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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Homeopathy/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by SandyGeorgia 19:39, 4 April 2009 [1].

Homeopathy

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Nominator(s): Shoemaker's Holiday (talk)

Homeopathy has had a long, chequered past. I am reliably told - by the person who did them - that scholarly studies have been done on the edit wars and battles over this article.

However, the battles appear to now be mostly over. Discussion is polite, progress has finally been made, and I think, after much work, that this article has finally reached a state that it can be considered for featured status.

I believe this will be the first candidacy of a controversial subject in some time; however, if we can handle Intelligent design and Global warming, it's my hope that Homeopathy can join this club of articles that rose above the problems inherent in their material to reach featured status. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 22:57, 15 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Per the WP:FAC instructions, were the lead editors consulted about the preparedness of this article for FAC? For example, TimVickers (talk · contribs) and Orangemarlin (talk · contribs) are currently active significant contributors. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:45, 18 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, they were, and I thought that everyone knew by now my old identity, which clearly is one of the lead editors. While I don't want my real name appearing on Wikipedia for websearch reason, I did think everyone knew what my old account was. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 11:58, 18 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • The article is not even of good status as it explains the topic poorly, has a patchy coverage of the topic's history and has a generally tendentious tone which is not NPOV. Overall, it compares poorly with encyclopedic treatments which I have inspected elsewhere and so promoting this as a FA would damage Wikipedia's reputation. Pushing for FA status seems likely to reactivate the battles of which User:Shoemaker's Holiday speaks. I had walked away from the article as discussion was so hostile and uncivil that it was quite unpleasant to work upon. Looking at the current talk page, this still seems to be the case but I shall return. Colonel Warden (talk) 23:42, 15 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The article seems to have improved significantly since I last read it in depth. I can see few major problems.
  • The references will need checking to ensure that they are suitable.
  • This paragraph under Research on medical effectiveness reads poorly: "In 2005, a systematic review of publications suggested that mainstream journals had a publication bias against clinical trials showing positive results, and vice versa on the complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) journals, although it's probably an involuntary bias. A possible submission bias was also suggested, in which positive trials tend to be sent to CAM journals and negatives ones to mainstream journals.[142] It also noted that the reviews on all journals approached the matter on an impartial manner, although most of the reviews on CAM journals avoided noting the lack of plausibility, unlike the ones on mainstream journals who almost always mentioned it." Fences and windows (talk) 01:22, 16 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Edited. Fences and windows (talk) 18:03, 3 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Wow, this is gonna be ugly. I'll just mention the first three issues that pop out at me: (1) the lead does a poor job of explaining the rationale, (2) far too many references in the lead, (3) the lead does a poor job of concisely explaining the scientific objections, to wit, that homeopathic remedies are frequently advertised as having no side effects, for the simple reason that they are completely inert and have no effects whatsoever. Basically I think that in Wikipedia, an article on this topic that can survive will inevitably be an "article by committee", which cannot possibly be an example of Wikipedia's best writing. Looie496 (talk) 01:28, 16 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Tech. Review
  • Dabs (based on the checker tool in the toolbox at the right)
  • Need to be fixed.--Best, ₮RUCӨ 02:19, 16 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • External links (based on the checker tool in the toolbox at the right)
  • There are 2 dead links that need to be replaced.--Best, ₮RUCӨ 02:19, 16 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ref formatting (based on the WP:REFTOOLS script)
  • The following ref (code pasted below) is duplicated and appears more than once in the ref section, a WP:REFNAME should be used instead.
  • {{cite web |url=http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/articles/article.aspx?articleId=197&sectionId=27 |title=Homeopathy results |accessdate=2007-07-25 |publisher=[[National Health Service]] }}
  • The following ref names are used to name more than one ref, when it should only name 1 specific ref.
  • pmid8554846
  • pmid12492603--Best, ₮RUCӨ 02:19, 16 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:33, 16 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Started work on this, it may take a little bit. I hope you don't mind, but I'm renumbering your numbers as I go. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 19:02, 16 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No worries. Take your time. It's a big article and lots of extraneous issues come in so I expect it'll take a bit of time. Ealdgyth - Talk 19:59, 16 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This article requires some work before I would consider it a FA. There is little info on the main page about areas in which it is practiced and how it's popularity has changed over time. Both of these would make good images ( which is something else that this article needs more of ). Make a world map of areas were this stuff is practiced and a graph of how its popularity has changed over time.

Also the discussion of regulations and its popularity are two different things and need to be separated into two sections. I am also not certain after reading this article what kind of conditions homeopathy treats. Does it treat everything of just certain conditions?

