Category talk:Alternative medicine

Not category:pseudoscience again

The criteria for using category:pseudoscience are given at WP:FRINGE/PS: "obvious pseudoscience" (i.e. obscure tiny-minority things like Time Cube, or "generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community" (i.e., well-known topics that have attracted commentary by scientific bodies, like astrology). While some alt-med's qualify as such, not all do, and I don't know of any reliable source that says the entire field of alt-med, or CAM, is generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community. Please also see WP:RS#Claims_of_consensus, which clarifies that "claims of consensus must be sourced". I welcome efforts to locate and include such a source, but till then, WP's NPOV policy is clear that the category doesn't belong here. --Jim Butler (t) 18:32, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Not all of astrology is pseudoscience either... it's just generally pseudoscience. The reliable sources which discuss alt med. all agree as long as they aren't written by alt med proponents. Therefore the category is appropriate and has been restored PER WP:FRINGE/PS. ScienceApologist (talk) 01:37, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Per WP:FRINGE/PS, Alternative Medicine is not an obvious pseudoscience. Nor is it generally considered pseudoscience. It's not even something masquerading as science. It's not something which can be labeled scientific or pseudoscientific. Why not? Because it is merely a category; a descriptive term when incorporates many forms of healing outside the mainstream. If you are going to label "Alt Med" pseudoscience, then you would be effectively labeling all of its member pseudoscience. And we know that not to be the case. After all, following that logic we could say that since Alt Med falls under the category Medicine and Alt Med has some pseudoscienctific disciplines contained within, then we could also label Medicine pseudoscience because it therefore contains some pseudoscientific disciplines with it. No? If you need to label, label the individual disciplines and not the overarching category where it only sometimes applies. -- Levine2112 ^discuss 04:18, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Levine2112 that WP:FRINGE/PS would prohibit the alternative medicine article or category from being classified under the Pseudoscience category. The association is strong, but not universal enough to warrant inclusion. It's a very different matter for the individual articles in the altmed category, since many of them would properly, according to WP:FRINGE/PS, be classed as pseudoscientific. -- Fyslee / talk 14:16, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

What a relief, I get to argue against categorization of something as pseudoscience. Broad swaths of alternative medicine qualify to one extent or another, but as long as diet, exercise, and vitamin supplementation are claimed by the movement (and, more importantly, described as "alternative" by reliable sources), it would seem inappropriate to use Category:Pseudoscience. - Eldereft (cont.) 14:29, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

There is strong consensus here that it should not be classified as "Pseudoscience". I too agree with this. Hence I replaced the cat by "fringe science".Biophys (talk) 15:10, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Now I realize that assigning this to "fringe science" was also incorrect. This is simply not science.Biophys (talk) 15:21, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Wow! This is a blast from the past. Above (my old username was Fyslee) I even agreed not to use the PSI category here or on the article and it was effected immediately. I didn't realize that in May 2010 it was restored and you were just fixing that situation, so I'll self-revert to your version. Thanks for catching it. Now what? -- Brangifer (talk) 16:11, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I whole-heartedly agree with Eldereft; such a sensible bloke, that. - 2/0 (cont.) 20:20, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

LOL! -- Brangifer (talk) 20:26, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Rethinking category tree

Done. Now we have Category:Alternative medicine under Holism | Medicine | New Age practices | Fringe science. Since alternative medicine is a collection of widely diverse practices that belong in many different categories, what's the best approach? Since they claim to be "alternatives" to medicine, they belong as a subcategory under medicine, so that's correct. Not all are holistic, new age, fringe science, or pseudoscience (just removed). Should we remove this category from Holism, New age practices, and Fringe science as well? -- Brangifer (talk) 16:18, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, let's remove it from fringe science. Certain sub-cats and articles maybe belong to fringe science (those funded by the NIH), but not shamanism and things like that. Same probably with Holism.Biophys (talk) 17:11, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Category:Traditional medicine makes sense in some ways, but that is currently a subcategory of this, which I think works better. This leaves the categorization of this category a bit sparse, but I am not sure that that is a problem. Category:Health movements might apply as long as it does not imply central organization or unanimity on all points. - 2/0 (cont.) 20:20, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

