Homeopathy edit war

Welcome to the research project about the Homeopathy edit war at Wikipedia. Edit waring at other wikis that is related to homeopathy is also relevant to this research project.

Homeopathy is a type of medical treatment performed by giving the patient an extremely diluted medicine. Homeopaths believe that these homeopathic medicines are efficacious even if they do not contain any molecules of medicinal substances. A homeopathic medicine in made by starting with a plant or mineral substance, but during preparation of the medicine any original plant or mineral molecules are diluted below a level that would allow for a conventional chemical effect on the patient. Homeopathy is controversial because conventional science cannot explain how such diluted homeopathic medicine might be of medicinal value.

The Wikipedia article about homeopathy is about the 6,000th most visited article at Wikipedia. Large numbers of people use homeopathic medicine. The Wikipedia article about homeopathy was started in 2001, the year that Wikipedia was founded. The "proper" content of this article immediately became a matter of dispute with some editors trying to describe the practice of homeopathy and other editors trying to label homeopathy as a pseudoscientific scam. The conflict between editors with these two different points of view has never ended. Edit waring at the Wikipedia homeopathy page has resulted in editing sanctions (blocks and bans) being imposed on many editors.

This research project is an historical analysis of the homeopathy edit war. Can we learn how to avoid such edit wars and limit the damage that they do?