Several months ago, the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP), an alternative medicine non-profit, began a petition on Change.org asking Wikipedia to “create and enforce new policies that allow for true scientific discourse about holistic approaches to healing.” The petition reached 7,000 signatures in mid-January and then largely stalled. But this weekend, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales responded to the request, saying that no amount of signatures would get him on board with ACEP's request.

In its petition, ACEP wrote to Wikipedia, “people who are interested in the benefits of Energy Medicine, Energy Psychology, and specific approaches such as the Emotional Freedom Techniques, Thought Field Therapy, and the Tapas Acupressure Technique, turn to your pages, trust what they read, and do not pursue getting help from these approaches which research has, in fact, proven to be of great benefit to many.”

”These pages are controlled by a few self-appointed 'skeptics' who serve as de facto censors for Wikipedia,” the petition continued. “They clothe their objections in the language of the narrowest possible understanding of science in order to inhibit open discussion of innovation in health care.” As of this writing, another 800 people have signed the petition in support of a revision of Wikipedia's policies.

Our house, our rules

Wales, however, responded on Change.org with a short note:

No, you have to be kidding me. Every single person who signed this petition needs to go back to check their premises and think harder about what it means to be honest, factual, truthful. Wikipedia's policies around this kind of thing are exactly spot-on and correct. If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals—that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately. What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of "true scientific discourse." It isn't.

Wikipedia's guidelines for the inclusion of information are outlined at length on its project pages, but the ACEP did not identify a specific rule it wanted added or excised in its grievances. (The ACEP has not yet responded to Ars' request for comment. This article will be updated if we hear back.)

One rule that may have irked alternative medicine proponents might be that Wikipedia tries to avoid being the host of original perspectives. As the site states on one project page, “Wikipedia does not publish original thought: all material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source.”

The website also may not accept some of the sources that the alternative practitioners rely on. It insists that editors “Base articles on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy... The best sources have a professional structure in place for checking or analyzing facts, legal issues, evidence, and arguments. The greater the degree of scrutiny given to these issues, the more reliable the source. Be especially careful when sourcing content related to living people or medicine.”

In its content guidelines, Wikipedia has a whole page dedicated to fringe theories and makes it clear that subjects like alternative medicine will be treated as such. "A theory that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight in an article about a mainstream idea, and reliable sources must be cited that affirm the relationship of the marginal idea to the mainstream idea in a serious and substantial manner."

Bunk science maybe, but let's talk about it

Interestingly, the petition also cited Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, who has since left the project, as proof that the site needed an overhaul of its policies:

Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, left the organization due to concerns about its integrity. He stated: "In some fields and some topics, there are groups who 'squat' on articles and insist on making them reflect their own specific biases. There is no credible mechanism to approve versions of articles.” This is exactly the case with the Wikipedia pages for Energy Psychology, Energy Medicine, acupuncture, and other forms of complementary/alternative medicine (CAM), which are currently skewed to a negative, unscientific view of these approaches despite numerous rigorous studies in recent years demonstrating their effectiveness.

Ars contacted Sanger about the use of his name in this argument, and he offered a more nuanced take on the petitioners' request:

“Wikipedia's neutrality policy, at least as I originally articulated it, requires that CAM's practitioners be given an opportunity to explain their views. At the same time, the policy also requires that more space be given to mainstream views that are critical of CAM, precisely because such critical views are held by most medical health professionals.

...

I am as big a defender of rationality, science, and objective reality as you are likely to find. But I also think a public resource like Wikipedia should be fully committed to intellectual tolerance and the free exchange of ideas. That, together with an interest in providing a way to resolve disputes, is just what drove me to advocate for and articulate the Wikipedia's neutrality policy. I have confidence that if CAM's advocates are given an opportunity to air their views fully and sympathetically—not to say they should be allowed to make Wikipedia assert their views—and skeptics are also given free rein to report their explanation of why they think CAM is a load of crap, then a rational reader will be given the tools he or she needs to take a reasonable position about the matter.

Putting all ideas on the table—but giving more space to the mainstream views and putting less emphasis on the alternative views—might be problematic in practice. Requiring that Wikipedia sources be based on third-party, published, and often peer-reviewed work is an easy way to at least make a passing effort at disseminating high-quality information. But how would space be doled out to advocates of alternative theories, who are just as certain about the rightness of their ideas as any scientist, if that guideline became more flexible? Would they be allowed to present their views in a set number of paragraphs? Or as a percentage of the number of words written about mainstream theories? Such a setup might be a slippery slope to what's been termed "false balance," a subject on which Ars has written at length before. In that scenario, views that have been ignored for a reason are given undeserved light to create the illusion of an even playing field.

If you'd like Ars' take on alternative medicine, check out our long explainer on homeopathy and pseudoscience, as well as our reporting on current events in science policy and education.