User talk:A1candidate: Difference between revisions

Hey, just saw that you're back editing and wanted to let you know I added some of the things from your list of outstanding issues onto the page. They were removed by a couple of edit warriors without any real discussion, and I just now added them back in. As I said earlier, I would love to help you in your efforts to place this material into the article. You've worked hard on that and I don't think it's right for it to not be included. A little at a time, I think, and the best stuff should stick. LesVegas (talk) 00:32, 26 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for helping out, it is greatly appreciated. -A1candidate (talk) 06:47, 26 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Gangnam Style
Thank you, resident of the Earth, for quality articles such as Das Reizleitungssystem des Säugetierherzens and Germany–South Korea relations, for detailed edit summaries, for requesting recent sources, for insight such as "It's like saying 'You're allowed to stab each other 3 times but not more than that'" and oppose, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:33, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Happy New Year!

A1candidate,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. LesVegas (talk) 22:45, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year 2015}} to user talk pages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Acupuncture

Just to save you making the same mistake again, Ullman was stated to be "not credible" by a judge, who rejected his testimony in its entirety.

The "dysfuunction" blog post has previously been discussed. The errors were pointed out then. It's rare to find any propaganda for homeopathy that is not trailed on the talk page almost immediately, so it's always worth checking the archives. A more complete rebuttal can be found here, if you are interested. Guy (Help!) 12:21, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I base my assessment of Ullman on the quality of his arguments, not on his reputation. See Wikipedia:Assume good faith. If he makes strong arguments, a witch-hunt against homeopaths by fighters of pseudoscience isn't going to change my opinion. The way to persuade me is to try this out: Show me how his arguments in this specific post are flawed. Thanks. -A1candidate (talk) 14:15, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I also base my assessment on the quality of his arguments. Every single argument he advanced int hat rant, was provably false, mendacious, long-since reuted, distorted or in some other way unworthy. I am extremely familiar wiht the literature on hoemopathy. So is Ullman, which gives him even less excuse for querstionable tactics such as citing a 1997 review whose lead author has told him, to his face, in front of witnesses, that he should instead quote the 1999 re-analysis of the results. You may not like my opinions on SCAM, but in this instance opinion does not enter into it: I am objectively correct, Ullman is objectively wrong. And he knows it. And he keeps proselytising anyway. Which is why a Judge called hium "not credible".

I have no problem dealing with civil advocates of non-mainstream POV, I do have a problem with people whose judgment of evidence is incorrect, and who do nto change that judgment in the face of compelling evidence they are wrong. Read my blog post, I cite my sources and I also reference in many cases long-standing refutations and rebuttals of which Ullman was fully aware. He was banned for good reasons. Don't go down tha same path, please. Guy (Help!) 23:28, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm reading your posts and thinking about the entire issue. It's a complicated one. -A1candidate (talk) 01:43, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What you are writing is totally false- Ullman refers to BOTH reviews. 1999 and 1997. How can you write such things? And you consider yourself credible Guy ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by MarioMarco2009 (talk • contribs) 19:19, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The point is that the 1999 re-analysis replaces the 1997 paper, but Ullman cites the result of the first and only nods to the second without acknowledging its full importance to the validity of the first. And while he alludes to the second paper, only the first is actually cited. He leads his reader direct to the conclusion he likes, with full citation and a link, but does not provide the necessary information for them to check his assertions on the rleevance of the later paper. He references Linde's critique of Shang, but not Shang's reply, which showed the critique to be wrong in important respects and stands as the last word in that debate in press. I could go on, but I have already line-by-lined Ullman's diatribe and A1candidate has read that and understands the problem. Ullman is a propagandist, his views are not reliable, and we're done with that. Guy (Help!) 11:21, 10 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

MarioMarco2009:

UpToDate is a reliable clinical encyclopedia that I use and trust.

This is how Wikipedia's homeopathy article fared when I compared it to UpToDate's article:

Fact Check: Wikipedia vs UpToDate

Issue of controversy Wikipedia (Homeopathy) UpToDate (http://www.uptodate.com/contents/homeopathy) Result of Fact Check Scientific status of Homeopathy Homeopathy is considered a pseudoscience Homeopathy is a pre-scientific practice N Failed: According to UpToDate, homeopathy was developed at a time when medicine was pre-scientific and frequently harmful. However, with the development of scientific medicine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, homeopathy became a fringe practice in the United States and only made a slight revival recently. Plausibility Homeopathy lacks biological plausibility, and its axioms are contradicted by scientific facts The concept of potentization violates basic scientific principles and defies logic Y Passed Water memory This concept is inconsistent with the current understanding of matter, and water memory has never been demonstrated to have any detectable effect, biological or otherwise. Much effort has been spent attempting to show that liquid water has “changeable structure” or “coherence patterns” that are somehow specified by that original substance Y Passed Jacques Benveniste experiment After investigating the findings and methodology of the experiment, the team found that the experiments were "statistically ill-controlled", "interpretation has been clouded by the exclusion of measurements in conflict with the claim" A famous 1988 investigation purported to demonstrate that dilutions of anti-IgE (up to 10120), compared to diluent, led to basophilic histamine release. The study was flawed, and the initial results could not be reproduced by independent research teams Y Passed Is Homeopathy better than placebo? No remedy has been proven to be more effective than placebo Current evidence finds that homeopathic remedies are no more effective than placebo Y Passed What about studies with positive results? Although some clinical trials produce positive results, systematic reviews reveal that this is because of chance, flawed research methods, and reporting bias “Positive” results of homeopathy are more likely to be due to bias and error than to specific effects of homeopathic preparations Y Passed

I would prefer it if the fighters of pseudoscience stop throwing around the "pseudoscience" label at everything they could grab their hands on, and there certainly are clear cases of dysfunction at Wikipedia's alternative medicine articles, but Homeopathy isn't one of them. -A1candidate (talk) 01:07, 10 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Before I try to explain you - what is your relationship with math and logic- I m asking because you use the word logic here. --MarioMarco2009 (talk) 15:10, 10 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Mario, the assertion that potentization "defies logic" did not come from me, I'm simply quoting what UpToDate said. Perhaps it may be better for you to direct this question to the authors and editors of UpToDate. -A1candidate (talk) 15:37, 10 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

First, thank you again for understanding the Ullman issue. Your input helped close off a debate that was going nowhere.

