Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Criticisms of medicine (2nd nomination)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. This was a lengthy discussion, even without counting the proceeding AfD and DRV. However, despite the length, there is a near-unanimous consensus that this article, in its current form, is not suitable for inclusion, largely per WP:SYNTH and WP:POV. The minority of participants who !voted keep generally argued that the topic was viable, not necessarily this article. Some editors also suggested preserving the content by merging it into other articles, but didn't specify how or which. In the interests of compromise I would therefore be happy to userfy the article, on request, if anybody wants to work on improving it or reuse some of the content. – Joe (talk) 21:56, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Criticisms of medicine

AfDs for this article:

• Articles for deletion/Criticisms of medicine
• Articles for deletion/Criticisms of medicine (2nd nomination)

Criticisms of medicine (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Not a viable article topic; there are insufficient sources on "Criticism of medicine" per se to allow a neutral and non-original article. Some aspects such as criticism of research methodology, ethics, etc. could potentially be put in relevant articles. Alexbrn (talk) 17:55, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:01, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

• Delete - appears to have been created purely for the purposes of pushing a particular point of view. Deb (talk) 18:13, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Reading the fuller version, I see it as nothing more than an essay. I don't think it would be possible to create a neutral article on this subject. Deb (talk) 07:54, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

And just to be clear, I endorse the initial decision to close the debate and delete. The fact that some "keepers" wrote reams more than the "deleters" doesn't make their arguments stronger. Deb (talk) 07:58, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

*Procedural Issue - Is an AFD appropriate where we have an AFD just so soon and it was overturned at DRV see Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2018_May_18 for keep. This is WP:FORUMSHOPPING already and disruptive. --Quek157 (talk) 18:15, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

• • Not disagreeing, but what would be your preferred procedure? Deb (talk) 18:24, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

:I am just commenting, as an admin can you advice me on? --Quek157 (talk) 18:27, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

• • I wouldn't call this forum shopping. AfD is the sole place for proposing deletion of articles. Natureium (talk) 18:28, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

:will it fall under WP:SKCRIT 2(a)??? --Quek157 (talk) 18:29, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

THIS IS THE DRV CLOSER STATEMENT --Quek157 (talk) 18:30, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

text quoted from DRV

Criticisms of medicine – Overturn. There's reasonable consensus here that the article should be restored. The argument that we can't have Criticism of ... articles has been firmly refuted (and we certainly do have plenty of those now). Its possible that this will end up getting split into multiple articles, or bits and pieces of it merged elsewhere (in which case, be careful to keep the attribution history intact, per WP:COPYWITHIN). It may also end up with a different title. All of that can be debated on the article talk page as part of the normal editorial process. – -- RoySmith (talk) 17:39, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

• Delete. Although I am not against a "Criticism of.." type of article, in the present form this article has no reason to exist. It is basically just a citation. I would suggest that the editors restart from a draft and seek collaboration to try to produce something encyclopedic. Gianvito Scaringi (talk) 18:34, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

:Just noting this is an editorial dispute where large chunck of texts are removed unilaterally without talk page discussion, the nominator just remove texts and then sending this to AFD??? Mere abuse of process. And now it is the same nominator who did the first nomination, wonderful. Will not care for this anymore but this is clearly outrageous, unacceptable --Quek157 (talk) 18:35, 25 May 2018 (UTC) **Quek157 makes a good point, so I support the Procedural Issue view. Gianvito Scaringi (talk) 19:05, 25 May 2018 (UTC) *Will however, leave it to an uninvolved admin / experience user to do anything to this, I will just rescue myself and be neutral. Just as a passerby seeing a few people fighting around with small knifes, unarmed, untrained, so the only way is to call the cops, I don't want to die in crossfire --Quek157 (talk) 19:07, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Just to add to nominator, why do these things, can you guys talk it out. As a fellow 2007 user, I will sincerely hope this is a talkpage discussion not here. --Quek157 (talk) 19:09, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

• Keep Criticism of medicine despite being quackery is notable per sources provided. I've restored the good version, it is unbecoming to remove all sources which give claim to notability and nominated for AfD. Valoem ^{talk contrib} 19:13, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Except you've restored unsourced content and content which is sourced to sources which fail WP:V, and/or which are off-topic, which is bad. Alexbrn (talk) 19:18, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

It is never good faith to removed 40 sources and then nominate for AfD. It would say this is bad faith editing. You made an AfD, so the version in question is up for debate. Removing an article down to one line and one source favors deletion and is bias. Valoem ^{talk contrib} 19:22, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Utterly wrong. Editing of articles for deletion is encouraged: WP:EDITATAFD. And the discussion is not wholly about the present text but about the viability of the topic. If anything, your restoration of unsourced and irrelevant dodgy content is bad faith; it is certainly bad editing. Alexbrn (talk) 19:31, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

• Delete — There is nothing I can say here that was not said in the original deletion discussion. There is only the vague notion that there was a procedural error in closure. This should never have lead to anything being overturned, but of a simple correction of the rational. Carl Fredrik ^talk 19:38, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

@Valoem: Thanks for restoring a good version from before it was butchered by Alexbrn in preparation for AfD (and now again by CFCF). But in view of the procedural issues and questions that have been raised about editor conduct, I think it best to do nothing until we hear from the closing administrator who restored the page. Thanks.NightHeron (talk) 20:01, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

note:the admin who restore the page is sitting this out Quek157 (talk) 20:18, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

• Delete The topic is framed as an attack page in an inherently biased way and so is contrary to core policy. Andrew D. (talk) 20:46, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
• Delete again. This article can only ever be either an apologia for quackery or a vast nit-picking back and forth. Guy (Help!) 21:28, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
• Delete - Whether process had been abused or not, whether there are any disputes or not, this topic can never end, edit conflicts that have the potential to reach a level of full protection, there can simply be no one agreeing on this issue. This is a TNT and IAR delete. To the original editor, this is a topic that is so controversial that it cannot be easily dealt with, so I recommend taking on other less controversial pages in the future, at least a topic such as Criticism of Alternative Medicine may well be better or not? --Quek157 (talk) 21:36, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Just to add, in addition to the above, this article in full is like a LISTCRUFT/SYNTH idea when list articles are mentioned and discussed. Is basically sourced information amalgamated together to form a topic where it can be better used in other articles. Delete the page. Selective Merger from history will be the best process. using the sources now to expand on current topic This is exactly what the DRV closer stated above. SYNTH can only be used for list but I find this argument relevant in a form of extended list. This can be called List of Criticism of Medicine which clearly then SYNTH applies. So delete with a proper rationale not IAR TNT. --Quek157 (talk) 18:19, 26 May 2018 (UTC) clarified --Quek157 (talk) 21:34, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Two points:

1. You can either delete the article, or merge content to other articles. You can't do both, because of copyright requirements.
2. I keep seeing this belief that nobody has truly criticized the institution and practice of medicine, and that anything that discusses concrete problems is just a made-up mishmash, and I keep being baffled by this. There have been multiple books on this subject, such as Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates (Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0199212798). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:02, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

• Delete. There are several overlapping problems here. The current (at the time of this posting) state of the article is essentially a content fork of alternative medicine. The longer version has that same problem; it is also something of a coatrack that also forks iatrogenesis. In any version, the ability to provide facially-acceptable sourcing has to be balanced by the demands of WP:FRINGE; and make no mistake, at least every recent version of this article serves as quiet advocacy of fringe medical positions. There are certainly aspects of this topic that can be addressed appropriately, but "criticism" of "medicine" broadly construed is always going to be a fringe-theory article with the inherent problems, and this falls short of the expectations of that standard. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 23:32, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
• Delete. I have read the so-called "good" version, and I'm actually sympathetic to some extent towards the notion of having an article like this. My liberal bleeding heart, always eager for a new excuse to ex-sanguinate, is moved by the assertions in the article that modern healthcare systems underserve women and minorities. But — big but — that is not a criticism of medicine. That's a criticism of healthcare. To take those arguments and lump them into an article with some alternative medicine woo-woo is WP:OR.

