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Regardless of the probity of adding an editor, they must be added on notification, and as such I consider Vassyana notified on this page regardless of Jossi's reverts. I also believe that editors must be added to this page when notified, and urge other editors to consider this diff. Unlike other editors, however, I will not edit war here. PouponOnToast ( talk) 18:55, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Proposed modification to the probation here. Lawrence § t/ e 19:24, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
I am posting this information on behalf of an editor who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of embroiling themselves in the homeopathy/pseudoscience conflict. (After checking their contributions to be sure, I can verify they are not involved in this conflict and have not been previously involved in conflict with ScienceApologist so far as I can tell.) This is simply being posted so that other sysops who are more familiar with the situation may review the circumstances. I am refraining from espousing my own opinion, instead simply organizing and presenting the evidence and arguments provided to me privately.
ScienceApologist ( talk · contribs) appears to be walking the border of disruption to make a point and using literalist, and potentially out-of-context, interpretations of the rules. There are also some continued edit warring and civility issues.
Jehochman warned ScienceApologist about edit warring on Rue. [1] SA blatantly copy/pasted the notice back to Jehochman. [2] This is a POINT and civility concern because Jehochman was not involved in edit warring on the article. [3] [4] SA reached four reverts on the article. [5] [6] [7] [8] This was reported and contrary to a plain review of the article history and edit summaries judged to not be a 3RR violation as somehow one revert was not a revert, and therefore it was "not a technical violation" of 3RR. (Specifically, the third edit was judged to not be a revert, but it was a partial reversion, which counts towards 3RR.) Levine2112 reverted up to the hard limit of three reverts, continuing and escalating the edit war. [9] [10] [11]
SA has POINTily framed the homeopathy issue of a plant's usage in homeopathic remedies, based on the known fact that homeopathic products are known to contain very little to none of the original production substance (though it is unquestionable that the original substances are used to create homeopathic preparations). [12] [13] To be fair, ScienceApologist has advocated for a centralized discussion of the issue, which may be a productive step. [14] [15] Discussion regarding this issue has also taken place at: Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_6#Deadly_nightshade and Wikipedia_talk:Neutral_point_of_view#Deadly_nightshade. SA appears to be dishonest in some of his dismissals, for example claiming that only homeopathic references make the claims (which is contrary to the discussions above and others SA has been aware of and/or involved in). [16]
ScienceApologist created WP:PROMINENCE as a redirect to WP:UNDUE based on the phrase "in proportion to the prominence of each" in that section. [17] He appears to be shifting the sands of UNDUE from the exclusion of extreme minority viewpoints to demanding that the claims be prominent. [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] These are distinctly different standards and the latter is at least a step removed from the meaning of the policy (which is simply indicating that things should be presented in proper proportion to their appearance in reliable sources). Creating a redirect to frame an ongoing argument is almost certainly a POINT violation. Furthermore, considering the ongoing and heated nature of this discussion, it is unlikely that SA was not aware that such a move would raise the heat of the conflict. On a related note, ScienceApologist is pushing principles of his own invention as though they were policy and claiming they are rooted in a "careful reading" of the rules. [24] [25]
It looks like SA is extremely dismissive of responses to him, characterizing responses he does not find convincing as essentially a lack of response. [26] [27] [28] [29] He also appears to be exhibiting bad faith assumptions about other editors, contrary to the ArbCom remedy. [30]
This dispute was raised on this noticeboard twice recently ( Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Editor disrupting editing with false claims of WP:PROMINENCE and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Clarification of Homeopathy Probation Edit Policy).
Please be aware these are not all relevant diffs, simply a random sampling of the most recent. It would probably be worth reviewing the actions and posts of other editors engaged with ScienceApologist, to take into account any possible baiting and to ensure all parties are treated equitably in this dispute. Thanks for your time and attention to this situation. Vassyana ( talk) 19:32, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
I don't like the fact that this discussion was closed on WP:ANI and then posted to a much less visible page. I don't think any action against SA is justified at this time. I dropped in on Talk:Deadly nightshade last night and I think that what SA is saying about sourcing is sensible. --Akhilleus ( talk) 20:04, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Do I get to know the identity of my accuser? Should I refute every diff's characterization point-by-point? What would the people here have me do? ScienceApologist ( talk) 20:32, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
[31] — Whig ( talk) 20:32, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
Admins who edit these articles, especially those who worked on them prior to the probation, are not exempt from probation. All users are bound, including admins. Lawrence § t/ e 22:37, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Per:
Lawrence § t/ e 22:41, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Good idea. One note, however - put the section header (==Admins==) on the protected page so that admins clicking "edit" by the section go to the right part, similar to RFA. PouponOnToast ( talk) 00:00, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
An editor is edit warning me in a content dispute. This probation may have unintended consquences. Quack Guru 00:07, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
PouponOnToast ( talk · contribs) - Creates this Wikipedia:DELETEHOMEOPATHY page. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 05:06, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
I'd like someone to please take a look at this. — Whig ( talk) 19:25, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
:|
east.718 at 21:04, February 2, 2008
Perhaps I misunderstood the purpose of article probation, but I thought it was supposed to stop edits like: [36] [37] [38] [39]. --Akhilleus ( talk) 20:30, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
I am respectfully questioning whether or not the admin Felonious Monk should be on the list of blocking admins given his vote to ban User:Whig here and User:Abridged here. A community ban seems like a pretty serious step, and there didn't seem to be any consensus that those bans were justified. Also, some evidence of involvement in the general area of homeopathy based on these edits: [42], [43]. (I'm not saying I agree with the edits or disagree; they may have been entirely appropriate, I'm just concerned about involvement in the subject area). Abridged talk 23:52, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Look, I was not disrupting. I was just doing what is supposted to be allowed. Why are you being so rude? Abridged talk 20:40, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
I reverted this addition to the talk page [44] by MartinPhi. I'm not sure what this falls under, but surely it falls under something, ie disruption. What has been doing on at Raymond's talk page has been going on in full view of the WP community, so it is not some big secret to anyone who has been editing over the past few days. That being said, the addition had no implications to further the homeopathy article. And he was already notified, prior to this, about the probation of the article. Prior to posting this, he added the passage back. Baegis ( talk) 06:45, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
I have left messages starting here (in this section), and here. Please do something about these editors. -- Fyslee / talk 07:29, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
Relax, everybody. Templating somebody's talk page could be viewed as provocation, but not vandalism. I think people can template their own talk page if they desire. Nobody is forced to visit Whig's talk page, so if he wants to make it a battle zone and suffer disruption, that is his business, so long as it is not being used to attack other editors, in which case we have a variety of control measures available. Jehochman Talk 14:08, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
Let me turn the question around. Please present a selection of diffs from your contribution history that show encyclopedic contributions, as opposed to argumentation (often in the form of politely phrased questions), lawyering over the rules, and lobbying for alt-med causes. [46] [47] [48] You have a very polite tone, but you seem to want to engage people in endless debates (stonewalling) and repeatedly make polite requests for information that is easily found. This all appears to be an effort to advance a content agenda. Jehochman Talk 17:06, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
The use of endless disruption and discussion can stop a consensus from forming, and is a serious form of stonewalling. It behooves editors who find themselves arguing against the good sources used (IOW failing to learn and change their POV) and against policies, to stop the objecting and sometimes simply be silent and allow things to progress forwards. Sometimes the question to be asked is "Why isn't there a consensus?" If it's because of contrarian obstinacy and stonewalling, then the lack of consensus is the fault of those who are stonewalling by their endless advocacy and pushing of minority and alternative agendas. Those POV may be allowed (and may even be required) in articles if properly sourced, but the POV are themselves disruptive because they are often denying reality or are against scientifically validated viewpoints. It is often a form of OR for fringe editors to come here and attempt to argue against the scientific majority POV. Another matter is that continually claiming that "there is no consensus" (as a means of stopping unfavorable edits) and then asking "do you believe there is a consensus?" (when there obviously isn't) is not constructive, but is just more stonewalling and is disruptive.
It is important to distinguish between two things:
In short, nonsense and fringe viewpoints may need to be included using good sources, but they should not be preached or advocated. Wikipedia talk pages are not mission fields for such POV missionaries. Proselytizing isn't allowed here. -- Fyslee / talk 06:42, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
The warrioring is getting out of control. Can we start issuing topic bans instead of article bans, and have that topic ban include these pages, such as Talk:Homeopathy/Article probation/Incidents and Talk:Homeopathy/Article probation? Please? I see at least one editor here that is banned from Homeopathy but is all over this page, not helping Wikipedia. If people are actually here to work on Wikipedia, there a million other articles to work on if barred for a week from Homeopathy junk. If they are incapable of working on other topics or areas, perhaps they should be permanently shown the door. Lawrence § t/ e 14:18, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
major edit without talk page discussion revert revert major edit without talk page discussion revert revert revert revert revert revert. 911 Is a Joke. PouponOnToast ( talk) 18:35, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
[51] — Whig ( talk) 22:29, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
[52] [53] [54] [55] [56] [57] EBDCM is a newbie but is making uncivil remarks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chiropractic#copyright_violation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic#Safety_issues The safety issues section has a text dump of copyrighted information. [58]
Please take a look here. [59] EBDCM has put a link on the talk page claiming he knows who I am and by clicking on the link at the website exposes a real person's name.
This was reported to the noticeborad but no action was taken. Regards, -- QuackGuru ( talk) 06:31, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Chiropractic&diff=next&oldid=191113326 After I made a report here the probation tag was removed without any reason. I do not understand why. QuackGuru ( talk) 18:06, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Chiropractic&diff=prev&oldid=191813064 Read the edit summary.
I am offended by the edit summary. I want more uninvolved editors and the probation restored. QuackGuru ( talk) 18:17, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Chiropractic&diff=prev&oldid=191818149 I hate to do this, but I agree with QG.
This is what happens when the probation tag is lifted. Draw your own conclusions. QuackGuru ( talk) 18:14, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
Are you saying that all this time your use of my comment was because you found it offensive? I had no idea! This is a revelation. I had no idea that that was the issue. All my comments above were made under the assumption that you were talking about something else. Sorry about the confusion. It would have helped if you had spelled it out instead of just listing a bunch of links and words from various people without much explanation. (Note that his thread is based on a previous edit that has been moved here and is now out of context.) It looked to me like you were attempting to make my words of support in one limited situation look like words of support for you in all situations, which is not true. As my revision of my comment shows, I thought you were talking about something else.
As to "leave me alone with your remarks", sorry, can't do that. You quote me and apparently are accusing me of something, so I have a right to defend myself. This has nothing to do with homeopathy or the probation. This is apparently about some difference of opinion, and where I actually agreed with you. You cannot force me to agree with you all the time, so just be grateful that I agreed with you that time. If you take offense, that's your problem. -- Fyslee / talk 06:43, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Neither this edit nor this edit were discussed on the talk page of the article, contrary to edit summary. Editor making said edits is under an unblock-mentorship agreement, though it appears their mentor has taken a break. The terms of the most recent unblock-mentorship was that the editor "may only make significant changes (anything past typo fixes, spelling corrections, etc.) after you have reached a consensus on the talk page." I am unwilling to deal further with disruptive single purpose editors-for-profit with conflicts of interest, so I leave it to someone else to even engage in discussions regarding this. PouponOnToast ( talk) 16:22, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Lame. That's what this is. Lame and ridiculous. I'm semi-breaking from admin duties (not including mentorship) for a few weeks, I'm not on a wiki-break. If there's nothing wrong with the edits, then sit down. Dana doesn't need to be blocked for making constructive edits. There's been discussion on the talk page, I could go read it, but considering it's been stated that it's not a bad edit, I don't see the point. Come to me when he does something wrong. Until then, we've all got more important things to deal with. Lara ❤ Love 18:05, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
(note - links corrected) PouponOnToast ( talk) 18:10, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Since LaraLove is no longer taking admin action, the mentorship of Danaullman should be remanded to an admin who has the time and the willingness to use administrative actions. ScienceApologist ( talk) 19:36, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
However, if you simply look at her contributions and/or on my user-page, you (or he...or anyone) would find that she is still actively mentoring me. In any case, you now know. Dana Ullman Talk 23:13, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
The edit war continues. Attempts at discussion are being stonewalled. Dlabtot ( talk) 20:54, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Could someone try to keep an eye on the Arsenicum album talk page? I have noticed that since Dana's mentor left (wikibreak, see above), he has become increasingly emboldened to push the civility envelope against opposing editors. He also has developed a new catchall of accusing anyone who dares to disagree with him of stonewalling. OfftheFence, Brunton, Arthur Rubin and myself could all attest to this statement, I'm sure. Frankly, it is quite annoying to have to scratch tooth and nail for every minor detail change. He is also in possession of a study that he continues to reference and include in the article (Cazin) but no one else has a copy of said study. Considering his actual profession is homeopathy related, this poses a serious problem for including any quotes for the study. It's all detailed on the talk page. Cheers! Baegis ( talk) 04:35, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
I haven't ended my mentorship of Dana. I thought that had been made clear by both myself and others. Regardless, if there are issues with Dana, as the banner on his talk page states, they should be brought to me. Regards,
Lara
❤
Love 18:31, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
The first two paragraphs below are copied from Talk:Homeopathy, to bring a discussion here rather than continue it there.
