Talk:Homeopathy/GA2

GA Review

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Reviewer: Aircorn (talk · contribs) 02:29, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

• No response so Failing this. AIRcorn (talk) 07:32, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

History

Okay. I will give this one a go. It will probably take a while given the size and nature of the topic so please bear with me. If anyone else is interested please feel free to leave any comments, just try to keep it focused on the criteria. Regards AIRcorn (talk) 02:29, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

• Noticed some citation needed and page needed tags (page needed ones have been present for a while). Could they be resolved please. AIRcorn (talk) 02:37, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
• Hahnemann rejected the mainstream First mention of Hahnemann should have full name and wikilink (see also should at least be moved up).
• Hahnemann ingested some bark Bark of cinchona?
• Hahnemann came to believe that all effective drugs produce symptoms... I wonder if this is a bit of an overreach. The source says he theorized the same could be true of other substance. It also says he did other experiments or "provings". The way it is written it makes it appear like all he did was try the bark.
• Okay I see provings is explained in more detail below. I still think some rewording of the above sentence would be useful.
• as well as the ancillary conditions under which they appeared What does this mean?
• is psora supposed to be italicised (I am not sure WP:WAW applies). Also do we need to say it means itch twice.
• described as being related to any itching diseases of the skin, supposed to be derived from suppressed scabies and claimed to be the foundation of many further disease conditions So he described it as any itch, but it is now believed to be scabies. Is that what we are meaning? Whos doing the claiming?
• The law of susceptibility ... This could probably be introduced better. "Homeopaths coined the term ...." or something. It kinda just appears with no explanation.
• Miasm's are described three times. Hahnemann introduced the concept of "miasms" as "infectious principles", remote cause of all chronic diseases (miasms) and attract hypothetical disease entities called "miasms". Do we need all those. If we explain miasm's early can we not just refer to them as miasms from then on? The second one I can understand, but the third seems overkill.
• Hahnemann's miasm theory remains disputed and controversial within homeopathy even in modern times Sorry cant access the source. Leading with this (and the fact it has the one source) leads me to believe the criticisms following this comes from the homeopathy community. Is this correct?

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• Homeopathy achieved its greatest popularity in the 19th century. It was introduced to the United States in 1825 by Hans Birch Gram, a student of Hahnemann. This seems a bit disjointed and seems to imply that its popular arose because it was introduced into the united states? Further down it talks about how it never really took hold in the US and was more established in Europe.
• The timeline is not well explained. We say it achieved its greatest popularity in the 19th century then we talk about a resurgence in the 20th century. So where is the dip?
• the first US national medical association, the American Institute of Homeopathy, was established. Is this saying the first medical association in the US was a homeopathic one? The source [1] seems incredibly weak for this claim. In fact I don't think this is a good source to use at all?
• {{tq|The relative success of homeopathy in the 19th century may have led to the abandonment of the ineffective and harmful treatments of bloodletting and purging and to have begun the move towards more effective, science-based medicine.}] From a 1971 source with no page number. Have found no other sources saying anything similar after a search of the internet.
• One reason for the growing popularity of homeopathy was its apparent success in treating people suffering from infectious disease epidemics. Same with this source.
• Most of the next paragraph is sourced to primary sources. Secondary ones would be better. They are attributed so not a deal breaker, but secondary sources would help us judge the weight better.
• but Ernst and Singh consider it to be linked to the rise of the New Age movement Who are these people (they are not blue linked) and what makes them notable for inclusion? Their place in the sentence suggests they are homeopaths.
• Whichever is correct This does not seem like encyclopedic language to me (in fact this is the only article that uses it [2])
• WP:Proseline in 21st century.
• More Bluelinks needed to notable organisations (i.e Science and Technology Committee of the United Kingdom House of Commons and National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia)
• Should spell out abbreviations first use (NHS)
• The last three paragraphs appear out of place and random (why are we highlighting these countries, incidents). Feel some major undue and recentism issues here (plus the last paragraph has grammatical errors). I think this needs some major revisions, with this either moved to more appropriate articles or at least summarised better if it is kept. We should only really have major developments in the history section.