To come at this from another direction, I think that an article about historical criticism of medicine would be fascinating. I'd love to read about how phrenologists defended phrenology as their weird psuedoscience fell into discredit, but again, that's information that lives more happily elsewhere, in an article less likely to be a coatrack for fringe crazies. The fact is that there is never going to be a substantial amount of reliable sources that compile credible criticisms of medicine itself. A Train^talk 23:51, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

• Delete - I can't put it better than A Train did. Alexbrn turned the article into something resembling an actual Wikipedia article, and removed a lot of the problems, but no amount of editing can fix the fact that this is not a viable topic. --bonadea contributions talk 15:35, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

• Illegitimate process I think it makes sense for supporters of restoring this article (the vote among admins in the appeal discussion was, as I recall, 4 to 1 for restoration) to continue just sitting out this illegitimate AfD2. Of course, as the nominator said, WP policy encourages editing an article before and during an AfD. But obviously the purpose should be to make a good-faith effort to improve the article in order to see whether or not improvement is a better option than deletion. The policy of encouraging editing is not intended as a justification for vandalizing the article -- reducing it to an incoherent stub -- right before proposing it for deletion. That is simply disruptive editing, and it causes the whole process to become illegitimate. So I think that those who disagree with the Anti-CAM Justice Warriors that this article supports fraud and quackery should just sit out this illegitimate procedure. It's analogous to a bogus election in an undemocratic country -- often the best strategy of the democracy advocates is to sit out the "election" and challenge its legitimacy later; if there's no effective way to do this within the country in question, then maybe pressure from outside the country would help. In the case of Wikipedia, this means off-wiki sources calling attention to what's going on. This has already been done on Slashdot. In short, the conduct of the Anti-CAM Warriors does not bring credit either to Wikipedia or to the medical profession that a few of them belong to. This is unfortunate and unfair, because their conduct is an outlier. From all I've seen, the majority of veteran editors do not behave this way, and the majority of physicians and medical researchers do not share their simpleminded POV that criticism of medicine is the same as support for CAM and that anyone who has an openminded view of certain forms of CAM (e.g., 88% of Americans surveyed and 60% of U.S. medical schools) is promoting fraud and quackery.NightHeron (talk) 15:17, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

NightHeron, please correct me if I'm misunderstanding but I think you're making two points here.

• First, you're saying that it's unfortunate that the article was stub-ified during the discussion. I concur with you, but I'm not sure that this is a big of a problem as you seem to think it is. Seeing previous versions of an article is trivially easy and experienced editors (such as those who tend to contribute at AfD) know how to do that. I read the longer previous version of the article before opining and it seems very clear to me that some if not all of the editors voting to delete here did as well.
• Now your second point is making me worried. Are you saying that you've encouraged Slashdot readers to brigade this AfD? That is poor form, if so. I'm not sure what to make of "Anti-CAM Warriors", so you may want to re-phrase that for folks like me who aren't steeped in the jargon of alternative medicine.

Thanks, A Train^talk 16:51, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

@A Train: Thanks for your courteous tone toward me, and I apologize if I was unclear. To answer your second point first, I had nothing to do with the posting on Slashdot. I've never used Slashdot and didn't even know what it was until it came up in the NPOV Noticeboard discussion. I was simply saying that some external criticism of Wikipedia should kick in if internal safeguards don't work. That's all.

In answer to your first point, I made up that term myself; I don't read pro-CAM propaganda, so I don't know whether or not they use it. My choice of that term was by analogy with the common pejorative "Social Justice Warriors" for people who think that their cause is so important as to justify censorship.

I personally agree with the objectives of both groups. I believe in social justice, and I also believe in combating fraud and pseudoscience. Where I part ways with both groups is that censorship is not the right way to go about it. Wikipedia policy very clearly says the same thing.NightHeron (talk) 20:07, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

@A Train: Concerning your other point about the disruptive editing that occurred immediately prior to the nominator renominating the article for deletion: This could have confused and probably did confuse some editors about what was going on and what was the article being evaluated. There's no way to know. In any case it was an abuse of procedure, and so this AfD is illegitimate. It makes sense for people who oppose deletion to just throw up our hands and boycott such a travesty. I understand that WP policy allows repeated proposals to delete a given article. But presumably that is because some time has passed and new editing of the article or new off-wiki events showed that the article is now inappropriate. Renomination is not supposed to be used because the original supporters of deletion are unhappy with the concensus that emerged in the deletion appeal process. Editors spent 3 weeks debating this. Why not let normal editing occur now, wait a few months, and see whether the case for deletion becomes stronger or weaker with time?NightHeron (talk) 21:04, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

I agree with you that the speedy re-nomination isn't ideal. But we're ultimately responsible to Wikipedia's readers. Given a choice between pedantically following the letter of the rules and taking action to remove an article that isn't in keeping with our standards for WP:NPOV, WP:SYNTH, or WP:FRINGE, we'll choose the latter every time. That's actually the essence of one of Wikipedia's five pillars: there are no firm rules, just the goal of making a good encyclopedia. There's a good consensus developing here that this article isn't fit for purpose. That's not censorship, it's just maintaining the standards. A Train^talk 23:22, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

@A Train: I'm sorry, but you're not really agreeing with me. I didn't say that the speedy (as in: within a half-hour) renomination "isn't ideal"; I said that it was a refusal to accept consensus (as in: consensus of admins in the appeal discussion) and hence contrary to WP policy. It is not "pedantic" to insist on respecting consensus.

How can you call the article "fringe" if every single one of my sources is a non-fringe non-CAM source, and several (Angell, Ernst, and of course the source about the Wakefield fraud) are strongly anti-CAM? Please point to a single thing in the article that is "fringe." Nor is it "synth"; please see WP:SYNNOT#Synth is not juxtaposition. It just blows my mind that anyone could defend Alternative medicine as not having an NPOV problem and accuse Criticisms of medicine of violating NPOV. Please just show the two articles side by side to any scientist you know outside of Wikipedia and ask them which one is biased or polemical. The claims that my article violates basic WP policies or that it would harm readers to see it are just absurd. Wikipedia's "responsibility to readers" is not to censor things.

