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The article states:
However, that citation takes you here: http://www.livescience.com/7973-human-speech-gene.html which says absolutely nothing about "ancient astronauts." Perhaps the citation was meant to support the "linked with language" claim, but, written as it is now, it makes it look like there is a legitimate citation for the fact that there are individuals who support this view --- and no citation for this is provided. 73.36.172.164 ( talk) 17:55, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
http://www.amazon.com/Humans-are-not-Earth-scientific-ebook/dp/B00DKK9IX2 "Humans are not from Earth: a scientific evaluation of the evidence" by Ellis Silver
THEN we have celebrated Australian cricketer expounding on this theory as well: http://www.thedailystar.net/sports/warnes-theory-human-evolution-513484 I think it's becoming widespread enough a belief (for what it's worth) to document. Kortoso ( talk) 00:25, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
And I'm not through yet. Richard Dawkins also spoke up on this craziness: http://www.theoligarch.com/richard-dawkins-aliens.htm
Kortoso ( talk) 00:29, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: MOVED. Arguments for moving are WP:COMMONNAME and WP:CONCISE, which are policy-based arguments. The only argument against moving is that "ancient astronauts did not exist, so the article is not about the actual astronauts (which did not exist), but about a hypothesis". I don't think that is a valid argument, as Wikipedia has a lot of articles about things that never existed, and whose titles are just plain common name of the (non-existing) topic. Idea that such articles have to contain words like "hypothesis" or similar looks bad to me, because one may say that we should add "hypothesis" to a whole bunch of religious articles and that would certainly not be supported by the community. Vanjagenije (talk) 13:18, 25 July 2016 (UTC) Vanjagenije (talk) 13:18, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
Ancient astronaut hypothesis →
Ancient astronauts – "Ancient astronauts" is the
WP:COMMONNAME, it's more
WP:CONCISE, and is a better reflection of the article's scope per
WP:PRECISE. Using my library's database to limit my search to peer-reviewed journals, "Ancient astronauts" gets a lot more hits than "Ancient astronaut hypothesis" (108 vs 8) and also without the peer-review filter (553 vs 17). "Ancient astronauts" already redirects here (singular and plural forms, with every combination of capitalization—which is more variations of redirects than we have for the current title). It's used in the plural form by academic sources more often than the singular form (108 vs ~40), so that's why I'm suggesting plural. IMO
this article from 1984 in the journal
American Speech supports moving the article to "Ancient astronauts". The summary blurb says: "'Among the New Words'. By Porter, Mary Gray, et al. Presents a list of new terms added to the American English vocabulary as of December 1984. Ancient astronaut; Backpack; Cabbage kid." (There were more words in the full list, and also definitions, but it made me laugh a little that those were the only 3 words in the summary.)
It looks like the article was originally named "Ancient astronaut theory" until it was moved to "Ancient astronaut hypothesis" in 2008 by consensus (the normal definition, not WP:CONSENSUS necessarily), because editors thought "theory" was misleading and rejected OP's proposal for "ancient astronauts", partially to do with it being plural, but it's not clear to me if there were other reasons. IMO "hypothesis" lends the topic an air of scientific credibility that it doesn't receive in academic sources that, when they do use the whole phrase "Ancient alien hypothesis", it's either in scare quotes or preceded by "so-called". Plus, all of the academic sources that do use that phrase were journals related to religion studies, not science, with Numen and Nova Religio giving it the most coverage. —PermStrump (talk) 19:29, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
Wikipedia generally follows the sources. [...] prevalence of the name [...] generally overrides concern that Wikipedia might appear as endorsing one side of an issue.Article titles are not the place to teach the dominant POV – even the scientific POV – about the issue. They are just supposed to provide a common name of the topic, and let the article body describe the appropriateness of the concept. No such user ( talk) 14:18, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
Ancient astronauts (sometimes referred to as the ancient astronaut myth [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]) are a common trope in science fiction and UFO religions that are described as human-like extraterrestrials that supposedly visited Earth and made contact with humans in antiquity and prehistoric times. [1]
References
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This is the number of hits for peer-reviewed sources using different labels to talk about this topic.