That sounds like a pretty good category to use instead of the others. Let's try it. -- Brangifer (talk) 20:26, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Done. Biophys or anyone, just revert if we need more discussion. - 2/0 (cont.) 21:26, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

note: above thread has been refactored to use current shortcut WP:FRINGE/PS, which directs to the guideline on Category:Pseudoscience: Wikipedia:Fringe_theories#Pseudoscience_and_other_fringe_theories. WP:PSCI used to direct there but was changed at some point, so my refactor replaced all instances of WP:PSCI with WP:FRINGE/PS. --Middle 8 (talk) 16:03, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Ionized bracelet

It is against US law to refer to the above as any kind of medicine.Redheylin (talk) 05:02, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

False advertising laws, at least. As for the term alternative medicine, it's often used as a blanket term for all sorts of unscientific snake oil. There's significant professional criticism regarding the use of the term for such things. –Gunslinger47 20:05, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

ANY kind of medicine. Even use of the term itself is strongly deprecated by the court's decision. Redheylin (talk) 23:10, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

RfC: Mass removal of "Category:Alternative medicine" from most articles

Was such mass deletion appropriate, and would it be appropriate to undo these mass deletions?

• A long series of edits (not all new) by User:Sticky Parkin has removed this category from nearly all articles that formerly were in this category. Now it is very difficult to keep track of subjects related to alternative medicine. If I understand things correctly, it isn't improper for an article to be in both a subcategory and the main category. I would like to see a discussion of the appropriateness of restoring those edits so this category will once again serve its major purpose. Right now it is severely crippled.

• I am not questioning the good faith efforts by Sticky Parkin, but am only questioning their wisdom and (lack of) usefulness. In several instances the removal was substituted with a very proper inclusion in a subcategory. This should not be undone, and we can be thankful to this user for doing so. I am basically requesting that all articles in this major category and its subcategories be listed in both this major category and the appropriate subcategory.

• It is especially important to be able to do this because of the nature of the subject matter. These are some of the most contentious articles at Wikipedia. They are all subjects that are by definition not accepted by mainstream medical science. They are often fringe subjects; often unhealthful or dangerous; often used for spam, promotion, and forbidden advocacy; sometimes involve very deceptive marketing practices; sometimes involve directly criminal practices, etc.. They are thus magnets for true believers, flakes, promoters, and scammers whose activities often disrupt Wikipedia in many significant ways and waste the time of many editors. The seriousness of these disruptions make it imperative that all editors, including newbies and casual readers, can easily keep track of every single article.

• Besides being listed in this major category, they should all be listed in the List of branches of alternative medicine, and some of them would logically be appropriate for the Health and Medicine section of List of pseudosciences and pseudoscientific concepts.

What think ye? -- Fyslee / talk 16:34, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

• Please provide some specific examples as the issue seems too vague currently. Colonel Warden (talk) 17:20, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

• Comment Although listing a page in both the main category and a subcategory is not actually wrong, it is certainly preferable to list the page only in the subcat. If you just want to have a handy way to keep track of AltMed topics, try the Category:WikiProject Alternative medicine articles category tree instead of this one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:52, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

• Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately that category suffers from the same problem as this one. One has to enter each subcategory to find anything. It suffers even more from another (greater) problem, in that it is not easily available for the public, but is mostly for editors, since it's only on talk pages. All articles on alternative medicine subjects should have a tag of some sort that announces that they are about alternative medicine, and which also automatically adds them to the main category. That's my wish. -- Fyslee / talk 08:08, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

• I'm sorry, but that just doesn't seem like a substantial burden to me. So you have to click on half a dozen categories to see the whole list: it really isn't that hard to do. But it sounds (below) like you've got a start on a replacement system that will actually have much better functionality than the category anyway; if it works as well as you hope, please let us all know! WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:07, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

• Comment After an unsystematic stroll through Sticky Parkin's health-related contributions in November, they all seem to be perfectly correct. He added the alternative medicine banner to lots of talk pages – I would guess that that was his main motivation. While at it, he occasionally found categorisation problems, such as an article being in a too wide category (in one case it was Health) as well as in a more appropriate subcategory. At this point I am not sure if you are misapplying WP:CAT, if you want to use categories for something they were not designed for (such as labelling articles), or if I overlooked some really problematic edits. As a general statement, I believe removing the categorisation as alternative medicines from articles such as Nishi Shiki and colon cleansing when they are already in a subcategory is exactly the right thing to do; see WP:CAT#Large_categories. I also have the impression that using the word "mass" in connection with these edits is quite misleading. I actually had trouble finding a few edits where he did in fact remove the alternative medicine category. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:43, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

