User talk:31.51.220.92

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Sincerely, Mathglot (talk) 21:43, 4 May 2019 (UTC)   (Leave me a message)

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Alternative medicine

To address some points raised:

• Some things could be explained better. When the term "alternative medicine" was first introduced in the 1970s, it really did mean "outside the mainstream". Mainstream doctors didn't use it, mainstream schools didn't teach it and mainstream systems didn't fund it. But these things are no longer entirely true. So there has been a shift to a new definition of alternative medicine: that it is "not supported by science".
• The definition of an "experimental" treatment is that it is currently being tested in a scientific experiment. As with an alternative treatment, there is (by definition) no evidence that an experimental treatment works. The difference is that experimental medicine is being tested for this evidence, whereas alternative treatments get used without care as to whether this evidence exists. It is possible for a treatment to be both alternative and experimental at the same time. The issue with trying to explain this better is that there isn't much space for it in the lede (opening paragraphs), so maybe it would need a paragraph later on.
• A scientific medical experiment has to follow certain rules, like having a control group. I highly recommend Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, which explains the full details of this well and is written in an accessible style. Some experiments are more reliable than others, but there is no "alternative" way to do an experiment.
• You are not the first person to know personally people who have been taken in by alternative medicine. One of my priorities when editing this article has been to explain why it appeals to some people, especially as it's often not the people you would expect. But stories of alternative medicines appearing to work on some individuals can't be used evidence that it works: "The plural of anecdote is not data."
• That being said, the point that every patient is different is an interesting one. If a herbal medicine has a significant effect on a minority of patients, is it worth giving it to that minority? My own opinion would be yes if you know whom they are. Because when someone feels better after an alternative treatment, it's more likely to be because of the placebo effect and a natural recovery, than because of it genuinely working. And the minority was probably a group of people who got lucky, rather than a group that were particularly attuned to the treatment. These are my own opinions, of course, but I don't think it's wrong to add them to the article if this content can be sourced.

Anywikiuser (talk) 21:42, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

I've been told off for using 'primary source' material on a talk page - which I'd never have used in an article but if there's a reason why it's wrong here (when anonymised) then I need to know.

I'll take your last point first. I do myself speculate that something along the lines of placebo might be a mechanism involved in some cases of apparent consistent success where there seems to be no rational explanation. I'm thinking here of a person I know who regularly suffers from psoriasis and always gets spectacular relief every time they're able to visit a particular homeopath. (Getting lucky with something that was about to clear up anyway could be an explanation for occasional success but it is only when you know someone that a point comes when that's no longer a credible explanation.) Some allopathic medicines though were originally derived from plant sources - and plant sources are still looked to for new medicines, so I'm puzzled as to why you would automatically ascribe success of a herbal remedy to either of those explanations?

It is a basic tenet of everything I've known as alternative medicine that they're treating an individual (with each failure of allopathy one gets more & more weary of being treated on a statistical basis). History taking is normally extensive in reputable alternative situations & typically done in a far more careful & thorough manner than you'd usually find in allopathic practice. It's not infrequently the case that, the client having initially chosen one type of therapy, the therapist will suggest another type of therapy with another practitioner instead (or occasionally as well as). How are you going to find RS for an approach that would be found threatening in mainstream academic circles?

In physics they say it's exciting when another result supports the standard model but they'd be far more excited by a result that didn't fit. In medicine it's quite the opposite, people build their careers, their prestige, their reputations based on certain ways of thinking & then end up spending their lives defending their position above what might be in the best interests of patients. 31.51.220.92 (talk) 20:44, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Try to break up long posts into paragraphs. It makes things easier to read.

For information on what makes a reliable source, see the 'no original research' guidelines and the stricter guidelines on medical sources). There's no ban that says you can't post primary-sourced material on the talk page. But it does mean your argument won't be listened to. The talk page is meant for discussing what needs to go in the article. Since information can't go in the article if it's supported only by primary sources, there's not much point discussing it on the talk pages.

A lot of what you talked about has been theoretical arguments about alt-med, which you have written yourself. These things can only be added to the article if they are sourced. For example, you mentioned a BBC Radio program that talks about how in the 1970s, alternative medicine had a different meaning to what it has now. If you can find this information and present it in a way that is sourced and neutral (ideally with other takes on the matter), it could probably fit into the "History" section.

