A diagram about Emotional Freedom Techniques that is hosted on Wikipedia.

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.

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 journalsthat 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 oneproject page, Wikipedia does not publish original thought: all material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source.

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Wikipedia founder calls alt-medicine practitioners lunatic charlatans