Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lyme disease controversy

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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 Redirect and merge to Lyme disease. This has clearly been a hard fought discussion but there does seem to be an overriding consensus on two points: firstly, there is sufficient notability for the subject to be included in Wikipedia; secondly, the article as it stands is far from ideal and it may be better to start from scratch. My decision is therefore to redirect the page to the main Lyme disease article, so that editors more knowledgeable on the subject than I can merge the good material from this article's history. This doesn't mean the Lyme disease controversy cannot be re-created at a later date - as long as the new article adheres strongly to WP:NPOV. Waggers (talk) 21:50, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Lyme disease controversy[edit]

Lyme disease controversy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Nominated per WP:NOTE and WP:NOTBATTLEGROUND. Article does not clearly establish what the title controversy is. A long table implies equal weight for contrasting views of a condition called chronic Lyme, but the guidelines grouped under IDSA are the views of most of medical community not just IDSA. ILADS is a relativly small advocacy organization who's membership is open to many people not just doctors, scientists so the table is undue weight. The section on CDC is not a controversy so misplaced, the long-term drug section is too detailed review of primary literature and controversy is not obvios. All relavent information covered in Lyme disease so IMO this is a POV fork to advance views which don't make it at the main article. RetroS1mone talk 22:09, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete or, as an alternative, Stub and rewrite from scratch using reliable sources and reining in meatpuppetry: Horrible, horrible POV fork and a focus of extensive meatpuppetry. There is probably enough material for a good, encyclopedic content fork on the controversies surrounding Lyme disease, but this article isn't it. It should be stubbed and material should be added piecemeal with reference to specific reliable sources. Additionally, extensive administrative oversight is needed to address the serious problems with agenda-driven meat- and sockpuppetry which make this article and Lyme disease nearly uneditable. MastCell Talk 22:57, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp | talk to me 00:07, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, merge encyclopedic content into a short section on Lyme disease. Then keep the Lyme article semiprotected and appoint two experienced editors to guide improvement there. JFW | T@lk 06:32, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep or redirect and merge, hasn't there been a NEJM article on this? I think there is a debate but the article is a POV fork so let's rewrite it properly, preferably in a separate article. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 07:27, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete and place salvageable material in section within Lyme Disease, using (a) verification of all claims at the point of editing them into the article using (b) citations of reliable sources, with (c) care and attention being paid to NPOV and WP:UNDUE. If this section becomes too large (and only if this happens, given the quality of the sources that should be used) consider splitting off the section into main article of its own.  DDStretch  (talk) 08:37, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: POV fork. Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 15:46, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep or redirect and merge, as a patient, this Wiki is for me. I can go to the CDC site for orthodoxy. Here, I expect to find, and have a right to see, all responsible, researched, fact based recommendations, pros and cons, and not only or mainly the prevailing policy of the medical establishment (no criticism intended). There clearly are areas of uncertainty and there are suffering people who fall into those areas who have to make hard choices. We deserve full disclosure and well presented POVs from both sides. The original article presumed the CDC's POV. I needed the table in this branch to visualize how the recommendations compared. Both sides are pretty scary.LeoBellew (talk) 2008 07 08Jul 04:58Tue (UTC) — LeoBellew (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
    Editor's first post, and there has been off-Wiki recruiting on Lyme advocacy websites. [1], [2], [3] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:03, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Also, Wikipedia is not written for patients. See WP:MEDMOS#Audience and the medical disclaimer. The mere fact that some patients find this information convenient is not proof of topic notability or its appropriateness for an encyclopedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:13, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, POV fork giving undue weight to a fringe viewpoint. Tim Vickers (talk) 04:20, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
But it doesn't necessarily have to be so. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 07:51, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think giving this "controversy" its own article overestimates its notability. It can certainly be mentioned in the main article, but this isn't something like the creation-evolution controversy where the debate itself is notable. Tim Vickers (talk) 01:17, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, but cover the social and political impacts and history, not the fringe claims except as necessary background. Lyme disease says that there are enough people barking about this to reduce the pool of researchers, which would seem to be sufficient for WP:Notability. I am not a doctor - does anybody not associated with ILADS promote this idea? If not, it might be appropriate to treat the idea there instead. - Eldereft (cont.) 09:15, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Delete, or merge and redirect if necessary. This is nowhere near as notable as, for instance, researchers shying away from animal testing. The conjecture and its social consequences are adequately treated in Lyme disease. Kudos to Tim Vickers. - Eldereft (cont.) 22:35, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete for several reasons:
    1. Content forking. We don't want two articles, Orthodox scientific views of Lyme disease and Alternative interpretations of Lyme disease. That, BTW, is what the article really is about, in its current form: it's not actually about the various political actions and, well, controversies. The article is not accurately titled. The two views should be represented in the same article with due weight (= less attention on the widely rejected "alternative" idea).
