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Thanks. — Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 09:36, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

Chip Coffey

Interested parties might want to look at this AfD

Request for input in discussion forum

Given the closely linked subjects of the various religion, mythology, and philosophy groups, it seems to me that we might benefit from having some sort of regular topical discussion forum to discuss the relevant content. I have put together the beginnings of an outline for such discussion at Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Religion/2011 meeting, and would very much appreciate the input of any interested editors. I am thinking that it might run over two months, the first of which would be to bring forward and discuss the current state of the content, and the second for perhaps some more focused discussion on what, if any, specific efforts might be taken in the near future. Any and all input is more than welcome. John Carter (talk)

_{Automated message by Project Messenger Bot from John Carter at 15:44, 5 April 2011}

Attention needed

I don't know if anyone uses this project anymore, but a new editor is promoting Ozone therapy as if it was an accepted mainstream medical specialty. TTBOMK it's only a fringe alternative medical practice without any scientific support and with some dangers. They are editing and creating articles and also adding categories, all in an attempt to make this seem like an accepted practice. It seems like they are using Misplaced Pages to create an alternate reality and notability for the practice. Their edits need to be checked for NPOV and for adherence to MEDRS. I don't have time to do it. -- Brangifer (talk) 15:55, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

"A start ParkSehJik (talk) 05:04, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Discussion at RSN about Robert Almeder

There is a discussion at the reliable sources noticeboard about whether an article on reincarnation by Robert Almeder, professor emeritus of philosophy at Georgia State University, is a reliable source for the article on Ian Stevenson (1918–2007). Several editors have objected to it because Almeder published it in Journal of Scientific Exploration, a journal that deals with anomalies (fringe issues). Uninvolved input would be very helpful. See Misplaced Pages:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Robert_Almeder. Many thanks, SlimVirgin 19:22, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Alternative medicine article discussion to restore MEDRS and NPOV content and sources such as Annals of New York Academy of Sciences and Journal of Academic Medicine

A discussion to restore the first 14 sources of this version, including Annals of New York Academy of Sciences, Journal of Academic Medicine, etc., to the Alternative medicine article is now going on here. ParkSehJik (talk) 02:57, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Is psychiatry a pseudoscience?

I made this edit, and plan more similar edits as I find MEDRS for them. The term "psychiatry" was coined to mean "medical treatment of the soul". Discussion begins here, and be expanded, especially re forensic psychiatry (the modern equivalent of testimony by an exorcist-priest in a witch trial, with almost identical personalities of the players, and identical descriptiopn of "symptoms" but for a change in terminology to create the facade of scientific respectability - all to be reliably sourced, of course). ParkSehJik (talk) 22:39, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Should the psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, and related articles be held to a lower MEDRS standard than alternative medicine and its related articles?

Discussion re uniform application of MEDRS standards to all WP articles is here.

Following discussion re MEDRS, ontologic status of psychiatric categories, and controversy re the scientific methodologies for attaching the term "disease", "disorder", and :lifetime" to the categories (if they really exist, e.g., Penis envy), in the psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, Bipolar disorder, and related article talk pages, FiachraByrne correctly wrote (bolfaced added by me for emphasis of most relevant part, and whose comment I may have distorted by excerpting just a part of it in order to raise the following issue) -

"Psychiatry is one of the oldest medical specialisms. It's designation as medical practice is a disciplinary/professional attribute that has little to do with the actual content of psychiatric knowledge or the nature of psychiatric practice. To establish this it is unnecessary to evaluate whether in any or all instances psychiatry adheres to the so-called 'scientific method'."

However, the designation of psychatry always being medicine, and not just some parts of it, with the associated implications of established efficacy in healing real diseases, at Misplaced Pages, is a WP:MEDRS issue, not just a matter of determining the common usage on the street. The part of FiachraByrne's comment quoted above raises issues being glossed over by other editors at those multiple talk pages, where it is declared to be "common knowledge" that psychiatry is for the most part evidence and science based, that its designated categories (eg., penis envy and bipolar disorder) are real, that the DSM designation of their being "disorders" estabishes with MEDRS that they are, and that they are lifetime, and questioning this violated WP:COMMONSENSE, and is WP:BATTLE because it is unquestionable, even with MEDRS and RS saying otherwise, all because Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the self-proclaimed "bible" for practitioners, is always unque3stionably MEDRS. Furthermore, RS and MEDRS content is being totally deleted from any WP:MOS (lede) "controversy" paragraph as being UNDUE, by simply citing the declarations in DSM, even when contradicted by other MEDRS sources.

