Talk:Alternative medicine/Archive 18

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 15

Archive 16

Archive 17

→

Merging CAM, alt. med, and comp. med into one article

I'm seeing a lot of overlap in these articles, and I think that it would be best if we focused on the CAM article. Today, these therapies are largely bunched together, whether other people like it or not. As we continue research, we can branch off into alternative medicine and comp. medicine, keeping the articles more short and focused. There is a discussion about this over at the CAM article (Talk:Complementary_and_alternative_medicine#Boldly_merged_where_no_merge_has_gone_before). II | (t - c) 01:12, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Support a merge. Overlap and duplication! It makes for a very confusing situation. All three articles are about the use of alternative medicine methods. The only difference is context, not the actual methods used, so I (still) support a merge, leaving
- (1) a very short disambiguation stub at Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and
- (2) a short article at Complementary medicine.

The CAM article is an umbrella term, not an isolated entity unto itself, and thus only deserves to be a disambiguation stub with an appropriate explanation and links. The existing lead might do fine. The comp. med. article should just explain the context in which alternative medicine methods are used in conjunction with mainstream methods. It could still be a short (maybe long?) article, since there is quite a bit of stuff from RS about the phenomenon. It should be a very different article than this one, so we wouldn't have all the duplication. Especially controversial stuff about individual methods (homeopathy, chiropractic, etc.) could be mentioned very briefly, but should primarily be dealt with in depth in their individual articles. -- Fyslee / talk 03:32, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

SupportThat is probably a very good idea. Then the CAM page can be a portal gateway (formal or no) and relegate any discussion of relative merits to the appropriate article. HatlessAtless (talk) 04:33, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Support merge. I agree with II's merge proposal and with Fyslee's suggestions (1) and (2). I had previously merged CAM and CompMed as a first step, back in January after posting discussion and not getting a response, but someone reverted it and I didn't feel like arguing so I dropped the idea. But those two fork-articles have continued to bother me. The terms "CAM" and "Complementary Medicine" are practical categories for legal and financial classification, possibly for purposes of insurance and government research funding, but they do not define different types or modalities of medicine; the only differences being whether a practice is used with or instead of conventional medicine. Since various types of altmed are used in both ways, the division into "C" or "A" parts of "CAM" is artificial and does not illuminate the topics. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 04:14, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Weak support. It's a confusing situation, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of objective distinction between "complementary" and "alternative" medicine. CAM is commonly used as the umbrella term in the UK, but I think Alternative is more universally applicable. Jefffire (talk) 08:16, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Support merger (still). I kinda thought that we had had a consensus on this some months ago that just petered out due to lack of anyone wanting to sort through all the aforementioned overlap. - Eldereft (cont.) 09:56, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
support for the many good reasons given. --SesquipedalianVerbiage (talk) 17:49, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Support I'm willing to put out the effort to do this if there is there is consensus. the only thing that worries me is that a merger will prompt a new round of edit squabbles over 'POV' issues. --Ludwigs2 18:18, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Take a look at the policy talk-page for fringe theories. I think I may have found a solution we could apply in practice to build a consensus that could keep the POV issue under control. HatlessAtless (talk) 18:37, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Ludwigs2, you will cut down on such a risk by being an inclusionist, IOW don't delete anything but duplication. Attempt to include everything and you won't offend anyone. Keep in mind the existing content has been arrived at by hard work, edit wars, compromises, and consensus, and thus it should be preserved as much as possible. You can start by working in your own workspace - User:Ludwigs2/Alternative medicine_merge. When you feel you've done all you can, invite us over and we'll all work together to make sure it encompasses the subject and includes all the existing information. That wil ensure it gets off to a good start. Good luck. -- Fyslee / talk 06:39, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

While I agree with Fyslee in encouraging editors to proceed with the merge, I do not see any need for creating a preliminary draft in userspace. I recommend that the merge proceed in mainspace; any concerns can be easily addressed with collaborative edits and/or talk page discussion. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 07:37, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

It certainly doesn't have to be done in user space. That was just a suggestion. Better in talkspace though than in cyberspace. -- Fyslee / talk 03:41, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I tent to agree with Jack, but I think I have a decent compromise. let me do the merge offline, and then I'll just put it up in a single post on one of the pages (say the CAM page). that way we can take a couple of days to look at it, and revert back easily if the attempt looks flawed. --Ludwigs2 20:21, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

P.s. to hatless - I looked over what you posted on the fringe talk page, and it makes an amount of sense to me. if fact, I even envisioned an infobox which would give a concise presentation of the status of the research. I think some of your cases need tweaking though... I'll post a note over there later today or tomorrow on that. --Ludwigs2 20:27, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Question: what should we title our comprehensive main article?

I have a feeling that most sources that we get on this topic will be referencing "CAM". Should we be titling this "Alternative medicine", or "Complementary and alternative medicine?" I dislike unwieldy titles, but to match up with most sources and produce the most comprehensive article I believe we should stick with the latter title, "CAM". From there we can diverge off into alt. medicine and complementary medicine sections and if necessary articles. II | (t - c) 19:01, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

CAM is a somewhat contrived term. I believe it was invented by NCCAM as a way to address concerns of healthcare providers and insurance companies by categorizing modalities according to who uses them. My recommendation is as follows:

Alternative medicine: main article
CAM: short article about the NCCAM classification scheme
Complementary medicine: redirect to CAM

In addition to CAM and "complementary medicine" being recently constructed terms, "alternative medicine" on the other hand has been used to describe this topic for a long time; there are many more sources using that term. That said, I don't see this as a big obstacle; if it ends up being CAM, that's OK too, as long as the differentiation of the terms is made clear in the article. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 20:24, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Alternative medicine is the original term. It has been used the longest, widest, and by far the most. All the others are only short descriptions of how alternative medicine is used. They all came much later. They are all about it. It's like "cheese". Other articles would describe how cheese is used in different situations, but none of them would have a basis for existence without the "cheese"! They all center around cheese, just like all these various articles center around alternative medicine.

The Complementary medicine article doesn't need much done. The Complementary and alternative medicine article can be shortened and some content moved to the Alternative medicine article. It should basically be a disambiguation page with a short explanation and appropriate links to the other articles.

In short there is no need for any new articles. We already have them. It's just a matter of moving ("merging") some information. That way we avoid duplication.

We ended up in this morass because a now banned editor tried to own and control all these articles and force them into his own OR version of how he thought the world of alt med should look. He really messed things up. He was headed straight for finally getting alternative medicine looking like it was all mainstream and accepted, when that's not the case. The articles were getting twisted in that direction using lots of OR and very odd uses of various sources, not all of them very reliable. The ownership issues ended up in him getting banned for the umpteenth time. It isn't called "alternative" for nothing. We need to stick to RS, not sources that try to twist reality to reflect the wishful thinking of certain proponents and practitioners. -- Fyslee / talk 04:00, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to see sources on that. The 1998 systematic review by Edzard Ernst that I put in the lead references CAM, so it was common 10 years ago. Besides that, nearly all the references include the word CAM, and the Thomson ISI category is "Integrative and Complementary Medicine". We need to stick with what the professionals are using. It would also be nice to trace the etymology/history of this movement. II | (t - c) 20:28, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I checked NCCAM, you're right, they're too recent to have coined the term. I've seen something on the origin of the CAM term but can't find it at the moment. I'll post that info if/when I locate it. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 20:43, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I think we need more input on this question than just Fyslee's opinion. If we're going to write an article about CAM, it ought to be called CAM. Since most of the references are about CAM, titling this "alternative medicine" will be highly confusing to the reader. II | (t - c) 03:55, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

merge complete

I've gone ahead and merged the three articles here - <link removed>. the version there is neither perfect nor complete, having the following limitations:

it lacks any changes made to the articles in the last few days
there are probably still duplicate citations which I'll weed out over teh next couple of days
in the process of merging, I had to restructure some, and I while I tried to do it as neutrally as possible, I can't swear that I completely succeeded
there are a few random passages that I just couldn't figure out what to do with, and so I hid them.

Other than that, this version should contain everything in the previous three articles. feel free to check it out and comment on its talk page, but let's not get into an editing free-for-all on it until we decide whether this merged version meets the basic requirements. --Ludwigs2 20:36, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Hello, Fyslee alerted me (thanks) and, though pushed for time right at the moment I would just like to say I very much welcome the move to merge these articles (so long as the terms alternative and complementary are defined early on) and hope this will extend to tidy up the categories. I have a lot of faith in Ludwigs2 to do the job also. Will be glad to help with tidying up etc, but just wanted to say it's a great idea. Redheylin (talk) 21:35, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I actually did a little copyediting of it. I think we should just focus on this merged version for a little while, because it will be easiest to just copy and paste it in. If we do that, work continuing on this page will be lost. II | (t - c) 23:11, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll add a template to the three pages pointing to the sandboxed version. --Ludwigs2 05:06, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

The parent article has to be CAM - this recognised internationally as the most appropriate term. Merge CM and AM into the CAM page as it is currently illogical.Davwillev (talk) 10:45, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Why no criticism?

Why is there not a proper criticism section? Most articles have one. Surely there must be enough criticism to warrant more than a few external links at the bottom of the page. Every time I note the lack of a well-developed criticism section, I know I'm looking at an article that is under tight control by some POV group. Is there nobody with enough influence to override the article lock down? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.222.201.18 (talk) 13:03, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

There is no criticism section because alternative medicine in and of itself is not amenable to criticism per wp:undue. Specifically, "Alternative Medicine" is an umbrella term capturing a significant number of different medical disciplines, ranging from snake oil and patent medicine, some of which were outright frauds, to massage therapy and chiropractic which are widely recognized and used by mainstream medicine. Any "criticism" of altmed as a whole runs into two logical problems. 1) Any particular discipline with altmed may or may not be subject to a particular criticism, and 2) when a particular discipline becomes scientifically accepted, does that make it no longer altmed and move into mainstream medicine? HatlessAtless (talk) 15:58, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

To our anon IP: Yes, this article is indeed "under tight control by some POV group." You are quite correct that the absence of a criticism section or of criticism is a big red flag. That indicates that NPOV is being grossly violated by that POV group. They are more interested in protecting their pet idea than in building this uniquely NPOV encyclopedia. That's been a problem here and on most alt med articles for a long time. Put those editors on your watchlist.

To HatlessAtless: There are plenty of very notable references in the articles (CAM, alt med & comp med) that directly criticize alt med in general, including criticisms of the very existence and misleading meaning of the term and concept itself. They are criticisms from some of the most notable personalities in mainstream medicine and scientific skepticism. Read those sources. That doesn't violate UNDUE at all. On the contrary, alt med is defined by (and the term only exists because of) its controversial nature, and thus UNDUE and NPOV would dictate that a large portion of the article should cover that fact. I definitely agree with you that specific criticisms, especially regarding very pseudoscientific and quackish practices, should only be in the specific articles. Especially the pseudoscience category should be used very carefully. That has nothing to do with mention, references, and See also wikilinks, which can expressly be used in all articles where there is even a tangential relationship, as mentioned in the policy wikilink Levine2112 provided:

"These may be useful for readers looking to read as much about a topic as possible, including subjects only peripherally related to the one in question." - (Emphasis added.)

We need to reinstate the primacy of NPOV, WEIGHT, and UNDUE here, even though the POV group who is violating those policies by keeping all criticism out won't be happy. Fortunately some of the most egregious players have been blocked and banned, but others here are experts at playing the "civility" card, wikilawyering, stonewalling, and generally making sure that discussions run in endless, repetitive circles, which ensures that they get their way - mainstream skeptical (IOW, scientific POV) criticism fails to be included, in violation of the named policies. Yes, the lack of criticism is a big redflag, and that needs to be fixed.

Your other point: Yes, when a particular discipline becomes scientifically accepted, it does indeed cease to be altmed and moves into mainstream medicine. When that conclusively happens, and no more controversy surrounds it for its continued inclusion of pseudoscientific & metaphysical ideas or quackish practices, then the altmed category should be removed from the bottom of the article page, and its mention in altmed articles can be removed, except for historical mention. -- Fyslee / talk 17:08, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

That is a valid viewpoint, however, based on the structure of the article as I understood it, I did not think that was the case. Chiropractic medicine should then be removed from the main article, as it has become part of mainstream medicine. If we are going to separate Altmed, Compmed, and perhaps other stuff, we might need to seriously consider at least moving articles to more specific articles to make the title and intent clearer. I am concerned as to the static categorization of the various medical disciplines; they will be fluid as some are disproven and some move to mainstream medicine, but that is not an insurmountable problem. *chuckles ruefully* I'll be more careful next time about jumping strong into a debate where I'm fresh. HatlessAtless (talk) 17:41, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate the humor ;-) Such changes need to be done according to well-established and reliable sources. Any change of categories here must be done carefully and reflect an obvious and undisputed change of categories in the real world. The existence of any significant continued debate in the real world about such changes should prevent us from making any changes of category here. So far the NCCAM categories seem to be fine. Chiropractic as a profession has definitely not become mainstream and is still the subject of much debate as long as it is based on a metaphysical idea (vertebral subluxation) and continues to include many pseudoscientific and quackish practices. It has a long way to go before becoming fully mainstream. When it is freed from those problems it will become sanitized enough to become mainstream. Some improvement is being made, but most of the schools, leaders, and association presidents are still old school. It is only spinal manipulation (which is freed from the metaphysical and pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo commonly associated with chiropractic spinal adjustments, and is a treatment method that predates chiropractic and that has always been used to some degree by other mainsteam professions) that has gained more acceptance. Even that acceptance is partial and questioned, and its proven usefulness is pretty much limited to low back pain, and not to the myriad conditions for which it is commonly used and claimed within chiropractic. -- Fyslee / talk 18:08, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Why do people have to cram hokey stuff into otherwise perfectly legitimate schools of medical thought? The idea of making sure bones and connective tissue are in proper alignment can make a lot of problems a whole lot better, and when working with physical therapy I have even seen chiropractors working in partnership with mainstream hospitals. HatlessAtless (talk) 19:35, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I have an instinctive dislike of "Criticism" sections; as a reader, I find they're a huge red flag that an article is going to suck. That said, there should certainly be well-sourced info here on alternative medicine's relationship to the "mainstream" medical and scientific communities, insofar as one can generalize about it. Some of that will be critical, and some will be integrative/complementary, chiropractic being an example of, well, both. I think the brief section on "Alternative vs. evidence-based medicine" is a good example of integrating "criticism" of alternative medicine in an effective, readable, relevant way. MastCell ^Talk 21:35, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

MC, I agree. HatlessAtless (talk) 21:57, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I can understand that concern and I have no special desire for a separate criticism section, as long as well-sourced and notable critical opinion is included. It exists and NPOV requires that it be included as part of the whole picture. -- Fyslee / talk 03:57, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

That sounds about right. Most of the notable critical reception to the idea of alternative medicine is best treated in comparison to medicine, which this article does to an extent. Stylistically, I think a specific Criticism section tends to break the flow of the article, especially on such a broad topic as this. - Eldereft (cont.) 08:35, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

My take on Criticism sections is completely different from MastCell: I find them handy, esp. when you're researching dirty politicians. They can sometimes be titled better, e.g. "Scandals and ethics", but "Criticism" or "Controversy" is not really bad, nor did Jimbo really say they were, although I had to fix his quote to show thatmy fix [1]. I imagine that we could actually have a "Quackery" section in this article, or something like it. A straight Evidence section also covers these things. Gonna also agree with HatLess here: alt. medicine is not defined by its evidence base, regardless of what some experts would like. If some broad category of medicine is classified as alt. med. by reliable sources, then it is alt. medicine. In the near future we will be seeing quite a few alt. medicines establishing an evidence base (or not -- we'll see). That doesn't mean they will not be alt. medicines. In fact an evidence base for some alt. med. therapies has already been built up -- Quackwatch-types who maintain that alt. med. is "all quackery" just prefer to plug their ears if you bring it up, or claim biased articles. Herbal medicines are heavily prescribed by doctors in Germany. Does that mean they're not alt. med.? The evidence is strong to decent for some, e.g. kava kava, St. John's Wort, Huperzine A, ginsengs, ect. Biofeedback has evidence; some nutritional approaches in naturopathy are solid; hypnosis#Research seems to work; even Ernst E will admit that acunpuncture seems to work in some cases. I can personally attest to the effectiveness of chiropractic for acute lower back pain, although I've only done it twice. But, eh, probably shouldn't keep rehashing this argument... II | (t - c) 09:28, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm a bit late to this party, so I'll just add that critiques of alt. med. and links to them should be provided in this article. I see no reason for a blanket omission. I think MCs views are good, though I think a criticisms section can sometimes be justified, per Fyslee/Eldreft. --SesquipedalianVerbiage (talk)

This article is about a controverisal term that has multiple meanings, with poor agreement as to which meaning is the best. This article is not a single philosophy, product, belief or medical intervention. What's to criticize, except the uselesness of the term itself? You might as well add a criticism section to language, confusion or prayer. If you have a beef with a specific CAM like homeopathy, then there is always room for more criticism on that page. But the chances of the 'alternative medicine' that you would like to criticize being the same as the 'alternative medicine' that someone else would like to defend are slim to none. Naturstud (talk) 05:11, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

pseudoscience "see also"

[re-edited my comment; I had noted it as a "category" edit, but it actually was a "see also"; I'll leave my comment for reference, but no action is needed. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 03:35, 14 July 2008 (UTC)]

~~I've reverted the addition of the pseudoscience category once, and it needs to be reverted again, but I'm not going to edit-war, so I request comments for consensus on the question.~~

While alternative medicine is mostly unproven, it does not meet the criteria of pseudoscience. There are many forms of altmed, some of which have been accepted as complementary for use with conventional medicine, as we've been discussing, and other forms that are unproven but currently undergoing research.

