User talk:Trevmar: Difference between revisions

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Latest revision as of 19:15, 29 June 2011

Hello, and Welcome to the Wikipedia, Trevmar! Thanks for the contributions to the Sarcoidosis article. Here are a few perfunctory tips to hasten your acculturation into the Wikipedia experience:

Take a look at the New contributors' help page, the Wikipedia Tutorial and the Manual of Style, and If you still need any help, you can always post your question at the Help Desk.
When you have time, please peruse The five pillars of Wikipedia and Assume good faith, but please keep in mind the unique style you brought to the Wiki!
Always be mindful of striving for NPOV, be respectful of others' POV, and remember your perspective on the meaning of neutrality is invaluable!
Explore, be bold in editing, and, above all else, have fun!

And some odds and ends: Cite your sources, Civility, Conflict resolution, How to edit a page, How to write a great article, Pages needing attention, Peer review, Policy Library, Verifiability, Village pump, and Wikiquette; also, you can sign your name on any page by typing four tildes: ~~~~. Best of luck, Trevmar, and most importantly, have fun! Ombudsman 19:05, 17 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You aren't helping yourself

I'm trying to help make sure that the biography on you is of high quality. I feel that the answers you are giving to things that I write are not particularly helpful to you. I think you might want to be more simple and direct with answers, because the people who think you are a crackpot are only fueled when you give what appear to you (perhaps) to be clever answers but appear to me (I'm sorry to say) evasive and unhelpful.

Someone has accused your work of amounting to a rejection of the Germ theory of disease. That's an easy charge for you to simply refute, and then we'd be done with that part of this. Just say "Actually, I very much agree that germs are the cause of many diseases. Nothing about my work suggests otherwise. I also happen to agree with mainstream science that many diseases are caused by things other than germs. I consider it outrageous that such an accusation has been leveled at me."

That'd be clear and to the point and would help everyone resolve the issue.

When you play around verbally, it doesn't help me to help make sure the article about you is accurate. So please try to be more simple and to the point.

What might be helpful, and you can email me if you prefer (use the e-mail this user link on my user talk page), is if you list for me whatever you regard as the 3 sentences in the article that I might most productively focus my attention on. That's just a start, I know, but it would be helpful. What in the article is false or misleading or inconsistent with the facts as put forward in reliable sources? Things that are easily refuted are the easiest place to start. And be simple and to the point, no games.