There was no consensus, as 4 out of 5 admins agreed during the appeal process. There might be one now, since it's largely the pro-deletion editors who are happy to go ahead with this illegitimate process. Other editors think three weeks on this is enough, and I fully sympthasize with the viewpoint that it's a waste of time to debate people who refuse to accept consensus.NightHeron (talk) 23:44, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Since the outcome of the last AfD/review was effectively "no consensus", this new AfD is a good thing to get to that consensus. Relisting AfDs to widen consensus is routinely done, and this new AfD is no different in principle to doing just that. This is why nobody with any clue is buying the "abuse of process" argument; that argument looks to me more like an attempt to subvert the emerging consensus. Alexbrn (talk) 01:41, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

@Alexbrn: I suppose you'll also argue that it's perfectly normal and in line with policy to vandalize an article (18 delete edits reducing it to a stub) within minutes of the posting of the appeal outcome and immediately before renominating the article for deletion?

In WP:PROCEDURALCLOSE it says that an AfD nomination is in error if "Nomination is an immediate objection to a prior deletion outcome," and so merits a procedural close. Thus, if the first closing admin had ruled "No Concensus" (and so kept the article) and if you had immediately renominated, that would have been grounds for procedural close. This isn't, of course, what you did, since the first ruling went in your favor. But the appeal ruling corrected the earlier ruling to "No Consensus," so what you did was very similar. You expressed your objection to that ruling (in apparent anger, since it is not normal for an experienced editor to vandalize an article by 18 deletion edits to bring it down to an incoherent stub) by immediately (within about a half hour) renominating it for deletion. Your actions that violated policy were refusal to accept consensus, disruptive editing, and inappropriate use of AfD to object to an appeal ruling.NightHeron (talk) 02:31, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

In WP:RENOM it recommends waiting "at least two months" after a "no consensus" close before renominating. The admin who closed the appeal said in reference to this second AfD: "I wouldn't be surprised if the AfD got speedy closed by somebody, but I'm not going to do that. It's better I leave that decision to an uninvolved admin."NightHeron (talk) 02:43, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

You need to read WP:NOTVAND. Considering the circumstances my renomination was good and I believe fully aligned with the goals of the Project. We shall just have to wait and see if the wider community supports my judgement. In any case, the relevant policy (for post-review renomination) has already been quoted to you at AN/I: WP:DP#Deletion review – "Overturned deletions may go to a deletion discussion if someone still wishes to delete and chooses to nominate." Ultimately however, we are driven by the great tide of consensus, not by WP:WIKILAWYERING. Alexbrn (talk) 02:50, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Please don't accuse me of lawyering just because I'm making a policy-based argument. I'm talking about basic issues like disruption and censorship; I'm not a lawyer haggling about technicalities. I'd prefer not to haggle over words either, but okay, I read WP:NOTVAND it's clear that vandalism should not be used if an inexperienced editor did what you did. But it's not clear whether the policy says anything in the case of an experienced editor who knows the rules. According to the lede of Vandalism on Wikipedia, "On Wikipedia, vandalism is the act of editing the project in a malicious manner that is intentionally disruptive. Vandalism includes the addition, removal, or modification of the text or other material that is ... [in an] otherwise degrading nature." If the word "vandalism" seems inaccurate, then other possible words to describe what happened: disruptive editing and butchering the article right before nominating. I don't care which words we use. It was clearly against policy in any case. The "great tide of consensus" among the "wider community" is nonsense, since most editors have little patience for endless debates with people who refuse to accept a consensus reached at the admin level after 3 weeks. Only the diehards are in it now; others lose interest when the same arguments are being beaten to death for the 4th straight week.NightHeron (talk) 03:41, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

No, we're getting fresh eyes all the time, usefully broadening the consensus. So far as I'm concerned this is just a run-of-the-mill exercise to remove bad content from Wikipedia. No big deal. With your talk of butchery and censorship and off-wiki judgements and beating to death you're already quite a way up the WP:REICHSTAG. Have you considered that you might ... be wrong? Alexbrn (talk) 12:44, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

The issue is not whether I was right or wrong to write an article on this topic. Apparently the most active members of WikiProject Medicine for the most part believe I was wrong. That's fine. The issue is the highly irregular procedure that is being used to overturn a decision reached by consensus after 3 difficult weeks of debate. All the "new eyes" this week on one side and none on the other side -- no surprise there. Your side can legally rally the troops. The other side cannot, or it would be canvassing. There's no "WikiProject Crit of Med", nor should there be. Also, most on the other side, including people who are more experienced and less naive about Wikipedia procedures than I am, don't want to waste their time -- just as it would be foolish to waste time campaigning in a rigged election. Apparently other people have had similar experiences long before I started editing.NightHeron (talk) 14:52, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

As they should. Spouting pseudoscience gets you an admonishment and if you continue it gets you a ban. Wikipedia could not exist if we allowed every quack to WP:BLUDGEON all of our processes. Science is not a democracy, it is biased to the scientific method. Carl Fredrik ^talk 15:23, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Am I a "quack" now? Have I been "spouting pseudoscience"? Am I soon to be banned? Are other editors who have supported the article also a bunch of "quacks"?NightHeron (talk) 16:29, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

I'm not using "censor" as a type of miscellaneous expression of annoyance, but rather in the precise sense of WP:CENSOR, where the first sentence states: "Wikipedia may contain content that some readers consider objectionable or offensive‍—‌even exceedingly so." The history of our controversy makes the central issue clear. I was led to the article Alternative medicine when looking for material on a subtopic of abortion that's also a subtopic of alt med, namely herbal abortifacients. I was shocked by the tone and POV of the alt med article, which I'd never before encountered on Wikipedia. Among other things, I tried to put in a section on criticism of medicine, in order to show that some of the appeal of alt med is due not to a belief in "magic, childishness, or the downright absurd" (to paraphrase a formulation that was in the alt med article's lede at the time, but since removed). Rather, this appeal might result in part from the less-than-perfect image that medicine has among much of the public. That section didn't survive, but an experienced editor advised me instead to write a separate article on the subject, which could then be cited from the alt med article in lieu of a section with that material. I much appreciated the constructive suggestion, and also the considerable help that editor gave me in improving my sandbox draft. When I posted it, the trouble started, with immediate suspicion of my good faith, e.g., a comment on the Wiki:Project Medicine talk page by a veteran editor saying "I smell a sock" (??). (In my comments on the alt med article, I had stated that I was strongly opposed to pseudoscience, quackery, and fraud, and that's why I wanted to improve the article. But since I was editing anonymously, editors had no way to verify that I wasn't lying.) Throughout the lengthy discussions on the crit of med talk page and three different delete-related discussion pages the persistent theme of the pro-deletion comments is that any article on the topic is automatically POV, essay-like, SYNTH, OR, and other nasty things. The reason is because of a "problematic agenda" (in the words of the deletion-nominator Alexbrn), namely to promote alt med. No one has ever pointed to a specific source or wording in the article that supports the alt-medists. But no matter. It's offensive to a dominant group of editors that includes some very active veteran editors in the medicine project, apparently because an article on such a topic is viewed as inconsistent with the need for an uncompromising battle against alt med. This is censorship in the Wikipedia sense of the word. Among my acquaintances in the off-wiki world I'm reasonably sure that every one of them would view it as such.NightHeron (talk) 16:23, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