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There are too many possible alternative names to address them all in the lead, but "Ancient alien contact" or "Ancient astronaut contact" and "paleocontact hypothesis" would not be in the top 10 (AAH and AAC don't seem to be a thing either), so I'm not sure why those things were picked for the lead sentence. But my point is discussing this now is to show what the most common names are for this topic according to the academic literature. —PermStrump (talk) 00:04, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
Binksternet Why did you revert me here saying that "hermeneutics is not an alternate term" when I cited multiple peer-reviewed sources to support it? Here are the quotes since they might be behind a paywall:
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Those were just the first 5 sources from a quick search of peer-reviewed articles, and there were more. There are a lot more when you look outside of the academic literature, and I'm not even including the plethora of sources that refer to it as hermeneutics without using those words in the exact same order. I'm posting here before reinserting it to make sure there wasn't a misunderstanding, but IMO this is clearly a relevant perspective on the topic that should be reflected in the article. —PermStrump (talk) 04:07, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
It could do with some external links to documentaries on the subject. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nibinaear ( talk • contribs) 19:36, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
Calling this legitimate theory pseudoscience is very insulting. This should be changed. I Am A Sandwich ( talk) 19:01, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
-- Simon19801 ( talk) 08:47, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
The sentence is sloppy and can be cleaned up.
By definition, hypotheses can not be pseudo-scientific. As a skeptic, I am not a proponent of either side of this issue. However, I do support the proper use of the English language and an objective presentation of the facts. It is my opinion that the misuse of the phrase pseudo-science in this context is illustrative of Wikipedia's institutional bias.
In fairness, there is a great load of garbage in the ancient astronaut community. Some of it is blatantly contrary to accepted notions of logic. However, the author of the sentence is overeager to debunk the subject and thereby does readers a disservice. The hypothesis is testable, the results are inconclusive. More troubling is the fact that many of the books proposing ancient astronauts rely on absurd conjecture. If the author would like to debunk, he should do so from within the guidelines of logic. Otherwise the article may fall prey to some of the same errors ancient astronaut proponents have made.
Historical narratives are always open to dispute. The hypothesis that the Roman empire declined due to monetary debasement has similar properties to ancient astronaut hypotheses in this regard. However, Wikipedia does not label the fields of economics or history as pseudoscience. Simply claiming adherence to Wikipedia's subjective guidelines may be sufficient for victorious bickering, but it is insufficient in the larger sense of composing high quality articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 36.252.95.61 ( talk) 11:07, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
Does it mean that, for example, a story of Jesus Christ is a pseudoscientific hypothesis ? Because, according to the above, it is A hypothesis that "lacks supporting scientific evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status"... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.172.176.50 ( talk) 16:36, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
"A hypothesis that "lacks supporting scientific evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status" would be, gulp, a pseudoscientific hypothesis"
A couple of weeks ago, I had a civil disagreement with another user regarding this subject. I wanted the hypothesis not to be called pseudoscientific, and my argument was as follows:
The deletion of the removed word does not qualify as an addition of "commentary or [my] own personal analysis" to the page's lead section. Also, the presence of the word "pseudoscientific" is no less objective or encyclopedic than the absence of it, as this word (and its derivatives) are inherently pejorative. A truly neutral account would be one which informed readers that the ancient astronaut hypothesis is widely regarded as, or generally considered to be, pseudoscientific.
