This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The contents of the List of ineffective cancer treatments page were merged into Alternative cancer treatments on 19 October 2013. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected page, please see its history; for the discussion at that location, see its talk page. |
This page has archives. Sections older than 90 days may be automatically archived by ClueBot III when more than 5 sections are present. |
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 12 August 2020 and 25 November 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Gtg32.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 17:09, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 29 October 2019 and 6 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Theyellowdart22. Peer reviewers: KateF87.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 13:57, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
The fact of the matter is that the biggest problem with Wikipedia is that much of the time, many articles are written by non-experts in the field. Not to incite any hostilities, but many of the articles written on Wikipedia are done so by non-experts in the field, with no real background in the topic they are covering. When someone with a background in the field makes a correction, it gets deleted, and an edit war ensues. Many of the non-experts have all kinds of awards that they wear like a badge on their talk pages, while the rest of us are actually in college studying the very things the so-called arm-chair "scientists" tell us we are wrong about. Wikipedia can be edited by anyone. And this fact scares me because Wikipedia is a popular go-to source for information. Much of the time bureaucracy and rules laid forth by the wiki-editors inhibit consensus, and dialogue is impeded. I truly wish that all of the articles dealing with biology could be dealt with by people who actually have a background in biology and chemistry. Most biologists would laugh at the notion that CRUK calls for the punishment of people who promote "superfoods" such as broccoli (literally! UK from what I have read actually punish people for using the word "superfood" in advertising!), when in fact, some of the chemicals in broccoli such as 3,3′-Diindolylmethane are now being isolated and investigated for its strong anticancer properties by the National Cancer Institute. So why are the so called experts policing words now? And why do the armchair "scientists" take what CRUK says as gospel truth? Seems to me like CRUK is about 60 years behind the USA in oncology. So how can they be cited as a reliable source of biological information? I'd far rather trust NCI than CRUK. But the author of this article seems to cite CRUK more often than any other source; I assume the author is from the UK. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:C4EA:14D0:C5C3:9B8C:5B41:AFEC ( talk) 04:09, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
This paper:
Johnson, Skyler B.; Park, Henry S.; Gross, Cary P.; Yu, James B. (2018-10-01).
"Complementary Medicine, Refusal of Conventional Cancer Therapy, and Survival Among Patients With Curable Cancers". JAMA oncology. 4 (10): 1375–1381.
doi:
10.1001/jamaoncol.2018.2487.
ISSN
2374-2445.
PMC
6233773.
PMID
30027204.{{
cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: PMC format (
link)
has some updated information on the risk of dying. They conclude that the biggest cause of excess mortality among people who use alternative cancer treatments is due to refusing or delaying conventional treatment.
This is a recent primary source, and while it's a large study in a reputable journal, I think it would be best to make a mental note about this work, and check back later to see whether it's been cited in other papers, and see how they evaluate it. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:24, 27 January 2019 (UTC)
Hello Internet Citizens,
I am currently working to improve this page. Wikiproject Medicine has rated this as a start-class with mid-importance. Wikiproject Skepticism has it as a C-class and high-importance. I am happy to hear any of your ideas for how this page might be improved.
A few observations and questions about the page as it stands:
- There seems to be several over-generalizations. For example, one ~30 patient breast cancer survey is generalized to all cancer patients seeking alternative therapy in the “People who choose alternative treatments” section.
- The areas of research section is confusing. I don’t know what is meant by “specific methods”, nor do I understand why proton therapy is listed. It is an established treatment recommended by oncologists every day.
- What is the purpose of the “People who choose alternative treatments section”? I see that it strings together some generalizations of people who use alternative therapies, but I don’t understand why that’s useful information.
- Examples of complementary therapy could be expanded to include summaries of cited articles to give a little more- detail.
I welcome a conversation! Please feel free to leave comments and start a discussion.
Theyellowdart22 ( talk) 02:44, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
"The effects of aromatherapy are unclear" and this "Clinical trials involving aromatherapy for symptomatic treatment in cancer patients shown mixed results." mean the exact same thing. Doc James ( talk · contribs · email) 07:10, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
With respect to hot flashes this is a better source https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26281028 than https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Acupuncture+for+the+relief+of+hot+flashes+in+breast+cancer+patients%3A+A+systematic+review+and+meta-analysis+of+randomized+controlled+trials+and+observational+studies
Doc James ( talk · contribs · email) 07:24, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
I do not think this is a fair summary of https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/cam/patient/aromatherapy-pdq "Other symptoms, including dry mouth, procedure-related pain, and sleep problems, have been shown to have some benefit from aromatherapy, although the studies are very small."
source says
"Studies of aromatherapy have shown mixed results. There have been some reports of improved mood, anxiety, sleep, nausea, and pain. Other studies reported that aromatherapy showed no change in symptoms."
This is summarized as "The effects of aromatherapy are unclear". Expecially with there being no peer reviewed RCTs on the topic.
