Ronsword

Survey request

Hi, Ronsword I need your help. I am working on a research project at Boston College, studying creation of medical information on Wikipedia. You are being contacted because you have been identified as an important contributor to one or more articles.

Would you will be willing to answer a few questions about your experience? We've done considerable background research, but we would also like to gather the insight of the actual editors. Details about the project can be found at the user page of the project leader, geraldckane. Survey questions can be found at geraldckane/medsurvey. Your privacy and confidentiality will be strictly protected!

The questions should only take a few minutes. I hope you will be willing to complete the survey, as we do value your insight. Please do not hesitate to contact me or Professor Kane if you have any questions. Thank You, BCproject (talk) 07:36, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Two comments

First, per the talk page guidelines, please please please thread your posts. That is, indent each new comment to one level beyond that used by the previous comment using one colon per level. In example:

First comment

Second

Third

Too far, undent

Second, from your user page, it is obvious that you have done considerable research on alternative medicine, particularly dealing with primary source material. Though this is laudable, wikipedia, and in particular, medical articles, are built from secondary sources (note WP:MEDRS section on this particularly). This means we can not use primary sources to "debunk" secondary sources, or to build a case for specific interventions or topics. To attempt to make a case for a subject or intervention rather than neutrally reporting the mainstream opinion (and giving that opinion due weight) is inappropriate on several levels. It is often original research, which we do not publish. It is often a form of advocacy for the specific intervention. It often gives undue weight to substantially unproven treatment modalities. And it often uses wikipedia as a soapbox. More simply put, until there is evidence that X intervention (such as hydrazine sulfate) is appropriately supported by mainstream science as a safe and effective treatment for cancer, we should not portray it as such. We also shouldn't portray it as inappropriately or prematurely abandoned. Such is the reality of wikipedia, though many people find it frustrating. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 15:52, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

A third comment - you apparently believe strongly in the efficacy, or at least potential efficacy of hydrazine sulfate. That's fine and good. However, note that the talk pages are for discussion of improvements to the article. Once it is apparent that no changes will occur on the main page, then there's little purpose in further talk page discussion, particularly since wikipedia is not a forum. If you wish to continue your discussion with Mastcell, I would suggest e-mail (which you can do by clicking on his talk page, then clicking on the e-mail link found in the list of Toolbox options in the column to the left). The civility of the discussion is appreciated, but it wastes time and server space to try to prove someone right or wrong on wikipedia, and that's not the purpose of talk pages. Thanks, WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 19:16, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi,

If you're going to use pages to draft temporary edits (like you did here), I suggest setting up a personal sandbox in a sub-page to your userspace. It's more convenient, and you can leave it for essentially as long as you like. It's better practice than using the talk page. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 20:15, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Note that genus and species names should be italicized. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 22:40, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Noted. My bad. Also, can you look at Trevor Marshall? Is this an example of neutral point of view and neutral voice? There is a line in the article that references the theory not having been proven, but not having been disproven---something the Livingston article was cited for. TnxRonsword (talk) 02:36, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

No problem. I already looked at it a little bit, it appears to have some of the same problems as the Virginia Livingston article I reviewed. The style is more journalistic than encyclopedic, and contains a lot of unnecessary information. It also portrays Marshall as a vindicated, or "proven" genius who has solved the problem. Unless there are independent replications with secondary sources to indicate the theory has been accepted on a large scale, then it's not appropriate to portray it as such. Searching pubmed comes up with 8 references, all of which feature Marshall as an author.

A general comment - it's not necessary to include large amounts of information accompanying wikilinks. Saying "Marshall was diagnosed with sarcoidosis, an autoimmune disease more prevalent in the northern hemisphere and in females with no known cause or treatment with high levels of blood markers for clotting" (not a direct quote) is excessive and unnecessary. I would suggest something more like "Marshall was diagnosed with sarcoidosis, an autoimmune disease." If readers want more information, they can click on the link, that's what they are for. I'll try to review in more detail, finding independent sources - particularly critical sources - is often difficult for alt medicine and the appropriate response is not to overload the article with a lengthy discussion using nonindependent sources. That being said, there are peer-reviewed sources that should be used. I'll have a look. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 14:01, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

tnx for the feedback. Above points are what I suspected based on previous discussions. Obviously, continuity in how articles are presented is crucialRonsword (talk) 16:08, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