The same WP:MEDRS standards should be applied to psychiatry as to alternative medicine articles. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is also one of the oldest "medical" practices. There is rigorous enforcement by WP:MEDRS hawks (of which I am one) that assertions re TCM being healing "medicine", as defined in that article and by MEDRS standards. The only allowable edits are that TCM practitioners "claim" to heal. TCM uses supernatural etiological objects ("qi" flow blockage causing qi, not the heart, to propel the blood inadequately), and outright false statements about anatomies, developed without the "cutting" of the "tom" in "anatomy" (Greek "tom" means "cut", as in "a-tom" – meaning not further able to be cut, as atoms were thought to be), has also historically been designated "medicine". MEDRS has different standards than accepted common usage, and for good reasons well argued in setting up the policy.

• Should the psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, Bipolar disorder, and related articles be held to a lower WP:MEDRS standard than alternative medicine and its related articles, as to its designation as a healing "medicine", with implications to claims of efficacy and intent of all areas of its practice (e.g., forensic psychiatry, or psychiatry practiced under the color of being "medicine" at Guantanamo), when there are substantial MEDRS sourced content that at, least part of psychiatry, is not based on science at all, and other parts are not intended to heal anything?

• Should Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders V be continued to be unquestioned as MEDRS, and citec as "common knowledge" which, if questioned with MEDRS or RS, is claimed to be WP:BATTLE and violate WP:COMMON SENSE, as was DSM IV, especially in light of comments such as that of Allen Frances, chair of the DSM-IV Task Force - "DSM 5 will accept diagnoses that achieve reliabilities as unbelievably low as 0.2-0.4 (barely beating the level of chance agreement two monkeys could achieve throwing darts at a diagnostic board".

Discussion is here.

ParkSehJik (talk) 19:44, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy, an article that your project may be interested in, has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. AIRcorn (talk) 12:59, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Is Psychiatry integrative medicine?

Is Psychiatry integrative medicine?

Discover Magazie just named this story as "Top 100 Science Stories of 2012" - The "Bible of Psychiatry" Faces Damning Criticism—From the Inside From that story -

"...the most recent attack comes from within the DSM-5’s ranks. Roel Verheul and John Livesley, a psychologist and psychiatrist who were members of the DSM-5 work group for for personality disorders, found that the group ignored their warnings about its methods and recommendations. In protest, they resigned, explaining why in an email to Psychology Today. Their disapproval stems from two primary problems with the proposed classification system: its confusing complexity, and its refusal to incorporate scientific evidence.

That is the very definition of pseudoscience in the Misplaced Pages article on the topic.

The resigning docs are quoted as saying -

"The proposal displays a truly stunning disregard for evidence. Important aspects of the proposal lack any reasonable evidential support of reliability and validity. For example, there is little evidence to justify which disorders to retain and which to eliminate. Even more concerning is the fact that a major component of proposal is inconsistent with extensive evidence…This creates the untenable situation of the Work Group advancing a taxonomic model that it has acknowledged in a published article to be inconsistent with the evidence."

Part of psychiatry is clearly evidence based and is science. But the field integrates this with pseudoscience and worse (forensic psychiatry and its associated fraud). Per the WP arricle, integrative medicine "integrates" evidence based medicine with the other stuff. Does WP:Spade apply here, or must there be a secondary source calling the spade a spade? ParkSehJik (talk) 23:38, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

The short answer is that yes you need good quality secondary sources to make these points and you need a sufficient number by medical/scientific academic publishers to establish weight. What constitutes a sufficient number is particularly poorly defined in the relevant Misplaced Pages policies. In all likelihood there isn't a sufficient number of sources which meet the inclusion guidelines for medical articles to support the contention that psychiatry or aspects of it - say, specific taxonomic categories - are pseudo-scientific constructs. Moreover, if the medico-scientific "community" or a majority thereof do arrive at the consensus position that a given psychiatric category is without evidential support in all probability that category is doomed in any case and will be replaced by another.