An advocate of the "pseudoscience" label would argue it is proper because Wikipedia is supposed to summarize scholarly sentiment in a way proportional with the specifics of scholarly opinion itself; even accounting for this principle, however, there is no reason it is necessary for the very first sentence to declare the hypothesis a pseudoscience (as though the hypothesis is objectively so). A truly neutral rendering, as said before, would be one in which the lead section informed readers that the theory is widely regarded as a pseudoscience. No encyclopedic article should begin its lead section describing the subject with an adjective that starts with "pseudo-". That prefix is, uncontroversially and without exception, pejorative. The pro-"pseudoscientific" crowd may state, rightfully, that Wikipedia is not a sandbox for personal opinion - but the very fact that they provide this argument is ironic. AndrewOne ( talk) 04:11, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
I also noticed the loud and loaded way the first sentence was written and naively removed the uncited "pseudo-scientific" adjective. I was promptly reverted. I left a note to that editor's talk page that reverting a good faith effort is not the best we can do as a community. However, being accommodating, I reedited the opening paragraph by removing the adjective, but moving to the front of the paragraph the statement that there is little respect in the scientific community for this hypothesis (the sentence is much longer and peacocky than that). The paragraph lost a healthy 140+characters in the process. I also moved Carl Sagan's contribution to its chronological place among the sources of this idea. User:Grayfell quickly reverted the edit, and left an edit summary that makes me think he or she did not see I had made those last two changes. I, like many reasonable editors before me, give up, for I do not have time to argue with editors that seem all too involved in watching this page, and seem willing to ignore the many complains found in this page that their blind fervour on labelling this hypothesis unscientific at-the-earliest-possible-moment is not helping the quality of the article ARosa ( talk) 00:54, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
@ Arosa, Binksternet, and Dimadick: hope you all don't mind, but as the post that ARosa responded to says basically further discussion of pseudoscience belongs here, I've moved it here. It might be useful to read all of this section. Doug Weller talk 17:21, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
As far as I can see, this hypothesis is pseudoscience because it claims evidence which is vague and for which there are alternative (and less fantastic) hypotheses, and because it is not falsifiable. That Sagan might have speculated about it does not change this. Isambard Kingdom ( talk) 00:08, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
"Pseudo-scientific hypothesis" is bordering on an oxymoron. The cries of reliable source could be used for all kinds of poor phraseology, and do not help make a better encyclopaedia. An hypothesis can exist within a pseudo-science, it is pseudo-science because evidence against hypotheses is ignored; alternatively a proposition might never have been an hypothesis in the first place if it wasn't testable, wasn't the starting point for investigation. Those editors who rightly damn the subject as pseudo-science, also damn language with their zealotry.
The article's title using the word hypothesis is the root of this problem, as that which is being examined is not simply the hypothesis, but the belief in ancient astronauts, its proponents, their works, methods, etc. But I am not a dedicated enough editor to set this right against those that care less about language than me, or are not subtle enough to even see this as a problem.-- Mongreilf ( talk) 09:05, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
The basic hypothesis in itself is not pseudoscientific (I suspect the reaction against it is based on fear, not reason). Instead, the dubious interpretation of various artefacts is what is pseudoscientific. Given the vast sea of time behind us, as a species and as a world, if contact with humans has happened it is more likely in the remote past, when we were more primitive. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.81.220.58 ( talk) 09:19, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
This article needs more on Kolosimo. He popularised this idea in a big way long before Von Däniken. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.81.220.58 ( talk) 09:10, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
The opening line of the article asserts the ancient astronaut theory is pseudoscience. This is in violation of the NPOV. From WP:NPOV
"Avoid stating opinions as facts. Usually, articles will contain information about the significant opinions that have been expressed about their subjects. However, these opinions should not be stated in Wikipedia's voice. Rather, they should be attributed in the text to particular sources, or where justified, described as widespread views, etc. For example, an article should not state that "genocide is an evil action", but it may state that "genocide has been described by John X as the epitome of human evil."
I personally believing this theory is ludicrous and is non-scientific but I believe in the NPOV Apollo The Logician ( talk) 21:23, 3 December 2016 (UTC) Apollo The Logician ( talk) 21:23, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
The pseudoscientific view should be clearly described as such.From WP:FRINGE (a guideline):
Ideas that have been rejected, are widely considered to be absurd or pseudoscientific, only of historical interest, or primarily the realm of science fiction, should be documented as such, using reliable sources.Seems clear enough to me. Grayfell ( talk) 23:29, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
*Avoid stating facts as opinions. Uncontested and uncontroversial factual assertions made by reliable sources should normally be directly stated in Wikipedia's voice. Unless a topic specifically deals with a disagreement over otherwise uncontested information, there is no need for specific attribution for the assertion, although it is helpful to add a reference link to the source in support of verifiability. Further, the passage should not be worded in any way that makes it appear to be contested.