    2. Notability. The alternative view of Lyme disease is not particularly notable. Important enough to mention in the article? Yes. Important enough to merit an entire article, with a careful comparison of the POV of each side? No. As Tim pointed out, this isn't like creationism vs. evolution; this is much more like Multiple chemical sensitivity spinning off an entire article for the sake of a point-by-point comparison of the differences between the mainstream and alternative views. Although I know a bit about the alternative interpretation of Lyme disease for professional reasons, I've never heard a regular news story about "chronic Lyme". (I see that exactly two are cited in the article; both are entirely critical of the "chronic Lyme" idea.) I have, however heard and read many stories on the mainstream view of Lyme disease. I therefore conclude that readers are not going to come looking for information about the controversy itself.
    3. Wikipedia is not the place to right great wrongs. This article feels like it was created by someone with the specific agenda of drawing additional attention to this idea, with the hope of giving it additional credibility or at least raising awareness.
    4. Undue emphasis on an idea that is rejected by mainstream researchers. I realize that this is inconvenient for agenda accounts that want to push minority viewpoints, but all Wikipedia articles, taken individually and in aggregate, must reflect the mainstream view -- the "orthodoxy", as one patient put it in comments above. This is the meaning of NPOV. If you consider these articles together, the aggregate attention dedicated to the rejected viewpoint and a few political actions is really not appropriate.
    5. Wikipedia is WP:NOT your webhost. If a pro-chronic-Lymer wants to make this information available somewhere, that's fine. Grab a copy right now. There are no copyright restrictions to stop you. But put it up on your own website, not here. The fact that you want this information to be somewhere on the web does not oblige Wikipedia to be that place.
IMO the existing summary in the main article is perfectly adequate to describe this controversy. I think therefore that deletion is a reasonable action. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:26, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep I've been uncertain about whether or not to maintain this subarticle. On balance, the controversy is by itself sufficiently notable, and sufficiently virulent, that it would probably be agood idea to have this as a separate article, keeping the main one for the scientific aspects. DGG (talk) 02:46, 11 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. The controversy itself, as a separate entity from the disease, is notable. It must be addressed, since it has significant media coverage; so if this page were deleted, it would bloat the main article. The controversy has two aspects - the media/cultural issues, and the actual medical controversy. I'm not familiar enough with the scientific issues to know whether the alternative ideas about it are a fringe theory or not, but there is no doubt that whatever those issues are, there has been significant debate about it, too much to simply ignore. From a purely policy standpoint, the controversy as a topic meets WP:N and WP:V. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 05:14, 11 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - The controversy is notable enough to have an article of its own. As it stands, it contains far too much technical detail for an encyclopedia – for example listing the ten specific serologic bands in the CDC Western Blot IgG surveillance criteria tells you nothing about the controversy – I would have said something like "delete all except the first four paragraphs" but this is not an option in AfD. Jll (talk) 09:26, 11 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment/plea: Would it be possible to get a commitment from participants here, if this article is kept, to watchlist it to help deal with serious and ongoing agenda-based meatpuppetry surrounding this article? MastCell Talk 19:55, 11 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've radically shortened the article by removing sections that were either unrelated to the controversy, or gave undue weight to fringe claims. Tim Vickers (talk) 20:10, 11 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge to Lyme disease and delete Redirect; with Tim Vickers tightening of the article, and accounting for duplicate text in the two articles, I believe the main article can now incorporate a merge (in terms of WP:SIZE as measured by Dr pda's page size script). The controversy does need to be mentioned somewhere on Wiki, but the coordinated meatpuppetry, fringe theory, and sockpuppetry issues can be more effectively dealt with by having all of the content in one article. Per Mastcell's plea, I see no evidence that some of the "keep" declarers will help maintain the separate article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:35, 11 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm afraid we can't merge and delete, Sandy, as that would violate the terms of the GDFL by failing to credit the contributors of the merged text. You'll have to pick one :) Skomorokh 03:24, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • Arrrrgh, this is why I rarely come this way :-) The correct term, I believe, is Merge and Redirect. Thanks, Skomorokh. 04:55, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete POV fork. B.Wind (talk) 04:31, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - POV fork, deserves a line or two in Lyme disease but that is all --T-rex 19:18, 13 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - POV fork, subject adequately covered by Lyme disease#Controversy and politics.--PhilKnight (talk) 13:28, 14 July 2008 (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.
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