I've looked over and rewrote the Marshall aritcle. The highlights are a significant trim of a lot of detail regarding the Marshall Protocol; it's not a mainstream hypothesis still, and there are a lot of problems with it (how have intracellular bacteria not been noticed previously despite the electron microscope existing for 50+ years? How can multi-year, low-level, pulsed antibiotic regimens do anything except breed antibiotic-resistant bacteria? How can we be certain that the assumptions and details of computer modelling actually apply in the much more complicated environment of the human body?) and mainly the fact that it has never been replicated beyond the Marshall group. Though it has several peer-reviewed publications in its "favour", many are primary research papers, there are few secondary, and none are independent. Also tried to clean up and source his work before the Marshall Protocol was a big part of his fame. As a fringe hypothesis, the Marshall Protocol shouldn't have a lot of detail, particularly shouldn't draw from a lot of primary sources.

If you're looking into what determines the content and style on pages, you're best to look into the core content policies of verifiability, reliable sources and neutrality. WP:FRINGE, WP:REDFLAG and WP:UNDUE are important nuances as well. For manual of style stuff, you've got the manual of style itself as a resource, but it's huge - more for reference than casual reading. The summary style guidelines might be of use, but really the only way to manage stuff like this is to edit, read, edit, read. I think your user page says you write for magazines, that's definitely a different style than an encyclopedia and it does show up in your writing at times (primarily in the kinds of context - lots - that you tend to write up, the way you tend to synthesize material, and that your writing tends to be more "exciting" than the relatively bland prose wikipedia tends to use). That you're writing about alternative medicine topics, which has both a lot of strong feelings attached from the skeptical and pro- sides, and relatively little debate in the peer-reviewed literature, tends to make dealing with them on wikipedia problematic. I must say, you're managing it quite well - the brutal culling of one's own writing is always painful, and often aggravating and frustrating. Your ongoing civility is very appreciated.

On a relatively unrelated note, if you're looking for counter-sources and criticisms of these types of articles, the blogs at sciencebasedmedicine.org and respectful insolence on ScienceBlogs are good places to start. Ben Goldacre's blog and newspaper column at bad science is also very good (so is his excellent book, Bad Science). They address the problems with alt medicine from a science-based perspective and give a lot of insights into why alt medicine doesn't tend to be taken seriously by most academics (as well as the significant problems faced by researching alt medicine - the need for rigorous controls, blinding, the importance of the placebo controls and how the failure of many proponents to conduct rigorous research actually harms their credibility in mainstream research, but does tend to support them continuing to use alternative medicine and co-opting science through a veneer of respectability). The claims that science and medicine doesn't take alternative medicine seriously isn't really fair since alternative medicine attempts to claim efficacy on the basis of tradition and authority rather than evidence. The whole point of science is that everyone should be able to do it - replicate findings, agree on results and interpretation, design an adequate experiment, etc. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 13:37, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

WLU, as a courtesy, please note proposed sentence in Virginia Livingston. Thank youRonsword (talk) 18:58, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I'll have a look. Note that if you want to be sure you get someone's attention, you should post it on their talk page. Some editors don't monitor other people's talk pages whey they post comments. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 22:56, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Okay. Ronsword (talk) 15:45, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

July 2012 Study of authors of health-related Wikipedia pages

Dear Author/Ronsword

My name is Nuša Farič and I am a Health Psychology MSc student at the University College London (UCL). I am currently running a quantitative study entitled Who edits health-related Wikipedia pages and why? I am interested in the editorial experience of people who edit health-related Wikipedia pages. I am interested to learn more about the authors of health-related pages on Wikipedia and what motivations they have for doing so. I am currently contacting the authors of randomly selected articles and I noticed that someone at this address recently edited an article on Staphylococcal infections. I would like to ask you a few questions about you and your experience of editing the above mentioned article and or other health-related articles. If you would like more information about the project, please visit my user page (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Hydra_Rain) and if interested, please reply via my talk page or e-mail me on nusa.faric.11@ucl.ac.uk. Also, others interested in the study may contact me! If I do not hear back from you I will not contact this account again. Thank you very much in advance. Hydra Rain (talk) 19:00, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Your help would be appreciated

The message this replaces was an effort to contact you from a banned user, Excuseme99. Please remember that Wikipedia policy explicitly forbids taking editing directions from banned users, so I strongly urge you to ignore the contract request. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.—Kww(talk) 05:42, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

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