I'm a volunteer like everyone else. So please respect my time and let's get straight down to the work at hand, ok?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:59, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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 And some odds and ends: [[Wikipedia:Cite your sources|Cite your sources]], [[Wikipedia:Civility|Civility]], [[Wikipedia:Conflict resolution|Conflict resolution]], [[Wikipedia:How to edit a page|How to edit a page]], [[Wikipedia:How to write a great article|How to write a great article]], [[Wikipedia:Pages needing attention|Pages needing attention]], [[Wikipedia:Peer review|Peer review]], [[Wikipedia:Policy Library|Policy Library]], [[Wikipedia:Verifiability|Verifiability]], [[Wikipedia:Village pump|Village pump]], and [[Wikipedia:Wikiquette|Wikiquette]]; also, you can sign your name on any page by typing four tildes:  &#x7e;&#x7e;&#x7e;&#x7e;.  Best of luck, Trevmar, and most importantly, have fun!  [[User:Ombudsman|Ombudsman]] 19:05, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
-== Minor edits ==
-[[Image:Information.svg|25px|alt=|link=]] Thank you for [[Special:Contributions/Trevmar|your contributions]]. Please remember to mark your edits as "minor" only if they truly are minor edits. In accordance with [[Help:Minor edit]], a minor edit is one that the editor believes requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute. Minor edits consist of things such as typographical corrections, formatting changes, or rearrangement of text without modification of content. Additionally, the [[Help:Reverting|reversion]] of clear-cut [[Wikipedia:Vandalism|vandalism]] and test edits may be labeled "minor". Thank you. <!-- Template:uw-minor --> [[User:WLU|WLU]] <small>[[User talk:WLU|(t)]] [[Special:Contributions/WLU|(c)]] Wikipedia's rules:</small>[[WP:SIMPLE|<sup><span style='color:#FFA500'>simple</span></sup>]]/[[WP:POL|<sub><span style='color:#008080'>complex</span></sub>]] 13:42, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
-:::Sorry, the days when I was fully savvy on wikis have long since gone. My head is full of medical jargon and concepts these days. I will try to be more careful, however. [[User:Trevmar|Trevmar]] ([[User talk:Trevmar#top|talk]])
-::::It doesn't matter that much, users can set their preferences to ignore minor edits which means some people might miss it.  Previously you could mark all edits minor by default but that option seems to be disabled now, for me at least.  I don't bother marking my edits minor even when they are but if your preferences are set to automatically tick all edits as minor you may want to look into disabling it.  [[User:WLU|WLU]] <small>[[User talk:WLU|(t)]] [[Special:Contributions/WLU|(c)]] Wikipedia's rules:</small>[[WP:SIMPLE|<sup><span style='color:#FFA500'>simple</span></sup>]]/[[WP:POL|<sub><span style='color:#008080'>complex</span></sub>]] 14:10, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
-:::::You know, honestly I don't know what my default settings are, but I did just try an edit, and the box wasn't ticked, so maybe I checked it by mistake. As I said, I will be more careful in future.[[User:Trevmar|Trevmar]] ([[User talk:Trevmar#top|talk]]) 14:13, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
-::::::Meh, the only further comment I can provide is sometimes I hit the minor edit button when I'm aiming for save or the edit summary.  I only mentioned because I saw several tagged in a row in your contribution history and thought it might be a misfiring default.  Since that seems to not be the case, not much else to watch for.  [[User:WLU|WLU]] <small>[[User talk:WLU|(t)]] [[Special:Contributions/WLU|(c)]] Wikipedia's rules:</small>[[WP:SIMPLE|<sup><span style='color:#FFA500'>simple</span></sup>]]/[[WP:POL|<sub><span style='color:#008080'>complex</span></sub>]] 14:23, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
-== Please thread your posts ==
-See [[conversation threading]].  When you post large blocks of text that are not separated from other persons' posts by an indent, it becomes difficult to separate comments by different people.  Use one colon for each new post, and the template {{tl|od}} for a "carriage return" to start a new line.  [[User:WLU|WLU]] <small>[[User talk:WLU|(t)]] [[Special:Contributions/WLU|(c)]] Wikipedia's rules:</small>[[WP:SIMPLE|<sup><span style='color:#FFA500'>simple</span></sup>]]/[[WP:POL|<sub><span style='color:#008080'>complex</span></sub>]] 18:23, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
-:WLU, these days my mind is focused on science, rather than editing. I appreciate your help in formatting. But I do beg your forbearance in understanding that I have responsibilities which are being displaced by having to spend time here, trying to correct the facts, and to assure editors I am complying with [[WP:AGF|WP:AGF]].
-:I am intrigued why editors here keep tagging my work with "alternative medicine." What I am doing is as mainstream as it is possible to do these days. Why is the "alternative" tag always applied here? [[User:Trevmar|Trevmar]] ([[User talk:Trevmar#top|talk]]) 18:39, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