Preparations and treatment

• I don't feel like the explanation of "materia medica" is explained clearly enough. How does an alphabetical arrangement of drug pictures (what are these?) help with preparation?
• Do practitioners use one or both of these references or are they entwined?
• Is the translators name important?
• Examples include arsenicum album (arsenic oxide), natrum muriaticum (sodium chloride or table salt), Lachesis muta (the venom of the bushmaster snake), opium, and thyroidinum (thyroid hormone). I am wary of using examples at the best of times (doubly so when there is no secondary source - or in this case no source at all). Why are we choosing these examples? It would be better if another source chose them for us. It can give the impression we (wikipedia) are deliberately listing preparations that are dangerous or mundane, instead of this being something that is generally brought up by sources.
• Why is Nosodes bolded, particularly when sarcodes is in quote marks?
• either pinned to the patients' clothing, put in their pockets, or placed under glasses of water that are then given to the patients Wouldn't it be simpler to just say given to the patients. Is the particular method of giving the writing important? This whole sentence with ...and the use of radionics to manufacture preparations at the end is very awkward and almost a run on
• 200CK is a 200C preparation made using the Korsakovian method What is 200C mean. I see it is explained further down, but it needs some introduction before we use it. I would suggest moving or removing this example as the C scale shoul stay under the dilutions heading.
• Fluxion and radionics methods of preparation do not require succussion We mention Radionics earlier, but what is Fluxion?
• Three main logarithmic dilution scales are in regular use in homeopathy. But we only describe two
• No reference for Hahnemanns favoured scale
• Example text Do we need to have both of these, we basically have four ways of saying the same thing here.
• In Hahnemann's time, it was reasonable to assume the preparations could be diluted indefinitely, as the concept of the atom or molecule as the smallest possible unit of a chemical substance was just beginning to be recognized. uncited
• The universe scale is getting a bit too much to visualise (which I guess is the point). Maybe a graphic would help.
• Provings are claimed to have been important in the development of the clinical trial, due to their early use of simple control groups, systematic and quantitative procedures, and some of the first application of statistics in medicine. Can this statement be confirmed, it seems quite important. The source has no page number for this. Also the book looks like it was published in 1984 not 1999.
• Why do we have a see also to Nocebo at the bottom of the section? It has no context.

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• Some stray text in Consultation.
• even body type why even. Likes/Dislikes appears more strange than body type?
• The process of homeopathic dilution results in no objectively detectable active ingredient in most cases We have probably done this to death in the previous sections
• in a biologically active concentration strong enough to have caused some people to lose their sense of smell I know it's the NYT, but does it meet WP:MEDS
• Zicam also listed several normal homeopathic potencies as "inactive ingredients", why do we need this. Over half the pill section is on one product, which seems a bit undue.
• Isopathy differs from homeopathy in general in that the preparations, Why "in general"?
• I assume that isopathy is diluted, but what about the flower preps
• Does "Veterinary use" fit under this sub-sub heading. It feels weird squeezed between other variants and isn't it just normal homeopathy but given to other animals. I would think it should be moved to the bottom and up a heading. That will also help the article be less focused on humans.
• Need some cites for UK vets
• We go to quite some effort to say how it doesn't work in humans (except placebo), yet just say it is controversial in vet medicine. If anything it works less in animals (which we do demonstrate), but controversial seems to imply there is some sort of evidence it might work. Is this just because refs don't delve into vet homeopathy as much as humans or is there another reason?
• The name refers to an electric bio-energy supposedly extracted from plants and of therapeutic value Grammar "and of therapeutic value".
• Cool to see some Asian perspective, the world view so far has been a bit narrow. Do we mention Indias ruling because electrohomeopathy is common in India? I feel some context is needed.
• Again I feel like using controversial in Homeoprophylaxis downplays the seriousness.

Evidence and efficacy

• The very low concentration of homeopathic preparations, which often lack even a single molecule of the diluted substance Not sure why very is italicised
• Contrariwise, quantum superposition has been invoked to explain why homeopathy does not work in double-blind trials. I would link double-blind. I wonder if the double blind aspect needs expansion. It is kind of key to efficacy so something here or earlier explaining that double blind trials don't show any evidence would be useful before we bring up quantum supersposition as to why that might be the case.
• The use of quantum entanglement to explain homeopathy's purported effects is "patent nonsense", as entanglement is a delicate state that rarely lasts longer than a fraction of a second. I assume "patent nonsense" is quoting someone, but we don't present anyone to attribute it too.
• We spend a bit of time on entanglement. Is this because it is the most pushed explanation?
• I wonder if the first two paragraphs in Evidence and efficacy would fit better here. The section can then start with the "Outside of the alternative medicine community, ..." paragraph and we then have the dilutions and water memory explanations under plausibility. It is already getting a bit repetitive.
• though this is now considered erroneous was it ever considered viable?
• No evidence of stable clusters of water molecules was found when homeopathic preparations were studied using nuclear magnetic resonance,[165] and many other physical experiments in homeopathy have been found to be of low methodological quality, which precludes any meaningful conclusion.[ This gets a bit awkward. We say no evidence and then say other experiments had low methodological quality. So did these other ones show evidence? If not then why are we mentioning them. If they did then it is worded wrong. Or is it just a run on sentence?
• For comparison, ISO 3696:1987 defines a standard for water used in laboratory analysis... I don't follow how this applies.
• There is some redundancy between plausibility and dilutions, which is to be expected. I do wonder if there could be some streamlining though. FWIW I found the Park explanation better than the universe one. Also Avogadro's number that explains the 12C and the first mention of it might be better together.
• In May 2018, the German skeptical organization GWUP issued an invitation... The problem with these is that they get out of date fast. Is it really needed given all the rest we have about dilutions?

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• I feel the rest of this section (and even parts of what I have already done) fail the focus criteria. I see that I delisted it for the same reasons 6 years ago (I forgot I had closed that). I don't see much point continuing this until this is sorted. It needs to be trimmed down quite a bit. I opened a split discussion on the talk page as that is one option if editors want to keep all this info in Wikipedia. AIRcorn (talk) 20:45, 9 May 2020 (UTC)