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Dear @ Roxy the dog:, You reverted my edit on Shiatsu in which I replaced "good" with "scientific" to keep true to the source. I would like to know your reasoning for this decision as "return to last good" isn't an explanation. Thank you. ✯✬✩⛥ InterestGather ( talk) 15:33, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
Claims on Wikipedia must be backed by reliable sources. The cited source does not say that qi and meridians are nonexistent. They say that qi is unverifiable and meridians are not supported by evidence. We should also keep in mind that no claim in science is ever considered to have absolute certainty, only support or lack of support. I have updated the article to be more accurate to the source. Also I should note that the Accupressure article goes into more detail regarding meridians and we don't need to be duplicating it. The sources cited for this blurb do not apply to Shiatsu specifically but Chinese traditional medicine in general. MarshallKe ( talk) 13:36, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
Acupuncture meridians and acupoints are imaginary until proven otherwise.The Ernst source [2] says,
Concepts such as the qi of Chinese traditional medicine are mythsAre you saying that "imaginary" and "myth" do not imply "does not exist"? -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 16:10, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
Alexbrn thinks that using the phrase "their existence can neither be proved nor disproved" is plagiarism, and that reverting to the non-neutral blanket statement that's not supported by the cited sources is better. This is the power that the FRINGE guys have over neutrality, in the name in science. It needn't be that way. Truth and verifiability can coexist. Dicklyon ( talk) 19:04, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
I saw this on WP:AN3; is the dispute really over whether "meridians" (A) are imaginary, or (B) do not exist? We are edit warring over "imaginary" vs. "do not exist"? Is there a more serious issue that I should investigate? User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 00:23, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
Any statement to the effect that the existence of meridians/qi "can neither be proved nor disproved" is facilely incorrect and does not belong in Wikipedia any more than we would say such a statement for fairies or ghosts or any other of a number of other fantastical claims. Where people have made empirical arguments that meridians/qi can be observed, their evidence has been lacking. To the extent that some claim you cannot observe the phenomenon that means that the claim has left the realm of empirical reality and stating jejune commentary over "proof or disproof" is something best left for your personal blogs. jps ( talk) 02:55, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
Does WP contains statements asserting the nonexistence of fairies?Wrong question. Better questions, "Does WP contains statements asserting that the existence of fairies can neither be proved nor disproved?" FTFY. It doesn't matter whether "plenty of people" think anything. Surveying the beliefs of plenty of people is not how we decide whether we WP:ASSERT a thing or say it's just, like, your opinion, man. jps ( talk) 11:17, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
Articles on mythical topics like qi and fairies should contain neither an assertion that they do not exist....Why shouldn't we have assertions of non-existence? We have reliable sources which make it clear that these things do not exist as typically argued, and it is fair to be up front about that. Of course, there are ways to do this that do not involve beating a reader over the head with clunkiness of wording. I'm reminded of all the times I cringe when the adjective "false" is inserted into news-stories about some inane thing the 45th President of the United States said, but occasionally there is nothing for it but to be up front. More to the point, the sources we have which indicate clearly that meridians and qi do not exist always do so in the context of claims that there is physiological or anatomical evidence of such. The claims of practitioners that they can "see" these things with third eyes or reiki or whatever other vaguely empirical argument are the contexts where, "Yeah, not really." needs to be explained so that readers are not confused. This can be done through simple David Hume-esque "Of Miracles" style which does not pass judgment on the believer but simply points out that within the phenomenology of "things known" that have observable effects, such things do not exist. Blunt statements can be jarring, but that is no reason to enact a prohibition on being honest to our readers. jps ( talk) 12:52, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
A thread has been opened since some time at the fringe theories noticeboard. Is there a reason why this is still being discussed here rather than there? Anyway, I have put up a proposal there, so I would like to invite comments on that. If it is preferred I put up my proposal here, I can copy it –just let me know. Thanks, ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 02:49, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
A number of editors here agreed on the wording (not necessarily the sources) below. I have skimmed through a number of sources, but found that the ones already cited in the article worked well enough (better sources could and should certainly be found, but for now these should suffice). Comments are welcome! ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 02:11, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
The practice of shiatsu is based on the traditional Chinese concept of qi, which is sometimes described as an "energy flow". [1] This energy flow is supposed to be channeled through certain pathways in the human body, known as meridians, thus causing a variety of effects. [1] Despite the fact that many practitioners use these ideas in explaining shiatsu, [2] neither meridians nor qi exist as observable natural phenomena. [3]
References
exist as observable natural phenomenais using a rather formal wording that is not present in the source, but MjolnirPants'
neither meridians nor qi have ever been shown to existis already much closer.