NightHeron, you are (again, I'm sorry to say) taking a pedantic, highly idiosyncratic reading of WP policy and bending it to your purposes. What WP:CENSOR means is that Wikipedia hosts content that some folks may find objectionable (viz. penises, images of the Prophet Muhammad, and Nickelback samples); it does not mean that we should ignore all of our content policies about fringe science or original research. There are over a dozen reasonable, highly experienced editors here who have collectively been editing Wikipedia for more than a hundred years. As Alexbrn asked you earlier: are you sure that maybe—just maybe—it's you that has the wrong end of the stick here? A Train^talk 23:01, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

@A Train: Don't you at least find it odd (although perhaps justified from your POV) that the crit of med article is continually being labeled as "fringe" or "pseudoscience" even though every single source (over 40 of them) is mainstream RS, nothing the least bit fringe? Doesn't that tell you that there might be something strange about what's going on?

As far as Wikipedia policy goes, I don't believe you're correct. It's not just for offensive images that someone doesn't want their children to see or that offend some religious notion. The policy in WP:CENSOR seems much more to be a core policy related to major content issues. The one where much of my editing has taken place is abortion. Wikipedia explicitly tries in various ways to protect super-controversial articles such as the abortion article from POV-groups and it seems to me that Wikipedia is relatively successful there. Even the frequent IP-vandalism isn't much of a problem, since it's usually reverted within a few minutes at very little effort -- that's what the "undo" click is there for (as it took me over a month to realize). Right now I'm involved in two discussions I instigated to change the title of United States pro-life movement and United States pro-choice movement to NPOV-compliant titles, replacing "pro-life" with "anti-abortion" and "pro-choice" with "abortion rights." To my pleasant surprise, both discussions have been going well, with no real animosity, no insults or violations of WP:GF. Nobody accused anyone of a "problematic agenda" or being a "quack" or said "I smell a sock," and nobody threatened to have anyone banned. The only place I've encountered that has been in the alt-med and crit-of-med context. Doesn't that seem strange to you? It does to me. BTW, none of this applies to you -- you've been consistently cordial and never assumed bad faith on my part.NightHeron (talk) 23:43, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

@A Train: After I posted the above reply to you, I noticed that the edit summary of your last response to me (which I had not even noticed) had been removed by an admin for containing "Grossly insulting, degrading, or offensive material." Of course, it's too late for me to read it now. I want to say that the last BTW sentence above was meant sincerely, not as sarcasm (because if the edit summary did insult me, I hadn't read it). Second, if the issue in the edit summary related to something not directed against me, then please let me know what it was so that I don't jump to an inaccurate conclusion.NightHeron (talk) 00:41, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

I was surprised to see a deleted edit summary in this page's history, and particularly surprised that A Train would post an edit summary falling under RD2. On reviewing the deleted summary, I am comfortable saying that the deletion of the edit summary was in error. The deleting admin was – presumably – unfamiliar with the phrase "hill to die on". A Train's rather sensible advice to you was simply (NightHeron, find another hill to die on), which I suppose could be seen as rather threatening if one didn't know the idiom involved. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:04, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

@TenOfAllTrades:@A Train: Of course I'm not insulted by that expression, so my last sentence about cordiality in my earlier response to User:A Train still stands as correct. However, I think there's a U.S.-specific reason why it was probably correct for the admin to delete that edit summary under RD2. Many people in the U.S. are hypersensitive about certain things, especially coming from someone who's an adversary, and some wish for them to "die" (even if it's in a common expression) would be perceived as some weird kind of death threat. I kid you not. I'm not hypersensitive (if I were, I'd find something else to do than edit medicine-related articles on Wikipedia, that's for sure).NightHeron (talk) 01:58, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Ah yes; clearly he needed to delete it to protect the ignorant and illiterate Americans. It would probably be a good idea for you to stop replying. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:37, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Sorry -- I removed my negative comment alluding to literacy in America, since apparently it offended you. I thought it appropriate to reply, because it seems the admin thought that the edit summary would be offensive to me. So I wanted to clarify that I was not offended, but in view of various tensions in the U.S. right now and the sensitivity of people when someone tells them something about "dying," the expression, though an accepted idiom, might be taken badly by some people. Is that okay? Or am I violating some policy? Speaking of interpreting or misinterpreting things, could you tell me what you meant by "a good idea for you to stop replying"? Was that a warning or threat? If so, please tell me what policy I was violating by replying to you about the edit summary?NightHeron (talk) 04:11, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

• delete. This page is a POV fork Jytdog (talk) 16:11, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
• Delete The article is simply an essay promoting a fringe POV, fleshed out with disparate sources. Any particular source or sentence could be justified as criticism of a relevant aspect of medicine, but no reliable source has proposed the same thesis as this article. The way it is assembled is tantamount to WP:SYNTH. --RexxS (talk) 20:00, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
• Split the content to more relevant articles, and – eventually, when all of the usable content has been correctly placed in other articles – redirect this name to Medicine, which probably will end up with a ==Criticism== section as a result. You can see one example of a very simple split in this diff, which shows me moving a sourced sentence to an article that did not previously contain such a concise explanation of how cultural expectations affected the opioid epidemic. This is not a difficult kind of editing task, and it WP:PRESERVEs verifiable content. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:51, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

You split out one sentence, and now the article must be kept for attribution... Natureium (talk) 21:28, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

No, it can be solved with a history merge. It's a lot of extra work for some administrator, but it's going to need to happen now that this was done. All it needs to do is attribute NightHeron, but something needs to be done to ensure the diff is truncated — it is currently the whole article, which should under no circumstance be part of the diff. Just for the sake of it I will make it clear I strongly oppose a redirect. Carl Fredrik ^talk 21:33, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Or the single edit could be rev-del'd (i.e., from the target article). I made sure to document the diff, so that it would be easy to do that if wanted, and difficult to overlook the necessity if editors conclude that this title absolutely must remain a redlink instead of pointing at Medicine. I think that quite a lot of the material in this article could easily find a home in other articles.

