Talk:Homeopathy

Please read before starting First of all, welcome to Wikipedia's homeopathy article. This article represents the work of many contributors and much negotiation to find consensus for an accurate and complete representation of the topic. Newcomers to Wikipedia and this article may find that it's easy to commit a faux pas. That's OK — everybody does it! You'll find a list of a few common ones you might try to avoid here. A common objection made by newly arriving editors is that this article presents homeopathy from a non-neutral point of view, and that the extensive criticism of homeopathy violates Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy (WP:NPOV). The sections of the WP:NPOV that apply directly to this article are: NPOV: Pseudoscience NPOV: Undue weight NPOV: Making necessary assumptions NPOV: Giving "equal validity" The contributors to the article continually strive to adhere to these to the letter. Also, splitting the article into sub-articles is governed by the Content forking guidelines. These policies have guided the shape and content of the article, and new arrivals are strongly encouraged to become familiar with them prior to raising objections on this page or adding content to the article. Other important policies guiding the article's content are No Original Research (WP:NOR) and Cite Your Sources (WP:CITE). Some common points of argument are addressed at Wikipedia's Homeopathy FAQ. Tempers can and have flared here. All contributors are asked to please respect Wikipedia's policy No Personal Attacks (WP:NPA) and to abide by consensus (WP:CON). This talk page is to discuss the text, photographs, format, grammar, etc of the article itself and not the inherent worth of homeopathy. See WP:NOT. If you wish to discuss or debate the validity of homeopathy or promote homeopathy please do so at google groups or other fora. This "Discussion" page is only for discussion on how to improve the Wikipedia article. Any attempts at trolling, using this page as a soapbox, or making personal attacks may be deleted at any time.

Original synthesis and missing sources

There are at least two instances of original synthesis in the lead.

The first sentence of the third paragraph states: Homeopathic remedies are generally considered safe, with rare exceptions. Two references are cited in support of this statement, but neither addresses the first clause. This is completely non-controversial, but should be cited regardless. Neither do these references address the issue of whether these particular instances of dangerous substances remaining after dilution are the most notable. It is likely that a quality reference treating safety could replace these.

The statement "homeopathic remedies are generally considered safe, with rare exceptions" is taken from a letter to the editor of a medical journal. It is used as a global observation by the authors of the letter but this does not qualify as a factual reference. I agree that there should be a better reference. Criticalobservation (talk) 10:15, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

The final sentence of the third paragraph, as Eubulides notes above, treats worldwide prevalence while only citing specific sources. Use in Germany is probably a better special case, anyway. - Eldereft (cont.) 06:58, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

It looks like worldwide prevalence could be addressed by this WHO book. Does anybody have access? - Eldereft (cont.) 07:35, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Google Books has that book, in Full view format (you can read all of it for free). Eubulides (talk) 08:36, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

On the matter of safety, it's a frequently made claim, but it generally relies on the same argument that homoeopaths reject when it is brought up as a reason to suppose that the remedies have no effects at all: that the remedies are so dilute that they can't produce side-effects. There may not be much reliable literature on this point. Brunton (talk) 12:43, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Ironic, isn't it? If the criticism that there is no substance left in a remedy is accepted as true, then how can someone be harmed by a small amount of sugar, distilled water, or grain alcohol? Homeopaths are criticized for being inconsistent, but the critique is inconsistent as well. Criticalobservation (talk) 06:48, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Brunton you are right about there not being much reliable literature. This is the brunt of the criticism of homeopathy. No one really knows why it works. The action is on the immune system which isn't hard to understand but explaining it is pretty difficult especially since there is considerable debate about how the immune system itself functions. Criticalobservation (talk) 10:15, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I haven't noticed critics of homoeopathy suggesting that it causes adverse effects (other than the possible results of not seeking proper medical attention, of course). On the other hand, homoeopaths sometimes do. The post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy cuts both ways. Brunton (talk) 08:41, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

The citations about homeopathic practitioners recommending against other medical treatments reference a study of medically licensed and non-licensed homeopathic practitioners in England. The whole point was that the questionable recommendations came from the non-licensed practioners. I have noticed your concern about seeking conventional medical attention and that concern is well founded. Homeopathy can't cure a broken arm, but it can help with the discomfort. The idea of a homeopath counseling against vaccinations is absurd; the underlying principles are identical. I also think you misunderstood the citation you used from the British hospital study. It is an excellent reference, but the "aggravation" described as an adverse response is actually an anticipated and desired response that indicates that the correct remedy was used. The point was that the patients may not see it that way. Criticalobservation (talk) 10:15, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

The underlying principles of vaccination and homoeopathy are not the same, and if "the idea of a homeopath counseling against vaccinations is absurd" then it would appear that there are an awful lot of absurd homoeopaths out there.

The adverse events reported in that paper were not all "aggravations": "Thirteen patients (11%) reported an adverse event even though 5 of those were patients who also reported an aggravation followed by an overall improvement of their symptoms"; there were also 31 patients twho reported entirely new symptoms. 12:29, 30 March 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brunton (talk • contribs) Not sure why that happened - it added the time and date when I signed but not my username. Brunton (talk) 12:36, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Oh, so they do - link. Not sure how I was getting only the front and back covers, thanks. - Eldereft (cont.) 17:06, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Because there is a map volume and a text volume, the latter of which does not display. meh. - Eldereft (cont.) 17:35, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I found a physical instantiation of the book - WHO does not so much actually measure prevalence as it does a few metrics like existence of regulations and professional associations which are assumed to correlate to use. Not a terrible assumption, and apparently the data we want do not exist for many countries, but not what I was hoping. It does say that homeopathy is significantly more utilized in rich countries than poor, but the sample is so heterogeneous that I would rather just list survey numbers for a few relevant cases. Oh well, back to the source mill. - Eldereft (cont.) 19:24, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Citation format

Hans has been converting to use the citation template vice the cite template. Either way works, but some words of caution are in order. We should agree which form we'll use rather than just bashing away independently. Mixing first/last with author doesn't cut it. To generate Vancouver citations (as normal for biomedical articles) the | author=Smith JD, Jones AB| form is better, as this is what the pmid matches against. Several of the cites currently have "and" between names. These should go. LeadSongDog (talk) 18:51, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I am working on a script to do this automatically. It's much easier to convert "cite X" to "citation" rather than the other way round (because otherwise the script would have to guess the type of the reference), so that's what I am doing. I can try to remove the "and" with the script, it seems that citation bot doesn't touch it. Could you explain what you mean when you say pmid matches against author? Is this about some automatic generation or verification of citations? If it gets technical, perhaps we can continue on my or your talk page and leave a pointer here. Thanks. --Hans Adler (talk) 00:23, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Consider PMID 8255290. Checking the PMID 8255290 shows the authors as "Hirst SJ, Hayes NA, Burridge J, Pearce FL, Foreman JC." This author format is what citationbot checks against. Similarly it looks for a title match against "Human basophil degranulation is not triggered by very dilute antiserum against human IgE." These forms are as recommended in the uniform style guidelines for biomedical journals, so we normally use them on biomedical articles on WP to simplify checking references. The {{citation}} template will happily take the author= parameter filled out this way instead of last1=|first1=|last2=|first2= and so on, rendering the desired result. Likewise, using Diberri's template filler the same result is achieved because it populates the template from the NLM database if given a pmid or other index key.LeadSongDog (talk) 22:36, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks. In the first version of the script I wasn't going to translate between author= and firstn=/lastn= anyway, so there shouldn't be a problem. This doesn't sound as if there are related difficulties that I need to take into account. --Hans Adler (talk) 23:59, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Conversion mostly done

My script has reached the stage where it is actually useful, and I have run this article through it. Now all citations uniformly use the "citation" templates. The only exception is a court case that (still) uses the "cite court" template. I believe that apart from a few misspelled tags which were fixed by the script (resulting in additional information now being displayed as intended) the only difference is that many full stops are now missing at the ends of the citations, and the "retrieved" information is now separated with a full stop from the rest of the citation, rather than with a comma. I can add the missing full stops tomorrow using the script. Please let me know if there are any problems. The page is now 8 KB bigger because I added additional spaces so the references are easier to read in the source code. If anyone feels that this isn't an improvement I can remove the spaces.

Warning: When I tried to look at the diff, it froze my browser (Firefox 3.0.7 on Windows). --Hans Adler (talk) 02:02, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Update: LeadSongDog has just made me furious by reverting without actually making a single objection. The edit summary was "undo - not right yet, please sandbox and check", apparently guessing that I had not checked. I appreciate any and all actual information about problems after my change that were not present in the article before my change. Everybody, please compare the two versions and see if you have any objections. I will take them into account as long as they are technically feasible and not contradictory with each other or the purpose of having a single citation style in the article. Thank you. --Hans Adler (talk) 08:49, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

First off - my apology. I was editing too late at night when I came across Hans' change. Having just spent a long time fixing another disaster I didn't have sufficient reserves of patience to go through every line of this massive diff and I failed to expand here on my reason for reverting.

The specific problem that triggered my reaction was, as Hans has already spotted, the conversion of cite web parameters, which are often problematic. The {{cite web}} "title" and "work" parameters do not cleanly map to single parameters on the {{citation}} template, leading to results such as contribution=World Health Organization in the reverted edit.

In massive changes like this it's advisable to roll them out by small steps when possible. I would suggest separate edits for each section of the article. That way we'd avoid the crashing browsers and edit conflicts on correcting any problem details. Theres no imperative to bundle them all into one edit. LeadSongDog (talk) 13:54, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I still don't understand why this scrutiny is necessary when careful visual inspection of the article before and after the change shows that everything went according to plan, with no visible changes other than the extremely minor expected ones. (The trick for thorough comparison is to have both versions open simultaneously in separate tags and to make sure that they are at exactly the same position. Then by switching tabs one easily sees all changes other than perhaps missing or added full stops.)

