Talk:Protandim/Archives/2009/June

Referencing

Basically on a controversial topic like this you need to ref what you add. If you do not it will be removed. Therefore I have removed some stuff that has been tagged for a while.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:58, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

That would be interesting if the new attorney general is Dr Sanjay Gupta because he happens to talk about protandim in one of these studies. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 1alexh (talk • contribs) 17:22, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Dr Sanjay Gupta has withdrawn his name from consideration as US Surgeon General. But he is an advocate of the alternative medicine concept of wellness. I see references to his book, "Chasing Life: New Discoveries in the Search for Immortality to Help You Age Less Today" and Protandim, but a search of this book on Amazon for the word "protandim" came up empty. However, there were at least 8 references to Dr Joe McCord.(Entropy7 (talk) 01:33, 6 May 2009 (UTC))

Actually the book describes protandim on pg. 55-56 Just not by name. (Entropy7 (talk) 02:06, 6 May 2009 (UTC)) Might want to sick quackbusters on Sanjay. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 1alexh (talk • contribs) 22:30, 6 May 2009 (UTC) It seems to give Dr Joe McCord a lot of time in his book? Maybe it's blatant advertising from Dr Sanjay Gupta there must be a conspiracy going on here call agent mulder. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.202.36.78 (talk) 00:15, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I found a review of Gupta's book, by someone named "val jones", whoever that is. Interestingly, one comment was that of Dr. Harriet Hall who "debunked" Protandim in a blog on Quack Watch. She says of Gupta, "Gupta is no Steve Novella, but he’s a whole order of magnitude more rational than Andrew Weil and several orders of magnitude better than Oprah. At least he doesn’t believe in “stoned” thinking. I think he is basically grounded in good science but is a bit gullible and tries too hard to be “fair.” I see him as educable rather than as a true believer. I wish he would read this blog." Seems a bit inconsistent if she runs down Protandim on one hand but thinks Gupta is basically grounded in good science. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Entropy7 (talk • contribs) 01:21, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

I find it rather hilarious that Dr Harriet Hall spends allthis time on her on her own website skep doc and a so called medical adviser for quack watch. For someone who has very little experience in the field of medicine but can debunk anything out there quite laughable, check out her credentials for yourself on her website skep doc and you will see what I mean. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.202.36.78 (talk) 10:26, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

This comment in the article: "There is no acceptable evidence that it works to improve health and thus it is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease." seems rather misleading. Protandim is more of nutraceutical than a supplement. It is neither a food nor a drug. Also, it contains no ingredient of direct nutritional value, therefore, "supplement" is not quite the right term. Its regulatory status would be that of a GRAS (generally recognized as safe) with no comment. Although the US FDA will enforce compliance with GRAS requirements, validation of effectiveness is outside the domain of its concern since it is not considered to be a pharmaceutical product. No matter how well validated it might be, this has no bearing on its regulatory status. The above comment implies that the current regulatory status is the result of a lack of validation, which is simply not the case. Also, it should be called a nutraceutical rather than a "dietary supplement".

Also, I would suggest that reference number 1 to the article by Dr. Harriet Hall should not serve as a principle reference. It does not seem as though she bothered to actually read the report on the human study (PMID 16413416) to which she refers. (e.g., she states 13 participants in the study when actually there were 29.) She cites no references to peer review literature, she only cites on-line content to support her arguments, supplies no links to these citations, and when one tries to google her quotes, many appear to have been deleted. In all, this article appears to be poorly researched because many sources she attempts to cite seem to have been deleted and she does not clearly refute information that is actually presented in peer review medical literature. Further discussion of Dr. Hall's article is found at: forum entry.(Entropy7 (talk) 22:04, 1 June 2009 (UTC))

A few week study on 29 health people does not in anyway show that this is substance is useful for anything. Yes this reference is not very good. The research on this substance however is even worse. Adding this quote for balance saved the article from being deleted.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:44, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