Neither meridians nor qi exist, on the other hand, is the furthest from the source of all four options on the table: Ernst 2013 explicitly treats of these concepts in terms of their empirical verifiability, saying that qi is unverifiable and that meridians are verifiable but have not actually been verified. As a fifth alternative, Ernst 2019, p. 193 has
These are philosophical concepts at best but lack scientific and biological plausibility, which we might perhaps paraphrase with
neither meridians nor qi are scientifically plausible concepts. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 05:31, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
acupuncture meridians and acupoints are imaginary until proven otherwise. However, Hall clearly is an opinionated source, which would necessitate us to hedge this with something like "According to the physician and skeptic Harriet Hall, ...". But that is clearly undesirable here, since it would have the opposite effect from the one we intend (i.e., conveying that not only according to skeptics, but according to the scientific community at large these concepts have no credibility). Edzard Ernst 2013 does call qi a myth, but this doesn't summarize his argument, which revolves around the unverifiability of the concept (comparing it to God and to Russell's teapot): the argument every time is that these concepts either cannot or have not been shown to exist, and it would tendentious to reduce this to "mythical", "imaginary", "does not exist", etc. In any case, other non-opinionated sources like the Cancer Research UK or Ernst 2019 do not use such words at all, which makes it clear that it would be undue for us to do so in this context. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 07:44, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
obfuscating the description of the mainstream views of the scientific community(as WP:PSCI puts it) is quite absurd. They're exactly the kind of thing a scientist would say when speaking for a broad public, and it is indeed what we find in the sources. Saying that they're mythical or imaginary would in many contexts be potentially offensive, as well as less informative, and so they tend to avoid that (as a matter of fact, we are also supposed to prefer nonjudgmental language and to avoid disparaging our subject). But quite simply, if the sources generally avoid it, we do too. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 09:47, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
the existence of qi can neither be proven nor disproven, and though Russel's teapot (also cited by Ernst) implies that what cannot be proven does not need to be disproven to be extremely unlikely, it does not imply that what cannot be proven is thereby disproven. Simply put, while the existence of qi is not a verifiable fact and therefore rather unlikely, its inexistence also isn't a verifiable fact. That's why Ernst 2013 doesn't say it does not exist: strictly (philosophically) speaking such a claim is untenable, and it's enough for him that qi is empirically unverifiable to argue that is has no place in science. Ernst 2013 also explicitly says that qi enjoys the same status as religious faith. If so, claims of its existence or inexistence are as factual as claims about the existence or inexistence of God. Ernst's whole argument is that science does not work with such unverifiable claims. Most importantly, other sources also plainly do avoid to say that qi doesn't exist (there's not one source saying it), and outright denying this verifiable fact (I encourage you to verify it) won't make it any less true. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 13:33, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
namedropping policies does not an argument make.Actually, it does. In fact, policy-based arguments are the best arguments to use on WP. If you don't think those principles apply, then feel free to read them. Nothing you've said here or at FTN does anything to undermine the fact that RSes state these things don't exist, and as this is not a BLP issue, there's literally no other acceptable argument for why we should not say so.
concepts such as the qi of Chinese traditional medicine are myths, he goes on by saying that they
enjoy the same status as religious faiths, precisely in the sense that
the existence of qi can neither be proven nor disproven(note that this is what he directly says about its existence). If you think of how, e.g., biblical scholars use the word "myth", it should be clear that referring to something as a myth is not the same as directly denying it occurred or existed. There are philosophical, methodological, and sociocultural reasons for avoiding that kind of claim (as I also explained above), and Ernst 2013 is using the word myth to clarify his broader argument that science cannot and does not work with unverifiable claims (as myths certainly are). Other sources like the Cancer Research UK page and Ernst 2019 also don't claim inexistence. If we are going to claim it, it should at least be qualified as in Jps's
as observable natural phenomena, which I still like (though I would also endorse
neither meridians nor qi have ever been shown to exist). ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 14:52, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
Despite the fact that many practitioners use these ideas in explaining shiatsu, neither meridians nor qi exist.I would only ask everyone to reflect upon how weird this really sounds, and why that could be. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 16:25, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
That is an acute comment.
Neither qi nor meridians exist.to
Neither qi nor meridians exist as observable natural phenomena., removed the 'disputed tag', and commented that "we're done". But that seems premature, given the fact that they seem to be the only one to disagree with the whole first part explaining what qi and meridians are supposed to be. The whole discussion until now has been focused on the admittedly difficult last part, but is there a consensus to leave out the first part of the proposal per Alexbrn's edit? My whole point of writing this was to give it some context. Most people seemed to agree with it before? ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 19:20, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
