Talk:Chronic Lyme disease

Disputed edits

User:Sthatdc has been making edits to this article that have been disputed by User:JzG and User:Alexbrn. For some reason none of those editors has seen fit to create a section here, where it belongs, to discuss this issue, although they all seem perfectly capable of editing Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents, so I am creating it for you. Please discuss the issue here rather than edit warring. There is no loss of face involved in being the one to start a discussion here: quite the reverse. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:51, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps Sthatdc could say what they're trying to do. I'm seeing weakening of WP:V and removal of information from the lede here[1]. What is the rationale for this edit? Alexbrn (talk) 19:03, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

• Since he refuses to say what his problem is, other than to claim it is somehow "obvious", I think we can safely ignore this until he explains his issue. Guy (help!) 23:03, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
• Well, I'll start, since nobody else wants to go first. User:Sthatdc, you removed the word harmful, as in of the treatments provided by people outside the scientific mainstream, "the most controversial and harmful is long-term antibiotic therapy, particularly intravenous antibiotics". Why did you remove this? For example, do you think that there are even more harmful therapies in reasonably common use, or that it is a harmless treatment? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:07, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

  The word "harmful" seems to be well supported by the sources, but I'm not sure about the word "most". Both of the sources cited for this sentence only appear to look at antibiotic use, and not other proposed treatments, so they do not support any comparison. Phil Bridger (talk) 11:25, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

  Taking another look I'm not sure about the word "controversial" either. Is there actually any controversy about this or are all reliable sources in agreement that this treatment doesn't work, and is actually harmful? Phil Bridger (talk) 12:22, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

  Phil Bridger, I'd say those were good points. This source from Science-Based Medicine addresses this topic, citing this relevant paper from AMMI Canada. Alexbrn (talk) 14:08, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

  Something can be "controversial" even when the scientific facts are clear. There's a general meaning of the term that is more like "people are yelling past each other". See https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/controversy : dispute, quarrel, strife. You can be wrong and still engage in all of that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:54, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

  You are right about that - I tend to be over-pedantic with word meanings. I would still stand by my questioning of "most", however. The sources make it clear that this is the treatment most commonly prescribed by those who believe that these symptoms are related to lyme disease, but don't preclude there being an even more controversial and harmful treatment offered. Phil Bridger (talk) 13:14, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

  Phil Bridger, it's the primary reason behind the passage of laws specifically shielding "Lyme literate" doctors from discipline for using dangerous quack treatments. As so often with quacks, they get patients to lobby for laws that prevent regulatory bodies from addressing their malpractice. It's called "legislative alchemy" - the process whereby you can turn lead into gold by passing a law saying that lead is a form of gold. Guy (help!) 17:10, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

  "possibly the most controversial and harmful" is unverifiable speculation. "one of the most controversial" is a statement that can be verified. Intravenous antibiotics are mentioned in the lead but not in the article anyway, which does not make sense. Who administers intravenous antibiotics except medical professionals? I do not believe medical professionals administer treatments which they know to be harmful. If I interpreted that sentence wrongly, make it clearer. Sthatdc (talk) 00:17, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

  Sthatdc, it's the one that has led to attempts to discipline "Lyme literate" doctors, and for which legislative alchemy has been invoked. Guy (help!) 00:49, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

• And why say chronic lyme has "symptoms similar to those of Lyme disease" when the cited source (and many others) make the point that chronic lyme has a huge number of symptoms, many of which are not specific to real lyme disease? Alexbrn (talk) 10:49, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Improving this article

Just started some initial efforts to improve the pages chronic Lyme disease and (riddled-with-fringe-citations) Multiple chemical sensitivity. My edits were reverted, but there seems to be some sort of misunderstanding, because all edits were above board. Please review the changes again. The effort was to remove redundant or irrelevant info and citations to WP:FRINGE group ILADS. For example, combined three mentions of fibromyalgia into one mention and removed the FM-wars reference, which just cites Feder. Also added citations to Feder, Barbour, and secondary sources citing CDC research that many people diagnosed with "chronic Lyme" have well-defined illnesses (e.g. ALS, cancer, Lupus), not CFS/fibromylagia.

I'd also like to add more about the psychiatric comorbidity often seen in patients with "chronic Lyme" beliefs, as discussed by Lantos, but not sure of the best way to add it.