Since I must copy and paste between my browser and the script, doing it per section seems quite inconvenient and error prone. How about doing things in the following steps instead, to maximise transparency:

• Pretty-printing: All templates are formatted as in the first run of my script (see link above), but otherwise the templates themselves and their parameters remain completely unchanged. This creates a massive diff that may still crash a browser, but the change is obviously harmless.
• Conversion of all "cite journal" templates, making only the necessary changes without any normalisation. Each converted template will create only one line in the diff.
• Conversion of all other "cite X" templates, again making only the necessary changes without any normalisation. Since some parameters must be renamed, a typical converted template will create about 1–3 lines in the diff.
• Normalisation of parameter names. If I normalise "last1" -> "last" and "first1" -> "first", rather than the other way round as I did in the previous run, the diff should be of manageable size.

Another necessary step, which can happen at any time after the pretty-printing, is manual correction of defective references. Here are some seriously wrong things that I may actually fix before the first run: wrong template ("cite web") for the WHO study and Encyclopedia "Brittanica", bogus parameters for National Science Board indicators, one use of "Harvard reference" template.

Would this sequence be acceptable to you, or do you object to the pretty-printing because you can't check it? --Hans Adler (talk) 15:34, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

That seems like a very reasonable approach. As discussed above, I'd prefer to adhere to the usual biomedical article approach of pubmed style citation, with author lists shown as author=Jones AB, Smith CD, Gold EF. rather than the last1 first1 etc style, mostly for compatibility with diberri's tool and with citation bot. I don't think that's a stopper in any case, it can be done afterwards. With regards to the WHO review, I've found ISBN 9241545488 treats the pdf as a book, which might be more straightforward to use than the more transient form of the webpage.LeadSongDog (talk) 16:06, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Ignore that last bit, I see you already found it.LeadSongDog (talk) 16:11, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Once the references are pretty-printed, it's straightforward for a script to translate them into your preferred format. (Unfortunately it's not clear to me how to easily integrate this function into my current script, as I am using sophisticated but slightly inflexible parser support [1].) It's probably best to translate references that have already separated the authors as last=Jones AB|last2=Smith CD|last3=Gold EF. This preserves the maximal possible amount of information while making things look like the output of diberri's tool. I am sure citation bot understands this format as well. (Otherwise it would need fixing.)

I will do the first (pretty-printing) step when I get home from work. --Hans Adler (talk) 16:27, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Refs 56 and 103 are the same paper. Fences and windows (talk) 18:28, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Done. --Hans Adler (talk) 22:20, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I have done the first (pretty-printing) step now. I will leave a day or so before doing the next one. --Hans Adler (talk) 22:20, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Now I have finished the second and third steps. I have also given the references to the Organon a more uniform structure and made numerous other little changes by hand. --Hans Adler (talk) 23:00, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Author names

Unfortunately there seems to be no way to change the separator between authors from ";" to ",". As a result, we have a mixture between both styles. Since there is a comma after the authors list, a semicolon doesn't seem to make sense here. I propose to adapt my script to convert all citations of the type "author1=Smith, Adam|author2=Jones, Bede" or "last1=Smith|first1=Adam|last2=Jones|first2=Bede" into references of the type "authors=Smith A, Jones B". Is that OK for everybody?

Fine by me. There is no need to pluralize, though, as "author=Smith A, Jones B" works just the same. With this approach pipetricks will be needed to link an author, e.g. "authors=Smith A, Jones B". LeadSongDog come howl 18:32, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Oh, sh.., I forgot about the author links. That's why I originally decided not to do this. I believe some documentation for the citation templates says explicitly that we shouldn't do, it although I can't find it right now. I guess that the Harvard system (which we are currently not using here) is broken otherwise, and I don't know what else may be affected. Possibly some bots or other tools. Unfortunately the semicolons seem to be hardcoded in Template:Citation/core. In connection with the comma as standard separator between the author list and the rest this is plain weird. I see I'll have to think about this a little longer. --Hans Adler (talk) 20:39, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Quackery

I think we can have that word lower down instead of in the Lead. I also want to know what is wrong with the WHO doc about the qualifications for Homeopathy?-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 03:36, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

"Quackery" is an incredibly loaded word in the United States and it has been used as grounds for sending folks to jail for fraud. The word is also colloquial American English and its use should be clarified. "Pseudoscience" is at least a Latin derivative. As a descriptor in the lead it would make sense to explain the justification for the use of the word "quackery." That would fulfill the NPOV objective.Criticalobservation (talk) 08:10, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Been there and done that. We have discussed this issue for ages and it's staying there. You have previously written an edit summary with these false words: "On the Talk Pg., there's been consensus to avoid using quackery in the lead,...".[2] That's not true. Please read the talk page archives. -- Fyslee (talk) 04:25, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

If by "what is wrong with the WHO doc...", you are referring to the removal of the phrase "although licenses and professional qualifications are required in most countries" which you keep tagging onto the end of the third paragraph of the lead, virtually the same phrase is included in its proper place at the end of the second paragraph, using a WHO document as its source. We don't need it in the lead twice, and (as has already been noted by Fences and windows) it is a non-sequitur where you are adding it. Brunton (talk) 09:30, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

It is relevant as an oxymoron. I want to neutralize the, 'pseudoscience and quackery' sentence, since y'all don't wanna remove it-any suggestions as to how we can neutralize it? Anyone and everyone is welcome to answer the question.-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 16:39, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

With no desire in getting into an argument about this topic, but NPOV does not mean we "neutralize" statements. The vast majority of sources state that it is quackery and pseudoscience. That's neutral and does not give weight to a minority opinion.SciMedKnowledge (talk) 17:07, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Another option would be to use a direct quote - "...in the words of a 1998 medical review, as "placebo therapy at best and quackery at worst"." Tim Vickers (talk) 18:40, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

That used to be in the lead after "pseudoscience or quackery", but it seemed a bit excessive to have both so I removed it. Perhaps it should be reinstated at the appropriate point in the body of the article. Brunton (talk) 20:19, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

It's already there, under the "Medical and scientific analysis" section. --Enric Naval (talk) 08:31, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Even then it's still cherry-picking. The word "quackery" is sometimes, but not usually, used by the most reliable sources in connection with homeopathy, and the word "pseudoscience" is sometimes (probably more often) used in connection with attempts to justify homeopathy. That's my impression. Now some editors seem to have a different impression. OK. The proper thing would be to use those reliable sources which have evaluated what other reliable sources say. We have started discussing one in the thread above. [3] I think it supports my opinion that the pseudoscience/quackery sentence is not representative for informed views of homeopathy and therefore does not belong in the lede.

Most papers using the word "quackery" do so in a guarded way ("a quackery with a difference"), as one of two extremes where we would never use the other extreme in this article ("quackery or a key to the future of medicine?"), or in a general attack on everything the author doesn't like ("clinical trial of homeopathy and an analysis of lunar phases and postoperative outcome", even better Medical quackery in Nigeria, where we can see the foam around the author's mouth). The sentence in Ernst & Pittler 1998 seems to be an exception. --Hans Adler (talk) 19:31, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

It appears that there are still editors here who fail to acknowledge the obvious fact that diverting sick people from getting real medical attention is a deadly serious business. Why should we continue to justify this behaviour?LeadSongDog (talk) 20:18, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

One of the reasons I'd like to delete "quackery" is that we can show more effectively that homeopathy is bunkum by avoiding words that are likely to provoke emotional reactions in the reader. If someone is inclined toward alt med stuff then they're going to be sensitive to words like that and may be turned off by the article. We then show how homeopathy uses "remedies" that are indistinguishable from water, there's no evidence for effectiveness beyond a placebo, and so on. If they have half a brain they can figure out that it's nonsense based on objective evidence, but we have to avoid building emotional walls that will keep the reader from reaching that evidence. And if they don't have half a brain it won't help to use the q-word anyway. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 20:26, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. Apart from that, Wikipedia is not the place to change the real world, especially not in respects that are obviously immune to change. Some patients will always lose faith in their physicians and start looking for alternatives. Less in times of great medical advances such as the discovery of antibiotics, more in times when medical insurance pays for machines and medication but not for taking time to talk to the patient. Attacking CAM in general, or any particular flavour of CAM, is the laziest and least effective way of attacking this problem. --Hans Adler (talk) 20:57, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, it's a place to describe the real world, not to change it. But in the real world homoeopathy is widely regarded as pseudoscience or quackery. Brunton (talk) 21:49, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

The articles on Osteopathy, Chiropractic, Naturopathy and Dentistry don't have the word quackery although there are good sources for it, so can we do something likewise here (or at least tag something to that sentence)?-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 12:43, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Naturopathy does, last I looked, actually. And you might be a little more convincing if you had left out dentistry. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 06:41, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

You may have missed this: Dentistry came in when some people argued with the large number of hits for homeopathy+quackery are an argument. Turns out there are more for dentistry+quackery. This led to this edit, with which I don't agree, even though I first brought dentistry up in this context. You are right though, the statement would have been more convincing without dentistry. --Hans Adler (talk) 12:58, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

The subtlety in this debate is that it is more than just a numbers game of hits for "therapy+quackery". The example of dentistry very well illustrates this; the articles don't criticise dentistry per se as quackery, but highlight the problem of quackery within dentistry, both historically and in the present day. Because I thought that this issue was actually notable in the history of dentistry, I made that edit. So - look at what the articles say, not how many there are. Fences and windows (talk) 18:01, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

