User talk:Valjean

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Discussion of my editing at Alternative Medicine

Your latest edit to the Alternative medicine page appears to be a copy/paste, and maybe a copyvio. I've reverted it, could you perhaps write up a summary, and reference to the study itstead? Ronabop 16:31, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Looks much more consistent with the rest of the page now. :-) Ronabop 23:50, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm still learning and appreciate the helpful suggestions. Now I need help with the Alternative medicine section about "Problems with the label "alternative"". It's far too shallow and needs supporting arguments, but AED doesn't seem to think so. -- Fyslee 06:46, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Check the talk archives and article history for some of the discussions on the labels used, but let me warn you, the archives and history are *filled* with acrimonious and contentious debates on the labels used (CAM, C/AM, AM, etc.). Some of the old POV warriors may have left, but to drag out an old cliché, "there be monsters there". I guess if nothing else, the history of that article can teach you a lot about the difficult sides of wikipedia. :-) Ronabop 07:59, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm not at all surprised...;-) As the Assistant Listmaster for the Healthfraud Discussion List, I'm used to dealing with this stuff daily, and often feel we are dealing with cultists, rather than people who use rational arguments. There are some who do stick to reason and evidence, but not many. If the subject interests you, you're welcome to join.....;-) -- Fyslee 09:28, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

If you want to know what I think, please feel free to ask rather than speculate. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, so copying and pasting abstracts or quotes is a lazy, inappropriate way to build an article. By referencing "POV warriors" and "monsters", I'm not sure if Ronabop is referring to me or not, but I'm quite sure an examination of the article and Talk page histories there will show that there are no double standards in my edits. I would suggest paraphrasing the information you would like included with appropriate references. AED 17:26, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi AED,

As a newcomer here, I appreciate all the help I can get. I can see what you mean about too many quotes, etc. I have a suggested solution. I'm not sure if it's proper to do it, so let me know what you think.

How about if I create another page for the quotes and references, and then just leave a link to that page in the article?

I would also appreciate your help with a creating a sandbox (see below). -- Fyslee 19:22, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Per WP:WWIN, Wikipedia is not the proper place for a collection of quotes. If you're interested in doing that, check out Wikiquote for links to the Wikiquote websites. References and citations should go at the bottom of the article in a section entitled "References". I've created a sandbox for you at User:Fyslee/Sandbox. Keep up the good work. AED 19:44, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

The reference section is for references, not for collecting quotations. If there is a certain point you are attempting to make, try posting the quote(s) on the Talk page. If we allow one POV to post quotes, then the other POV must be allowed to do the same. The article then becomes a list of quotes rather than an encyclopedia article. AED 21:14, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I have looked at Wikiquote and Wikisource, and am not sure which one is most appropriate, if at all.

Maybe I'll try putting them in the "References" section, as you suggest. I hope AED finds that acceptable....;-)

As it is now, the section about "Problems with the label "alternative"" - while quite true - is opinion without any documentation. An encyclopedia deserves better than that. While the Dawkins quote is a good one, it doesn't quite fit the bill. (It should be at the top in a "Definition" section.) I have better quotes for documentation.

BTW, thanks for the sandbox! -- Fyslee 08:31, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Template question

Is there a standard template to use for such articles? At SkepticWiki we use one for this type of subject, the ACM Template copied here: Fyslee 21:19, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

START TEMPLATE

Definition

Origins

Quotations

Discussion

Related Topics

• Alternative and Complementary Medicine

References

Comments

For all contributors:

• Try to keep the "Definition" as straight and encyclopaedic in style as possible. Use the "Discussion" section for editorialising

• Use the references section for footnotes to books and other sources

END TEMPLATE

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My Tools

• User:Fyslee/Sandbox

SCAM

Recently, an article you wrote, SCAM, was deleted. The information in the article was insufficient to make it notable enough to qualify for an article. Feel free to recreate the article after a few weeks if you feel you can include new information asserting its notability. Don't forget to cite your sources. Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia!--File Éireann 23:48, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll work on it here User:Fyslee/Sandbox.