Doc James ( talk · contribs · email) 07:39, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
Roxy, the dog. Can you please explain why Ref 15 is acceptable? It seems to violate the Wikipedia:MEDRS claim that primary sources should not be used, which has been discussed on this talk page. Thank you. Theyellowdart22 ( talk) 21:25, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
Alexbrn You commented in your editsum "This is an article about alternative cancer treatment, not side-effect treatment." If that is true, then why include anything about complementary therapies? I think if you draw the line to say that we're not going to talk about side effects, you have to eliminate all mention of complementary therapies that deal with symptoms, which is most of the "Examples of complementary therapy" section. The "Pain Relief" section should also be deleted. Is that what you think we should do? Theyellowdart22 ( talk) 17:18, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
The lead section gives a very good, but detailed, overview of the concept of alternative cancer treatments. As someone who has a medical background, this section was readable and understandable to me. However, it uses quite a bit of medical jargon and is at a post-graduate reading level. I wonder if you can work on this section and make it a bit more readable to the general audience. Overall, I think this section sets up the article well and really helps define what is meant by "alternative cancer treatments."
I think the layout of your page is really great! I like how you start with a terminology section and then get into the details. I wonder if you could add a section on examples of alternative therapy? Or maybe incorporate this into the unproven and disproven treatment sections?
One thing we talked about in the intro sessions was to minimize the use of primary literature and direct quotations in the Wikipedia articles. Both the prevalence and people who choose alternative treatments contain quite a bit of data and direct quotations from specific studies. I am not sure how much of this you added or what was already there before you started.
For an inherently biased topic, I think you did a really good job of keeping a neutral tone. You presented facts, and did not make any opinionated comments about alternative cancer treatments or people who choose them. In terms of balance, it seemed as if complementary therapies were talked about in almost equal amount as alternative therapies. I was a bit confused about this -- are complementary therapies a subset of alternative therapies, or are they entirely separate?
This page is very well cited. One think about the sources that I mentioned previously is that there seem to be quite a bit of primary studies cited rather than reviews.
Overall, well organized and the article flows well. I think if you wanted to, you could add a section for "examples of alternative cancer therapies" after terminology. The alternative theories of cancer sections is a bulleted list - I wonder if you could instead of making each theory a different bullet point, make it a different subheading? Just a thought!
I don't think this is very applicable to your article. I don't know if you can find an image about the alternative theories of cancer? If not, I think that is also okay!
Overall I think you did a really good job with this page, despite it being a complicated page to edit. You added some really great information and good sources! I am very impressed by how you were able to keep the page very neutral. Great job!
KateF87 ( talk) 15:14, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
What is the history of alternative cancer treatments? Lyang82 ( talk) 19:47, 10 February 2020 (UTC)lyang
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The contents of the List of ineffective cancer treatments page were merged into Alternative cancer treatments on 19 October 2013. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected page, please see its history; for the discussion at that location, see its talk page. |
This page has archives. Sections older than 90 days may be automatically archived by ClueBot III when more than 5 sections are present. |
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 12 August 2020 and 25 November 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Gtg32.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 17:09, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 29 October 2019 and 6 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Theyellowdart22. Peer reviewers: KateF87.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 13:57, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
The fact of the matter is that the biggest problem with Wikipedia is that much of the time, many articles are written by non-experts in the field. Not to incite any hostilities, but many of the articles written on Wikipedia are done so by non-experts in the field, with no real background in the topic they are covering. When someone with a background in the field makes a correction, it gets deleted, and an edit war ensues. Many of the non-experts have all kinds of awards that they wear like a badge on their talk pages, while the rest of us are actually in college studying the very things the so-called arm-chair "scientists" tell us we are wrong about. Wikipedia can be edited by anyone. And this fact scares me because Wikipedia is a popular go-to source for information. Much of the time bureaucracy and rules laid forth by the wiki-editors inhibit consensus, and dialogue is impeded. I truly wish that all of the articles dealing with biology could be dealt with by people who actually have a background in biology and chemistry. Most biologists would laugh at the notion that CRUK calls for the punishment of people who promote "superfoods" such as broccoli (literally! UK from what I have read actually punish people for using the word "superfood" in advertising!), when in fact, some of the chemicals in broccoli such as 3,3′-Diindolylmethane are now being isolated and investigated for its strong anticancer properties by the National Cancer Institute. So why are the so called experts policing words now? And why do the armchair "scientists" take what CRUK says as gospel truth? Seems to me like CRUK is about 60 years behind the USA in oncology. So how can they be cited as a reliable source of biological information? I'd far rather trust NCI than CRUK. But the author of this article seems to cite CRUK more often than any other source; I assume the author is from the UK. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:C4EA:14D0:C5C3:9B8C:5B41:AFEC ( talk) 04:09, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
This paper:
Johnson, Skyler B.; Park, Henry S.; Gross, Cary P.; Yu, James B. (2018-10-01).
"Complementary Medicine, Refusal of Conventional Cancer Therapy, and Survival Among Patients With Curable Cancers". JAMA oncology. 4 (10): 1375–1381.
doi:
10.1001/jamaoncol.2018.2487.
ISSN
2374-2445.
PMC
6233773.