That was exactly my point. As I explained above [4], almost all papers that use the word "quackery" in relation with homeopathy either do so in a guarded way or are not reliable. I feel that I never got a proper response. The next thing that happened was that LeadSongDog changed the topic with an emotional appeal to a morals. What has not happened was that anyone has either shot down the review that clearly says it's not all that common to call homeopathy "quackery", or offered another of similar quality that cameo the opposite conclusion. --Hans Adler (talk) 20:46, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

That's pretty rich. In case you forgot, my actual words are legible just above. No need to invent new meanings.LeadSongDog come howl 21:56, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Homeopaths themselves often write that traditional medics believe that homeopathy is quackery, but I won't go down that avenue for now. Some sources. This letter in Canadian Family Physician calls homeopathy quackery directly: [5]; This letters column in Salon uses the claim directly: [6]; LA Times article reports that health advocates regard homeopathy as quackery: [7]; PZ Myers has called it "quackery without scruples": [8] (blog, but a notable one); Edzard Ernst directly accused Boots of selling quack medicine due to them selling homeopathic remedies: [9]; David Gorksi/Orac has called it quackery in his notable Respectful Insolence blog: [10]; Ben Goldacre calls it quackery: [11]; Robin McKie calls in quackery in the Observer: [12]; Susan Blackmore calls it quackery: [13]. More to come... Fences and windows (talk) 22:38, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

OK, so you have several letters to the editor. I am not going to pay for the LA Times archive, but the sentence in the abstract ("This alarms consumer health advocates, who contend that homeopathy is quackery repackaged in a New Age veneer.") doesn't strike me as particularly insightful. Perhaps homeopathy is New Age in the US, but certainly not in Europe. And "consumer health advocates" might well be referring only to people like Stephen Barrett. PZ Myers is an associate professor of biology and made the statement in his blog, not in a peer-reviewed paper. Edzard Ernst doesn't help in this context because my point is that basically he is the only qualified expert who makes the quackery claim with the full weight of his qualification. The remaining references are similarly unconvincing. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:36, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Rose Shapiro includes it in an article on quack therapies: [14]; headline of article by Polly Toynbee dubs it quackery: [15]; Ben Goldacre includes homeopathy in "degrees in quackery": [16]; James Randi calls it quackery: [17] [18]; Dominic Lawson lumps homeopathy in with quackery: [19] ; homeopathy alluded to as being called quackery by conventional doctors in NYT: [20] [21]; homeopathy seen as quackery by medical establishment: [22]; Damian Thompson calls it quackery in the Daily Telegraph [23] [24]; "prevailing view of Western medicine" reported as considering homeopathy to be "near quackery" [25]; Ross Clark in the Telegraph refers to diet pills, homeopathy and aromatherapy directly before saying "Quackery pays": [26]. By way of dissent, a piece in JRSM says "Supporters of CAM have good reason to object to the term ‘quackery’ being linked in any way with such practices as homeopathy, osteopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture and herbalism" [27]. This is not about whether homeopathy is actually quackery, it is about whether a notable criticism in the media and from scientists and medics is that homeopathy is quackery. I don't think mentioning this fairly prominently is giving undue weight considering the number of sources that report this belief. Fences and windows (talk) 00:12, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for taking my concern seriously. I will have a look at these references tomorrow and see if they convince me. The chances don't seem to be all that bad. --Hans Adler (talk) 01:38, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

This second batch contains some very interesting sources. "The British medical establishment has responded with demands for curbing what it calls quackery." [28] Another article has interesting background information that may be useful for the article, but basically the author's opinion about homeopathy/quackery. [29]

OK, you have addressed the question whether there is notable criticism of homeopathy as quackery, from various sides. I have been contesting the two following, specific points:

• Should the word "quackery" be mentioned in the lede?
• Is it so obviously true that homeopathy is quackery that we, as Wikipedia, can cite the quackery claims in a way that implicitly endorses them, as opposed to simply reporting them?

I am now prepared to concede the first. I still think it's not wise to mention the word, but perhaps that's not worth pursuing. But I believe the second point still stands. Whenever someone tries to put in "Some call it quackery although ..." they are reverted, and correctly so because that would be a way of taking a position about the claim. However, we are currently saying "Some call it quackery because ...", which is equally problematic because it takes the opposite position. And IMO to make such a claim we would need WP:MEDRS quality references to establish that this is in fact scientific consensus. However, Edzard Ernst seems to be the only expert who provides us with sources of sufficient quality. Even though he is the only UK professor of CAM, I doubt that his opinion alone makes a consensus. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:36, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

WP:MEDRS focusses on medical facts, not medical opinion. As quackery isn't a very scientific word, it isn't used very much in the scientific or medical literature. It's a colloquial term. Note this: "the high-quality popular press can be a good source for social, biographical, current-affairs and historical information in a medical article". So the articles I sourced (mostly from the British press, as I'm most familar with it) are relevant, as this is a social view of the scientific community. We can't just say "scientists say homeopathy is quackery", but we can say "homeopathy has been commonly labelled as quackery by journalists and mainstream scientists"[refs], or something along those lines. We could even add something like "but homeopaths and some other medical professionals reject this label".[refs] Fences and windows (talk) 19:05, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree that we can say something like this, although your concrete formulation doesn't work for me, because it makes a possibly unverifiable claim about some non-homeopathic medical professionals rejecting the quackery label for homeopathy and gives the (incorrect, in my opinion) impression that there is some kind of consensus that the label fits, which is shared by all but homeopaths and a few others. I am sure this is a very touchy topic for homeopathy fans, and has been from its inception, so we really need to get all facts and nuances right. I will think about a concrete proposal. One problem is that I see the stylistic need for some framing of the quackery accusation, and this seems hard to do without introducing a POV. --Hans Adler (talk) 19:20, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

My wording suggestion was off-the-cuff. The JRSM piece is by a mainstream medical historian, Irvine Loudon, who was a notable GP before that. I'll look for some more views along the same lines from non-homeopaths. Fences and windows (talk) 20:21, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

"It is not quackery because it hides nothing; its principles, its mode of operation, its remedies are all known to the world". Homeopathy: Nature's Healing Law by M. L. Scott [30] (obviously a homeopath); press release about scientists who used homeopathy, including Darwin (peace be with him), though it is not NPOV as it is about a book by Dana Ullmann: [31]. I'm having trouble coming up with much. Fences and windows (talk) 21:50, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

The stuff about Darwin has been dealt with ad nauseam. Probably best brought together in Charles Darwin and Homeopathy and The Homeopathic Revolution by Dana Ullman: A Review on the Quackometer blog. Ullman's claims have also been discussed on various talk pages on Wikipedia, for example on the one for the James Manby Gully article. Briefly, if you want to know what Darwin thought of homoeopathy, try this letter. Brunton (talk) 14:57, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't mince his words. "You speak about Homœopathy; which is a subject which makes me more wrath, even than does Clair-voyance: clairvoyance so transcends belief, that one's ordinary faculties are put out of question, but in Homœopathy common sense & common observation come into play, & both these must go to the Dogs, if the infinetesimal doses have any effect whatever". I didn't expect those claims to have much veracity! Fences and windows (talk) 21:38, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah, here's a Google books view of the book by Ullman and Fisher, which is basically a compendium of famous people, including scientists, who have used homeopathy: [32]. Another "anti": "Dr Evan Harris, of the all-party parliamentary malaria group, said: 'This sort of outrageous quackery is unacceptable. Vulnerable people are being duped into handing over cash for useless remedies and are having their health put at risk through grossly inadequate advice. People need to consider homeopathy in the same way as the treat faith-healing and witchcraft - that is not to risk their life or health on it." [33] He's an MP and a former medical doctor. And ""Homeopathy gets bigger all the time and has a lot of staunch defenders," says [William] Helfand. "They tell me I have no right" to include homeopathy as quackery". He's a medical historian[34]. Copy of article here. Indian homeopaths didn't like the Goa Medical Council calling them quacks: [35]. Time magazine in 1940 said "An aura of quackery surrounded homeopathy until some 20 years ago, when Founder Hahnemann was given his historic due by no less a personage than Sir William Osler".[36] Fences and windows (talk) 22:29, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Let's delete "quackery", certainly from the lead if not from the article itself. Yes I'm aware that there are plenty of sources for the term. But one of the most basic rules of effective writing is "show, don't tell." Our articles on Pol Pot and Idi Amin don't call them "bloodthirsty tyrants" or the like despite the fact that we could find plenty of sources applying such terms to these folks. We simply relate their horrid deeds and our readers naturally come to that conclusion. Likewise, for homeopathy we need only relate the facts as clearly as possible -- the "remedies" contain none of the original ingredients, there is no clinical evidence that they are effective, and so on -- and our readers will come to the conclusion that homeopathy is bunk. And if a reader is such a brainless New Age moron that they still think magic water will cure disease then they would be unreachable with the quackery label anyway. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 21:21, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

That argument may sound convincing to you, but it has no basis in the guidelines and policies which govern the writing of this encyclopedia, which is deliberately required to be written differently than other sources and other encyclopedias. This is Wikipedia.

Seriously now, please consider these facts: it's a practice that is very widely used; has been used for a long time; is excepted from the legal regulations that require all other drugs to be tested for proof of efficacy and safety; it is based on "laws" that are not laws at all, but are just the confabulations of a rather odd and failed doctor who acted in ignorance based on a reaction he experienced, caused by his own (unknown to himself) allergy to quinine, IOW his reaction wasn't typical, and was thus useless and misleading as the basis of a theory; it has no evidence of any biological effects beyond any weak and subjective placebo effects; it violates many basic laws of biology, physics, and pathology; it has the largest profit margin per invested dollar of any product in the world, largely because of a lack of developmental research directed at proving efficacy, combined with a very small start base of an active ingredient; ad libitum....