Ideas that have been rejected, are widely considered to be absurd or pseudoscientific, only of historical interest, or primarily the realm of science fiction, should be documented as such, using reliable sources.This article amply documents and sources why this theory is considered to be pseudoscientific. That some people believe something which is scientifically untrue is interesting, but not relevant to our description of it as pseudoscience. NorthBySouthBaranof ( talk) 18:57, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
@ Dmol:, What objections do you have to my recent changes? Were there problems with grammar; tone; POV? BorkBorkGoesTheCode ( talk) 04:32, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
Pseudoscience means the topic looks like scientific but actually not scientific and is false science. Pseudoscientific hypothesis or pseudoscientifc concept means the hypothesis or concept look scientific but actually not.
We would not say Harry Potter as pseudoscience because it is not classified as science, and it is clearly not look like any science.
Ancient astronaut clearly not like a science, and not like a valid science hypothesis or concept. It is clearly a science fiction topic or a non scientific hypothesis.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 45.64.241.197 ( talk • contribs)
I have removed an image dubiously labelled as a representation of the Anunnaki and marked its page on Wikimedia Commons as likely factually inaccurate. As someone who knows something about Mesopotamian mythology, I know that there are currently no known extant Mesopotamian representations of the Anunnaki as a group. We do have representations of individual members of the Anunnaki, such as Enki or Inanna, but no depictions of them collectively. The image's page on the commons had no description or explanation. I looked at the website that this image came from and it appears to be a purveyor of the ancient astronaut hypothesis itself. The image appears frequently on conspiracy theory websites, but is conspicuously absent from academic writings about Mesopotamian religion. The image has clearly been drastically misinterpreted. -- Katolophyromai ( talk) 22:01, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Not done (pmc) consensus clearly against
DrStrauss
talk please use {{ping|DrStrauss}} when replying
20:11, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
Ancient astronauts → Ancient aliens – Short version: Does not "astronaut" primarily refer to human spaceflight? Gaioa ( talk) 14:02, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
Long version: The concept of this pseudoscience is that extraterrestrials visited Earth long ago, but are extraterrestrials really "astronauts"? Although the word itself means "star-sailor" and is independent of species, it is almost exclusively used concerning humans. For instance, Laika is rarely considered an astronaut or kosmonaut, but simply "dog in space". Now, the subject matter of this article is by no means primarily ancient human spaceflight, but ancient extraterrestrial contact. And why should these beings be considered astronauts? I say rename to Ancient aliens, which I believe is a more common term anyway. Of course, this means that Ancient Aliens hafta be moved to Ancient Alien (TV series). However, if there's past wiki discussion on this topic, or if the sci. comm. considered the term "ancient astronauts" to be the most appropriate, or if the proponents themselves claim to talk about "ancient astronauts", then I will stand corrected :) Gaioa ( talk) 14:02, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
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I think that we ought to remove the second paragraph of this section. It's an non-sourced list of things that I think requires more than a simple assertion that they're relevant to the topic. Further it seems like a proper citation of the material would amount to a lengthy list at the end of the article and not really add anything of substance to it.
Please vote. Rap Chart Mike ( talk) 14:54, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
Consider it gone. I know we don't vote but consensus is nice and avoids arguments and edit wars. Ha, I was totally unaware that there was an article for in Pop-culture already. Nice catch!
Rap Chart Mike (
talk)
19:07, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
In the content guideline
Wikipedia: Fringe theories we have
WP:DESCF, which says "It is also best to avoid hiding all disputations in an end criticism section, but instead work for integrated, easy to read, and accurate article prose."
