Negotiating distinctions between conventional and alternative medicine in the English- and French-language Wikipedias

随着17世纪和18世纪欧洲科学范式的出现，现代医学越来越多地与自然科学保持一致。这一点在今天变得尤为明显，因为全世界的专业医生都被鼓励在治疗患者时遵循“循证医学”的指导方针：医生被训练拒绝主观直觉和个人经验作为正确决策的依据，而是要求通过回顾随机对照试验和基于人群的实证研究的已发表结果来寻找解决方案（所罗门，2015年）。与此同时，这种生产和应用医学知识的科学方法试图与现在所谓的“传统”，“民间”，“替代”或“补充”医学（CAM）保持距离：CAM的批评者试图在传统医学的经验客观性和可检验性之间保持坚定的区别，以及世界各地许多地方传统所固有的替代医学知识体系的未经检验和无法检验的“江湖郎中”（Ramsey 1999）。该项目表明，在线百科全书维基百科构成了最引人注目的环境之一，其中科学和非传统医学之间的界限被定义，在当代全球文化中进行谈判和竞争。在冠状病毒大流行期间，全球数百万互联网用户将维基百科的内容视为医疗信息的来源：仅在2020年3月，“2019冠状病毒疾病”页面的日均浏览量就超过25万次。百科全书对医学主题的覆盖范围由一个专门的国际志愿编辑社区维护和扩展，其中许多人是合格的医疗保健专业人员或医学生（Beck 2013）。然而，维基百科并不要求贡献者拥有相关的资格或专业知识;相反，该平台允许网站的任何访问者修改其内容。来自不同文化和政治背景的数千名互联网用户，其中一些是替代医学的从业者或倡导者，聚集在一个空间，并要求就如何最好地代表当前医学知识的总和达成共识。该项目旨在通过探索以下研究问题，为协商达成共识的辩论提供新的见解：1）我们如何开发基于语料库的方法和可视化工具，以识别和跟踪在大型，不稳定和异构的真实在线数据集合中重复出现的话语模式和策略？2)当维基人讨论传统医学和替代疗法之间的区别时，疗效、安全性和证据等概念是如何工具化和有争议的？3)这些争论在英语和法语维基百科社区中以相似或不同的方式进行到什么程度？4)关于世界各地当地居民的文化、宗教、政治和意识形态敏感性和利益如何影响了该网站与健康有关的内容的合作创作，这些相似之处和不同之处可能告诉我们什么？通过这一分析，该项目力求为在线空间科学知识传播的全球层面提供新的见解。通过向不同受众传播其调查结果，它希望提高科学界和公众成员对医学面临的挑战的性质、原因和影响的重要认识。它还旨在促进对科学、文化和政治之间复杂联系的自我反思，沿着对科学证据固有的争议性质的更细致的理解。

Following the emergence of the scientific paradigm in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries, modern medicine has increasingly aligned itself with the natural sciences. This has become especially evident today as professional medical practitioners throughout the world are encouraged to follow the guidelines of 'evidence-based medicine' when treating their patients: doctors are trained to reject subjective intuition and personal experience as grounds for proper decision making, and are asked instead to seek out solutions by reviewing the published findings of randomized controlled trials and empirical population-based studies (Solomon 2015). At the same time, this scientific approach to the production and application of medical knowledge seeks to distance itself from what is now termed 'traditional', 'folk', 'alternative' or 'complementary' medicine (CAM): critics of CAM attempt to maintain a firm distinction between the empirical objectivity and testability of conventional medicine, and the untested and untestable 'quackery' of alternative systems of medical knowledge indigenous to many local traditions around the world (Ramsey 1999).This project suggests that the online encyclopedia Wikipedia constitutes one of the most high-profile environments in which boundaries between scientific and non-conventional medicine are defined, negotiated and contested within contemporary global culture. During the coronavirus pandemic, it has become evident that many millions of internet users around the world look to Wikipedia's content as a source of medical information: in March 2020 alone, the 'Coronavirus Disease 2019' page received a daily average of over 250,000 views. The enyclopedia's coverage of medical topics is maintained and expanded by a dedicated international community of volunteer editors, many of whom are qualified health care professionals or medical students (Beck 2013). Wikipedia does not however require contributors to hold relevant qualifications or expertise; instead, the platform allows any visitor to the site to alter its content. Many thousands of internet users from a wide variety of cultural and political backgrounds, some of whom are practitioners or advocates of alternative medicine, are brought together in a single space and asked to achieve consensus on how best to represent the sum of current medical knowledge.This project seeks to develop novel insights into the debates through which this consensus is negotiated by exploring the following research questions:1) How might we develop incisive corpus-based methodologies and visualization tools with which to identify and trace discursive patterns and strategies that recur across large, unstable and heterogeneous collections of authentic online data?2) How are concepts such as efficacy, safety and evidence instrumentalised and contested when Wikipedians discuss distinctions between conventional medicine and alternative therapies?3) To what extent do these debates play out in similar or different ways in the English- and French-language Wikipedia communities?4) What might these similarities and differences tell us about how the cultural, religious, political and ideological sensitivities and interests of local populations in different parts of the world have shaped the collaborative creation of the site's health-related content?Through this analysis, the project seeks to contribute novel insight into the global dimensions of the contestation of scientific knowledge in online spaces. By disseminating its findings among diverse audiences, it hopes to raise critical awareness among members of both the scientific community and the general public regarding the nature, causes and implications of the challenges mounted against medical science. It further aims to promote self-reflexive consideration of the complex ties binding science, culture and politics, along with more nuanced understandings of the inherently contested nature of scientific evidence.