Homeopathy is a very frequently discussed example of pseudoscience. However, there is a need to be clear: homeopathy itself is, as you say, a pre-scientific vitalist belief system. The pseudoscience is in the cottage industry of faux-scientific publications attempting to justify it in terms of modern scientific concepts and the practice of evidence-based medicine - however, this is a route set by Hahnemann himself, and his own publicatiosn were clearly intended to be scholarly and, as we would now characterise it, scientific. This was not the scientific Dark Ages, homeopathy was dreamed up towards the end of the Age of Enlightenment, a century and a half after the founding of the Royal Society and the emergence of empirical science from its predecessor, natural philosophy - the problem is that the scientific method had not, at that time, taken hold in medicine, to anything like the current extent. So it's not as clear cut as it might be.

Take a less contentious example for comparison. The original Fleischmann-Pons cold fusion experiments were not pseudoscience and were not pathological science. They weren't right, but a lot of science turns out not to be right when tested further. Fleischmann was not given to pseudoscience, and did not, as far as I can see, engage in it. Pons may well have engaged in pathological science, and a substantial group grew up who are also engaged in pathological science and pseudoscience, publishing papers in their own journals and discussing their findings with each other, in a classic walled garden. Jones, of Brigham Young, went the full pseudoscience when he fell in with the Truthers.

Another example: chiropractic is a practice which contains elelments of pseudoscience. Manipulation therapy is plausibly effective for musculoskeletal pain, but the concepts of innate and the chiropracxtic subluxation are nonsense, and the academic study of these things is pseudoscientific. Chiropractic is not pseudoscience as practiced by some, but the roots of it are pseudoscience because it was invented in an era when the scientific method was available, at least in outline, and no attempt was made to falsify the claims, only to provide "evidence" to support them. So chiro is a field rooted in pseudoscoence from which some legitimate elmenets have emerged, almost by accident.

Osteopathy, by contrast, also has its roots in pseudoscience, but applied the scientific method and became legitimate, at least in the US.

Pseudoscience is a useful and informative category to describe a class of endeavour. The label "alternative medicine" is also helpful, due to Minchin's Law, but proponents of alternative medicine do not help us here in that they constantly try to rebrand it in order to avoid the obvious. Thus alt med became CAM (as if homeopathy is any less bogus because you consider it alongside massage and other valid complementary therapies) and now "integrative medicine" (as if homeopathy becomes any less refuted when you use it alongside valid therapies). In this we are actively hampered by the sources, since the quackademic medicine movement seems at present to be in the ascendent, to the point where even fatiuous nonsense like reiki and reflexology is offered with a straight face.

I would prefer to be clear about the differences between alternative medicine and the pseudoscience it inspires. This is not always easy in the context of an article like hoemopathy, most of whose content is concerned with the pseudoscience used in the rearguard action currently being fought. I do not know if, in ten years time, we will have the same problem, as there seems to be rising public awareness of its fraudulent nature and certainly in the UK and Australia it is suffering badly at the hands of reality-based reviews.

I's be wary of using the textbook you refer to: it's unlikely to be concerned with the demarcation issue and is more likely to simply describe the beliefs of homeopaths, not least because they have a tendency to go ballistic and protest when you say they are wrong, and the more evidence you provide the more ballistic they get. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia for the general reader and there are an enormous number of sources for the general reader that describe homeopathy as pseudoscience (just for starters [1], [2], [3], [4]), and it's also widely discussed in books on the subject of pseudoscience and the demarcatio issue, always coming down on the side of homeopathy being pseudoscience.

So while belief in homeopathy is esssentially religious, like creationism, the attempts to justify it are solidly in the realm of pseudoscience, like "intelligent design" and the rest of the work of the Discovery Institute. Guy (Help!) 11:03, 10 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I just happened to notice the discussion on Jimbo's talk page in which you said: "This is not the position of AHA, it's the position of Wikipedia and an example of how scientific inquiry is downgraded into "lunatic charlatanry" by Wikipedia." You have it exactly right. Brook, the first author, says that the IIb optional wordings have a gradation. These optional wordings are there for the statement authors to select the one most appropriate. The authors chose the first option: "may be considered." Brook has said that this is the wording that should be used, and not the other optional wordings. If you email him, he will confirm this. But it's not a good idea to try to change the TM article at this time. It will just make things worse. TimidGuy (talk) 15:52, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

TM isn't the only article being distorted. They're doing it to many other articles as well, but I'll take your advice and stay out of all these issues for the time being. -A1candidate (talk) 17:26, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hope you have a good break. Best of luck! Bladesmulti (talk) 03:24, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure all of us bugging you will cause you to end your hiatus sooner! We need you! Anyway, I found the K-pop portal today and would like to use it for some pages I edit, namely your created page, List of K-Pop concerts held outside Asia, and others I have created. However, I'm uncertain if this is OK, do I need permission? Also, I think it needs a cute little picture with it, instead of the puzzle one - maybe like the cute one on the page for it?

Can you attach that to the portal link? Hurry back soon & thanks,--Bonnielou2013 (talk) 07:26, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Arbitration Committee has closed a case request by motion with the following remedy being enacted:

For the Arbitration Committee, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 11:18, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]