• Comments:

Arguments favoring removal:

• The first point under "this page in a nutshell" on WP:CG says: "Categories help users navigate through Wikipedia via multiple taxonomies." Including both the parent and child cats on a page does not seem to further that end. Clicking on the child category at the bottom of the page takes the reader straight to the parent category, here.
• Per Hans, I'm not sure why it's necessary to "label" the article (but see point below, favoring retention). However, if a topic's "alternative-medicine-ness" is truly salient, that fact should appear in the article body, or even the TOC.
• "Be frugal when vertical." See the third and fourth para's under WP:CG#How_to_categorize_an_article: "In the "vertical" dimension, Wikipedia is more frugal, placing articles only in the most specific categories they reasonably fit in."

• Argument favoring retention:

• The second point under "this page in a nutshell" on WP:CG says: "Categories are for defining characteristics, and should be specific, neutral, inclusive and follow certain conventions." To the extent that editors come to a consensus that "alternative medicine" is a characteristic sufficiently defining as to warrant overriding the above considerations, then "Category:Alternative medicine" should be replaced where appropriate.

(At the moment, I'm net neutral regarding the overriding salience of the term "Alternative Medicine", and thus tend to favor the weight of argument against retaining it on pages that already come under one of its child categories.)

regards, Jim Butler (t) 00:59, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Erm, people could have informed me of this discussion:) All I am doing is trying to move things into the relevant subcategories because the top of the page Category:Alternative medicine says it should consist mainly only of the subcats and should be routinely maintained to ensure it stays like that. When I got to it there were 260 or more articles directly in Category:Alternative medicine, which makes it difficult for people to find more specifically related articles. Please note they are not being moved out of category alternative medicine, they're still in it, just in its subcategories where they should be. Anyway this is a wiki so if anyone dislikes a particular article's subcategory please feel free to change it, while appreciating what I'm trying to do as I've just explained.

Yes and they are all new, I've done them all over the last couple of months and I'm very proud of my work. My first task was refining the categories, putting things in the subcategories of Category:alternative medicine a category which they are still in. My second task is I am assigning a wikiproject alternative medicine banner and class to the articles' talk page. The reason for this is that for the editorial assessment and for ease of helping people to find the Category:Alternative medicine articles by quality, because once I've gone through them (which I nearly have) I want to start work on improving all the stubs, and others may wish to work on other classes of the alternative medicine articles, such as get them up to Good or Featured Article status. Someone could have discussed things with me on my talk page before talking about me- they did not as far as I know:) As I said above, I'm very proud of what I've been doing, and really want to improve these articles so if there's anything you want me to do differently just say, but these are still in the category where they always were and I'm just following the guideline at the top of the page.:) But I don't appreciate being talked about without the talkee first discussing it with me, otherwise how can I change what he dislikes or how can I explain to him they are still in the cat? What's the point of subcategories if we do not use them, I am just obeying the instruction at the top of the page. But obviously I have no personal attachment as such although it would be nice if the hours of work I put in refining the categories was useful to people. If anyone has a problem with anything I'm doing in future, please let me know on my talk page, otherwise I am just working for hours just to have my work possibly undone behind my back, and if you told me sooner I could change anything you dislike earlier and saved myself some work and you the trouble of writing something about me.:) But I hope you understand what I'm trying to do now.:)

It says:-

Articles in this category should be moved to subcategories when appropriate. This category may require frequent maintenance to avoid becoming too large. It should list very few, if any, article pages directly and should mainly contain subcategories.

So you see what I'm doing is entirely in accordance with policy and stanndard practice as far as I'm aware. But people are welcome to discuss these things with me on my talk page at any time-so I wonder why that wasn't done.:) Sticky Parkin 04:29, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation, and I do apologize for not approaching you about this matter first. I noticed it at one point, then got away from it and forgot to get back to you. As you can see above, I definitely assume good faith and give you credit for good work, and I don't wish it (use of subcategories) to be undone. In fact you have done more than I was aware of, and kudos to you for doing it! My request is obviously a matter of personal preference, because what was a great tool for me was suddenly depopulated and rendered quite difficult to use. That's basically it. Now if we could create some kind of category that could serve the same purpose, but without subcategories, everything would be okay. Any suggestions? Maybe we could create a subcategory that is a megadump of all the contents of the subcategories, but then we'd be back to what we originally had, but with an extra step and an extra category tag on each article. How about a hidden category that is only visible to logged in editors, since we are already denying normal readers of the opportunity I suggest? At least that way editors could keep track of all the articles in one place. I just tried a transclusion to my talk page, but that placed my talk page in the category, so that didn't work. Anyone got any brillant ideas for a user talk subpage? -- Fyslee / talk 08:08, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