I'm not sure I entirely understand your concern. We're not saying it's a formal description, just that it's "sometimes described" that way? Perhaps we should look for a source on Chinese philosophy that does give a more formal description? One other alternative is to have "sometimes translated as "energy flow"": the fact that we're dealing with a Chinese word here definitely adds to the difficulty. By the way, describing it as "energy" is not entirely metaphorical, and certainly not apocryphal: did you know that the word "energy" derives from Greek ἐνέργειᾰ (enérgeia), lit. "being-at-work", meaning "activity, operation, vigour"? This word (and its equivalents in other languages, like the Arabic fiʿl) was used in ancient and medieval natural philosophy to denote an active, moving, formative principle. Given the historical definition of life as the state of being self-moving or having an active principle of movement, it was in some contexts also identified as a vital principle (e.g., in Galenic medicine). The modern word energy (the capacity to do work) ultimately derives from this idea of an active principle, as contrasted with a passive principle (historically matter, in Newtonian physics perhaps mass). Our understanding of what energy is, and of what it is and isn't responsible for, has of course changed completely (most importantly, since the 17th century we do not longer identify it as being responsible for form), but there is a certain continuity that goes beyond etymology. Given this historical meaning of the word energy, and given the similarity between that historical concept and the concept of qi, both "vital" and "energy" are apt translations. Isn't it remarkable that the Greek word pneuma, used by Aristotle to denote the material carrier of the active and 'energetic' entity called vital heat, and used by Chrysippus to denote that energetic principle itself, literally means "air", and that qi also literally means "air"? G. E. R. Lloyd, one of the most well-respected historians of ancient philosophy and science, has written a number of books on this which are still on my reading list. Anyway, even though the incoherent use of the word energy among modern-day esotericists also has a background in the historical meanings of the word as described above, the description of qi as "energy" in reliable sources does not necessarily derive from the popularity of qi among said esotericists, but has its own background in the comparative historiography of natural philosophy. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 14:50, 31 July 2021 (UTC)
[...] on the Chinese philosophical concept of qi, which is most often translated as "vital energy" or "vital force".This way, it's perhaps somewhat clearer that it's a philosophical concept (Ernst 2019 also refers to qi and related terms as "philosophical concepts at best"), that the meaning is not entirely fixed because of the language gap, and that it's more closely related to the idea of 'having a lot of energy' (as opposed to being tired) than to the modern scientific concept. I personally find linking to Energy (esotericism) just as misleading as linking to Vitalism (as the Qi article does for "vital force"), but I'll leave that to your discretion. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 20:44, 31 July 2021 (UTC)
I think you didn't grasp what I was saying. We're talking about a 2300-year old philosophical concept here (it originated in the School of Naturalists, third century BCE) that the most prominent historians of philosophy and science usually describe as a "vital energy or vital force". There's no way that this expert usage is colloquial, or simple. These scholars all agree with each other, and in most cases they give a number of alternative translations themselves. They do, however, go on to use the term qi after this initial explanation, as is common with foreign-language philosophical terms that have no direct equivalent in English, and which commonly results in the absence of one stable English term. If we really want to make it clear that the translation is unstable, the best way to do that is probably to give one literal translation and then a number of common translations. That way, we are almost literally saying that the translations given are inexact and do not correspond with the original meaning of the term (the case of pneuma is fairly similar by the way, as can be glanced from the lead of our article on it). For example:
The practice of shiatsu is based on the Chinese philosophical concept of qi, [1] which literally means "air" but is commonly translated as "vital energy" or "vital force". [2]
References
Liu 2015 is a particularly good sample source here, since it's an edited volume written by top-tier experts in the field (the different page numbers refer to different scholars), who consistently gloss it as either "vital energy" or "vital force". ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 04:53, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
The practice of shiatsu is based on the traditional Chinese concept of qi, which can be loosely translated as "flowing vital energy".
I think the problem here is the jps only knows energy and force and power and such from the POV of modern physics. These terms have a long history (including in English) that predates the Newtonian physics that gave them them their current technical meanings. So by inexact or colloquial he means non-technical or something like that. I find colloquial means "used in ordinary or familiar conversation; not formal or literary", but that's not the point here; the old non-technical meanings are still common in formal and literary writing. And the first dictionary definition of energy (that I find via a web search) is of that type: "the strength and vitality required for sustained physical or mental activity – changes in the levels of vitamins can affect energy and well-being". If we expand our POV a bit, we can cover the subject better. The narrow POVs of western medicine and modern physics and not doing this subject justice. Dicklyon ( talk) 16:41, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
I admit they do conflate it with physical energyThen we're done. We don't have to argue about whether they always conflate it with energy only that it sometimes happens as that was the point I was trying to make earlier this week. jps ( talk) 23:05, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
If you just mean that someone somewhere has conflated the meanings of "energy", that's fineThat's what I meant. And it is found in a number of sources we have considered including the one you identified. jps ( talk) 04:26, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
@ Apaugasma: The community would be much more relaxed if fringe proponents would not fight tooth and nail against calling a pseudoscience a pseudoscience. The editing atmosphere will remain toxic as long as vandals and POV-warriors fight against that. It's like a war zone, while the authors of Britannica do not have to fend off constant attacks by advocates of pseudosciences. Many POV-pushers perfectly understand it is them against Big Science, or Big Pharma, or Bible scholarship from the Ivy League. tgeorgescu ( talk) 23:40, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
Sorry to drudge up the terribly long debate above, but the opening sentence: "Shiatsu is a pseudoscientific form of Japanese bodywork based on concepts in traditional Chinese medicine such as the use of qi meridians," comes across as saying the practice itself is pseudoscientific rather than it being rooted in pseudoscientific claims. Adjacent articles to Shiatsu, such as the acupressure and tui na article, make the points "There is no reliable evidence for the effectiveness of acupressure," and "Good evidence tui na is an effective treatment and its safety is poorly understood." but it is not stated as a pseudoscientifiic practice as Shiatsu is, though I would argue Shiatsu is more comparable to acupressure and tui na than to, say, measuring skull shapes. More to this point: I would consider Shiatsu to be a form of massage, something that is demonstrated to have positive effects, with a pseudoscientific theory behind its efficacy and practices, rather than a form of quakery in itself; license massage therapists may practice Shiatsu as an alternative to a standard Swedish massage, something which according to Wikipedia itself gives some evidence of being beneficial Massage#Medical_and_therapeutic_use, psychologists and neurologists don't measure your skull shape to determine your cognitive functioning.
