User talk:Sgerbic/Archives/2012/11

I understand why you wanted to alert your fellow PhRMA guns Wikipedians

but why do you ″sceptics″ always have to be so negative? The Facebook-thingy you link to clearly states that now (after merely 30+ years of conducting patient-funded trials) ″Burzynski is in the process of preparing to publish all of his Phase 2 trials″, so it's clearly time to unprotect the article and let Burzynski's fans tell the true story of this man. /SARCASM

Seriously though: thanks for the heads-up. --Six words (talk) 18:11, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Six. I had to read your post twice, I've been around your edits many times and at first I thought that I had you mixed up with someone else. Yeah, I'm waiting for that check... keep looking in the mailbox but it never seems to arrive. I'm glad you thought I did the right thing, I wasn't sure if I should link to that FB page because I haven't seen anyone else do this kind of warning before. And I'm serious, if we have messed up any of the citations that they are complaining about then we should fix them. Sgerbic (talk) 03:07, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

What, you get paid with checks in the mailbox? I always get e-mails with dollar bill jpegs, but since my printer can't do duplex prints I cannot pay them into the bank!

Sorry that my message caused confusion. At the moment I'm only sporadically on Wikipedia and your comment on that talk page was the first thing I read after being absent for weeks. It was definitely good to warn everyone a POV squad might arrive and try to change the article (and it might even be why they deleted that page - I do think they're watching the WP article and talk page).

I absolutely agree that we have to take complaints seriously - no matter who points out a mistake, it should be fixed, and it's great that their (unfounded) criticism of this source (the article clearly states that they mocked the film prior to its release) made us check it again. If it wasn't for them, Alexbrn probably wouldn't have looked at the source and found out the author's name was wrong (I wouldn't have seen that in a million years). --Six words (talk) 00:33, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Nice to see that there are editors here on WP with a great sense of humor. Maybe they keeps sending the checks to deleted email account, maybe I better start checking my spam filter?

Yes, they must be watching the talk page, maybe even the conversation we are having right now. Hello everyone! Otherwise why delete the FB page right then? I was going to take a screen shot of it but forgot to do so and got busy with something else. This happens all the time with my WP blog, they link to my blog, not realizing that I can follow the link back to the source (usually in a forum) and read all the comments about how they are going to mess with the skeptics, and change a WP page. I just watch their conversation, never saying a word. It always ends the same, they egg each other on, and a few state that they don't know how to edit but will do so anyway, others say "the skeptics on WP are too powerful and we shouldn't even bother". In the end, I have the pages on my watchlist and NOTHING ever happens. They are all talk and no Do. What is this "sporadically on Wikipedia" you speak of? Is there another world out there? Heathen! Sgerbic (talk) 00:52, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Ha, I wanted to take a screenshot, too, but the computer I was on didn't have a browser add-on for that yet, and when I had installed the add-on and restarted the browser, the page was gone! I took a screenshot of the google cache of it though, because I don't know how long it is stored.

You're right, most of the "guerilla attacks" on WP articles stop before they've even begun, can't say that I'm sad about that, though, it can be quite annoying when they follow through with their plans. I usually don't read their forums, it's too depressing to see them giving "advice" to people who quite obviously need to go see a doctor (last time I did read such a forum was when a German sceptic blogged about reporting a mother who "treated" her child's severe orthopedic problem with homeopathy to her municipality's Jugendamt (German equivalent of CPS or CAFCASS)). Instead, I wait for those who actually come here. One of my favourite threats of theirs is: "I'm going to write a blog post/article about you!" - do they think it matters to me what other alties think? Do they think that non-alties will care that WP doesn't let alties control altmed articles the way Citizendium used to do before they realised that didn't only not help but actually hurt their cause? This, of course, is usually just an empty threat anyway, but I'd like to know what they think would happen if they actually wrote about those mean Wikipedians who think their anecdata are useless. --Six words (talk) 19:07, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

This is what happens when they write blogs about how they are unable to edit. http://www.wickedglitch.com/2012/07/wikipedias-tyranny-unemployed/ Sgerbic (talk) 03:07, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your well reasoned discussion

Thanks for your well reasoned discussion re improving the alternative medicine article, resulting in air tight MEDRS sources for the lede first two sentences, and RS for the first paragraph. Now lets see if we can keep the content and sources from being slowly removed as appears to have happened in the past. Thanks again. :) ParkSehJik (talk) 17:22, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

ParkSehJik, yes, things are going much smoother now that we are focused on tiny bits at a time. It takes longer this way, but the changes will last. BTW I know someone that wanted to create the Wally Sampson page but you beat him to it. Don't want to step on your toes but if it is okay with you then we will spend a lot more time finishing it. I have a special way I work on these pages, and you won't see the changes until the page is released as completed. Sgerbic (talk) 21:03, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

If you had not said "beat him to it", I would have thought that someome might be someone Wally was supposed to have given my number to call me with, about two or three weeks ago. He must have hundreds or more of students now out there practicing medicine, and appalled by what is going on when every local strip mall now has an acupuncture/chiropractor taking up dollars from the health insurance bucdget pie, all a result of the very "propaganda" Wally described in the NYAS article. Tony Lopez, the O'Conner Hospital cardiologist (the guy who married the Chief of Staff during the main of Wally's tenure as oncologist there), recently described Wally to me as a "Muckraker", intended not only as a big compliment, but as indicating something that he thinks his profession is sorely lacking in more of. I tried to find sources on this term to put in the Wiki article, and sources on Wally's unique brand of "conservativism", which might be better described as both scientific and ethical absolutism, or anti-relativism. I could not find any such sources, so the article is very incomplete as a biography. Interestingly, Wikipedia's "truth by consensus", which seems to have historically driven what goes into the alt med article (but no more), and associated Wikipedia style egalitarianism, which Wally calls "cultural relativism", is exactly what he wrote of in the Antiscience article in Annals of New York Academy of Sciences. ParkSehJik (talk) 02:43, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Give us a few weeks and lets see what we come up with for Wally's page. Sgerbic (talk) 05:55, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

In the real world, I am soon going to the Tampa, Florida press about a real estate fraud in Tampa FL, Los Gatos CA, and a Greek island monestary that was solely based on Chiropractic practice that was allowed in California by findings of the Calif Board of Chiropractic examiners. (If this sounds like a weird mix, it is even more bizarre and convoluted than I just stated, but Chiropractors have made stranger claims and done even more bizarre things. Once irrationality is formally allowed in by government regulators, it can be manipulated by clever fraudsters into any kind of absurdity for fraud). Wally can tell you about the small medical related part of it that he knows about. I will contact your group before I implement the press move. Washington Times may also cover it because of errors made by Washington Post re the information I gave them, and because of their past post-Post coverage of the same group of fraudsters. ParkSehJik (talk) 16:12, 26 November 2012 (UTC)