It might be helpful to all concerned if you could explain WHY you have banned him? He has not said anything above that he has not said before several times. Irritating though that may be yet he is surely entitled to express his view and has he actually insulted anyone? Furthermore, he has not tampered with the article. Purely from a sociological viewpoint his view, extreme though it is, should be heard IMO. thanks Peter morrell 14:02, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
My point simply was about freedom of speech: we should not be banning folks just for their extreme views but more for offending others. Those views certainly exist extreme or not but even if they were true, WP should still strive to describe homeopathy neutrally and fairly, even if it were proved to be some crazy pseudoscience and founded in some weird religious belief, which I know it isn't. Widely divergent views should be welcomed. That was all really. Peter morrell 20:16, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Top sekwet advise to anthon: RB has figured out hour despickabul sekwet stwatagey. Dont annser himn. PS Dont tel anywun this. Wanderer57 ( talk) 04:26, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
Could an admin please take a look at this? [63] — Whig ( talk) 02:42, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Per Jehochman's request to see diffs of disruption, please see the following edits of DanaUllman: [66] [67] [68]. These are the only edits Dana made to this section before OffTheFence's frustration resulted in caps (he also edited other sections of the page, but no answers there either. This is the most applicable area, though). He was repeatedly asked whether this study was randomized, and instead of answering, he mocked the need for randomization (see the second diff for the actual mocking). This particular instance of disruption is more telling in what isn't said, really (Dana's refusal to respond about the randomization), so a simple presentation of diffs can't really suffice, sorry. Some history perusal might be necessary to confirm that nowhere did he actual answer the question. -- Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 19:19, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
I have now placed a report on both the Cazin and Linde papers on Ars Alb's Talk page. I would welcome comments. OffTheFence ( talk) 08:07, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
The edit summary made by Levine2112 claimed: No recent discussion nor any consensus for any of this mass revert/change. There has been discussions. See serious NPOV issues (oh my). Levine2112 has not participated in the recent discussion and reverted a quality NPOV edit. -- QuackGuru ( talk) 00:32, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
Should anons be adding editors to article probation and outing their supposed identities on that page? [69] — Whig ( talk) 17:49, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
FYI, "I don't see 'Homeopath-" anything in the *text* of either Chiropractic, or Sci Inv of Chiropractic; remove Homeo- warning, its cont'd abuse seems to me to be, POV, initimidation & provocation". Lawrence § t/ e 07:13, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
These need to stop, it's what probation is about. SchmuckyTheCat ( talk)
Whig has an extensive history of disruption on homeopathy-related talk pages. I will restrict the following collection of diffs to those posted in the four days, in the interest of freshness, but please realize that this behavior has gone on for months.
This needs to stop. This behavior is poisoning good faith attempts by both pro- and anti-factions to improve coverage of homeopathic topics on Wikipedia. Whig has been the subject of two recent user conduct RFCs ( here and here), which have had no effect in changing his tendentious and needlessly argumentative approach. I recommend a broadly defined topic ban (if not a full siteban) that covers all articles and talk pages related to homeopathy, as well as any user page/AN/ANI discussions related to homeopathy. Skinwalker ( talk) 21:14, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
It is clear that many of these postings were to editors that were not AGF, including several that have been harassing me. This has the appearance of a cabal's game. The Tutor ( talk) 22:49, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
In what will surely be claimed as a personal vendetta, the one of the problems that I see with Whig is that he knows the rules well enough to walk the line but never get caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Is that really the kind of editor we need? His mentor has been MIA for a long period of time, leaving him free to edit without having to abide by his restrictions. As we saw from the DanaUllman case, a good mentor should always be watching in order to correct bad behavior. Dana's mentor stepped in on several occasions to apply restrictions and weigh in on issues regarding the mentee. But, the biggest problem is Whig's penchant for being a willing meat puppet for other pro-homeopathy users. While my diff's will never be able to show the totality of the previous statement, they do show that he constantly backs up edits from [Name Redacted], TheTutor (Tutor diffs from previous people), and Dana. As seen on this section of the Arsenicum album talk page, a question is asked to Dana and then after a response from Dana, Whig answers all further questions, drastically steering the conversation off course. This is not the only case of this happening, as seen from the mess involving TheTutor. Though Whig has been around a lot longer than the parties I describe, his actions in conjunction with them are problematic. He even backed up a comment from Dana in which he, in a round about way, called someones mental capacity into question, saying it was funny. Maybe it's because [Name Redacted] and Dana are both well known outside of the Wiki world and it is a case of coattails. Who knows? The point is, Whig constantly violated the terms of his probation and should be held accountable. Baegis ( talk) 02:16, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
The business about the swimming pool would be enough to drive anyone to distraction and just remove this article from their watchlist and let it flounder.
This example is just being used by Whig and Anthon01 and other homeopathy proponents as an excuse to threaten and fight ad nauseum. Rather than even look at a google search or the sources already linked, they would prefer to engage in tendentitious and disruptive argumentation and spamming of the talk page with nonsense. This must stop right now and I ask an admin to warn those involved.-- Filll ( talk) 14:54, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
If several editors asked for a POV tag since they argue that the article does not comply with the NOPV policy the administrators should add it or not, according to wikirules? I might make a mistake - I asked again and nonoone answered. s Please comment. I hope this is the right place to post this question.-- Area69 ( talk) 20:46, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
If so, please pop on over to the Arsenicum album page and lend a hand. An editor, one who has been warned about the probation for these articles, is insisting on this being a better version than the way I had it previously, even though it is the EXACT same phrase just ordered differently. It is more appropriate to present the results of the study THEN discuss the problems. I'm pretty sure few will find a problem with that. On the talk page, Dana claims I need to verify the same facts that another editor discussed at length (see rest of talk page) with him before he will "allow" my edit to stick. He has reverted it 3 times so far today, clearly in violation of the spirit of the probation. I have cautioned him about the 3RR rule. I have also reverted it twice, so I will accept any punishment for violating the probation. Baegis ( talk) 03:57, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
I just indefinitely blocked Ramaanand ( talk · contribs) & added that account to Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Dr.Jhingaadey. It was painfully obvious that this last chance effort to reform the editor was going to fail, especially when the editor revealed that he was " not even willing to be an editor here" and was simply aiming to argue & edit war over the inclusion of homeopathy criticisms.
If any admin feels that my reasons for blocking were inappropriate or insufficient, please feel free to contact me. If nobody objects, I'd say that WP:BAN is back in full effect for this editor. — Scien tizzle 14:18, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Addhoc hi. You are not an uninvolved administrator. You should really be editing the article as you have done:
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Homeopathy&diff=prev&oldid=191701837]--70.107.246.88 (talk) 17:39, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Personally I think that rule is counterproductive. I think that involved editors should be allowed to use their tools, but that their decisions should be subject to careful review andn vetting and certification by others to prevent abuse.-- Filll ( talk) 18:42, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
If you feel strongly that you have a case (which I do not think you do) and you are not able to get a reasonable response from Addhoc, then you can try AN/I or Arbcomm. However, I think the best option might be to change those silly rules you are citing to something more useful and productive.-- Filll ( talk) 18:50, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
There are worse examples in this forum.The way the discussion is administrated led to this situation. So fine. Addhoc please consider removing Dana's ban symbolically and edit the article. Nothing personal here.-- 70.107.246.88 ( talk) 18:59, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
See this comment of mine [133] and answers. It would appear that Dana presented a 1994 study on Talk:Arsenicum album, where it was shooted down for several reasons. Because of an initial confusion, some editors talked instead about the 1997 article by same author, and shooted it down too.
Now, Dana has presented the 1997 article on Talk:Homeopathy and has not warned that it was previously dismissed elsewhere, or that a 1994 article by same author had been discussed and dismissed elsewhere. It wasn't until some editor remembered having discussed the article before that it surfaced. This has the appeareance of article pushing and talk-page shopping -- Enric Naval ( talk) 23:12, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Adenda: Dana Ullman and LaraLove have been notified on their talk pages -- Enric Naval ( talk) 23:44, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Yeah Phil, and this includes everyone (I'm not yet clear why you chose to single me out). The bottomline here is the Enric has his history mixed up, not just about me, but also about the different Linde meta-analyses, and about the Arsenicum article which rightfully includes reference to the Linde 1994 work. I assume good faith and realize that it is challenging to keep all of this info straight, but this is why one should check-in with the potentially offending party before bothering admins or noticeboards. Is this reasonable? DanaUllman Talk 02:42, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Dana.... I know that you might be a bit fired up because of this discussion, but do you really think that this edit [135] is wise? No consensus at talk page, deleting the attribution of one source suspected of POV, and past probation problems with same problems. I restored the words [136], I suggest that you achieve more consensus at talk page, and that you don't perform the actual edit yourself (just in case), lest we need to open to open another section here -- Enric Naval ( talk) 05:03, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Dana is pushing Enni's studies again on April 3 2008 [139] (notice the veiled POV accusation on the edit summary to any editor ever opposing Ennis' study). Dana says that the study was replicated by 4 independient labs and asks for sources on four laboratories saying they couldn't replicate it.
However the lack of replication by "four experts from reputable laboratories" is explained at this userspace draft of homeopathy while (it can't get more ironical) dismounting an argument on a book written by Dana. In Dana's defence, there is no evidence that he was aware of this text. Moreover, links below prove that he knew about BBC's replication and has been off-wiki objecting actively to how it was presented and other stuff. Dunno if Dana has ever disclosed this this COI.
He also has *huge* WP:COI because he appears to have written a book where he defended Ennis' study, and is perfectly aware of BBC program, since he sent a complaint letter to ABC and Dana received a mail from Ennis himself on the matter on 2003.
Then I searched Ennis on talk pages and found this Dana's comment from January 26 2008 where he gets answered "Dana, why do you keep repeating this same arguments when it's been explained to you that they aren't valid on other pages?" Talk:Arsenicum_album#Defies_logic I was like "wtf"? So I digged through Homeopathy archives and found nothing except passing mentions to Ennis here, but a search on google turned out a discussion with Maury Markowitz on January 1 2008 User_talk:Maury_Markowitz#BBC.27s_and_ABC.27s_20.2F20_Homeopathy_Test_was_Junk_Science and a discussion with Otheus on February 1 2008 at User_talk:Otheus.
I also finally found the archives of Water memory talk March 4 2007 - June 5 2007 Talk:Water_memory/Archive1#Ennis_email_incorrectly_attributed, December 18 2007 - February 4 2008 [ [140]] and February 1-2 2008 Talk:Water_memory/Archive1#Pseudoscience_Info_box where Ennis study is shot down, and Dana is perfectly aware of the conversation since he adds himself in the middle of other user comment (probably due to unexperience and unawareness of WP:TALK) on August 9 2007 [141].
So, gross probation violation, and probable gross WP:COI violation, and gross WP:NPOV violation for pushing POV studies without mentioning that they had been shot down by consensus and evidence (see above incident for same problem), and using edit summaries unadequately again -- Enric Naval ( talk) 14:51, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
The thing that really strikes you when you look at these pages in full is that it's hard to find onee thing on them written by DanaUllman that is not quickly demonstrated to be exaggerated and/or falsified. I'd encourage others to check other pages, but the pattern is clear: Dana Ullman regularly and consistently misrepresents his sources, and tries to claim that sources that support his POV are in top journals in their fields, sources of unquestionable accuracy, which must be included, and which thoroughly disprove those nasty negative references which should be deleted. That is not an exaggeration. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 17:01, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
"Dana Ullman regularly and consistently misrepresents his sources".
I have a problem with Shoemaker's above-noted "universal" statement. While I can't pretend to understand meta-analyses, I do know homeopathy works. Many of us use Dana's books for references as they are in libraries across the world and his books have often been one of our first introductions to homeopathy over the past 25+ years. By characterizing him as "misrepresent"ing his sources - it seems you are more concerned with attacking his reputation than refuting his claims or the claims of homeopathic remedies in general, which is -- after all -- the general thrust and intention of the article. My question then is: why? How does the practice of homeopathy offend you? And why the supreme effort to denounce its efficacy? Patients do not die taking homeopathy remedies and unlike therapeutic meds from big pharma, it's safe. Your motives are more than questionnable.
--
Flagtheerror (
talk) 20:59, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
You don't have a problem with others making sweeping generalizations about him "misrepresenting" sources when there is no proof of his doing so? How fair is that? What in heaven's name would be his MO for doing so? But by continuing this push to continually chastise, criticize and denounce his claims, well, one tends to wonder why. Don't you think any of his book editors properly sourced his references in the past? He wouldn't have much credibility if he did what you and others claim, in the publishing world - now would he?
--
Flagtheerror (
talk) 21:40, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps this is a misunderstanding. Dana, can you select a handful of the studies that Shoemaker has referenced above and quote from the text to demonstrate that he is mistaken? Antelan talk 02:07, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Sorry Enric...I meant to refer to you as a newbie to editing articles on homeopathy. You are not a newbie to wikipedia. I do, however, have concern that you may be working from a very strong POV seemingly without adequate knowledge of the field and without adequate knowledge of the broad basic science and clinical research that has been conducted in the field. If I'm wrong, my apologies, but you've only begun editing in this homeopathic space for under 2 months. DanaUllman Talk 04:37, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
To accuse someone of having a "conflict of interest" (COI) because they wrote a positive review about a particular research study in a publication is beyond the bound of human logic! The nature of the advocacy of the anti-homeopathy POV (and that is not a joke, but a sad commentary on the bias that is blatantly displayed even on this page) is to insist on removing any mention of studies that appear to support homeopathy, and insist on the inclusion of studies that do not appear to support homeopathy. Arion 3x3 ( talk) 00:58, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
The argument that because Dana reviewed a study in his book makes that somehow a conflict of interest in being an editor on homeopathic artices on Wikipedia is ridiculous. The statement "If the study gets famous, the book gets more famous." also does not logically follow. Arion 3x3 ( talk) 01:20, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Mr. Ullman, let's look at some of the things you have said about studies that are demonstratably misleading. All quotes are exact, with the exception of removing formatting such as ref tags or brackets around web links that would make formatting be messed up. Any abbreviation is marked as such. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 17:42, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Summary
Although Mr. Ullman claims that J.C. Cazin et al.. "A Study of the Effect of Decimal and Centesimal Dilution of Arsenic on Retention and Mobilization of Arsenic in the Rat," Human Toxicology, July 1987 was published in a "leading" "major" and "highly-respected" journal, he changes his mind repeatedly on the title of the journal, jumps at a suggestion by Hesperian of a title that it might be, and uses it to justify his claims, saying that Hesperian's suggestion was correct. Research, however, shows that it was not, and that the journal is, in fact, a minor, low-impact journal with a section devoted to non-mainstream reports. These inflated claims will be shown to be typical as this report continues to other studies he refers to.