The wording often seems to side step the issue. If you look at the lead it says "Claims of homeopathy's efficacy beyond the placebo effect are unsupported by the collective weight of scientific and clinical evidence" This is a round about way of saying: "evidence has not shown homeopathy to be of proven benefit for any medical condition." Some of the wording in the rest of the article is also a little confusing.

Also the fact that homeopathy has a placebo effect should be emphasized as a positive rather than as a negative. A placebo effect is powerful and is all that is needed or is the best currently avaliable treatment for many conditions. Take the common cold for example or most cases of depression, anxiety, or insomnia. One can explain that no treatment is needed which takes a great deal of time or one could prescibe a placebo. Giving a placebo is much faster and is what some people want. But for a physician of course this is unethical.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:03, 16 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Some points:

  • Needs a paragraph on the proposed mechanism - "law of similars" and "water memory" in the lead.
  • Needs to discus in-depth the conditions used to treat and how often it is used to treat those conditions. I'm guessing most of the time it is used for colds and flus.
  • Why use multiple footnotes for single facts in the lead?
  • A historical summary is merited in the lead as well; in Hahneman's time, his approach had lower death rates, as noted in the article. It was abandoned was medicine became more science-based. How it rose to popularity again in the 1970s is a historical gap which needs to be filled. Who popularized it?

(Reading above, I see these points have already been made.) II | (t - c) 07:42, 17 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Concerning the two types of citation templates – I tried to do this mostly by hand, but it's too much work. I am working on a script which can convert citation templates automatically. It should be finished this week, probably in the first half. --Hans Adler (talk) 23:25, 22 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Excellent article. I have a couple of comments. The "Revival in the late 20th Century" is too short and does not discuss the incredible growth of homeopathy in Europe. Given its effectiveness is under so much dispute, why is it so successful to the point that homeopathic treatments are accepted by major European insurance companies or national health systems? A significant portion of the population believes in homeopathy; this cries out for an explanation. Also, I have to agree with the discussion on the talk page that the final image does not illustrate what is in the caption (the woman is looking at other items, not homeopathic remedies). It should be removed or changed. --RelHistBuff (talk) 10:59, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I don't agree that there is an incredible growth of homeopathy in Europe. Certainly not in my observation. Homeopathy is now covered by some of the health insurers that make up the German public health system, but that's just an experiment with the new freedom left by a recent reform. In Britain it has always been part of the NHS, and now there are strong attempts to throw it out. Anyway, we would need a reliable source observing such a growth before we could describe it. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:48, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
But the way you state it sounds like a pretty good rate of growth to me! The fact that homeopathy is even covered (even experimentally) by a national health system says something about how much it has changed during the 20th century. The article gives no history on how it grew from almost non-existence to accepted practice as an alternative treatment. How in the world did it become a part of the NHS? Pharmacies where I live are all stocked with homeopathic remedies attesting to its acceptance by a significant number of people. If there are no sources describing this phenomenon, then that would be a rather unfortunate gap in the coverage of this article. --RelHistBuff (talk) 15:36, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No. Homeopathy has been an optional part of standard medical training for a long time, although there are attempts to get rid of it. The German health insurers are now covering almost everything from acupuncture to voodoo (well, almost). What has changed is only that they are now allowed to do it. I think it's quite likely that the same would have happened 30 years ago, had there been such a reform at the time. Homeopathy probably became covered by the NHS because of the strong support by the Royal Family. The gap in coverage is not because we don't want to describe this but because nobody has found a good reliable source. Homeopathic sources tend to overstate the prevalence of homeopathy, while more general sources tend to understate it or ignore homeopathy. The best thing we have is the WHO report on CAM, but it's not enough for this purpose. We must distinguish how prevalent homeopathy is in a country from the trend of prevalence in that country. My guess: Germany > UK > US; US increasing, UK decreasing, Germany staying on the same high level. But as I said, I have no reliable sources for this. This is just my impression. --Hans Adler (talk) 16:08, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The trend info may be unavailable, but the early history of support (such as your speculation about royal family support) might exist somewhere. Whatever you could add to the 20th century history would be interesting. Excellent article anyway. --RelHistBuff (talk) 17:59, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In a telephone survey of 1001 adults in Germany, 11.5% had used homeopathy. [2]. News story about increase in homeoapthy in India: [3]. News story about homeopathy increasing in the US: [4]. More here.

