Talk:Snake oil

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Archives (Index)

This page is archived by ClueBot III.

First use in TCM?[edit]

Is there a citation for the claim "It has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for many centuries"? This sort of thing is typical of dubious claims of "ancient wisdom" sometimes made for medicines. What's the earliest use in China that has good evidence?

  • First, please remember to sign your post with four tilde (~) signs. To answer your question, a large amount of so-called "traditional Chinese medicine" first appeared in the 1960s under Mao as part of his propaganda efforts. There are of course older references to many traditional folk remedies, but the modern systematic usage of TCM is fairly recent, as are claims of any scientific validity. So the best that you're likely to find is historical references to various old tonics and cures, but not likely the sort of complex "qi diagrams" you'll see in modern acupuncture, for example. Even then, given just the basics of how history gets written, the most likely sources are going to be if some emperor fell ill and was given some sort of trsditional cure. Rural hedge doctors, by contrast, rarely leave much of an historical record. Hyperion35 (talk) 18:12, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Should the See Also section include Goop (company)?[edit]

In the Goop article, there are 5 mentions of someone referring to the company's products as "snake oil." All 5 are, in my humble opinion, well-sourced to RSes. We list many products here in this section that are historical, and also the overall concept of Multi-level marketing companies, which are current. Korny_O%27Near has removed this Goop reference a few times, on the grounds that it is a rude reference and that the "snake oil" references in the Goop article are not in wiki-voice.

So I ask you: Are the many different WP:RSes that refer to Goop's products as "snake oil" enough to justify inclusion here under "See Also?"--Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 00:53, 17 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe that the given grounds for removal are valid; afaik, all that's needed are well-sourced characterizations as "snake oil," as you say. I support adding Goop (company) to the See Also section. Global Cerebral Ischemia (talk) 12:48, 17 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If the goal is to explain that Goop has been described as selling products that are akin to snake oil, then I would the best solution is to add a sentence to the article saying that. (Speaking of improving this article, it probably makes sense to split it into an article about the term and an article about the actual oil from snakes, but that's another story.) Korny O'Near (talk) 15:30, 17 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps tangential, but a quick reply; as discussed above, any separate article for "snake oil" other than what is described in the lead (eg as a specific supplement, or alternative medicine etc) definitely doesn't meet notability via WP:GNG and the even more strict guidelines of WP:MEDRS, and seems to me like it would be a clear example of WP:POVFORK. Global Cerebral Ischemia (talk) 17:34, 17 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know what you mean. This article is currently about three things: literal oil from snakes, various vegetable oil "cures" marketed as snake oil, and a general term for scams, especially health-related. There's no connection between the 1st and 3rd of those, and no real connection between the 1st and 2nd either, other than sharing a name. So it makes no sense to have a single article for everything. The only question is whether there are enough sources to establish the notability of literal snake oil, and I'm guessing there are. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Korny O'Near (talk • contribs) 18:55, 17 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The connections you mention are clearly described in the article. And yes, there is a good reason to "have a single article for everything." Please read WP:CONTENTFORKING. Global Cerebral Ischemia (talk) 22:27, 17 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What's the connection? Let's take a thought experiment: let's say that the fraudulent marketers of the 19th century had instead called their product "super snake oil", and "super snake oil" became the term for a scam. Would it then be justified to have a separate article called "Snake oil" that's just about the oil of a snake? Korny O'Near (talk) 22:56, 17 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If it were "Super snake oil" the proper article would still be "snake oil." And then a section on "super" varieties (and their linguistic usage) and "conventional" varieties. I'm not sure this thought experiment works in the intended way...The place to look would be WP:GNG. I am not sure "snake oil" outside of the link with pseudoscience, has enough coverage for its own article. Just my opinion from only a cursory glance, though. WP:POVFORK is indeed an issue, as well. Can't just separate the term that people apply to bad things from the good term.--Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 00:36, 18 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So there would be an article called "Snake oil" that began with "Super snake oil is a euphemism for deceptive marketing ..."? Or would the entire intro have to be rewritten to refer to the actual substance - which right now doesn't even get mentioned in the intro? No offense, but it doesn't seem like you've given this that much thought. And no, POVFORK is not an issue in the slightest. Korny O'Near (talk) 02:21, 18 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No need for personal attacks, please. I do not agree that your counterfactual is directly relevant here. Per WP:CONTENTFORKING, I don't see how a second article is even an issue, and I agree with Shibbolethink that POVFORK applies (especially as POVFORK includes undue weight). Given all this, the chances of a second "snake oil" article are probably nil. Global Cerebral Ischemia (talk) 03:21, 18 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"I do not agree that your counterfactual is directly relevant here" is not much of a retort, but maybe that's the best I'll get. Anyway, Wikipedia already has articles about the oil of a crocodile and emu, so having an article about the oil of a snake hardly seems like a stretch. Perhaps you're saying that this article is that, but it's not - it's about a term, and actual snake oil is relegated to just two paragraphs in the "History" section. Perhaps the right solution is to change this article to really be about snake oil, and make the term "snake oil" just a small part of the article; which would make sense anyway, as Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Korny O'Near (talk) 13:11, 18 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Why would you persist in being hostile? We just want to help make a good encyclopedia. No "retorts" or accusations are necessary. WP:RSUW (and more pointedly, the parent PAG WP:NPOV) tells us that we must weight the proportion of coverage based on the amount of coverage in secondary sources. And you will find much more coverage of the idea of "snake oil" as a shorthand for pseudoscientific cures than you will for the actual "oil of a snake," which receives very little coverage in comparison. If we make this article very little about the idea in pseudoscience, we would not be portraying a NPOV. It would be undue weight. We'd be suppressing the meaning that most people are considering when they say the phrase "snake oil." We're not just giving a definition in this case, either, as "snake oil" is not a word, it's a concept that we're explaining (and giving context), so I don't think WP:DICT applies. If we didn't give the origin of the term, explain the history, and give examples, but instead just had the first part of the lead, then DICT would definitely apply. So I'm glad we do those things!--Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 14:50, 18 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The amount of coverage is irrelevant in this case. If you search for the phrase "hello there", what do you think will show up more - the greeting, or a 1977 song by Cheap Trick? And yet it's the song that gets the article. A dictionary is for words and short phrases, not just individual words. Anyway, you're at least admitting that "snake oil" has two different meanings, which feels like progress. Splitting this up into two articles would be fine with me. Korny O'Near (talk) 16:50, 18 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • See also sections are not necessarily for articles which are directly related (the category system is more useful for that) but can include stuff which is tangentially related. Inclusion is a matter of judgement. There are so many "snake oil" companies and products it's hard, though, to see why Goop merits a special mention. Alexbrn (talk) 04:00, 18 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Alexbrn, I think it deserves mention because it's probably one of the most notable examples of something being called "snake oil" in our modern time. As an exercise, can you think of a modern national brand that has a closer association? I could not. Maybe Dr. Phil is close, but he's not even selling products, just helping others advertise them (including Goop). Maybe Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, but even then...that story didn't catch fire much beyond than people who are already interested in healthcare and biotech, not in my experience. Goop has a much wider reach into the average household, because Gwyneth Paltrow does. You won't be seeing Elizabeth Holmes appearing in Iron Man 4. I think that notability is why the See also makes sense here.--Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 14:54, 18 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose that's true. There are others but Goop is a doozy. So yeah, maybe it'd be fine. Alexbrn (talk) 15:34, 18 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Turn this into an article about oil from snakes?[edit]