Carl, I'd like to know more about why you oppose a redirect. Do you believe that this needs to be a redlink, or do you only oppose a redirect that has the article history behind it? ("Somebody might revert the redirect" could be reliably solved with page protection.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:31, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Two reasons: (1) — The history of this article should be deleted as it is an unconstructive mass of diatribe and textbook WP:SYNTH. That certain passages may be relevant to other articles is cause to merge them without history, not to allow this WP:OR mess to continue and potentially be found. (2) It relays a false sense of legitimacy to have this page as a redirect — especially as there is no Medicine#Criticism section, and there is strong policy support to deny creating such a section. Carl Fredrik ^talk 10:02, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia licensing requires attribution. And while that's most commonly done via the editor log in article history, it isn't the exclusive way for text to be attributed (I'm too busy to scrape up an example at the moment, but there are articles where, for various reasons, attribution of some text was made in a persistent talk page note). Or, to the point, having a line of text from here exported to another article does not immunize this one from deletion. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:31, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

On the topic of attribution, I notice that NightHeron is maintaining a mirror of this article at User:NightHeron/sandbox, including others' edits. How does this work? Alexbrn (talk) 14:47, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Since I don't understand how "userfy" works, and since whatever version I'd get access to might have deletions from it of material I'd want to keep, I saved a recent version in sandbox. On the question of attribution, I've mentioned that two veteran editors (one admin and one member of the medicine Wikiproject) helped me significantly with the first published version when it was in the sandbox stage. Neither one got attribution. The first posted version was certainly not entirely my work. At the time I didn't even think about that, since I thought (apparently incorrectly) that attribution was not important on Wikipedia.NightHeron (talk) 15:13, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Please take a look at WP:Copying within Wikipedia for the legal requirements. Userfication is just wiki-slang for move to user space. In this case, the most likely location would be User:NightHeron/Criticisms of medicine. When that happens, the entire editing history comes with it, just like with any other article rename. And, should the page eventually be moved back into main article space, the history will continue to follow it. This preserves the full history of every editor's changes, so you can both see what the page looked like at any point in time, and we also have the full attribution history, so you can see who wrote what. Making a copy, as you're doing with your current sandbox, breaks all of that, and is against policy. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:53, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Also, WP:PATT tells how to patch up the history to provide the required attribution after the fact of a copy-paste event. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:58, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

@RoySmith: Thank you for the explanation. I'm unclear about the following question: If I ask for "userfying" a deleted article, can I specify a particular version of that article that I'd like to work on improving? What I'm afraid of is that in the version that's eventually deleted some sections will already have been deleted earlier. For example, the deletion nominator could again reduce the article to a stub, as he did immediately following your restoring of it in closing the deletion review (that is, immediately before again nominating it for deletion). Also, another editor added a section on maternal mortality in the U.S., which I thought was a very positive contribution. The nominator quickly reverted it, then I restored it (into a different section where I thought it fit better), and he again deleted it, so it clearly will not be in the version that's eventually deleted. Since the nominator and several others apparently believe that no article on criticisms of mainstream medicine should be in Wikipedia, he or others might want to make it much harder for me and others to write a much revised and expanded version for publication in a few months. That's why I copied a version without deleted sections (I didn't know at the time that this is against policy), and that's why I'd like to know if I'd be permitted to specify a particular version for userification. Thanks.NightHeron (talk) 16:01, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

If an article is "userfied", it is moved into your userspace. The entire history of the article comes with it, just as it would if it were moved from one title to another within articlespace. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 16:04, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

More specifically to your question, you can easily restore it to any previous version. The exact details vary depending on what client you're running, but with the web client, click the View history tab at the top of the page to bring up the full history. You can view any earlier version by clicking on the timestamp. Once you've found the one you want, click the Edit tab, and as soon as it drops you into the editor, click Publish changes. You've now effectively reverted back to that version (and, the history is still intact). -- RoySmith (talk) 19:18, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, that answers that question. I have two more questions: (1) After deletion would I have access to the talk page for the article with its current content still there? (2) Is there something I should do about attribution either for the two editors who helped me (in one case with direct edits) in the sandbox draft earlier or for editors who help me in the next sandbox stage after deletion? In an academic setting, they'd be either coauthors or mentioned in the acknowledgment, depending on the extent of their work on it.NightHeron (talk) 19:35, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

In theory, it's possible to userfy the article and not the talk page, but I've never heard of that happening. Assume you'll get both. As mentioned above, read WP:PATT for how to handle after-the-fact attribution. One possible route would be a null edit and an edit comment along the lines of, Includes text contributed by User:Foo and User:Bar. Another alternative might be to describe the contributions on the talk page. I'll admit, the details of this are not really my area of expertise. WP:VPP might be a good place to get more specific advice. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:46, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks.NightHeron (talk) 21:10, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

• Delete The article is an essay with opinions gathered by an editor (WP:SYNTH) to show one side of a story (WP:POVFORK). Anything as complex as medicine is going to have a lot of problems (and misguided accusations of problems), and listing them should be done on a blog. Johnuniq (talk) 23:12, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
• Delete/Split as a WP:POVFORK. Some of the content is criticism of the US healthcare system (which already has its own article and plenty of space for criticism), some is criticism of frauds (which exist in all fields, not just medicine - and a relevant article also already exists), some is criticism of historical behaviours which can hardly be attributed to the field of medicine alone, and the article overall is a haphazard collation of those, and it constitutes POV-pushing WP:SYNTH (since it is criticism taken out of context, see this older AfD - sure, there's criticism, but the article in this form is unacceptable WP:CHERRYPICKING). Relevant content can thus be split to relevant articles (if it isn't already there), and the rest can go where it rightfully belongs (i.e. the trash can, if you were not sure). 198.84.253.202 (talk) 13:10, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
• Delete. There just isn't a clear concept of what this article is intended to cover, so it's always going to be a neither-fish-nor-fowl laundry-list muddle. It's called "Criticisms of Medicine", but it's really a poorly-scoped agglomeration of anything negative that's tangentially-related to the past or present of medicine. There's stuff there that better fits in – and is often already part of – our articles on healthcare, or history of medicine, or informed consent, or scientific misconduct, and others. (The old editor's saw: What you've got is good and original. But the good stuff isn't original, and the original stuff isn't good.)
  The novel synthesis and agglomeration of this grab-bag of bits and pieces isn't a helpful construction (except, perhaps, to an anti-medicine crusader looking for Gish Gallop fodder), and the lumping-together in this way isn't supported by suitable sources. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:51, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
• Delete. No systematic framework, not likely to be anything but a tirade. WP:CRITICISM is always risky and I'd say any useful content should be merged to the specific phenomena being criticised, not the practice or profession of medicine as a whole. JFW | T@lk 17:58, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
• Delete and salt the tittle, because no encyclopedic neutral article can exists there. I painstakingly surveyed all accessible so-called references, they revealed one thing: this article s epitome of WP:SYNTHESIS and concoction to paint picture that never was and push fringe POV masquerading as an encyclopedic article. I am also pertubed by the badgering by account solely created to mask identity and fight for keeping this mess in the name of article.Forum shopping after DRV and their apparent attempt to recreate the article after this is eventually deleted. –Ammarpad (talk) 05:24, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

• Delete. The article is more like an essay or list that cherry-picks events where healthcare services have been substandard. There is no overall direction. (I have looked at the previous "good" version.) Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:30, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
• Delete Oh, what a mess. Yet, that's pretty much a textbook example of WP:SYNTH. Even if each separate axis of criticism was supported by rock-solid RS (which is not really the case at the moment but it is within the realm of possibilities), what would be needed is sources (e.g. sociology studies; emphasis on plural) lumping all those separate criticisms together. A quick GScholar search did not turn up anything remotely resembling that, though I will admit that's not my domain and I might have overlooked something obvious. Also, the first AfD's closure might have been invalid, but plainly on procedural/closure rationale grounds, and it certainly is no obstacle to quick renomination. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 11:41, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
• Comment We have 17 deletes, 1 split, 1 keep, and 1 22kB argument. Are we going to make this run another 3 days? Natureium (talk) 13:55, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