There may be some forms that are pseudoscience, and if they are then their individual articles can be linked to pseudoscience that way. This page though addresses the larger field, that includes many non-pseudoscience modalities (even seemingly simple ones, like yoga or relaxation techniques that have proven basic health benefits).

The use of that very charged word "pesudoscience" will not be effective for making progress on this article, so I ask that editors from all sides of the debate bring agreement here that we will leave that word out of it so we can make good-faith progress.

Considering the level of contentiousness on this article in the past, I've been impressed by the collaborative spirit shown here recently and I hope we can continue in that way to make a really great Wikipedia article on a difficult topic. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 23:22, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Your reasoning is very good, and when I went to find out what was going on I found that your description is very inaccurate, which changes everything. If it were the Ps category, then fine, but it's a wikilink in the See also section, which is quite appropriate, even by your reasoning above. Many forms of alt med are definitely pseudoscientific and quackery, so wikilinks to those subjects would be fine. On another note, some of the wikilinks are inappropriate in that section since they are wikilinked in the article itself multiple times. The See also section is for further help with related subjects that might not have gotten much attention in the article. I have restored the link. I didn't look, but if the Quackery article isn't linked there, it should be. -- Fyslee / talk 03:35, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Thanks for your good-faith response. I had noticed that it was a see-also and not a category, so was re-editing my comment at the same time as you replied. As a "see also", it's a bit less polarizing than as a category, though I still don't think it belongs. Regarding duplicate links, yes those should be removed. Regarding quackery, that is a much more serious issue and does not belong here. Quackery implies deceit; some altmed may simply be wrong, but that is very different than willful misleading of gullible customers. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 03:40, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Not really. You are thinking of health fraud, which always involves deceit. Most quacks are true believers and not deceivers. What they say may be untrue, but it's not a "lie", since they really believe it. Quackery has some objective criteria that have nothing to do with deliberate deception. -- Fyslee / talk 05:18, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

The relevance of Pseudoscience is not immediately apparent. Removing per WP:ALSO. -- Levine2112 ^discuss 03:53, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

As a "See also" link it's relevance is quite apparent. Some forms of alternative medicine are indeed pseudoscientific, and the link provides readers the option to get further information. Anyone who denies the connection needs to open their eyes and stop whitewashing Wikpedia. Your source above isn't helpful to your argument: "These may be useful for readers looking to read as much about a topic as possible, including subjects only peripherally related to the one in question." So even if you don't see the great correlation between many alt med practices and pseudoscience, at least they are "peripherally related" and the link should be restored. -- Fyslee / talk 05:18, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. The relevance isn't apparent. Some forms of alt med are indeed scientific. Does that mean we should link to science here as well so we may provide readers the option to get further information? If you are accusing me of whitewashing, then also please consider that perhaps a push to include pseudoscience here may be POV driven. -- Levine2112 ^discuss 06:08, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Pot. Alternative medicine is by definition basically unscientific, with few exceptions. Weight would dictate that we favor that fact, and simple wikilinks to Pseudoscience and Quackery shouldn't be controversial except to those who wish to deny that fact. There are plenty of RS in the articles about its basic unscientific or lack of scientific nature. The few alt med practices that ever get scientifically proven then become mainstream EBM and are accepted, no longer being considered alt med. That's the way it works and you need to get used to it. That's not just "my" POV. Read the sources. -- Fyslee / talk 06:48, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

First, "Pot"? What does that mean? (Do you have some? Are you selling? ;-) Second, per the ArbCom, we cannot capriciously apply the term "pseudoscience" to anything on Wikipedia. Saying that alt med is "basically unscientific" is not enough. It has to be a clear and obvious pseudoscience for us to throw that term around. You even acknowledge above that there are exceptions, meaning that there are scientific practices, methodologies, professions and treatments in Alt Med. By labeling the entire term, we are effectively labeling everything within the term (and thus mislabeling all of these scientific practices, methodologies, etc.). Please reconsider. -- Levine2112 ^discuss 15:41, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Firstly, WP:POT was referring to your comments and edit summaries, which were POV-ish deletionism, to use your own terminology. Deletionism is especially egregious as it tears down, rather than builds, the encyclopedia.

The rest of your arguments miss the point. We are not dealing with a Category. Your arguments and the ArbCom decision apply to Categories, and I agree with that. But here we are only supplying added help for readers. We aren't labelling all of alt med, but since so much of it would be appropriately labelled using those terms, supplying wikilinks for them is helpful. It seems that you see it as your mission to make sure those two words are never connected with any form of alt med here at Wikipedia. At least your track record is pretty consistent whenever those two words ever appear anywhere. Try this time to allow a bit of leeway and AGF. No one is labelling all of alt med, nor is this a category issue. Your own wikilink above expressly supplies the reasoning why such links are helpful. -- Fyslee / talk 16:13, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

The very fact that alternative medicine is an artificial umbrella term covering all sorts of different types of medical practice means that we cannot apply the pseudoscience label to th umbrella term. We have articles on patent medicine and quackery for the most fraudulent cases of pseudoscience, and we have articles on each discipline of altmed for a reason. Claiming altmed is pseudoscientific pew WP:NPOV since it is perjorative and colors both the accepted and proven alternative disciplines and those that are openly pseudoscientific. It violates WP:undue because it presents one side of an argument or debate that is highly subjective and subject to logical fallacy while itself not being amenable to presenting counter arguments in a way that avoids logical fallacy. Finally, it violates WP:NOR. There are no articles that criticize "alternative medicine" as a whole, only claims that test its sub-disciplines. While I agree that 90% of the reports I have read about the effectiveness of herbal preparations claim they are bunk (though I can walk you through in detail why I think the methodology in many of the reports is flawed), generalizing that claim from specific cases to the umbrella term is an original statement, and therefore violates wikipedia policy. I left quackery in because it is a related subject but not as pejorative (in my view) to the umbrella term, and discusses pseudoscience effectively.HatlessAtless (talk) 16:16, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Hatless and Jack, here. Labeling the entirety of alternative medicine as pseudoscience can't possibly be appropriate (particularly if you're a fan of Evidence-Based Medicine, which explicitly refrains from judging until scientific evidence arrives). Pseudoscience should be reserved for those theories and practices that make claims to being properly scientific (in western scientists' sense of the word) but do so on false or erroneous grounds. --Ludwigs2 17:39, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

No one is proposing that we "Label the entirety of alternative medicine as pseudoscience." That's a straw man argument. We're only discussing what should be an innocuous and uncontroversial inclusion of two wikilinks in the See also section. That it has been disputed so strongly reveals the emotional revulsion which members of the POV group who controls these articles feels when those words are even mentioned. They simply are willing to violate every policy here in an attempt to wikilawyer their way out of seeing those words. -- Fyslee / talk 18:00, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

"innocuous and uncontroversial"? By the hornet's nest the inclusion has stirred up, its pretty clear the inclusion is neither of those. However, AltMed is often based on belief systems other than science. Without commenting on my own low opinion of many of those belief systems, are you really surprised that people will happily defend a nonscientific set of beliefs even in the face of scientific rationale? My main issue with pseudoscience is its connotation of bad faith (which I dispute for enough AltMed disciplines and practitioners). Besides, I think including too many negatively-connoted "see also" articles would create an implied lack of neutrality. Personally, though I think we need to rescope the AltMed and CompMed articles to help avoid this debate in its entirety. HatlessAtless (talk) 18:11, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes indeed. Like I said, "what should be an innocuous and uncontroversial inclusion" gets such a reaction, which proves my point, even to the point of someone who was not named including themselves in a POV group and improperly tampering with another user's (mine) comment. Interesting. I think that user and some others need to do some self-reflection about whether they are here to write an NPOV encyclopedia, or to protect their own interests and belief systems. I see that you at least are doing something constructive (your inclusion of actual sourced edits) and I applaud you for it. It's just a shame that this type of edit warring (mostly discussion here), all over something that wouldn't cause a true respecter of NPOV to lift an eyebrow, keeps us from following standard practice and having a helpful See also section. Such a compromise to keep the peace is indeed another victory for protectors of fringe POV. A sad day. I'll "vote" below. -- Fyslee / talk 04:21, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Just to clarify: I see a distinct difference between something that is nonscientific and pseudoscientific. Pseudoscience is a disingenuous attempt to mislead using the terminology and ramient of science to inspire confidence in the results. This is a separate discussion from traditional or folk medicines which are not based on science at all, and no attempt is being made to deceive. HatlessAtless (talk) 17:51, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Off-topic discussion

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Fyslee, I object to the implication that I'm part of a POV group, and I've struck out the phrase from your post as uncivil. if you think that's actually true, than I expect you to identify what POV you think I have. otherwise I expect a retraction. in the future, if you have a problem with something I say, please address it without ad-hominems. --Ludwigs2 18:34, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

First Ludwigs, I removed your strike-out, since it's kind of silly to do so, since the wording is still there, and since it's not good form. You can ask Fyslee to do so, ifyou so choose. In addition, your making threats by saying "you'd best be unimpeachably neutral." Fyslee is one of the top editors around these type of articles, and since he regularly ticks me off or makes me happy about his edits, usually on the same article and the same day, I'd have to say he's about as neutral as they come. And he isn't using ad-hominem arguments, he is stating his personal observation of the tendentious editing style we've be observing as of late. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 04:12, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

OrangeMarlin - if you really feel strongly about this, then please ask someone else to make your points for you. If Fyslee would like (as I said) to point out what my bias is, I'll engage that discussion. --Ludwigs2 17:44, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

That's not appropriate. Please comment on the edits, not the editors. Also, remember to assume good faith. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 19:37, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I can maintain a more-or-less proper attitude with him when I need to discuss content issues, but I'd prefer he keeps out of my personal discussions with other editors. it's just best if he and I avoid each other except where necessary. that, I think, will prevent unnecessary squabbling. --Ludwigs2 20:28, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Your personal attacks are not going unnoticed. And I once again reverted your changes to Fyslee's comments per WP:TALK#Others' comments. Please refrain from any further personal attacks against any editors, including myself. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 06:41, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

OM, Ludwings, take a deep breath please! OM, I read some of Ludwigs' comments as rude, but I don't read his comments as personal attacks. An editor has a right to their opinion of other editors, and I would not consider stating an opinion of an editor or an opinion of their editing style as a blatant personal attack. The word "personal attack" is a loaded one on Wikipedia. If you really think that he's going to far, take it to WP:WQA or WP:ANI so an uninvolved admin can sort it out. Ludwigs: editing other people's talk page posts is considered the height of rudeness. Stating your objection to a user's post should be enough, and just like I suggested to OM, if something is egregious enough to require removal, go to WP:WQA or WP:ANI to request action. Both of you are contributing usefully to the discussion, and while I've both agreed and disagreed with you both on various points, please take a deep breath and try to be carefully polite. I know it is difficult, but we don't need to descend into policy sniping because you're both keyed up (I'm new to the interactions between you, but I see you've got history). HatlessAtless (talk) 16:27, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

sorry hatless - I don't mind being accused of having a point of view if the accuser is willing to state what he thinks that point of view is - that way the truth of it can be discussed and resolved. I just find the unfounded accusation pointless and insulting. I'll take your advice about not striking out people's comments unless necessary, however. --Ludwigs2 19:30, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I kind of feel sorry for Ludwigs2. I think he believes his POV is under attack from several editors, so I presume resorting to personal attacks and rudeness is natural defense mechanism. I'll try to mentor him over the next few days, since his science background in these areas seems to be a bit less than mine. I traditionally do not use WQA or ANI, since I feel that they should be used for serious issues, say sockpuppetry or legal threats. I know other individuals abuse those two forums, and they usually look pretty bad at the end of the day. Anyways, I appreciate your suggestion, so I've taken a deep breath or two. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 16:46, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

OM, you are not above the fray yourself: "Your personal attacks are not going unnoticed. And I once again reverted your changes to Fyslee's comments per WP:TALK#Others' comments. Please refrain from any further personal attacks against any editors, including myself. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 06:41, 16 July 2008 (UTC)" throws around loaded terms and stoked the fire with your statements. In your reply above, I can read a level of condescension in your tone, and given the level of disagreement there appears to be between yourself and Ludwigs, I expect that he will likely take significant offense at that statement, and not without reason. (In particular because you also hint that part of your justification for why you should mentor him, instead of the other way around is that your science background is stronger than his, which violates the core wikipedia principle that strength of background has no weight within the community. You may have a better science background than he, I don't know, but that is not a valid justification as to why you should mentor him). Please note, I'm not trying to defend Ludwig's rudeness and overreactions, nor am I attacking you, but am instead assuming that your post was meant with the best of intentions, and I am hoping that by pointing out where your comments were unintentionally inconsiderate, you'll be able to be less so in the future. HatlessAtless (talk) 17:12, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Hatless, if he wants to try to mentor me on scientific issues, that would be fine, so long as he stays away from personal comments and restricts himself to topic. while I doubt there is anything I could say that would shake his own personal beliefs, I have no doubts whatsoever that I can out-debate him in general (in my experience, he masks any errors he makes in analytic reasoning by making personal and social commentary, so removing the latter as an option will only expose the former for examination). and who knows, maybe what he and I need is a nice, polite, intellectual knock-down-drag-out to get over this little spite-fest. --Ludwigs2 19:55, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

P.s. - ah, to H with this pointless conversation. on a good recommendation, I'm going to remove a problematic comment or two of my own, and then I'm going to archive this little squabble so that it doesn't waste an talk page space. if anyone would like to continue the debate (for some silly reason), please let's take it up on my talk page. --Ludwigs2 20:07, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I have updated the "testing for Efficacy" section to include the assertion that misuse or misrepresentation of research is Pseudoscience. Since this is in an appropriate section for the article, but shouldn't be readable as asserting that all AltMed is pseudoscience, I think this may obviate the debate. HatlessAtless (talk) 18:36, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

(Note from an uninvolved admin) This edit-warring over the "see also" section is disappointing. My recommendation is to just work the desired terms into the text of the article. If they're in the text, they shouldn't be in the "See also" section. If the editors here can't agree on what links should or shouldn't be in that section, then just delete the entire section. --El on ka 23:29, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

The relevance of Quackery is not immediately apparent. I think it should be removed. It seems to be serving as some kind of pejorative label, which I believe is inappropriate and violates WP:NPOV. That said, I think the way that "pseudoscience" was worked into the article is fine; though I would like to see a reference for the statement. -- Levine2112 ^discuss 23:40, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

The opening section of pseudoscience obviates a need for a reference, IMO. HatlessAtless (talk) 23:45, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure that I understand. This is the unreferenced statement: Willful misrepresentation of the research status of an alternative remedy or therapy qualifies as pseudoscience, which is why several countries including the USA have strict laws on the claims that alternative therapies can make. Why do you think no reference is needed? -- Levine2112 ^discuss 23:47, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Levine, I looked at it again and I see where you're coming from. I decoupled the two clauses, removed the expository "why" and sourced the regs. That should clear up the concerns. HatlessAtless (talk) 02:52, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Is there a reliable source which links the terms "quackery" and "alternative medicine"? --El on ka 23:48, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

My guess - and I may be wrong - is that all we will find are opinion pieces from various Alt Med critics, but nothing substantial. As with "pseudoscience", I think we need to be careful with the use of "quackery" on articles. Perhaps even more so with "quackery" because the term almost always implies "fraud". -- Levine2112 ^discuss 23:54, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

(Note from another uninvolved admin) I just checked a newspaper archive and found dozens of articles that link the terms "quackery" and "alternative medicine". If it'd help I can post some. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 19:35, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Please do post them here. -- Levine2112 ^discuss 17:32, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to delete "see also" section. Elonka wrote, 23:29, 14 July 2008 (UTC): "If the editors here can't agree on what links should or shouldn't be in that section, then just delete the entire section." - I concur with this suggestion, it's a good idea. I recommend we delete the "see also" section and keep to wikilinking only within the article, based on reliably sourced connections. If a link is relevant, it can fit within the text. This can help us move on to improving the content of the article with less distraction. Please comment on this proposal. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 02:11, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree. or at least hide it until we reach some consensus as to what ought to go on there. --Ludwigs2 02:53, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
That seems reasonable. I think "See also" sections tend to get abused. Just look at what is happening at the article Pseudoscience where the "See also" section is thought of as a categorization tool. -- Levine2112 ^discuss 02:56, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
This is a shameful compromise, but at least HatlessAtlas is doing something constructive. I can only hope that the obstructionism that motivated all this debacle doesn't continue in the article, but history has shown that the same POV warriors will make their presence felt and seek to keep criticisms out or at least dilute them. -- Fyslee / talk 04:21, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I have boldly gone and found justifiable places for all of the references in the "see also" section, included them in the body text, and removed the see also section. Let me know what you think. HatlessAtless (talk) 03:20, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

You are an honorable editor. Good luck. -- Fyslee / talk 04:21, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll need it.HatlessAtless (talk) 05:31, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Looks good to me. I would have allowed the pseudoscience link in the See also, but it is much better in the article with a discussion and references to specific practices. Placing "pseudoscience" in See also, and then fighting to keep it, is the approach that really bothers me among these so-called "quackbusters". It's a rhetorical strategy that doesn't work -- "hey, here's my hint: alt. med. is pseudoscience cause I put it in see also section". One does not convince, or inform, anyone with such antics. (Not trying to target Fyslee for defending its inclusion -- like I said, I don't mind putting it in See also -- lots of alt. med. is pseudoscience, I'll admit.) Discussion on the longstanding relationship between "quackery" and alt. medicine will be a good part of an etymological/history section, which I plan to try and write sometime. II | (t - c) 08:29, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Three new sections, rationale and suggestions:

I've added three new sections that I think will add some real value to the article, and give a place for mainstream science in the article without throwing around too much emotionally charged materiel. My comments included below:

Relationship with public policy

My main experience is with the debates in the US, and I know it doesn't cover Asia, Africa, or South America at all. Someone who is better at finding good refs will need to seriously expand this section. I think that here we can talk about the debates over "alternative medicine" especially in terms of freedom vs state interest debates without getting too much into the scientific content of specific therapies, I've added a section later on.