This was discussed above, but I think makes sense to have a separate section for it - especially now after I cleaned up the article a little bit. Right now this article is about three things: oil from snakes, fake snake oil sold by charlatans, and a term for health fraud. And in a sense it's really just an article about the third of those, judging from the first sentence ("Snake oil is a euphemism for deceptive marketing, health care fraud, or a scam."). I think it makes sense to instead make this article about the first of those, in the manner of other articles like crocodile oil and emu oil, and merge much of the rest of the content into quackery - which has some of this same content already. I don't see any logic to having these three concepts in one article; they have almost nothing to do with one another, beyond having the same name. Korny O'Near (talk) 01:07, 21 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What makes sense is to create separate articles, if those separate meanings are independently notable. Judging by the fact mostly everyone thinks of quackery when they hear this term, the current article should be about the WP:PRIMARY TOPIC, which is the quackery and not anything else. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 03:08, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I certainly hope you're not wikihounding me. Anyway, I don't think WP:PRIMARY TOPIC applies here, because it's not obvious that someone going to an article called "snake oil" will want to read about quackery (especially since an article already exists for that) rather than about literal snake oil. But I'm open to different names, as long as the concepts are indeed separated. What would you name the article on literal snake oil - Snake oil (oil)? Korny O'Near (talk) 03:33, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Snake oil (traditional medicine)? re. quackery "Snake oil salesman" is a common expression, and one most likely to be known to our readers, unlike the obscure uses of actual snake oil. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 03:49, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That would be an alright solution. I don't think it makes sense to have separate articles for "snake oil" (the term) and "quackery", since they're essentially synonyms, though you could argue that "snake oil" should be a redirect to "quackery". Anyway, this would still be preferable to the status quo, since the two nearly unrelated meanings of "snake oil" would finally get split up. Korny O'Near (talk) 13:44, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

missing link[edit]