  If it was up to me, yes. Leaving it open three more days is not likely to lead to much mud-slinging, but closing it three days early certainly is (for evidence, see previous AfD and DRV). Also, applying WP:SNOW (assuming that's the argument) is dubious when a previous recent AfD was certainly not within SNOW realm. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 17:17, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

• With only one supporter of the article not sitting out the vote, you're at 94 percent. Don't you want to try to raise that? The old Soviet Union would routinely get over 95 percent voting for the Communist Party. You should be able to match that.NightHeron (talk) 10:29 am, Today (UTC−4)
• Comment It's a shame to see this article deleted. It's a good starter article that covers an important aspect of medicine. (NightHeron, you should strike that comment you just made. Others here are just are just as sincere in their opinions as you are.) Gandydancer (talk) 14:52, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
• I deleted it.NightHeron (talk) 15:00, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
• Delete No, you didn't. -Roxy, the dog. barcus 16:07, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, I did delete it, was told by another editor that I shouldn't have deleted something that had been replied to, and that editor (I think) then crossed through it.NightHeron (talk) 19:26, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
• Keep - I'm going to go out on a limb here, but being new to this discussion, I'm reading this objectively. I went over the different sections and feel there are enough criticisms that are properly sourced to keep this. This does not seem to be fringe, POV material. High medical costs; opioid and psychotropic drug over-prescription; and false findings by researchers are subjects that have been widely discussed elsewhere, and indeed some have their own articles. Likewise with discrimination against women and minorities. We could add forced sterilization of developmentally disabled people, and Nazi experiments on Jews during World War II as further black eyes on medicine. All unpleasant, but all valid and notable. I'm not sure I agree that inadequate therapeutic relationships is a valid criticism, but that can be culled, or defended with additional sourcing. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 20:45, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
  • From what I'm reading, inadequate therapeutic relationships are a source of burnout among the newest generation of physicians, poor outcomes, and patient dissatisfaction. It is not a matter of social skills. It is a structural, institutional, and financial problem: you typically get 15 minutes to deal with a patient, including time to read past notes and document what the patient said and what you did and said this time (and, in some cases, what you didn't do and didn't say and what the patient did or didn't do), regardless of whether the goal of the office visit is a super-simple thing like "glance at a freckle and say that it's a freckle" or "inform parents that their child's cancer is untreatable and that the child is going to die". The difficulty of forging a working relationship in a few minutes, a couple of times a year, is widely believed to be one of the reasons that people with complex and chronic problems seek out alternative medicine practitioners. A physician effectively has eight minutes to talk to the patient, wants the patient to stick to the chief complaint, and may be visibly annoyed when someone asks another question just as he's reaching for the doorknob. By contrast, the acupuncturist will cheerfully schedule a 90-minute appointment every week or two, and wants to hear about everything. The acupuncturist may be doing no more good for your health than your hairdresser, but you will have a better relationship with the acupuncturist than with the over-scheduled guy who privileges you with ten minutes of attention a couple of times a year. Additionally, when the patient needs to spend time in the hospital, the odds are high that nobody who knows anything about that patient's normal life will be involved in the patient's care at the hospital, and the lack of that individual connection – the lack of that "adequate therapeutic relationship" – creates its own set of challenges (Read more). So, yeah, it's a known problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:44, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
• Keep Some bizarre comments above - anyone who thinks there is not massive criticism of medicine from within the conventional medical world is someone who has never looked at a leading medical journal, or for example ever read a review of one of Ben Goldacre's books. Conflict of interest in the healthcare industry is one massive topic, for example. The article isn't great, but the subject is entirely valid and important. Johnbod (talk) 01:32, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is suggesting that there is not criticism (legitimate and otherwise) of pretty much all aspects of modern medicine, healthcare delivery, and medical research. The objection I think most of us have is that trying to smoosh all that criticism together into one giant gemisch results in a poor encyclopedia article. The information (mostly) belongs in Wikipedia; it just doesn't belong in one, big, impossible-to-properly-scope pile.

It would be like trying to create an article called Criticisms of food, in which was discussed

• how some people couldn't afford to get enough food; or how it was difficult to deliver food to some parts of the world;
• how large manufacturers and distributors of food used marketing tactics and sloppy science to misrepresent the benefits and risks associated with their products;
• how some people become sick from consuming too much or the wrong types of food;
• how the practice of preparing and serving food has changed (sometimes in very harmful ways) through history;
• how improperly handled foods can cause food poisoning; and
• how poorly-regulated charlatans can sell fad diets that are expensive but useless (or even harmful).

All of those things are worth discussing in the context of various Wikipedia articles, but trying to mash them all together in one place doesn't work. Those bullets could all be loosely described as "food-related criticisms and concerns", but they don't work collectively as "Criticisms of food".

The notion that editors endorsing deletion of this article are intent on suppressing or ignoring criticism of medicine (or are somehow ignorant of such criticism) is a non-starter, bordering on insulting. We just don't think that this article's format is an effective or useful way to provide the information to our readers. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:14, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Have you seen the article Criticism of science, which underwent an AfD that closed quickly after unanimous or near-unanimous keeps? Please look at it. Would you argue that it is better (less of a gemisch) than the one under discussion?NightHeron (talk) 03:26, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

@NightHeron: I just checked that article, in fact the exact version which was discussed at AfD, and what I can see is that the criticism there is much more of science as one whole field than of individual aspects of science. In contrast, this article just cherrypicks on all the negative aspects, and loops them in together, and all of that despite none of them being really directly relevant to medicine, merely one of the many aspects of it. Therefore, even if the subject might be eventually worthy of an article, the article in its current form is in clear breach of policy/accepted standards and WP:TNT applies at the very least. 198.84.253.202 (talk) 04:07, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

@TenOfAllTrades: and 198.84.253.202. Please take a look at Criticism of Christianity, which "is about criticism of the doctrines and practices of Christianity," just as Criticisms of medicine is about criticism of both the science and practice of medicine. The table of contents of Criticism of Christianity lists a wide range of topics that are covered in a single article. Perhaps surprisingly, in view of the strong feelings that many Christians have about perceived criticism of their faith, the article is there, and has been since Sept 2005. That's a nice example of adherence to WP:CENSOR. I think that editors of Wikipedia who have strong Christian views deserve credit for not trying to get that article deleted.NightHeron (talk) 06:01, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