We should probably attempt to integrate the
Critics section into the article. --
tronvillain (
talk)
18:58, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
The article states:
However, that citation takes you here: http://www.livescience.com/7973-human-speech-gene.html which says absolutely nothing about "ancient astronauts." Perhaps the citation was meant to support the "linked with language" claim, but, written as it is now, it makes it look like there is a legitimate citation for the fact that there are individuals who support this view --- and no citation for this is provided. 73.36.172.164 ( talk) 17:55, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
http://www.amazon.com/Humans-are-not-Earth-scientific-ebook/dp/B00DKK9IX2 "Humans are not from Earth: a scientific evaluation of the evidence" by Ellis Silver
THEN we have celebrated Australian cricketer expounding on this theory as well: http://www.thedailystar.net/sports/warnes-theory-human-evolution-513484 I think it's becoming widespread enough a belief (for what it's worth) to document. Kortoso ( talk) 00:25, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
And I'm not through yet. Richard Dawkins also spoke up on this craziness: http://www.theoligarch.com/richard-dawkins-aliens.htm
Kortoso ( talk) 00:29, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: MOVED. Arguments for moving are WP:COMMONNAME and WP:CONCISE, which are policy-based arguments. The only argument against moving is that "ancient astronauts did not exist, so the article is not about the actual astronauts (which did not exist), but about a hypothesis". I don't think that is a valid argument, as Wikipedia has a lot of articles about things that never existed, and whose titles are just plain common name of the (non-existing) topic. Idea that such articles have to contain words like "hypothesis" or similar looks bad to me, because one may say that we should add "hypothesis" to a whole bunch of religious articles and that would certainly not be supported by the community. Vanjagenije (talk) 13:18, 25 July 2016 (UTC) Vanjagenije (talk) 13:18, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
Ancient astronaut hypothesis →
Ancient astronauts – "Ancient astronauts" is the
WP:COMMONNAME, it's more
WP:CONCISE, and is a better reflection of the article's scope per
WP:PRECISE. Using my library's database to limit my search to peer-reviewed journals, "Ancient astronauts" gets a lot more hits than "Ancient astronaut hypothesis" (108 vs 8) and also without the peer-review filter (553 vs 17). "Ancient astronauts" already redirects here (singular and plural forms, with every combination of capitalization—which is more variations of redirects than we have for the current title). It's used in the plural form by academic sources more often than the singular form (108 vs ~40), so that's why I'm suggesting plural. IMO
this article from 1984 in the journal
American Speech supports moving the article to "Ancient astronauts". The summary blurb says: "'Among the New Words'. By Porter, Mary Gray, et al. Presents a list of new terms added to the American English vocabulary as of December 1984. Ancient astronaut; Backpack; Cabbage kid." (There were more words in the full list, and also definitions, but it made me laugh a little that those were the only 3 words in the summary.)
It looks like the article was originally named "Ancient astronaut theory" until it was moved to "Ancient astronaut hypothesis" in 2008 by consensus (the normal definition, not WP:CONSENSUS necessarily), because editors thought "theory" was misleading and rejected OP's proposal for "ancient astronauts", partially to do with it being plural, but it's not clear to me if there were other reasons. IMO "hypothesis" lends the topic an air of scientific credibility that it doesn't receive in academic sources that, when they do use the whole phrase "Ancient alien hypothesis", it's either in scare quotes or preceded by "so-called". Plus, all of the academic sources that do use that phrase were journals related to religion studies, not science, with Numen and Nova Religio giving it the most coverage. —PermStrump (talk) 19:29, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
Wikipedia generally follows the sources. [...] prevalence of the name [...] generally overrides concern that Wikipedia might appear as endorsing one side of an issue.Article titles are not the place to teach the dominant POV – even the scientific POV – about the issue. They are just supposed to provide a common name of the topic, and let the article body describe the appropriateness of the concept. No such user ( talk) 14:18, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
Ancient astronauts (sometimes referred to as the ancient astronaut myth [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]) are a common trope in science fiction and UFO religions that are described as human-like extraterrestrials that supposedly visited Earth and made contact with humans in antiquity and prehistoric times. [1]
References
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This is the number of hits for peer-reviewed sources using different labels to talk about this topic.
