Andreas Parker

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Re: Hydroxyzine and OCD

I notice that you have added verbiage to the OCD article claiming that hydroxyzine is a strong antiobsessive. However, the citation you added has a title of "Use of hydroxyzine in psychosis", and no abstract is available online. Psychosis is not the same as obsessive thought; although obsessive thought sometimes occurs in psychosis, it can also occur without psychosis, and OCD is not commonly considered a psychotic disorder. Further, the paper is 53 years old and hydroxyzine is still not a common treatment for OCD, leading me to believe that any antiobsessive effect of hydroxyzine is not as strong as the writer may imply. Do you have access to the paper? If so, could you provide specific text quotations supporting the claims you added to the Wiki article? --Aurochs (Talk | Block) 19:21, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi, sure, I have the paper here and I will add the quotation and some details. No problem. You're right that Hydroxyzine is not a well-known OCD medication in the US. But that's mainly a consequence of the fact that at the same time (1950ies) the first neuroleptics were introduced and so the manufacturer UCB/Pfizer had no interest in applying approval for a broader spectrum of conditions. However, this drug remains popular as an off-label medication for treatment resistant patients in several countries. As far as I know in some countries (e.g. Russia) it is approved to treat the symptoms of "psychoneurosis", exactly the old classification type OCD was part of. And the FDA has approved hydroxyzine for the treatment of anxiety due to "psychoneurosis". Interesting, isn't it? --Andreas Parker (talk) 21:14, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Hello again. The quote you added does not indicate the diagnosis of the subjects. I am also concerned that the study, which only included 11 subjects, does not have the statistical power to validly draw the conclusions that the authors did for the general population. In other words, I am not convinced that the source is reliable. We should definitely avoid use of qualifiers such as "strong" and "effective" when the only basis for their use is a single pilot study done over 50 years ago. Do you have a scan of the article?
As far as approval for use in other countries, that is certainly valid encyclopedic information, especially for the hydroxyzine article. I believe that a simple blanket statement to the effect of "Hydroxyzine is used in several European countries<citations go here>" would be fine on the OCD article. However, approval and marketing in other countries does not necessarily indicate efficacy. There are a number of drugs that are approved for use in Europe that are not approved for marketing in the US because the manufacturers could not prove efficacy to the FDA. Again, we should avoid strong statements without strong evidence.
Finally, benzodiazepines are considered very good treatments for general anxiety problems, but are not effective treatments for OCD. Everything you have said and everything I know about hydroxyzine indicates that it falls in the same category. AFAIK, there is no drug available in the US with that indication. --Aurochs (Talk | Block) 18:08, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I understand your concerns. However, the only problem is that there were not many further studies researching the effect of hydroxyzine on OCD. In fact, it happens quite often that a promising drug is not studied further because there are no economical interests to do that. There has never (!) been a study with a negative outcome. But one positive American and one positive French study from the 50ies. I have the studies here, I am able to read and I am an expert in this field. Furthermore, in the OCD article there are mentioned other medications for which there is even less (!) evidence in the treatment of OCD, e.g. the glutaminergic drugs or the opioids. For many of them only anecdotical reports or case studies including one or two cases exist. Given these facts I see no reason why we should be specifically concerned about mentioning hydroxyzine.

Furthermore the is absolutely no reason why a good study becomes "bad" only because it is old. Please note that also many (!) of the modern OCD studies included not too many subjects. For example one of the most famous CBT studies included only 50 subjects.

But I agree that I can write the hydroxyzine part in an even more precise way. I will do that now, but I see no reason to be even more "strict" in the case of hydroxyzine than in the case of many other drugs which are included in the article.

Please check the relevant part of the article which has been corrected based on our discussion. Now it has definitely encyclopedic quality and relevance. --Andreas Parker (talk) 20:23, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Re: the lack of further studies: That is pretty much an admission that the evidence supporting the use of hydroxyzine as a treatment for OCD is too weak to even mention here. Lack of contrary evidence does not mean that an assertion must be true. The null hypothesis is not rejected unless a certain threshold of evidence is passed.
You would need to substantiate the claim that you are an expert in this field, but I frankly don't think I care. On the basis of the evidence you have presented, there is no proof that hydroxyzine is at all useful for treating OCD, and I do not believe that it belongs in the article.
Being old does not make something bad, per se, but the lack of further research in the intervening half century is a good indicator that hydroxyzine may not be the panacea that the authors hoped for. Also, the diagnostic criteria for OCD have surely changed in the past 50 years, and it's still not clear to me if the subjects even HAD OCD, since the title of the paper specifically refers to psychosis.
Finally, opiates are mentioned as an experimental treatment in a different section, and the glutaminergic drugs are presented as avenues of ongoing research (i.e., the same way). You have presented hydroxyzine as a wonderful current treatment without presenting substantiating evidence. I have no choice but to remove that paragraph from the article. --Aurochs (Talk | Block) 04:21, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

That is simply not true. The medication was not presented as "woderful" but very neutral.

