deepak Chopra have both personally blamed Susan for changes to their pages that removed unverified facts and unreferenced information. In other words, upheld the wikipedia standard. This has been a common complaint of alternative medicine peddlers as well, and their petition for “allowing more discourse” received this response from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
What’s ironic here, is that while it may seem like zealous editors can make sweeping changes easily, wikipedia is structured for transparency. What I mean is that all the edits, discussions, and even what pages a certain editor works on is all tracked. In an extremely detailed breakdown, Tim Farley uses this data to show that Deepak and the like have a small number of editors who ONLY update their pages, while skeptic editors engage in more transparent discussion and participate much more broadly. Bottom line: Deepak is hypocritically swinging at strawmen.
Wait, you're Susan? The one that all the self-help gurus are up in arms about?
SUSAN
That's me!
ROB
What did you do to make them so angry?
SUSAN
I asked for sources on their wikipedia pages.
ROB
-And that's it?
SUSAN
They're a little sensitive.
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It’s funny how a lot of people think that an adjective meaning “smallest possible” actually means “big”. “We have made a quantum leap in education reform!” or “We have made quantum leaps in the development of the F-35!” My own AP Chem teacher told me before the class “AP Chem is a QUANTUM (really emphasized the quantum) leap above standard chemistry.” Wasn’t until quite some time later that I actually learned what it meant
You know Harrison, when they say “We have made quantum leaps in the development of the F-35!” maybe they know exactly what they’re saying. They’re just counting on the Congressional interpretation of the statement. 😉
Or it could be referencing the old television show. The basic premise was time travel through body possession. I think the reference (assuming I’m correct) fits well.
The original phrasing comes from molecular mechanics, where an electron moves from one orbital to another instantaneously, without transitional states. In this sense, using “quantum leap” to describe a large stride forward made by a single discovery isn’t as ridiculous as it might first seem.
That’s one thing that I learned in AP chem. But as a unit of measurement, it is literally the smallest unit possible by its definition. Just a funny thing
^^this
Jon nailed it, that is where the common use of saying something took a “quantum leap” in progression or development came from, though most of the people using the term at first didn’t actually understand the meaning behind it either.
It’s just that the ones in the room who did saw it as a technically correct usage of the term so they kept their mouths shut. 😀
I love it! [citation needed]
No wonder they got up in arms. Their sauces are all to an arcane secret recipe, passed down through millenia by whispered commands in the middle of the night.
Personally, I’m a member of the HP Brown sauce cult, but I also profess to dabbling in the Alchamaic Science of Salad Cream and Chips (the real English kind, not the American crisps- salad cream and crisps? Are you mad?). I also sometimes use chilli sauce to predict the future, especially when liberally added to a curry.
There are plenty of sources that validate various aspects of what you call “pseudoscience.” You eat a slightly toxic plant (an herb), your dendritic cells sense the offending toxin, they sound the alarm and upregulate your immune system against tumors.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18037790
Dendritic cell vaccine therapy is one of the cutting edge approaches against cancer (see Stanford’s program). The overwhelming majority of cancer drugs come from plants. It also ties into alarm signals from DAMPs. Use your heads people.
Most skeptics just cherry pick which scientific sources they consider to be valid or reputable. I can see the appeal of having very high standards for evidence, but many “reputable” journals have politics beind their biases and when there is an agenda to actively “debunk” alternative medical practices just because we can’t imagine their underlying mechanisms, that can be counterproductive to actual medical progress.
Pseudoscience is differend from emerging science. If you would like to discuss any pseudoscience from the comic in particular, I’d be happy to go study-for-study until one of us runs out of evidence.