Now please name ANY candidate that is MORE worthy of being described as quackery and pseudoscience. I can think of no other. It is the penultimate classic example.

No, you'll have to find better arguments based in our policies here. You not only want to delete it from the LEAD, but from the article??? Is that a joke? No, it needs its own section, plus continued mention in the LEAD. Note that this article has no criticism section, which is rather odd for a topic that is most notable because of the criticisms leveled against it. The weight of the article is twisted in the wrong direction and violates how we are supposed to deal with FRINGE topics. This article needs a section entitled Homeopathy#Labeled_as_quackery_and_pseudoscience. According to principles layed out in the WP:PSCI ArbCom decision, homeopathy is clearly an "Obvious pseudoscience" and "Generally considered pseudoscience", just as much so as astrology, and the article should make that very clear. It is already categorized as pseudoscience, and properly so. The article shouldn't be any less clear than the categorization.

The way to solve this debate is to strengthen the documentation for its being considered a form of pseudoscientific quackery, not to weaken it. Editors who have previously tried to violate our policies by weakening this are already banned, and we don't need more of the same. -- Fyslee (talk) 02:35, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

From the Compact Oxford Dictionary:quack Noun 1) an unqualified person who dishonestly claims to have medical knowledge. 2)Brit. informal doctor --Derivatives quackery noun. --Origin abbreviation of earlier quacksalver, from Dutch, probably from obsolete quacken 'prattle' + salf 'salve'. Personally, I suspect that "quacksalver" may also be related to quicksilver, an old term for mercury, which was, throughout much of the 19th century promoted in the English speaking world as a cure-all. (If someone wants a reference, I'll go hunt one down.) Criticalobservation (talk) 08:10, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

A number of references, especially from the current debates in England related to the scientific community's outspoken attacks on Prince Charles (described as the "Prince of Quacks") and his promotion of homeopathy (labeled as pseudoscience and quackery), and to the dropping of "pseudoscience degrees" (often related to homeopathy) from universities, is found here: Alternative medicine critics . -- Fyslee (talk) 02:43, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Interesting, since his mother's royal physician is a respected homeopath, Peter Fisher. Criticalobservation (talk) 08:10, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

The opinion of the royal family on homeopathy is one thing; the opinion of the mainstream scientific and medical communities is quite another. Fences and windows (talk) 18:08, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Hippocrates

As Hans Adler has noted, the reference given to support Hippocrates's use of homoeopathy doesn't actually mention Hippocrates. The claim that homoeopathy goes back to Hippocrates is a fairly common one, but I can't find much in the way of hard evidence for it. I've found references to Hippocrates mentioning something that looks a bit like the principle of "like cures like", but not to him actually using the principle. There's some discussion of this, including the relevant texts from Hippocrates, here, along with some analysis of the claim. Brunton (talk) 08:29, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't think we need an extended discussion about whether homeopathy was anticipated by Hippocrates and Paracelsus, or only by Paracelsus. In the interest of encyclopedic brevity I have simply removed Hippocrates. --Hans Adler (talk) 13:24, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Hahnemann mentioned Hippocrates and gave examples of its use by him, so I wish we can add Hippocrates' name there, but I'd like to get consensus here first.-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 13:41, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Then you need to find sources for that. But note, this would justify the article saying that Hahnemann cited Hippocrates but not necessarily that Hippocrates used the principles himself. Brunton (talk) 14:25, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, sources for Hahnemann invoking Hippocrates as a precursor should be easy to find, but we need it from somebody focused on Hippocrates or the history of medicine in general, not on homeopathy. An alternative would be to make the statement weaker and use what Hahnemann says. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:47, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Homeopathy isn't practised in Europe alone

Homeopathy isn't practised in Europe alone, so I've made some additions in the last section. Please feel free to change the words, if you don't like it, but don't delete it-the reader should know Homeopathy isn't practised in Europe alone!-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 12:38, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

It seems to have been copied and pasted from here, or one of the other sites that uses Citizendium as a source. It probably goes into too much detail (there is, as is indicated at the start of the section you pasted it into, a separate article on Regulation and prevalence of homeopathy), and contains a certain amount of irrelevant information (for example, the phrase about regulation of "conventional, western medical education" in India). Brunton (talk) 14:57, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, if it's copy-pasted, I'm going to revert. Cannae use plagiarism. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 15:02, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

In addition, almost all of the material added about homoeopathy outside Europe is unsupported by references. The only references added are articles about belief in CAM in the among Dutch GPs (Knipschild et al. 1990), and CAM in Europe (Fisher et al 1994), and two references to Indian sites, one of which merely went to the homepage of the Medical Council of India which has no information on it about homoeopathy, and the other of which, to the Department of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy of the Indian Health Ministry, does not support all of the contentions in the sentence it appears to support. Brunton (talk) 15:12, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I've given him a polite warning about Copyvio - it's not actually the first time he did this. =/ Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 15:31, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

[rant removed] Note, the so-called "irrelevant details" you are criticizing here may not be relevant to you but to international users they are important in order to understand the different conditions, standards and regulations (or lack thereof) in different countries; [rant removed] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.130.154.212 (talk) 02:44, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

This section of the article is about regulation and prevelance of homoeopathy; the information about regulation of "conventional, western medical education" is therefore irrelevant. Brunton (talk) 08:55, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

The citizendium article in homeopathy follows Citizendium rules about sources. The article here follows wikipedia rules about sources. Please repeat the edit with sources that follow wikipedia rules. (Also, please don't rant about how good Citizendium is and how evil Wikipedia is, that's just unhelpful) --Enric Naval (talk) 03:25, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Dear Enric Naval; is not a bit hypocritical of you to patronizingly admonish me for allegedly ranting when your very admonishment is a rant in itself? No matter, my point has been made; you and user brunton have had to read it.

However, you have attributed words to me that I never wrote; this is pathetic. I never called wikipedia "evil" nor have I yet made the judgment that Citizendium is "good"; simply that their (Citizendium's) article on homeopathy seems to be superior to the opinionated self-righteous diatribe that is interspersed in the wikipedia article on homeopathy. It is amazingly egotistical to make the leap that a criticism of the 'sacred' wikipedia homeopathy article is an attack on the entire body of articles that exist on wikipedia, and hence an attribution that wikipedia is "evil". What weak logic and poor reasoning; I guess this exposes one the underlying causes of the poor quality of this homeopathy article; you can draw your own conclusions as to what I mean by that. You should follow your own practice and not engage in any further illogical and slanderous rants; rants that are quite unhelpful, didn't you know?

[Constructive Criticism] You should understand that I am not convinced about the efficacy of homeopathy, but that is not the point. The actual point is that the article is so opinionated (against homeopathy) and is somewhat Eurocentric that it makes one question the credibility of the article. Therefore from my perspective this article has failed; it has not provided me with the information I required (i.e. in a dispassionate, consistent and professional manner) and instead subjected me to have wade through nasty, time-wasting back and forth contradictory statements between pro and anti homeopathy contributors in the article. Which forces readers like me, who do not have bone in this childish debate, to look for alternative sources of info, such as Citizendium (the link to which was so graciously provided by user brunton) or google. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.130.154.212 (talk) 04:40, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

66.130.154.212, the Citizendium approach will not result in a better article. If you want to read about homeopathy from the viewpoint of homeopaths it is quite good, as it was substantially contributed to by Dana Ullmann and other homeopaths. Don't confuse its dispassionate tone for a lack of bias! There is abundant special pleading, like the paragraph beginning "Water is not simply a collection of molecules of H2O", which makes special pleading for the idea of the memory of water. The overview is also a biased view, using weasel wording to downplay science. The CZ article does not back up controversial claims with reliable sources. All Wikipedia pages should be dispassionate (which it has been criticed for!) and based on reliable sources, not opinion. We deliberately avoid the kind of editorialising seen on CZ. If you want to improve this article on Wikipedia, please discuss its demerits here without insulting it or its editors. It probably does need improvement for flow and clarity. Fences and windows (talk) 18:56, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Off-topic: I just love how the first post in their talk page is a huge rant by a stablished user about how Dana is removing negative info from the article. This is what I love about open wikis, you get to be aware of all the POV fights going on behind the scenes (by the way, they replaced the Paracelsus text at "Homeopathy", but they forgot to add it to "History of Homeopathy", so now the articles are out of sync). --Enric Naval (talk) 12:40, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Some parts of the CZ article are good and Wikipedia could benefit from considering those bits. On the other hand their "Scientific basis of homeopathy" section is ghastly, with a lot of cargo cult ramblings about isotopes and such. The strangely-titled "Overview" section is an all-purpose apologia for implausible phenomena. I think both the CZ and WP articles are not very well written and could use some polishing up. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 14:26, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Their coverage of history of homeopathy seems to be much better, although I fear that it's full of inaccuracies, like the Hippocrates thing found by Fences and Windows. (knowing that Dana has been involved in it, I actually expected this sort of thing happening :P ) --Enric Naval (talk) 02:52, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Clinical evidence

Clinical evidence is the evidence doctors see in their clinics or at the bed-side. Homeopaths see that their treatment does produce results. The BHA studies are even more supportive of that. Can we remove the word, 'Clinical evidence' from the, 'Claims to the......' sentence in the Lead?-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 11:38, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

No. That's what the sources say. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 11:57, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

"The BHA studies" fail to take trial quality into account, as has already been noted above. Brunton (talk) 22:07, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Don't the BHA studies meet the WP:MEDRS criteria according to the first table there? Can we insert the BHA studies somewhere here?-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 16:36, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

The same studies are already discussed in the article by reference to published, peer-reviewed analyses, which take study quality into account, rather than the unpublished review from an organisation that, in its own words "exists to promote homeopathy" that you want to insert. The studies are already included, using better sources. Brunton (talk) 08:19, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Hippocrates

There are lotsa webpages/websites which mention Hippocrates and his use of similars, but can someone find a reliable source for it (I don't have the time)?-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 16:39, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I found an encyclopedia from the 1830s that places homeopathy and "Hippocratic medicine" in opposition to each other.

