Is Wikipedia Biased? Depends Upon Who You Ask

Gary Null PhD

Progressive Radio Network, October 10, 2025

During the past two years, our investigations into Wikipedia and modern Skepticism, focused primarily upon subjects related to Complementary and Alternative Medicine (e.g., Chiropractic, acupuncture, naturopathy, Traditional Chinese Medicine, homeopathy, etc.), as well as individual practitioners and advocates of these nonconventional medical systems (e.g., Drs. Deepak Chopra, Larry Dossey, David Perlmutter, etc.), has shown extreme bias, distortion of facts, shoddy selection of legitimate references and a systemic effort to conceal from the IRS, Congress and the media what we believe is institutional corruption. Furthermore, during this period, we have composed and disseminated over 50 articles to deconstruct Wikipedia and its Skeptic editors. Much of this same information has been sent to Wikipedia’s co-founder Jimmy Wales and the Wikimedia Foundation Board members.

Equally important, based upon the data and evidence, the character assassination of entire groups of health practitioners, likely numbering in the tens of thousands, represents in our opinion a crime against humanity. Why? Because there are thousands of studies published in the peer-reviewed literature that prove that the image Wikipedia attempts to convey to the public is grossly wrong. Even products such as pesticides, genetically modified foods, and chemicals in common household products that international health bodies have declared as carcinogenic or the cause for serious illness, are routinely whitewashed on Wikipedia.

At the same time, Wikipedia editors who control many of the health pages, condemn, ridicule and vilify with animus the scientific conclusions that show alternative medical therapies can prevent and reverse life-threatening diseases. In fact, these editors have become so brazen, they brag about their skills and success in targeting living persons to destroy their reputations.  Such shameful and ideologically-driven activity is being supported by the Foundation’s Board and fiduciaries because of the personal philosophy of its co-founder Jimmy Wales, who is aligned with the tenets of modern Skepticism.

Our attorneys have repeatedly provided factual documentation showing evidence for all of the above to the Foundation’s Board members. This includes examples of individuals who control the biographical pages of living persons who are viciously attacked and who operate within a network of secret communications that are in direct violation of Wikipedia’s standards. Despite the evidence now in the Board’s hands, it has continued to permit this illegal activity to occur because biographies remain unchanged.

Unlike other legitimate encyclopedias that rely upon experts and professional scholars in their fields to generate content and have very strict rules for what and what cannot be used as referenced resources, Wikipedia is far more vague and ambiguous; consequently, the encyclopedia is riddled with tendentious and bigoted content. Nor is any expertise required to edit on Wikipedia pages.

To further highlight the extent of Wikipedia’s problems, and the depth of the systemic rot that infiltrates its medical and health pages, the following information was provided by a former editor who has worked within Wikipedia as an administrator.

It is now time to insist that the US Congress and the Inspector General of the IRS undertake an audit of the Wikimedia Foundation to determine whether the organization is in violation of its non-profit status and transgresses the statutes of the federal Communication Decency Act. If so, the Foundation should be held accountable for the thousands of cases of defamation and erroneous information leveled at individuals who have discovered they have no viable recourse to correct the untruths on Wikipedia. Mr. Wales and his Foundation, on the other hand, believe they can operate above the law and are exempt from the consequences of their actions. In the meantime, we continue to be flooded with new additional information, including from individuals within Wikipedia. Therefore, we are preparing litigation to hold the Foundation accountable for the on-going aspersion of living persons that it has allowed for many years.

Examples of Negative Bias on Wikipedia Alternative Medical Pages. There is a dedicated movement to force an orthodox, skeptic view on Wikipedia. This is an effort that is well-known, catalogued, and recognized as a source of misinformation and bias.

There is a Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Skepticism) that organizes and instructs these skeptics to:

·      List acceptable/unacceptable ideas

·       * Share hatred of “pseudo” topics

·       * Strategize on how to rewrite those topics

·       * Share ideological talking points

·       * Outline “hit-list” of articles that need to be changed to be more negative

Below are a handful of quotes from various articles on the skeptic “hit-list.” In all of them other editors quickly notice the skeptics inserting obvious negative bias and complain, but the skeptic editors organize and collaborate to reject all complaints and any narrative but their own. There are hundreds of quotes like the ones sampled below.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)

1.1. [REJECTED BIAS COMPLAINT] The lead is presently dwelling heavily on the lack of scientific support for the notions behind TCM, and for its efficacy. The prominence of this material in the lead strongly implies a WP:FRINGE/WP:MEDRS-solid entire section about this, but it is absent. We either need that in this article, or a well-sourced split-off article. 50.78.103.6 (talk) 23:21, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

1.2. [In REJECTING a bias complaint that the TCM article was biased and trying to force the terms pseudoscience and fringe, a leading skeptic editor sarcastically replied] You appear to be working from the assumption that TCM is not based upon pseudoscience and fringe theories. –Ronz (talk) 18:16, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

1.3. [REJECTED BIAS COMPLAINT] I think it’s inaccurate to place TCM in the same group with “scientific racism” and vaccine conspiracies. It would make more sense to group the alternative medicines covered by health insurance, separate from the truly fringe medicine. So this would require two groups instead of the current one. There would be an “Alternative Medicine” series, and a “Pseudo-medicine” series. Thorbachev (talk) 10:04, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