I've tentatively made an edit to clarify this, but as I am not an experienced editor I give deference to others to reverse the change. FunctorialNonsense ( talk) 22:40, 27 October 2021 (UTC) FunctorialNonsense
More heat than light here and is definitely not WP:FOC |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
The article God currently says "In monotheistic thought, God is conceived of as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. God is usually conceived of as being omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omnibenevolent as well as having an eternal and necessary existence. God is most often held to be incorporeal, with said characteristic being related to conceptions of transcendence or immanence." Obviously too wordy, giving "credence to disproven nonsense" as Alexbrn would say. Should we just change it to "God does not exist"? Especially given the occasional report of healing miracles and such, this should fall under the same FRINGE and MEDRS hammers as Alexbrn wants to apply to Shiatsu, no? Dicklyon ( talk) 17:54, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
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The joys of full-protection... I'll come back to this later then. Shiatsu has a brief mention put in context in Regal's Pseudoscience - A critical encyclopedia's "Alternative medicine" section. It could be used to add a little more context in this article's "description", possibly also to mention that it's listed in this encyclopedia, that might support the pseudoscientific mention (that currently lacks any citations). — Paleo Neonate – 16:17, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
I made a sequence of four tiny edits to improve the article, sticking close to cited sources and using a good survey source instead a POV editorial by a quack chaser. Apaugasma reverted the whole lot with summary I think these changes are taking the tone of the article further away from the sources rather than the opposite; feel free to discuss at the talk. Most of these are already discussed above, and he didn't give any particulars of what he objected to or why sticking closer to what the supporting sources say makes him think the tone "further away from the sources". This is very odd. So I reverted his revert, and am seeking any particular reasons why any of these changes would not be regarded as improvements. Dicklyon ( talk) 18:57, 31 July 2021 (UTC)
The changes in question are these:
several case reports, and he himself implies that there are more examples. In any case, your change is unduly minimizing things by stressing that there is only one case each time. This is not at all the tone of the sources (including Wada et al. 2005), who stress the opposite.
Tsuboi reported a case of retinal and cerebral artery embolism directly caused by shiatsu massage of the neck. Elliott and Taylor also reported two cases of carotid dissection that occurred after use of a shiatsu-type massaging machine. We would therefore like to draw attention to the possibility that shiatsu massage of the neck may cause serious neurological complications.They want to draw attention: they're not exactly minimizing it, but rather suggesting that this may happen more often than reported. The Ernst paper you cite is about massage therapies in general, and looks at a whole range of them. The
serious adverse events are probably true raritiesapplies to massage therapies in general, not to shiatsu specifically, but the phrase
the majority of adverse effects were associated with exotic types of manual massagedoes apply to shiatsu: elsewhere in the paper, Ernst writes:
Clearly, one should differentiate between various approaches. The above findings suggest that massage by non‐professional and forceful techniques like shiatsu, urut and Rolfing are relatively often associated with adverse events.He also writes that the small amount of reported adverse effects
could be due to under‐reporting. The tone of the sources is clearly that more problems may be lurking, not at all that there are only a few isolated and/or uncertain cases. Ernst 2019 has a big red thumbs down for the safety aspects of shiatsu, and we should convey that tone of warning. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 11:54, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
There is no evidence that shiatsu will prevent or cure any disease., though I suspect that we have "good evidence" now because some of the bad evidence (the low-quality studies Robinson et al. 2011 speak of) falsely claims health benefits. If this is incorrect, we can strike "good". However, as I said, changing this to there is no scientific evidence unduly suggests that there may be evidence of another kind. This has been suggested on this talk page before (e.g., by InterestGather) and has been rejected (e.g., by Alexbrn and by Roxy the dog) for similar reasons as the ones I have given. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 11:54, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
Acupuncture is not science. It is a quasi-religious set of practices, so I personally don't think it's pseudoscience either (though the study of it very often is). It is definitely pseudomedicine. The thing is, though, that what we think doesn't matter a hill of beans, it's what the reliable sources say, and no reliable source on the subject of the demarcation issue between science and pseudoscience, has come down in favour of acupuncture being science.