A longer version of what was deleted can be found here at SkepticWiki - [1] - where SPOV is encouraged.

I have copied your message here: User:Fyslee/Sandbox -- Fyslee 09:39, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Chiro category questions

Yeah, all stub templates automatically link with categories - but if you use "subst" on a template then save, it simply substitutes the template with its actual code and you can take out bits of it (like the category link).

As to the self-referential category, that's not really a bad thing - articles and categories are in different "spaces" of wikipedia, and quite often a category will have the same name as the main article in it. The problems only really come if someone tries to put a category into itself - that leads to an endless loop. Grutness...wha? 00:47, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, let me see if I understand you correctly. I'll use an illustration:

If the article were about an American dialect, lets say Southern, then it could be categorized as Southern dialect. If that were the only article on the Southern dialect, using it as its own category would lead to an endless loop, IOW it would be pointless. It should instead be categorized under American Dialects. That would be useful information.

OTOH, if there were several articles about the Southern dialect, written on its differenct aspects (Georgian, Texan, etc.), then they would all be in the Southern dialect category, so it would be Okay. Fine.

But shouldn't they all, or at least the one article that was the major one, also be in a category called American Dialects?

Similarly, shouldn't an article with no other title than Chiropractic, also be placed under the category Alternative Medicine? To place it under Chiropractic would create an endless loop, and would provide no context or additional useful information on the subject.

Lots of other chiropractic subcategories (such as Toggle Recoil, Subluxation, BJ Palmer, etc.) would of course be in the Chiropractic category (with BJ Palmer also being in the Famous Quacks category......;-)

My way of thinking tells me that Chiropractic should at least also be in the Alternative Medicine category.

I see no reason for the repeated attempts to remove the Chiropractic article from the Alternative Medicine category. That is the only way to provide additional, useful, information.

What am I missing here? -- Fyslee 05:17, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

what you're missing is that the chiropractic category is in Category:Alternative medicine. Chiropractic care is going to have enough articles to have its own category, but all of those articles are about a subset of Alternative medicine, so Category:Chiropractic is a subcategory of Category:Alternative medicine - it's in a box within the main box. To use your earlier example, if you clicked on the American dialects category, you'd see several articles, but you'd also see a some subcategories. Southern Dialects would be one of them, along with - say - New England Dialects and Western Dialects. When the Southern Dialects category is new, it might only have the Southern Dialect article in it, but any later articles, on Texan, or Arkansas or whatever, would be added to it as they were written. Hope that helps!

That makes sense. What I still am missing is the larger context in which to place Chiropractic. Since it is a subcategory of Alternative Medicine, there should be no reason that it can't also be in that category, just as the Subluxation article is listed in two categories - Medical terms & Chiropractic - which is also logical.

I'll add that category, since doing so will only improve things. It would only be some types of chiropractors who would have an interest in distancing themselves from alternative medicine, who would be interested in removing it from that category, but we're not in Wonderland, where Humpty Dumpty says: "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." Things don't work that. It belongs in that category. -- Fyslee 11:56, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

As to the stub template, yes, please put the "ral" template back on when the article's ready to go in the main article space! :) Grutness...wha? 05:34, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay. Will do at that time. -- Fyslee 11:56, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

One cannot make a category self-referential. It doesn't make sense. Chiropractic is a subcategory of Alternative medicine. I'm not sure exactly what you mean here, but chiropractic needs to be in the most appropriate category, and that would be chiropractic. --CDN99 13:02, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Making categories

Making a category is as simple as making a new article - but instead of typing zxc and following the red link to create an article called zxc, you'd type Category:zxc then follow the red link in the same way. All the details you want to know can be found at Wikipedia:Categorization. Be careful, though, because category names are a little more strictly controlled than article names, and it's harder to change the name if it's wrong the first time. Certainly Category: Physical Therapists / Physiotherapists wouldn't be accepted (the capitalization is wrong (no capital "t" in therapists) and obliques ("/") aren't used in categories unless they can't be avoided.Category: Physiotherapists would be a good name, though (I'm surprised we don't already have it!) or possibly Category:Physical therapists and physiotherapists, though that doesn't sound quite as good (I don't know enough about the difference between the two, or even if there is one - ironic, since my dad used to wok as a physiotherapist!). Grutness...wha? 23:08, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

