Psychologist Guy

What Wiki Tag Justifies "Crazy Edits"?

Regarding...

Crazy Edits

What is your criteria? I'm flabergasted.

Is it the quantity of additional text?

The citations of colon cancer growth becoming arrested by acetic acid is worth retaining unless you assume that if some authority had claimed that Jarvis is a quack, then it doesn't matter if someone else comes along and refutes it, not by saying so, but by giving us cause to question the prior critic as possibly being opinionated, or else formed their opinion prior to this new evidence which qualifies Jarvis' revised condition as being controversial, but certainly no longer quackery. Vinyasi (talk) 23:16, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

This is a bad edit [1] that violates multiple Wikipedia policies. If you do something like this again you may be blocked. I find it hard to assume good faith over viewing your edits. You are inserting personal commentary into the article, adding sources that fail WP:MEDRS, adding unsourced content that is against WP:OR, adding off-topic content, none of which mention Jarvis. It's not good editing. And yes the content about "Students recreat[ing] an artificial volcano using baking soda, vinegar and red food coloring" is crazy, that has nothing to do with the article. Please only add on-topic content. Nothing you added has anything to do with Jarvis or mention him. Psychologist Guy (talk) 02:49, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

I see you have already been warned about this kind of bad editing before [2] Psychologist Guy (talk) 02:54, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

How can Jarvis be mentioned when he’s long since dead? How can what he promoted be junk science when science is validating the usefulness of vinegar in so many ways?

I admit it’s not the best edit, but it’s not a useless edit. So, your deletion is inappropriate. A rewrite would be more appropriate along with a re-organization. Vinyasi (talk) 13:40, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) Vinyasi, your edits to D. C. Jarvis were highly inappropriate, and Psychologist Guy was very right to revert them. To come across phrasing such as "We mustn't let our emotionally driven prejudice replace our discrimination", "The fact is", "It remains to be seen" in a supposed encyclopedia article is very jarring. Are you aware of the use of talkpages? They are the place for such observations, in discussion of an article — the article itself is not. Admittedly, there were some unexpected style choices in the article before, such as "Wrote one reviewer" (I just changed that one). Bishonen | tålk 14:38, 28 June 2024 (UTC).

How long am I supposed to endure the silence of a talk page before taking action? Vinyasi (talk) 14:42, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

If the action you take is useless, as in this case, I would say you're supposed to endure it forever. Pinging ToBeFree, who warned you in January 2023. Bishonen | tålk 16:56, 28 June 2024 (UTC).

I get it now...

Secondary sources are policy-oriented sources as compared to primary sources which purports original research. There's my mistake! I don't, or rather: I almost never, comply with policy since that's authoritative opinion of (and apart from) actual case studies. I'd take the experience of the case studies any day over the opinions of any authoritative body since that's a major fallacy of logic, namely: appeal to authority. It's no wonder I don't fit into Wikipedia wherein appeal to common sense is the "de facto" standard of excellence, here, as one old-timer editor put it: "If we didn't vote on how to proceed, we'd never get anything done." So, it's not like I haven't been warned. But who said understanding of warnings always comes as quickly as does the warning, itself? My mistake for being so uncommon. I'm not bred from out of the corporate cookie cutter. Vinyasi (talk) 21:56, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Bishonen, thanks for the ping in the section above. Vinyasi, thanks for your understanding. In a collaborative project like Wikipedia, agreement with all policies and guidelines is rare and unnecessary. Adherence to them, however, is often a requirement even where agreement is missing. Perhaps we can "agree to disagree" about Wikipedia's verifiability requirements. If this makes different websites more attractive than Wikipedia, that's also fine. It's a volunteer project; participation is not compulsory. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:15, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Fads

About this, from the first sentence of Fad diet: "A fad diet is a diet that is popular, generally only for a short time, similar to fads in fashion, without being a standard scientific dietary recommendation..."

What makes a fad diet is that it's a fad, not that it's a bad diet. "Without evidence" describes pretty much every diet before modern science, and yet they were mostly not fads. "Making pseudoscientific claims" describes even some of the best evidence-based diets (because anyone can make anti-science claims about anything).

Properly speaking, if the Macrobiotic diet is a fad diet, it's because it's popularity rose and peaked in a relatively short time period. (This headline suggests it was popular for 16 years.) And if we're going to say that it is a fad diet, it's because good-quality sources say that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:40, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

I disagree but if you are going by a dictionary definition you would be correct. I have been reading nutritional textbooks for a long time, if you read the textbooks the definition is not really about time, it's about a fad diet being a bad diet. A fad diet is just another name for a pseudoscientific diet. A diet that lacks scientific evidence and makes unproven health claims usually about weight loss. Here is how the British Dietetic Association defines it [3].

"A fad diet is a plan that promotes results such as fast weight loss without robust scientific evidence to support its claims. Popular ones include plans where you eat a very restrictive diet with few foods or an unusual combination of foods. They may only allow you to eat certain foods at certain times. Fad diets often consist of expensive and unnecessary food products, ingredients and/or supplements."

I go with dietetic/nutritional definition, a fad diet is a diet that makes claims without scientific evidence. A lot of woo-meisters love the dictionary definitions, then they claim their diet's are not a fad, example "carnivore diet has been around 200 years, it's not a fad!!". Psychologist Guy (talk) 08:27, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

I found a pair of sources yesterday that differentiate between Food faddism and a Fad diet. The former is bad science ("Eat lots of grapefruit for your health!") and the latter is temporary popularity ("The Grapefruit Diet™ was briefly popular in the 1920s"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:50, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Interesting, I have often seen food faddism and fad diet used synonymously. The beginning of the first sentence on the Wikipedia article lead for fad diet is wrong IMO (the bit about fads and fashion and short time). One of the best books in the field to come out in recent years is Fad Diets and Adolescents A Guide for Clinicians, Educators, Coaches and Trainers (Springer, 2022). The first chapter of the book is titled "What is a Fad diet", on page 5 we read the definition which is very clear:

"A fad diet is a socially popular set of rules for nutrition, often promising rapid and unrealistic results, that are unsupported by science".

I believe the dictionary definition is outdated and flawed. The definition used by clinicians and dietitians is much more accurate. I believe the Wikipedia article should be updated. Psychologist Guy (talk) 18:30, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Well... rather than focusing which definition should "win" the term, I wonder if you see any value in having different terminology for "diet that is popular" and "diet that is bad".

(The source, BTW, is the The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America. Contrast the entries for Fad Diet and Health Food.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:43, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America defines fad diet as "a scheme of eating that enjoys temporary and sometimes enthusiastic popularity" (page 623). It defines food faddism as "a prescription of foods with exaggerated and scientifically unproven health claims" (page 162). This is accurate to what others say about food faddism [4], [5]. I personally do not see any difference between the fad diet definition I listed above in my previous posts and the definition of food faddism. On Wikipedia food faddism redirects to fad diet. It's probably worth adding some text about food faddism. Psychologist Guy (talk) 20:41, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm thinking that it might be worth having a separate article altogether, with prominent links between the two (because many commercial/promoted diets are both). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:15, 29 June 2024 (UTC)