Also valuable would be more discussion of the common beliefs in chronic Lyme groups, for example the discredited beliefs in multiple chronic coinfections. ScienceFlyer (talk) 11:42, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

The misunderstanding is your own. Your edits were not "above board" as you have stated above. -Roxy, the PROD. . wooF 11:45, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

WP:COPYPASTE

You may not copy and paste text from a source, and present it in the voice of the encyclopaedia. You may not do this even if you indicate where you copied and pasted it from. Wikipedia is a free encyclopaedia, which means you must write your own text, which you license freely. You may quote a source verbatim if the exact words need to be reproduced. So, a first sentence which includes a large chunk of copied and pasted text presented in the voice of the encyclopaedia is not valid. I fixed that. Sthatdc (talk) 00:12, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

So you say. Now please provide the source, and show that it's not a reverse-copyvio (a site that copied from us). Guy (help!) 00:26, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

You seem to have completely misunderstood the situation. You think a review article in the New England Journal of Medicine plagiarised Wikipedia, and therefore it's OK for Wikipedia to plagiarise them? Sthatdc (talk) 00:36, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Sthatdc, See above. Please identify the source of the supposed copyright violation. You removed text cited to multiple sources. Copyright is not a magic talisman, you have to show the actual source and that it is not de minimis. Guy (help!) 00:52, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

You seem to have changed tack, but again, you have completely misunderstood. The text was clearly copied and pasted from a source and presented in the voice of the encyclopaedia. Are you denying that? Sthatdc (talk) 00:54, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Sthatdc, thank you for giving me the benefit of your 150 edits' worth of experience, but I, as a mere 15 year veteran with under an eighth of a million edits am unable to discern the purported copyright violation. So when you get back from your edit warring block you need to identify what text was copied from what sources, and that it's not free content (as Wikipedia sourced text is). Guy (help!) 01:13, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

You can't see which text was copied and pasted from a source and presented in the voice of the encyclopaedia? You are either illiterate, or trolling. Sthatdc (talk) 14:03, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Evidence, please. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:52, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

I too am interested in these claimed copyright violation problems. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously. So, specifics please so a good fix can be done! As to Sthatdc's other edits, they degrade the information content of the lede while skewing the POV (as mentioned above, e.g. by removing "harmful") and so are not to the overall benefit of the article. Hence, reverted. Alexbrn (talk) 14:20, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Yes, me too. Sthatdc, you must provide evidence in EXACTLY this form: Provide the full quote, in quotation marks, from THIS article. Then provide the source from which it is supposedly taken, and tell us the page. If you do that, then we can take you seriously. Your evasive replies make me think you're just trolling us. -- BullRangifer (talk) 02:04, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Unless something went very, very wrong, a Southern Hemisphere equivalent of an Ivy League/Oxbridge university does not give a first class honours degree in English literature and a law degree to someone who is illiterate. I'd be interested to see proof of this copyright violation. (Note: admittedly, in those same decades, something did go very, very wrong there, but that's another story.)--Shirt58 (talk) 03:34, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Read the first sentence!!! It is already IN quotation marks!! Apparently, you do not understand what is written at WP:COPYPASTE. It is not a quotation; if it were, the exact words would be crucial to reproduce, and the person saying them would need to be named inline. What would motivate you to pretend you cannot see the copied text? Sthatdc (talk) 14:27, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

"Advancing fringe POV"

User:JzG reverted my edits numerous times and explicitly refused to explain why he was doing so. Now he has given a reason, but it's quite the personal attack. Will he explain exactly what POV he thinks I have? Sthatdc (talk) 01:03, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Sthatdc, it's a mature article, the onus is on you to explain the changes you're trying to make. Guy (help!) 01:08, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

So you cannot account for your own edit summary. Interesting. Sthatdc (talk) 14:03, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Sthatdc, yes I can. But that is beside the point. You bear the burden of persuading others to change long-standing text, and with about 150 edits total you are not in a good position to lecture people who have been here for over a decade. Guy (help!) 00:57, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

For the sake of illiterate trolls

The following non-free text, copied and pasted from a source, appears in the first sentence of the article: "a broad array of illnesses or symptom complexes for which there is no reproducible or convincing scientific evidence of any relationship to Borrelia burgdorferi infection". WP:COPYPASTE, and the whole concept of Wikipedia as a free encyclopaedia, mean that this is not acceptable. Sthatdc (talk) 14:29, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Poppycock. A sort atrributed quotation is not a copyright violation. Phil Bridger (talk) 14:31, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

source?

In almost all cases, you may not copy text from other sources into Wikipedia. Doing so is a copyright violation. Always write the articles in your own words. What part of that is hard to understand? Sthatdc (talk) 14:40, 22 December 2019 (UTC)