Notable cases of adoption

Also, let's try to keep the content here to the most clear-cut cases where treatments (as adapted from their traditional form) have been soundly integrated into mainstream medicine. I think that any claims with the word "may", such as "this substance may help with X" are probably not historically "proven" sufficiently to discuss here, since I think we can do this without sparking an edit war.

Notable failures

This section's title is a kluge. I know it, please help. I want to balance the adoption cases with clear cut cases of quackery but I don't want to make the section sound like an indictment of AltMed, I think we can discuss clear-cut quackery, poisons or drugs sold as medicine and such without offending any of the hot-button people who contribute here (read: sparking an edit war). Also, let's try to keep the content here to the most egregious cases where treatments have been soundly condemned by history. That should balance the drugs and therapies that have been discovered while not inciting much debate.

HatlessAtless (talk) 15:47, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Notable situations where alternative therapies have been misused or classical therapies have petered out

This section is suspect. The only sentence which was referenced (weakly at that) I had to remove because it had nothing to do with Alt Med but rather a study of mainstream vitamins/supplements such as Centrum and Flintstones. The rest of the section is unreferenced. The paragraph about mandrake and mushrooms reads more akin to a commentary on Traditional medicine rather that Alternative medicine. I'm leaning towards just removing this section wholesale. -- Levine2112 ^discuss 00:48, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I too have a concern with this section, and with the contrapuntal section Notable cases where alternative therapies are adopted by mainstream medicine. These could easily become coatracks. One important concern is the referencing of any included modalities as AltMed; as one example of the kind of questions that could arise, as Levine2112 noted, not all traditional medicines are AltMed.

On the other hand, these sections could be useful, with the understanding that the referencing is especially important and that no examples should be added without reliable sources; ie, nothing that might need a fact tag.

Here's a proposal for modified headings:

Studies regarding forms of alternative medicine

Proven ineffective or harmful
Proven safe & adopted as complementary medicine
Undergoing continued research

??? --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 03:28, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

hmmmm... this whole enterprise strikes me as suspect. what would one debunked practice (or approved practice) really say about altmed as a whole. do the problems with mandrake say anything about the worthiness of traditional chinese medicine; does the development of atropine reflect at all on the capacities of bodywork? these just seem like stalking horses. I could see the notable successes bit being incorporated into the EBM commentary, but the other section seems to have no real value. --Ludwigs2 04:13, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

That's an interesting point; I think you're right. It would be hard to avoid synthesis with that kind of section. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 04:22, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I too agree and imagine it is un-salvageable. Anyone opposed to just removing this section? -- Levine2112 ^discuss 05:30, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I feel the same way about "Notable cases where alternative therapies are adopted by mainstream medicine". WP:COATRACK - perhaps. But it is also unreferenced and seems to be talking about Traditional Medicine and not "alternative therapies". I think we should delete this section too (or move it to a more appropriate article). -- Levine2112 ^discuss 05:43, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll go ahead and remove these sections from the current and the merged version (though I may try to incorporate some of the 'adopted' elements into the EBM section, since that seems like appropriate description there). --Ludwigs2 17:34, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Ludwigs2, even though I didn't like the sections that you removed, I don't think your edit summary is accurate. Per discussion with three individuals, a small part of the editing corps, probably isn't accurate. Again, I would have agreed with the deletion, but it hardly qualifies as "per discussion." OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 17:47, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

my apologies. I'd only meant that it had been discussed and that people curious about the change should look here. what would have been a better way to phrase it? --Ludwigs2 18:44, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

You were being bold which is fine. But you could have said "reverting per WP:TRIVIA" or something. Then see discussion. You implied that the discussion endorsed your change, when there wasn't very much of a discussion. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 21:30, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

that's a good point. I'll keep that in mind for the future. --Ludwigs2 22:19, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, when I created those two subsections I created them as stubs in the hope that they'd provoke discussion and probably be improved. The idea was that it might be useful to illustrate some cases of both how formerly alternative therapies have gone mainstream, or how others have not, to give some concrete illustration to altmed's relationship with mainstream medicine. HatlessAtless (talk) 15:59, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I think the first point is not a half bad idea, actually, but the second one is a loose cannon, and the dichotomy tends to favor the EBM model more than I'm really comfortable with. and really, it makes an assertion about 'AltMed' as a positive category, when really AltMed is little more than an overarching (negational) theme. for a silly example, it would be like creating a category 'all people who aren't Wikipedia Editors', and then discussing prominent APWAWEs who are serial killers. either that's a bad implication (that all APWAWEs are probably serial killers) or it's trivia (some APWAWEs are serial killers, and we're only mentioning them because it happens to be cool), and either way it divides the world into APWAWEs and WEs, which is just an odd way to divide the world. :-) --Ludwigs2 02:21, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposal

[2] "In the US, many medical insurers and some hospitals integrate chiropractic and massage therapy as adjuncts to mainstream medical care."^{[citation needed]}

Suggest replacing with below, it gives a more generalized example than specific as above so I am posting it here first.

In the US, by the end of the 1990's, major health care institutions started integrating CAM therapies, "for which there is evidence of safety and efficacy," as adjuncts to mainstream medical care, and small, but increasing numbers of medical insurers are offering limited CAM treatment reimbursement.[3]^[1]

Ward20 (talk) 01:05, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Go for it. I tagged my own edit because I knew it was imperfect, and that is essentially what I would have said had I had the source handy. HatlessAtless (talk) 05:38, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Looks good to me too. -- Levine2112 ^discuss 05:39, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

The present section where it appears may be going away (agree), and I am not happy with the section in quotes as it could be mis-interpreted to call attention to safety and efficacy of Cam. But the intent in the article was to say that only Cam that has some positive evidence base is being incorporated. It was late and I could not come up with a NPOV way to restate this part so I quoted it. I would rework it for use later if there is a section in which it would be pertinent. Perhaps it could be of use in the third paragraph of Contemporary use of alternative medicine. Ward20 (talk) 15:43, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Finalizing merge

ok, I think the merge on <link removed> is about as merged as it's going to get. I'm ready to take the next stage and copy it in at Alternative medicine, and then stubify or redirect the CAM and complementary medicine pages. do we have a consensus on the best way to handle that? I can finish over the weekend if we do. --Ludwigs2 21:05, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Do it! Fyslee wants stubs - but I have not yet heard what he wants to say in them. I myself think redirects are fine, so far, I am open to arguments. I suggest convert now at first to redirects - and of course put tags to extinct talk pages on the new talk page. It has to be called "Alternative and Complementary Medicine" I believe, unwieldy though you may think it. It just is. We can discuss on the "new" talk page whether extinct pages ought to be stubs rather than redirects and why. That's all. isn't it? Please go ahead, let's get some clarity and economy going in this neck of the woods. And thanks. Redheylin (talk) 22:12, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

This merge discussion has unfortunately gotten split up. That should never have happened. The agreement was to use the Alternative Medicine article as the main article, since the others exist only because of it, and refer to it. CAM is only an umbrella term, with no real content of its own. Any other solution and the whole merge deal is off and will be disputed and reverted. We can't go and change the agreed upon terms for the merge without a new discussion. -- Fyslee / talk 06:32, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Edits by User:207.112.125.217

I've reverted this editor's edits three-times. They are POV, which is subjective, but the editor is not giving us the benefit of a user summary or a discussion. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 18:39, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I've reverted IP once also and warned. Don't revert again though please, OM, I'd hate to see you caught in some bastardized technicality. I'll block the IP if he/she adds it again at this point, if more IPs magically appear, I'll semi-protect the article for a time. Keeper ǀ 76 18:41, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

No, I won't. But it's hard to edit-war with someone who won't discuss their edits! It's more like hitting my head against the wall. Ouch!!!!! OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 18:43, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

It's a heavily watchlisted article. (actually, I'm not even sure how it's in my watchlist, I don't think I've ever edited it before...)Let others help revert. No need for headbanging, unless there's good music on. If it gets extreme, or extremely annoying/pervasive/persistent, I'll add protection. Keeper ǀ 76 18:48, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm too old for head-banging music. It appears that someone else has decided to join in the edit-war. Sigh. I'll bet you're watching this article because you enjoy jumping into all kinds of controversies, because, you know, it's soooooo dull around here. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 21:36, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Now is the time to raise your points as to why you think the edit is unacceptable (and now you know how I feel when I'm editing with people like ScienceApologist, Jefffire, and QuackGuru). The edit diff) doesn't appear highly POV to me. Did you even read the diff, Keeper? It doesn't have references, but the current version appears much more POV than the one that anon is trying to put in (and also lacks references). The one that anon is trying to put in could be backed up by references such as the Institute of Medicine's definition of alt. med[4], which calls the current definition the "normative" (i.e. highly POV) one. The IOM (currently the premier medical research body in the United States) makes the exact same point that I did above, that Cochrane reviews show many conventional medical techniques are unproven:

According to Kopelman, normative definitions (e.g., untested or unscientific) also fail to distinguish CAM from conventional medicine. For example, Angell and Kassier (1998) write “there is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not.” However such a definition does not distinguish between conventional medicine and CAM because many conventional treatments have not been supported by rigorous testing. For example, a review of 160 Cochrane systematic reviews of the effectiveness of conventional biomedical procedures found that 20 percent showed no effect, whereas insufficient evidence was available for another 21 percent (Ezzo et al., 2001). Furthermore, “some CAM manufacturers adopt higher standards than are currently required in the United States and rigorously test their CAM products” (Kopelman, 2002).

That's 41 percent of mainstream medicine without an evidence base. It says nothing about how effective the treatments which exhibited more than "no effect" were, either. Therefore, distinguishing on the basis of evidence excludes much of conventional medicine; it is an unacceptable definition. II | (t - c) 21:04, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

ImpInf, add a sentence here on the talk page, with at least one reliable reference, without POV, without baseless accusations against me or any other editor, and I'll add it myself. There was nothing wrong with the language of the particular part of the article that IP207 (and IP72) was attempting to change sans references. Give me one. Work with other editors. If you are the IP, than you should know better than to simply change the wording of a highly contentious article without a reference to back up your language choices in the article. Keeper ǀ 76 21:08, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Err, Keeper67, do you see the quotation? That is a reference to the IOM. Click on the link and read their discussion. I'm not the IP, but calling the edit "vandalism" (as OrangeMarlin did several times) is pure inflammatory rhetoric without basis, and then going on the talk page to justify his edit war with a simple "it is a POV edit" adds flame to the fire. Sorry, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with replacing an unreferenced badly written, POV section with an unreferenced, but improved version. I'm not going to change the page because I'm waiting until the merged page is in to start editing. I'm disappointed that OrangeMarlin has feels it necessary engage in POV edit-warring at every possible occasion. He did it less than a week ago with Ludwigs2 over the adding a tag. Now he's stonewalling the anon IP from improving the article. Please take a step back, read the diffs, read my paragraph again, and try to take a neutral perspective. I also don't see why wikilinking the naturopathic schools is unacceptable. These need justification. II | (t - c) 21:16, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

<ec>Ah, that's not very nice. I called the edit vandalism precisely once, because if you're going to revert an edit without discussion, it's quacking quite loudly. Please, accusing me of POV edit-warring is hardly civil, but since you seem to be a good guy, I'll just assume you're having a bad day. I really do appreciate your conversing here rather than randomly reverting without discussion. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 21:41, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

this diff, that you just reverted me on, was not the same as the one that OM (and myself) were continually reverting, but yes, I did revert that particular edit as coming from the same IP. We are talking here on the talkpage about two separate reversions. I don't have a problem, personally, with your revert of my reversion, I was perhaps moving too fast (saw the same IP...). Still, sources are needed to add the bit that the IP was attempting to add (and that OM and myself) reverted previously. Keeper ǀ 76 21:38, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

<--related it seems, I've removed the word "popularity" from this particular sentence, it is a peacock/weasel term (especially without a reference), and I've added the {{fact}} tag to the sentence that you are contending, ImperfectlyInformed. Again, you and I (and OrangeMarlin) are reverting different things from today. Your particular reversion of my "IP revert" is fine, I have no problem with it, but at the same time, a reliable, independent source is needed to say that the "number" of accrediting schools is actually true. (I've already removed the weasel/peacock term "popularity" under the premise of who decides "popularity". Keeper ǀ 76 22:26, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

It should be clear from my paragraph above that I am aware there are two different reversions. I'll be blunt: the fact that you're reminding me of this leaves me suspicious that you didn't me very carefully. I don't understand why you're holding the current sourceless version to a lower standard than the one this new version is being held to. The new version appears superior in form and content. Pretend I'm the anon IP and explain how the current version is superior. I'm not really having a bad day; my patience has been worn thin, and I'm afraid I habitually fall into an irritated, rather whiny internet tone pretty fast. It's a bad habit that I'm trying to work on. I'd also agree that discussion is good. Below is a revised edition of that section:

Proposed new edition of history of alternative medicine

The term "alternative medicine" is only meaningful as compared to modern scientific medicine and the development of the scientific method.^{[citation needed]} (This is a terrible sentence which I'd like to remove.) Historically, many of the traditional medicines currently called "alternative" were mainstream in ancient history; examples include herbalism, acupuncture, and ayurvedic medicine. These can be considered prescientific. Other techniques with varying levels of scientific sophistication developed later. Chiropracty began in the 1890s, biofeedback began in the 1960s, and licensed naturopathic medicine began in the early 20th century. Some practices from traditional and early modern Western medicine such as colonics and silver remain a part of some modern alternative medicine modalities, although other traditional Western techniques such as bleeding and humorism are not. The term alternative medicine includes many questionable and disproven treatments, which have frequently appeared and disappeared throughout history,[5] as well as techniques for which there is evidence. Evidence-based techniques are commonly adopted as complementary therapies.

The existence of "alternative medicine" was brought into focus in the 19th and 20th century, when mainstream scientific medicine formed. In the 19th century homeopaths, herbalists, and other "eclectic" medical practices were popular, but their popularity diminished until the recent resurgence in the late 20th century.[6] The current distinction between alternative medicine and mainstream medicine are subject to debate, but the US Institute of Medicine defines alternative medicine as "a broad domain of resources that encompasses health systems, modalities, and practices and their accompanying theories and beliefs, other than those intrinsic to the dominant health system of a particular society or culture in a given historical period."[7] Although some have advocated that alternative medicine and mainstream medicine be distinguished by their evidence base, the Institute of Medicine points out that this definition is unacceptable because some mainstream medical techniques have little evidence.[8] The Institute of Medicine further points out that "boundaries within CAM and between the CAM domain and the domain of the dominant system are not always sharp or fixed." Different disciplines and areas have different considerations of what is alternative. For example, biofeedback is commonly used within the Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation community, but is considered alternative with the larger biomedical community, and some herbal therapies are mainstream in Europe, but are alternative in the United States.[9]

On first read, I don't have a glaring problem with either paragraph here, II. I'm going offline in a few minutes here, don't have time (until tomorrow) to seriously delve into this, and I'm -self-admittedly not a subject matter expert. I would like you to stop assuming that I have bad faith in regards to IP edits (and by extension) your edits. Attacking me, my intelligence, and my motivations for protecting this particlular article will not serve you well. I have no motives other than to make this article (which, frankly, is about to disappear into a merged/compiled article anyway) the best, most neutral, well sourced, article possible, and for you to assume otherwise is very offputting. Keeper ǀ 76 00:45, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll admit that I flew off the handle a little bit. I guess I assumed bad faith on your part and I'm sorry. But you should be able to admit that the edits being reverted were relatively sound, esp. in comparison to what exists -- I'm not just talking about the one I reverted. Incidentally, you removed "popularity" and added a fact tag in "compromise", but you should note that the edit being reverted did not even add those assertions -- the edit was simply a wikilink. When I see reverts (and edit warring) going on like that, I get a little heated. It is highly discouraging to new people who are trying to improve the article, and who could be succeeding. I'll admit that the 207 anon. IP should have brought up his changes instead of edit-warring, but I would have expected an experienced editor to justify his reversion with something better than "it is a POV edit". When I revert what appears to be sound edit, I'll usually start a discussion of my reversion with more than that. II | (t - c) 01:18, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

ok, I'm going to try a revision of your revision. I didn't find the IPs edits all that POV (though I can't say that they are completely neutral, either). let me point out, first, that 'History' is not the correct title for what's written here; 'derivation of the concept' might be better. I'm also only editing the first paragraph of the above (since the second paragraph seems more like a discussion of what AM is, than where the term coms from). how does this look?

The term "alternative medicine" is a neologism used to refer to those healing practices that lie outside the bounds of modern scientific medicine.^{[citation needed]} Some of the practices that fall under this rubric are traditional medicines that were mainstream in historical times or are still mainstream in less-developed regions: examples include herbalism, traditional chinese medicine, and ayurvedic medicine. Others alternative medicine practices are recent protoscientific developments with varying levels of sophistication. Chiropracty began in the 1890s, biofeedback began in the 1960s, and licensed naturopathic medicine began in the early 20th century. Some practices from traditional and early modern Western medicine such as colonics and silver remain a part of some modern alternative medicine modalities, although other traditional Western techniques such as bleeding and humorism are not. The term alternative medicine covers a range of practices from questionable and disproven treatments,^[2] to treatments which have no scientific evidence supporting or refuting them, to techniques which have scientific evidence supporting them even though they do not fit the medical model. These last techniques are often adopted as complementary therapies to conventional medicine.

