Talk:Fringe theory/GA1

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Reviewer: Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk · contribs) 13:59, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Overall this is a fairly well done article. I've got some specific comments below along with some suggestions which I feel might help the article cover the subject in a more comprehensive manner.

content

• The first sentence is "A fringe theory is an idea or viewpoint held by a small group of supporters." but the definition Fringe theories are ideas which depart significantly from a prevailing or mainstream theory. is materially different, more specific and equally incomplete. The two components to a fringe theory are (roughly): few peopel subscribe and the theory departs from (or just doesn't speak to) a prevailing view.
• "The conspirators are possessed of..." I'm not sure if this sentence served much purpose. We want to include conspiracy theories in a discussion of the constellation of nonsense around fringe theories. As well we should. But I don't think describing what conspiracy theories claim in general serves the reader. We should mention conspiracy theories in some way, but this seems unnecessary.
• The "mainstream impact" section isn't really about mainstream impact. I think we might be well served by having a short section on mainstream impact and a longer section on evolution of various fringe theories. Like, the first paragraph talks mainstream impact and the remaining 4 talk about the evolution of various theories.
• "Sometimes this change is not gradual; in such cases it represents a paradigm shift." While I understand the point this sentence is making (especially as it leads in to a salient example), it conflates "paradigm shift" with "fast" rather than using the more germane meaning of a mechanism by which a community accepts a theory which challenges mainstream assumptions. Paradigm shifts can be fast, but that's not what is important about that term.
• "Such shifts between fringe theory and accepted theories are not always clear-cut." Is the only example we have here Fruedian psycholanalysis?
• Similarly, while the NYT piece (+ reactions) is a good example of false balance becoming accepted, is it the only one?
• "...others in the media condemned the Times..." Who? We're offloading this to Offit, but a reader might want to know.
• "Because advocates of creationism want schools to present only their preferred alternative..." Creationist placement of ID/YEC against evolution as a two sided issue points to a failure of intellectual honesty. It's not super helpful to the reader to frame it as "because they're intellectually dishonest, they create a false balance".

Style

• Article is well linked, well cited and overall fairly clear. No real problems.

additions?

• I'm a little surprised to not see Kuhn anywhere. I admit, he's not exactly au currant in the history of science literature, but if we're talking about the demarcation problem and/or theories moving in and out of the fringe, his is an important (and widely cited) voice on the subject.
• There's an (old) discussion on the talk page complaining about continental drift as an example. I don't think it should be removed, but the point there was about science as a meta-process. The argument goes that science falls in and out of love with concepts or ideas for non-scientific reasons (c.f. paradigm shifts) but that most ideas which were adopted later were not accepted at the time because they lacked a scientific mechanism. Continental drift as it was expressed at the time was rightly in the fringe. Now, I think this argument is pretty self-serving, but it's out there in the literature on how we discuss the topic.
• Actually the aside on behavioral finance highlights the above problem. Behavioral economists were marginalized in the discipline for years for a variety of reasons. The main reason was that BE/BF didn't provide the mechanism for a tractable, testable general theory (I'll go find some sources on this). It wasn't properly "fringe" in 2002, but it certainly was in the 80s.
• Sometimes theories which enter the fringe in one discipline (Fruedian pscyhoanalysis in psychiatry) become central to another--it's pretty hard to read Lacan and following work without seeing how critical theory adopted a method on the way out in another discipline and made it central.

Sources

• Is there a better source than this for the claim "The relationship between psychoanalysis and psychiatry remains complex." Or maybe, is there some more clarity we can give the reader about the source? It looks like this is a complete version of that book available online. Is it?
• It's a bit confusing to mix sfn with full citations in the notes (e.g. Fritze is cited w/ pagination using sfn but cited without pagination using the full cite three times as well). However I don't see any major problems and it clearly meets the GA criteria.

Thanks for your work on the article. I look forward to hearing your replies to the review. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:02, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Additional comments

• Ed gives us a lot to work with... but I will add one other concern. The article tends to be dominated by discussion of two forms of fringe: conspiracy theory and fringe science. We need more explanation of fringe theories in other academic areas (for example... while we mention pseudo-history in passing, we don't really explain what constitutes pseudo-history or give any examples). Blueboar (talk) 15:36, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Blueboar and Logos. Additional comments are always welcome. I didn't notice until I completed the review, but the nominator hasn't been active in the past two months. I'm planning to place the review on hold for now. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:18, 16 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Pure OR/SYNTH

How can a pure OR/SYNTH article can earn the "good article" status. Ed should try to find at least 1 source first, which clearly defines in detail what "fringe theory" is. By "source", of course, I don't mean the trivial or tangential stuff mentioned/discussed in the deletion discussion. Preliminary discussion here which led to the AfD, will also help to bring the problematic main elements into consideration once again. Logos (talk) 16:33, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]