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Compare how Britannica and Wikipedia introduce the traditional system of Indian medicine called Ayerveda.
Britannica is respectful.
Wikipedia has no fewer than four dismissive epithets in the first paragraph: "quackery," "pseudoscientific," "protoscience," and "unscientific."..
Not long ago, this article would have been regarded as a deep offense against multiculturalism. ... It is not the role of an encyclopedia to tell people what to think or to cast aspersions on entire cultures. ... Wikipedia should make *no* claims on its own behalf about what is medicine; that is not the role of an encyclopedia. It can repeat research on that though. ... You assume that you can detect what "modern medicine," or other scientific or scholarly work, really is, i.e., whether it actually passes muster of the scientific method. ... If the systems of peer review is screwed up, you can't. Nor if medical research is tainted by filthy lucre from Big Pharma. The world is considerably more complicated than the silly children at Wikipedia think it is. Britannica at least understands that much. (en) |