As to where medical research gets its ideas from: They might look at case studies and do informal tests to decide if a long and expensive trial is actually worthwhile. That way, a trial can produce the evidence. Except that individual trials can have flaws and flukes, so you need a meta-analysis of trials (a "study of studies") to reveal the "big picture".7

Occasionally, alt-med treatments have been validated. For example, St John's wort appears to have an effect on depression. Normally scientists would extract the active ingredient from a workable plant cure to make it more effective and reduce the side effects. In the case of St John's wort, they haven't been fully sure which is the active ingredient, so the full plant is still used as medication. It's misleading to say that no alt-med treatments work. Some do, but plenty of others are harmful, and most achieve little that can't be explained by the placebo effect, natural recovery and other effects. Anywikiuser (talk) 11:55, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

With regard to sources, the problem is that on the one hand when it comes to talking about what we actually know does work then i certainly agree wikipedia has a responsibility to go with scientific verifiability. But in other regards mainstream science papers don't cover the subject properly, so we've had an article that basically defines 'alternative' as 'alternative to reality' - which may be true sometimes but at other times 'alternative' has been proved worthwhile - and evidence has shown some mainstream medicine from the 1970ies to be not so great. So my sources will not be accepted for a medical article - and the OED/allopathy episode demonstrates that this policy has strange unintended consequences - not every comment that appears in mainstream journals is all about the science - some is just a reflection of very human fragile egos!

My point about alternative therapies addressing the individual rather than populations does I think imply something that cannot be proved by current scientific methodology, so it is an unverifiable claim - and I have no objection to wikipedia saying so. OTOH science cannot say that it is untrue either can it? I would simply like to see this issue presented in a neutral way as simply something that is claimed but logically cannot be verified - I'm most unlikely though to find sources that would be acceptable for a medical article.

A particular point I want to raise is this view of the 'rebranding' of alternatives being just different words for the same thing.

I'd say this is quite misleading, For example let's look at cancer :-

Category One, the alternative practitioners I knew of in the 1970ies did not expect to make much money - far from it, that's not why they were in the game. Importantly, commercial 'mainstream' (esp 'high pressure) marketing techniques were totally antithetical to their ideology. In the absence of scientific validation though if a client's cancer went into remission that could sometimes then be taken as 'anecdotal evidence' implying that a therapy was having a good effect on the cancer - perhaps a mistake but a mistake made in innocence.

Category Two, Complementary Medicine - in order to work together with allopathy it has to be explicit that the complementary cannot be taken to be about alternative methods of curing cancer - nobody in complementary medicine can make such claims otherwise they are no longer complementary!

Category Three - the contemporary "Bombastic' commercial sort mentioned in your article, inheritors of the traditional U.S. snake oil business model (but please note the actually quite informative wikipedia snake oil article). Aimed at a totally different clientele to the original 'alternative' types of category one. Takes 'material' from the alternative movement but makes outrageous & often ridiculous persistent (often illegal) claims about cancer cures & uses the same high pressure techniques employed wherever there is money to made from exploiting the desperate and the gullible - while at the same time making an enemy of 'Big Pharma'. Not at all fair to compare "complementary" practitioners with this sort of thing & it's clear (to me at least - citation needed!) that the motivation & ethos is quite other than what was thought of as original 'alternative' ethics.

For sources for any of this though it needs to be looked at in a separate article taken out of the strictly medical sphere altogether, looking at this as a social phenomenon. I don't see there being much of a problem really finding a wording that presents a less biased case while not promoting unproven cures. Later I'll search the major uni's to see the various ways this topic might have been covered 31.51.220.92 (talk) 11:36, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

A minor point but just for the record, you say I've "mentioned a BBC Radio program that talks about how in the 1970s, alternative medicine had a different meaning to what it has now" I've mentioned BBC stories a fair bit but I don't remember this, I thought it was you here pointing out that the meaning had changed! Are you mixing me up with someone else? 31.51.220.92 (talk) 20:47, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Your comment at Allopathic medicine

I responded to your comment about renaming the Allopathic medicine article here.

By the way, you should consider registering for a free Wikipedia account, as it gives you numerous advantages over using an IP.

Finally, no one seems to have officially welcomed you to Wikipedia, so I'm going to do that right after this. Normally, each new addition to a Talk page goes at the bottom, but someone should have welcomed you already, so I'm going to put your Welcome at the traditional spot, at the top of your Talk page. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Mathglot (talk) 21:41, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks very much for your welcome Mathglot :o) the guide now at the top of my page will be useful to me at this stage also.

I was of course glad to see your intervention over at Allopathic medicine.

Without visible history it has sometimes been possible that editors with different views might imagine I'm 'not here to create an encyclopaedia'. My IP changes every few days, sometimes within my control but recently outside of my control - it's changed again since your welcome, which of course is confusing. I'm more a reader than an editor but under other IPs I have been on wikipedia previously to help a bit in small ways now & then, more often in less controversial areas.

I'm not absolutely sure yet when or whether I'm going to register, I'll be away for a few days now but when back I'll be asking for advice on how best I could perhaps link a new Wikipedia account to this page & to this other one too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:86.148.15.235 and all the recent contribution history associated with those IPs + current. I could use one of the methods above to get help but if you have time to advise me of course that would be great. (signed 'previously.92') 31.51.220.37 (talk) 18:49, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

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