Detailed analysis in support
and
“ | ...it was published in one of the leading journals in toxicology.... | ” |
We'll deal with the rest of that last quote at a slightly later point. Let's move on for the moment...
Although Mr. Ullman repeatedly claims that Human Toxicology is a highly-respected leading journal, he soon demonstrate he has no actual knowledge about it:
“ | The "new" name of this journal is "Human and Veterinary Toxicology" | ” |
But when Hesperian points out that "Thomson Scientific's Journal Citation Reports lists 76 journals in the "toxicology" category. It doesn't list journals entitled "Human Toxicology", nor "Human and Veterinary Toxicology", but it does list a journal named "Veterinary and Human Toxicology". When listed in order of impact factor, H&VT ranks 68th out of 76 journals." he immediately changes his tune:
“ | It is not mysterious at all. The correct name is Veterinary and Human Toxicology. I'm glad that you've confirmed that it is a recognized peer-review journal in toxicology. | ” |
And, before all this, he had added the following to the article:
“ | Human and Experimental Toxicology (today, this journal is simply called Human Toxicology). | ” |
In fact, all of these are wrong. The journal was originally Human Toxicology, and changed its name to Human and Experimental Toxicology, a name it retains to this day [154]. This means that he was making claims about the importance of a journal that he could not even get the name of correct. But he still claimed himself and himself alone as a sufficient authority to assert it was a highly-respected, leading journal. It is actually a low impact journal (Journal eigenfactor: 0.0028658. Article Influence: 0.24856). In short, he appears to have had no idea what he was talking about, but this did not stop him constantly making grand assertions, and flailing about in an attempt to leap on anything that would give the temporary appearance of supporting his arguments, true or not, nonetheless.
Finally, according to the editors, Human [and Experimental] toxicology's scope is:
In other words, they have a special section DEVOTED TO SPECULATIVE OR NON-MAINSTREAM REPORTS. I presume this is where the Cazin article appeared. Do I need to say why this is a problem to his assertion that Human Toxicology's reputation (such as it is) proves that the Cazin article is a reliable source?
Summary Ullman makes similar - even, perhaps, extreme claims for the importance of the Linde 1994 metaanalysis (Linde K, et al, Critical review and meta-analysis of serial agitated dilutions in experimental toxicology, Human and experimental toxicology, 1994). He claims that it is a "major" meta-analysis, published in a major journal on numerous occasions. However, the journal is the same one as the Cazin study; the article is only cited by two (TWO) other studies in all of Pubmed [155]. Places you would expect to find a major metaanalysis do not include it, and it is not generally available, with even companies making volumes of Human and Experimental Toxicology available not offering issues back that far.
Detailed analysis
Ullman makes similar claims for the Linde 1994 metaanalysis as the Cazin study:
“ | ...Please note that Linde, et al (1994) is an important meta-analysis... | ” |
and
“ | The meta-analysis to which I referenced here was published in a major toxicology journal. If you think that I'm wrong (though I'm not), please provide verification. | ” |
He is, in fact, wrong. As shown in section 1a, he appears to have no to little knowledge of the journal, as it's the same one as the Cazin study was published in, (Not that he knows that, or he wouldn't say that the Cazin journal was Human and Veterinary Toxicology, or did he mean Veterinary and Human Toxicology... well, they're all major journals if they publish something hie likes, as will be shown throughout this report). Also as shown in 1a, the journal has both a low article impact and eigenfactor. It is not a major toxicology journal, as Mr. Ullman would even [finally] admit later:
“ | ...We can strike the word "leading," but it is still a NPOV source... | ” |
Only two other articles reference it in all of the pubmed database: [156]
The study does not appear places you would expect it to if it were a "major" metaanalysis. For instance, the NCCAM page on Homeopathy is generally supportive of homeopathy, but does not list this study in the table of metaanalyses. Linde himself does not cite it in his list of systematic reviews of homeopathy.
Dana Ullman aso has some confusion as to what year it was published, calling it a 1995 study, until corrected. This is typical of his sloppy work.
Finally, Ingentia only makes Human and experimental toxicology available back to mid 2000, Sage publications back to 1998, meaning the article is not generally available.
Despite the problems demonstrated above: that it has only two references to it in all of Pubmed, is generally unavailable, and is not even discussed in Linde's own discussion of systematic reviews of homeopathy, DanaUllman claims repeatedly that the non-notable Linde 1994 study is itself sufficient to make the Cazin study count as notable, as shown in section 1d.
Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 21:33, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Summary Linde retracted several conclusions of his previous work in 1999, and this was pointed out to Ullman at the start of the discussion. (part i) Nonetheless, Ullman continues to use the retracted conclusions. (part iii) Ullman insists that we should AGF on his behalf, but does not apply the policy to other editors, and is a textbook tendentious editor (part ii).
Summary: One of the studies that Ullman pushes for [Linde 1997, see part iii for evidence of his abuse] has had findings explicitly retracted by its authors, and this was pointed out to Ullman. This retraction, in the eyes of a reasonable person, would also apply to the much more minor 1994.
Detailed analysis
In 1999, Linde retracted much of his previous work:
“ | "The evidence of bias weakens the findings of our original meta-analysis [7]. Since we completed our literature search in 1995, a considerable number of new homeopathy trials have been published. The fact that a number of the new high-quality trials (e.g. [14,15]) have negative results, and a recent update of our review for the most “original” subtype of homeopathy (classical or individualized homeopathy [16]), seem to confirm the finding that more rigorous trials have less-promising results. It seems, therefore, likely that our meta-analysis [7] at least overestimated the effects of homeopathic treatments."
Linde et al, Impact of Study Quality on Outcome in Placebo-Controlled Trials of Homeopathy, J Clin Epidemiol Vol. 52, No. 7, pp. 631–636, 1999, doi: 10.1016/S0895-4356(99)00048-7 |
” |
Link [7] refers to the Linde's 1997 metanalysis; however, as shown in 1b, the 1994 study by Linde is incredibly minor, and so it is not, perhaps, surprising that Linde does not explicitly mention it.
This was pointed out to Mr. Ullman at the start of the thread that kicked off the discussions referred to in 1a and 1b. [157]
Summary: Ullman's quotes of statistics from Linde 1997 are misleading, and Ullman insists that we should WP:AGF, at the same time as he attacks other editors with impunity, and ignores that AGF specifically says "This guideline does not require that editors continue to assume good faith in the presence of evidence to the contrary." and seems ignorant of WP:TEND "Tendentious editing is editing which is partisan, biased, skewed—in other words, it does not conform to the neutral point of view. On Wikipedia, the term also carries the connotation of repetitive attempts to insert or delete content which is resisted by multiple other editors." Several examples of Ullman failing to assume good faith, and attacking others without assuming good faith are summarised.
Detailed analysis
This section discusses the Linde 1997 metaanalysis (Linde, et al, 1997 Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? A meta-analysis of placebo-controlled trials, Lancet, doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(97)02293-9.
“ | First, I realize that Linde said that his previous meta-analysis "at least overestimated the effects of homeopathic treatments." However, of the 89 trials evaluated, there was a 2.45 (!) odds ratio favoring homeopathy, and when reviewing only the high quality studies, it was something like 1.78 (that's still significant). | ” |
Ullman is incorrect in multiple ways.
In a discussion of the effects of publication bias changing the results of the 1997 Linde study, Ullman quotes the combined results for the 1997 trial as uncorrected for publication bias. In the 1997 trial itself, Linde writes: "The overall estimate of the odds ratio corrected for publication bias was 1·78 (1·03 to 3·10, z=2·09). Thus correction for publication bias decreases the odds ratio by about 27%; however, it remained substantial and statistically significant."
The results for the quality trials are 1.66, not 1.78 as Dana claims. Linde et al do not correct the quality trials for publication bias.
“ | Although some studies after the 1997 had negative results, Linde never asserted that these new studies took away significance from the body of research... | ” |
WRONG!!!! WRONG ON EVERY COUNT!!! What part of "The evidence of bias weakens the findings of our original meta-analysis." does Mr. Ullman not understand? What part of "The fact that a number of the new high-quality trials (e.g. [14,15]) have negative results, and a recent update of our review for the most “original” subtype of homeopathy (classical or individualized homeopathy [16]), seem to confirm the finding that more rigorous trials have less-promising results. It seems, therefore, likely that our meta-analysis [7] at least overestimated the effects of homeopathic treatments." does not imply that the results of these new studies reduce Linde's findings on the body of research?
As this section of Linde 1999 was quoted above, and Ullman was explicitly responding to the quote, Ullman's reading comprehension must be cast into extreme doubt. Ullman's statement above "Either your bias is blinding you or you are not reading or understanding previous discussions." would appear to be a textbook example of projection. Which leads to the next point:
“ | Once again, I want to warn you to AGF | ” |
This is typical of Ullman's use of AGF as a sledgehammer to try and attack others who disagree with him into silence. Mr. Ullman, is mistaken on the details of the AGF policy. Assuming Good Faith does not mean assuming that you are right. "This guideline does not require that editors continue to assume good faith in the presence of evidence to the contrary." You are clearly a tendentious editor: "Tendentious editing is editing which is partisan, biased, skewed—in other words, it does not conform to the neutral point of view. On Wikipedia, the term also carries the connotation of repetitive attempts to insert or delete content which is resisted by multiple other editors." Assuming good faith does not mean assuming you are right. It means assuming the best interpretation to your actions, e.g. that you are incompetent, rather than intentionally deceitful.
1
“ | Can you show good faith by inserting this statement (it seems that some editors delete my contributions). | ” |
2
Brief analysis Ullman and Arion 3x3 were editwarring (Ullman: [158] [159] Arion: [160] [161] [162] [163]) for addition of a new section that he wrote that made a purely biased use of the 1997 study to claim that there is strong evidence that Homeopathy works, and elimination of a discussion of problems with homeopathic research. Hesperian's quote of Linde's finding that "The number of methodologically sound, independently reproduced studies is too small to make any definitive conclusions regarding the effect of SAD preparations in toxicology" was quite sufficient to rebut the additions to the article that Ullman was editwarring for the inclusion of. Ullman nontheless attacks Hesperian for quoting a section that shows that Linde's conclusions were not the 100% pure proof of homeopathy that Ullman claimed, acting as if it was a huge attempt to deceive, but that he was graciously assuming good faith. Oh, and it also provides yet another bit of confusion about Human Toxicology (claims that Human and Experimental Toxicology became Human Toxicology, rather than the other way around. [see 1a])
3
(adding note)Dana already got later involved on a different edit war,
he got warned for it, then
accused of bad faith assumption by two editors and then
banned 7 days from editing homeopathy articles for the edit warring. --
Enric Naval (
talk) 12:58, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
4
“ | Either you're stonewall or pretending to have a bad memory. Despite this, I will AGF if you can agree that Cazin's work deserves to remain in the article. | ” |
1
“ | I wish to assume good faith, but I also have a sneaking suspicion that some (maybe many) of the above editors are neither subscribers or readers of this journal... | ” |
Attacking all your critics because they are not subscribers of a journal that you are trying to hype is not assuming good faith. The rest of the quote deals with the journal Homeopathy, which is best dealt with in another section.
2
3 (On an admin's talk page)
More could be provided in this section with ease, but I think the point is made.
Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 11:31, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
[TBC] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk • contribs) 11:58, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Summary: One of Dana's longer posts on Cazin is analysed in detail, and almost everything in it is shown to be false or misleading. In a more recent post, Ullman makes such grandiose claims for his source that he actually ends up claiming that a 1994 study will serve as a secondary source to prove the notability of sources from 2003 and 2005.
Detailed analysis:
We may now return to the earlier quote I said we'd come back to.
Almost every word in that is wrong, except, perhaps, Ullman's praise of what appears (these articles are not generally availble, as I said, which makes it difficult to check, but this is my best guess) to be the Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille which, as far as I know, is an excellent university. However, it appears (see below) that the university were not the only people involved.
That's from February. However, Mr. Ullman tends to repeat himself a lot, and he has continued to make similar claims, despite months of discussion, even to nearly the present day. Consider this quote from 29 March, which ignores all that came before and simply asserts:
“ | First, virtually all of the studies mentioned here have secondary RS, and that is the Linde 1994 meta-analysis... | ” |
As I pointed out at the time, there were about three studies Ullman was pushing at the time, and the 2003 and 2005 cannot possibly be referenced in a 1994 meta-analysis. Virtually all, my hairy arse.
Shoemaker's Holiday (
talk)
Summer Glau 20:09, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
[Forthcoming]
[Forthcoming. Quick samples follow] Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 16:04, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Here we see Ullman cavalierly saying we should delete the mainstream view of homeopathy in favour of small, preliminary studies that support his views.
