User talk:Ljstalpers

A belated welcome![edit]

Here's wishing you a belated welcome to Wikipedia, Ljstalpers. I see that you've already been around a while and wanted to thank you for your contributions. Especially, your expansion of my 2013 stub on Thomas McKeown (physician) is excellent work! Thank you for this.

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Again, welcome! Fences&Windows 22:51, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

On reading through the article, I found some issues. One is the tone, as it reads a bit like a personal essay. We try to be more detached. Also, in places you seem to be making your own arguments or interptetations - we leave that to the sources we use. I tagged a few sentences accordingly. Relevant to this, the policies and guidelines on Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view give useful advice. Also, I removed a lengthy quote from his book as it did not seem to add directly to the point it was supposed to support, i.e. that his ideas were mainstream by then. Fences&Windows 13:24, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Amsterdam, Jan 8, 2017: Wow, never thought that writing for Wikipedia did have such an enormous impact; I have received ~10 mails, largely constructive and encouraging, within one week. And I received by ordinary mail a package of books by Noble laureate R.W. Fogel (Thanks!), which I now cited in my page. Thanks especially to Fences and Windows for your constructive comments and suggestions. I agree that the lengthy citation was somewhat superfluous, and the page has been improved by having it removed.

My apologies that I have not yet been sufficiently detached, which indeed is somewhat difficult in a Wiki page about a (one time) polemic figure with a (at that time) provocative theory. I added citations according to your suggestions: its not only me who likes the guy's theories. More formal:

I do not think that one can find a serious public health scientist anymore who will disagree that McKeown was essentially right that medical care (i.e. antibiotics and vaccines) has been far less effective in improving public health than did improvement of standard of living (economy, food) and public health measures (i.e. clean water, sanitation). Economists like Noble laureates Angus Deaton and Robert Fogel have, quite disquieting, shown that the McKeown thesis even holds for present day western civilization. Not a single critic of McKeown has produced evidence that medicine did increase life expectancy or improve health at a population level (and he never claimed that medical care did not work at the individual level). What remains a problem, -which I think is too political for a Wiki-page- is that, despite this now common knowledge, most of health care funding and medical research money goes into improving individual care and biomedical research. I am not talking about nickles and dimes, I am talking about billions to ill-directed 'moon shots against cancer', 'human genome projects', 'personalized medicine' and 'increased life span' studies. Penny wise, pound foolish. That worries me. First I planned to write this reminder essay on McKeown for a public health journal; Wikipedia is however far more effective to reach a wider audience. I appreciate any suggestion to improve the page. Thanks. Ljstalpers (talk) 14:58, 8 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Recent sources[edit]

We try to use sources from the last 10 years. Not sure why you replaced newer sources with older ones? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:07, 7 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]