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There are too many possible alternative names to address them all in the lead, but "Ancient alien contact" or "Ancient astronaut contact" and "paleocontact hypothesis" would not be in the top 10 (AAH and AAC don't seem to be a thing either), so I'm not sure why those things were picked for the lead sentence. But my point is discussing this now is to show what the most common names are for this topic according to the academic literature. —PermStrump (talk) 00:04, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
Binksternet Why did you revert me here saying that "hermeneutics is not an alternate term" when I cited multiple peer-reviewed sources to support it? Here are the quotes since they might be behind a paywall:
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Those were just the first 5 sources from a quick search of peer-reviewed articles, and there were more. There are a lot more when you look outside of the academic literature, and I'm not even including the plethora of sources that refer to it as hermeneutics without using those words in the exact same order. I'm posting here before reinserting it to make sure there wasn't a misunderstanding, but IMO this is clearly a relevant perspective on the topic that should be reflected in the article. —PermStrump (talk) 04:07, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
It could do with some external links to documentaries on the subject. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nibinaear ( talk • contribs) 19:36, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
Calling this legitimate theory pseudoscience is very insulting. This should be changed. I Am A Sandwich ( talk) 19:01, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
-- Simon19801 ( talk) 08:47, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
The sentence is sloppy and can be cleaned up.
By definition, hypotheses can not be pseudo-scientific. As a skeptic, I am not a proponent of either side of this issue. However, I do support the proper use of the English language and an objective presentation of the facts. It is my opinion that the misuse of the phrase pseudo-science in this context is illustrative of Wikipedia's institutional bias.
In fairness, there is a great load of garbage in the ancient astronaut community. Some of it is blatantly contrary to accepted notions of logic. However, the author of the sentence is overeager to debunk the subject and thereby does readers a disservice. The hypothesis is testable, the results are inconclusive. More troubling is the fact that many of the books proposing ancient astronauts rely on absurd conjecture. If the author would like to debunk, he should do so from within the guidelines of logic. Otherwise the article may fall prey to some of the same errors ancient astronaut proponents have made.
Historical narratives are always open to dispute. The hypothesis that the Roman empire declined due to monetary debasement has similar properties to ancient astronaut hypotheses in this regard. However, Wikipedia does not label the fields of economics or history as pseudoscience. Simply claiming adherence to Wikipedia's subjective guidelines may be sufficient for victorious bickering, but it is insufficient in the larger sense of composing high quality articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 36.252.95.61 ( talk) 11:07, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
Does it mean that, for example, a story of Jesus Christ is a pseudoscientific hypothesis ? Because, according to the above, it is A hypothesis that "lacks supporting scientific evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status"... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.172.176.50 ( talk) 16:36, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
"A hypothesis that "lacks supporting scientific evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status" would be, gulp, a pseudoscientific hypothesis"
A couple of weeks ago, I had a civil disagreement with another user regarding this subject. I wanted the hypothesis not to be called pseudoscientific, and my argument was as follows:
The deletion of the removed word does not qualify as an addition of "commentary or [my] own personal analysis" to the page's lead section. Also, the presence of the word "pseudoscientific" is no less objective or encyclopedic than the absence of it, as this word (and its derivatives) are inherently pejorative. A truly neutral account would be one which informed readers that the ancient astronaut hypothesis is widely regarded as, or generally considered to be, pseudoscientific.
