Talk:Chiropractic

Scope of Practice

I edited the scope of practice to be more specific. Currently, physical therapists are prohibited from performing SM in only two states (Arkansas and WA) which I think is worth mentioning. Further, in NO states do physical therapists have to recieve "chiropractic training"...that would make them chiropractors. In some states, PT's must show advanced education in spinal manipulation which does not equate to chiropractic.

Further, I am not aware of ANY states wher ONLY chiropractors can provide spinal manipulation. Could we please find a public record of this claim?

Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.17.98.158 (talk) 04:36, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Do you have a reliable source for that information about Arkansas and Washington? The article needs to cite it. The source currently cited, Hilliard & Johnson 2004, cites Arkansas, Michigan, and Montana as states who restrict physical therapists against performing spinal manipulation (it does not say that this is an exhaustive list). You're right about the "chiropractic training" bit: that part has been proposed in some legislatures but hasn't passed (I misread the source). I presume it'd mean that PTs would have to take chiropractic courses though not enough courses to become licensed chiropractors; but it's irrelevant since the laws haven't passed. Eubulides (talk) 04:51, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Advantages and disadvantages

A recent set of changes was mostly good, except that it made the following change to the lead:

"complementary and alternative medicine, a characterization that many chiropractors reject. The advantages and disadvantages of this categorization have been described and it is rejected by many chiropractors."

with the newly added "advantages and disadvantages" idea supported by Cooperstein & Gleberzon 2004 (ISBN 0-443-07413-5). I see three problems with this change:

• This newly-added idea in the lead does not summarize anything in the body, contrary to WP:LEAD.
• I don't see where the cited source directly supports this newly-added idea.
• The idea is vague. Almost everything has pros and cons, so what's the point of saying that here?

For now I undid that part of the changes; further comments are welcome. Eubulides (talk) 03:59, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

It's from pages 304-305: "Is CAM Status Desirable For Chiropractic?" This subject is alluded to in the article, but this discussion isn't mentioned with a source. Using this source bolsters the fact that chiropractic is considered CAM, regardless of whether some chiros don't like the characterization. It has also been a subject of much debate on this talk page, and this chiropractic source reinforces the argument for keeping our current content. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:13, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, Google Books URLs don't work for me. What does the source actually say about this? Eubulides (talk) 07:23, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd copy it if I could. I don't know how. Sometimes Google Books' previews provide the option of viewing the text in HTML or text format, which can be copied very easily. This doesn't offer that option. Maybe someone else can figure it out. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:36, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, I managed to scare up a copy. There's a subtle point here: the source doesn't directly support the claim "The advantages and disadvantages of this categorization have been described", because the source doesn't say that the pros and cons have been described: it merely lists some pros and cons, which is a different thing. Briefly, the source argues that there are political and money reasons to be embraced by conventional medicine, as well as P.R. and some funding advantages to be thought to be CAM. Those funding advantages are a bit dated (and anyway dubious, as funding is also available for conventional medical research), but the other points are valid. I don't think this needs to be in the lead, though. How about appending the following to the first paragraph of Scope of practice, citing the chapter "Current and future utilization rates and trends" (pages 297–305) of the source?

"Aligning with conventional medicine could give chiropractors more university affiliation and access to hospitals and long-term facilities; aligning with the CAM movement could bring more patients looking for nonmedical approaches."

Eubulides (talk) 07:58, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Excellent. Thanks. -- Brangifer (talk) 15:32, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Refs

• Spinal manipulation for asthma: a systematic review of randomised clinical trials.
• Chiropractic spinal manipulation for infant colic: a systematic review of randomised clinical trials. QuackGuru (talk) 17:45, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up; I added those. Eubulides (talk) 21:58, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

. More refs. QuackGuru (talk) 05:26, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that list. I Added Kaminskyj et al.. Johnson et al. isn't that relevant. Alcantara et al. is a low-quality source (a selective and idiosyncratic review). Bronfort et al. is a weird one, as it's seemingly about everything; not quite sure how to work that in (partly because it duplicates contents of reviews by the same authors that we already source; no sense duplicating citations, and I suppose we might drop some of our older citations if we cite this one). This is as far as I've gotten so far, but I'll try to look into this more over the next few days. Eubulides (talk) 07:56, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Unnecessary vague tag

This edit added a "vague" tag that's unnecessary. There's nothing wrong with summarizing the cited source as saying that critics of chiropractic get sued. There's no need to repeat their criticisms here, as similar points are already made elsewhere in this article, with much better sources. If it really were problem that this sentence is too vague (which it's not), then let's simply remove the claim; it's not that important. Eubulides (talk) 06:24, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The reader does not know why the critics were threatened with lawsuits. QuackGuru (talk) 06:26, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

We don't know that. The source doesn't say, and it's unlikely that we'll find reliable sources that do say. Were they criticized to shut them up? or to deter other potential critics? or to make money off them? or simply because of personal feuds? There are lots of things that we don't know and cannot really know for certain, but that doesn't mean that we can't summarize what we do know. Again, the point is relatively minor, and if there's a serious dispute about whether it's vague, then let's simply drop the claim. Eubulides (talk) 07:25, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I briefly mentioned the dispute without going into too much detail. QuackGuru (talk) 07:51, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

