Category talk:Fasting advocates

List of fasting advocates listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect List of fasting advocates. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:16, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Discussion about this category

There is a current discussion about this category on Tryptofish's talk-page [1]. I don't want to repeat exactly what I posted there but in a nutshell this category is for those who have promoted pseudoscientific views about fasting, whilst the other category for fasting researchers is for academics and scientists who have done research on fasting which is not pseudoscience. Hopefully that is clear. Psychologist Guy (talk) 00:54, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

I've put this notice at WT:MED: [2]. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:39, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks!-Classicfilms (talk) 17:43, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

regarding fasting advocates cat

[Copied discussion from user talk page]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Hi Tryptofish, I understand why you reverted my edit (I didn't see the note before), and I won't contest it. However, there are a number of medical doctors who advocate fasting listed here who don't belong in either the pseudoscientific category or the researchers category (usually they are well versed in the work of researchers and have the scientific background to support their interest). So I'm going to create another category for this specific group of doctors. I'm thinking of Medical Doctors who advocate fasting (or support fasting). It's long but specific. Then I will move the MDs there. Let me know what you think.-Classicfilms (talk) 23:55, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

P.S. I'm thinking that otherwise it's potentially a WP:BLP issue.-Classicfilms (talk) 23:56, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for understanding. (For watchers, we're talking about [3].) I'm going to ping Psychologist Guy, who created the category and pays close attention to the subject area. Basically, I agree with that approach. The only concern that I can think of is whether an MD who is not a researcher but who makes public pronouncements about the medical benefits of fasting is really not engaging in pseudoscience. There's a difference between reducing caloric intake and actually fasting. I appreciate the BLP issue, but if there is solid sourcing it's not necessarily a BLP violation. I'll also welcome any other of my talk page participants to offer their takes on this question. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:11, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Got it. MDs read research on many subjects and apply it to to their clinical work. For example, if an MD recommends a vegetarian diet because the research indicates that it is healthy, is that pseudoscience? I appreciate that this is a subject open to debate, so perhaps what I will do is take the cat off of MDs in general which basically will solve the problem.-Classicfilms (talk) 00:18, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

There are MDs who make public recommendations when it's not what the research indicates. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:21, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

True, but again this is the case in many areas related to health, so it feels a little like WP:OR if we apply this issue to one area of health and not another. Again I think we run into WP:BLP here. Though I get the basic issue that is being addressed.-Classicfilms (talk) 00:25, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

It's not OR if there are reliable secondary sources that say that a particular MD is a quack. Since you've started off by asking me, I'd be more comfortable if you would wait and see if anyone else replies, before taking action with recategorization. I'm not that familiar with the topic area. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:31, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Sure, that's fine. Or we can move this to the cat talk page. -Classicfilms (talk) 00:34, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

I almost reverted the category, but since a discussion is taking place will address it here. Fasting, either a daily fast or a longer fast, is certainly not pseudoscience. I've known fasters, and those who advocate fasting, and since 1988 have done a 14-17 hour daily fast, etc. Highly recommended. I started doing that immediately upon learning something which may or may not be accurate (Swami Satchidananda wrote that a daily 14 hour fast gives seven hours of digestion followed by seven hours of the same organs working on toxic cleansing) but made sense. In any case, fasting works on several levels (and saves money on late night munchies). But pseudoscience? Doesn't seem an accurate descriptor, although some may disagree. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:36, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

All the people in the fasting advocates category [4] were nearly all naturopaths and others promoting pseudoscientific views about fasting (it can cure all diseases etc), they were not research scientists. The fasting researchers category is for actual nutritional researchers, scientists and historians who have done basic research or clinical studies on fasting which is not pseudoscience [5]. There's obviously a big difference between someone like Francis Gano Benedict who was studying fasting in a laboratory and publishing under peer review than Wallace Wattles who was writing nonsense about fasting invoking mystical powers. It's best to keep the researchers and scientists in one category whilst all the people making pseudoscientific claims about fasting in another. Psychologist Guy (talk) 00:47, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

