Talk:Cranial electrotherapy stimulation

Recent edits

Dude: I overwrote your one-citation declaration that CES doesn't work with references to 10+ academic studies that say it does--a conclusion backed by the FDA in 1979.

You reverted that change.

The single study you reference does not refute any of the evidence; it performed no research itself, nor nor did it review current research. In fact, it is not really a study at all. All this one source did in its single-page literature review was to declare that ALL of the many research studies on CES "do not meet the inclusion criteria for this review. Therefore we conclude that insufficient evidence exists to..."

It actually said nothing at all, other than that it refused to look at the research published in the academic journals this Wikipedia article references:

• Journal of Clinical Psychiatry
• Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
• Annals of the New York Academy of Science
• Journal of Neurotherapy
• Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science
• Neuropsychopharmacology
• Brain and Behavior
• Neuroscientist
• Neurobehavioral Toxicology and Teratology
• Journal of the Psychiatric Clinics of North America
• American Journal of Electromedicine
• Current Opinion in Psychiatry
• Publications of the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma
• Annals of Internal Medicine

The above research—and much more—convinced the FDA to declare in 1979, that:

Controlled studies demonstrate that CES is effective in treating anxiety, headaches, fibromyalgia, smoking cessation, and drug withdrawal symptoms.

Yet you replaced all of that here because ONE outfit published an article saying that none of these studies meets its high review standards, even though they met the standards of the FDA.

Finally, your single citation was from Cochraine Reviews, an outfit that seems to exist to prove that accepted medical treatments don't work. They were recently busted for scientific fraud when they published a paper declaring that Ritalin doesn't help ADHD. The outfit smells like scientology.

This is outrageous.

If you want to pursue this, take it to arbcom. Don't revert it again. The only way you could win there is if you have an admin friend who will rubber stamp anything you write. That may very well happen, as I've seen it happen before in years past. I have heretofore remained silent at these travesties because until now, I was, per WP rules, too young to be editing here. Verdana♥Bold 10:50, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Please focus on content. See WP:FOC.

Your edits were not OK because the sourcing was not OK. Please see WP:MEDRS - I left a note on your talk page providing guidance on editing about health and medicine. Jytdog (talk) 14:21, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Why were they "not okay"?

The guidelines say we take FDA and other established sources seriously. My sourcing was the FDA and a dozen serious academic journals. Yours was a single literature review that said nothing except to reject ALL published evidence in the last 40 years as not meeting their standards for a literature review. They then conclude that the topic is unsubstantiated because there is no literature about it. This is beyond ridiculous. We're obviously going to arbcom, but first, I'd like to hear your answer. Verdana♥Bold 12:30, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Why were they "not okay"? See WP:MEDRS as already explained to you. -Roxy, the dog. barcus 13:01, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

An RfC

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

A summary of the debate may be found at the bottom of the discussion.

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RFC: Should FDA and a dozen serious academic journals be overridden by a single article that, literally, says nothing about the subject? See the section titled "Recent edits." Verdana♥Bold 08:36, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Responses

See WP:MEDRS as already explained to you. I leave it to somebody else to remove the tag. -Roxy, the dog. barcus 08:47, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

The RfC statement is not neutral nor is it competent.

With regard to the FDA, these devices were grandfathered in, when the the part of FDA law that governs medical devices was amended in 1976. The FDA is required to look back and reclassify such already-marketed devices, and there has been heavy lobbying over that (just as there has been heavily lobbying on this page, as you can can see from the list at the top of this page). As of 2012 what the FDA actually had to say about these devices is here: “FDA believes the available valid scientific evidence does not demonstrate that CES will provide a reasonable assurance of effectiveness for the indication of ‘insomnia, depression, anxiety.’”

The answer to the question outside of the FDA -- dealing with the refs the OP actually brought, is yes -- the refs were almost entirely primary sources which are not OK per MEDRS. The "single article" is a Cochrane review, which is OK per MEDRS.

The article does need to be updated but not with a bunch of woo sourced to refs that fail MEDRS.Jytdog (talk) 14:39, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

• (bot-summoned) Procedural close RfC statement is not only non-neutral (see Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment#Statement_should_be_neutral_and_brief), it also fails to clearly state what are the options to choose from or to link to a contested diff. I suspect insiders already know what is going on, but the point of an RfC is to bring in outsiders; let them know quickly what is happening. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 07:13, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
• (summoned by bot) Yes - Even leaving aside the non-neutral phrasing of the RfC, an examination of the sources in question leads me to conclude that, yes, the "one source" meets WP:MEDRS, as well as being the most up-to-date and reliable review that we have. The "ten sources", however, do not meet WP:MEDRS so far as I can see (indeed, some of them were specifically referenced in the Cochrane review without changing its conclusions), and the "one source" version should therefore stand. Anaxial (talk) 18:41, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
• Close this. It's not a proper RfC. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 04:30, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

• I have closed the RfC . As noted by other editors, it is not a proper RfC. Looie496 (talk) 15:29, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.