“ Every disease is considered as requiring a specific remedy. Homoeopathy is thus placed in opposition to the Hippocratic system, which has existed, under various forms, for twenty-two centuries; and it has been exposed to numerous attacks on this account. We will mention some of the points in dispute. Homoeopathy objects to the Hippocratic system, that it acts on the maxim contraria contrariis curantur, and therefore effects merely a palliative cure. This reproach is unjust, because the judicious physician endeavours to restore the diseased organs by the influence of the healthy organs, and the merest empiric alone attempts to cure by absolute contraries. The Hippocratic medicine does not even reject the homoeopathic principle, as the treatment of nervous diseases proves. Secondly, the homoeopathists accuse their opponents of directing their efforts against what cannot be known, the proximate cause of the disease; while, in turn, the homoeopathist may be reproached with attaching himself merely to the superficial external appearance of the disease, and with a pedantic minuteness in regard to those symptoms which disease assumes in a given case. Thirdly, the homoeopathist accuses the others of administering remedies of which they do not know the effects; to which it may be replied that the effect of a medicine becomes perfectly known only through a patient, never by a healthy person. Fourthly, the minuteness of the dose prescribed by the homoeopathists is objected to by other physicians, who, however, should not forget that they constantly order a solution of one grain of tartar-emetic in eight ounces of water. The injudicious mixture of medicines has become less common than formerly among the Hippocratic physicians. The Hippocratic school cannot reconcile itself to the idea that all classification of diseases under generic names is, in itself, without meaning, and that the course of acute diseases, the doctrine of the crisis, &c. (the basis of the Hippocratic medicine), is imaginary, since it rests on a faithful observation of nature. The old system, therefore, reproaches homoeopathy not only with not knowing, but with disdaining to know the nature of diseases. Since the knowledge of the nature and the course of diseases is the indisputable basis of the Hippocratic medicine, a great revolution in medicine is not to be expected from homoeopathy. If its principles should prove true, it will result in a knowledge of specific means of cure, and thus make a valuable addition to medicine, as other systems have done. ”

[37] Fences and windows (talk) 23:01, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Here are the works of Hippocrates. The intro mentions homeopathy and similia etc., but I can't find the passage in his actual writing using search terms... [38] Fences and windows (talk) 23:08, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Here's a review of the relevant part of the Hippocratic Corpus, "Places in Man": http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2000/2000-02-24.html. It is apparent that "Hippocrates" wasn't the author of any statements about similars; the "Hippocratic Corpus" was written by many authors, and this one seems earlier, less focussed and less sophisticated than some others. Hahnemann's interpretation is also disputed. This isn't a 'reliable source' as such, but it is a lucid description of why Hahnemann may have been wrong in his reading of Places in Man: http://www.skepsis.nl/homeopat.html. A reference to Hahnemann believing that Hippocrates had foreshadowed him might be OK, but any statement to the effect that Hippocrates applied principles of homeopathy would be incorrect. Fences and windows (talk) 23:47, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Citations linking to journal titles, author names, publishers, locations

(This section follows up from User talk:Hans Adler #Homeopathy and overlinking.)

Let's remove internal wikilinks from citations. Citations are supposed to be to external, reliable sources and the wikilinks give an inappropriate visual cue to readers as to which of these citations Wikipedia editors like. Also, the extra blue text is offputting and confusing. So, for example, let's change something like this:

• Maddox J, Randi J, Stewart WW (1988), "'High-dilution' experiments a delusion" (PDF), Nature, 334 (6180): 287–90, doi:10.1038/334287a0{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

to this:

• Maddox J, Randi J, Stewart WW (1988), "'High-dilution' experiments a delusion" (PDF), Nature, 334 (6180): 287–90, doi:10.1038/334287a0{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Eubulides (talk) 07:34, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Bad idea. All the links do is provide access to articles, in this case articles on the authors and publishers. Readers are likely to find it useful to be able to find out more, and to make their own assessment of the value of the sources. . dave souza, talk 10:19, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

So far Eubulides and I have considered the following options:

(1) Wikilinks for authors, journals etc. are used in footnotes wherever the target exists, e.g. currently there would be 12 links to Edzard Ernst.

(2) Such wikilinks are only used in the first instance, e.g. Edzard Ernst would be linked only from footnote 5, but not from footnote 9, 12, 15, 23, 44, 108, 115, 138, 142, 160, 161.

(3) Such wikilinks are not used at all.

My personal preferences are (3), (1), (2) for a big article such as this one, and (2), (1), (3) for an article with few footnotes. The problem with option (2) for this article is that each time someone adds or removes a reference in the lede, other references are also affected. Based on past sloppiness with reference formatting etc. (which makes sense, because you never know if your change will stick, even if it was discussed) I predict that this is not going to work.

We haven't discussed my personal favourite:

(4) Rename "Notes and references" to "References". Add a new section "References" which contains the most important references, and cite them from footnotes using the Harvard citation mechanism. Use option (3) for the "Notes" section and option (2) for the "References" section.

I don't expect to get much support for this, but I thought it's at least worth mentioning. --Hans Adler (talk) 11:08, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I prefer solutions 2 and 1, in no particular order. Hans, do you mean a Notes section and a References section rather than two reference sections? Verbal chat 12:05, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I am thinking of a Notes section that would in practice contain mostly obscure references that only serve to back a specific claim, i.e. the references that we only have for formal reasons and that a well-written article outsided Wikipedia would omit. The References section would certainly include the Organon, probably ""Homeopaths 'endangering lives' by offering malaria remedies", and certainly not "Water resources, In Encyclopedia of climate and weather". It would be sorted alphabetically, possibly with a few subsections for different types of sources. We are currently listing > 150 sources in more or less random order, and I think this is not optimal. --Hans Adler (talk) 12:41, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Why should anyone's personal preferences enter the discussion? Let's just follow the lead of WP's best articles in medicine, particularly ones promoted recently. What would it take to get through FAR? See Wikipedia:Featured_Article#Health_and_medicine for a list.LeadSongDog come howl 13:11, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure that I fully understand your comment. It's hard to check in an existing article whether it follows (1) or (2). Anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany looks very similar to what I proposed as (4), only they seem to have a clear rule that the References section is for books. --Hans Adler (talk) 13:53, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Asperger syndrome is a demonstration of the problem with approach (2): Simon Baron-Cohen appears as author in references 29, 44, 45, 49 50, 51, 84, 92, 93. Guess which one has the link. --Hans Adler (talk) 13:58, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Virtually all the biomedical journal publishers follow the Vancouver guidelines with slight variations. References are listed in order of first occurence. Our hardcore medical articles follow that form. History, religion and literature articles are more associated with the two-level notes-plus-references system, your number 4 (refnamed-harvnb or however we designate it). So perhaps we should ask if this article is to be principally a history, a discussion of the current practice of homeopathy as CAM, or as faith healing. Having made that choice the options narrow down.LeadSongDog come howl 16:59, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I can't follow you. It sounds as if you are saying that there is an objective correct citation style depending on the nature of this article, which cannot be overridden by the editors because of practical considerations. But surely you can't mean that? If you feel very strongly that you can't live with the citation style that I proposed it would seem enough that you simply say so, rather than accusing me of bringing in improper personal preferences. After all, I have only proposed (4) because I think it's a good solution to the problem that Eubulides objects to the overlinking caused by (1), I object to the inconsistency and unmaintainability caused by (2), and Dave souza objects to the loss of information caused by (3). If you object to (4) because you think it's unworthy of a medical article it's obviously not going to work as a compromise.

Also, if you really feel you have to bring in a veto against (4), I think you have the duty to at least state your position on (1)-(3) and make it clear whether or not you are going to veto one of them as well. Given that I wasn't even going to discuss option (4) unless it got strong support by others (remember? "I don't expect to get much support for this") and that I merely replied to Verbal's question, I don't think you are showing your most constructive side right now. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:13, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks for catching that bug in Asperger syndrome; I fixed it by removing the wikilink in the citation, which was a duplicate of a wikilink in the main text. The fix also removes some other wikilinks (mostly in citations) which had similar problems. It's been a while since someone has audited Asperger syndrome for duplicate or out-of-order wikilinks.
• Asperger syndrome uses another rule, which we can call (5): Omit wikilinks to authors in citations if they're duplicates of wikilinks in the text, and do not use wikilinks to journals, publishers, locations, etc. (5) is a compromise between (2) and (3); I prefer (3), then (5), then (2), and last (1). (4), I think, is overkill for most medical topics, though it works well for nonmedical topics where books are the main source.

