Style guidelines for writing about scientific miracles, famous one-time observations of them, and experiments trying to reproduce them.
(Started on the LK-99 talk page, for good-faith results. For the bad-faith version, see User:Sj/scifraud)
"And it is at this point that we have an entirely new physics..."
Reflecting on articles about various miracle-cure physics and science articles: we could use a style for tagging / talking about claimed advances that are not 'breakthroughs' in the sense of "biggest advance in years" but 'breakaways' in the sense of "sudden inexplicable advance surpassing anything in the history of the field". To my knowledge, these are almost always a mix of error, fraud, and wishful thinking. We have Category:Pseudoscience for projects that continue to publish such claims after many previous attempts have shown it not to work, but nothing for this category of initially-credible, technical, but aspirational and unverified or unverifiable discoveries.
Some characteristics of discoveries that fall into miracle territory and may deserve their own style (feel free to add to this list):
Miraculousness
Supreme confidence
Fiddliness
The above assumes we're only using reliable sources, but working through how to summarize them and use them proportionately, in the period between self-publication and meaningful external review, when a frothy pop-science vibe will dominate all searches and people will develop an expectation that a miracle will work out and start extrapolating endlessly on what that might mean [with no knowledge about whether or not it ever happened once, is replicable, is understandable, means what the most starry-eyed think it means, &c.]
During that period, popular science outlets – often the primary sources for reporting on new self-announced discoveries – are not particularly reliable, and authors themselves [in interviews and their own preprints] are particularly conflicted: public interest paints them into a corner of defending their work even in aspects where they may have doubts.
from Talk:LK-99
Is there an existing style guide for this? Good examples in other articles? Popular science journalism treats these alleged advances the same way they do any tangible, widely-observable advance (like the first GW solar tower or the first electric flying car); and then spends as many articles saying "scientists skeptical about X"... "X shown not to work after all". We should provide better context from the start, particularly in early days of hype and confusion.
Someone suggested we would know soon whether a miracle that many people are trying to replicate has "panned out or not". This may be true if there are a series of positive results. But if there are only negative results, this is unlikely, as negative claims are hard to prove. Some of the developments that might be expected even if results are persistently negative for a long time:
Inconclusive support
Inconclusive disconfirmation
Feel free to add to the above. – SJ +
SJ's comment looks like it would be a valuable addition to the Reproducibility article, with a link from this one. Frank MacCrory ( talk) 02:43, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
I reckon it's "reproducibility style on wikipedia" more than the encyclopedia article itself. Perhaps we need an MOS:REPRODUCIBILITY as part of the same style guide page as MOS:MIRACLE. – SJ +
Style guidelines for writing about scientific miracles, famous one-time observations of them, and experiments trying to reproduce them.
(Started on the LK-99 talk page, for good-faith results. For the bad-faith version, see User:Sj/scifraud)
"And it is at this point that we have an entirely new physics..."
Reflecting on articles about various miracle-cure physics and science articles: we could use a style for tagging / talking about claimed advances that are not 'breakthroughs' in the sense of "biggest advance in years" but 'breakaways' in the sense of "sudden inexplicable advance surpassing anything in the history of the field". To my knowledge, these are almost always a mix of error, fraud, and wishful thinking. We have Category:Pseudoscience for projects that continue to publish such claims after many previous attempts have shown it not to work, but nothing for this category of initially-credible, technical, but aspirational and unverified or unverifiable discoveries.
Some characteristics of discoveries that fall into miracle territory and may deserve their own style (feel free to add to this list):
Miraculousness
Supreme confidence
Fiddliness
The above assumes we're only using reliable sources, but working through how to summarize them and use them proportionately, in the period between self-publication and meaningful external review, when a frothy pop-science vibe will dominate all searches and people will develop an expectation that a miracle will work out and start extrapolating endlessly on what that might mean [with no knowledge about whether or not it ever happened once, is replicable, is understandable, means what the most starry-eyed think it means, &c.]
During that period, popular science outlets – often the primary sources for reporting on new self-announced discoveries – are not particularly reliable, and authors themselves [in interviews and their own preprints] are particularly conflicted: public interest paints them into a corner of defending their work even in aspects where they may have doubts.
from Talk:LK-99
Is there an existing style guide for this? Good examples in other articles? Popular science journalism treats these alleged advances the same way they do any tangible, widely-observable advance (like the first GW solar tower or the first electric flying car); and then spends as many articles saying "scientists skeptical about X"... "X shown not to work after all". We should provide better context from the start, particularly in early days of hype and confusion.
Someone suggested we would know soon whether a miracle that many people are trying to replicate has "panned out or not". This may be true if there are a series of positive results. But if there are only negative results, this is unlikely, as negative claims are hard to prove. Some of the developments that might be expected even if results are persistently negative for a long time:
Inconclusive support
Inconclusive disconfirmation
Feel free to add to the above. – SJ +
SJ's comment looks like it would be a valuable addition to the Reproducibility article, with a link from this one. Frank MacCrory ( talk) 02:43, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
I reckon it's "reproducibility style on wikipedia" more than the encyclopedia article itself. Perhaps we need an MOS:REPRODUCIBILITY as part of the same style guide page as MOS:MIRACLE. – SJ +