@NightHeron: Except that article is actual "criticism" (critical thinking), as exemplified by say the first sentence of the first sub-section, "Biblical criticism, in particular higher criticism, covers a variety of methods used since the Enlightenment in the early 18th century as scholars began to apply to biblical documents the same methods and perspectives which had already been applied to other literary and philosophical texts." That is critical thinking, and surprise, it implies nothing negative... The current article "Criticism of medicine" is however just criticism of the "ripping on" form, includes a gratuitous statement to promote quackery (i.e. CAM), and lacks balance. Stop making desperate comparisons - we are talking of this article, not of every single other article whose title is "Criticism of [something]". 198.84.253.202 (talk) 14:12, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Please look at the historical section of Criticism of Christianity, which describes many extremely negative things that sources say about what Christianity has done in the past. Concerning "critical thinking," the beginning of the lede of Criticisms of medicine contains a sentence written in much the same style as the one you quote from Criticism of Christianity. Can you be more specific about which section or sections (the one on scandals? on harmful effects of treatment? on historical discrimination? etc.) you believe to be lacking in critical thinking that should be there? If you mean fleshing out details, in an article of this sort that's normally done by wikilinks to full articles on the given subtopic. Finally, what do you mean specifically by "a gratuitous statement to promote quackery"? That's a very serious and insulting accusation, since I've repeatedly stated that I -- and, to the best of my knowledge, other editors who have contributed -- are strongly opposed to fraud and quackery. So please be specific.NightHeron (talk) 16:19, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

@NightHeron: The discussion here is already long enough - see comments on article talk for "specifics". 198.84.253.202 (talk) 16:45, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) To respond to both User:Johnbod and User:timtempleton, if you look at this carefully, you will see that the lead perfunctorily summarizes a good source -- " The critical study of medicine is multidisciplinary, using methods from history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and quantitative science."... but the actual page ignores that. What is in the body is not a "critical study" (an analysis using the tools of those various disciplines - in other words, critical thinking) but rather just plain old ripping on (an entirely different sense of the word "criticism"). The results of authentic critical study are rarely entirely negative.

This page is really Here is a Bunch of Bad Stuff about the Biomedical Establishment in the United States (due to the inclusion here of stuff like the Scandals section which is all about research, and some of the Conflict of Interest section which is also about research). Taking that out, it is really Here is Bad stuff about the Healthcare System in the United States, or perhaps better Why you should not trust medicine but instead use CAM, and is just a POV fork of Health care in the United States.

Tim you added mention of Wakefield, but it is remarkable that there was no discussion of anything like that before, nor even now of other healthcare fraudsters like Burzynski Clinic, the scandal of dietary supplement advertising (HGH "supplements", anyone?), the conspiracy theorizing and misinformation that websites like Mercola spew into the public sphere every day, the proliferation of celebrity doctors like Doctor Oz flogging dietary supplements or their fad diet books, celebrities who aren't doctors like Gwyneth Paltrow selling expensive jade eggs to cleanse your vagina, the horrible, hyped reporting about "health news" in the mainstream media; people's own bad behaviors that destroy their health that they look for others to fix for them -- all the shit that people who are trying to be healthy and well actually face.

It would be more... worthy of some kind of consideration if actually was looking at all the flaws in the healthcare economy.

This page, however, is a sloppy piece of crap masquerading as an encyclopedia article -- criticism (ripping on) masquerading as criticism (critical thinking). That is why the !votes are overwhelmingly "delete". Jytdog (talk) 02:28, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Do you think that calling me "juvenile" and "sloppy" and using obscenities strengthens your argument? It's no credit to Wikipedia that the subculture seems to tolerate such verbal abuse.NightHeron (talk) 02:47, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

I never called you anything. I have characterized the page. Also, I removed the "juvenile" before you replied; that was also about the page. Everything that is there, is accurate. You have dumped garbage into WP, and we are wasting a bunch of community resources shovelling it out. Please leave your ax at the login page; this is not a place for grinding it. (that is a comment on your behavior, not on you) Jytdog (talk) 02:53, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for removing "juvenile," a word that refers not to a page, but to the person who wrote it. Your hostility and extreme language ("crap," "garbage," "sloppy") is an insult not only to me, but to others who helped with the page or who voted to keep it. That includes the veteran editor who suggested that I write the article -- a member of the medicine WikiProject, who I'm sure disagrees with me about a lot, but chose to provide some constructive guidance. He also provided valuable suggestions (in draft stage) as have others. But the deluge of anger and verbal abuse from several veteran editors during this AfD2 (including threats implying that I might soon get banned) exceeds anything I was prepared for. It's no wonder Wikipedia has such a huge attrition of new editors. Most people are not accustomed to taking abuse, and if they do get abuse in their daily life, they're even less inclined to want more of it by editing Wikipedia. For example, very few women I know would want to edit Wikipedia if they heard about the barrage of insults one has to put up with.NightHeron (talk) 03:23, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

The nom says "Not a viable article topic; there are insufficient sources on "Criticism of medicine" per se to allow a neutral and non-original article", which seems completely wrong to me. Various other deleters have said similar things. I see no reason why there can't be a good, neutral summary article of the various kinds of criticism of modern medicine, which, yes, will probably have a lot on the US, like most Wikipedia articles. This article certainly isn't that (yet), but I can't agree it could never become that, and I reject the premise of the nom. AfD should generally concentrate on the Platonic ideal of the article rather than the text at this point, which is not happening here. Johnbod (talk) 03:39, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Because I was distracted by User:Jytdog's insults, I neglected to respond to his point about Wakefield and CAM. The original title of the article, Criticisms of mainstream medicine, was shortened to "Criticisms of medicine," if I recall correctly by User:CFCF, who didn't like what he saw as the implication that there's such a thing as non-mainstream medicine. The article is not and was never intended to be a critique of CAM. The reason for the inclusion of the Andrew Wakefield scandal is that his fraudulent work was peer reviewed and published in The Lancet, one of the world's premier medical journals, and that was a high-profile embarrassment for mainstream medicine that had the effect of strengthening the fringe anti-vaccine movement. I don't agree with the recent edit that puts the Wakefield scandal in its own separate section on "False criticism". However, I think it was a good edit earlier today to mention the anti-vaccine movement as an example of false criticism; it's just that the Wakefield case itself was a failure of the research-review process.NightHeron (talk) 04:51, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

I don't even know how to respond to this. Publishing is a human endeavor. Fraudulent research being published in high profile journals is the result of an act of fraud followed by a series of errors. Retractions are corrections of those errors; they are painful but they are good things, and are part of the process of publishing. Would it be better if humans and their institutions were perfect? If nobody tried to fool the system, and if anytime someone did, they were caught timely? Sure. But trying to put something like a laundry list of high profile retractions into an article about "Criticisms of Medicine" is bizarre. The research misconduct in the biomedical sphere is similar. This is not a problem with biomedical research, but with some people who do it. Its being uncovered by other people, is a good thing, and again, mechanisms to report, investigate, and take action with respect to research misconduct is part of the system. Naming instances of these self-corrections as "criticism" is kind of juvenile (am now bringing this back), in the assumption that some perfect world exists, or could exist. Kids often do this sort of thing before they understand that their parents are human, too, and before they understand that institutions are human creations.

Lots of this is bizarre. This -- "in Cuba hospitals have been plagued by shortages caused by the U.S. embargo" -- is not something wrong with medicine per se.