You could create some sort of list. That's sort of what lists are about. You can keep it organized and structured, and put it on your watchlist. I'd be willing to help keep it updated maybe. Per WP:CSL, categories and lists are synergistic. Personally I tend to like lists more. Also, if you want to keep track of new AltMed articles, start a section in WP:ALTMED for new articles and list them there. Such sections exist in WP:JOURNAL, and I added one to WP:ECONOMICS recently as well. II | (t - c) 09:43, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Fyslee, be sure you call that list List of Total-Ass Quackery and other Alarming Bullshit, so that there are no NPOV problems with the title.... ;-) --Jim Butler (t) 11:08, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Jim, I appreciate the humor ;-)... II's suggestion is probably a very workable solution. Since we already have List of branches of alternative medicine, maybe we can make one like it, but with a purely alphabetical listing. It even has the advantage of being placed on a watchlist. To avoid any duplication, how many other such lists of altmed subjects currently exist in various places? -- Fyslee / talk 14:45, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

• Comment. I would do the same as Sticky Parkin. For looking over all articles in a project, I like pages such as Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Alternative medicine articles by quality and its kin. --Una Smith (talk) 17:38, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

• Comment SP has tidied up lots of categories and done a great job, but there is a problem when the connection with subsubsubcategories to the parent category is not at all clear. It would help if there was some sort of tree structure for categories, and we could choose which categories to display on each page - eg, for homeopathic corporations we don't need to see homeopathy, but for a category called "centennial dilutions" (were it to exist) it would be helpful to also show the parent category but still have it only appear in the child. That would involve devs or something, but maybe a temporary solution is to amend the wording and allow the super categories on some pages where it makes sense. I generally think List articles can be a bit of a mess, but this could also be a solution. My second choice is Jim's title ;) It should at least be a redirect... Verbal chat 18:31, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

• Discovery. Is THIS TEMPLATE what I'm looking for? Can someone explain its function to me? -- Fyslee / talk 20:52, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I was annoyed, it's just because I've spent weeks doing this and I thought all my work might be undone cruelly.:) Verbal said in an email that we could make some sort of 'category tree' to help with the category. Do other categories have that off the main one? It sounds a good iidea, I don't have any skill with any technical or even filling-in jobs like that at all, but for someone who was good at things like that it would be easy for them. Sticky Parkin 21:18, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Dear Sticky, I am very, very sorry for any anguish and worry I have caused you. I didn't handle this very well. I should have contacted you first but forgot to do so. I fully believe you have handled in a fully appropriate manner by following the instructions on the page. My use of the words "mass removal" can apparently be misunderstood to mean something akin to vandalism, and that was definitely not my intention. My apologies for that. Those words were just what came to mind when I saw you rapidly removing the main category from so many articles. I have never questioned your intent or good faith, since you were moving everything into subcategories, but I was also admittedly irritated that a tool I was accustomed to using became pretty useless all of a sudden. Now I have to "open" many "doors" and search many different "rooms" to discover their contents, which is a time consuming task. The fault of all this is NOT yours, but my preference and those instructions.

If anything were to be done to prevent this situation, it would be to revise those instructions, or to create some type of mega-subcategory that automatically includes all the contents of all the ordinary subcategories. I probably wouldn't have even considered it a problem (it had worked fine until then) if I didn't know that there are (or were, just like this one) categories where far from everything is removed from the main category, even though it is likely also in a subcategory. That has always made more sense to me and has provided more than one method for searching for information, which is the purpose of all the various synergistically functioning categories, lists, etc.. They are designed to provide many methods for the different ways we like to do things. Some like categories, and others like lists.