What science tells us about acupuncture is that it doesn't matter where you pit the needles or whether you even insert them, so acupoints are fictional, the claimed "meridians" have no associated anatomy and have never been shown to exist, and a large part of acupuncture's popularity in the West stems from a propaganda stunt by Mao in the 1970s. We know it does not work for most things, we know that the effect size in all studies is small, we know that the more scope there is for bias, the greater the chance of a positive outcome from a trial, we know that no study from China has ever found a negative result, and we know that the evidence trend is firmly against it. Guy ( Help!) 00:03, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
I don't think Ernst's big red thumbs-down opinion can be considered neutral, nor within what WP:MEDRS requires.When the world's most prominent expert on a subject writes a book based on all the available primary sources and systematic reviews, and you somehow don't consider their conclusion to be neutral and/or not within what MEDRS requires, I personally believe that your lack of understanding of our policies is serious enough to warrant a topic ban on articles related to medicine, broadly construed. But that's just my personal belief, and I have no desire to engage in any kind of fight with you, so please forgive me for expressing this sincerely held opinion. I also will leave it up to other editors to decide whether they agree with the changes you have made to the article or not. Respectfully, ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 00:38, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
This is a ‘scientists’ view of shiatsu and seems to focus on ‘disproving it’ as opposed to being an open and unbiased description of the tradition 82.40.149.126 ( talk) 23:18, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
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![]() | Equine Shiatsu was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 19 April 2012 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Shiatsu. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here. |
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![]() | Arbitration Ruling on the Treatment of Pseudoscience In December of 2006 the Arbitration Committee ruled on guidelines for the presentation of topics as pseudoscience in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience. The final decision was as follows:
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This page has archives. Sections older than 180 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 5 sections are present. |
Dear @ Roxy the dog:, You reverted my edit on Shiatsu in which I replaced "good" with "scientific" to keep true to the source. I would like to know your reasoning for this decision as "return to last good" isn't an explanation. Thank you. ✯✬✩⛥ InterestGather ( talk) 15:33, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
Claims on Wikipedia must be backed by reliable sources. The cited source does not say that qi and meridians are nonexistent. They say that qi is unverifiable and meridians are not supported by evidence. We should also keep in mind that no claim in science is ever considered to have absolute certainty, only support or lack of support. I have updated the article to be more accurate to the source. Also I should note that the Accupressure article goes into more detail regarding meridians and we don't need to be duplicating it. The sources cited for this blurb do not apply to Shiatsu specifically but Chinese traditional medicine in general. MarshallKe ( talk) 13:36, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
Acupuncture meridians and acupoints are imaginary until proven otherwise.The Ernst source [2] says,
Concepts such as the qi of Chinese traditional medicine are mythsAre you saying that "imaginary" and "myth" do not imply "does not exist"? -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 16:10, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
Alexbrn thinks that using the phrase "their existence can neither be proved nor disproved" is plagiarism, and that reverting to the non-neutral blanket statement that's not supported by the cited sources is better. This is the power that the FRINGE guys have over neutrality, in the name in science. It needn't be that way. Truth and verifiability can coexist. Dicklyon ( talk) 19:04, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
I saw this on WP:AN3; is the dispute really over whether "meridians" (A) are imaginary, or (B) do not exist? We are edit warring over "imaginary" vs. "do not exist"? Is there a more serious issue that I should investigate? User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 00:23, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
Any statement to the effect that the existence of meridians/qi "can neither be proved nor disproved" is facilely incorrect and does not belong in Wikipedia any more than we would say such a statement for fairies or ghosts or any other of a number of other fantastical claims. Where people have made empirical arguments that meridians/qi can be observed, their evidence has been lacking. To the extent that some claim you cannot observe the phenomenon that means that the claim has left the realm of empirical reality and stating jejune commentary over "proof or disproof" is something best left for your personal blogs. jps ( talk) 02:55, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
Does WP contains statements asserting the nonexistence of fairies?Wrong question. Better questions, "Does WP contains statements asserting that the existence of fairies can neither be proved nor disproved?" FTFY. It doesn't matter whether "plenty of people" think anything. Surveying the beliefs of plenty of people is not how we decide whether we WP:ASSERT a thing or say it's just, like, your opinion, man. jps ( talk) 11:17, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
Articles on mythical topics like qi and fairies should contain neither an assertion that they do not exist....Why shouldn't we have assertions of non-existence? We have reliable sources which make it clear that these things do not exist as typically argued, and it is fair to be up front about that. Of course, there are ways to do this that do not involve beating a reader over the head with clunkiness of wording. I'm reminded of all the times I cringe when the adjective "false" is inserted into news-stories about some inane thing the 45th President of the United States said, but occasionally there is nothing for it but to be up front. More to the point, the sources we have which indicate clearly that meridians and qi do not exist always do so in the context of claims that there is physiological or anatomical evidence of such. The claims of practitioners that they can "see" these things with third eyes or reiki or whatever other vaguely empirical argument are the contexts where, "Yeah, not really." needs to be explained so that readers are not confused. This can be done through simple David Hume-esque "Of Miracles" style which does not pass judgment on the believer but simply points out that within the phenomenology of "things known" that have observable effects, such things do not exist. Blunt statements can be jarring, but that is no reason to enact a prohibition on being honest to our readers. jps ( talk) 12:52, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
A thread has been opened since some time at the fringe theories noticeboard. Is there a reason why this is still being discussed here rather than there? Anyway, I have put up a proposal there, so I would like to invite comments on that. If it is preferred I put up my proposal here, I can copy it –just let me know. Thanks, ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 02:49, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
A number of editors here agreed on the wording (not necessarily the sources) below. I have skimmed through a number of sources, but found that the ones already cited in the article worked well enough (better sources could and should certainly be found, but for now these should suffice). Comments are welcome! ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 02:11, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
The practice of shiatsu is based on the traditional Chinese concept of qi, which is sometimes described as an "energy flow". [1] This energy flow is supposed to be channeled through certain pathways in the human body, known as meridians, thus causing a variety of effects. [1] Despite the fact that many practitioners use these ideas in explaining shiatsu, [2] neither meridians nor qi exist as observable natural phenomena. [3]
References
exist as observable natural phenomenais using a rather formal wording that is not present in the source, but MjolnirPants'
neither meridians nor qi have ever been shown to existis already much closer.