An advocate of the "pseudoscience" label would argue it is proper because Wikipedia is supposed to summarize scholarly sentiment in a way proportional with the specifics of scholarly opinion itself; even accounting for this principle, however, there is no reason it is necessary for the very first sentence to declare the hypothesis a pseudoscience (as though the hypothesis is objectively so). A truly neutral rendering, as said before, would be one in which the lead section informed readers that the theory is widely regarded as a pseudoscience. No encyclopedic article should begin its lead section describing the subject with an adjective that starts with "pseudo-". That prefix is, uncontroversially and without exception, pejorative. The pro-"pseudoscientific" crowd may state, rightfully, that Wikipedia is not a sandbox for personal opinion - but the very fact that they provide this argument is ironic. AndrewOne ( talk) 04:11, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
I also noticed the loud and loaded way the first sentence was written and naively removed the uncited "pseudo-scientific" adjective. I was promptly reverted. I left a note to that editor's talk page that reverting a good faith effort is not the best we can do as a community. However, being accommodating, I reedited the opening paragraph by removing the adjective, but moving to the front of the paragraph the statement that there is little respect in the scientific community for this hypothesis (the sentence is much longer and peacocky than that). The paragraph lost a healthy 140+characters in the process. I also moved Carl Sagan's contribution to its chronological place among the sources of this idea. User:Grayfell quickly reverted the edit, and left an edit summary that makes me think he or she did not see I had made those last two changes. I, like many reasonable editors before me, give up, for I do not have time to argue with editors that seem all too involved in watching this page, and seem willing to ignore the many complains found in this page that their blind fervour on labelling this hypothesis unscientific at-the-earliest-possible-moment is not helping the quality of the article ARosa ( talk) 00:54, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
@ Arosa, Binksternet, and Dimadick: hope you all don't mind, but as the post that ARosa responded to says basically further discussion of pseudoscience belongs here, I've moved it here. It might be useful to read all of this section. Doug Weller talk 17:21, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
As far as I can see, this hypothesis is pseudoscience because it claims evidence which is vague and for which there are alternative (and less fantastic) hypotheses, and because it is not falsifiable. That Sagan might have speculated about it does not change this. Isambard Kingdom ( talk) 00:08, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
"Pseudo-scientific hypothesis" is bordering on an oxymoron. The cries of reliable source could be used for all kinds of poor phraseology, and do not help make a better encyclopaedia. An hypothesis can exist within a pseudo-science, it is pseudo-science because evidence against hypotheses is ignored; alternatively a proposition might never have been an hypothesis in the first place if it wasn't testable, wasn't the starting point for investigation. Those editors who rightly damn the subject as pseudo-science, also damn language with their zealotry.
The article's title using the word hypothesis is the root of this problem, as that which is being examined is not simply the hypothesis, but the belief in ancient astronauts, its proponents, their works, methods, etc. But I am not a dedicated enough editor to set this right against those that care less about language than me, or are not subtle enough to even see this as a problem.-- Mongreilf ( talk) 09:05, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
The basic hypothesis in itself is not pseudoscientific (I suspect the reaction against it is based on fear, not reason). Instead, the dubious interpretation of various artefacts is what is pseudoscientific. Given the vast sea of time behind us, as a species and as a world, if contact with humans has happened it is more likely in the remote past, when we were more primitive. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.81.220.58 ( talk) 09:19, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
This article needs more on Kolosimo. He popularised this idea in a big way long before Von Däniken. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.81.220.58 ( talk) 09:10, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
The opening line of the article asserts the ancient astronaut theory is pseudoscience. This is in violation of the NPOV. From WP:NPOV
"Avoid stating opinions as facts. Usually, articles will contain information about the significant opinions that have been expressed about their subjects. However, these opinions should not be stated in Wikipedia's voice. Rather, they should be attributed in the text to particular sources, or where justified, described as widespread views, etc. For example, an article should not state that "genocide is an evil action", but it may state that "genocide has been described by John X as the epitome of human evil."
I personally believing this theory is ludicrous and is non-scientific but I believe in the NPOV Apollo The Logician ( talk) 21:23, 3 December 2016 (UTC) Apollo The Logician ( talk) 21:23, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
The pseudoscientific view should be clearly described as such.From WP:FRINGE (a guideline):
Ideas that have been rejected, are widely considered to be absurd or pseudoscientific, only of historical interest, or primarily the realm of science fiction, should be documented as such, using reliable sources.Seems clear enough to me. Grayfell ( talk) 23:29, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
*Avoid stating facts as opinions. Uncontested and uncontroversial factual assertions made by reliable sources should normally be directly stated in Wikipedia's voice. Unless a topic specifically deals with a disagreement over otherwise uncontested information, there is no need for specific attribution for the assertion, although it is helpful to add a reference link to the source in support of verifiability. Further, the passage should not be worded in any way that makes it appear to be contested.