I personally like both, but find lists more usable since I can place a list on my watchlist and keep track of edits to every single wikilink in the list. The way to do it is by using the "Related changes" link at the left side of each page. Unfortunately I edit widely and have many interests, so my regular watchlist starts with this: "You have 3,337 pages on your watchlist (excluding talk pages)." So that keeps me busy enough, and I rarely use my own private watchlists, which I will introduce to you now.

Here is a subpage I made 1½ years ago where I use this method:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fyslee/Watchlists

If you'll try those links you'll discover that I can keep track of edits to every single wikilink in an article or list. That's a pretty nifty trick. Now if we had a list with wikilinks to every single alternative medicine article (I don't think this works well for categories), a "Related changes" link to just that one list would provide a watchlist which showed edits to every single article on the list. That's what I really want. I can do it myself, but if we make it a regular list in mainspace, it will be maintained by the community and anyone who wishes to use my method can keep track of changes to every single article on the list.

If this sounds like a usable idea, I hope that everyone will support the new List of alternative medicine subjects which I have just started. Let's see where this takes us. If I've chosen a less-than-ideal title, it can be changed, but give me a chance to get it started first before changing or deleting things. I have chosen a format and inclusion/exclusion criteria which should reduce the chance for edit wars and conflicts. I think you will all like the idea -- Fyslee / talk 04:30, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Adding Watchlist: List of alternative medicine subjects -- Fyslee / talk 04:38, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Wow, nice job on the List of alternative medicine subjects; did you do that all by hand? And that watchlist generated by the "Related Changed" link is quite useful. Never knew what that button was for. --Jim Butler (t) 07:53, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Starting with an existing list helped save some time, but alot still had to be done by hand. That watchlist is indeed a great tool. I hope that we all can benefit from the list and from the watchlist. -- Fyslee / talk 08:08, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Since this seems to have been resolved weeks ago, would anyone object to removing the RFC tag? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:13, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Category:New Age Practices?

While this category applies to some alternative medicines, it doesn't apply to all of them, particularly traditional Asian medicines. The category should go on particular individual articles (or subcategories, if applicable) rather than this broad parent category. --Middle 8 (talk) 06:07, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

And the same reasoning remains true for Category:Pseudoscience, over which there was a low-level edit war recently, and which I just removed with an ES explaining the consensus discussed above at Category_talk:Alternative_medicine#Not_category:pseudoscience_again. --Middle 8 (talk) 16:11, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Pseudoscience category being added again

There is another edit war, adding the category Category:Pseudoscience to this. Per the consensus above on this page, I am removing it, again. @Gregbard:, please join the discussion here and explain your reasoning.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 20:42, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

We have had a consensus on this for a while now, and we periodically get someone coming in claiming some older discussion is the consensus. We need to A) put the pseudoscience category back, B) put this category and the article under protection, and C)conspicuously identify problem editors and ban them from editing both the category page and the article. Greg Bard (talk) 22:01, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi, could you please point me to the discussion where this consensus was established? I don't see it. If I look at the edit history, I see you adding it, and then being reverted. if you look further back in the history, every time pseudoscience was added, it was quickly reverted, using the same arguments I have used, and the same arguments from above. Namely, not all of alternative medicine is considered pseudoscience- some aspects of it are, and some aspects of it are considered to have clinical effectiveness (e.g massage for relaxation, certain herbs for treatment of certain conditions, etc). Using "see also", as I've set up now, is a much better way to connect these topics which have overlap but not subset/parent relationship.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 22:07, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Looking higher up on this page, I see a consensus against adding the cat.

Another question might be: Shamanism is alt med. What about that spiritual practice says "fake science" to you? Would you really want to list religious beliefs under the "actively pretends to be science, even though it's not" category? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:50, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

You are free to search through the enormous quantity of discussion at Talk:Alternative medicine, where you will discover that "WhatamIdoing" is one of the problem editors I was talking about. We got the situation under control a few months ago, and now it's scab pulling time apparently. Greg Bard (talk) 23:31, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

per eponcat, the eponymous category for a topic need not always be in the same places as the lead article. So even if there is consensus to add the article about alternative medicine to pseudoscience if the topic alt med is regularly spoken of as such, the category is more of a catchall and contains a number of things that would be disputed for inclusion here, so we need to have a consensus for the cat, which historically looks like nyet to me. Your comments about problematic editors fall on deaf ears Greg - the history on this cat shows you being one of the problematic ones.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 00:57, 27 March 2014 (UTC)