--Ludwigs2 03:13, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Some nits: protoscience should be used to refer to traditional medicines, not the later developments; historical times is not a good word for the history of alt. medicine wikilink (though "historically" was not either, I'll admit); the intermediary "no scientific evidence supporting or refuting" is unnecessary ~~fluff~~; "the medical model" ~~is a questionable statement which should be removed~~ is likely not the real reason why evidence-based CAM is not adopted; "often" is an ugly, overused word (I prefer commonly, or perhaps sometimes). II | (t - c) 03:56, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Let's face it gang, "Alternative" is the ultimate weasel word. Alternative to what? Alternative to the the conventional majority? Alternative to the evidence based, scientific, rational? These are not the same because the mainstream, the conventional and the popular has never been exclusively rational and evidence based, just as the unconventional and less popular has never been exclusively irrational or unscientific. The article needs to explore this duality, but it would be a mistake to attempt to resolve it. Some people use the term alternative to mean 'medicine that is not scientific' - and the article should discuss the problems associated with this usage. Some people use the term to mean 'medicine that is not routinely practiced or accepted by the majority' - and the article should discuss the problems with this usage as well. As an 'alternative' evidence based practitioner, I am irked by the former usage, but i acknowledge that a fair and balanced article should report the various meanings. Here is a little story to illustrate my point, sorry if it goes a little off topic:

I remember being in first year, seeing the often quoted study about the prevelance of EBM in city hosiptals. The study followed a group of MDs on their rounds and found that they admited that they would change 40% of the medical decisions that they had made "...if they had been using EBM"! I remember hearing this and wanting to ask the doctors in the study "Well, what kind of medicine have you been practicing today, if not evidence based medicine?" Of course, in their minds, they *were* practicing EBM all day long, and I am sure that this is what they would have claimed if asked. No one is ever trying not to use evidence - they just weren't using the best evidence (as defined by the authors of the study) all of the time.

So here is my question: were the doctors in that study practicing 'alternative medicine'? When I prescribe what I beleieve to be an evidence based (but non conventional) treatment, am I practicing 'alternative medicine'? Should the difference lie in the quality of the evidence used, the professional identity of the practitioner, or in the relative popularity and acceptance of the treatment by the public? All of these criteria might be used to label an intervention as 'alternative', or not. Naturstud (talk) 04:42, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I am also unhappy with the term "alternative medicine". It implies selecting anOTHER INSTEAD. If an MD turned exclusively to Ayurveda or vice versa, that would be an "alternative". For many, these therapies are part of an "alternative society", along with alternative education, comedy etc. There is an antipathy to and an avoidance of "allopathic" medicine. However, the alternative is not a coherent system except when it involves Ayurveda etc; so is not strictly "alternative medicine", where "medicine" implies an integrated art and science. Further, there are few actual therapies that propose or demand such an avoidance of some other system. This is exactly why the term "complementary" was introduced by doctors. Redheylin (talk) 08:27, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Good point made by Redheylin. "Alternative medicine" has a connotation of 'counter culture' in some circles. In an extreme political usage, "alternative medicine" may not signify "medicine that is not mainstream" but rather "an alternative to medicine". In other words, some practitioners/patients may reject the term not because they do not like being called "alternative" but because they do not like being associated with "medicine", a term that they percieve as bellonging strictly to the allopathic realm. These are the folks who would rather use 'naturopathy,homeopathy,auruveda' than 'naturopathic medicine', 'homeopathic medicine', and 'ayurvedic medicine'. So you have two groups of non-conventional practitioners who both dislike the term 'alternative medicine': one who doesn't like being excluded from 'medicine' proper and one who doesn't like being associated with 'medicine' at all. Have I mentioned what a useless term I think 'alternative medicine' is lately? Naturstud (talk) 15:25, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

well, if you ask me (and forgive me for intruding my opinion here, just for sake of the argument) alternative medicine was always more of a social movement than a medical one - it reflects a growing concern that modern medicine has become machine medicine, and in various ways keeps trying to inject something personal, natural, spiritual, and/or patient-centered (as opposed to sickness-centered) into the treatment process. this partly explains why there's fraud there (people who feel lost in the medical machine are vulnerable to scammers who offer to give them their individuality and dignity back). in that sense, 'alternative' means 'non-dehumanizing'. plus (if you think about it) the bulk of AltMed is treatment for things that modern medicine doesn't do much with. if you go to a conventional doctor and tell him that you have (say) a persistent pain in your shoulder, the doc will run a few tests and xrays, and poke you a bit (maybe, if your insurance is good, he'll send you to a specialist who will test and poke at a much higher price), but unless he finds some weird sort of disease or degeneration he's going to send you home with a prescription for pain-killers and some advice about taking things easy for a week. an altmed practitioner will at least try to do something proactive. seems like most of the criticism of altmed aims at cases where alt med starts intruding on something that medicine has tested procedures for, which is a small minority of cases. in fact, most decent altmed practitioners will recognize when something needs the attention of a conventional medical doctor, and refer patients on instead of trying to treat them (and if I can believe what my friends say, recognizing when not to treat something is part of most AltMed certification programs). --Ludwigs2 19:03, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I think you have hit the nail on the head Ludwigs2. The more recent interest in alt.med. seems to me to be motivated by an increasing desire for the therapeutic relationship. I can't tell you how many patients I saw last year who came to our clinic not because they thought that we had better evidence, safety or efficacy but simply because they felt that the other guy 'wasn't listening'. I also share your concerns that in the wrong hands, such a therapeutic relationship is easily manipulated. Far from being off topic, I think this is a key attractor to alt/med (and an inherrent risk) that should be featured in the article. Naturstud (talk) 19:45, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

merge done, redirects added

I've completed the merge of alt med, comp med and cam, and redirected the pages to the new page, here: Alternative and complementary medicine. I'm not sure how to handle the ongoing talk page discussions, though. my first instinct s to refactor them over to the new talk page, but I don't want to break the archival history here, and I don't want duplicate discussions splitting off if I just copy them. suggestions? --Ludwigs2 03:43, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

CAM (Complementary and alternative medicine) is the standard name used by, among many others, the most prestigious medical body in the United States (the Institute of Medicine), so why did you title the new article "Alternative and complem. medicine"? Let's stick with what the references use -- that is, CAM. It will be awkward writing an article on CAM when the title it "alternative medicine" or "alternative and complementary medicine". I don't think that creating a new article was at all necessary. II | (t - c) 03:55, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Good Job Ludwigs, but I do have a few questions:

I'm not so sure about the title. CAM is the common name, including the NCCAM. Is it possible that you couldn't move to the former CAM article? You'll have to get an admin to do that.
You've deleted one of the best quotes ever about CAM. I can't remember who wrote it, but it said something along the lines of "there is medicine and there is not.." Now I can't remember it exactly, but I believe it was a woman at the FDA or NIH. My photographic memory is failing in my old age.
We have to clean up those references. All kinds of styles and forms.

Anyways, you've done something that should have been done months ago. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 04:00, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

(ec) I too have concerns about the page title. But before I address those concerns, I want to thank Ludwigs2 for doing the work - whatever the title of the page is, the merge was needed, and at first look, he did it well.

Regarding the title, the term used in most sources, and the topic of the page is: Alternative medicine; that's the title that should be used. The other titles, CAM and CM, are neolgisms used for various reasons; they should be identified and explained, based on reliable sources, but should not overshadow the central topic of the article. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 04:04, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Would anyone mind if I copied the merged article over this one? As far as the title, I disagree with Jack, as it is clear that nearly all nonpartisan, highly reliable sources use the word CAM rather than just "alternative medicine". But I've got no problem with keeping the merged article here for now, and if everyone agrees with Jack, then we can leave it under "alternative medicine". II | (t - c) 05:18, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

OM: my pleasure.

re:the title - I chose 'Alternative and complementary medicine' from Redheylin's suggestion above, and from some of the talk page discussions. CAM (if I remember correctly) was identified as a neologism, though a wide-spread one (particularly in Europe), and I think ACM was supposed to be a compromise between the more venerable AM, and the up-and-coming CAM. I could go either way on the issue, personally.
the quote you're looking for (I think) is in footnote 25, credited to Dawkins "There is no alternative medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't work." I don't know how it ended up there: I may have put it there while I was organizing and removing redundancies from the 'Definitions and categorizations' section, or it may have already been in the footnote. I'll look at the CAM page history and see if there's something else, if that's not it. no problem working it back in, though.
re: references - yeah <sigh...>

ImpIn - copied the merged article over which one - the AltMed article? the main problems I would see with that would be (a) both articles might start to get edited, creating confusion, and (b) it would muck up redirects. or am I misunderstanding what you're saying? --Ludwigs2 15:19, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Ludwigs--CAM might be more "USA" than rest of world, but I can't be sure. It's just that the only agency in the world that is funding clinical research in CAM uses the words "CAM." The Dawkins quote is good, but it's not the one I recall. I believe a woman stated it. I'll try to look back in the history of the CAM or AM articles. But again, I might be hallucinating. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 15:48, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

We'd destroy ACM with a PROD, as that is just awkward and confusing -- no need even for a redirect, and leave the fully merged article here on AltMed to satisfy Jack and Fyslee, since I don't particularly want to push a debate over such a trivial matter. Jack asserted without evidence that "complementary" was added to make it easier for alt. med. to be covered by insurance. Even if this was true, what really matters is whether it is predominantly used or not. Just now he's asserted that it is a neologism, and I see you've incorporated his uncited statement into my revised history section. No sources have been given by Jack or Fyslee. A neutral reading of the article reveals that nearly all nonpartisan sources refer to CAM, especially the most influential ones such as the IOM. I've been working on the alternative cancer treatments article, and I just added 4-5 reviews from credible journals -- all of them refer to CAM in their title. Even the most critical researchers of CAM, such as Edzard Ernst and Barrie R Cassileth, have referred to alt. med. as CAM since as far back as 1998 (see the lead). If CAM is a neologism, then maybe evidence-based medicine is a neologism as well, since it was only coined in 1992. I'm surprised that there is so much resistance to using the official language of the IOM and the NCCAM, which is also used by the vast majority of current peer-reviewed articles on CAM. The people not referring to alt. med. as CAM at this point are the CSI and Quackwatch-related folks. II | (t - c) 16:02, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the current title Alternative and complementary medicine is not the best title, and neither is Alternative medicine. They are both useful and viable as redirects to what the article, according to the assertions made here, should be called, which is Complementary and alternative medicine. Basically, if that's what the reliable sources (off-wiki) call it, that's what we call it. Regurgitation, or not what we think, what they think. I don't mean that to sound as preachy as it probably does, everyone here of course is well aware of that :-) Ludwigs, you've done excellent work, and I understand your logic in placing the merged article where you did as a compromising title, however, the sources don't refer to any of this as ACM, but CAM. If a consensus emerges here to move this, someone can ping my talkpage and I'll use my superpowers to sort everything out. (OM is right, at this point, a non-admin will not be able to move this article to CAM). Cheers, Keeper ǀ 76 16:33, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

ImpIn - sorry, the 'neologism' comment was mine, not Jack's, and it wasn't particularly thought out, but just a reflection of the fact that AltMed is the older term (since CAM explicitly relates AltMed to CompMed). and yes, I'd also put 'evidence-based' medicine as a neologism, because it was clearly constructed to cope with a particular problem that AltMed posed to conventional medicine. I'm not particularly attached to it. :-) so look, I can move this around pretty freely right now (even to the 'Complementary and alternative medicine' page, which doesn't seem to need administrator access). it seems like it's split now: Fyslee and Jack wanting AltMed, and OM, ImpIn and Keeper wanting Comp&alt med. for right now I will move the page here to AltMed, fix the redirects, and delete the page I created; when we reach a consensus, moving it again will not be a problem. --Ludwigs2 19:06, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Done merged content now here at Alternative medicine, alternative and complementary medicine flagged for deletion. --Ludwigs2 19:24, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm kind of confused here. Why aren't we using "Complementary and Alternative Medicine" as the article's name? It seemed like the consensus was that direction. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 20:30, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm confused as well - lol - but as I noted above it looks like a 2/3 split: Fyslee and Jack vs. you, ImpIn, and Keeper. I'm good either way, and whenever it's clear which way the cookie is crumbling, I'm happy to shift things around again (it only takes ten minutes or so to fix things). I see this move as a temporary solution that gets rid of the page that no one wanted, and places the active page in the same place as the active talk page discussion (which saves on confusion). --Ludwigs2 20:49, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

A quick scan of the references leaves me with a count of around 8 which use the word "alternative" without "complementary" in the title. A handful don't use either words (traditional medicine). The rest, 80+, use either complementary and alternative, or just complementary. Let's see what Fyslee and Jack have to say before we move on. Incidentally, many of the ones using just "alternative" are Dawkins' definition from The Devils' Chaplain: reference 19 and 25 are duplicates, with 22, 23, 24, and 26 basically supporting just repeating and supporting this definition. I think it's a bit of undue weight for one man's attempt to define CAM, but we'll work it out later. The IOM considered this definition and dismissed it, which should be noted. II | (t - c) 00:23, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't see this as a big issue, either AltMed or CAM will be OK, though I'd prefer AltMed because it's the more established, broader term; the other terms CM and CAM are recent constructions that create an artificial division between different types of AltMed not useful for the article other than as a section about that terminology. All forms of CM or CAM are simply forms of AltMed that just happen to be used together with conventional medicine in some places, where the term CM happens to be used to indicate that acceptance. Many places do use the term, but some don't; for example in the German Wikipedia the term Complementary Medicine (Komplementärmedizin) redirects to their article on AltMed. That said, let's not draw this out. If more people want to use CAM, I'm willing to go along and not press the issue.--Jack-A-Roe (talk) 01:18, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Right, more big thanks to Ludwig, but I have a confession - I regretted my suggested title. I agree with others that the most notable formula should be adopted, which would be C and A, not A and C. I appreciated Ludwig's point that "alternative" implies wholism and an attitude, really: I think this point can and should be backed up and added. However this does not alter my point; if it is the attitude that is "alternative" then there are corollaries - herbalism, say, is only "alternative" if the practitioner is sympathetic, a sympathetic MD is "alternative" but acupuncture is not, when prescribed with the wrong attitude. In the end, there will be hardly any therapy that can be described as "alternative", because it is the diagnosis and manner that is alternative, not the therapy. And so we would have to reinvoke the "complementary" page, all the duplication. So I would like to vote against altmed, pace Jackaroe, and simply make sure that the relevant issues are sourced and present. Thanks for a good quality debate. Redheylin (talk) 00:45, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

since we haven't heard back from Fyslee, and the consensus among other editors seems to be to use the Complementary and alternative medicine page, then I guess I will go ahead and make the final move from AltMed to CAM sometime in the next few days. (unless of course more discussion is needed). what I will probably do as well is archive this talk page, archive the CAM talk page, and then copy the current discussions here over to the CAM talk page. I'll leave a note on this page saying that's what happened, but you might want to make sure the other page is on your watchlist. --Ludwigs2 05:21, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

This merge discussion has unfortunately gotten split up. That should never have happened. The agreement was to use the Alternative Medicine article as the main article, since the others exist only because of it, and refer to it. CAM is only an umbrella term, with no real world content of its own. It just refers to TWO other terms, which DO have real world content. Any other solution and the whole merge deal is off. We can't go and change the agreed upon terms for the merge without a new discussion. This Alternative medicine article is based on the real substance and methods spoken of in the other articles on the subject (CAM and Complementary medicine), and is by far the most commonly used and recognized term, considering that even CAM refers to it. The others are specialized terms that still relate to Alternative medicine. Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is a term that really has no content of its own, but refers to altmed usage in TWO different settings. That's why the CAM article should be a short disambiguation page pointing to those TWO articles with content. The Alternative medicine article would naturally have the most content because everything is about those methods, and the Complementary medicine article would have the content that is relevant to that form of usage. This eliminates all the duplication. I originally suggested leaving stubs (well, the Compmed article is more than a stub...) at them, not redirects, and I still think that is best. We just needed to get rid of all the duplication by collecting it here. -- Fyslee / talk 06:57, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Duplication again is premature. CAM is used by all reliable current sources. As I noted, only 8-9 of the current sources even reference "alternative" without "complementary" in the title, and most of these are just partisan rhetoric. I don't think we should create a separate CompMed article as that gets as back into the overlap, especially when we don't have sources making the distinction clearly for us. Maybe in a couple years. With that said, I can handle just having this article being called ~~complementary~~ meant to say alternative. II | (t - c) 07:16, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

ok, well... what we have now is all the content collected into the AltMed article. since there still seems to be dispute about how to arrange things, (and there's nothing so dire in the dispute that it needs to be resolved now), let's just leave things here and see how it develops. we can move the page at any time if we decide to, and while it would be better (IMO) not to fork CAM off to another page, we can do that later too if we decide it's necessary. I'll hold off on doing anything more until there's a clear consensus. --Ludwigs2 18:55, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Cultural/political definition

"The Cochrane Collaboration defines complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) as a broad domain of healing resources that encompasses all health systems, modalities, and practices and their accompanying theories and beliefs, other than those intrinsic to the politically dominant health systems of a particular society or culture in a given historical period." -- "Complementary and alternative medicine". Department of Health, UK Government.