Why is there no Wiki page on Richard Stoughton? Stjohn1970 (talk) 09:18, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ah. that's understandable. maybe he could be mentioned in aromatic bitters. ;-) Stjohn1970 (talk) 14:43, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: quackery and literal snake oil[edit]

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There is consensus to keep the article as is (option A). If more sources on the literal snake oil are found in MEDRS, they should be incorporated in the article or, if there are enough sources to establish notability of the snake oil as an oily substance produced from snakes (as opposed to the idiom), a new one should be written. The current paucity of reliably sourced content for literal snake oil does not allow for such creation at this moment. (non-admin closure) Szmenderowiecki (talk) 00:00, 23 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Of the three concepts, quackery, "snake oil" (a term for fraud), and snake oil (literal oil from snakes), which ones deserve to have their own article? Korny O'Near (talk) 15:51, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I see six seven main options:

A. Keep this article as it is: with a main focus on "snake oil" as a term for fraud, but also discussing literal snake oil within the article
B. Remove most of the information on literal snake oil from this article
C. Same as B, but put that information into a new article such as Snake oil (traditional medicine)
D. Create an article such as Snake oil (traditional medicine), and turn Snake oil into a redirect to Quackery
E. Simply turn this article into a redirect to Quackery, merging some of the content into that article
F. Rearrange this article to focus on literal snake oil, with some additional information on snake oil-related scams (see here for one example of what that could look like)
G. Create the article Snake oil (traditional medicine), and move Snake oil (disambiguation) to Snake oil, adding to it links to that new article, as well as to Quackery and probably other articles like Fraud and Confidence trick

Survey[edit]

