Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Herpes nosodes

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 Snow Delete. Mark Arsten (talk) 17:09, 29 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Herpes nosodes

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This commercial product [1] fails to meet WP:GNG. Per User:Scray's comment on the Talk page:

As noted in the Homeopathy article (already a redirect from Nosodes), the term "nosodes" just refers to any homeopathic remedy derived from disease-related material. The Homeopathy page is the right place for dealing with these pseudoscientific concoctions that are actually water. Any therapeutic claim requires support from reliable medical sources (WP:MEDRS), which are completely lacking [2] [3] (current content is based on a primary study [4] which does not meet WP:MEDRS). This article's subject is otherwise non-notable, and inclusion provides undue weight for quackery. MistyMorn (talk) 11:07, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. I couldn't find any reliable sources on Pubmed. A few articles happen to mention "nosodes" in passing, but nothing that could be used as a source; none are secondary sources. With a Google search, there are many retailers selling these products but no suitable source to establish notability. Nor does Google Books provide a source. Axl ¤ [Talk] 12:02, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. There does not appear to be sufficient reliable sources to support either the notability of this topic or of the content of the article. Peacock (talk) 13:48, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Dilute until no trace of the article remains. Homeopathy is bunk, but it's notable bunk. It's plausible for some specific homeopathic "remedy" to acquire enough notability to warrant independent inclusion. That's true for Oscillococcinum, but not true here. Wikipedia is not a homeopathic repertory or materia medica. No shortage of linkable justifications: WP:MEDRS/WP:FRINGE/WP:UNDUE. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:04, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - No reliable sources. ---My Core Competency is Competency (talk) 15:26, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. No merit as a standalone article. JFW | T@lk 19:31, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - only one book source (by convicted fraudster Kevin Trudeau) and no google scholar hits at all. Would require a fundemental re-write to become encyclopaedic in any case, very promotional towards a homeopathic view medicine.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 20:19, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Probably evident from my comment included above. -- Scray (talk) 00:18, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:41, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Improve. Wikipedia is a neutral resource. Our personal beliefs on homeopathy do not need to be reflected here. Herpes nosodes benefited 82% of genital herpes patients in a clinical trial conducted in France and this study was published in peer review scientific journals. Google scholar link is [5] presented here. Homeopathy is bunk to people who only consider a newtonian molecular view of the universe. Numerous new scientific studies like those on the memory of water and nanotechnology support homeopathy. Either way our opinions on this are not what counts. I am new to Wikipedia and such opinionated opinions are driving many editors away. Please show some wiki love :)[6]. This product needs mention as herpes is now a pandemic and this study of herpes nosodes was one of the most promising till date. [7] shows many scientific references to studies on herpes nosodes like [8] and [9] Why does this not meet WP:MEDRS? One most also consider that homeopathy and natural medicine in general cannot be patented and therefore is never put through drug trials like chemical medicines are. This is leading to a world where chemicals have crept into our food and medicine and are soon becoming the only notable option. Let's please keep wikipedia as objective and neutral as possible.NatureisScience2 —Preceding undated comment added 10:59, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Homoeopathy is bunk. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:17, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Explain IF Homoeopathy is bunk, why is it that these herpes nosodes benefited 82% of patients with genital herpes? I would like to remind you that placebos work 40% of the time and this nosode study outperformed anti-viral drugs in terms of percentage of users that had no or reduced outbreaks for 5 years. Either way lets be objective here. Regardless of our personal beliefs, people have a right to this information and the right to choose between chemical or natural remedies. Just as there is no state religion, there ought to be no preferred state medicine system. NatureisScience2 —Preceding undated comment added 15:16, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The British Homeopathic Journal is not a reliable source for citing medical claims, as contemplated by our policies on sources about medicine or sources about fringe material. You are correct when you say that individual editors' personal beliefs should not direct the contents of articles; however, that includes your personal beliefs as well. We seek to represent mainstream, consensus viewpoints, and the mainstream, consensus viewpoint regarding homeopathy is that it is pseudoscience, with purported mechanisms that are in contravention of established physical law. Accordingly, topics internal to homeopathy (such as this one) would need coverage from reliable sources from publications not dedicated to the homeopathic viewpoint in order to warrant inclusion (you can see such an article at Oscillococcinum). Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:36, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This article cites pubmed, google scholar and sciencedirect and not the British Journal of Homeopathy. Furthermore it simply states the results of one study without claiming a treatment or cure. Hence this article does not bring in an opinion on whether nosodes work or they don't. What is states is one study where they were used and the actual scientific results of those studies across 53 participants. Deleting the article would be opinionated, leaving it would not. Maybe the unbiased thing to do here is add your mainstream, consensus viewpoint regarding homeopathy is that it is pseudoscience. As far as purported mechanisms that are in contravention of established physical law I would like to remind wikipedians that science has long shifted to the view point that "matter exists by virtue of vibration" - max planck, and field theory has long replaced Newtonian ideas on molecules. NatureisScience2 —Preceding undated comment added 16:21, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, but reporting unblinded and uncontrolled results in some journal doesn't make them "science". Without a control group, we really don't know what would have happened to these people had they been given a placebo and the study correctly done. Not all placebo effects are the same, and there is evidence that the herpes placebo effect is particularly strong since herpes is strongly influenced by mental stress (think of your cold sores). For example, here's an article on the effect of an ether treatment on genital herpes, where the treatment group experienced 75% relief, and the placbo group got 77% relief! See PMID 6243714. In the face of results like this in a well done trial, it seems particularly strange to want to pay attention to an open study where the single treated group reported 82% results. So what? And that's not even getting into the problems of what the baseline disease attack rate in this group was before they were treated, and how we know what it was. Supposedly the intake group all had more than 4 attacks per year: PMID 11055774. So how do we know they did? We took their word for it?? Apparently so. After that, their attack rate went down (supposedly). How do we know? Is this from doctor's exams or are we taking their word again? Without blinded here, the results are meaningless. Doctors need to be blinded, or else they may see what they expect to see, and the patients likewise. There must also be an untreated control, due to the very large treatment/placebo effect for herpes, which is strong for anything you do (including putting distilled water on it). Which (all in all) is a lot cheaper than homeopathy.S B H arris 01:56, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You cannot "cite" Google Scholar, PubMed, or Science Direct. They are search engines, databases, and compilations, but are not publications in and of themselves. In fact, every link in this article is derived from the same publication, a 2000 paper in the British Homeopathic Journal, which is very much not a reliable source for medical claims, as per WP:MEDRS (which also warns against over-emphasizing single studies). Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 22:19, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. It's impossible to build a neutral article about snake oil like this. bobrayner (talk) 22:11, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom and numerous other persuasive arguments above (primarily WP:MEDRS).--E8 (talk) 02:58, 27 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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.