It's interesting that the UK DoH defines CAM based on cultural/political criteria. Maybe there's a use for this somewhere in the article. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 01:20, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Glance at the definitions and categorizations section of the article. That's not the UK DoH definition or the Cochrane's definition; it is the US Institute of Medicine's definition. Nevertheless, it is interesting that this definition is being so widely adopted. Or at least, it is essentially the same as the IOM's definition, which was worked out in 2005; Cochrane gave their version in 2007. That definition is already incorporated into the article, although I think it is redundant to quote both. I say we just quote the IOM and then note that Cochrane's definition is essentially the same, and that this definition has been adopted by the UK DoH. II | (t - c) 01:40, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

At this point I don't mind if we leave it here. I like keeping titles short if possible. I imagine at some point this will have to be moved though, as CAM really is the standard terminology among professional researchers and governmental organizations. II | (t - c) 02:31, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Alternative medicine is not the opposite of evidence based medicine

I have changed the section title "Alternative vs. Evidence based medicine" to "Alternative medicine and Evidence based medicine". As pointed out elsewhere in the article, these terms are not opposites. Indeed the content of this section discusses the quality of the evidence of CAM in comparison with conventional medicine. Perhaps a better section title would be capture this idea: "Comparison with conventional medicine: quality of evidence", which is what this section seems to be about. Naturstud (talk) 05:23, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Consolidating the EBM section of Definitions

I think we need to cut down the definition and the EBM section, as they currently read repetitively. We've got Angell's 10-year old editorial from the NEJM cited 3 times, and then a bunch of speculation on what medicine should really be like. I agree that it would be nice if there was only EBM, but that doesn't mean that alt. med. is not medicine. There are much more nuanced "critical" sources/analyses from people like Edzard Ernst and Cassileth. We shouldn't fill the article with rhetoric. Similarly, I think the whole definition section could be cleaned up. The IOM and Cochrane definitions are redundant; we should quote one and cite the others as supporting that view. Then I think the Classification section should be made into a major rather than a subsection, and we should fill up the subsections for it.

I'm looking at Angell's 1998 editorial right now. She does note that much of mainstream med. is not backed by strong evidence, and here's what she says about it:

Of course, many treatments used in conventional medicine have not been rigorously tested, either, but the scientific community generally acknowledges that this is a failing that needs to be remedied. Many advocates of alternative medicine, in contrast, believe the scientific method is simply not applicable to their remedies. They rely instead on anecdotes and theories.

Maybe she is right, but that can easily be construed as a straw man as it stands. We can support this view by noting that there is an antiscientific perspective within much of the alt. med. community, through citing alt. med.-related papers. II | (t - c) 16:03, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

As a default member of what you call the 'alt.med community' (what ever the hell that is), I would be very interested to see documentation of the 'antiscientific perspective' that you mention. Which practitioners/tradition are you thinking about? I don't have a problem with including these, just want the criticism to be as specific as possible. If my gammy looses her leg because her psychic iridologist told her to stop taking her insulin, and I write about the dangers of 'alternative medicine', I'm gonna piss of the Chiropractors and NDs, yes? The reveres is true: just because certain alternative practices are relatively level headed and rational doesn't mean that 'alternative medicine' should be praised as safe and effective as a whole. The article needs to be specific in its critisim and make it clear that 'alternative medicine' is an umbrella term that refers to a wide variety of beliefs, attitudes and skills. Painting all alternatives as dangerous, ineffective or not based in evidence would only gurantee a hundred-year edit-war, yes?Naturstud (talk) 17:51, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Therapeutic touch and homeopathy strike me as fairly unscientific. Chiropractic has a long history of being opposed to science, or at least that's what the article says -- there is a reasonable question of bias when it comes to these accusations from mainstream med. (chiropractic competes), but still, it is quite true that chiropractic hasn't been scientifically focused. Those advocating herbalism have tried to say that historical use is evidence -- but historical establishment is not really scientific evidence (perhaps a little -- there is some science to the trial and error -- yet that didn't stop Western med. from developing bleeding and humorism). Certainly much of CAM criticizes normal scientific evidence, ie RCTs. The Journal of Complementary and Alternative Medicine seemed a bit antiscientific when I glanced at it, although not terribly so. Glance at the Tonelli ref. on the page, and go to related links to see some discussion on this issue. II | (t - c) 18:12, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

II - let me make a few comments about what I see as misconceptions in your posts

antiscientific and unscientific are very different concepts, and I'm not certain that either applies to AltMed as a whole. Antiscientific implies that something is actually against science, which doesn't strike me as true of anything in altmed except pure quackery. unscientific, by contrasts, implies that a disinterest with or ignorance of science, which doesn't strike me as true of anything in altmed except some of the more spiritual practices.
your use of the term science is almost mystical or religious, rather than analytic. Science is always a particular set of procedures applied to a particular subject of analysis, and the first thing any scientist will tell you is what his procedures can and cannot explain. I make the argument myself that not everything in AltMed is subject to scientific testing (not because I'm a huge AltMed supporter, but because I realize the limitations in the methodology of scientific medicine).
likewise, science is technology dependent; remember, science is just reasoning based on evidence. the fact that traditional medicine practitioners did not have access to CAT scans and modern chemistry does not mean their approach was not scientific - it only means that that their scientific analyses were based on the measurements they could make at the time. in a few hundred years, believe me, doctors are going to look back at our 'modern' medicine with disgust at how brutal and primitive it was. --Ludwigs2 18:35, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Well II , Homeopathy seems profoundly unscientific to me - and I am an ND! I suppose most people would consider my profession 'alternative medicine' - but far from criticizing normal scientific evidence, a significant portion of my training was in how to look for good evidence. Wanting to be an expert in natural based therapies can certainly be frustrating for lack of good research. I'm still not sure where 'antiscience' should come in to the picture...I'm not saying you won't find it as an attitude in some individuals, but I have never encountered it as an institutionalized or professional bias. As an ND I often have to accept working with less evidence than I would like to have, and yes,I have to dilute the quality of evidence to include expert opinion and historical practices. But this is not what you mean by 'antiscientific' or 'unscientific' is it? I am also aware in my profession of the sentiment that although something like therapeutic touch may not be proven by science to be curative, it can still be of tremendous value by giving comfort - sometimes all that any of us can do. Sometimes we say and do things that provide comfort, even though the only evidence we have that they give comfort is that the patient reports feeling better. Is this antiscientific? Because whatever you would call it, it is not an "alternative" but rather something that good doctors everywhere do every day. Not all medicine is science, it seems. Naturstud (talk) 19:02, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

The word compelling as used by Edzard Ernst

This is a minor issue, but it is worth clarifying. Jefffire has posted on my talk page (which is not where this comment belongs):

I've reverted an edit of your where you have apparently misunderstood how WP:NPoV works. Please be aware that quoting PoV text is still PoV, unless properly attributed. Please take some time to read over WP:NPoV and WP:ATTRIBUTION, to understand how these key policies and guidelines work on Wikipedia.

Simply because Jefffire doesn't like the descriptive word attached to something doesn't mean it is not neutral. The word compelling is attributed to Edzard Ernst with the footnote. If the foremost researcher on alt. med. (Edzard Ernst) says evidence is weak, we say it is weak. If he says it is decent, we say it is decent. If he says it is compelling, we say it is compelling. If he just says "evidence exists", we say that. This is to allow the reader to get an idea of what the reliable sources actually think. Also, "Attribution" is an essay, and NPOV has nothing to say on this particular point. Do we want to increase wordiness by saying "Edzard Ernst" says research is compelling, or can we let the footnote stand alone? II | (t - c) 16:03, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I have changed the text to more acurately describe Ernst's agnostic position, which is that 'compelling' results exist along side other interventions that have been shown to be ineffective and others still which simply have not had enough investigation to say either way. The previous text "Dr. Edzard Ernst claims that compelling evidence exists..." was a serious, if perhaps inadvertant, misrepresentation of his position. Naturstud (talk) 17:41, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Naturstud - there is a difference between using a term like 'compelling' as a sourced statement, and using a term like 'compelling' as though it were true because it's a sourced statement. the first is NPOV; the second is biased. I'll take a look at the change you made, but please don't attribute Jefffire's comments to mere personal opinion. he does have a point. --Ludwigs2 18:39, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree that Ernst should be identified as the source - but the way he was referenced gave the impression that someone else had noted CAM failures and that Ernst was claiming compelling results alone. This could be misconstrued so as to paint him as an ardent suporter when in fact his position is much more balanced. Naturstud (talk) 19:12, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I checked, and your changes look fine to me. no worries. :-) --Ludwigs2 20:02, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Suspending autoarchiving?

I'm not really a fan of autoarchiving. How would it be suspended? I'd prefer that we archive manually and take notes as we archive, briefly summarizing points which still need to be addressed. For example, in [16] Ernst's Trick or Treat is noted -- this is a great resource, as well another recent book, The Oxford Handbook on Complementary Medicine. II | (t - c) 23:06, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

is there a place

somewhere for this link Wilk vs AMA? Lakinekaki (talk) 05:15, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

that might fit in with some of the evidence-based medicine comments, or with the critiques of AM that come a little later, just to show that the medical opinion of AM is not so monolithic as some people try to make it. --Ludwigs2 19:35, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

They don't do they? Better look at [10]. Mind you, a lot of these doctors and professors are probably just trying to get in with Prince Charles. May I ask; why has not "complementary" been added to the title yet? I do not think these people see these therapies and approaches as an "alternative" - it is just that there are some medical strategies in which doctors are not currently trained. Unslipping discs, for instance. But many of the same therapies and procedures function as alternatives to some and complementaries to others. Oh I have said that before. What is the problem? Redheylin (talk) 00:21, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Bot report : Found duplicate references !

In medicine&redirect=no&oldid=228832227 the last revision I edited, I found duplicate named references, i.e. references sharing the same name, but not having the same content. Please check them, as I am not able to fix them automatically :)

"Angell" :
- Alternative medicine--the risks of untested and unregulated remedies. Angell M, Kassirer JP. N Engl J Med 1998;339:839.
- Angell M, Kassirer JP (1998). "Alternative medicine--the risks of untested and unregulated remedies" (PDF). N. Engl. J. Med. 339 (12): 839–41. doi:10.1056/NEJM199809173391210. PMID 9738094. Retrieved 2007-12-28.
"autogenerated2" :
- Eisenberg, DM, Davis RB, Ettner SL "Trends in alternative medicine use in the United States 1990-1997." JAMA, 1998; 280:1569-1575. PMID 9820257
- Saw S, Tong L, Chua W, Chia K, Koh D, Tan D, Katz J (2005). "Incidence and progression of myopia in Singaporean school children". Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 46 (1): 51–7. doi:10.1167/iovs.04-0565. PMID 15623754.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
"NCCAM CAM" :
- "What is Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)?". National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. Retrieved 2006-07-11.
- "Are complementary medicine and alternative medicine different from each other?". National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. Retrieved 2006-07-11.

DumZiBoT (talk) 11:20, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Done. - Eldereft (cont.) 06:46, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

"Rejected"?

Currently we have this wording in the lead:

"The US Institute of Medicine rejected the evidence-based approach to defining CAM because research suggests that many mainstream medical techniques lack solid evidence as well."^[3]

Can someone point to the exact wording and page which justifies the "rejected" and "because research suggests" wording? I fail to see that the reference justifies this wording. It sounds like an OR and/or SYNTH violation. -- Fyslee / talk 19:03, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I think I found the section that the above refers to, though it appears that the paraphrase might need improvement to more accurately reflect the source. The ref is an interesting document that seems to acknowledge many of the same difficulties in defining CAM that have made these articles challenging for editors here as well.

Here's the quote I found, on pp 17-18 of the source:

According to Kopelman, normative definitions (e.g., untested or unscientific) also fail to distinguish CAM from conventional medicine. For example, Angell and Kassier (1998) write “there is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not.” However such a definition does not distinguish between conventional medicine and CAM because many conventional treatments have not been supported by rigorous testing. For example, a review of 160 Cochrane systematic reviews of the effectiveness of conventional biomedical procedures found that 20 percent showed no effect, whereas insufficient evidence was available for another 21 percent (Ezzo et al., 2001). Furthermore, “some CAM manufacturers adopt higher standards than are currently required in the United States and rigorously test their CAM products” (Kopelman, 2002).

Is that what you were looking for? --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 20:07, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

That's basically where I drew that statement from. I cited it to page 17 for that reason. The fact that the IOM eventually went with a non-normative definition means that they did reject it. I reworded slightly. II | (t - c) 20:25, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to heartily disagree with your interpretation. They are quoting Kopelman, not endorsing your statement that the Institute of Medicine is rejecting evidence-based approach. I'm going to side with Fyslee--this is a synthesis that is not accurate or supported. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 22:32, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

They don't adopt a definition with even a shred of the evidence-based one, and appear to completely agree with Kopelman. What did you think of my change of wording from rejected to "noted that the evidence-based definition is problematic"? II | (t - c) 22:41, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I think your change is an improvement. Actually they faulted all the existing definitional attempts, which is unsurprising. None of them are perfect. Other sources could be cited to find fault with others using different arguments, which makes it problematic for us to choose this one source and use it to fault others. What should we do? Well, we can't list them all, so why not just report that there are various definitions and source them. We shouldn't take sides in the article, even though we naturally have our favorites ;-) -- Fyslee / talk 00:14, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Series of edits

I have made a number of edits, mostly copy edits and minor improvements, but also a couple significant additions. I hope that my documentation and sourcing are good enough. I have made them a little bit at a time so that analysis of each edit will be easier. I am not entirely satisfied with the placement of my last edit, but it seemed to fit there better than anywhere else. Suggestions for improvement will be appreciated, since collaboration is the best way forward. -- Fyslee / talk 07:17, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Section on evidence-based medicine

In case a reading by a fresh pair of eyes helps: I just read this section and was impressed with its balance, given the divergent views of the editors. But my dominant impression was that it has ended up being too long by about two thirds, has a lot of redundancy, and gets away from the topic of the article by giving too much detail about the issue of evidence-based medicine. In any case, this section is greatly improved over what I remember from a month or so ago. TimidGuy (talk) 21:16, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Interesting article. Possible source?

I read this at slate.com: Alternative Universe: The homeopathic crowd meets academic medicine. Thought some of you would enjoy it and perhaps see fit to use it as a source in this article perhaps. -- Levine2112 ^discuss 18:27, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Indeed an interesting report. There is a bit of exaggeration, hyperbole, caricaturing, straw men, etc., but also some good points and some food for thought for all sides. Thanks for sharing this with us. -- Fyslee / talk 00:13, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Another interesting article

Quote:

“Complementary practices do not compete with conventional medicine whereas alternative medicine might. Acupuncture, chiropractic care, Indian or eastern medicine are considered alternative medicine and are less accepted by the conventional medical community. Doctors are more accepting of other methods if it complements what they are doing,” McCormack said.

The study was recently published in OT Practice, a journal of The American Occupational Therapy Association.

Source(s): More Than A Pill: Complementary Medicine Can Help With Chronic Pain, Same article, different source

-- Fyslee / talk 23:56, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Testing of efficacy

In 87% of the cases, the readers agreed. In the 17% in which they disagreed…

At least one of those two percentages in wrong. I am not convinced that they add anything to the article anyway, but if kept they should be corrected.

In the same section, concluded that CAM is harmful is compared to concluded harmful effects [for conventional treatments] - are these net effects indicating that a particular treatment should not be used, or did the RCTs only conclude that there exist harmful side effects? If the same classification categories are used by the IoM reviewers, that is the language we should use here.

In the same section, there occurs the figure 0.69% (formerly .69%). Unless I am misreading the section, the relevant denominator is 480 studies, which gives 3.312 harmful studies. This is too far from an integer value to be a reasonable rounding error, and the reviewers do not appear to be using fractional categorization. I believe that Cochrane requires easily extractable presentation for reviews included in the Library - were some studies not included in this analysis, or is the 480 figure only approximate (by, say, 45 studies)?

In the same section again, the categories for conventional treatments only add up to 90.7% - was there an additional category or were some studies discarded? - Eldereft (cont.) 23:00, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for the mixup. The relevant denominator is actually only 145, and only 1 CAM Cochrane review concluded net harmful effects. Those harmful effect are certainly net. Feel free to read the section, as I do misread sometimes. II | (t - c) 23:42, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

That makes much more sense, thank you. I rearranged the statistics to be in the same order for both data sets instead of independently in descending order, as that makes them easier to compare.

The blurry definition of "alternative treatments" and the point that research is done on them are covered in the Definitions section, and probably do not need to be rehashed here. I would like to just excise the first clause per WP:WTA#However, although, whereas, despite, leaving us with "[M]any alternative therapies have been tested with varying results." as the introductory sentence. - Eldereft (cont.) 15:09, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. II | (t - c) 17:50, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Done. - Eldereft (cont.) 18:34, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

→

Page move and lead changes

I suggest moving the page to complementary medicine; CAM still has "alternative" in its name, suggesting that it's a form of medicine used if western-type medicine fails (which is wrong; actually in this respect it should be the way around -->western type medicine or chirurgy (which is completely different from both alternative and western medicine) is best used if the less radical 'alternative'-medicine fails or is unsuitable (eg for certain diseases) So actually, aternative medicine should actually be regular and regular complementary.