Summary: Two discussions on Talk:Arsenicum album are analysed. Although the Shang metaanalysis is published in The Lancet, and comes complete with a glowing editorial by the Lancet's editors, unlike the studies that Ullman likes, where journals and importance are talked up to the skies, in this case, a widely-respected article in a top-tier journal is viciously attacked, using minor, fringe alternative medicine journals.
Discussion I A quick note - One gets the feeling that Ullman is responding to something else in his first post, which starts off this thread, as it otherwise comes out of nowhere, and seems to have no relationship to the article in question. However, this is the first post in the thread, so... don't look at me.
“ | [164] | ” |
[TBC - need food]
Discussion II
“ | ...[Linde provides much much more damaging analysis of the Shang (2005) review of research (which he and others blow out of the water as unscientific and unethical...yeah, that bad). | ” |
The Shang metaanalysis is a highly-respected one published in the journal Lancet, considered one of the top four medical journals. The Lancet editorial published with it attacked homeopathy repeatedly. Let's look at the letter from Linde that Dana says shows that the Shang metaanalysis is "unscientific and unethical". Here's the opening paragraph.
“ | We congratulate Aijing Shang and colleagues1 on their meta-analysis examining the clinical effects of homoeopathy. Their methods largely reproduce those of our meta-analysis on the same topic published in The Lancet 8 years ago.2 We agree that homoeopathy is highly implausible and that the evidence from placebo-controlled trials is not robust. However, there are major problems with the way Shang and colleagues present and discuss their results, as well as how The Lancet reviewed and interpreted this study. We will point out two. | ” |
Shang replies to both points in {{doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)67881-6}} - they're fairly minor procedural aspects, basically, they didn't follow a guideline that Linde thought they should have, and Linde thought they and the Lancet should have been a bit more temperate in their conclusions. More importantly, Linde NOWHERE says that they were unethical, as DanaUllman claims. The discussion peters out at this point, with a reference to the previous one. Once again, Ullman's claims about sources do not match the source itself.
Summary: While there is strong evidence of Ullman making systematic errors and grandiose claims, I do not believe that Ullman's behaviour is evidence of intent to deceive. There is quite a bit of evidence to show that Ullman is simply very sloppy,[Section 1a, etc, as well as little things like mistaking "Little Red Riding Hood" for "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" and has an inflated opinion of his own abilities, which combined with the significant investment he's made by having spent his entire adult life advocating for homeopathy, causes him to rate things that support his views much higher than he should [Section 1], while rejecting anything that does not support his views as unimportant or insignificant. [Section 3] While this does mean that he probably genuinely believes what he says at the time, unfortunately, this causes him to be an unreliable source [1a, etc], make it extremely unlikely that he could change his ways, and make him very disruptive to our purpose of making a respectable, mainstream encyclopaedia.
Discussion:
Per WP:REDFLAG: "Certain red flags should prompt editors to examine the sources for a given claim... [including] claims that are contradicted by the prevailing view within the relevant community, or which would significantly alter mainstream assumptions, especially in science, medicine, history, politics, and BLPs. Be particularly careful when proponents of such claims say there is a conspiracy to silence them... Exceptional claims in Wikipedia require high-quality reliable sources; if such sources are not available, the material should not be included."
Ullman has demonstrated himself prone to inflating the importance of sources he likes the conclusions of, [Section 1 a, b, c-ii] and seems to confuse disagreeing with his conclusions as a violation of good faith [Section 1c pt. ii appendix a], while denegrating respected studies he dislikes the findings of [Section 3]
This puts him in near-constant violation of WP:REDFLAG. He attacks other people that attempt to examine his sources, despite homeopathy "significantly altering mainstream assumptions... in science", particularly at dilutions higher than the Avorogado limit.[See Note 1, below] His habit of claiming, through his over-inflated statements on the importance of the minor studies he quotes [Section 1 a, b, and d], that he, in fact has sufficient evidence, his abuse of WP:RS to claim that it must be included [This will be covered in Section 2], and he also implies, if more weakly than some, that there is a conspiracy to silence him, or at least claims that anyone who disagrees with him is wrong: [165] [166] [See also Section 1c, Part ii(a and b).]
Ullman is a tendentious editor [1c-ii] and is prone to confabulation, creating false information that sounds like it might be true but evaporates when investigated [1a]. He has undergone mentorship with LaraLove, but does not seem to have changed the core nature of the problems that make him so difficult to work with on Wikipedia; nor does he seem to have a very high proportion of useful edits to rejected edits and tendentious arguments. Due to Ullman's heavy investment into homeopathy, having dedicated his life to promoting it, it is, perhaps, understandable that he is unwilling to change his views, and will resist any challenges to it. However, even if his behaviour is understandable, that does not make it suitable for Wikipedia: I think it highly unlikely that he is or will be capable of working effectively with others to build a neutral, NPOV (See WP:UNDUE, WP:NPOV/FAQ#Pseudoscience) encyclopaedia; nor do I think him likely to ever be able to accurately apply guidelines such as WP:FRINGE which insist on identifying and emphasising mainstream views at the expense of his strongly-held fringe views; nor do I think he will stop being a tendentious editor and turn into a useful contributor. Let's face it, in the end, he is Dana Ullman, a leading proselytizer of homeopathy. His entire livelihood and career spins around his unwavering belief in and promotion of homeopathy, and emphasising and hyping whatever could possibly be interpreted as positive to homeopathy and denigrating and trying to dismiss anything negative is part and parcel of that. We cannot expect him to change these inherent aspects of his character just because Wikipedia asks him to nicely.
Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 15:05, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Note 1: Sources for this are numerous, a few taken from the Homeopathy article include Teixeira J (2007). "Can water possibly have a memory? A sceptical view". Homeopathy : the journal of the Faculty of Homeopathy 96 (3): 158-162. doi: 10.1016/j.homp.2007.05.001, [167], and Whorton, James C. (2004). Nature Cures: The History of Alternative Medicine in America. Oxford University Press. Or perhaps This article in Time, which contains quotes such as "'It is just the reverse of everything we believe according to the basic principles of physiology,' declares Professor Varro Tyler of Purdue University, an expert on herbal remedies. 'We believe that the greater the dose, the greater the physiological response. They believe that even after there is no drug left, you still get a response.'" and "Advocates claim that evidence of homeopathy's efficacy is emerging, citing a list of scientific papers published in recent years in such reputable journals as Pediatrics, the British Medical Journal, Lancet and Nature. But there is only a handful of these reports, and they are far from definitive. The ultimate test of scientific validity is whether the results can be duplicated, and so far they have not been." and "Belief is the entire process, contend scientists." Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 15:05, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
As an editor in Wikipedia, I do not believe it is appropriate to accuse Dana Ullman of "intentionally misleading us". That frankly borders on a personal attack upon his character and his integrity. Arion 3x3 ( talk) 20:51, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
It is not the role of editors to prevent the inclusion of research that is supportive of homeopathy. Tortured logic has been used to try to dismiss research with such comments as "high-quality is only intended to mean 'relatively high'"! There is no justification for such argumentation. To argue for the exclusion of a research article because "the article is not generally available" is not acceptable. Research that both supports homeopathy and does not support homeopathy should be included. That is how a NPOV article in an encyclopedia must be wriitten. Arion 3x3 ( talk) 22:03, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Arion is right about one important thing: print journals that are not yet available online are usable as references. The way to deal with them is to obtain a copy by interlibrary loan or at a major med cal library that has it. We do not ignore everything before the internet. The availability of online journals is relatively recent, and it will be a considerable time before all files are converted. While this is especially true for many of the less important independent journals, the lack of present online availability is irrelevant to use as a RS. This said, I do agree with Shoemaker Holiday's other criticisms about the journal and the article. I think he has sufficiently shown that the findings there are not supported by subsequent studies. DGG ( talk) 05:03, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
DGG's stating the factually inaccurate statement "not supported by subsequent studies" does not make that a fact. Where is the data to back up that assertion? Arion 3x3 ( talk) 20:46, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
User:Shoemaker's Holiday has much more time to burn than I do, though it has been said that people who live in glass houses should not throw stones. He claims that I have made numerous errors and that he even asserts that I seem to do so on purpose. I have asserted several times that this editor has content issues with me, and because I refer to RS research that is notable and that shows positive results for homeopathy, he simply cannot accept this information. This has led him to now attack the messager. It is therefore more than a tad ironic (actually, it is the "total chutzpah" category) that he is frequently be shown to provide misinformation, as he did above when he refers to Linde's writings as a "retraction" of his previous study, as Shoemaker did here [170] First, Linde never used the word "retraction" nor did he even say that the 1997 meta-analysis was no longer significant. Shoemaker even asserted (TOTALLY INCORRECTLY) that Linde's "retraction" referred to BOTH the 1997 meta-analysis of clinical study as well as the 1994 meta-analysis of environmental toxicology studies: "This retraction, in the eyes of a reasonable person, would also apply to the much more minor 1994. In 1999, Linde retracted much of his previous work: "The evidence of bias weakens the findings of our original meta-analysis [7]." My question to Shoemaker, TO WHAT REFERENCE DOES #7 REFER? The 1997 meta-analysis or the 1994 meta-analysis? DanaUllman Talk 03:56, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Reference 7 is the 1997 metaanalysis, as I explicitly pointed out right near the top of the section you link to, claiming I was in error: Link to revision from 6 April, showing the text was there before Ullman attacked me
“ | Link [7] refers to the Linde's 1997 metanalysis; however, as shown in 1b, the 1994 study by Linde is incredibly minor, and so it is not, perhaps, surprising that Linde does not explicitly mention it. | ” |
Perhaps, Ullman, you are not familiar with the word "summary". It means that things will be explained in more detail if you read a bit further, and that will prevent you from looking like a complete idiot for using this supposed fact to attack me here and at Talk:Arsenicum album and to attempt to justify a revert. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 10:31, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Baegis, does this mean that wikipedia is now allowing OR? I rarely assert that someone is breaking wiki-rules by OR, but in THIS case, it is obvious, even according to Shoe's above statement. Yes...for "the love of all that is holy," I assume good faith, and I simply ask for good faith from other editors. Let's be reasonable. DanaUllman Talk 17:14, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
I like Dana. I really do. I think he could help us document this area and be an asset to the project. He knows a lot about homeopathy and a lot of this detail is tough to ferret out of the horrendous mess that is the homeopathic literature.
However, this kind of tomfoolery, arguing whether a retraction is a "retraction" based on whether the author explicitly used the word "retraction" or not is just approaching the ridiculous. Sorry, but this is almost the very definition of WP:DE and WP:TE. It saddens me. This is part of the reason good editors have been driven away from this article, this topic, and some even from WP itself. I am very disappointed.-- Filll ( talk) 17:44, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Come on. We all know what a scientific retraction is. This was not one. It was a reassessment in the light of new information. But you all seem to be so enjoying your bean-feast, I wondered whether to come back at all. And by the way, do not ever say you like me, as I will know then that I am in trouble. The Tutor ( talk) 19:56, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
"A withdrawal of an earlier assertion, particularly one that is made in a public forum, and which concedes that the earlier assertion was in error". Er, you mean like saying something along the lines of "the evidence of bias weakens the findings of our original meta-analysis. Since we completed our literature search in 1995, a considerable number of new homeopathy trials have been published. The fact that a number of the new high-quality trials have negative results, and a recent update of our review for the most “original” subtype of homeopathy (classical or individualized homeopathy), seem to confirm the finding that more rigorous trials have less-promising results. It seems, therefore, likely that our meta-analysis at least overestimated the effects of homeopathic treatments." Brunton ( talk) 21:04, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
In examining the meaning and connotation of the word "retraction", I believe it does not properly reflect the statement by Linde: "It seems, therefore, likely that our meta-analysis at least overestimated the effects of homeopathic treatments." Arion 3x3 ( talk) 21:56, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
"seem to confirm the finding that more rigorous trials have less-promising results" still means something positive. And this should be reflected in the lead.-- 24.56.140.198 ( talk) 22:41, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
It is incredibly tedious that it should take an entire section to come to an understanding of "retraction". Antelan talk 23:11, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Any administrator would like to make suggestions to the editor who reverted me at the Arsenicum_album ? I discussed it, kindly asked for objections and added a quote from the article which is in use in the article. What is the problem? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Arsenicum_album#.22Basic_science_research_on_the_biological_effects_of_highly_diluted_solutions_has_yielded_mixed_results..22 -- 70.107.246.88 ( talk) 19:03, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#DanaUllman Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 01:20, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
DanaUllman ( talk · contribs) is currently the subject of a topic ban, but is editing the current ArbCom in spite of having been warned of his topic ban. [172] [173] If there is anything at Wikipedia that deals with the (banned) subject of homeopathy more than this ArbCom, I don't know what it would be, so the topic ban certainly applies just as much to it as to the homeopathy article. -- Fyslee / talk 15:07, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
Peter morrell ( talk · contribs) has decided to stop editing at homeopathy. Here are relevant links and evidence of a serious attitude problem: [174] [175] [176] [177] [178] [179] [180] [181] [182] [183] [184] [185] I suggest that he be taken at his word and held to it, IOW a topic ban until he shows evidence of a change of heart and an understanding of NPOV. -- Fyslee / talk 15:31, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
The Arbitration Committee homeopathy case has closed, accordingly the community probation has been replaced with Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions, and this page is essentially redundant. Disruptive editors editors should now be handled using the Arbitration Committee sanctions, which is detailed on the case page, instead of the community probation. PhilKnight ( talk) 00:35, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
This page is currently inactive and is retained for
historical reference. Either the page is no longer relevant or consensus on its purpose has become unclear. To revive discussion, seek broader input via a forum such as the village pump. |
Regardless of the probity of adding an editor, they must be added on notification, and as such I consider Vassyana notified on this page regardless of Jossi's reverts. I also believe that editors must be added to this page when notified, and urge other editors to consider this diff. Unlike other editors, however, I will not edit war here. PouponOnToast ( talk) 18:55, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Proposed modification to the probation here. Lawrence § t/ e 19:24, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
I am posting this information on behalf of an editor who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of embroiling themselves in the homeopathy/pseudoscience conflict. (After checking their contributions to be sure, I can verify they are not involved in this conflict and have not been previously involved in conflict with ScienceApologist so far as I can tell.) This is simply being posted so that other sysops who are more familiar with the situation may review the circumstances. I am refraining from espousing my own opinion, instead simply organizing and presenting the evidence and arguments provided to me privately.