This looks like a good review. It is already cited in the "rise in popularity" section, but it points to two studies that themselves should be cited: Eisenberg DM, Davis RB, Ettner SL, Appel S, Wilkey S, Van Rompay M, et al. Trends in alternative medicine use in the United States, 1990-1997: results of a follow-up national survey JAMA. 1998;280:1569-75. [5]; Jacobs J, Chapman EH, Crothers D. Patient characteristics and practice patterns of physicians using homeopathy Arch Fam Med. 1998;7:537-40. [6]. Fences and windows (talk) 18:26, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
outdent - Regulation and prevalence of homeopathy already has a lot of information on the prevalence of the use of homeopathy today and historically in various countries. Fences and windows (talk) 19:12, 3 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that it's so unstructured. It's hard to draw any claims about general trends from it without serious original research. --Hans Adler (talk) 22:29, 3 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The article on Homeopathy is controlled by the critics and skeptics. No homeopath would accept it to be NPOV, so it should never be a FA.-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 12:08, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah... no. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 15:13, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If it were controlled by the homeopaths, then it would also be POV, and no skeptic or critic would accept it, so... Poechalkdust (talk) 13:49, 28 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Article is quite good and is nearly of featured quality. I found some problems in the current version, which need to be fixed before I can support:
  • Topics that are missing or are not well covered:
  • scope of practice (e.g., what are homeopaths not allowed to do?). To address this, the Associations and regulatory bodies section should be moved out of External links and should be put into the main text.
  • education and its relationship to licensing
  • schools of thought within homeopathy
  • What percentage of the population uses homeopathy? (This should be in the prevalence section.) Also, please give prevalence versus time.
  • Regulation and prevalence talks only about Europe, and needs more of a worldwide focus.
  • Misspelling: "Hehnemann"
  • "US" is sometimes used; should be changed to "U.S." (the majority).
  • Truncated sentence: "sunlight,[101] Recent"
  • "professional qualifications and licenses are needed in most countries" (stated in both the lead and the body) is dubious, and the cited source says "relatively few countries have developed policies and regulations", which seems to contradict the claim.
  • The Campbell/Vithoulkas incident is repeated in two sections. It should be mentioned just once.
  • The See also section should not list Homeopathic dilutions, as that is already mentioned in the text. Nor should it list Electrohomeopathy, as that topic should be briefly covered in the text and the wikilink moved there.
  • Some citations separate author names with commas, others with semicolons. Please standardize. I suggest commas, as that's the typical style in medical sources.
  • A stray space before a period In the Williams 2002 citation.
  • The Other links section should be either removed or drastically trimmed down. Wikipedia is not supposed to be a collection of links, and the utility of these links is dubious. Do we really need a link to an 1885 history of homeopathy?
Eubulides (talk) 05:57, 29 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Eubulides, why don't you recommend Chiropractic to be an FA instead of this? I know that you post a lot there.-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 11:06, 30 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Surely you meant "in addition to this", not "instead of this"? But that would be a different topic; let's stick to Homeopathy here.
  • I fixed the minor editorial stuff noted above, and struck it out.
Eubulides (talk) 22:56, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry I've been slow about everything - illness'll do that. Will try and get it all sorted tomorrow. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 11:50, 30 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose on criterion "d". The article is biased. It is obviously controlled by the critics of homeopathy. I am not a homoeopathist or a conventional doctor and I am not a fan or a critic of alternative medicine or the conventional medicine. I simply do know a little bit about homeopathy. After reading this article I would think that homeopathy is some kind of witchery. The problem is that most of the article - not only the sections that are related to criticism according to their headings - are related to criticism. The article purposely uses a style, where every statement by homeopathists is immediately disproved by the classical medicine. Many sections that are related to the characteristics of the method are full of pure criticism instead of a description of the method. Many arguments are raised by the classical medicine, but the arguments of the other side have been left out. "Criticism" of homeopathy should be one section of the article. It should not be part of every single paragraph. The language is also oppinionated by using words such as "been diagnosed" for conventional medicine, but "been claimed" or "under the belief" for homeopathy. As I said I am no expert of any kind of medicine, I am just a student, but this article is totally opinionated from the top to the end - I know a bit about homeopathy and it is not what this article says. The writer is using the sources that he prefers for his view and ignores the arguments of the other side. Already the lead section is ridiculous. In this article, homeopathy is being treated as something that "does not work". It should not be treated as something that "does or does not work". It should be described from a neutral view with a neutral language (simply collecting facts that homeopathists provide) and then there should be a section about the view of the conventional medicine. Therefore I oppose.--  LYKANTROP  ✉ 12:53, 2 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment: The thing is, because Homeopathy is a fringe theory, it is quite reasonable to use disparaging references. One must not obfuscate neutrality with objectivity: an objective encyclopedia cannot allow for fringe theories to be construed as anything more. WilliamH (talk) 18:02, 2 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