Eubulides (talk) 22:09, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

For starters, I was not accusing anyone of anything. Not Hans, not Verbal, and most certainly not Eubulides, whom I regard with a measure of awe. Next, there's nothing improper about having personal preferences, we all do. It's one of the strengths of WP that those preferences play off against each other. Further, I don't believe anyone mentioned a veto. There isn't one, so far as I am aware, for those of us who are not called Jimbo. So please relax, it's just a discussion. In fact, I happen to like 4. I went to great effort to introduce it at World War I. It is not without its problems, as the bugs in harvnb linking still haven't been sorted out. (It doesn't correctly ignore the difference between last=Smith|first=A|year=2009 and last = Smith | first = A | year = 2009, generating different CITEREF tags in each case. This then breaks the internal linkage from the Note to the Reference when someone or somebot makes a whitespace change.) So for technical reasons, I'm avoiding it even where I think it would be appropriate. But if we think that this is a history, philosophy or faith article, then I'd suggest we go with 4 once the technical problem is resolved. If we wish this to be a medicine article then I hold that we should follow the same pattern as those medicine articles that have recently achieved FA status. The example of the Nazi anti-smoking article clearly followed the history track (it too has roots in both article categories). Amongst 1, 2, 3 I agree that 2 is the most robust answer and I would suggest that this rationale should trump the WP:Overlink issue, at least until the content is much more stable. Clear enough?LeadSongDog come howl 22:24, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation and sorry for getting irritated. Could you clarify your penultimate sentence please? Your rationale sounds like something I might have written in favour of (1), so I'm a bit confused. --Hans Adler (talk) 23:07, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

No problem, we all have our days. The penultimate sentence was my observation that Talk:Anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany shows that article to be part of WikiProject History and WikiProject Medicine. The style 4 usage in that article is one that the wiki-historians would be comfortable working with. (Observation: By contrast editors of medical articles sometimes prefer to just provide a pmid or doi and let user:Citation bot or user:Diberri's tool do the rest. I have long argued that improvements to the automation for checking and completing citations is the best way to improve them and so reduce our susceptibility to subtle vandalism that changes page numbers etc.) LeadSongDog come howl 15:43, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Mechanism of homeopathy

We don't have any great detail on the proposed mechanisms of homeopathy, and criticisms of these proposed mechanisms.

• Walach and Milgrom have proposed non-local effects and quantum entanglement play a part. While looking for studies I found this examination of the issue as well: http://www.cs.rug.nl/~michael/qthair.pdf
• The proposed mechanisms of water memory could be explored more, although possibly on its own page.
• Some discussion of the placebo effect and its subtleties might be good.
• The issue of "complex treatments", specifically that there may be other elements in the homeopathic treatment other than the remedy that may have an effect, e.g. the consultation, e.g. see these articles: Circular instead of hierarchical: methodological principles for the evaluation of complex interventions, Homeopathy – what are the active ingredients? An exploratory study using the UK Medical Research Council's framework for the evaluation of complex interventions, Evaluation of specific and non-specific effects in homeopathy: Feasibility study for a randomised trial, How do parents of child patients compare consultations with homeopaths and physicians? A qualitative study ‘Homeopathy’: Untangling the debate Fences and windows (talk) 23:43, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

You may wanna see:-

1. Martin Chaplin, ed. (2007) "The Memory of Water." Homeopathy. 96:141-230 (Copies of the articles in this special issue along with discussion are available at Homeopathy Journal Club Bad Science, a blog by Ben Goldacre.

2. Khuda-Bukhsh AR (2003). Towards understanding molecular mechanisms of action of homeopathic drugs: an overview. Mol Cell Biochem 253: 339–45. PMID 14619985.

Regards,

NootherIDAvailable (talk) 13:04, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Regarding the "Memory of Water" special issue of Homeopathy, it's also worth looking at the responses to the papers in that issue published in the January 2008 issue of the same journal.

Regarding the second item, can you give us any details of the "interesting scientific works on homeopathy" of which this communication presents an overview, and say what it says about them? Unfortunately the full text is behind a paywall. Brunton (talk) 15:21, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Khuda-Bukhsh's review is here.

Here's a debate between Khuda-Bukhsh and Moffet et al.: [39] [40] (the latter is un-free).

The Bad Science homeopathy journal club has links to a lot of (free) articles on mechanisms, including water memory. Fences and windows (talk) 15:26, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

I now see that there's a mention of WQT in the section on effectiveness: "Positive results have been reported, but no single model has been sufficiently widely replicated. Local models proposed are far from convincing, and the nonlocal models proposed, often invoking "weak quantum theory", would predict that it is impossible to nail down homeopathic effects with direct experimental testing." This wording fails to explain what "local" and "non-local" mean in this context; a reader unfamiliar with the proposals of WQT would be confused. I don't think discussion of mechanisms is appropriate in a section on effectiveness; there should be a separate section called Mechanism of homeopathy. Fences and windows (talk) 20:06, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree. The water memory nonsense got a lot of attention, and it would fit nicely into such a section. A better title might be Proposed mechanisms of homeopathy. --Hans Adler (talk) 22:49, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Just curious, but how can homeopathic preparations retain their "vital force" but not their disease-causing "force"? For example, some preparations are based on proven carcinogens and the practitioners claim the preparations can't cause cancer. 172.190.53.158 (talk) 02:31, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

As far as homoeopathy is concerned, the remedies have the power to cure because they have disease-causing powers. The concepts of desired effects and side effects are alien to homoeopathy - the remedies (allegedly) have effects, and it is simply a matter of matching the remedy's effects to the patient's overall symptoms. Brunton (talk) 08:19, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Research on medical effectiveness

This section should probably be structured. It reads as a choppy chronological list of meta-analyses. There could be the following sections:

• History of studies
• Meta-analyses and systematic reviews
• The evidence base for different conditions
• Statements by medical bodies on effectiveness
• Discussion of the appropriateness of clinical trials - is homeopathy individualised, appropriateness of RCTs for testing homeopathy etc.

Oh, and the title of the section seems awkward. Research on efficacy? Studies of efficacy? Fences and windows (talk) 20:06, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Regulation and prevalence

Why are the prevalence of homeopathy and the regulation coupled? The two subjects don't seem related to me. We could expand the Revival in the late 20th century section using material about prevalence from the article on Regulation and prevalence of homeopathy, and leave the section at the end to discuss only regulatory and legal issues. Fences and windows (talk) 20:06, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Safety of homeopathy

• This is an interesting discussion of the safety of homeopathy in the JRSM by Brian Kirby: Safety of homeopathic products. It discusses the issue quite well, I think. Fisher et al. replied here, with a response by Kirby included. I'd like to include a reference to this.
• If anyone has access, this article, Harm in homeopathy: Aggravations, adverse drug events or medication errors? discusses adverse events in homeopathy, from a sympathetic perspective.
• A related matter is "aggravations". Homeopaths believe that under treatment, symptoms may get worse before they get better, and term this "aggravations", and see them positively, e.g. "homeopathic aggravations are desirable" (The Science of Homeopathy By George Vithoulkas, p228); "Homeopathic physicians see aggravations as a positive sign on the correct route to recovery" (Essentials of complementary and alternative medicine By Wayne B. Jonas, Jeffrey S. Levin, Brian Berman, p168). However, a systematic review by Ernst didn't find evidence to back this belief in aggravations. I think this topic also should be included. Fences and windows (talk) 17:26, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

POV tag

This article is not NPOV and so it ought to have the 'not neutral' tag (unless we rename it, 'Criticism of homeopathy'). No homeopath will accept this article in its present form (and the article is about homeopathy, sigh!).-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 12:13, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

You are right. I don't. Yes, I am a practicing lay homeopath. Criticalobservation (talk) 08:18, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Clearly you misunderstand wp:NPOV. It doesn't mean that each side of the dispute thinks that it's neutral. We don't expect the Turkish government to consider the article Armenian genocide as neutral. We expect it to reflect the verifiable, reliable sources. Removing the tag as previously discussed.LeadSongDog (talk) 13:00, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

When you guys police it to disallow a defence, it can never be NPOV. There's absolutely no consensus that this article is NPOV (in fact many will agree that this is an attack piece), so the POV tag is justified.-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 13:06, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Stop adding the POV tag just because you don't like what the article says. You were already told at Talk:Homeopathy#Quackery why the work "quackery" should stay in the lead. --Enric Naval (talk) 13:23, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

This article isn't NPOV and should have that tag. I think we'll need an admin to arbitrate here. I think you guys should be reported for disruptive editing-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 13:28, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Please read WP:DISPUTE on dispute resolution. Thanks. Fences and windows (talk) 21:06, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Thread at ANI (already closed) --Enric Naval (talk) 21:08, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, exactly. Going asking for admin help is not a good solution here. Fences and windows (talk) 21:32, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

NootherIDAvailable, this article isn't written for homeopaths, nor their customers, but for everyone. It's not a sales brochure written only from the viewpoint of homeopaths. You really need to understand NPOV better. One indication that NPOV is being met is when neither side of the issue is totally happy with ALL the information the article contains, but if they are good Wikipedia editors who understand the policies here, they will be satisfied only when opposing POV have been presented factually without promotion. To be a good editor here, one has to be willing to write for the enemy. Are you willing to do that? It doesn't sound like it. If you aren't willing to do that, or at least allow it, then you will only be a disruption here and will end up getting blocked or banned. Please make up your mind. This isn't your personal website or blog. This is an encyclopedia like no other. It has its own special set of rules, and no one understands them completely since they are constantly evolving to meet new demands. Some of our policies, like those related to Pseudoscience and Fringe subjects, were developed because of the actions of editors like yourself, IOW they were made to enable the canons of Wikipedia to shoot you and other editors like you. Since you seem to be new here, I suggest that you just lay low and stay out of the sights of those canons by not making too many waves. Give it time and you'll likely get the hang of it. Edit other subjects for awhile and learn the ropes. Good luck. -- Fyslee (talk) 05:03, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Fyslee is right. The test of being able to write for the enemy is an excellent one. The ability to do so ensures that the writer understands the opposing point of view, is not taken in by slander, and understands the weaknesses of his or her own argument. The article really doesn't have the perspective of a homeopathic practitioner, rather it is primarily historic and colorful descriptions of the ideology behind the practice. Criticalobservation (talk) 08:27, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I have written a few thoughts about NPOV here: My POV on NPOV. I hope it will at least help you understand where I'm coming from as an experienced editor here. -- Fyslee (talk) 05:21, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