The other point is that with posts such as the above you're going to be accused of treating wikipedia as a forum for your views. That you regard psychiatry, or aspects of it, in this way is of course legitimate. Lots of people, here and elsewhere, entertain a variety of criticisms about psychiatric knowledge and practices. But that's irrelevant here. For an encyclopaedic article you need to represent the majority perspective from the most reliable and authoritative sources. As psychiatry is still the dominant discipline in terms of the production of knowledge about mental illnesses/disorders the preeminent psychiatric publications are, for Misplaced Pages, the most reliable and authoritative sources. Therefore, this encyclopaedia will largely, but not exclusively, represent the mainstream views within the discipline regardless of whether those perspectives correspond to the "truth" or not. FiachraByrne (talk) 01:13, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

And I suppose we define "mainsteam" as whatever DSM-whatever says it is, today? You know, DSM is a lot like what Bismarck said about laws and sausages-- if you want to retain any respect for them you shouldn't watch them being made. The same is true also of Misplaced Pages articles, and (yes) and medical and scientific concensus. Which is why we wait awhile for these things to happen in science, and try to avoid recentism like those speedy neutrinos that slowed right down again when the loose cable was wiggled back in. Which suggests you really should NOT pay any attention to a DSM until after it's 30 years old. Or more.

You know, once upon a time, the dominant mode of American psychiatry was Freudian psychoanalysis? I kid you not. You know, that had neurotics and psychotics and people with character disorders? And the neuroses were due to people with unresolved subconscious conflicts? It was all very interesting and it was all in DSM I and II. But then in 1980 DSM III came out and "poof" the neurotics and neuroses all disappeared. Like over night. Very much like the disease of gayness going away in 1974. Which had been a lot of fun for the Freudians with the penis envy and the anal fixation, let me tell you. But anyway, the neurotics all disappeared in 1980 and presumably the entire Freudian subconscious conflict, along with them. Or, at least, I think it did. I dream about all this stuff, sometimes, but when I wake up, it's all gone.... SBHarris 02:52, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

@Fiachra - Yup, appearance of FORUM applies. I need to be more careful, or I will end up wasting alot of time on reverts to my edits based on forming an opinion of me, not my edits. I actually do not have views that I am aware of to be desiring a FORUM for, but I hoped instead to get thinkers with backgrounds outside of medicine involved in editing the psychiatry articles, by posting here. Re "sufficient number", I am going over the WEIGHT article to suggest improvements. There is also an academic legal community commenting on use of psychiatry in the courts, to base questioning "truth" on. I found it odd that every psychiatrist I engage with comments the same, that diagnoses like "bipolar" are "junk science" categories so easy to diagnose that it insures payment under an insurance billing code, and a critique that attorneys and insurance industries are hijacking the profession for money, and leaving the science in the dust, yet there is none of this universal self-criticism in the Wiki articles. ParkSehJik (talk) 20:03, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Metatheories of religion

Misplaced Pages:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2012_December_9#Category:Metatheory_of_religion

This category has been proposed for deletion, and the result will be that Skepticism may be categorized under Religion, rather than Philosophy. The category was created to make a distinction between theories that govern the formation of religious beliefs which are limited by scholarly, academic, empirical, skeptical philosophical methodology and reason; and religious belief. Please look into this matter.Greg Bard (talk) 19:48, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Conversion therapy

I think this article fits this Wikiproject, if someone more experienced agrees please add your banner to the talk page. Thank you. Insomesia (talk) 20:48, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

List of common misconceptions

This article could use a thorough review by anyone interested.   — C M B J   09:22, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

University College London Hospital advertised for a "spiritual healer", but they must be "qualified".

University College London Hospital advertised for a "spiritual healer", but they must be "qualified". This if a fact from an opinion piece by the former Director of the Wellcome Laboratory for Molecular Pharmacology, Fellow of the Royal Society, Honorary Fellow of University College London. Does anyone have any RS on how "qualified to spiritually heal" is defined by University College London Hospital and other evidence based university medical hospitals? 64.134.222.106 (talk) 01:09, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

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