  • A. This article is well-balanced on the coverage of the term in reliable secondary sources. Very few sources cover the actual oil, but many many more cover the "pseudoscience" meaning. This is also evident in how sources about the actual oil are forced to clarify that they are not talking about the pseudoscience meaning. See this article we reference in the text for example.[1] Wiki policy tells us to cover those meanings in proportion to their coverage in WP:RS, and that's what we do in the article as it stands. It would be a WP:POVFORK issue to do C, D or E, and WP:UNDUE to do F. I can see why you'd want to do B, but personally I think it adds context. I actually really like how this article covers the history of the actual oil in traditional medicine, then the origin of it as a term for tinctures and patent medicines, etc. I think it weaves together nicely.--Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 16:09, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been advertised at the Fringe theories noticeboard. 16:18, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
Note: This discussion has been advertised at the NPOV noticeboard. 16:18, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
    • "Pseudoscience" is inappropropriate, imo - it was deceptive fraud and outright lying - labelling that as pseudoscience deflects attention away from the most significant aspects of this subject away from its being deliberate fraud and the selling of fake goods and instead focuses more attention on the tactics used. In other words, whats more significant, the fact that someone was commiting fraud, or the fact that he was making false scientific claims in order to commit fraud? The primary concern is fraud; whether or not it involved "pseudoscience" is irrelevant: fraud is still fraud, pseudoscience or not! Firejuggler86 (talk) 16:30, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment There's a "real" snake oil? I only every heard this term as a term for health frauds. Alexbrn (talk) 16:21, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it is the header image of the article being discussed.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Bakkster Man (talk • contribs) 16:53, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's a 1905 poster?!? Alexbrn (talk) 17:34, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have personally seen snake oil for sale in 2005 at a Carrefour market in China, in little packets, sold as a beauty aid. My travelling companion bought a bunch as souvenirs for people back home. --Calton | Talk 04:03, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The poster is for something "containing no snake-derived substances whatsoever". Pincrete (talk) 18:06, 28 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • F, or possibly D or G. There are already articles on all sorts of animal-derived oils (see Category:Animal fats), and there seems to be at least as much information available on snake oil as there is on, say, skunk oil. It's a substance that has been used for centuries or more. And there's no point having an article about "snake oil" the term, because it's essentially a synonym for quackery (close enough, anyway). Wikipedia is not a dictionary; there's no article for the term "flim-flam" (that's just a disambiguation page), to take one of countless examples. That just leaves the question of whether the article on actual snake oil should be at snake oil or elsewhere. I think it should be at "snake oil". The fact that, in some English-speaking countries, "snake oil" is used much more widely to refer to scams than it does to the oil is not the only consideration; if there's no article on "snake oil" the term, then there's no strong reason to keep that page for the term. Korny O'Near (talk) 16:42, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • A as there doesn't appear to be enough content to justify C for a standalone article for the traditional medicine. Bakkster Man (talk) 16:53, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • A per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. It's quite obvious from a quick web search or having a look at other encyclopdias and dictionaries what the common use of the expression is. If there is enough material for a viable article on oil made from snakes, C (with a disambiguation link on top of this page) also makes perfect sense. “WarKosign” 18:06, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • A per my comments on article talk about WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. C could work, also, as I explained on article talk. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 18:08, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • A (Summoned by bot) - At least in the sense that Option A first calls for keeping the article mostly as it is. Though I will say that I believe the RfC author erred in how they describe which of these options is the best descriptor of the current status quo version of the article. The reason the current version of the article works well for our purposes on this project is that it is actually closer in form to how Option F is described: the article is largely focused on discussion of the evolution of the term based in the actual particular historical forms of charlatanism from which it arose, even if the lead (by necessity) foregrounds the modern idiomatic meaning of the word. This seems to be precisely the approach called for here: we don't need content here which acts as a POVFORK to multiple articles which already discuss fraud/commercial chicanery as broad and generalized topics: this article ought to instead focus on a particular strain of once-popular variety of miracle cure while simultaneously contextualizing it by explaining how the name of the product pushed in that trend became linked to a broader class of deceptive marketing and pseudo-medicine quackery. But it seems to me the current version of the article strikes that balance pretty well. Snow let's rap 21:01, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that's true - a lot of the article is about the selling of "snake oil", but of fake snake oil (actually mineral oil). And the intro, as well as the article's "short description", make it clear that the article is ultimately about the term. I also don't understand how POVFORK applies here. Korny O'Near (talk) 22:59, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Korny, I originally responded to you in-line here, but due to the length of my comments, I decided to move the post to an extended discussion section below. I almost left it inline here despite the verbosity, since I believe it addresses the crux of the issue here and why your preferred approach is not finding support at the appropriate one under policy as others see it. But the length was just a bit more than I could justify leaving the in the !vote response section. Snow let's rap 07:22, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support a balance between A & F; strongly oppose D & E - I think that literal snale oil, if for no other reason than its fame on account of the archetypal snale oil salesman and the legacy of "snake oil" becoming an idiom for any kind of fraudulent product sold by a charlatan. I do not see any need for separate articles; who cares if literal oil from snakes and charlatanism/marketing fraud are seemingly two very different topics? In the case of the latter, with snake oil, it is largely what makes the former notable; yet on the flipside, no worthy encyclopaedia entry on the latter can exist without background & info on the further. All should be presented with due weight. I am against any attempts to tie "snake oil" with "quackery": even though the practices of the original 19th century snake oil salesman could technically be called "quackery", that is not the best' or most fittingword to describe what he did, and in modern parlance that is not what 'snake oil' means! For example, it would be totally incorrect to call Bernie Madoff a practitioner of quackery; a fraudster doesnt magically become a quack just because the thing hes scamming people with he happens to be claiming has health benefits: the more significant qualityis the fraudulence, not the medical claims; and besides, in this case, he knew that what he was selling was not even snake oil at all, so calling it quackery rather than fraud would be totally misleading. Firejuggler86 (talk) 16:12, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It's true that the term "snake oil" doesn't always refer to health-related scams. I just added another option, G, which I should have added before - turning the article "Snake oil" into a disambiguation page, so it can link to all the possible meanings of "snake oil". Korny O'Near (talk) 20:26, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • A The status quo is fine. ~ HAL333 04:37, 26 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • A There is no need to change the article. Sea Ane (talk) 21:16, 26 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • A -Keep the article as it is since it gives a balanced description of the term as per reliable sources. BristolTreeHouse (talk) 19:26, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • ? Have a slightly different concern. Firstly, as a scam, this article should include many of the "negative" categories that exist in Quackery. However, a problem with articles that merge completely different concepts (despite possible historical relationships), is that some of these categories don't really apply to the other senses. While I do find that the article strikes a good balance, that balance is not reflected in the categories which apply to all good or bad senses. Dpleibovitz (talk) 07:57, 28 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Firm agree that this article has been mildly whitewashed to remove categories like that. We need to restore NPOV.--Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 14:23, 28 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for acknowledging that article does in fact merge completely different concepts - I wish more people in this discussion would. Korny O'Near (talk) 17:37, 28 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • A -ish. I concur with the excellent analysis from Snow Rise below. There simply doesn't seem to be enough material for any 'real' article and this one has quite good coverage of how the 'quackery' sense might have evolved. Even so, at present the Scientific American source seems pretty thin gruel to support a "Chinese water-snake oil .... may be beneficial" claim (it seems more of a light-hearted article than any kind of serious scientific evaluation). Pincrete (talk) 16:03, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • A The common usage of the term Snake Oil is best represented by how the article is written now which has reliable sources and because I agree with Snow Rise who has written an excellent response supporting option A. Jurisdicta (talk) 04:06, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • A. No merge/redirect as snake oil meaning fraudulent marketing (not just medical) differs from quackery meaning incompetent medical practice, e.g. historically the analytical surgeon/drug school insults to holistic / homeopathic / herbalist. Also, origin of the phrase needs some mention of the real snake oil here. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 22:18, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • A, with a rewrite of the lead to give a little more weight to the existence of real snake oil. Definitely no need to reinvent the wheel here. Retswerb (talk) 06:10, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Extended discussion[edit]