PMID
30027204.{{
cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: PMC format (
link)
has some updated information on the risk of dying. They conclude that the biggest cause of excess mortality among people who use alternative cancer treatments is due to refusing or delaying conventional treatment.
This is a recent primary source, and while it's a large study in a reputable journal, I think it would be best to make a mental note about this work, and check back later to see whether it's been cited in other papers, and see how they evaluate it. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:24, 27 January 2019 (UTC)
Hello Internet Citizens,
I am currently working to improve this page. Wikiproject Medicine has rated this as a start-class with mid-importance. Wikiproject Skepticism has it as a C-class and high-importance. I am happy to hear any of your ideas for how this page might be improved.
A few observations and questions about the page as it stands:
- There seems to be several over-generalizations. For example, one ~30 patient breast cancer survey is generalized to all cancer patients seeking alternative therapy in the “People who choose alternative treatments” section.
- The areas of research section is confusing. I don’t know what is meant by “specific methods”, nor do I understand why proton therapy is listed. It is an established treatment recommended by oncologists every day.
- What is the purpose of the “People who choose alternative treatments section”? I see that it strings together some generalizations of people who use alternative therapies, but I don’t understand why that’s useful information.
- Examples of complementary therapy could be expanded to include summaries of cited articles to give a little more- detail.
I welcome a conversation! Please feel free to leave comments and start a discussion.
Theyellowdart22 ( talk) 02:44, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
"The effects of aromatherapy are unclear" and this "Clinical trials involving aromatherapy for symptomatic treatment in cancer patients shown mixed results." mean the exact same thing. Doc James ( talk · contribs · email) 07:10, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
With respect to hot flashes this is a better source https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26281028 than https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Acupuncture+for+the+relief+of+hot+flashes+in+breast+cancer+patients%3A+A+systematic+review+and+meta-analysis+of+randomized+controlled+trials+and+observational+studies
Doc James ( talk · contribs · email) 07:24, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
I do not think this is a fair summary of https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/cam/patient/aromatherapy-pdq "Other symptoms, including dry mouth, procedure-related pain, and sleep problems, have been shown to have some benefit from aromatherapy, although the studies are very small."
source says
"Studies of aromatherapy have shown mixed results. There have been some reports of improved mood, anxiety, sleep, nausea, and pain. Other studies reported that aromatherapy showed no change in symptoms."
This is summarized as "The effects of aromatherapy are unclear". Expecially with there being no peer reviewed RCTs on the topic.
Doc James ( talk · contribs · email) 07:39, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
Roxy, the dog. Can you please explain why Ref 15 is acceptable? It seems to violate the Wikipedia:MEDRS claim that primary sources should not be used, which has been discussed on this talk page. Thank you. Theyellowdart22 ( talk) 21:25, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
Alexbrn You commented in your editsum "This is an article about alternative cancer treatment, not side-effect treatment." If that is true, then why include anything about complementary therapies? I think if you draw the line to say that we're not going to talk about side effects, you have to eliminate all mention of complementary therapies that deal with symptoms, which is most of the "Examples of complementary therapy" section. The "Pain Relief" section should also be deleted. Is that what you think we should do? Theyellowdart22 ( talk) 17:18, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
The lead section gives a very good, but detailed, overview of the concept of alternative cancer treatments. As someone who has a medical background, this section was readable and understandable to me. However, it uses quite a bit of medical jargon and is at a post-graduate reading level. I wonder if you can work on this section and make it a bit more readable to the general audience. Overall, I think this section sets up the article well and really helps define what is meant by "alternative cancer treatments."
I think the layout of your page is really great! I like how you start with a terminology section and then get into the details. I wonder if you could add a section on examples of alternative therapy? Or maybe incorporate this into the unproven and disproven treatment sections?
One thing we talked about in the intro sessions was to minimize the use of primary literature and direct quotations in the Wikipedia articles. Both the prevalence and people who choose alternative treatments contain quite a bit of data and direct quotations from specific studies. I am not sure how much of this you added or what was already there before you started.
For an inherently biased topic, I think you did a really good job of keeping a neutral tone. You presented facts, and did not make any opinionated comments about alternative cancer treatments or people who choose them. In terms of balance, it seemed as if complementary therapies were talked about in almost equal amount as alternative therapies. I was a bit confused about this -- are complementary therapies a subset of alternative therapies, or are they entirely separate?
This page is very well cited. One think about the sources that I mentioned previously is that there seem to be quite a bit of primary studies cited rather than reviews.
Overall, well organized and the article flows well. I think if you wanted to, you could add a section for "examples of alternative cancer therapies" after terminology. The alternative theories of cancer sections is a bulleted list - I wonder if you could instead of making each theory a different bullet point, make it a different subheading? Just a thought!
I don't think this is very applicable to your article. I don't know if you can find an image about the alternative theories of cancer? If not, I think that is also okay!
Overall I think you did a really good job with this page, despite it being a complicated page to edit. You added some really great information and good sources! I am very impressed by how you were able to keep the page very neutral. Great job!
KateF87 ( talk) 15:14, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
What is the history of alternative cancer treatments? Lyang82 ( talk) 19:47, 10 February 2020 (UTC)lyang