Following input was reverted: [11]

This edit contained following info:

Alternative medicine, (also complementary medicine or complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)) are terms used to encompasses any healing practice "that does not fall within the realm of conventional medicine."^[4] Commonly cited examples^[5] include:

Biologically based practices and Whole medical systems such as Western herbalism, traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, Tibetan medicine, Kanpo, natural hygiene, food therapy, natural medicine, ...
Body therapies as osteopathy, chiropractic, bodywork therapy, and massage therapy
Breathing therapy, relaxation therapy, meditation, and aromatherapy
Healing therapies
Psychologic therapies
Energy therapies,
and Creative therapies ^[6]—Preceding unsigned comment added by KVDP (talk • contribs)

Keep here: I object to the move (the material was recently all moved here from the separate articles, and this name was chosen). I also think having a long list of "therapies" that don't have articles in the lead isn't a good idea. Verbal chat 20:12, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Seconded. The discussion to which Verbal refers is, I believe, this one. Additionally, you may be interested in List of branches of alternative medicine, linked from the sidebar. - Eldereft (cont.) 01:45, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Oppose page move. As noted by Eldereft and Verbal, this topic has been extensively discussed, and after long consideration the current page structure was chosen by consensus, and followed-up with careful implementation. Consensus can change, but it's too soon to revisit this question. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 01:50, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Comment The discussion that Eldereft linked to was over the merge itself, not the name of the title. When I started that discussion I didn't suggest a title. Fyslee made a suggestion, but we didn't really go with the suggestion. Fyslee also argued for just "alternative", but the argument seems more based in ideology than on sources. Jack-A-Roe agreed with Fyslee, stating that "In addition to CAM and "complementary medicine" being recently constructed terms, "alternative medicine" on the other hand has been used to describe this topic for a long time; there are many more sources using that term." I pointed out this was incorrect as 1) 1998 systematic review by Edzard Ernst that I put in the lead uses CAM, and 2) A quick scan of the references leaves me with a count of around 8 which use the word "alternative" without "complementary" in the title. A handful don't use either words (traditional medicine). The rest, 80+, use either complementary and alternative, or just complementary. OrangeMarlin and Keeper67 acknowledged that CAM seems to be the more appropriate term, with Keeper67 pointing out that it's not the words that we use, it's what they use. With that said, I don't care that much about the title, and the current one has brevity, if not the weight of professional use. The current one is also much more commonly used among nonprofessionals. Let's keep the title as is for now -- I particularly like its brevity. II | (t - c) 23:25, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

- I don't feel strongly about the title either, so if my comment gave that impression, then I wasn't clear. I didn't recall or research the details you mentioned, but your notes seem to be accurate. I prefer the simplicity of the current title, but I also don't see it as a big deal either way. My motivation in wanting to keep it as-is, is that we went through those discussions and this is what we came to, so I'd prefer to keep it here and move on with the content improvements. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 02:27, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Oppose page move. We've been here before and no new or convincing arguments have been presented. As Jack-A-Roe wisely suggests, let's concentrate on improvements and not get distracted. -- Fyslee / talk 05:11, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Diagnosis

Determining the cause of the ilness, malady or problem, in complementary medicine, can be done by a number of ways. Most of these diagnosis-techniqsues are not used in conventional medicine. Some techniques, often inherent to one complementary system ore another, are:

Questioneers, sleeping journals, food diaries, and asrological calculations
Wrist diagnosis (Ayurveda, TCM, Tibetan medicine, kanpo)
Iridology
Pressure points diagnosis
diagnos1is based on general walk and appearance
energetic diagnosis
microdiagnosis (diagnosis by study of face, belly, ears, fingers, toes, feet, back, ...)
tongue diagnosis (kanpo, TCM)
muscle tension (Touch-for-Health)
palpitation and belly palpitation
analysis of saliva, blood, feces, urine, hair, ...

Please find sources to support statements and reupload. Thanks, KVDP (talk) 13:19, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

The only one of the above techniques not used, when appropriate, in medicine is "astrological calculation" (unless you're talking about the unproven alt med uses). Verbal chat 20:18, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't think iridology is used in mainstream medicine. II | (t - c) 06:35, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

AHRQ evidence reports

Fyslee reverted this external link. While there is only 1 on meditation, there are 19 on dietary supplements, which are definitely CAM. I don't feel strongly either way, but I thought it was an interesting list. II | (t - c) 06:35, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Dietary supplements are not necessarily alternative medicine, so it is probably best to use AHRQ in the more specific articles. I added the meditation summary to Health applications and clinical studies of meditation since the source looks nice and reliable. They do have several other mentions of AM on the site, but except for a testimony before Congress in 1999, which does not really contain enough specifics for an external link but might make a good historical source, I did not find anything describing AM as a whole. - Eldereft (cont.) 16:42, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

If people start using the "alternative medicine" in the title to keep out things which veer towards "complementary medicine", then I'm going to have to lobby hard for retitling this page to "complementary and alternative medicine". I'm not sure if that's what you were reasoning. Dietary supplements certainly fall under CAM. Dietary supplements certainly fall under CAM. With that said, I don't mind if we don't use this link elsewhere. II | (t - c) 19:10, 7 November 2008 (UTC)II | (t - c) 19:02, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Dietary supplements are supposed to supplement the diet; this is not medicine but prevention. The medical profession diagnoses and treats the results of, among others things, a poor lifestyle, including inadequate diet. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.177.97.184 (talk) 20:23, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

New list

Announcing a new list:

List of alternative medicine subjects

-- Fyslee / talk 08:05, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Seems to me that list directly duplicates Index of topics in alternative medicine which was redirected long ago? -- John Gohde (talk) 02:28, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Not entirely, and I want to make it clear that this list is not in competition with "your" Glossary of alternative medicine, nor is it intended to replace it. See the talk page there regarding recent attempts to redirect it. I don't support them. -- Fyslee (talk) 03:42, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Interesting article: Life and Death on Fringes of Medicine

The following article is well worth the read. It can be used as a source here:

Life and Death on Fringes of Medicine, By Shari Roan, LA Times, February 05, 2006

-- Fyslee (talk) 07:44, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Wall Street Journal: "Alternative Medicine is Mainstream

This article from a reliable source should be integrated in the article[12]. The article should not be used as reference that Alt Med is scientifically proven now but to show HOW Alt Med is perceived in the general mainstream media. MaxPont (talk) 09:38, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Further information: this is an opinion piece written by the well known alt-med advocates Deepak Chopra, Dean Ornish, Rustrum Roy and Andrew Weil. Verbal chat 09:51, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

And it has been accepted for publication by the most mainstream of mainstream media. MaxPont (talk) 12:15, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

The article basically emphasizes the importance of eating well, not smoking, and exercising regularly. Yes, those recommendations are "mainstream". This article also underscores why WP:MEDRS advocates caution in citing the popular press. Compare the following:

Dean Ornish et al. in Lancet Oncology: "We report these increases in telomerase activity as a significant association rather than inferring causation." (PMID 18799354)
Dean Ornish et al. in the Wall Street Journal: "A study published in The Lancet Oncology reported that these changes increase telomerase, the enzyme that lengthens telomeres, the ends of our chromosomes that control how long we live. Even drugs have not been shown to do this."

Note the difference. In the scientific paper, the authors (including Ornish) interpret their data cautiously, assign appropriate caveats, and explicitly refuse to assume causation. In the Wall Street Journal, Ornish blithely mentions that lifestyle decisions upregulate telomerase, which "controls how long we live." The implication of causation could not be more clear, and it's all the more glaring since Ornish coauthored both items (though, oddly, he doesn't mention that he's citing his own findings in the WSJ).

Anyhow, the WSJ article actually argues for a preventive approach based on a healthy diet, exercise, tobacco cessation, and reduced stress. That's hardly arguable, and it is, as the authors suggest, mainstream. I would submit that the items listed by the authors of the WSJ article are not really considered "alternative medicine" in this day and age. MastCell ^Talk 22:32, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Here [13] is another ref. MaxPont (talk) 15:21, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree with MaxPont. The subject of the WSJ article is clearly and demonstrably relevant to this WP article and the WSJ easily meets the bar for WP:RS. In terms of content, I suggest that the first paragraph of the WSJ article contains the material we should use to summarise its general thrust.Vitaminman (talk) 08:36, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, it would need to be attributed as an opinion piece authored by several prominent alternative-medicine personalities. It's not exactly like the news desk at the Wall Street Journal is reporting here. I assume this means that opinion pieces in equally mainstream newspapers and magazines which happen to be critical of alternative medicine are also acceptable sources? I also note no response to my final question - are these interventions (eating well, not smoking, exercising) really what people consider "alternative"? Focusing on the first paragraph and leaving out the details would seem to gloss over the fact that the authors aren't talking about homeopathy, or herbaceuticals, or megadose vitamins when they discuss "alternative medicine". They're talking about eating right and exercising. MastCell ^Talk 06:02, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

What we have here is an example of where alternative medical practitioners agree with mainstream medical public health findings, and documented by mainstream research methods. Nothing alternative about it, other than it's alternative authors describing mainstream recommendations, which alternative practitioners also might make, but they would also include recommendations and methods that are fringe and without scientific foundation, IOW so-Called "Alternative" Medicine (sCAM) ideas. They are what's truly "alternative" and not mainstream. If they aren't proven by proper research, they are in the realm of "alternative" medicine. Why "so-called"? Because they are only truly "alternatives" if they are equally effective, but they aren't, which is why the term "alternative medicine" is only a misleading marketing term. -- Fyslee (talk) 07:53, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

According to my reading of WP:RS, opinion pieces are valid so long as we present them in a way that is consistent with WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE. As such, both positive and critical pieces are acceptable sources, and, to achieve WP:NPOV, we need both. Regarding Mastcell's question as to whether eating well, not smoking and exercising are really what people consider "alternative", let's not lose sight of the fact that the piece: makes mention of meditation, yoga, acupuncture and herbal remedies; states that herbs usually have far fewer side effects than pharmaceuticals; makes the point that lifestyle changes can prevent or even reverse heart disease and help prevent or reverse many other chronic diseases. But if Mastcell and Fyslee are convinced that there's nothing alternative about the piece's recommendations, their opinions would at least seem to be in accordance with the piece's title ('Alternative' Medicine Is Mainstream) and subtitle (The evidence is mounting that diet and lifestyle are the best cures for our worst afflictions).Vitaminman (talk) 08:42, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

We also need to consider WP:MEDRS when making medical claims. This article seems a fine piece for documenting the opinion of some prominent advocates. Perhaps the best place to include it would be under Alternative medicine#Appeal of alternative medicine. - Eldereft (cont.) 18:37, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok. I propose that we keep it simple and include something along the lines of the following text, to be placed under Alternative medicine#Appeal of alternative medicine, as per Eldereft's suggestion: An opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal by the well known alt-med advocates Deepak Chopra, Dean Ornish, Rustrum Roy and Andrew Weil, argues that alternative medicine is now mainstream and that "evidence is mounting that diet and lifestyle are the best cures for our worst afflictions."^[7] Vitaminman (talk) 13:48, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

It's the other way around, alt-med is adopting the advice of mainstream medicine. Verbal chat 15:11, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

No, surely, mainstream medicine believes that drugs, surgery and radiation are the best cures for our worst afflictions, yes? But, regardless, our POVs are irrelevant here. Given that it was published in a WP:RS, I agree with Eldereft that the article seems a fine piece for documenting the opinion of some prominent advocates.Vitaminman (talk) 15:35, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I wish I could say that you are joking, but I've heard this caricature of mainstream medicine far too often to believe it's hyperbole. Mainstream medicine is far more than just treatment of the most advanced stages of serious illnesses, where drugs, surgery and radiation are often the only things that will have a chance of working. Preventive medicine is a very important part, but it is the responsibility of the patient to follow their doctor's advice. Unfortunately, patients would often rather maintain their own unhealthy lifestyle in spite of their doctor's advice. Then they come running when things turn bad and alternative medical advocates scream that all mainstream medicine does is "slash, burn and poison". No, any method that is proven to help prevent illness is part of mainstream medical practice. Those that are not proven to be effective are what we call sCAM.

As far as the article goes, no one is disputing that the WSJ is a RS. It's just not a reliable source for medical facts. The opinions of the author and the quoted persons are just their opinions, opinions which are in contrast to the facts. They are self-serving attempts to twist what's really going on in alternative medicine, which is defined as methods that are unproven or disproven, and are often unscientific, antiscientific, pseudoscientific, and/or metaphysical. If they're proven, they're mainstream. Yes, they might have been "alternative" at one time, but no more. The transition does happen, but less and less so than in the past. -- Fyslee (talk) 16:13, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Hang on, Fyslee, are you seriosuly suggesting that an opinion piece by some of alt-med's most prominent adherents, published in one of the largest-circulation newspapers in the United States, is not even worthy of a one sentence mention in an encyclopedia article on the subject? Frankly, if you are, and if, say, this went to arbitration, I think you'd be on rather shaky ground - especially so given that my proposed wording, above, is hardly POV as it merely contains the WSJ article's title and subtitle. Reading your comments, above, one could actually be forgiven for thinking that you want to exclude the opinions of alt-med's proponents from the article and base it instead on those of its opponents. To me, this would be a little bit like advocating that an article on ice hockey shouldn't include statements from its players.Vitaminman (talk) 16:48, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Relax. I'm not proposing any such thing. It could be mentioned, IF it's really worthy of mention. It's more a question of WEIGHT and how to do it so as not to present their self-serving and one-sided opinion as a statement of fact. BTW, there are also other more dubious opinions in that article which you aren't mentioning.) Worded properly, the source could be included. I'm just not sure how. Please keep working on a good wording. I have never opposed the inclusion of even nonsensical material, as long as it is well-sourced, worded properly, and doesn't violate WEIGHT and FRINGE. These are promoters of fringe nonsense, but also of some mainstream sense (preventive medicine). We can document that they do agree with mainstream medicine on these points, while they are still advocating fringe concepts with little or no good evidence of effectiveness. So I am definitely not in favor of excluding the opinions of alt-med's proponents. -- Fyslee (talk) 17:13, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough, I think that this is a good wording:

An opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal by the well known alt-med advocates Deepak Chopra, Dean Ornish, Rustrum Roy and Andrew Weil, argues that alternative medicine is now mainstream and that "evidence is mounting that diet and lifestyle are the best cures for our worst afflictions."^[8]

If you disagree with it, please make an alternative proposal and let's see if we can arrive at something that we both agree on.Vitaminman (talk) 17:32, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

My objection is that it's pretty much a direct lie and ignores what alternative medicine really is. They, of all people, don't decide the definition of alternative medicine. That is the domain of mainstream medicine and science. It is they who are keeping alternative medicine at arms length when it comes to definitions. Now if those alt med advocates want to claim that some forms of alternative medicine have become incoporated into mainstream medicine, that would be a totally different matter (but that's not what they are doing). In this case their claim is not entirely true, and even if it were true, just because some of the rarely sensible things that were originally found in alternative medicine have become mainstream (and thus should no longer be categorized as "alternative"), doesn't mean that all the remaining 95% nonsensical stuff that still makes up alt med suddenly qualifies for being claimed to "be mainstream". That's an absurd attempt to change the fundamental definitions. Even their basic statement - "diet and lifestyle are the best cures for our worst afflictions" - isn't totally true. It would be more correct to state that they are the best "prevention". That is much closer to the truth, and I doubt that any supporters of mainstream medicine would disagree. Prevention is very important! Unfortunately, once "our worst afflictions" become a reality, those things, vitally important as they are, won't turn things around very often, if at all. (Of course this depends on which condition we're talking about. For example, diabetes in its early stages is often amenable to lifestyle changes.) -- Fyslee (talk) 17:54, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, but setting aside the issue that this is simply your POV, and that what we should be doing here is reporting honestly on what the alt-med advocates' opinions are, how about we remove the word "argues" and replace it with the word "claims", as follows:

An opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal by the well known alt-med advocates Deepak Chopra, Dean Ornish, Rustrum Roy and Andrew Weil, claims that alternative medicine is now mainstream and that "evidence is mounting that diet and lifestyle are the best cures for our worst afflictions."^[9]

If you have a reference to support your objection that the above is "pretty much a direct lie and ignores what alternative medicine really is", by all means add a second sentence, supported by an appropriate citation, right afterwards, so as to maintain balance.Vitaminman (talk) 18:35, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I just happened to see the word "claim" go by - please note that it is on the list of words to avoid since it tends to undercut the statement. It's better use more neutral terms likes "states", "says", "argues", etc. "Claim" is, of course, a fine word to use in relation to mineral rights. ;) Will Beback talk 18:50, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Will, I wasn't aware of that. Very helpful, and useful too. My original suggestion, using "argues", stands then.Vitaminman (talk) 19:29, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

In the absense of any alternative (pun intended!!) proposals for wordings, and given that four weeks have now passed since I proposed my suggested wording, I have added it to the Appeal of alternative medicine section, as per Eldereft's suggestion.Vitaminman (talk) 08:36, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

In those 4 weeks the problems have not been addressed. I reverted the addition. You could have asked first. Verbal chat 08:58, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I did, at 19:29 on 7 February, and nobody responded. On many other WP articles' talk pages that I have seen, this would be interpretted as a lack of opposition. Vitaminman (talk) 10:05, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

You made a statement, you did not propose the addition. Please take my revert as opposition. Verbal chat 10:08, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I really do think you are splitting hairs here. Regardless, please take my "statement" as a proposal (i.e. asking for comment). On a more positive note, I am at least heartened by the fact that we are now debating this issue again. It's just such a shame that so many people around here seem to resort to aggression whenever they encounter a difference of opinion.Vitaminman (talk) 12:39, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I think the current version more than satisfies NPOV. It seems that everyone here (save Verbal) has no problem with including this, provided that we are clear that this is an "opinion piece". Consensus is well establish, but I'll throw another log on the fire and state that - with the proper attribution already in place - I support the inclusion of this piece as well. -- Levine2112 ^discuss 17:38, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Not true. I still object to the inclusion. If it were framed properly so as not to give the false impression the original wishful thinking statement is designed to give, I might conceivably support inclusion, but the current attempt totally fails in that regard. The authors are vested interests who wish to sneak a load of nonsense (95% of alt med) under the radar by mentioning mainstream concepts that are sensible. That's pretty deceptive. -- Fyslee (talk) 03:55, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I also object to its inclusion. The WSJ is NOT a reliable source, especially since it's a leftist newspaper (save for its opinion page, which has never made sense to me). That being said, CAM is not mainstream except from a pure business sense, in that they make more money off of people than the pharmaceutical industry will. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 05:09, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, Orangemarlin, but the WSJ easily meets the bar for WP:RS. And whether you perceive it as "leftist" or "rightist" is totally besides the point.Vitaminman (talk) 10:40, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

A reliable secondary source at best surely? Fyslee is right - the newspaper article clearly and disingenuously overstates the case for AM by bracketing successful mainstream "lifestyle" approaches in with AM. The authors of the article clearly have a stake in presenting AM in this way and would struggle to be so brazen in a primary source such as a scientific paper. Beyond providing a promotional plug for the obvious views of AM practioners, I'm not sure what this, to be fair, heavily-caveated paragraph adds to the article. Basically, its point (insofar as we quote it) is "evidence is mounting that diet and lifestyle are the best cures for our worst afflictions". Is this news? Does it have anything to do with AM? --PLUMBAGO 11:24, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

P.S. The WSJ "leftist"? <thick euro-accent>"Only in America!"</thick euro-accent>. Nice one OrangeMarlin! ;-)

Universities drop “pseudo-science” degrees "in subjects that are not science"

Universities drop degree courses in alternative medicine

"Universities are increasingly turning their backs on homoeopathy and complementary medicine amid opposition from the scientific community to “pseudo-science” degrees.