ScienceApologist ( talk · contribs) appears to be walking the border of disruption to make a point and using literalist, and potentially out-of-context, interpretations of the rules. There are also some continued edit warring and civility issues.
Jehochman warned ScienceApologist about edit warring on Rue. [1] SA blatantly copy/pasted the notice back to Jehochman. [2] This is a POINT and civility concern because Jehochman was not involved in edit warring on the article. [3] [4] SA reached four reverts on the article. [5] [6] [7] [8] This was reported and contrary to a plain review of the article history and edit summaries judged to not be a 3RR violation as somehow one revert was not a revert, and therefore it was "not a technical violation" of 3RR. (Specifically, the third edit was judged to not be a revert, but it was a partial reversion, which counts towards 3RR.) Levine2112 reverted up to the hard limit of three reverts, continuing and escalating the edit war. [9] [10] [11]
SA has POINTily framed the homeopathy issue of a plant's usage in homeopathic remedies, based on the known fact that homeopathic products are known to contain very little to none of the original production substance (though it is unquestionable that the original substances are used to create homeopathic preparations). [12] [13] To be fair, ScienceApologist has advocated for a centralized discussion of the issue, which may be a productive step. [14] [15] Discussion regarding this issue has also taken place at: Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_6#Deadly_nightshade and Wikipedia_talk:Neutral_point_of_view#Deadly_nightshade. SA appears to be dishonest in some of his dismissals, for example claiming that only homeopathic references make the claims (which is contrary to the discussions above and others SA has been aware of and/or involved in). [16]
ScienceApologist created WP:PROMINENCE as a redirect to WP:UNDUE based on the phrase "in proportion to the prominence of each" in that section. [17] He appears to be shifting the sands of UNDUE from the exclusion of extreme minority viewpoints to demanding that the claims be prominent. [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] These are distinctly different standards and the latter is at least a step removed from the meaning of the policy (which is simply indicating that things should be presented in proper proportion to their appearance in reliable sources). Creating a redirect to frame an ongoing argument is almost certainly a POINT violation. Furthermore, considering the ongoing and heated nature of this discussion, it is unlikely that SA was not aware that such a move would raise the heat of the conflict. On a related note, ScienceApologist is pushing principles of his own invention as though they were policy and claiming they are rooted in a "careful reading" of the rules. [24] [25]
It looks like SA is extremely dismissive of responses to him, characterizing responses he does not find convincing as essentially a lack of response. [26] [27] [28] [29] He also appears to be exhibiting bad faith assumptions about other editors, contrary to the ArbCom remedy. [30]
This dispute was raised on this noticeboard twice recently ( Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Editor disrupting editing with false claims of WP:PROMINENCE and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Clarification of Homeopathy Probation Edit Policy).
Please be aware these are not all relevant diffs, simply a random sampling of the most recent. It would probably be worth reviewing the actions and posts of other editors engaged with ScienceApologist, to take into account any possible baiting and to ensure all parties are treated equitably in this dispute. Thanks for your time and attention to this situation. Vassyana ( talk) 19:32, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
I don't like the fact that this discussion was closed on WP:ANI and then posted to a much less visible page. I don't think any action against SA is justified at this time. I dropped in on Talk:Deadly nightshade last night and I think that what SA is saying about sourcing is sensible. --Akhilleus ( talk) 20:04, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Do I get to know the identity of my accuser? Should I refute every diff's characterization point-by-point? What would the people here have me do? ScienceApologist ( talk) 20:32, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
[31] — Whig ( talk) 20:32, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
Admins who edit these articles, especially those who worked on them prior to the probation, are not exempt from probation. All users are bound, including admins. Lawrence § t/ e 22:37, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Per:
Lawrence § t/ e 22:41, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Good idea. One note, however - put the section header (==Admins==) on the protected page so that admins clicking "edit" by the section go to the right part, similar to RFA. PouponOnToast ( talk) 00:00, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
An editor is edit warning me in a content dispute. This probation may have unintended consquences. Quack Guru 00:07, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
PouponOnToast ( talk · contribs) - Creates this Wikipedia:DELETEHOMEOPATHY page. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 05:06, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
I'd like someone to please take a look at this. — Whig ( talk) 19:25, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
:|
east.718 at 21:04, February 2, 2008
Perhaps I misunderstood the purpose of article probation, but I thought it was supposed to stop edits like: [36] [37] [38] [39]. --Akhilleus ( talk) 20:30, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
I am respectfully questioning whether or not the admin Felonious Monk should be on the list of blocking admins given his vote to ban User:Whig here and User:Abridged here. A community ban seems like a pretty serious step, and there didn't seem to be any consensus that those bans were justified. Also, some evidence of involvement in the general area of homeopathy based on these edits: [42], [43]. (I'm not saying I agree with the edits or disagree; they may have been entirely appropriate, I'm just concerned about involvement in the subject area). Abridged talk 23:52, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Look, I was not disrupting. I was just doing what is supposted to be allowed. Why are you being so rude? Abridged talk 20:40, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
I reverted this addition to the talk page [44] by MartinPhi. I'm not sure what this falls under, but surely it falls under something, ie disruption. What has been doing on at Raymond's talk page has been going on in full view of the WP community, so it is not some big secret to anyone who has been editing over the past few days. That being said, the addition had no implications to further the homeopathy article. And he was already notified, prior to this, about the probation of the article. Prior to posting this, he added the passage back. Baegis ( talk) 06:45, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
I have left messages starting here (in this section), and here. Please do something about these editors. -- Fyslee / talk 07:29, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
Relax, everybody. Templating somebody's talk page could be viewed as provocation, but not vandalism. I think people can template their own talk page if they desire. Nobody is forced to visit Whig's talk page, so if he wants to make it a battle zone and suffer disruption, that is his business, so long as it is not being used to attack other editors, in which case we have a variety of control measures available. Jehochman Talk 14:08, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
Let me turn the question around. Please present a selection of diffs from your contribution history that show encyclopedic contributions, as opposed to argumentation (often in the form of politely phrased questions), lawyering over the rules, and lobbying for alt-med causes. [46] [47] [48] You have a very polite tone, but you seem to want to engage people in endless debates (stonewalling) and repeatedly make polite requests for information that is easily found. This all appears to be an effort to advance a content agenda. Jehochman Talk 17:06, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
The use of endless disruption and discussion can stop a consensus from forming, and is a serious form of stonewalling. It behooves editors who find themselves arguing against the good sources used (IOW failing to learn and change their POV) and against policies, to stop the objecting and sometimes simply be silent and allow things to progress forwards. Sometimes the question to be asked is "Why isn't there a consensus?" If it's because of contrarian obstinacy and stonewalling, then the lack of consensus is the fault of those who are stonewalling by their endless advocacy and pushing of minority and alternative agendas. Those POV may be allowed (and may even be required) in articles if properly sourced, but the POV are themselves disruptive because they are often denying reality or are against scientifically validated viewpoints. It is often a form of OR for fringe editors to come here and attempt to argue against the scientific majority POV. Another matter is that continually claiming that "there is no consensus" (as a means of stopping unfavorable edits) and then asking "do you believe there is a consensus?" (when there obviously isn't) is not constructive, but is just more stonewalling and is disruptive.
It is important to distinguish between two things:
In short, nonsense and fringe viewpoints may need to be included using good sources, but they should not be preached or advocated. Wikipedia talk pages are not mission fields for such POV missionaries. Proselytizing isn't allowed here. -- Fyslee / talk 06:42, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
The warrioring is getting out of control. Can we start issuing topic bans instead of article bans, and have that topic ban include these pages, such as Talk:Homeopathy/Article probation/Incidents and Talk:Homeopathy/Article probation? Please? I see at least one editor here that is banned from Homeopathy but is all over this page, not helping Wikipedia. If people are actually here to work on Wikipedia, there a million other articles to work on if barred for a week from Homeopathy junk. If they are incapable of working on other topics or areas, perhaps they should be permanently shown the door. Lawrence § t/ e 14:18, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
major edit without talk page discussion revert revert major edit without talk page discussion revert revert revert revert revert revert. 911 Is a Joke. PouponOnToast ( talk) 18:35, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
[51] — Whig ( talk) 22:29, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
[52] [53] [54] [55] [56] [57] EBDCM is a newbie but is making uncivil remarks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chiropractic#copyright_violation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic#Safety_issues The safety issues section has a text dump of copyrighted information. [58]
Please take a look here. [59] EBDCM has put a link on the talk page claiming he knows who I am and by clicking on the link at the website exposes a real person's name.
This was reported to the noticeborad but no action was taken. Regards, -- QuackGuru ( talk) 06:31, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Chiropractic&diff=next&oldid=191113326 After I made a report here the probation tag was removed without any reason. I do not understand why. QuackGuru ( talk) 18:06, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Chiropractic&diff=prev&oldid=191813064 Read the edit summary.
I am offended by the edit summary. I want more uninvolved editors and the probation restored. QuackGuru ( talk) 18:17, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Chiropractic&diff=prev&oldid=191818149 I hate to do this, but I agree with QG.
This is what happens when the probation tag is lifted. Draw your own conclusions. QuackGuru ( talk) 18:14, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
Are you saying that all this time your use of my comment was because you found it offensive? I had no idea! This is a revelation. I had no idea that that was the issue. All my comments above were made under the assumption that you were talking about something else. Sorry about the confusion. It would have helped if you had spelled it out instead of just listing a bunch of links and words from various people without much explanation. (Note that his thread is based on a previous edit that has been moved here and is now out of context.) It looked to me like you were attempting to make my words of support in one limited situation look like words of support for you in all situations, which is not true. As my revision of my comment shows, I thought you were talking about something else.
As to "leave me alone with your remarks", sorry, can't do that. You quote me and apparently are accusing me of something, so I have a right to defend myself. This has nothing to do with homeopathy or the probation. This is apparently about some difference of opinion, and where I actually agreed with you. You cannot force me to agree with you all the time, so just be grateful that I agreed with you that time. If you take offense, that's your problem. -- Fyslee / talk 06:43, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Neither this edit nor this edit were discussed on the talk page of the article, contrary to edit summary. Editor making said edits is under an unblock-mentorship agreement, though it appears their mentor has taken a break. The terms of the most recent unblock-mentorship was that the editor "may only make significant changes (anything past typo fixes, spelling corrections, etc.) after you have reached a consensus on the talk page." I am unwilling to deal further with disruptive single purpose editors-for-profit with conflicts of interest, so I leave it to someone else to even engage in discussions regarding this. PouponOnToast ( talk) 16:22, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Lame. That's what this is. Lame and ridiculous. I'm semi-breaking from admin duties (not including mentorship) for a few weeks, I'm not on a wiki-break. If there's nothing wrong with the edits, then sit down. Dana doesn't need to be blocked for making constructive edits. There's been discussion on the talk page, I could go read it, but considering it's been stated that it's not a bad edit, I don't see the point. Come to me when he does something wrong. Until then, we've all got more important things to deal with. Lara ❤ Love 18:05, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
(note - links corrected) PouponOnToast ( talk) 18:10, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Since LaraLove is no longer taking admin action, the mentorship of Danaullman should be remanded to an admin who has the time and the willingness to use administrative actions. ScienceApologist ( talk) 19:36, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
However, if you simply look at her contributions and/or on my user-page, you (or he...or anyone) would find that she is still actively mentoring me. In any case, you now know. Dana Ullman Talk 23:13, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
The edit war continues. Attempts at discussion are being stonewalled. Dlabtot ( talk) 20:54, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Could someone try to keep an eye on the Arsenicum album talk page? I have noticed that since Dana's mentor left (wikibreak, see above), he has become increasingly emboldened to push the civility envelope against opposing editors. He also has developed a new catchall of accusing anyone who dares to disagree with him of stonewalling. OfftheFence, Brunton, Arthur Rubin and myself could all attest to this statement, I'm sure. Frankly, it is quite annoying to have to scratch tooth and nail for every minor detail change. He is also in possession of a study that he continues to reference and include in the article (Cazin) but no one else has a copy of said study. Considering his actual profession is homeopathy related, this poses a serious problem for including any quotes for the study. It's all detailed on the talk page. Cheers! Baegis ( talk) 04:35, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
I haven't ended my mentorship of Dana. I thought that had been made clear by both myself and others. Regardless, if there are issues with Dana, as the banner on his talk page states, they should be brought to me. Regards,
Lara
❤
Love 18:31, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
The first two paragraphs below are copied from Talk:Homeopathy, to bring a discussion here rather than continue it there.