Neither meridians nor qi exist, on the other hand, is the furthest from the source of all four options on the table: Ernst 2013 explicitly treats of these concepts in terms of their empirical verifiability, saying that qi is unverifiable and that meridians are verifiable but have not actually been verified. As a fifth alternative, Ernst 2019, p. 193 has
These are philosophical concepts at best but lack scientific and biological plausibility, which we might perhaps paraphrase with
neither meridians nor qi are scientifically plausible concepts. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 05:31, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
acupuncture meridians and acupoints are imaginary until proven otherwise. However, Hall clearly is an opinionated source, which would necessitate us to hedge this with something like "According to the physician and skeptic Harriet Hall, ...". But that is clearly undesirable here, since it would have the opposite effect from the one we intend (i.e., conveying that not only according to skeptics, but according to the scientific community at large these concepts have no credibility). Edzard Ernst 2013 does call qi a myth, but this doesn't summarize his argument, which revolves around the unverifiability of the concept (comparing it to God and to Russell's teapot): the argument every time is that these concepts either cannot or have not been shown to exist, and it would tendentious to reduce this to "mythical", "imaginary", "does not exist", etc. In any case, other non-opinionated sources like the Cancer Research UK or Ernst 2019 do not use such words at all, which makes it clear that it would be undue for us to do so in this context. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 07:44, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
obfuscating the description of the mainstream views of the scientific community(as WP:PSCI puts it) is quite absurd. They're exactly the kind of thing a scientist would say when speaking for a broad public, and it is indeed what we find in the sources. Saying that they're mythical or imaginary would in many contexts be potentially offensive, as well as less informative, and so they tend to avoid that (as a matter of fact, we are also supposed to prefer nonjudgmental language and to avoid disparaging our subject). But quite simply, if the sources generally avoid it, we do too. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 09:47, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
the existence of qi can neither be proven nor disproven, and though Russel's teapot (also cited by Ernst) implies that what cannot be proven does not need to be disproven to be extremely unlikely, it does not imply that what cannot be proven is thereby disproven. Simply put, while the existence of qi is not a verifiable fact and therefore rather unlikely, its inexistence also isn't a verifiable fact. That's why Ernst 2013 doesn't say it does not exist: strictly (philosophically) speaking such a claim is untenable, and it's enough for him that qi is empirically unverifiable to argue that is has no place in science. Ernst 2013 also explicitly says that qi enjoys the same status as religious faith. If so, claims of its existence or inexistence are as factual as claims about the existence or inexistence of God. Ernst's whole argument is that science does not work with such unverifiable claims. Most importantly, other sources also plainly do avoid to say that qi doesn't exist (there's not one source saying it), and outright denying this verifiable fact (I encourage you to verify it) won't make it any less true. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 13:33, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
namedropping policies does not an argument make.Actually, it does. In fact, policy-based arguments are the best arguments to use on WP. If you don't think those principles apply, then feel free to read them. Nothing you've said here or at FTN does anything to undermine the fact that RSes state these things don't exist, and as this is not a BLP issue, there's literally no other acceptable argument for why we should not say so.
concepts such as the qi of Chinese traditional medicine are myths, he goes on by saying that they
enjoy the same status as religious faiths, precisely in the sense that
the existence of qi can neither be proven nor disproven(note that this is what he directly says about its existence). If you think of how, e.g., biblical scholars use the word "myth", it should be clear that referring to something as a myth is not the same as directly denying it occurred or existed. There are philosophical, methodological, and sociocultural reasons for avoiding that kind of claim (as I also explained above), and Ernst 2013 is using the word myth to clarify his broader argument that science cannot and does not work with unverifiable claims (as myths certainly are). Other sources like the Cancer Research UK page and Ernst 2019 also don't claim inexistence. If we are going to claim it, it should at least be qualified as in Jps's
as observable natural phenomena, which I still like (though I would also endorse
neither meridians nor qi have ever been shown to exist). ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 14:52, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
Despite the fact that many practitioners use these ideas in explaining shiatsu, neither meridians nor qi exist.I would only ask everyone to reflect upon how weird this really sounds, and why that could be. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 16:25, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
That is an acute comment.
Neither qi nor meridians exist.to
Neither qi nor meridians exist as observable natural phenomena., removed the 'disputed tag', and commented that "we're done". But that seems premature, given the fact that they seem to be the only one to disagree with the whole first part explaining what qi and meridians are supposed to be. The whole discussion until now has been focused on the admittedly difficult last part, but is there a consensus to leave out the first part of the proposal per Alexbrn's edit? My whole point of writing this was to give it some context. Most people seemed to agree with it before? ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 19:20, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