The difference is one of English "dialect" for the generic professional title, otherwise the same profession:

American: Physical Therapist (26 million hits)

UK: Physiotherapist (7 million hits)

-- Fyslee 21:43, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Created new PT category

It seems to be working, but I'd like to see the alphabetization work better. [2]

It looks like all users will end up being placed under U, instead of their user name. How can I get my User name under "F"?

Here it looks like it works fine most of the time - [3]

-- Fyslee 05:18, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Citing sources

To cite your sources, please follow as described here:[4]

Levine2112 17:26, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

References

I've answered your query at my talk page. Thank you.--File Éireann 18:38, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Some updating done to article.--File Éireann 19:27, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Chiropractic

Sorry to keep removing your passages on DD Palmer from the Chiropractic page. A lot of this information would be better suited for his biography page. We are trying to keep this page clear and concise like the History section of pages such as Osteopathy.

Levine2112 22:33, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I'll settle for moving most of it when I get the time.

There is one small paragraph that I'll restore, as it is essential to the question of origins, and thus the History section.

How's that for a compromise? ....;-) -- Fyslee 22:56, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I'll leave it but I still don't get your point (other than insinuating DD Palmer was a trifle kooky).  :-) -- Levine2112 23:07, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Ha ha! Don't tempt me.....;-) No, seriously, it's just an important part of understanding the origins.

In order to judge whether he was "kooky" or not, one has to understand the spiritualist movement back then. It was a regular religion, with church services, summer camp meetings, etc. There were many famous spiritualists, including A.T. Still, so Palmer was just one of many. Speaking of Still, here's a short article: [5]

Here is more:

The second event was the emergence of Spiritualism, an aggregate system of beliefs that began to form in the years before the American civil war, that held, among other metaphysical beliefs, that commication with the dead was possible. The importance of Spiritualism to the development of wholistic healing systems in America and the western world cannot be over estimated. Spiritualism began around 1830 and began examining and incorporating alternative spiritual beliefs as it evolved. One of the more important thinkers the movement drew on was Emmanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish visionary of the early 18th century, who claimed to communicate with and see into invisible levels of being. Spiritualism also incorporated the ideas of Mesmer and his followers. Spiritualists began offering healining in the manner of the mesmerists, which by this time had developed into two branches, mesmerism and magnetic healing. Mesmerists by the end of the 18th century had begun to put people into a trance state for the purposes of diagnosis and the visonary exploration of invisible realms. Scientific hypnotism grew from this branch of mesmerism. The other phase of mesmerism, magnetic healing, consisted of light touch energy healing with the hands, and included non-touch healing that was called "mesmeric passes." This is in fact the ancestor and origin of what we now call energy healing or energy medicine.

Almost every field of healing that was being practiced, developed or invented in the 19th century was influenced by Spiritualism and Mesmerism. A great many healers of the era began to adopt and expand these philosophies of the invisible. Some of these healers included herbalists, homeopaths, naturopaths, water cure doctors, natural hygenists, electrical therapists and others. Magnetic healing soon began to develop into its own specialty beyond Spiritualism and the pure from of mesmeric-magnetic healing. Schools of magnetic healing were opend all over the country, especially in the mid-west. Two well known students of Spiritualism and magnetic healing were Daniel D. Palmer and A.T. Still. Palmer later created chiropractic and Still created osteopathy, the two modern versions of bone-setting and spinal manipulation.

Chiropractic and osteopathy both hold that disease and dysfunction in the body relate to blockage of the vital life force by structural interference. In chiropractic it is nervous system that is deemed to be the primary carrier of the life force. In osteopathy it is the blood stream and arterial blood supply. Many magnetic healers held that a fluid travelled along the nerve pathways. The flow of this fluid was interfered with by structural abnormalities, particularly misalignment of the spine, where the nerves branch out from the spinal cord.