It might be helpful to all concerned if you could explain WHY you have banned him? He has not said anything above that he has not said before several times. Irritating though that may be yet he is surely entitled to express his view and has he actually insulted anyone? Furthermore, he has not tampered with the article. Purely from a sociological viewpoint his view, extreme though it is, should be heard IMO. thanks Peter morrell 14:02, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
My point simply was about freedom of speech: we should not be banning folks just for their extreme views but more for offending others. Those views certainly exist extreme or not but even if they were true, WP should still strive to describe homeopathy neutrally and fairly, even if it were proved to be some crazy pseudoscience and founded in some weird religious belief, which I know it isn't. Widely divergent views should be welcomed. That was all really. Peter morrell 20:16, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Top sekwet advise to anthon: RB has figured out hour despickabul sekwet stwatagey. Dont annser himn. PS Dont tel anywun this. Wanderer57 ( talk) 04:26, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
Could an admin please take a look at this? [63] — Whig ( talk) 02:42, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Per Jehochman's request to see diffs of disruption, please see the following edits of DanaUllman: [66] [67] [68]. These are the only edits Dana made to this section before OffTheFence's frustration resulted in caps (he also edited other sections of the page, but no answers there either. This is the most applicable area, though). He was repeatedly asked whether this study was randomized, and instead of answering, he mocked the need for randomization (see the second diff for the actual mocking). This particular instance of disruption is more telling in what isn't said, really (Dana's refusal to respond about the randomization), so a simple presentation of diffs can't really suffice, sorry. Some history perusal might be necessary to confirm that nowhere did he actual answer the question. -- Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 19:19, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
I have now placed a report on both the Cazin and Linde papers on Ars Alb's Talk page. I would welcome comments. OffTheFence ( talk) 08:07, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
The edit summary made by Levine2112 claimed: No recent discussion nor any consensus for any of this mass revert/change. There has been discussions. See serious NPOV issues (oh my). Levine2112 has not participated in the recent discussion and reverted a quality NPOV edit. -- QuackGuru ( talk) 00:32, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
Should anons be adding editors to article probation and outing their supposed identities on that page? [69] — Whig ( talk) 17:49, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
FYI, "I don't see 'Homeopath-" anything in the *text* of either Chiropractic, or Sci Inv of Chiropractic; remove Homeo- warning, its cont'd abuse seems to me to be, POV, initimidation & provocation". Lawrence § t/ e 07:13, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
These need to stop, it's what probation is about. SchmuckyTheCat ( talk)
Whig has an extensive history of disruption on homeopathy-related talk pages. I will restrict the following collection of diffs to those posted in the four days, in the interest of freshness, but please realize that this behavior has gone on for months.
This needs to stop. This behavior is poisoning good faith attempts by both pro- and anti-factions to improve coverage of homeopathic topics on Wikipedia. Whig has been the subject of two recent user conduct RFCs ( here and here), which have had no effect in changing his tendentious and needlessly argumentative approach. I recommend a broadly defined topic ban (if not a full siteban) that covers all articles and talk pages related to homeopathy, as well as any user page/AN/ANI discussions related to homeopathy. Skinwalker ( talk) 21:14, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
It is clear that many of these postings were to editors that were not AGF, including several that have been harassing me. This has the appearance of a cabal's game. The Tutor ( talk) 22:49, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
In what will surely be claimed as a personal vendetta, the one of the problems that I see with Whig is that he knows the rules well enough to walk the line but never get caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Is that really the kind of editor we need? His mentor has been MIA for a long period of time, leaving him free to edit without having to abide by his restrictions. As we saw from the DanaUllman case, a good mentor should always be watching in order to correct bad behavior. Dana's mentor stepped in on several occasions to apply restrictions and weigh in on issues regarding the mentee. But, the biggest problem is Whig's penchant for being a willing meat puppet for other pro-homeopathy users. While my diff's will never be able to show the totality of the previous statement, they do show that he constantly backs up edits from [Name Redacted], TheTutor (Tutor diffs from previous people), and Dana. As seen on this section of the Arsenicum album talk page, a question is asked to Dana and then after a response from Dana, Whig answers all further questions, drastically steering the conversation off course. This is not the only case of this happening, as seen from the mess involving TheTutor. Though Whig has been around a lot longer than the parties I describe, his actions in conjunction with them are problematic. He even backed up a comment from Dana in which he, in a round about way, called someones mental capacity into question, saying it was funny. Maybe it's because [Name Redacted] and Dana are both well known outside of the Wiki world and it is a case of coattails. Who knows? The point is, Whig constantly violated the terms of his probation and should be held accountable. Baegis ( talk) 02:16, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
The business about the swimming pool would be enough to drive anyone to distraction and just remove this article from their watchlist and let it flounder.
This example is just being used by Whig and Anthon01 and other homeopathy proponents as an excuse to threaten and fight ad nauseum. Rather than even look at a google search or the sources already linked, they would prefer to engage in tendentitious and disruptive argumentation and spamming of the talk page with nonsense. This must stop right now and I ask an admin to warn those involved.-- Filll ( talk) 14:54, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
If several editors asked for a POV tag since they argue that the article does not comply with the NOPV policy the administrators should add it or not, according to wikirules? I might make a mistake - I asked again and nonoone answered. s Please comment. I hope this is the right place to post this question.-- Area69 ( talk) 20:46, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
If so, please pop on over to the Arsenicum album page and lend a hand. An editor, one who has been warned about the probation for these articles, is insisting on this being a better version than the way I had it previously, even though it is the EXACT same phrase just ordered differently. It is more appropriate to present the results of the study THEN discuss the problems. I'm pretty sure few will find a problem with that. On the talk page, Dana claims I need to verify the same facts that another editor discussed at length (see rest of talk page) with him before he will "allow" my edit to stick. He has reverted it 3 times so far today, clearly in violation of the spirit of the probation. I have cautioned him about the 3RR rule. I have also reverted it twice, so I will accept any punishment for violating the probation. Baegis ( talk) 03:57, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
I just indefinitely blocked Ramaanand ( talk · contribs) & added that account to Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Dr.Jhingaadey. It was painfully obvious that this last chance effort to reform the editor was going to fail, especially when the editor revealed that he was " not even willing to be an editor here" and was simply aiming to argue & edit war over the inclusion of homeopathy criticisms.
If any admin feels that my reasons for blocking were inappropriate or insufficient, please feel free to contact me. If nobody objects, I'd say that WP:BAN is back in full effect for this editor. — Scien tizzle 14:18, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Addhoc hi. You are not an uninvolved administrator. You should really be editing the article as you have done:
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Homeopathy&diff=prev&oldid=191701837]--70.107.246.88 (talk) 17:39, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Personally I think that rule is counterproductive. I think that involved editors should be allowed to use their tools, but that their decisions should be subject to careful review andn vetting and certification by others to prevent abuse.-- Filll ( talk) 18:42, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
If you feel strongly that you have a case (which I do not think you do) and you are not able to get a reasonable response from Addhoc, then you can try AN/I or Arbcomm. However, I think the best option might be to change those silly rules you are citing to something more useful and productive.-- Filll ( talk) 18:50, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
There are worse examples in this forum.The way the discussion is administrated led to this situation. So fine. Addhoc please consider removing Dana's ban symbolically and edit the article. Nothing personal here.-- 70.107.246.88 ( talk) 18:59, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
See this comment of mine [133] and answers. It would appear that Dana presented a 1994 study on Talk:Arsenicum album, where it was shooted down for several reasons. Because of an initial confusion, some editors talked instead about the 1997 article by same author, and shooted it down too.
Now, Dana has presented the 1997 article on Talk:Homeopathy and has not warned that it was previously dismissed elsewhere, or that a 1994 article by same author had been discussed and dismissed elsewhere. It wasn't until some editor remembered having discussed the article before that it surfaced. This has the appeareance of article pushing and talk-page shopping -- Enric Naval ( talk) 23:12, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Adenda: Dana Ullman and LaraLove have been notified on their talk pages -- Enric Naval ( talk) 23:44, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Yeah Phil, and this includes everyone (I'm not yet clear why you chose to single me out). The bottomline here is the Enric has his history mixed up, not just about me, but also about the different Linde meta-analyses, and about the Arsenicum article which rightfully includes reference to the Linde 1994 work. I assume good faith and realize that it is challenging to keep all of this info straight, but this is why one should check-in with the potentially offending party before bothering admins or noticeboards. Is this reasonable? DanaUllman Talk 02:42, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Dana.... I know that you might be a bit fired up because of this discussion, but do you really think that this edit [135] is wise? No consensus at talk page, deleting the attribution of one source suspected of POV, and past probation problems with same problems. I restored the words [136], I suggest that you achieve more consensus at talk page, and that you don't perform the actual edit yourself (just in case), lest we need to open to open another section here -- Enric Naval ( talk) 05:03, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Dana is pushing Enni's studies again on April 3 2008 [139] (notice the veiled POV accusation on the edit summary to any editor ever opposing Ennis' study). Dana says that the study was replicated by 4 independient labs and asks for sources on four laboratories saying they couldn't replicate it.
However the lack of replication by "four experts from reputable laboratories" is explained at this userspace draft of homeopathy while (it can't get more ironical) dismounting an argument on a book written by Dana. In Dana's defence, there is no evidence that he was aware of this text. Moreover, links below prove that he knew about BBC's replication and has been off-wiki objecting actively to how it was presented and other stuff. Dunno if Dana has ever disclosed this this COI.
He also has *huge* WP:COI because he appears to have written a book where he defended Ennis' study, and is perfectly aware of BBC program, since he sent a complaint letter to ABC and Dana received a mail from Ennis himself on the matter on 2003.
Then I searched Ennis on talk pages and found this Dana's comment from January 26 2008 where he gets answered "Dana, why do you keep repeating this same arguments when it's been explained to you that they aren't valid on other pages?" Talk:Arsenicum_album#Defies_logic I was like "wtf"? So I digged through Homeopathy archives and found nothing except passing mentions to Ennis here, but a search on google turned out a discussion with Maury Markowitz on January 1 2008 User_talk:Maury_Markowitz#BBC.27s_and_ABC.27s_20.2F20_Homeopathy_Test_was_Junk_Science and a discussion with Otheus on February 1 2008 at User_talk:Otheus.
I also finally found the archives of Water memory talk March 4 2007 - June 5 2007 Talk:Water_memory/Archive1#Ennis_email_incorrectly_attributed, December 18 2007 - February 4 2008 [ [140]] and February 1-2 2008 Talk:Water_memory/Archive1#Pseudoscience_Info_box where Ennis study is shot down, and Dana is perfectly aware of the conversation since he adds himself in the middle of other user comment (probably due to unexperience and unawareness of WP:TALK) on August 9 2007 [141].
So, gross probation violation, and probable gross WP:COI violation, and gross WP:NPOV violation for pushing POV studies without mentioning that they had been shot down by consensus and evidence (see above incident for same problem), and using edit summaries unadequately again -- Enric Naval ( talk) 14:51, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
The thing that really strikes you when you look at these pages in full is that it's hard to find onee thing on them written by DanaUllman that is not quickly demonstrated to be exaggerated and/or falsified. I'd encourage others to check other pages, but the pattern is clear: Dana Ullman regularly and consistently misrepresents his sources, and tries to claim that sources that support his POV are in top journals in their fields, sources of unquestionable accuracy, which must be included, and which thoroughly disprove those nasty negative references which should be deleted. That is not an exaggeration. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 17:01, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
"Dana Ullman regularly and consistently misrepresents his sources".
I have a problem with Shoemaker's above-noted "universal" statement. While I can't pretend to understand meta-analyses, I do know homeopathy works. Many of us use Dana's books for references as they are in libraries across the world and his books have often been one of our first introductions to homeopathy over the past 25+ years. By characterizing him as "misrepresent"ing his sources - it seems you are more concerned with attacking his reputation than refuting his claims or the claims of homeopathic remedies in general, which is -- after all -- the general thrust and intention of the article. My question then is: why? How does the practice of homeopathy offend you? And why the supreme effort to denounce its efficacy? Patients do not die taking homeopathy remedies and unlike therapeutic meds from big pharma, it's safe. Your motives are more than questionnable.
--
Flagtheerror (
talk) 20:59, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
You don't have a problem with others making sweeping generalizations about him "misrepresenting" sources when there is no proof of his doing so? How fair is that? What in heaven's name would be his MO for doing so? But by continuing this push to continually chastise, criticize and denounce his claims, well, one tends to wonder why. Don't you think any of his book editors properly sourced his references in the past? He wouldn't have much credibility if he did what you and others claim, in the publishing world - now would he?
--
Flagtheerror (
talk) 21:40, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps this is a misunderstanding. Dana, can you select a handful of the studies that Shoemaker has referenced above and quote from the text to demonstrate that he is mistaken? Antelan talk 02:07, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Sorry Enric...I meant to refer to you as a newbie to editing articles on homeopathy. You are not a newbie to wikipedia. I do, however, have concern that you may be working from a very strong POV seemingly without adequate knowledge of the field and without adequate knowledge of the broad basic science and clinical research that has been conducted in the field. If I'm wrong, my apologies, but you've only begun editing in this homeopathic space for under 2 months. DanaUllman Talk 04:37, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
To accuse someone of having a "conflict of interest" (COI) because they wrote a positive review about a particular research study in a publication is beyond the bound of human logic! The nature of the advocacy of the anti-homeopathy POV (and that is not a joke, but a sad commentary on the bias that is blatantly displayed even on this page) is to insist on removing any mention of studies that appear to support homeopathy, and insist on the inclusion of studies that do not appear to support homeopathy. Arion 3x3 ( talk) 00:58, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
The argument that because Dana reviewed a study in his book makes that somehow a conflict of interest in being an editor on homeopathic artices on Wikipedia is ridiculous. The statement "If the study gets famous, the book gets more famous." also does not logically follow. Arion 3x3 ( talk) 01:20, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Mr. Ullman, let's look at some of the things you have said about studies that are demonstratably misleading. All quotes are exact, with the exception of removing formatting such as ref tags or brackets around web links that would make formatting be messed up. Any abbreviation is marked as such. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 17:42, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Summary
Although Mr. Ullman claims that J.C. Cazin et al.. "A Study of the Effect of Decimal and Centesimal Dilution of Arsenic on Retention and Mobilization of Arsenic in the Rat," Human Toxicology, July 1987 was published in a "leading" "major" and "highly-respected" journal, he changes his mind repeatedly on the title of the journal, jumps at a suggestion by Hesperian of a title that it might be, and uses it to justify his claims, saying that Hesperian's suggestion was correct. Research, however, shows that it was not, and that the journal is, in fact, a minor, low-impact journal with a section devoted to non-mainstream reports. These inflated claims will be shown to be typical as this report continues to other studies he refers to.
