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

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.