But feel free to ignore facts, to act upon double standards and dismiss the contribution of an expert in this field - I won't stop you. But it disgusts me. -Andreas Parker (talk) 08:38, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Continued discussion

I attempted to restore your edits yesterday and seem to have reignited discussion here.   — C M B J   11:17, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

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Germany

Re your recent edit: I appreciate the basic thrust of your change. The problem is that, strictly speaking, Germany and the United States are federal states, while Bavaria and Texas are federated states. "Normally" people don't use the word "federated", but calling the constituent states "federal states" is either incorrect, or at least ambiguous, because in this sort of context might want to apply the word "federal" to Germany. In this context, I am also not happy about the word "sovereign" being applied to the constituent states. They are, of course, partly sovereign, and may even have extremely limited sovereignty in some international contexts, but I'm not sure the word is helpful, rather than misleading, to someone who doesn't know the exact situation anyway, because sovereign state usually means something else. --Boson (talk) 23:00, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

I do appreciate your oppinion regarding the term "federated". However, within German political science there is no doubt that the German states are partly sovereign entities, with a broad range of independent legeslative rights and a very distinct sense for their own identity. The greater misconception would be to think of the German states as provinces. They were independent countries for many centuries until 1871. So "partly sovereign" perfectly discribes the history and the current situation and is a usual term used by the German political scientists as well as in legislative texts. By the way, even in Wikipedia (in the German as well as in the English version) this term has been used correctly ever since. Perhaps you want to have a look at this article. Furthermore everybody should understand that "partly sovereign" doesn't mean independent or fully sovereign. It would be worse if readers misconcept Germany as centralized like France or if the German states would be considered as artificial entities without a history as independent countries as it is the case in many other so called "federations". --Andreas Parker (talk) 23:24, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

I agree with you fully on the constitutional facts. As I wrote: "they are, of course, partly sovereign", and even added that they had limited sovereignty in some international matters. And I am not suggesting anything like "provinces". But the two specific issues that I raised have not been addressed:

1. the wording might easily be misconstrued by the uninformed reader who is not a political scientist (and the reader who is a political scientist knows that the constituent states of a federal state are partly sovereign, without being told; stating that the constituent states are partly sovereign is redundant if it is stated that Germany is a federal state):
2. since Germany is a federal state, it is potentially very confusing to state that the Länder are federal states. This is partly a (mis-) translation issue: it is confusing to translate both the political scientist's Bundesstaat and the informal Bundesland as "federal state".

I have no objection to re-inforcing that the constituent states are "partly sovereign" but I think it is confusing in this specific context, in the lede, where the relationship of the federal state to the (so-called) federal states is defined. For instance, it might be appropriate to explain it better in the relevant section. I am also, of course, not disputing that in common parlance, the Länder are often referred to as "Bundesländer". Perhaps you would agree, though, that referring to them as Bundesstaaten (federal states) might be a little confusing. --Boson (talk) 14:32, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

I do understand your point. However, I don't share it. First of all Germany is a "federal republic" consisting of 16 states, which, as a matter of tradition, are called "Länder" in German, a term which is also sometimes used in English because "Länder" translates as "countries" which would truly be confusing. What's more, it is a fact that the German "Länder" are partly sovereign member states of a federation. As this is true beyond any reasonable doubt, I personally don't see the need to "adjust" the facts to avoid "confusion". This is an encyclopedia, not a school book for beginners. Let's stick to the facts. --Andreas Parker (talk) 16:37, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

I am perfectly OK with "Germany is a federal republic consisting of 16 states". What I am not happy with is the (implied) "Germany is a federal state consisting of 16 federal states". There is, of course, no question of adjusting the facts; it is a matter of adjusting the wording to match the facts in correct and unambiguous English. --Boson (talk) 18:01, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

If I remember (and read) correctly our topic has been morphing during this discussion. Therefore we will end it at this point. --Andreas Parker (talk) 19:43, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

BMJ

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Skeptical Movement

Du wirst ja bereits für ein Nachfolgeaccount von mir gehalten. Kleiner Hinweis: https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Skeptikerbewegung&oldid=129083964 - die deWP hat da komplett revertiert. Ich mach da nicht länger mit, aber Dir könnte das noch hilfreich sein. Grüße Serten (talk) 18:06, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Due to the fact that this is the English Wikipedia please accept my answer in English: Thanks for letting me know. I have no personal interest in the subject you just mentioned. I tried to improve the article in a fact based manner. However, I had the impression that there are well organized forces involved that are not interested in such a neutral approach. Therefore I will not deal with this subject any longer. But thanks for letting me know anyway. Rgds --Andreas Parker (talk) 22:55, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Big Sigh, I had an interest in the Topic article and I had largely contributed to WP. But, as you said, I don't need to waste time with the powers that be and I lost interest in all of that. Seems to be a trend we share. Regards. Serten (talk) 15:54, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

It's with regret that I must agree with you. I never expected such strange fanatism in this field until I experienced it myself. Don't give up, sometimes things need to be addressed at the right time to be successful. Rgds, --Andreas Parker (talk) 23:45, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

See de::Benutzer:Gamma/Die Psychopathologie des Skeptikers ;) Serten (talk) 00:44, 3 August 2014 (UTC) PS.: Die Rhöner Säuwäntzt - winds of change ;)

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Nomination of Goldenberg Institute for deletion

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Dear Andreas Parker,

in your contributions to the discussion, you have used language which I find offensive. In particular, you have accused me of a "vendetta" and of "snooping", called me "sick" and "pathological", and attacked me again and again for my nationality. Please tone it down a notch, ok? -- Framhein (talk) 22:45, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

December 2015

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Death of Andreas Parker

From The Signpost, January 6, 2016:

• Wikipedian dies of heart attack after alleged "cyber-lynching": An article in the German edition of the Huffington Post reported (Dec. 29) that User:Andreas Parker, who was active in both the English and German Wikipedias, had suffered a heart attack after upsetting exchanges on Wikipedia that the article's author described as "cyber-lynching". A follow-up article (Dec. 30) carried the sad news that Parker had died in hospital. The reports, which led to heated discussions in the German Wikipedia, were pulled from the Huffington Post website on December 30; readers following the links were first only presented with a page saying "The content of this article is being checked", and now see a blank page. AK

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