All I'm trying to say is that we haven't reached consensus here on removing the tag. I'm sure y'all have noticed that I haven't re-inserted the tag after it was reverted by Enric. I hope we can have the POV tag back in place.-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 11:24, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

You appear to be thinking that "we haven't reached consensus" is equal to "it's still not to my liking". --Enric Naval (talk) 16:04, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Consensus means all must agree to the removal of the tag, don't misquote me.-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 11:11, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

No, consensus doesn't mean that every single person must agree, just a majority, and even then it needs to take into account wikipedia policies, which have wider consensus. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:52, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

We have this notice on this Page which reads, 'This is a controversial topic that may be under dispute......'. We also had the POV tag on the article from June 2008 to Jan.2009, so I'm merely asking to reinsert the POV tag on the article, because the article's tone hasn't changed since June 2008.-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 16:18, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Verbal removed the tag in August 2008;

• Talk:Homeopathy/Archive_36#NPOV_tag

This started a series of discussions lasting until February 2009:

• Talk:Homeopathy/Archive_36#neutrality of tone
• Talk:Homeopathy/Archive_36#POV tag
• Talk:Homeopathy/Archive_36#Apart from quackery in the lead...
• Talk:Homeopathy/Archive 37#Problems with the lead
• Talk:Homeopathy/Archive_37#Recent changes to the lead
• Talk:Homeopathy/Archive_37#POV tag
• Talk:Homeopathy/Archive_37#not NPOV
• Talk:Homeopathy/Archive_37#Lede still not NPOV, please comment on proposal
• Talk:Homeopathy/Archive_37#Homeopaths can't post to this page
• Talk:Homeopathy/Archive_37#Point of view tag
• Talk:Homeopathy/Archive_37#Puppetry, Protection & POV tags

--Enric Naval (talk) 20:27, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I believe there was no homeopath to object then, but now I insist the tag be reinserted.-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 07:41, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

It shouldn't be reinserted. Could you give some policy reasons why the tag should be inserted? Ones that haven't already been dismissed would be helpful. Verbal chat 09:50, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Lykantrop wrote correctly in the FA nomination that every statement is criticised in this article. He also wrote:-

Well, your answer is pretty much of a good display of the problem. "Homeopathy is a fringe theory" is what you say. That is the problem. You are observing Homeopathy from the view of the critics.

In the most developed countries in the world such as Sweden or Netherlands, homeopathy is officially been used in hospitals along with conventional medicine and also veterinary homeopathy is used there for agricultural animals instead of antibiotics. Yes, the majority of scientific community does not support homeopathy, but a huge part of scientific community and thus reliable scientific sources written by medicine professors and scientists do support it just because its effectivness as well as some developed countries decided to.

"Homeopathy is a fringe theory" is a non-neutral statement as well as this article is. I am absolutely not saying that homeopathy should be put on the same level as the conventional medicine. But to say that the conventional-medicine-view is the objective one and the view of homeopathy is the subjective one is wrong and not neutral. There is a difference between these two of course. But that does not mean that conventional medicine, which is only acknowledged by the majority (that's not 100%), must comment every statement of homeopathy from its "conventional medicine view".

Yes, homeopathy is not accepted by the majority of scientists, and that is why the conventional medicine (which is accepted by the majority) should have a section about criticism in the homeopathy article. But the conventional medicine is not the only accepted medicine. Homeopathy is accepted by a minority of scientific world thus it is not any kind of quackery. And that is why conventional medicine is not the objective one that has the right to say its opinion on everything in the article. Conventional medicine has its reliable sources but homeopathy does have its reliable sources as well. Conventional medicine is not objective just because it has more of them.

You can use this style of writing for some quackery, but not for homeopathy, which is supported by many scientists and some European countires. The problem is that you think that homeopathy is quackery, but that is not neutral.

These arguments are just a lame way how to preventively get rid of criticism.-- LYKANTROP

The homeopathic medical doctors aren't even being allowed to put up a defense (nor take out the criticism), so we ought to have the POV tag here, unless we rename it, 'Criticism of Homeopathy'.

I wouldn't mind if the POV tags are taken off the osteopathy, naturopathy or chiropractic articles, though (as an admin, you can do that, right?).-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 09:33, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I've inserted an 'arbcom' tag on the article, which I believe only they can remove (you skeptics can make corrections, but can't remove the tag).-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 09:59, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

You are incorrect that it can only be removed by arbcom, and it isn't even a tag! Please stop inserting this template. The POV tag, or any tag, has not been justified. You may be blocked if you keep inserting this template. Verbal chat 10:06, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I won't reinsert it, but I'm looking for ways to refer this article to the arbcom. Anyone is welcome to answer how to go about doing it!-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 10:10, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I've now posted it at WP:DR.-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 10:46, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

That is a page about how to go about dispute resolution. Try posting to WP:FTN with full yet concise description of the problem, supported by evidence. Verbal chat 10:49, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

RfC: Is this article NPOV?

Is this article NPOV?-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 11:13, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I think there's something wrong with this tag, but I hope someone can set it right (I dunno how, I'm sorry).-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 11:19, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I've commented out the broken tag. I'd suggest waiting for more input from the two noticeboards you've posted to, and giving some specific problems you have with the page. Verbal chat 11:35, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

This dispute over a POV tag is not helping to improve the article. If you see above, I'm interested in working to improve several of the sections, and this dispute is distracting from efforts to improve the writing and expand the content. In my view, we need to improve the flow of many of the sections, to expand the information about prevalence and regulation, reorganise the effectiveness section and add a Proposed mechanism section. I'd prefer editors' efforts to be directed into this instead of this fruitless discussion. Fences and windows (talk) 20:09, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Arbitration_enforcement#NoOtherIDAvailable

I hate to do this, but I think this needs sorted. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 18:28, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

references 1

The references with one line for each part of the ref makes editing of this page almost impossible. Someone needs to take the times to condense these. Not other GA / FA does this that I have seen.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:09, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Fixed the heading so as not to confuse things. We can't have two identical headings. Now....what do you mean? Please explain. Is there something different with the references section in this article than you find in other references sections on other articles? Or is this about references temlates with lots of lines in each reference. That's easy to fix. I'll take a look. -- Fyslee (talk) 06:00, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I gave it a try and discovered that the whole article is filled with these weird ref formats. It looks like a bot must have done it. It does indeed make editing difficult. That bot needs to be tarred and feathered and then lit on fire! Whoever did this, please undo it. -- Fyslee (talk) 06:11, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Can someone explain what the difficulty is with this approach? It is certainly easier for humans to read the wikitext when it is one line per field. Bots don't care. Many complex templates' documentation show usage broken one line per field: see Template:Citation/doc for example FA status of the article is not affected, see Alzheimer's disease for an example FA using it. LeadSongDog come howl 07:12, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I did it using a script that requires manual copy & paste; it was announced above under #Citation format. (Look for the word "pretty-printing".) I have no idea why anybody could think this makes editing the article harder. It certainly makes cleaning up the references significantly easier, and that's an overdue task that quite a few people have been working on recently. I can of course revert it using the same script; but that produces a massive diff, and therefore I would like to see a bit more discussion (and preferably a consensus) before I do this. So far the 4 editors participating in this thread are split evenly. --Hans Adler (talk) 07:22, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

It makes upkeep and editing of references much easier, even if it does mean more scrolling. As Hans has made the effort to present the references in this user-friendly way, I'd keep it like that. Fences and windows (talk) 15:36, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

It seems that fixing this to make it similar to the style elsewhere at Wikipedia would be too much work, so let's just learn to live with it here, but please don't do it elsewhere. I use Google Toolbar and can highlight the "ref", which makes it easy to find and edit text and references. This format makes it harder to find where sentences and paragraphs start and stop. I find streamlined refs easier to deal with, since dealing with references is often manual work. -- Fyslee (talk) 04:51, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

World Homeopathy Day

I'm not gonna edit this article till I learn the rules better, but World Homeopathy Day is celebrated worldwide on April 10th, so I hope some of you can take a look at this article favorably :-

Evidence profile for the efficacy of homeopathy – A new paradigm for medical sciences: "The Body Information Theory",

which I'm sure y'all can find on the Internet.-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 02:36, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

It isn't peer-reviewed (summary of symposium proceedings) and is largely a discussion of the same evidence base for which the article cites peer-reviewed analyses. It also seems to be to some extent guilty of cherry-picking - for example I note that it cites Linde et al 1997 but not Linde et al 1999, which looked in particular at study quality and stated that the findings of the 1997 paper "at least overestimated the effects of homeopathic treatments". Brunton (talk) 07:48, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

External links - Associations and regulatory bodies

Of the 6 links in this section, 5 are clearly associations and not regulatory bodies. Wouldn't it be clearer to call this section simply "Associations", and possibly move the link to HPCUS someplace else? (I know how easily tempers and edit wars can rise here, so I leave the change to those who are more deeply involved in this topic.) --Art Carlson (talk) 10:58, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's necessary. The HPCUS is clearly in the same class as the other links. I think it would be better to simply change the title, or perhaps find a second regulatory body. Although I guess that some of the professional organisations play a similar role anyway. --Hans Adler (talk) 11:04, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

DMOZ has a page for organizations. I dislike linking to organizations because you get scope and organization creep. Unless there is a world body, every country, state and group will start adding themselves to the list. In addition, it's not really world-wide to allow specific areas, nor is it really appropriate per WP:ELNO or WP:ELYES. The page is not about an organization, it's about homeopathy in general. DMOZ also has a regular page for homeopathy. I had added it, but Shoemaker's Holiday removed it citing extensive commerical entities (and no critical ones I think) so I'm content to leave it off. I'd be more in favour of replacing the DMOZ's organizations page though, it's ultimately got a useful collection of links to Europe, North America, Asia and Oceania org lists as well as the misc. list on the front page.