What about those who advocate for fasting who are not professionals in the field. The before mentioned Swami Satchidananda for example, would he qualify or be lumped in with pseudoscience? A thin line? Randy Kryn (talk) 00:54, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Swami Satchidananda had some sensible things to say about diet but he was also a believer in Mucoid plaque and believed in something similar to colon cleansing. I believe his views on fasting were pseudoscience although I could be wrong. I did a lot of research into historical fasting and all I found was that it was heavily associated with alternative medicine claims, there is a good historical paper about it [6]. I used to be interested in documenting alternative fringe diets but it doesn't really interest me anymore. If you want to remove any mention of pseudoscience from fasting advocates category, it wouldn't bother me. I guess you could just use the category to add anyone who is an advocate. Historically I have never come across a non-pseudoscientific fasting advocate, the problem with the topic is all the extreme claims that come with it. Psychologist Guy (talk) 01:11, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

So to clarify, are we all in agreement to remove "pseudoscience" from the fasting advocates category? Or do you want to wait for more possible input from other editors? I'm fine to wait.-Classicfilms (talk) 14:17, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Psychologist Guy about this. A lot of these pages, though perhaps not all, are properly described as pseudoscience. I also think that this discussion has grown to something that should not be at my user talk page. The options are either the category talk page or WP:CSD, and in either case, I will want to have a neutral notice at WT:MED. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:20, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Resumed discussion

I will reiterate my points above that my concerns lie in WP:BLP and WP:OR for the reasons stated above.-Classicfilms (talk) 17:35, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Here is my take. We have this category, and we have Category:Fasting researchers. We could perhaps also create a new category. The category here was created as a subcategory of Category:Pseudoscientific diet advocates. Many of the pages currently in this category are, indeed, about proponents of pseudoscientific theories. However, it may make sense to move some of the pages out of this category, into a new one that is a subcategory of Category:Fasting, which is also the parent category of the researchers category. I don't really buy the argument about OR, but BLP certainly requires us not to label people as pseudoscientists who are not. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:47, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Sure, that all makes sense to me. I'm not really interested in creating a huge fuss about this, just making certain we are following WP:BLP. I'm open to all ways of doing that.-Classicfilms (talk) 17:51, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

How about making a list, here in talk, of those pages that should be moved out of this category? --Tryptofish (talk) 18:00, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Sure, though it's short because I limited it to living people, as WP:BLP is the area of consensus. Perhaps the easiest solution is to simply remove the category from their pages, which would take away that issue- Jason Fung, Michael Klaper, Palaniappan Manickam. -Classicfilms (talk) 18:12, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

What do other editors think about those three pages? --Tryptofish (talk) 18:14, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Michael Klaper and Palaniappan Manickam have published peer reviewed papers on fasting, it's probably better to put them in the fasting researchers category. Jason Fung has written a lot of nonsense but his case studies on intermittent fasting are not pseudoscience [7]. I would say putting these individuals in the fasting researchers category is more accurate. Psychologist Guy (talk) 19:58, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Support- moving all three to fasting researchers works for me. I'll wait to see if anyone else wants to respond. Thanks!-Classicfilms (talk) 20:03, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Actually I see Psychologist Guy has already moved them :-). -Classicfilms (talk) 20:04, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

I came here from the post at WP:MED. I'm glad there's an effort to distinguish those who study and use fasting as part of evidence-based medicine and those who aren't. But the titles trouble me as it seems to be saying to me it is ok to "research" fasting but if you then dared to "advocate" it, you'd be a pseudoscientist. Is that what people here believe, or is it just an unfortunate consequence of trying to come up with a word for "proper scientist" or "mainstream doctor" and all you could think of was "researcher"? I also don't think a comment at the top of the category is likely to be read by many or that our readers will understand the distinction. BLP and categories are a nightmare and I though policy was clear that categories shouldn't be used for contentious labels.

Folk may be interested to read Ketogenic diet, which is a mainstream-medicine diet for epilepsy. The world class neurologists who invented the diet in the 1920s were influenced by the clear success of some quacks at treating epilepsy by fasting. Of course, you can't fast for ever, so it wasn't a long term treatment, and the quack's ideas of why it worked were all wrong. So the neurologists came up with the ketogenic diet to try to reproduce the effects of fasting but in a way that permitted you to get the vital nutrients. Even relatively recently, many US hospitals initiated the KD in their patients with a fast, but have since discovered this wasn't necessary and wasn't a good idea for children for various reasons. And there's also the pre-op fasting that I'm pretty sure many anaesthesiologists "advocate" patients observe! -- Colin°^Talk 20:24, 7 November 2023 (UTC)