The University of Salford has stopped offering undergraduate degrees in the subjects, and the University of Westminster announced yesterday that it plans to strengthen the “science base” content of its courses after an internal review which examined their scientific credibility.

Both universities are following the lead of the University of Central Lancashire, which last year stopped recruiting new students to its undergraduate degree in homoeopathic medicine.

The decisions by Salford and Westminster open a new chapter in the fierce debate about the place of awarding of Bachelor of Science degrees in subjects that are not science."^[10]

-- Fyslee (talk) 01:39, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Would be nice to see them replace those with degrees in botanical pharmacotherapy. II | (t - c) 17:47, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Where is the integrative medicine when the topic was there 5 min ago?

I'm not happy with the bully action people made —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.228.190.54 (talk) 04:51, 24 December 2008 (UTC) and I suppose the person who mopped it up must have eaten lots of beef ^__^

That redirect has been in place for a long time. A redirect should never be undone without achieving a very clear consensus at the "new" article's talk page, IOW right here. The decision to make that a redirect was achieved by such a process, so your edits there (which weren't significant anyway) were in vain. The one who undid the redirect was in error. Too bad you didn't notice. The subject is now covered in this article. -- Fyslee (talk) 07:41, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

---
Well, this is another Intelligent design of stealling, isn't??--222.64.29.57 (talk) 01:38, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

---
Recently, these people have changed their abusive/bully strategies to the action of keep reverting my additions to the articles in which I have been interested in.--222.64.29.57 (talk) 01:49, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

---
Could anyone please let me know how to tract the topic of integrative medicine that has been edited by the wiki writers??? The audit trails of this topic is listed here, but where is the one for integrative medicine--58.38.43.252 (talk) 04:37, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Criticism section

It seems very strange to me that, for such a controversial topic, there is no Criticism section (other than external links). The article does contain criticism, but it's mixed up with other stuff under somewhat vague headings such as 'Appeal of alternative medicine'. It would be much clearer if there were a single Criticism section, perhaps with subheads. 93.96.236.8 (talk) 13:30, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Criticism sections: "While sometimes appropriate, this structure is not optimal, as relegating all criticisms to one section usually results in an unbalanced presentation. When present, such sections should be considered a temporary solution until the article is restructured to integrate criticism into each relevant section. It may then be desirable to have a "General criticisms" section near the end of the article, for those points which did not neatly fit anywhere else." Verbal chat 14:26, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

That would be nonsense. Its perfectly reasonable to handle concepts in the context of a separate criticism section, even if other sections refer to such criticism. In fact I think such readings of that policy (which most certainly needs looking at) are typically too self-serving to accept without discussion. Its been proven time and time again that fringe concepts such as these attract adherents who are less interested in NPOV as they are promoting their own adherence. ~~You~~ They are quite quick to remove any criticism, and if they can claim that policy is on their side, well then they've won. Update: Note the policy has been rewritten for clarity, and more to the point, it features the Jimbo quote in the lede, which is neutral on the concept. Note also that the *essay explicitly considers the usage of controversy/criticism sections as a part of article development. Which reminds me, I should deal with the adherents at Falun Gong again. -Ste vertigo 07:05, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

There are case both for and against. If a criticism is a response to or a refutation of a claim made in the article, then it should follow that claim directly, so that the full picture is presented. If it is more nebulous or not specific to a claim in the article, or a general criticism, then a criticism section may be justified. Verbal chat 10:11, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

TGA's Guideline on Submission of Marketing Authorisation Applications (SMAA)....????

I can only find the SMAA of Influenza Vaccines to EMEA. Where is the one for herbal medicines located at TGA website???

This again has shown the defects of, google or SEO staff of TGA

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&newwindow=1&q=Guideline+on+Submission+of+Marketing+Authorisation+Applications+site%3Awww.tga.gov.au&btnG=Search
--58.38.43.252 (talk) 06:41, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Please respect the talk page guidelines by reserving this space for discussion of improvements to this article. Wikipedia:Reference desk may be able to help you, as well as various fora elsewhere on the internet or a little study in the semiotics of search engines. - 2/0 (cont.) 18:07, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Auto-archiving

This page is bloating up past three dozen K again - would anybody mind if I set up Miszabot to remove stale threads on a regular basis? As a side note, listing the archive pages is taken care of in the new {{talkpageheader}} - is anybody particularly attached to that little orange box? - 2/0 (cont.) 18:21, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Done. Threads older than 21 days will be sent to the archive, with a minimum of five threads left active on the page and two threads required for activation. Any of these may be changed or the archive bot turned off as desired. - 2/0 (cont.) 17:37, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

A standardized definition of alternative medicine is needed....

If this is not fixed up, it might be a big mess.

The meaning of the words at the beginning of the article excludes the conventional medicines as non alternative. I will then ask what the standardized definition of alternative medicine is.--222.64.18.232 (talk) 04:04, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

It is non-conventional. The two kinds of medicine are "conventional" and "alternative" with no overlap, since "alternative" is defined as "not-conventional." S B H arris 05:46, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Please do not auto direct conventional medicine to the article of medicine.....

Because according to the words of the medicine article, the disciplines of the alternative medicine should be included. Therefore, the presence of this article is meaningless, and both the article should be combined--222.64.18.232 (talk) 05:15, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

When somebody says "medicine" with no modifier, they are usually referring to conventional medicine. If they mean alternative medicine, they say it. Similarly, if you type in skiing you will be directed to the article on snow skiing, even though water skiing is a kind of skiing also. This is not a contradiction, but merely the way the English language is often used. Very often a generic word used without a modifier refers to only the most common subset of the word, and not the whole class (even though technically it should refer to the whole class of activities, like skiing does). Welcome to Wikipedia. I notice that you're editing from China, so please trust us about the use of English. S B H arris 05:45, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, in this case WHO should also provide the definition for the conventional medicine to clearly distiquish the other medicine, shouldn't it?

Perhaps for the SEO problem, I cann't find it in the following

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&newwindow=1&q=medicine+definition+site%3Awww.who.int&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

--222.64.31.57 (talk) 07:21, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

While the WHO is undoubtedly a RS for their opinion, and one we would often use, it doesn't trump the use of other sources here. The LEAD of any article here is a summary of the key points of the article, and thus it must duplicate article content, without introducing anything not contained in the body of the article. It is common to include a definition in the lead, but that definition is often one based on several sources used in the article, not just one source. That doesn't make it wrong to quote one definition, IF it reflects article content, but if it is one-sided when compared to article content, which may well cover the subject better than the one source for the definition, we might not prefer to cite it, or at least not cite it alone. Some articles actually have a section where various definitions are discussed, and a summary of all of them is then used in the lead. -- Brangifer (talk) 15:08, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Combining this article with Traditional medicine....???

as the term of Traditional medicine is approved by WHO--222.64.31.57 (talk) 07:12, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

They aren't exactly the same thing. Alternative medicince can share some methods also described as traditional medicine, but includes many methods that are not traditional medicine. For example, many alternative medicine methods have formerly been mainstream methods, but have been rejected in light of increased knowledge (for example homeopathy), but are still retained by alternative medicine practitioners. These are not just "unproven" methods, but "disproven" methods that aren't from a particular ethnic or cultural tradition. Alternative medicine is defined by its relationship to mainstream medicine rather than cultural background, IOW all forms of medical practice and healing methods not currently proven by the scientific method and accepted by mainstream consensus. That's one part of the definition. There are other aspects. However one wishes to describe them, alternative medicine is not synonymous with traditional medicine, which is defined by its relationship to traditions in a certain culture, and thus can vary depending on (most often) geographical location.-- Brangifer (talk) 07:32, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Homeopathy was never mainstream. Much of alt med is new age, and thus obviously not traditional. I would include homeopathy as a new age therapy. Introduced in the 1800s -- that's not traditional. II | (t - c) 10:00, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Good point about homeopathy. Although enjoying much success in its early days, it has never been totally accepted by mainstream medicine. For many years it was a serious contender and there were many homeopathic medical schools before Flexner undercut them by insisting on higher quality medical education based on evidence. It just came to my mind as a quick illustration for a method that has been rejected in light of increased knowledge. Yes, a number of alt med methods are related to New Age thinking, some to Oriental religious thinking, yet others to Traditional medicine, others are rejected older mainstream methods, and a number are just outright fraud right from the get go. Homeopathy precedes (originated in the late 1700s - early 1800s) what we now refer to as New Age, which is a relatively modern movement. Some of the ideas found in New Age travellers and hippie thinking are conducive to a belief in homeopathy. -- Brangifer (talk) 14:40, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

A bit more. To help understand some historical connections I suggest reading Marilyn Ferguson's (read that article here) classic "The Aquarian Conspiracy".[http://www.amazon.com/Aquarian-Conspiracy-Marilyn-Ferguson/dp/0874774586] [14] There she outlined the plan for what we are now seeing actually happening. Alternative medicine as a modern movement is a direct part of this plan, the plan for getting everyone to accept New Age thinking. It is an unusual conspiracy, since it isn't a secret, but a publicized plan that is openly being carried out. Therefore the New Age/Alternative Medicine alliance is no accident, but part of a plan and therefore the use of the Yin-Yang symbol by many alt med/New Age therapists isn't an accident either. The book is fascinating. It is no novel, but a highly applauded and recognized blue print. The choice of the Yin-Yang symbol is in direct opposition to the use of the Rod of Asclepius, which to New Agers and alternative medicine is the symbol of the devil himself, i.e big pharma, drugs, mainstream medicine, etc.. I once (when I was an alternative medicine user and practitioner) read a religious book that outlined how "fallen" Christianity was infiltrated by ungodly elements and gradually incorporated heathen practices and thus modern medicine signalized its heathenness by using a pagan symbol, the Rod of Asclepius. (Don't blame me for that. I just read it....;-) -- Brangifer (talk) 14:48, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

$2.5 billion spent, no alternative cures found

This news (which isn't news to skeptics) is very significant and is published by a very reliable news source:

$2.5 billion spent, no alternative cures found. Big, government-funded studies show most work no better than placebos

BETHESDA, Md. - Ten years ago the government set out to test herbal and other alternative health remedies to find the ones that work. After spending $2.5 billion, the disappointing answer seems to be that almost none of them do.^[11]

These paragraphs say it all:

"There's been a deliberate policy of never saying something doesn't work. It's as though you can only speak in one direction," and say a different version or dose might give different results, said Dr. Stephen Barrett, a retired physician who runs Quackwatch, a web site on medical scams.

Critics also say the federal center's research agenda is shaped by an advisory board loaded with alternative medicine practitioners. They account for at least nine of the board's 18 members, as required by its government charter. Many studies they approve for funding are done by alternative therapy providers; grants have gone to board members, too.

"It's the fox guarding the chicken coop," said Dr. Joseph Jacobs, who headed the Office of Alternative Medicine, a smaller federal agency that preceded the center's creation. "This is not science, it's ideology on the part of the advocates."^[11]

Now how and where should this be included? -- Brangifer (talk) 05:30, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

In passing, if/when this material is added to the article, it should be the study that is cited primarily, not the news coverage of it. The news coverage will be useful too, especially since it will likely cover important things like reactions to the study, but the study is the real deal. I mention this because the text above implies that MSNBC is "the source", when it's really reporting on "the source". Cheers, --PLUMBAGO 07:14, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Quite right. Both the original source and the news reports should be used, since using the reactions to the report are what prevents this from being OR. The reaction of Dr. Joseph Jacobs is rather interesting, since he was one of those responsible for creating the atmosphere in which the situation could exist in the first place, but he seems to have realized that it ended up being something different, and that the critics had been right all along. Barrett has been writing about this abuse for years, once again demonstrating him as a RS for commentary on such matters. -- Brangifer (talk) 13:53, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Just because "government spends X and no alternative cures found," doesn't mean there are no alternative cures, it just means that "government spent X and no alternative cures found," ergo, this news article really belongs in "inefficient government programs" or something similar, not in "alternative medicine."71.201.83.52 (talk) 07:59, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

That's not actually what the source says, though. The source says that these claims have been made in various alternative medical outlets for decades. When they were actually systematically tested, none have turned out to be valid. In the US, most systematic medical research is funded by the government, but the source clearly concerns the lack of demonstrable efficacy of the tested remedies. MastCell ^Talk 23:40, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

U.S. military uses alternative medicine

Should be added to the article[15] MaxPont (talk) 13:00, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Great idea, Max. Here's a perhaps slightly stronger source discussing the use of alternative medical devices by the military. It's an interesting commentary on the level of diligence that goes into evaluating such therapies, and the amount of weight that such use should carry. Are you still interested? MastCell ^Talk 18:24, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't see any evidence in the article that the InterX 5000 is "alternative medicine". The article says that it is used by sport trainers (presumably "phyiscal therapists") and that the manufacturer "sells it to patients by prescription or to licensed medical professionals." Overall, I think MastCell's source is a weak reference for this particular article. -- Levine2112 ^discuss 20:07, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Energy medicine is generally understood to be a subset of alternative medicine, by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine ([16]) among others. As far as I know, any serious overview of energy medicine would categorize it as a form of "alternative medicine". MastCell ^Talk 20:26, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

And yet the article provided makes no mention of it. Odd. In fact, it seems to discuss the widespread mainstream use of this unproven device. So it's not really appropriate for this article. In general, these one-off type specific cases aren't really suited for such a broad topic article. Whereas MaxPont's source - albeit not definitively RS - deals more with the broad topic of alternative medicine. -- Levine2112 ^discuss 20:49, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

So because the article doesn't use the literal words "alternative medicine", when describing a technique universally considered to be "alternative medicine", you consider it irrelevant here? If an article discussed acupuncture without specifically identifying it with the words "alternative medicine", would that invalidate it as a source for this article? We cite NCCAM's definition of alternative medicine prominently in our article - going so far as to explicitly identify "energy medicine" as a form of alternative medicine - so why would we disregard that obvious, commonsense point here in favor of intensely legalistic parsing? MastCell ^Talk 20:56, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

You're missing the point entirely here. The source in question discusses the mainstream use of a specific device. These kinds of one-off stories about one specific device of one specific technique of one specific discipline of alternative medicine is much too - well - "specific" for this very broad article. To be honest with you, it may be even too specific for the Energy medicine article. Maybe try it at Electrotherapy - where it seems that you are a regular talk page contributor. -- Levine2112 ^discuss 22:10, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not convinced it belongs anywhere; for that matter, I don't think the source produced by MaxPont is particularly noteworthy or appropriate. I do think that if the use of alternative medical therapies by the US military is covered in this article, then we should strive for a balanced perspective. That's all. I'm happy to leave this for now, unless anyone else has an opinion they'd like to share. MastCell ^Talk 23:39, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I think you should have made this motive clearer in the beginning of this thread then. As it stands, it seems like you were lodging a soft threat as if to say "Hey Max, if you're going to try an include a source which says something good about the topic, then I'm going to be forced to include one that says something bad about it. Are you still interested in adding your 'good' source?" At least, that's how it now seems to me given your explanation here. Remember, a "bablanced perspective" does not necessarily mean a tit for a tat. After all, we're striving for neutral coverage of what can be verified by reliable sources. -- Levine2112 ^discuss 00:05, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Integrative Medicine not the same as Alternative Medicine

Unless I see a consensus to the contrary I plan to create a separate page for Integrative Medicine. I believe it is a mistake to redirect Integrative Medicine to Alternative Medicine. The two practices of medicine are distinctly different. It is my understanding that Alternative Medicine can be practiced by anyone whether or not they are licensed to practice medicine and can consist be almost any wild or weird alternative way to treat someone. Whereas Integrative Medicine is practiced by licensed physicians (MD and DO) or licensed nurse practitioners, and physician assistants who are working under the supervision of licensed physicians. Here is a link to an integrative medicine fellowship at the University of Arizona run by Andrew Weil, MD. Notice the section on Eligibility: "The Fellowship admits physicians (MD and DO), nurse practitioners, and physician assistants. http://integrativemedicine.arizona.edu/education/fellowship/tuition.html Citizen-of-wiki (talk) 15:29, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

It used to exist, but was merged into this article. Currently it is mentioned in at least two places in this article, the first one is here. The statements by Weil are definitely controversial, but have so far remained in the article, even though they are considered deceptive marketing by many skeptics. Two aspects to this subject are (1) how methods are used (in conjunction with conventional medicines) and (2) who is administering it. It appears you are concerned with the second aspect. Please propose your suggested improvements here on the talk page and let's hammer out a consensus version that will be acceptable. Improvements (that are consensus versions) are always welcome. If you have several V & RS to back up your position, please provide them. -- Brangifer (talk) 20:55, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I must say that I don't see anything controversial about Dr. Weil's statement's in this article. Perhaps you could help me understand how these statements are controversial. I really don't follow your comments about deceptive marketing. Maybe I am missing something. I agree that an important focus on Integrative Medicine is that it is being performed either by a licensed physician or by licensed nurse practitioner or physician assistant working under the supervision of a licensed physician. My proposed improvement is to create an different article on Integrative Medicine. Grouping Integrative Medicine with Alternative Medicine, in my opinion, is like saying apples are the same fruit as oranges. And when people go to a Wikipedia page on apples they are redirected to page on oranges. See my arguments above for why Alternative Medicine is different from Integrative Medicine. I don't believe there is enough room on this talk page for an Article on Integrative Medicine. I suggest that the prior merged integrative medicine article be copied to my user space or your user space. We can work on developing a consensus on the article while it is in user space. When it is ready we can move the Integration Medicine article to the main Wikipedia. How does this sound to you? Citizen-of-wiki (talk) 19:18, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

The last legitimate version before the merge (which was discussed in the archives of this article) was a three-sentence stub located here. My comment about "deceptive marketing" is regarding the undisputed statement (IOW, he does say it) by Weil about "for which there is some high-quality scientific evidence of their safety and effectiveness." The truth of that statement is disputed by scientific skeptics, who find it to be rather dubious.^[11] I'm just pointing out that there is a difference of opinion on that point, but the statement has been allowed to be included without much debate. Without it there wouldn't be much to say about the subject. Scientific skeptics contend that if there really was such evidence (that is disputed), then it would be called "medicine", not "integrative". I'm referring to the old joke: "What do you call alternative medicine that works? Medicine!" [17] [18]. This all gets back to the definitional issues discussed in the whole Definitions and categorizations section. In the end, the difference doesn't justify a whole article. Even the previous article was just a three-sentence stub.