1.4. [REJECTED BIAS COMPLAINT] Please either change the title of this topic to ‘CLASSICAL CHINESE MEDICINE’, or change the content completely. The historical information in this article is incorrect. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) was created in the 1950’s under the communist party. TCM was created to ‘fuse’ it with the western world and many of the mentioned aspects of the classical practice of medicine (Yin/Yang, 5 Elements and all the ancient historical references) have been either adulterated or removed from the learning and practice of TCM. Classical Chinese Medicine is the ancient and historical practice of Chinese Medicine, which this article is mostly about. This article confuses the two and is therefore incorrect. 92.211.57.142 (talk) 15:47, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

1.5. [REJECTION] No. Roxy, the dog. woof 15:51, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

2. Acupuncture

2.1. [Unsupported assertion used to REJECT inclusion of any peer-reviewed medical studies supporting acupuncture] This is true, but not in the way you claim. Use of stage dagger needles and other improved blinding techniques have indeed demonstrated that acupuncture works by fooling the patient into reporting an improvement, rather than by actually effecting any improvement. Guy (help!) 14:42, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

2.2. [REJECTED BIAS COMPLAINT] This article lists acupuncture as a pseudoscience based on the opinion of a webpage using research more than 20 years old. The WHO considers acupuncture to be part of a system of East Asian medicine that is valid enough that the next round of ICD codes will include Chinese Medicine diagnosis codes like Liver Spleen Disharmony which has a scientifically valid and measurable symptom picture. The Department of Health and Human Services in its 2019 Task Force report lists acupuncture as a first line treatment for pain and the VA includes it as a standard option for treatment of a variety of conditions including pain and PTSD. This is far from a pseudoscience and Wikipedia needs to catch up to the results of research less than 20 years old. Atymy33 (talk) 02:52, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

2.3. [REJECTED BIAS COMPLAINT] I am concerned by the accent of the “pseudoscience” aspect weighed in the article. It is a well-known fact that a.p. is a form of alternative medicine but it seems like this article was written as an attempt to disprove it by skeptoscience, pointing out inconsistencies in studies instead of describing its methods and goals (and their means). Reading through the whole article, I barely resist the urge to change the title to “the pseudoscience of acupuncture”. Kuchesezik 21:56, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

2.4. [REJECTION] You do not understand how science works, and you do not understand how Wikipedia works. Please drop the WP:STICK. –Hob Gadling

2.5. [REJECTED BIAS COMPLAINT] You “Guys” are saying that “science says” something that *some* scientific studies have concluded, but not all. It’s pretty unscientific to say things like “science (as if it were an entity) has this very simple judgment about this pretty complicated topic”. It’s silly, and people that come to the article recognize that the tone of the article is cartoonish in its amplification of few voices (Ernst and Novella).Herbxue (talk) 23:40, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

2.6. [REJECTION] Ernst’s Law absolutely applies to Wikipedia articles: if you are writing about alt-med and you are not hated by the alt-med world, you’re not doing it right. Guy (Help!) 23:54, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

3. Chiropractic 

3.1. [REJECTED BIAS COMPLAINT] I gather from the article, and particularly this talk page that this article is under heavy attack from trolling, presumably proponents of chiropractic. It is now locked stating that chiropractic is a pseudoscience, as evidenced by a paper from last decade. However, things are moving. Just last year JAMA (yes, journal of American medical association) published a Cochrane meta analysis of randomized clinical trials of the chiropractic spinal manipulation, and the results came out in favor of the intervention. So today it’s simply not evidence-based to claim that it is a pseudoscience. Therefore I think this is a good example of overeager wiki editors trying to defend their own worldview, rather than yield to evidence based world views. LasseFolkersen (talk) 06:57, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

3.2. [REJECTION by skeptic editor, declaring Wikipedia must be based on scientific sources) You have no hope of winning this, not because of external circumstances, but because you are wrong and you only have bad reasoning on your side. “supported by controlled clinical trials” – This is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. You picked one study out of the total data base. The fact that it confirms your opinion does not mean chiropractic is science, it means you used the invalid method of cherry picking.  “Agenda-pushers” is not the crux here, “bad reasoning” is. You are not competent to tell good reasoning from bad reasoning, and therefore your own agenda-pushing fails. Of course you fall back on argumentum ad hominem, as pseudoscience proponents usually do. –Hob Gadling (talk) 17:05, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

3.3. [REJECTION by skeptic editor, declaring Wikipedia must be based on popular sources, not individual scientific sources) Meta-analyses of all available studies of one specific treatment against one specific ailment. You cherry picked the meta-analysis of the one ailment chiropractics can do something against and ignored all the other studies on ailments that they try to do something against, but fail abysmally… –Hob Gadling (talk) 17:32, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

3.4. [REJECTION by skeptic editor, declaring Wikipedia must be based on undetermined “reliable” sources, not popular sources) Wikipedia looks at the reliable sources, not at search engine hits… –Hob Gadling (talk) 18:50, 22 August 2018 (UTC)