Right now, all the links are problematic in my mind - what nation does the "National Center for Homeopathy (NCH)" represent? Why does it deserve a mention? Why does the BHA? Why are there three for Europe, why does the US get one? I'd rather the whole set removed seeing as I don't see anything encyclopedic added by having them. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 15:51, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

New Source

This source is of interest [41] I think the abstract explains the main points. Smartse (talk) 16:02, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

This isn't new, it's a Boiron/Ennis paper. Was there something especially interesting? Verbal chat 16:07, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, it was its fifth birthday on Tuesday... Brunton (talk) 16:49, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Bias?

It seems like the intro paragraphs are highly critical of homeopathy. I'm sure criticisms aboud, but shouldn't they be in the body of the article (which they are), but to focus so heavily on the criticisms in the lead in seems unencyclopedic? After all, its not some fringe practice, it is used widely across Asia, and Europe. Let's not let American bias interfere with the objectivity of the article. Warfwar3 (talk) 00:41, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Please read the extensive discussions of this issue in the talk archives, linked at the top of the page, before deciding to tag the article. Homeopathy is most certainly a fringe practice, and this has nothing to do with pro-American bias. Skinwalker (talk) 01:18, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

The criticism is not a US centric position; it is based on homeopathy being a fringe theory (see WP:FRINGE), which is not supported by the scientific evidence. NPOV does not mean presenting all theories without criticism. Criticism needs to be given due weight in the lead, and this does not mean giving equal weight to support and criticism, but rather reflecting the facts and views expressed in reliable sources (see WP:MEDRS). Fences and windows (talk) 01:22, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I am disputing the neutrality, so why do you remove the tag? Let us have a reasonable discussion and find the solution, like grown-ups. You can't dispute the fact that people are disputing the neutrality. And past consensus does not mean it can not change. Wikipedia is not a religion. We should not tolerate dogma. There are many times when a consensus has been reached on a certain article, only for it to be overturned at a later time. Warfwar3 (talk) 20:41, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Per WP:LEAD, the lead section should summarize the body, with all key points presented. Could you please make specific suggestions based on the sources already used or new reliable sources regarding how the article might be improved?

Also, absent specific discussion of how to fix the perceived bias, the POV-tag should be removed. - Eldereft (cont.) 05:44, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. The discussion in this section comes nowhere close to justify a POV tag. I removed the tag (again). Eubulides (talk) 07:56, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

The current lead is dominated by criticism, which is not NPOV. Also, it does not summarise the article, having been written independently and contains many citations. A better approach would be to throw it away and start again by summarising the structure of the article. Of course, the main body of the article has to be made NPOV first. I shall be restoring the tag until this is done. Colonel Warden (talk) 08:00, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

The current lead is appropriately weighted, and is heavily cited due to the "bias" accusations which have been thrown around. The POV tag is not justified. We need specific issues, and hopefully ones that haven't already been addressed. (for example, pseudoscience and quackery has been addressed many times and should remain). The lead does summarise the article, and having been written "after" doesn't invalidate that - starting again would allow the same so called "criticism". The lead is POV because it's well sourced?? Verbal chat 08:05, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

No, the lead is POV because it consists almost entirely of sources that criticize homeopathy, while disparaging sources that support homeopathy. Just take a look at other "professional" encyclopedias and the difference is obvious. The article in general reads like an attack piece. Until we can resolve that, why shouldn't the tag remain? Let's not resort to censorship 96.233.45.165 (talk) 17:13, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Regarding claims of censorship, see Observation #1 here. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 17:16, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

The most medically reliable sources, third-party reviews of literature, find homeopathy to be ineffective. The core sciences are totally unsupportive of just about everything about homeopathy. The best science available fails to support it. Ergo, per WP:UNDUE, placing any emphasis on it's "useful" applications is inappropriate. So the lead should be mostly unsupportive. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 18:43, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Opening sentence: "larger doses"

Sorry to bring this up again, but a recent edit has made the opening sentence of the lead more directly contradict a sourced statement in the body of the article. Homeopathy does not try to treat disease with dilutions of substances that would cause the symptoms of the disease at larger doses: it treats disease with remedies that are claimed to cause the same symptoms in healthy volunteers. Hahnemann, by time he wrote the later editions of the Organon, recommended "proving" remedies (i.e. finding out what symptoms they caused) at 30C, and, as sourced in the article, "most modern provings are carried out using ultradilute remedies in which it is highly unlikely that any of the original molecules remain." My previous attempts to rephrase this sentence to better reflect the referenced statement in the body of the article have not met with approval - would anyone else like to suggest an alternative wording? Brunton (talk) 09:42, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I've edited it accordingly so that the statement in the lead is at least true. I suspect that The "thought to" might not be acceptable, but the evidence that they actually do cause the symptoms they are claimed to is not exactly robust - "provings" are rarely adequately blinded, and there are several double-blind proving trials of potentised remedies which appear to show no significant effect. Brunton (talk) 09:44, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of this important point, which I was not aware of until recently. For me personally the use of very dilute substances in provings is as important as the use of ultradilute substances in remedies: These are the two key points where plausibility breaks down completely. Your formulation works for me. --Hans Adler (talk) 12:18, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Criticisms and ideas for improvement

(paraphrased from the Fringe theories noticeboard, by ImperfectlyInformed):

• The lead uses 20 footnotes (some repeat citations) to tell the reader the "it's not scientific".
• There is no discussion of mechanism in the lead.
• Water memory gets only one sentence which doesn't even mention the most relevant mainstream fact, i.e. that water's structure lasts about 1 picosecond, nor any of the proponents' research.
• There is little discussion of how most homeopathic remedies would be expected to have zero molecules of the original substance.
• No mention of scientific investigation into the law of similars.
• No mention of the Bayesian approach where findings are weighted by prior plausibility, which is an argument against any positive findings.
• The article needs more detail on what homeopaths do and how they see the world.(comment by Short Brigade Harvester Boris)

Fences and windows (talk) 15:47, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

For the first few points: The citations were required by the edit warring and accusations of bias made by pro-homeopathy editors; There is no plausible mechanism, so it is hard to discuss and have in the lead, unless we simply state there is no plausible mechanism (plenty of sources for that) - mechanism is also secondary to effect, and there is no evidence of effect - as the article and lead make clear; water memory in the article could be expanded, but it is only one proposed mechanism and has been mostly discredited and abandoned - even by homeopaths - and should be dealt with in its own article. I don't have a problem with water memory research and dilution problems being expanded on. The other points sound like good ideas for expanding the article. Verbal chat 15:55, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. One authoritative recent citation, lacking a contradicting recent citation, is as authoritative as 4. I hardly think the ref-bombing changed the edit-warring. Blaming promotional homeopaths for poor-writing and ref-bombing is unconvincing, especially since DanaUllman hasn't been editing for a long while. Whether the proposed mechanisms are plausible or not is irrelevant since this article, like all articles, is an expository encyclopedia article. Proposed mechanisms must be summarized in the lead. Reading over again, perhaps I was a little sharp in my response. II | (t - c) 18:10, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

The article also should move away from (what I call) "Wikipedia style" writing, which consists of sentences built like those rambling New England houses, where phrases and clauses are strung together, much like additional rooms are gradually added to the original house, with lots of parenthetical statements (like nooks and crannies), which makes it harder to find your way around, and which can cause you to lose your original path as a reader, or as a visitor. Never underestimate the power of the simple declarative sentence. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 16:07, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Verbal chat 16:17, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I wonder whether we need so much detail in the lead as to why homeopathy is criticised by scientists? The lead is a summary, and I'm not sure we need to include all the information about law of mass action etc. right upfront; it does clutter the lead. I agree that most of the info on water memory should be in its own article, but it is a notable suggested mechanism. The weak quantum hypothesis should be explained in more detail as well (along with criticism!). Here's an article on prior beliefs and alternative medicine, which mentions Bayesian reasoning: [42]. Fences and windows (talk) 18:26, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Opening up the edit window on this article, it's even more of a pain than I expected. It seems as if the people editing this article wanted to add every single article on homeopathy. For example, 3 articles on Zicam alone, numerous reviews dating from the 1990s to the 2000s. I really don't think this is necessary given that reviews of clinical trials all say the same thing: some trials showed efficacy, some don't, but homeopathy is implausible. Let's just cut the old ones and stick to the new, unless the old ones are shown to be particularly notable. II | (t - c) 22:13, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I've been moving slowly in this direction, preferring broad meta-analyses to more narrowly focused ones, more recent reviews to earlier ones, and so on. It's probably best to move slowly given the history of this article. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 00:47, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

If we were only to use what could be supported by WP:MEDRS reviews, the article could be reduced to an explanation of Homeopathy as a system of faith healing using water and sugar pills as placebos. Perhaps not a bad thing, though certain to meet some opposition.LeadSongDog come howl 20:51, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Homeopathy ain't faith healing. There are innumerable studies to prove it's effective (that's Y it's survived 250+ years), but U guys keep saying it's, 'Fringe Theory'. I C that the articles on Chiropractic, Naturopathy & Osteopathy are proFringe Theory, but this article is an attack piece - every statement is criticised and no defense of the criticism is allowed. I believe Col.Warden is right in inserting the POV tag.-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 10:18, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

References

Please keep this section at the bottom. TO ADD A NEW SECTION, just click the EDIT link at the right and add the new section ABOVE this one. Then copy the heading into the edit summary box.