AN online petition calling for Wikipedia to stop calling acupuncture ‘pseudoscience’ has drawn much attention.

    The petition, “Clean up the Wikipedia Acupuncture page to reflect medical and scientific consensus” created on Change.org, aims to collect 10,000 signatures, and more than 2,500 people have signed it as of Tuesday.

    The Wikipedia article about acupuncture, a type of treatment of a person’s illness or pain by sticking small needles into their body, has caused uproar among traditional Chinese medicine practitioners around the globe and people who have received the treatment.

    “It (acupuncture) is a key component of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). TCM theory and practice are not based upon scientific knowledge, and acupuncture is a pseudoscience,” the Wikipedia article says.

    Mel Koppelman, an acupuncturist based in the U.K. and a main originator of the petition, posted on Asian Medicine Zone, “acupuncture has been increasingly embraced by conventional care as an efficacious treatment for a variety of conditions.”

    “The page, controlled by a group of staunch anti-acupuncture ‘pseudoskeptics,’ insists that mainstream support for acupuncture from the medical and scientific community doesn’t exist,” Koppelman said on Asian Medicine Zone.

    Samantha Lien, communications manager at Wikimedia Foundation, said Wikipedia usually does not write, edit or control the content of articles on its website, and that all the articles were contributed by volunteers from around the world, fawan.com reported.

    Lien said they would follow up on this issue and provide further information as soon as possible, according to fawan.com.

    Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales hasn’t responded to the petition. (CRI)