This page is a grab bag of "bad stuff" thrown at the wall without regard for what are systemic problems that are intrinsic to "medicine" per se, what are problems specific to the US healthcare system (which is its own thing, and a strange one at that), what are societal problems expressed in the field of medicine (which is part of society), and what are not systemic problems at all but rather, ways that the system deals with the humans inside it.

It would be more encyclopedic and less prone to absurdity, to deal with these things where they belong -- and most of it in Healthcare in the United States -- than through this badly thought out, invalid POV fork. Jytdog (talk) 05:57, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

I started thinking about how this could be merged and redirected to a section within medicine instead of just being a straight keep. There is a similar criticism section with Alternative medicine#Risks and problems. I'm still not sold that would work, because you could also argue that similar info should be added to healthcare, and therefore it might require less duplication of content and effort to keep this as standalone. Instead, medicine and healthcare could be linked to this one in an easier cleaner way. There is some hodgepodge, but most of the info is properly sourced and notable - and therefore worthy of inclusion. BTW - I just undid the new section I created - realizing that the scandal was not the vaccination study fraud but was instead the associated peer review process failure. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 18:30, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

User:timtempleton, thanks for your reply. My reading of the section you added was that some of 'criticisms" at "medicine" are ridiculous or even fraudulent - like Wakefield's clsims that vaccines cause autism and there is a huge conspiracy hiding that, or almost anything David Wolfe says about medicine. That's what I thought you meant. About adding this stuff to Medicine -- again almost none of it is about medicine per se, but rather the Healthcare in the US - the actual system through which care is provided and paid for... Mainstream medicine in Europe for example is really different; homeopathy and other alt med practices that started becoming widespread in the US in the 1970s are embedded deep in German culture, and are widespread in Germany and have been since the 19th century... Jytdog (talk) 21:08, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

User:Jytdog - right - it was a bit of a Gordian knot. The issue was not that the vaccine study was an example of medical criticism which was then proven wrong, but instead the criticism was that a fraudulent study got traction and legitimacy, thus exposing a systemic problem within the medical peer review process. That problem may still exist, bolstering at least one point made by this article. I hope my edit made that clearer. Back to the AfD - it is a bit of a blurry distinction between medicine and healthcare. Healthcare is of course broader. If I could see a merge of the meat to healthcare, with some linkage from medicine for readers interested in reading about medicine-specific criticism, I might be convinced that a redirect would work. And mind you - I'm on the side of science and medicine here - but the criticism, like other unpopular subjects including 9/11 inside jobs, chemtrails, holocaust deniers, etc. is a notable enough part of our culture to outweigh WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Just as long as we use reliable sources and there's no bias. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:25, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

In response to your dismissal of the policy violating aspects of this page as simply IDONTLIKEIT, I will say that if you "like" pages that violate policy, please go work in facebook or something. I imagine that a WP article on critical thinking about medicine could be created, but it would not be a laundry list of "criticism" (as in bad stuff). This page is trash. Most of the the "criticism of X" pages in WP have been turned by fuckwit editing into "laundry lists of bad stuff" in whole or in signficant stretches. Look at them. Jytdog (talk) 17:20, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

• Delete WP:SYNTH, per Jytdog this content all fits elsewhere, and it is largely criticism of healthcare in the United States smooshed with some other stuff. I also agree with TenOfAllTrades comment on "criticism of food" and 198.84.253.202's comments on Criticism of science being actually broadly on criticism of science. Galobtter (pingó mió) 08:04, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
• Comment The content of the article could be improved, but it is a valid topic. A more accurate title would be helpful, or perhaps a redirect to Medical sociology. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 10:00, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
• Further comment It is an example of the need for a summary overview article on the topic that the 23 articles in Category:Unnecessary health care were not linked to Category:Medical controversies until I did it just now. Johnbod (talk) 16:53, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
  • User:Johnbod, the current title implies, at least at first glance, that medicine itself - in general - has significant criticism. Maybe the article could be recreated under a more appropriate title, such as mainstream healthcare controversies, although the risk of it becoming a POV fork would still be very real. The current title/article is not suitable, in my view.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 18:19, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
    • • I'm very ready to agree that the title, like the present text, could be improved. Johnbod (talk) 00:46, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
• Delete and merge Split and redirect The article title and subject is silly, POV and fringe, and the sources are not criticising medicine in general but rather failings, scandals, etc. Thus the article should be deleted. That said, some of the content appears to reliably sourced and to cover notable issues within medical care and could sensibly be merged to more focused articles.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 05:42, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
  • You can't delete and merge. You can either delete, and (having lost the history, which is required for copyright reasons) not merge, or you can merge, and not delete. The closest you can realistically come to "delete and merge" is to split the useful content off to other articles (that's the "merge" part) and redirect the page someplace sensible. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:20, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
    • Okay, yeah, thanks. I think there is an argument for a more suitable name such as renaming the article to e.g. mainstream healthcare controversies. User:Johnbod has made a valid point that there needs to be a summary article of our various medical controversies articles. The current name implies that mainstream medicine in general is validly criticised as a whole.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 18:19, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
• Delete The content in the article seems false to the article name as pointed out by others; most of it is Criticism of healthcare (in particular parts of the world). Some parts of what currently makes up the article could maybe fit in their relevant article, but not in one with this name. --Treetear (talk) 07:55, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Criticism of health care would be an improvement on the current name 'criticism of medicine,' so long as it was monitored for POV pushing.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 10:07, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
• Keep - the history of medicine is full of techniques that were once considered "cutting edge" and "scientific", that are now considered nonsense - phlebotomy, bleeding to drain bad humours, for instance. On the other hand, there are techniques now used that seemed like quack techniques, that are now universally accepted. Semmelweis, the 19th century obstetrician who first argued doctors should wash their hands prior to delivering babies was sent to an insane asylum. No offense but it is only recentism that makes fans of scientific medicine see it as above criticism.

  Will kooks try to stuff Criticisms of medicine with kooky nonsense? Maybe. But that is true of articles on any notable topic. And the remedy for that is for non-kooks to put the article on their watchlist, and insist that new material complies with WP:VER, WP:RS, WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. If we think new material seems kooky, but our check shows us it complies with VER, RS, NPOV and NOR, it wasn't kooky after all, it was only our unexamined biases that made us think it was kooky. Geo Swan (talk) 12:20, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

• Delete. As much as I support being tolerant of non-orthodox views on Wikipedia – since most of our modern views were considered unorthodox sometime in the past – here I have to agree with Jytdog and others that the very concept of this essay is not in line with what Wikipedia aims to be, and having an essay (!) that tries to list together, under a single weasel heading, all the varied challenges facing modern medicine, science, healthcare systems, politics, publication practices, financial systems, etc., is a non-starter. — kashmīrī ^TALK 17:04, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
• Delete as a rather incoherent hodge-podge of miscellaneous complaints about nation- and field-specific problems with how medicine is researched and provided. Even the problematic Criticism of science is more coherent than this article, actually trying to focus on criticisms of the very idea of science, at least insofar as science is commonly defined. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:04, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
• Delete per Someguy1221's comments. Throw everything a crock pot and cook it and call it a stew? It stinks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 20:01, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.