Detailed analysis in support
and
“ | ...it was published in one of the leading journals in toxicology.... | ” |
We'll deal with the rest of that last quote at a slightly later point. Let's move on for the moment...
Although Mr. Ullman repeatedly claims that Human Toxicology is a highly-respected leading journal, he soon demonstrate he has no actual knowledge about it:
“ | The "new" name of this journal is "Human and Veterinary Toxicology" | ” |
But when Hesperian points out that "Thomson Scientific's Journal Citation Reports lists 76 journals in the "toxicology" category. It doesn't list journals entitled "Human Toxicology", nor "Human and Veterinary Toxicology", but it does list a journal named "Veterinary and Human Toxicology". When listed in order of impact factor, H&VT ranks 68th out of 76 journals." he immediately changes his tune:
“ | It is not mysterious at all. The correct name is Veterinary and Human Toxicology. I'm glad that you've confirmed that it is a recognized peer-review journal in toxicology. | ” |
And, before all this, he had added the following to the article:
“ | Human and Experimental Toxicology (today, this journal is simply called Human Toxicology). | ” |
In fact, all of these are wrong. The journal was originally Human Toxicology, and changed its name to Human and Experimental Toxicology, a name it retains to this day [154]. This means that he was making claims about the importance of a journal that he could not even get the name of correct. But he still claimed himself and himself alone as a sufficient authority to assert it was a highly-respected, leading journal. It is actually a low impact journal (Journal eigenfactor: 0.0028658. Article Influence: 0.24856). In short, he appears to have had no idea what he was talking about, but this did not stop him constantly making grand assertions, and flailing about in an attempt to leap on anything that would give the temporary appearance of supporting his arguments, true or not, nonetheless.
Finally, according to the editors, Human [and Experimental] toxicology's scope is:
In other words, they have a special section DEVOTED TO SPECULATIVE OR NON-MAINSTREAM REPORTS. I presume this is where the Cazin article appeared. Do I need to say why this is a problem to his assertion that Human Toxicology's reputation (such as it is) proves that the Cazin article is a reliable source?
Summary Ullman makes similar - even, perhaps, extreme claims for the importance of the Linde 1994 metaanalysis (Linde K, et al, Critical review and meta-analysis of serial agitated dilutions in experimental toxicology, Human and experimental toxicology, 1994). He claims that it is a "major" meta-analysis, published in a major journal on numerous occasions. However, the journal is the same one as the Cazin study; the article is only cited by two (TWO) other studies in all of Pubmed [155]. Places you would expect to find a major metaanalysis do not include it, and it is not generally available, with even companies making volumes of Human and Experimental Toxicology available not offering issues back that far.
Detailed analysis
Ullman makes similar claims for the Linde 1994 metaanalysis as the Cazin study:
“ | ...Please note that Linde, et al (1994) is an important meta-analysis... | ” |
and
“ | The meta-analysis to which I referenced here was published in a major toxicology journal. If you think that I'm wrong (though I'm not), please provide verification. | ” |
He is, in fact, wrong. As shown in section 1a, he appears to have no to little knowledge of the journal, as it's the same one as the Cazin study was published in, (Not that he knows that, or he wouldn't say that the Cazin journal was Human and Veterinary Toxicology, or did he mean Veterinary and Human Toxicology... well, they're all major journals if they publish something hie likes, as will be shown throughout this report). Also as shown in 1a, the journal has both a low article impact and eigenfactor. It is not a major toxicology journal, as Mr. Ullman would even [finally] admit later:
“ | ...We can strike the word "leading," but it is still a NPOV source... | ” |
Only two other articles reference it in all of the pubmed database: [156]
The study does not appear places you would expect it to if it were a "major" metaanalysis. For instance, the NCCAM page on Homeopathy is generally supportive of homeopathy, but does not list this study in the table of metaanalyses. Linde himself does not cite it in his list of systematic reviews of homeopathy.
Dana Ullman aso has some confusion as to what year it was published, calling it a 1995 study, until corrected. This is typical of his sloppy work.
Finally, Ingentia only makes Human and experimental toxicology available back to mid 2000, Sage publications back to 1998, meaning the article is not generally available.
Despite the problems demonstrated above: that it has only two references to it in all of Pubmed, is generally unavailable, and is not even discussed in Linde's own discussion of systematic reviews of homeopathy, DanaUllman claims repeatedly that the non-notable Linde 1994 study is itself sufficient to make the Cazin study count as notable, as shown in section 1d.
Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 21:33, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Summary Linde retracted several conclusions of his previous work in 1999, and this was pointed out to Ullman at the start of the discussion. (part i) Nonetheless, Ullman continues to use the retracted conclusions. (part iii) Ullman insists that we should AGF on his behalf, but does not apply the policy to other editors, and is a textbook tendentious editor (part ii).
Summary: One of the studies that Ullman pushes for [Linde 1997, see part iii for evidence of his abuse] has had findings explicitly retracted by its authors, and this was pointed out to Ullman. This retraction, in the eyes of a reasonable person, would also apply to the much more minor 1994.
Detailed analysis
In 1999, Linde retracted much of his previous work:
“ | "The evidence of bias weakens the findings of our original meta-analysis [7]. Since we completed our literature search in 1995, a considerable number of new homeopathy trials have been published. The fact that a number of the new high-quality trials (e.g. [14,15]) have negative results, and a recent update of our review for the most “original” subtype of homeopathy (classical or individualized homeopathy [16]), seem to confirm the finding that more rigorous trials have less-promising results. It seems, therefore, likely that our meta-analysis [7] at least overestimated the effects of homeopathic treatments."
Linde et al, Impact of Study Quality on Outcome in Placebo-Controlled Trials of Homeopathy, J Clin Epidemiol Vol. 52, No. 7, pp. 631–636, 1999, doi: 10.1016/S0895-4356(99)00048-7 |
” |
Link [7] refers to the Linde's 1997 metanalysis; however, as shown in 1b, the 1994 study by Linde is incredibly minor, and so it is not, perhaps, surprising that Linde does not explicitly mention it.
This was pointed out to Mr. Ullman at the start of the thread that kicked off the discussions referred to in 1a and 1b. [157]
Summary: Ullman's quotes of statistics from Linde 1997 are misleading, and Ullman insists that we should WP:AGF, at the same time as he attacks other editors with impunity, and ignores that AGF specifically says "This guideline does not require that editors continue to assume good faith in the presence of evidence to the contrary." and seems ignorant of WP:TEND "Tendentious editing is editing which is partisan, biased, skewed—in other words, it does not conform to the neutral point of view. On Wikipedia, the term also carries the connotation of repetitive attempts to insert or delete content which is resisted by multiple other editors." Several examples of Ullman failing to assume good faith, and attacking others without assuming good faith are summarised.
Detailed analysis
This section discusses the Linde 1997 metaanalysis (Linde, et al, 1997 Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? A meta-analysis of placebo-controlled trials, Lancet, doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(97)02293-9.
“ | First, I realize that Linde said that his previous meta-analysis "at least overestimated the effects of homeopathic treatments." However, of the 89 trials evaluated, there was a 2.45 (!) odds ratio favoring homeopathy, and when reviewing only the high quality studies, it was something like 1.78 (that's still significant). | ” |
Ullman is incorrect in multiple ways.
In a discussion of the effects of publication bias changing the results of the 1997 Linde study, Ullman quotes the combined results for the 1997 trial as uncorrected for publication bias. In the 1997 trial itself, Linde writes: "The overall estimate of the odds ratio corrected for publication bias was 1·78 (1·03 to 3·10, z=2·09). Thus correction for publication bias decreases the odds ratio by about 27%; however, it remained substantial and statistically significant."
The results for the quality trials are 1.66, not 1.78 as Dana claims. Linde et al do not correct the quality trials for publication bias.
“ | Although some studies after the 1997 had negative results, Linde never asserted that these new studies took away significance from the body of research... | ” |
WRONG!!!! WRONG ON EVERY COUNT!!! What part of "The evidence of bias weakens the findings of our original meta-analysis." does Mr. Ullman not understand? What part of "The fact that a number of the new high-quality trials (e.g. [14,15]) have negative results, and a recent update of our review for the most “original” subtype of homeopathy (classical or individualized homeopathy [16]), seem to confirm the finding that more rigorous trials have less-promising results. It seems, therefore, likely that our meta-analysis [7] at least overestimated the effects of homeopathic treatments." does not imply that the results of these new studies reduce Linde's findings on the body of research?
As this section of Linde 1999 was quoted above, and Ullman was explicitly responding to the quote, Ullman's reading comprehension must be cast into extreme doubt. Ullman's statement above "Either your bias is blinding you or you are not reading or understanding previous discussions." would appear to be a textbook example of projection. Which leads to the next point:
“ | Once again, I want to warn you to AGF | ” |
This is typical of Ullman's use of AGF as a sledgehammer to try and attack others who disagree with him into silence. Mr. Ullman, is mistaken on the details of the AGF policy. Assuming Good Faith does not mean assuming that you are right. "This guideline does not require that editors continue to assume good faith in the presence of evidence to the contrary." You are clearly a tendentious editor: "Tendentious editing is editing which is partisan, biased, skewed—in other words, it does not conform to the neutral point of view. On Wikipedia, the term also carries the connotation of repetitive attempts to insert or delete content which is resisted by multiple other editors." Assuming good faith does not mean assuming you are right. It means assuming the best interpretation to your actions, e.g. that you are incompetent, rather than intentionally deceitful.
1
“ | Can you show good faith by inserting this statement (it seems that some editors delete my contributions). | ” |
2
Brief analysis Ullman and Arion 3x3 were editwarring (Ullman: [158] [159] Arion: [160] [161] [162] [163]) for addition of a new section that he wrote that made a purely biased use of the 1997 study to claim that there is strong evidence that Homeopathy works, and elimination of a discussion of problems with homeopathic research. Hesperian's quote of Linde's finding that "The number of methodologically sound, independently reproduced studies is too small to make any definitive conclusions regarding the effect of SAD preparations in toxicology" was quite sufficient to rebut the additions to the article that Ullman was editwarring for the inclusion of. Ullman nontheless attacks Hesperian for quoting a section that shows that Linde's conclusions were not the 100% pure proof of homeopathy that Ullman claimed, acting as if it was a huge attempt to deceive, but that he was graciously assuming good faith. Oh, and it also provides yet another bit of confusion about Human Toxicology (claims that Human and Experimental Toxicology became Human Toxicology, rather than the other way around. [see 1a])
3
(adding note)Dana already got later involved on a different edit war,
he got warned for it, then
accused of bad faith assumption by two editors and then
banned 7 days from editing homeopathy articles for the edit warring. --
Enric Naval (
talk) 12:58, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
4
“ | Either you're stonewall or pretending to have a bad memory. Despite this, I will AGF if you can agree that Cazin's work deserves to remain in the article. | ” |
1
“ | I wish to assume good faith, but I also have a sneaking suspicion that some (maybe many) of the above editors are neither subscribers or readers of this journal... | ” |
Attacking all your critics because they are not subscribers of a journal that you are trying to hype is not assuming good faith. The rest of the quote deals with the journal Homeopathy, which is best dealt with in another section.
2
3 (On an admin's talk page)
More could be provided in this section with ease, but I think the point is made.
Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 11:31, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
[TBC] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk • contribs) 11:58, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Summary: One of Dana's longer posts on Cazin is analysed in detail, and almost everything in it is shown to be false or misleading. In a more recent post, Ullman makes such grandiose claims for his source that he actually ends up claiming that a 1994 study will serve as a secondary source to prove the notability of sources from 2003 and 2005.
Detailed analysis:
We may now return to the earlier quote I said we'd come back to.
Almost every word in that is wrong, except, perhaps, Ullman's praise of what appears (these articles are not generally availble, as I said, which makes it difficult to check, but this is my best guess) to be the Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille which, as far as I know, is an excellent university. However, it appears (see below) that the university were not the only people involved.
That's from February. However, Mr. Ullman tends to repeat himself a lot, and he has continued to make similar claims, despite months of discussion, even to nearly the present day. Consider this quote from 29 March, which ignores all that came before and simply asserts:
“ | First, virtually all of the studies mentioned here have secondary RS, and that is the Linde 1994 meta-analysis... | ” |
As I pointed out at the time, there were about three studies Ullman was pushing at the time, and the 2003 and 2005 cannot possibly be referenced in a 1994 meta-analysis. Virtually all, my hairy arse.
Shoemaker's Holiday (
talk)
Summer Glau 20:09, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
[Forthcoming]
[Forthcoming. Quick samples follow] Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 16:04, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Here we see Ullman cavalierly saying we should delete the mainstream view of homeopathy in favour of small, preliminary studies that support his views.