In magnetic healing, the healer held one hand one the back side of the body on the spine and one hand over the diseased organ or dysfunctional body part. A healing current was mentally willed to pass from one hand to the other and thus release the interference of the nerve flow to the body part. This was in fact a very practical and workable method that brought results. Another technique was to make magnetic or mesmeric passes, the hands not touching the body, from head to toe, to balance and re-vitalize the currents of the body. In addition to both these methods, healers who used the magnetic method also began to develop a sensitivity to the life force or "energy field," and began to intuitively feel the sites of pain and dysfunction by scanning the body with their hands.D.D. Palmer and A.T. Still both utilized these methods. At some point Still began to see that fluid circulation was impaired in addition to nervous derangement due to structural interference. He began to use massge and manipulation of the spine to free up blood flow in addition to magnetic healing. Later Palmer followed suit, focusing more on freeing the nerve impluses from the spine to the organs with spinal adjustments. They both opened schools to teach their methods. [6]

.... and more here: Osteopathy and chiropractic, a little history.... -- Fyslee 05:31, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Skeptic's circle

Do you read the Skeptic's Circle at all? Jokermage ^{"Timor Mentum Occidit"} 22:11, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Although I have contributed a couple times, it's been quite awhile. That one is really great! Lots of hard work, too.

Was there anything special I should notice? -- Fyslee 22:19, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't remember any that really stood out, but my brain can be very sieve like at times. Jokermage ^{"Timor Mentum Occidit"} 22:22, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Have you seen the list of Blog Carnivals in the sidebar of my main blog, Confessions of a Quackbuster? -- Fyslee 22:26, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Categories....

My intentions were the same as yours (i.e. I agree alt. med. is pseudoscience); it's just that you had Category:Pseudoscience under Category:Alternative medicine, and vice versa. I changed things so that Cat:Alt. med. was under Pseudoscience, but not the other way around. You also had Cat: Professional CAM treatments under Cat:Alt med, and vice versa. But right now, Alt. med. is under Pseudoscience (alt. med. is a subsection of pseudoscience) and Fraud, and Pseudoscience is under Fraud. Things were just a bit mixed up. (my talk) --CDN99 23:16, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Where can I find the correct order for these categories? I read somewhere here that the category system isn't strictly a tree structure, but that it is possible to go in circles. I don't intend to do that. Since those categories overlap only partially, I felt it safer to list them all.

It doesn't make much difference now, since a pro-chiro user has been making the same reversions you have just made, and I don't want to bother doing this all over again.

I just want to know where to find the correct ordered sequence. -- Fyslee 00:15, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Paul, I was trying to be civil about this, but I see what you're doing here. Calling Chiropractic a "pseudoscience" absolutely 100% breaks the NPOV. If you want to say that its roots were in spiritualism, hey that's fine. It's part of the history. I can hardly think of any form of medicine without roots in spiritualism. But know this: Today chiropractic is a science. Doctors, yes DOCTORS of Chiropractic are accredited physicians who gain as much knowledge of the human anatomy as an MD in the 4 years of intensive research and study one receives at a chiropractic college (which is a heck of a lot more than a physiotherapist.) Chiropractic is not magic. It is not a religion. It is not a cult. It is a SCIENCE by all definitions of the word science. As it is not aligned with mainstream medicine (as far as the ruling pharmaceutical and medical lobbies are concerned), it is therefore classified as an "Alternative Medicine" - end of story. And yes, CDN99, Alternative Medicine is still a scientific classification. Chiropractors, homeopaths, osteopaths, et cetera are proud of this distinction of being an alternative to cutting the body open and loading it up with unnatural chemicals. I'm glad another user caught this edit of yours. I will always be monitoring this article for unfairness from hereon. I have nothing but time on my side. So please, feel free to add to the knowledge-base if you like, but refrain from making your potshots and attacks. Save your skeptical, unscientific opinions for your little blog. Please leave Wikipedia as a place for clear, unbiased knowledge. Levine2112 05:20, 7 January 2006 (UTC)