I'm not sure I entirely understand your concern. We're not saying it's a formal description, just that it's "sometimes described" that way? Perhaps we should look for a source on Chinese philosophy that does give a more formal description? One other alternative is to have "sometimes translated as "energy flow"": the fact that we're dealing with a Chinese word here definitely adds to the difficulty. By the way, describing it as "energy" is not entirely metaphorical, and certainly not apocryphal: did you know that the word "energy" derives from Greek ἐνέργειᾰ (enérgeia), lit. "being-at-work", meaning "activity, operation, vigour"? This word (and its equivalents in other languages, like the Arabic fiʿl) was used in ancient and medieval natural philosophy to denote an active, moving, formative principle. Given the historical definition of life as the state of being self-moving or having an active principle of movement, it was in some contexts also identified as a vital principle (e.g., in Galenic medicine). The modern word energy (the capacity to do work) ultimately derives from this idea of an active principle, as contrasted with a passive principle (historically matter, in Newtonian physics perhaps mass). Our understanding of what energy is, and of what it is and isn't responsible for, has of course changed completely (most importantly, since the 17th century we do not longer identify it as being responsible for form), but there is a certain continuity that goes beyond etymology. Given this historical meaning of the word energy, and given the similarity between that historical concept and the concept of qi, both "vital" and "energy" are apt translations. Isn't it remarkable that the Greek word pneuma, used by Aristotle to denote the material carrier of the active and 'energetic' entity called vital heat, and used by Chrysippus to denote that energetic principle itself, literally means "air", and that qi also literally means "air"? G. E. R. Lloyd, one of the most well-respected historians of ancient philosophy and science, has written a number of books on this which are still on my reading list. Anyway, even though the incoherent use of the word energy among modern-day esotericists also has a background in the historical meanings of the word as described above, the description of qi as "energy" in reliable sources does not necessarily derive from the popularity of qi among said esotericists, but has its own background in the comparative historiography of natural philosophy. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 14:50, 31 July 2021 (UTC)
[...] on the Chinese philosophical concept of qi, which is most often translated as "vital energy" or "vital force".This way, it's perhaps somewhat clearer that it's a philosophical concept (Ernst 2019 also refers to qi and related terms as "philosophical concepts at best"), that the meaning is not entirely fixed because of the language gap, and that it's more closely related to the idea of 'having a lot of energy' (as opposed to being tired) than to the modern scientific concept. I personally find linking to Energy (esotericism) just as misleading as linking to Vitalism (as the Qi article does for "vital force"), but I'll leave that to your discretion. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 20:44, 31 July 2021 (UTC)
I think you didn't grasp what I was saying. We're talking about a 2300-year old philosophical concept here (it originated in the School of Naturalists, third century BCE) that the most prominent historians of philosophy and science usually describe as a "vital energy or vital force". There's no way that this expert usage is colloquial, or simple. These scholars all agree with each other, and in most cases they give a number of alternative translations themselves. They do, however, go on to use the term qi after this initial explanation, as is common with foreign-language philosophical terms that have no direct equivalent in English, and which commonly results in the absence of one stable English term. If we really want to make it clear that the translation is unstable, the best way to do that is probably to give one literal translation and then a number of common translations. That way, we are almost literally saying that the translations given are inexact and do not correspond with the original meaning of the term (the case of pneuma is fairly similar by the way, as can be glanced from the lead of our article on it). For example:
The practice of shiatsu is based on the Chinese philosophical concept of qi, [1] which literally means "air" but is commonly translated as "vital energy" or "vital force". [2]
References
Liu 2015 is a particularly good sample source here, since it's an edited volume written by top-tier experts in the field (the different page numbers refer to different scholars), who consistently gloss it as either "vital energy" or "vital force". ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 04:53, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
The practice of shiatsu is based on the traditional Chinese concept of qi, which can be loosely translated as "flowing vital energy".
I think the problem here is the jps only knows energy and force and power and such from the POV of modern physics. These terms have a long history (including in English) that predates the Newtonian physics that gave them them their current technical meanings. So by inexact or colloquial he means non-technical or something like that. I find colloquial means "used in ordinary or familiar conversation; not formal or literary", but that's not the point here; the old non-technical meanings are still common in formal and literary writing. And the first dictionary definition of energy (that I find via a web search) is of that type: "the strength and vitality required for sustained physical or mental activity – changes in the levels of vitamins can affect energy and well-being". If we expand our POV a bit, we can cover the subject better. The narrow POVs of western medicine and modern physics and not doing this subject justice. Dicklyon ( talk) 16:41, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
I admit they do conflate it with physical energyThen we're done. We don't have to argue about whether they always conflate it with energy only that it sometimes happens as that was the point I was trying to make earlier this week. jps ( talk) 23:05, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
If you just mean that someone somewhere has conflated the meanings of "energy", that's fineThat's what I meant. And it is found in a number of sources we have considered including the one you identified. jps ( talk) 04:26, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
@ Apaugasma: The community would be much more relaxed if fringe proponents would not fight tooth and nail against calling a pseudoscience a pseudoscience. The editing atmosphere will remain toxic as long as vandals and POV-warriors fight against that. It's like a war zone, while the authors of Britannica do not have to fend off constant attacks by advocates of pseudosciences. Many POV-pushers perfectly understand it is them against Big Science, or Big Pharma, or Bible scholarship from the Ivy League. tgeorgescu ( talk) 23:40, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
Sorry to drudge up the terribly long debate above, but the opening sentence: "Shiatsu is a pseudoscientific form of Japanese bodywork based on concepts in traditional Chinese medicine such as the use of qi meridians," comes across as saying the practice itself is pseudoscientific rather than it being rooted in pseudoscientific claims. Adjacent articles to Shiatsu, such as the acupressure and tui na article, make the points "There is no reliable evidence for the effectiveness of acupressure," and "Good evidence tui na is an effective treatment and its safety is poorly understood." but it is not stated as a pseudoscientifiic practice as Shiatsu is, though I would argue Shiatsu is more comparable to acupressure and tui na than to, say, measuring skull shapes. More to this point: I would consider Shiatsu to be a form of massage, something that is demonstrated to have positive effects, with a pseudoscientific theory behind its efficacy and practices, rather than a form of quakery in itself; license massage therapists may practice Shiatsu as an alternative to a standard Swedish massage, something which according to Wikipedia itself gives some evidence of being beneficial Massage#Medical_and_therapeutic_use, psychologists and neurologists don't measure your skull shape to determine your cognitive functioning.