Summary: Two discussions on Talk:Arsenicum album are analysed. Although the Shang metaanalysis is published in The Lancet, and comes complete with a glowing editorial by the Lancet's editors, unlike the studies that Ullman likes, where journals and importance are talked up to the skies, in this case, a widely-respected article in a top-tier journal is viciously attacked, using minor, fringe alternative medicine journals.
Discussion I A quick note - One gets the feeling that Ullman is responding to something else in his first post, which starts off this thread, as it otherwise comes out of nowhere, and seems to have no relationship to the article in question. However, this is the first post in the thread, so... don't look at me.
“ | [164] | ” |
[TBC - need food]
Discussion II
“ | ...[Linde provides much much more damaging analysis of the Shang (2005) review of research (which he and others blow out of the water as unscientific and unethical...yeah, that bad). | ” |
The Shang metaanalysis is a highly-respected one published in the journal Lancet, considered one of the top four medical journals. The Lancet editorial published with it attacked homeopathy repeatedly. Let's look at the letter from Linde that Dana says shows that the Shang metaanalysis is "unscientific and unethical". Here's the opening paragraph.
“ | We congratulate Aijing Shang and colleagues1 on their meta-analysis examining the clinical effects of homoeopathy. Their methods largely reproduce those of our meta-analysis on the same topic published in The Lancet 8 years ago.2 We agree that homoeopathy is highly implausible and that the evidence from placebo-controlled trials is not robust. However, there are major problems with the way Shang and colleagues present and discuss their results, as well as how The Lancet reviewed and interpreted this study. We will point out two. | ” |
Shang replies to both points in {{doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)67881-6}} - they're fairly minor procedural aspects, basically, they didn't follow a guideline that Linde thought they should have, and Linde thought they and the Lancet should have been a bit more temperate in their conclusions. More importantly, Linde NOWHERE says that they were unethical, as DanaUllman claims. The discussion peters out at this point, with a reference to the previous one. Once again, Ullman's claims about sources do not match the source itself.
Summary: While there is strong evidence of Ullman making systematic errors and grandiose claims, I do not believe that Ullman's behaviour is evidence of intent to deceive. There is quite a bit of evidence to show that Ullman is simply very sloppy,[Section 1a, etc, as well as little things like mistaking "Little Red Riding Hood" for "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" and has an inflated opinion of his own abilities, which combined with the significant investment he's made by having spent his entire adult life advocating for homeopathy, causes him to rate things that support his views much higher than he should [Section 1], while rejecting anything that does not support his views as unimportant or insignificant. [Section 3] While this does mean that he probably genuinely believes what he says at the time, unfortunately, this causes him to be an unreliable source [1a, etc], make it extremely unlikely that he could change his ways, and make him very disruptive to our purpose of making a respectable, mainstream encyclopaedia.
Discussion:
Per WP:REDFLAG: "Certain red flags should prompt editors to examine the sources for a given claim... [including] claims that are contradicted by the prevailing view within the relevant community, or which would significantly alter mainstream assumptions, especially in science, medicine, history, politics, and BLPs. Be particularly careful when proponents of such claims say there is a conspiracy to silence them... Exceptional claims in Wikipedia require high-quality reliable sources; if such sources are not available, the material should not be included."
Ullman has demonstrated himself prone to inflating the importance of sources he likes the conclusions of, [Section 1 a, b, c-ii] and seems to confuse disagreeing with his conclusions as a violation of good faith [Section 1c pt. ii appendix a], while denegrating respected studies he dislikes the findings of [Section 3]
This puts him in near-constant violation of WP:REDFLAG. He attacks other people that attempt to examine his sources, despite homeopathy "significantly altering mainstream assumptions... in science", particularly at dilutions higher than the Avorogado limit.[See Note 1, below] His habit of claiming, through his over-inflated statements on the importance of the minor studies he quotes [Section 1 a, b, and d], that he, in fact has sufficient evidence, his abuse of WP:RS to claim that it must be included [This will be covered in Section 2], and he also implies, if more weakly than some, that there is a conspiracy to silence him, or at least claims that anyone who disagrees with him is wrong: [165] [166] [See also Section 1c, Part ii(a and b).]
Ullman is a tendentious editor [1c-ii] and is prone to confabulation, creating false information that sounds like it might be true but evaporates when investigated [1a]. He has undergone mentorship with LaraLove, but does not seem to have changed the core nature of the problems that make him so difficult to work with on Wikipedia; nor does he seem to have a very high proportion of useful edits to rejected edits and tendentious arguments. Due to Ullman's heavy investment into homeopathy, having dedicated his life to promoting it, it is, perhaps, understandable that he is unwilling to change his views, and will resist any challenges to it. However, even if his behaviour is understandable, that does not make it suitable for Wikipedia: I think it highly unlikely that he is or will be capable of working effectively with others to build a neutral, NPOV (See WP:UNDUE, WP:NPOV/FAQ#Pseudoscience) encyclopaedia; nor do I think him likely to ever be able to accurately apply guidelines such as WP:FRINGE which insist on identifying and emphasising mainstream views at the expense of his strongly-held fringe views; nor do I think he will stop being a tendentious editor and turn into a useful contributor. Let's face it, in the end, he is Dana Ullman, a leading proselytizer of homeopathy. His entire livelihood and career spins around his unwavering belief in and promotion of homeopathy, and emphasising and hyping whatever could possibly be interpreted as positive to homeopathy and denigrating and trying to dismiss anything negative is part and parcel of that. We cannot expect him to change these inherent aspects of his character just because Wikipedia asks him to nicely.
Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 15:05, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Note 1: Sources for this are numerous, a few taken from the Homeopathy article include Teixeira J (2007). "Can water possibly have a memory? A sceptical view". Homeopathy : the journal of the Faculty of Homeopathy 96 (3): 158-162. doi: 10.1016/j.homp.2007.05.001, [167], and Whorton, James C. (2004). Nature Cures: The History of Alternative Medicine in America. Oxford University Press. Or perhaps This article in Time, which contains quotes such as "'It is just the reverse of everything we believe according to the basic principles of physiology,' declares Professor Varro Tyler of Purdue University, an expert on herbal remedies. 'We believe that the greater the dose, the greater the physiological response. They believe that even after there is no drug left, you still get a response.'" and "Advocates claim that evidence of homeopathy's efficacy is emerging, citing a list of scientific papers published in recent years in such reputable journals as Pediatrics, the British Medical Journal, Lancet and Nature. But there is only a handful of these reports, and they are far from definitive. The ultimate test of scientific validity is whether the results can be duplicated, and so far they have not been." and "Belief is the entire process, contend scientists." Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 15:05, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
As an editor in Wikipedia, I do not believe it is appropriate to accuse Dana Ullman of "intentionally misleading us". That frankly borders on a personal attack upon his character and his integrity. Arion 3x3 ( talk) 20:51, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
It is not the role of editors to prevent the inclusion of research that is supportive of homeopathy. Tortured logic has been used to try to dismiss research with such comments as "high-quality is only intended to mean 'relatively high'"! There is no justification for such argumentation. To argue for the exclusion of a research article because "the article is not generally available" is not acceptable. Research that both supports homeopathy and does not support homeopathy should be included. That is how a NPOV article in an encyclopedia must be wriitten. Arion 3x3 ( talk) 22:03, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Arion is right about one important thing: print journals that are not yet available online are usable as references. The way to deal with them is to obtain a copy by interlibrary loan or at a major med cal library that has it. We do not ignore everything before the internet. The availability of online journals is relatively recent, and it will be a considerable time before all files are converted. While this is especially true for many of the less important independent journals, the lack of present online availability is irrelevant to use as a RS. This said, I do agree with Shoemaker Holiday's other criticisms about the journal and the article. I think he has sufficiently shown that the findings there are not supported by subsequent studies. DGG ( talk) 05:03, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
DGG's stating the factually inaccurate statement "not supported by subsequent studies" does not make that a fact. Where is the data to back up that assertion? Arion 3x3 ( talk) 20:46, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
User:Shoemaker's Holiday has much more time to burn than I do, though it has been said that people who live in glass houses should not throw stones. He claims that I have made numerous errors and that he even asserts that I seem to do so on purpose. I have asserted several times that this editor has content issues with me, and because I refer to RS research that is notable and that shows positive results for homeopathy, he simply cannot accept this information. This has led him to now attack the messager. It is therefore more than a tad ironic (actually, it is the "total chutzpah" category) that he is frequently be shown to provide misinformation, as he did above when he refers to Linde's writings as a "retraction" of his previous study, as Shoemaker did here [170] First, Linde never used the word "retraction" nor did he even say that the 1997 meta-analysis was no longer significant. Shoemaker even asserted (TOTALLY INCORRECTLY) that Linde's "retraction" referred to BOTH the 1997 meta-analysis of clinical study as well as the 1994 meta-analysis of environmental toxicology studies: "This retraction, in the eyes of a reasonable person, would also apply to the much more minor 1994. In 1999, Linde retracted much of his previous work: "The evidence of bias weakens the findings of our original meta-analysis [7]." My question to Shoemaker, TO WHAT REFERENCE DOES #7 REFER? The 1997 meta-analysis or the 1994 meta-analysis? DanaUllman Talk 03:56, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Reference 7 is the 1997 metaanalysis, as I explicitly pointed out right near the top of the section you link to, claiming I was in error: Link to revision from 6 April, showing the text was there before Ullman attacked me
“ | Link [7] refers to the Linde's 1997 metanalysis; however, as shown in 1b, the 1994 study by Linde is incredibly minor, and so it is not, perhaps, surprising that Linde does not explicitly mention it. | ” |
Perhaps, Ullman, you are not familiar with the word "summary". It means that things will be explained in more detail if you read a bit further, and that will prevent you from looking like a complete idiot for using this supposed fact to attack me here and at Talk:Arsenicum album and to attempt to justify a revert. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 10:31, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Baegis, does this mean that wikipedia is now allowing OR? I rarely assert that someone is breaking wiki-rules by OR, but in THIS case, it is obvious, even according to Shoe's above statement. Yes...for "the love of all that is holy," I assume good faith, and I simply ask for good faith from other editors. Let's be reasonable. DanaUllman Talk 17:14, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
I like Dana. I really do. I think he could help us document this area and be an asset to the project. He knows a lot about homeopathy and a lot of this detail is tough to ferret out of the horrendous mess that is the homeopathic literature.
However, this kind of tomfoolery, arguing whether a retraction is a "retraction" based on whether the author explicitly used the word "retraction" or not is just approaching the ridiculous. Sorry, but this is almost the very definition of WP:DE and WP:TE. It saddens me. This is part of the reason good editors have been driven away from this article, this topic, and some even from WP itself. I am very disappointed.-- Filll ( talk) 17:44, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Come on. We all know what a scientific retraction is. This was not one. It was a reassessment in the light of new information. But you all seem to be so enjoying your bean-feast, I wondered whether to come back at all. And by the way, do not ever say you like me, as I will know then that I am in trouble. The Tutor ( talk) 19:56, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
"A withdrawal of an earlier assertion, particularly one that is made in a public forum, and which concedes that the earlier assertion was in error". Er, you mean like saying something along the lines of "the evidence of bias weakens the findings of our original meta-analysis. Since we completed our literature search in 1995, a considerable number of new homeopathy trials have been published. The fact that a number of the new high-quality trials have negative results, and a recent update of our review for the most “original” subtype of homeopathy (classical or individualized homeopathy), seem to confirm the finding that more rigorous trials have less-promising results. It seems, therefore, likely that our meta-analysis at least overestimated the effects of homeopathic treatments." Brunton ( talk) 21:04, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
In examining the meaning and connotation of the word "retraction", I believe it does not properly reflect the statement by Linde: "It seems, therefore, likely that our meta-analysis at least overestimated the effects of homeopathic treatments." Arion 3x3 ( talk) 21:56, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
"seem to confirm the finding that more rigorous trials have less-promising results" still means something positive. And this should be reflected in the lead.-- 24.56.140.198 ( talk) 22:41, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
It is incredibly tedious that it should take an entire section to come to an understanding of "retraction". Antelan talk 23:11, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Any administrator would like to make suggestions to the editor who reverted me at the Arsenicum_album ? I discussed it, kindly asked for objections and added a quote from the article which is in use in the article. What is the problem? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Arsenicum_album#.22Basic_science_research_on_the_biological_effects_of_highly_diluted_solutions_has_yielded_mixed_results..22 -- 70.107.246.88 ( talk) 19:03, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#DanaUllman Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 01:20, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
DanaUllman ( talk · contribs) is currently the subject of a topic ban, but is editing the current ArbCom in spite of having been warned of his topic ban. [172] [173] If there is anything at Wikipedia that deals with the (banned) subject of homeopathy more than this ArbCom, I don't know what it would be, so the topic ban certainly applies just as much to it as to the homeopathy article. -- Fyslee / talk 15:07, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
Peter morrell ( talk · contribs) has decided to stop editing at homeopathy. Here are relevant links and evidence of a serious attitude problem: [174] [175] [176] [177] [178] [179] [180] [181] [182] [183] [184] [185] I suggest that he be taken at his word and held to it, IOW a topic ban until he shows evidence of a change of heart and an understanding of NPOV. -- Fyslee / talk 15:31, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
The Arbitration Committee homeopathy case has closed, accordingly the community probation has been replaced with Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions, and this page is essentially redundant. Disruptive editors editors should now be handled using the Arbitration Committee sanctions, which is detailed on the case page, instead of the community probation. PhilKnight ( talk) 00:35, 1 July 2008 (UTC)