-::Because your work isn't "medicine", it's speculative research that hasn't been subjected to a randomized, controlled trial.  Your interpretations of the human genome/metagenome and vitamin D are not mainstream.  Possibly yet, possibly never.  You don't seem to be able to point to medical textbooks, or the publications of major medical agencies, that have seized your work and began implementing major recommendations based on it.  From the perspective of a skeptical oursider, your work looks much like that of quacks and cranks - you had an idea, and you've decided it's a revolutionary truth that you now promote through conferences, press releases and speculative publications rather than basic research.  Your primary indication that your interpretation has merit in humans appears to be found in case studies rather than randomized controlled trials.  Those results haven't been picked up by other researchers and confirmed or extended.  Again, it's simply too early to proclaim you to be ''correct'' about your interpreatations.  You ''haven't'' changed the scientific consensus, at best you've got scientists, a notoriously polite bunch in print, saying it's "interesting".  Part of the issue ''might'' be that your work is so new, it's simply not had time to be adopted.  On the other hand, it might be unconvincing and violate a whole bunch of current theories about biology - doesn't make it wrong, just means you will really need solid evidence to convince the skeptical majority.  Time, and evidence, will tell.  Are you familiar with XMVR as a hypothesized cause of CFS?  If not, check out a skeptical set of blog postings [http://scienceblogs.com/erv/xmrv/ here].  You're at the point now where XMVR would have been perhaps five years ago, or ''H. pylori'' in around 1983 - letters to the editor, conference procedings, but minimal acceptance and little empirical evidence.  Your results may be XMVR, they may be ''H. pylori''.  Time and evidence will tell, but right now you're still protesting the treatment of your ideas on wikipedia without realizing what wikipedia is, how it reports and most crucially, without a lot of supporting evidence that you are believed by most researchers in the field.  [[User:WLU|WLU]] <small>[[User talk:WLU|(t)]] [[Special:Contributions/WLU|(c)]] Wikipedia's rules:</small>[[WP:SIMPLE|<sup><span style='color:#FFA500'>simple</span></sup>]]/[[WP:POL|<sub><span style='color:#008080'>complex</span></sub>]] 19:46, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
-:::I guess you mean [[XMRV]], not XMVR. [[Special:Contributions/88.104.1.52|88.104.1.52]] ([[User talk:88.104.1.52|talk]]) 15:17, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
-== Apology ==
-Sorry for my rather perfunctory answer on my talkpage earlier. I find that discussions function better when centralized to one location instead of diffused across many perhaps non-obvious venues, but my response was still less than helpful. I have looked into the sources a bit more now, but in the interests of avoiding personality conflicts with some of the other editors there, I will be avoiding your article for the foreseeable future. You may already be aware of it, but if not here is a link to Wikipedia's policy on writing [[WP:BLP|biographies of living persons]]. The community generally takes its responsibility quite seriously to make sure that statements about living persons are exceptionally well sourced.<p>A few general recommendations follow. Writing an encyclopedia article is, I can tell you from personal experience, quite different from writing a journal article. The intellectual game here is not to bring together disparate lines of evidence to make our own conclusions regarding what the evidence supports, but merely to provide an accurate reliability-weighted summary of what other sources have stated. Providing direct attribution and interpreting sources narrowly (Dr. X of Y University states Z in source W) can often help in this regard.  [[Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)]] also contains some pretty solid advice on writing. The [[Wikipedia:New contributors' help page|New contributors' help page]] and the [[Wikipedia:Help desk|Help desk]] are generally recommended, and you seem already to have found the several boards for inviting additional comment from independent editors. You might also consider proposing that the present article be moved to [[Marshall Protocol]], which would naturally change the focus of the material presented. Good luck, - [[User talk:2over0|2/0]] <small>([[Special:Contributions/2over0|cont.]])</small> 10:31, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
-==Reply==
-I thought I'd reply here so it wouldn't get lost in the sea of polemic on the article talk page.  Trevmar, you are expending considerable effort here looking out for your article so I just wanted to make sure where you stand and are coming from.  If you want the article around, it's a case of live by the sword, die by the sword. :) I find the self-appointed "science" crusaders and gatekeepers around here a pain as well especially since few of them actually write articles—but it's the kind of place Wikipedia has become or maybe always was.  Good luck convincing the factotums and wikilawyers here, but if not maybe you can take some comfort from knowing it means you can present more unique real content on your own website. [[User:Lambanog|Lambanog]] ([[User talk:Lambanog|talk]]) 16:57, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
-:Of course, the "science" crusaders see themselves as properly presenting the scientific consensus as is required by our policy on [[WP:NPOV|neutrality]].  Multiple sides to these arguments.  As NPOV and [[WP:UNDUE]] says - if there are many adherents to an idea, it should be trivial to cite them.  If there are a few prominent ones, it should be easy to name them and attribute their views.  If a viewpoint is held by a tiny minority, then perhaps we shouldn't mention it.  Thing like the Marshall protocol and the idea that coconut oil is a health food are not viewpoints held by the majority, this is easy to cite.  The response has tended to be the citation and synthesis of primary sources to demonstrate that the majority is wrong.  That's inappropriate here, for a variety of reasons - [[WP:NOT]], [[WP:OR]], [[WP:SYNTH]], [[WP:UNDUE]], [[WP:MEDRS]].  Please read these policies, they are what determine content.  [[User:WLU|WLU]] <small>[[User talk:WLU|(t)]] [[Special:Contributions/WLU|(c)]] Wikipedia's rules:</small>[[WP:SIMPLE|<sup><span style='color:#FFA500'>simple</span></sup>]]/[[WP:POL|<sub><span style='color:#008080'>complex</span></sub>]] 20:19, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