It's a notable enough phenomena that it's worth keeping, but just make very short mention. No need to mention all the other cases where this has happened. -- Brangifer (talk) 08:17, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

QuackGuru's edit doesn't say "why the critics were threatened with lawsuits". It therefore does not address the claimed problem. I am mystified why the (not-that-grammatical) change was made. The overall phenomenon of chiropractors suing critics is arguably notable, but mentioning the Singh case itself is WP:RECENTISM. Let's go back to the way it was; the recent change made the article worse. Eubulides (talk) 08:27, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The Singh case, although recent, seems unique, even in the history of British libel cases. It should be incorporated in the main Chiropractic article. I agree it is a unique case that should be mentioned in this article. QuackGuru (talk) 18:21, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Every case is unique in some sense, but the Singh case is not unique as an example of British libel law's misuse to go after medical critics. There is also, for example, the Wilmshurst case; see Marcovitch 2009 (PMID 19589817). Assertions that the Singh case is unique seem to be based mostly on a lack of understanding of British legal practice. More generally, chiropractors often sue critics (and each other); what's so special about this particular lawsuit? Why not also mention, for example, chiropractors' lawsuits against Blue Cross and Aetna? Do we have a reliable secondary source that talks about a pattern of chiropractors suing people? If not, I'm dubious about our citing individual lawsuits based only on our own editorial judgment. Again, let's go back to the way it was: that was simpler and reflected the source better. Eubulides (talk) 21:03, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Sense About Science: keep the libel laws out of science, BMJ 2009;338:b2254 doi:10.1136/bmj.b2254, BMJ 2009;339:b4429 doi:10.1136/bmj.b4429, BMJ 2009;339:b2783 doi:10.1136/bmj.b2783, Ben Goldacre (2009-07-29). "An intrepid, ragged band of bloggers". The Guardian. Retrieved 2009-10-08., "Chiropocalypse". Richard Dawkins. Retrieved 2009-07-29., Lucas Laursen. "The Great Beyond: Chiropractic group advises members to 'withdraw from the battleground'". Nature.com. Retrieved 20 June 2009., Lucas Laursen. "The Great Beyond: Complaints converge on chiropractors". Nature.com. Retrieved 20 June 2009., (PMID 19848549), (PMID 19833705).

This case is unique in part because of all the coverage by reliable sources. QuackGuru (talk) 21:16, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

No, it's not unique. I can easily cite dozens of reliable sources on the Wilmshurst libel case. Here are a few, for starters: doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7423.1113, doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7433.230-a, doi:10.1136/bmj.a2822, [1], doi:10.1136/bmj.c967. doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7433.230. If anything, there are probably more reliable sources about this one, than about the Singh case. I can also cite dozens of reliable sources about chiropractors suing insurance companies. So, again: why push this particular case in this article? Eubulides (talk) 00:46, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I tried to compromise by keeping it very brief. QuackGuru (talk) 04:55, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

WCA 240 members around the Ronnberg family. Reliable? I dont think so. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.217.112.100 (talk) 21:46, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Page loading efficiency and style

I recently edited this page in a minor way and it took about 30 seconds between the time I hit the "Save page" button and the time I saw the resulting page. The vast majority of this time was spent inside the Wikipedia servers (not inside my browser or doing network transmission); this can be determined by reading the little comment at the bottom of the HTML, for example:

<!-- Served by srv141 in 27.744 secs. -->

A major reason this page takes a long time to load to the use of the standard Wikipedia citation templates such as {{cite web}}. Recently developed faster & smaller Vancouver system templates such as {{vcite web}} would make the page significantly faster to generate (roughly 2.5 times faster in my test; admittedly I did only one test) as well as significantly smaller in terms of the HTML generated (the resulting page is 37% smaller, in terms of number of bytes of HTML). Let's use these templates here; they're already in use in Autism, Wildfire, etc., and have resulted in major savings both for time and for the size of the generated HTML. You can see the proposed change here and the proposed new version here. Eubulides (talk) 09:01, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Attribution

I reverted the removal of attribution of an opinion, that can clearly not be documented as fact. DigitalC (talk) 04:22, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Unnecessary attribution is a violation of WP:ASF policy when no serious dispute exists among reliable sources (an objective fact that is not a serious dispute). WP:ASF does not require in-text attribution for information where there is no serious dispute. Requiring in-text attribution for widespread consensus of reliable sources on the grounds that it is "opinion" would allow a contrarian reader to insist on in-text attribution for material about which there is no serious dispute, using the argument that the material is an "opinion". This would mean, in the end, that all material in Wikipedia would require in-text attribution, even if only one Wikipedia editor insisted on it, which is not the intent of WP:ASF or of WP:CONSENSUS. QuackGuru (talk) 06:56, 14 March 2010 (UTC)