I've tentatively made an edit to clarify this, but as I am not an experienced editor I give deference to others to reverse the change. FunctorialNonsense ( talk) 22:40, 27 October 2021 (UTC) FunctorialNonsense
More heat than light here and is definitely not WP:FOC |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
The article God currently says "In monotheistic thought, God is conceived of as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. God is usually conceived of as being omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omnibenevolent as well as having an eternal and necessary existence. God is most often held to be incorporeal, with said characteristic being related to conceptions of transcendence or immanence." Obviously too wordy, giving "credence to disproven nonsense" as Alexbrn would say. Should we just change it to "God does not exist"? Especially given the occasional report of healing miracles and such, this should fall under the same FRINGE and MEDRS hammers as Alexbrn wants to apply to Shiatsu, no? Dicklyon ( talk) 17:54, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
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The joys of full-protection... I'll come back to this later then. Shiatsu has a brief mention put in context in Regal's Pseudoscience - A critical encyclopedia's "Alternative medicine" section. It could be used to add a little more context in this article's "description", possibly also to mention that it's listed in this encyclopedia, that might support the pseudoscientific mention (that currently lacks any citations). — Paleo Neonate – 16:17, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
I made a sequence of four tiny edits to improve the article, sticking close to cited sources and using a good survey source instead a POV editorial by a quack chaser. Apaugasma reverted the whole lot with summary I think these changes are taking the tone of the article further away from the sources rather than the opposite; feel free to discuss at the talk. Most of these are already discussed above, and he didn't give any particulars of what he objected to or why sticking closer to what the supporting sources say makes him think the tone "further away from the sources". This is very odd. So I reverted his revert, and am seeking any particular reasons why any of these changes would not be regarded as improvements. Dicklyon ( talk) 18:57, 31 July 2021 (UTC)
The changes in question are these:
several case reports, and he himself implies that there are more examples. In any case, your change is unduly minimizing things by stressing that there is only one case each time. This is not at all the tone of the sources (including Wada et al. 2005), who stress the opposite.
Tsuboi reported a case of retinal and cerebral artery embolism directly caused by shiatsu massage of the neck. Elliott and Taylor also reported two cases of carotid dissection that occurred after use of a shiatsu-type massaging machine. We would therefore like to draw attention to the possibility that shiatsu massage of the neck may cause serious neurological complications.They want to draw attention: they're not exactly minimizing it, but rather suggesting that this may happen more often than reported. The Ernst paper you cite is about massage therapies in general, and looks at a whole range of them. The
serious adverse events are probably true raritiesapplies to massage therapies in general, not to shiatsu specifically, but the phrase
the majority of adverse effects were associated with exotic types of manual massagedoes apply to shiatsu: elsewhere in the paper, Ernst writes:
Clearly, one should differentiate between various approaches. The above findings suggest that massage by non‐professional and forceful techniques like shiatsu, urut and Rolfing are relatively often associated with adverse events.He also writes that the small amount of reported adverse effects
could be due to under‐reporting. The tone of the sources is clearly that more problems may be lurking, not at all that there are only a few isolated and/or uncertain cases. Ernst 2019 has a big red thumbs down for the safety aspects of shiatsu, and we should convey that tone of warning. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 11:54, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
There is no evidence that shiatsu will prevent or cure any disease., though I suspect that we have "good evidence" now because some of the bad evidence (the low-quality studies Robinson et al. 2011 speak of) falsely claims health benefits. If this is incorrect, we can strike "good". However, as I said, changing this to there is no scientific evidence unduly suggests that there may be evidence of another kind. This has been suggested on this talk page before (e.g., by InterestGather) and has been rejected (e.g., by Alexbrn and by Roxy the dog) for similar reasons as the ones I have given. ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 11:54, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
Acupuncture is not science. It is a quasi-religious set of practices, so I personally don't think it's pseudoscience either (though the study of it very often is). It is definitely pseudomedicine. The thing is, though, that what we think doesn't matter a hill of beans, it's what the reliable sources say, and no reliable source on the subject of the demarcation issue between science and pseudoscience, has come down in favour of acupuncture being science.
What science tells us about acupuncture is that it doesn't matter where you pit the needles or whether you even insert them, so acupoints are fictional, the claimed "meridians" have no associated anatomy and have never been shown to exist, and a large part of acupuncture's popularity in the West stems from a propaganda stunt by Mao in the 1970s. We know it does not work for most things, we know that the effect size in all studies is small, we know that the more scope there is for bias, the greater the chance of a positive outcome from a trial, we know that no study from China has ever found a negative result, and we know that the evidence trend is firmly against it. Guy ( Help!) 00:03, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
I don't think Ernst's big red thumbs-down opinion can be considered neutral, nor within what WP:MEDRS requires.When the world's most prominent expert on a subject writes a book based on all the available primary sources and systematic reviews, and you somehow don't consider their conclusion to be neutral and/or not within what MEDRS requires, I personally believe that your lack of understanding of our policies is serious enough to warrant a topic ban on articles related to medicine, broadly construed. But that's just my personal belief, and I have no desire to engage in any kind of fight with you, so please forgive me for expressing this sincerely held opinion. I also will leave it up to other editors to decide whether they agree with the changes you have made to the article or not. Respectfully, ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 00:38, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
This is a ‘scientists’ view of shiatsu and seems to focus on ‘disproving it’ as opposed to being an open and unbiased description of the tradition 82.40.149.126 ( talk) 23:18, 27 July 2022 (UTC)