-::Then WLU, cite the majority. You consistently fail to do so. [[User:Lambanog|Lambanog]] ([[User talk:Lambanog|talk]]) 04:02, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
-Lambanog, in 1978 I was given 18 months to live. I switched from the University where I was teaching, Curtin University (it was WAIT at the time), to the University of Western Australia, so I could start doing some clinical research, what we would now call Translational research (Bench to Bedside). Although the 18 months prognosis was incorrect, by 1999 I had terminal pulmonary hypertension and my lungs had long since given out. Yet now I have a life again, and I get letters daily from physicians and patients who are convinced that they owe their lives to the science which I and my colleagues have developed over the past ten years. That is what keeps me going. I work as an unpaid volunteer. All the Autoimmunity Research Foundation and UGESA staff are volunteers, yet they are dedicated, just like Wikipedia editors. What primarily drives me is that it is ''fun'' to be able to help other human beings. Oh, and the possibility of a Nobel Prize doesn't sit too badly, either :) On more pedantic issues, sadly some of the best secondary sources are behind firewalls. For example, [http://afr.com/p/national/why_are_we_taking_so_much_vitamin_gbSmsZjvMDJkOW3IiXzwrK the article in the Australian Financial Review], written by a veteran health journalist, contains a very well balanced profile of that part of my research, including interviews with other academics. But it isn't free. Additionally, so much in the Health Sciences is based on Conference presentations, which apparently don't count here :( After you have been vetted at conferences, only then do you get the opportunity to write papers for the prestigious journals. But even though I have been continually linking to the Foundation's YouTube channel for the last 4 days, I have not been asked one question about those presentations... Sigh... Anyway, thanks for asking about my motivation, it is good to get that off my mind.. [[User:Trevmar|Trevmar]] ([[User talk:Trevmar#top|talk]]) 04:33, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
-:This is a comment aside from my contributors as an editor, it's a comment about science in general and medicine more specifically.  The absolute best way to help the most patients would be to undertake the background and clinical research necessary to demonstrate your ideas with rigour.  Case studies, speculation, computer modelling, conference presentations, are all sub-par from a proof in living people.  The problem with low-quality (from a scientific perspective) trials is that they are convincing to laymen and not to doctors.  If you've got a genuine phenomenon, it should be ''easy'' to demonstrate, no matter how rigorous the controls.  However, the history of science also demonstrates it is incredibly easy to fool one's self.  In the mean time, it's extremely gratifying to see what you believe to be patients getting better - but could easily be confirmation bias, natural swings in disease severity, only the "successful" patients keeping in touch, etc.  It's a very common issue in complimentary and alternative medicine - the proof is in the patients getting better, but "getting better" doesn't mean "the disease goes away", it can mean patients feeling better, telling you they feel better, etc.  You may try reading sciencebasedmedicine, or R. Barker Bausel's book ''Snake Oil Science'', or Edzard Ernst and Simon Singh's ''[[Trick or Treatment]]'', or Ben Goldacre's ''Bad Science''.  They all cover common pitfalls of scientific research and the biases you will see in medicine but won't necessarily see in engineering problems.
-:From an editorial perspective, I would happily eat crow if you could simply demonstrate that the scientific literature, independent of your own research groups, have positively reviewed your claims.  If you have a genuine cure for autoimmune conditions, by failing to convince the scientific world but instead pitching it directly to the patients, you're actually keeping the treatment out of the hands of actual patients.  Again, a genuine cure should be ''easy'' to demonstrate, irrespective rigour, frustrating and unnecessary it may seem to you.  A comment as a skeptic who is convinced by evidence.  [[User:WLU|WLU]] <small>[[User talk:WLU|(t)]] [[Special:Contributions/WLU|(c)]] Wikipedia's rules:</small>[[WP:SIMPLE|<sup><span style='color:#FFA500'>simple</span></sup>]]/[[WP:POL|<sub><span style='color:#008080'>complex</span></sub>]] 11:00, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
-==Question==
-Trevmar, you've used "our" before, such as "''[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&diff=434241200&oldid=434240424 I note that editor WLU continues to edit the bio, and that his/her edits continue to convey a negative opinion of our reputation and our works...]''"
-May I ask how many people are using this account?  Is the account for the autoimmunity research foundation, for Trevor Marshall alone, or for several people connected to Trevor Marshall?  [[User:WLU|WLU]] <small>[[User talk:WLU|(t)]] [[Special:Contributions/WLU|(c)]] Wikipedia's rules:</small>[[WP:SIMPLE|<sup><span style='color:#FFA500'>simple</span></sup>]]/[[WP:POL|<sub><span style='color:#008080'>complex</span></sub>]] 20:19, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
 == You aren't helping yourself ==