How do you edit the top part of the article? One sentence says, "As of Jan 10, 2009 only 2 studies have been published. Neither was double blinded or placebo controlled." One of these studies, PMID: 19056485 (which should be cited) is a tissue culture study done on "MIN6 cells, a mouse beta-cell line, and in SK-N-MC cells, a human neuroblastoma cell line". It is not necessary to say that a tissue culture study was not double-blind placebo controlled. It would also be more efficient to simply state that 3 studies have been published. A Lifevantage press release dated May 15, 2009, http://finance.yahoo.com/news/LifeVantage-Corporation-bw-15267892.html?.v=1 that claims 20 studies are currently underway. Seems like that would be of some interest to a person researching the validation status of this product. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Entropy7 (talk • contribs) 12:08, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Also, the sentence after that says, "One was carried out on a small number of mice and the other included 29 people." No, one was a tissue culture study and one was the human study. The studies should be cited directly. The citation following this sentence is to a blog that has no literature citations itself. Also, the clinical study section should cite the human study. Therefore, the citation to the human study should be named, e.g, ref name="human_study" so it can be cited in the Clinical Study section. (Entropy7 (talk) 14:25, 5 June 2009 (UTC))

How do I add a comment to an item in the history? I deleted a small note on uric acid increase only because the statistic requires clarification. The article should clearly state the meaning of the statistic rather than a tentative explanation of the statistic, especially if it is possible to obtain such clarification. I already e-mail Lifevantage once and they replied but didn't really answer my question. I am currenty trying to contact appropriate parties in an effort to obtain necessary clarification. (Entropy7 (talk) 22:42, 5 June 2009 (UTC))

Oh I see, click "edit this page" tab will allow you to edit the entire page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.176.199.104 (talk) 22:30, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I see someone added a ((fact)) tag in the "clinical study" section. It raises the issue that in this study, the authors relied rather heavily on the rationale of Fischer's p-value which can be problematic is some instances: p-value fallacy Hmmm, Well, the raw data can be backed out of the report by pixel counts on two of the figures in the human study report. An estimate of statistical significance based on confidence intervals rather than P values might be interesting. Yet another possible project to work on this summer. (Entropy7 (talk) 18:45, 8 June 2009 (UTC))

Citing actual sources

Does the human study directly claim "safety (these ingredients have a history of safe use in traditional medicine) and each is reported to have the ability to increase the activities of SOD or catalase while decreasing plasma TBARS" -- in which case, we need to lose the long string of refs at the end of the statement, and just WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT -- or is this all original research, in which case we need to remove the whole sentence? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:41, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

The human study does directly say this. The string of references are the same as those given in the human study to validate the fact that "each is reported to have the ability to increase the activities of SOD or catalase while decreasing plasma TBARS". Seemed like there was a lot of skepticism about the basis of this research so all items I copied over to emphasize that, in this respect, each individual ingredient is validated in medical and scientific literature. The human study is on-line. Perhaps the URL could just be added to the title fo the reference so if the reader wanted to see validation of the quote they could click on the link to go look at it.

That's kind of what I figured. Wikipedia doesn't permit that sort of listing of copied refs, so I'll remove it. One published ref is more than adequate to support such a statement for our purposes.

Yes, we can add the URL. What is it? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:43, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it's already in the external links section. It took me a while to notice that it was there. It is on the Lifevantage web site. If they notice that the report is getting all this careful scrutiny, they may take it down.(67.176.199.104 (talk) 22:53, 10 June 2009 (UTC))

Thanks for pointing it out; I've cleaned that up.

I doubt that they'll take it down: providing ready access to something that looks science-y and appears to be favorable can be the difference between being profitable and being bankrupt. If they monitor this article at all (which I expect), they'll be absolutely thrilled to have Wikipedia "advertising" their study for them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:23, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Significance

What about clinical significance?--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:08, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

That's a good question. I don't think anybody has a good fix on the answer. Sometimes there is an uneasy tension between science and commerce. Scientists have to be rational and objective, yet even scientists have to pay the bills and keep the lights on. If they are working on something that is rather unorthodox, (herbal remedies for example) getting the funding is going to be really uphill no matter how good their science is. They have to get creative about funding. I think this stuff is basically safe enough. Someone might take it and have a bad reaction, but I don't think its going permanently screw up their health. At least I hope not. I would feel bad if that happened and I have nothing to do with LifeVantage. (Entropy7 (talk) 19:05, 11 June 2009 (UTC))