How can homeopathy be the fringe theory on the article on homeopathy (that argument may hold water only in the article on allopathy created by Bryan Hopping)? Why don't you go argue like that on the osteopathy, naturopathy or chiropractic articles? The online Encyclopedia Brittanica is really NPOV, while Citizendium allows both criticism as well as a defence, but Wikipedia is being policed by the skeptical critics who don't let a defense to be put up. Wikipedia lost credibility when it let people post that some people had died, when they hadn't on their wikipedia biographies - if this article becomes an FA, it will lose more credibility. I'd prefer the articles on osteopathy, naturopathy or chiropractic to be made FAs'.-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 12:29, 3 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Homeopathy is a fringe theory because it is not supported by the vast majority of the scientific community, because the evidence for it is poor, and because it contradicts well-established scientific principles. Where it is being discussed doesn't change this. Brunton (talk) 15:40, 3 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Then why aren't the articles on osteopathy, naturopathy or chiropractic considered fringe theory and called quackery? Let's have the same yard-stick for all Alt. Med. articles.-NootherIDAvailable (talk) 07:45, 4 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If you think they should include it, and can find RS for it, then add it. But can we stick to the topic of the homoeopathy article here, please? Brunton (talk) 08:24, 4 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, your answer is pretty much of a good display of the problem. "Homeopathy is a fringe theory" is what you say. That is the problem. You are observing Homeopathy from the view of the critics.
In the most developed countries in the world such as Sweden or Netherlands, homeopathy is officially been used in hospitals along with conventional medicine and also veterinary homeopathy is used there for agricultural animals instead of antibiotics. Yes, the majority of scientific community does not support homeopathy, but a huge part of scientific community and thus reliable scientific sources written by medicine professors and scientists do support it just because its effectivness as well as some developed countries decided to.
"Homeopathy is a fringe theory" is a non-neutral statement as well as this article is. I am absolutely not saying that homeopathy should be put on the same level as the conventional medicine. But to say that the conventional-medicine-view is the objective one and the view of homeopathy is the subjective one is wrong and not neutral. There is a difference between these two of course. But that does not mean that conventional medicine, which is only acknowledged by the majority (that's not 100%), must comment every statement of homeoathy from its "conventional medicine view".
Yes, homeopathy is not accepted by the majority of scientists, and that is why the conventional medicine (which is accepted by the majority) should have a section about criticism in the homeopathy article. But the conventional medicine is not the only accepted medicine. Homeopathy is accepted by a minority of scientific world thus it is not any kind of quackery. And that is why conventional medicine is not the objective one that has the right to say its opinion on everything in the article. Conventional medicine has its reliable sources but homeopathy does have its reliable sources as well. Conventional medicine is not objective just because it has more of them.
You can use this style of writing for some quackery, but not for homeopathy, which is supported by many scientists and some European countires. The problem is that you think that homeopathy is quackery, but that is not neutral.
These arguments are just a lame way how to preventively get rid of criticism.--  LYKANTROP  ✉ 11:52, 4 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously this is a controversial area, but I suggest taking this dispute to Talk:Homeopathy. It's out of place here. Eubulides (talk) 16:42, 4 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a debate between homeopathy and "conventional medicine". The issue is one of science. If these treatments were so wonderfully potent it would be EASY to show effectiveness. Research however has not shown more than a placebo effect. Therefore claimed benefit is pseudo scientific and based on faith.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:33, 4 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

1) Whether the issue is one of science is one of the issues. 2) I think Eubulides meant that everybody who wants to continue this discussion should do so at Talk:Homeopathy. 3) I think he is right and I apologise for responding here. --Hans Adler (talk) 19:28, 4 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I am not an expert so I don't think that I can contribute any effective arguments to any side of this discussion anymore. I am only expressing, as an average potential reader, who is not on a side of any of these treatments, that the style and language of this Wikipedia article seems to be pretty unbalanced to me and thus definitely not FA quality. The way I think you should deal with the imbalance is described in my last comment. But if you believe it is balanced, you can simply outvote my single oppose. Cheers.--  LYKANTROP  ✉ 21:05, 4 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose the nomination as a FA due to the concerns made above. A few other concerns include

  1. "In many countries, the laws that govern the regulation and testing of conventional drugs do not apply to homeopathic remedies." implies that in some countries it is regulated under the same laws as pharmaceuticals
  2. "Specific pharmacological effect with no active molecules is scientifically implausible" It is not implausible but impossible.
  3. More on prevalence and regulations need to be combined into the main article
  4. I think history section should be moved to the end.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:19, 4 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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