Your concern is an angle that could be developed by adding a sentence and some refs to back it up. I don't see any reason why that might not work, and it would be an improvement in the coverage of that matter. That's why I encourage you to give a proposal a try here on the talk page. It might very well fly and get support from most editors.

You may wish to consider if there is any significant difference between what you are proposing and the definition of "complementary medicine", which is also merged into this article. If so, go for it. Note that they all (alt med, complem. med, integr med) use exactly the same methods, but it is the setting that makes the definitional difference. In practice, even "integrative" medicine uses exactly the same unproven and disproven methods, but it's often a licensed physician who's prescribing it (which is why Quackwatch mostly subjects licensed professionals to criticism). That's where actual practice and Weil's definition conflict with each other. (That's where I'm hoping your proposal can sort this out.) When Weil's best proposals (what methods he considers have "some high-quality" evidence) are examined, skeptics consider the word "some" to truly be a very little "some"thing-or-other, and "high-quality" to be "low-quality", IOW Weil's interpretation of standards of quality is suspect and varies considerably from the authorities quoted as sources in the "Definitions and categorizations" section. It appears to be an attempt to fly "under the radar", sneaking unproven and disproven methods into mainstream medicine. (It's a huge industry that needs more customers.) There has been some success in this endeavor, but it is backfiring and universities are now dropping their programs in alternative/integrative medicine. (See User:BullRangifer/Alternative_medicine_critics.) The difference of opinion exists in the real world and can be sourced to V & RS, so that is being done in this article. All sides of the subject must be covered per NPOV, and we try to do it here. I hope you can flesh out this particular point about "who does it". Good luck. -- Brangifer (talk) 20:29, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

BullRangifer, you act as if Weil is the only one to use the term "complementary medicine". There are some quite reputable medical universities that have complementary medicine as a branch of their setup, with papers published in the standard medical journals. Duke Integrative Medicine is one, being a part of Duke University and Duke Medicine. Here is a page with papers published by their staff [19]. The for Integrative Medicine at George Washington Medical Center is another. stmrlbs|talk 20:46, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

I suspect you meant "complementary", when I was only referring to "integrative". I believe Weil was one of the originators of the term, hence my reference to him. I'm well aware of the use of the term in various ways, including academic circles. This link to the modalities used at GWMC is interesting. It's a mixture of modalities, ranging from those that sometimes include pseudoscience, to some that are purely pseudoscientific/metaphysical. Note that even the worst may provide some benefits in the form of relaxation. Since relaxation can be achieved without resorting to woo woo, and since "It's a very dangerous thing to believe in nonsense," (James Randi), scientific skeptics retain their skepticism and attempt to debunk such practices for the protection of vulnerable individuals who are suffering and easy marks for those who would rob them of their last hope in their utmost time of need. -- Brangifer (talk) 22:22, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

BullRangifer, thanks for your detailed response. When I get a chance I will work on a version of an Integrative Medicine article in my user space. When it is developed enough I will post some or all of the article on this talk page to get feedback. It sounds like you and I disagree agree about whether or not Integrative Medicine should have a separate article. As Stmrlbs points out above, there are many physicians and medical schools that are including/expanding integrative medicine. It seems to me that this trend is growing. We can wait and see how the Integrative Medicine article comes together in my user space. Let me know if you have any other guidance, references, suggestions, etc. Citizen-of-wiki (talk) 21:06, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Whether we agree or disagree is really immaterial. If you have a notable idea that can be sourced properly, then by all means work on it and you'll get my support and comments. I suspect you can contribute to improve coverage of this subject, and that would be great. If you were to examine my history here, you will discover that I edit and protect many articles about subjects which I consider dubious and even totally nonsensical. As an editor here, my personal POV is irrelevant to whether an article should be here. If it qualifies to be here, then I work to keep it in line with our policies, including to the point of protecting the inclusion of patent nonsense, as long as it's sourced properly. Your proposal doesn't even come close to nonsense, and I think it should be developed better. Good luck. -- Brangifer (talk) 22:22, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Please do not create separate articles for each of the several terms used to refer to the same set of practices and ideas (with minor quibbles). There is only one movement, albeit loosely connected. - 2/0 (cont.) 22:46, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Integrative Medicine and what's controversial about Andrew Weil, M.D.

As an old hand in a “medical care game” who has seen it both from the side of being a patient and doctor, perhaps I can explain what’s controversial about Weil’s statement and his attitude. Briefly, it is this: if you define “integrative medicine” in the way he wants to, it ends up “integrating” all honorable professions and caring activities, something like The Blob or The Borg. Pretty much anything which makes the patient better or feel better, in this view, now becomes “health care.” And anybody who provides such a good or service, becomes a “health care provider.” Never mind tradition. If a toenail trim or flowers or a sympathetic ear make for better health (which they do), then the pedicurist, florist, aromatherapist, astrologer, spiritual adviser and shaman all become health care provider/workers, too. The borders now go far past the podiatrist, physiatrist, and psychologist. Health care providers now include the guy who sets up your computer and net connection if THAT improves your mental health. And your car mechanic to get you a functional automobile, if THAT impacts your health (which it does).

So Weil’s message, while long-recognized and perfectly true (Voltaire reminds us that much of medicine is entertaining the patient while nature cures the disease), at the same time it isn’t very USEFUL. We know that all honorable professions and relationships are necessary for health. None of this helps us decide what a physician or coordinating “Health Care Provider” should do in pursuit of “healing.” Ricardo’s law of economic comparative advantage suggests that it’s not such a great idea to train an M.D. for 10 years in arcane fields of biochem, anatomy, and pathophysiology, and then have him or her spend much time wearing a rubber clown nose and floppy shoes. People go to clown school for that, and they’re funnier. If a clown is needed for mental health, there are a lot of clowns out of work (so sad!). Hire one, if you have the dough. Similarly, leave social work to social workers, and so on. Calling all this stuff “health care” encourages an ultimately pernicious view that any practice which prevents or ameliorates disease should be coordinated and by a doctor with a thumb in the pie, and either provided free, or else paid for by donors or by the government (see taxpayer). Needless to say, neither “Patch” Adams nor Weil actually make a living doing “integrative medicine.” Weil lives on grants and telling OTHERS how they should be doing it. There aren’t too many economic niches like the one he occupies, though, and it’s a pyramid game, if not. Dr. Weil has a degree from Harvard and is fun (I’ve read all his books). I just wish he practiced medicine. :( S B H arris 21:53, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

He also makes a living by selling dietary supplements, and if you take his online Vitamin Advisor, you will no doubt get sold some product, no matter whether you need it or not.....;-) Dr. Relman has written an interesting article about him: "A Trip to Stonesville: Some Notes on Andrew Weil (1998), by Arnold S. Relman, M.D.. It is currently housed at Quackwatch: "This article was published in the December 14, 1998, issue of The New Republic and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the author. At the time it was published, Dr. Relman was editor-in-chief emeritus of The New England Journal of Medicine and professor emeritus of medicine and social medicine at Harvard Medical School." -- Brangifer (talk) 22:50, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

The Title: Alternative Medicine

People in the field of Complementary Therapies do not normally use the term Alternative Medicine. People from mainstream medicine or Allopathic medicine use the term. It makes it seem as if you have to choose either one or the other, which is an incorrect assumption. It is seldom that a person goes to see someone from a Complementary Therapy without it also seeing their MD.

Additionally, the term Alternative Medicine has developed unpleasant connotations due to the fact that any unfriendly article written about Complementary Therapies uses the term Alternative Medicine. This is pronounced enough that if you see the term Alternative Medicine in the title it is almost always critical towards it. Feel free to keep this in mind and discover the truth of this. I would suggest ditching the less friendly term, re-title it Complementary Medicine and redirect any searches for Alternative Medicine to the better title.

24.36.87.239 (talk) 04:30, 16 October 2009 (UTC)Nacken24.36.87.239 (talk) 04:30, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I think "Complementary Medicine" is a wonderful name. It brings up visions of hospitals where there is turn-down service, a Kron chocolate on your pillow, and in the bathroom, actual quality hotel toilet-paper folding so you can guess that if you get multiply drug resistant Staph, it won't be from there. Comp'ed! Don't you feel better, already? Check-out is any time you like, and as a courtesy, we don't let you see your list of room charges till you're long gone. Or else you might have a relapse. S B H arris 04:52, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

(Good one SBH!) Since AM always refers to the basic methods used, no matter if one is referring to AM, CM, or IM, this article title has been chosen because it refers to the root term, a term invented by alternative therapists and used by them, and the most commonly used term. Look at practically every directory and list on alternative medicine websites. They use the term, and it is still the most commonly used term. The other terms (CM and IM) only refer to the setting in which the exact same methods are being used, IOW with or without the cooperation of an MD or other medical professional. That is dealt with in a few sentences, because there simply isn't that much more to say about it. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:04, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Blood electrification

Blood electrification is term coined as a method of inducing a small current of around 26 volts in micro-ampere strength to the blood by way of a electronic device by what is generally known as alternative medicine. It is not a officially scientifically studied medical process, and is therefore not considered medical science. The method though has been spread through the alternative media, the internet and alternative gatherings in the US.

The above is the content I have written to a wiki article on the subject.

Wikipedia has removed this article several times, mostly it seems through not bothering to protect the serious edits of the article and later giving the reason that it is not serious. please vote if this should be kept or not, as many are using blood electrification devices with relatively great success. Nunamiut (talk) 00:15, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Your ~~admission~~ statement that "It is not a officially scientifically studied medical process, and is therefore not considered medical science" obviously begs the question "How do you know that it has "relatively great success"?" Without such studies one cannot know for certain. One only has anecdotes, and they aren't reliable.

On another note, noting your username I looked up the Nunamiut article and figure you might be interested in this article I wrote (Reindeer hunting in Greenland) and why I have the username I have chosen (a bull rangifer tarandus = a bull caribou/reindeer). The best tasting red meat on earth ;-) -- Brangifer (talk) 02:48, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not "admitting" anything , I am stating it openly. It's my statement, not yours. And I'm not interested in promoting or documenting blood electrifications effectiveness. I'm only interested in informing the public about what it is. Electro shock therapy to the head has been going on for almost a century too with no definitive conclusions, should we delete all references to that as well? But As most of us know by now, anything and everything that isn't patented or commercially sold by the pharmaceutical industry will only receive detrimental comments and be called anecdotal everywhere no matter how many success cases you have, basically because it is forbidden by law with penalty of jail and loosing your license as a doctor for life to say that you have cured anyone with anything that is not regulated as a drug. So basically we can never document or tell you anything about such cases, nor give you links to documented cases. However if wiki admins bothered to do any research except googling (as if google was the end all be all of all knowledge on the planet) and reading more than the first page of google result, they would encounter a huge audience that in a few years will put some wiki admins to great shame. It's a pity but there you go. Go figure.Nunamiut (talk) 05:08, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I have changed my wording to make sure no one misunderstands the figure of speech which you haven't understood. If you really want to write an article about it, then it needs to be done properly by using proper Wikipedia formatting, style, and policies. You can make a start by doing it in your own userspace here: User:Nunamiut/Blood electrification. Place these {{NOINDEX|visible = yes}} {{User sandbox}} at the top of the page to avoid problems. When you start, contact me on my talk page and I'll try to give you some help and advice. BTW, your statement about what will happen to a physician, starting with these words - "it is forbidden by law..." - isn't true. Only if someone gets hurt badly AND complains might something happen, and even then not nearly as bad as you write. It's pretty rare for physicians to be punished so severely. Maybe a fine and temporary loss of license for a year or so. They get put on probation. If the injury is severe, the patient has a good lawyer, and there is proof of criminal intent, then the punishment might be more severe. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:43, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Website survey

I found the following content that was hidden in the text and needs to find a proper "home" in the article:

A survey of websites providing information about breast cancer found that about one in twenty such sites contained inaccurate information, and that CAM websites were 15 times more likely to contain inaccuracies.^[12]^[13]

-- Brangifer (talk) 13:52, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

"Variouis bodies of evidence" & Other Issues

from the first paragraph: "Alternative medicine is often based on the belief that a particular health regimen has efficacious effects even while there exists various bodies of evidence to contradict such a belief under the rigorous standards of evidence based medicine."

It is unlikely that there exist large or substantial bodies of evidence to CONTRADICT such beliefs. There may be no published evidence to SUPPORT such beliefs, but generally there is little in the way of evidence to "contradict" or disprove.

Also: "the rigorous standards of evidence based medicine" is a boast, which implies that those standards are superior to one's own personal experience with any health or medical practice. In truth, those rigorous standards ARE superior, but not for individuals and their personal practices. They are superior for representing what happens on average across a population; on that score they win, hands down. But they are of limited use in predicting what will happen with a given individual, and they are of even more limited use in composing a personal plan of health care. Unless this distinction is made clear, then the passage as it stands in the opening paragraph is misleading.

Further, in the section "Relation to Evidence-Based Medicine", we find this: "The IOM found that in a study of 160 Cochrane systematic reviews of mainstream techniques, 20% were ineffective and 21% had insufficient evidence.[16]"

Reference #16 is to this book: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11182#toc Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States [authored by the NAS' Institute of Medicine]

I'm trying to find a correspondence between the assertion above, from the article, and what I am reading in that book.

For example, here's a snippet from pages 135-6, describing the Cochrane and other reviews:

http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11182&page=135 "The largest number of treatments described in the reviews were classified as insufficient evidence of an effect (n = 82; 56.6 percent), followed by positive effect (n = 36; 24.8 percent) and possibly positive effect (n = 18; 12.4 percent). Only one review described a treatment that was classified as harmful (Caraballoso et al., 2003) (see Table 5-2). The reviews describing treatments classified as having positive effects are listed in Table 5-3. Although this exercise suggests that there is strong evidence for the effectiveness of some CAM therapies, much more research is required, as demonstrated by the large proportion of reviews of treatments classified as insufficient evidence of an effect. The fact that only one of the treatments in the Cochrane reviews fell into the harmful effect category suggests that clinical trials of CAM therapies have posed little risk to the participants. Some interesting findings emerge when the results of the evaluation of Cochrane reviews of CAM therapies are compared with the results of the earlier study (Ezzo et al., 2001) evaluating Cochrane reviews of conventional therapies: insufficient evidence of an effect was determined for a larger proportion of CAM therapies (56.6 percent for CAM versus 21.3 percent for conventional medicine), CAM therapies were less likely to be classified as harmful (8.1 percent for conventional medicine versus 0.69 percent for CAM) or as having no effect (20.0 percent for conventional medicine versus 4.8 percent for CAM), and classification of the therapies as having positive or a possibly positive effect was approximately equal for CAM and conventional medicine therapies (41.3 percent for conventional medicine versus 38.4 percent for CAM)." END OF QUOTE

Perhaps the article could reflect in more detail, and more accurately, what the Institute of Medicine said. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alan2012 (talk • contribs) 15:28, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

$2.5 billion spent, no alternative cures found

(This subsection is from the archives and is copied here as it deals with the claims of efficacy made above.) - Brangifer (talk) 06:42, 31 October 2009 (UTC)