Ideas that have been rejected, are widely considered to be absurd or pseudoscientific, only of historical interest, or primarily the realm of science fiction, should be documented as such, using reliable sources.This article amply documents and sources why this theory is considered to be pseudoscientific. That some people believe something which is scientifically untrue is interesting, but not relevant to our description of it as pseudoscience. NorthBySouthBaranof ( talk) 18:57, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
@ Dmol:, What objections do you have to my recent changes? Were there problems with grammar; tone; POV? BorkBorkGoesTheCode ( talk) 04:32, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
Pseudoscience means the topic looks like scientific but actually not scientific and is false science. Pseudoscientific hypothesis or pseudoscientifc concept means the hypothesis or concept look scientific but actually not.
We would not say Harry Potter as pseudoscience because it is not classified as science, and it is clearly not look like any science.
Ancient astronaut clearly not like a science, and not like a valid science hypothesis or concept. It is clearly a science fiction topic or a non scientific hypothesis.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 45.64.241.197 ( talk • contribs)
I have removed an image dubiously labelled as a representation of the Anunnaki and marked its page on Wikimedia Commons as likely factually inaccurate. As someone who knows something about Mesopotamian mythology, I know that there are currently no known extant Mesopotamian representations of the Anunnaki as a group. We do have representations of individual members of the Anunnaki, such as Enki or Inanna, but no depictions of them collectively. The image's page on the commons had no description or explanation. I looked at the website that this image came from and it appears to be a purveyor of the ancient astronaut hypothesis itself. The image appears frequently on conspiracy theory websites, but is conspicuously absent from academic writings about Mesopotamian religion. The image has clearly been drastically misinterpreted. -- Katolophyromai ( talk) 22:01, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Not done (pmc) consensus clearly against
DrStrauss
talk please use {{ping|DrStrauss}} when replying
20:11, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
Ancient astronauts → Ancient aliens – Short version: Does not "astronaut" primarily refer to human spaceflight? Gaioa ( talk) 14:02, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
Long version: The concept of this pseudoscience is that extraterrestrials visited Earth long ago, but are extraterrestrials really "astronauts"? Although the word itself means "star-sailor" and is independent of species, it is almost exclusively used concerning humans. For instance, Laika is rarely considered an astronaut or kosmonaut, but simply "dog in space". Now, the subject matter of this article is by no means primarily ancient human spaceflight, but ancient extraterrestrial contact. And why should these beings be considered astronauts? I say rename to Ancient aliens, which I believe is a more common term anyway. Of course, this means that Ancient Aliens hafta be moved to Ancient Alien (TV series). However, if there's past wiki discussion on this topic, or if the sci. comm. considered the term "ancient astronauts" to be the most appropriate, or if the proponents themselves claim to talk about "ancient astronauts", then I will stand corrected :) Gaioa ( talk) 14:02, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
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I think that we ought to remove the second paragraph of this section. It's an non-sourced list of things that I think requires more than a simple assertion that they're relevant to the topic. Further it seems like a proper citation of the material would amount to a lengthy list at the end of the article and not really add anything of substance to it.
Please vote. Rap Chart Mike ( talk) 14:54, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
Consider it gone. I know we don't vote but consensus is nice and avoids arguments and edit wars. Ha, I was totally unaware that there was an article for in Pop-culture already. Nice catch!
Rap Chart Mike (
talk)
19:07, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
In the content guideline
Wikipedia: Fringe theories we have
WP:DESCF, which says "It is also best to avoid hiding all disputations in an end criticism section, but instead work for integrated, easy to read, and accurate article prose."
We should probably attempt to integrate the
Critics section into the article. --
tronvillain (
talk)
18:58, 10 July 2018 (UTC)