Korny O'Near, this is a response to your comment on my !vote above, which response I originally placed just bellow said comment, but which I am now moving down here over concerns that it's length might have made the !vote section unwieldy. The original post proceeds from here:

Yes, reviewing the RfC prompt again, I understand the distinction you are making here and better understand why you worded the various options as you did. That said, my opinion on the most appropriate approach here remains the same: the article already effectively strikes the right balance between what are the main topics a an article about the subject of 'snake oil' ought to cover: the idiomatic modern usage of the term as it is applied to a specific historical trend in flim flamery, supported by some of the actual history of such products, such to contextualize the immersion of the term (and for the encyclopedic value of that topic as a piece of history itself). The third topic that (if I am understanding you correctly now), you are arguing should be the main subject of this article--namely the actual physical substance of oils processed from actual snakes--is simply not a significant enough subject matter to supplant the other meanings of this article. Such substances have very little in the way of WP:WEIGHT in relevant sources that is independent of the other, more significant topics to which that term applies. And indeed, by and large, even when we are talking about literal oils derived from actual snakes, those products have historically fallen mostly into the category of the same kind of bogus miracle cures as those oils marketed as snake oil which (in addition to being ineffective cures for the maladies they were advertised to treat), also happened to not be derived from snakes.
That third usage (i.e. a product of traditional Chinese medicine that existed before the widely debunked role of similar products in the pharmaceutical contexts of 18th through 20th century Europe and North America, and which an WP:RS or two says "may" have had some minor but legitimate therapeutic effect because they "may" have have contained trace amounts of timnodonic acid) is, in my opinion, a dubious topic to predicate even a separate "snake oil" article on, no matter how carefully one attempted to differentiate it from the common meaning of the term and the topic discussed presently in this article: I just don't think it's likely that you are going to find enough sourcing to provide for WP:Notability under WP:GNG, and I think the average editor is likely to perceive the purpose of such a spun-off article as a WP:POVFORK that attempts to rehabilitate the image of snake oil, when the weight of sources on the subject says that these products overwhelmingly are the definition of quackery (hence the very existence of the idiom). Now, you're welcome to give it a try nonetheless, and if you dig up a healthy enough number of WP:RS discussing empirical research on actual phospholipids derived from snakes, independent of the subject of dubious cure-alls, and you develop some neutral prose, you may yet overcome those hurdles and get a new article on the subject past AfD and other reviews, since many editors who contribute their time to this project in areas pertaining to quackery have some degree of background in medicine, microbiology, and physiology. So if you can show there is legitimate science on the subject covered by secondary RS, you may be able to sell the value of such an auxiliary article on the topic. I'll be honest, I think it will be an uphill battle for the reasons discussed above, but a cursory search does suggest at least some contemporary research on the subject: that's different from reliable secondary sources, of course, but it's a place to start.
Regardless, what I feel I can say with some certainty is not going to happen is your preferred approach of both creating the split article described above (again, unlikely in itself) combined with blanking/redirecting this present article and its discussion of historical snake oil products and the more generalized terminology that evolved out of that history. And I base this less on the uniformity of the responses the RfC has received so far rejecting this approach (though I do think you should pay attention to that as well) and more upon my knowledge of this content area and how these issues play out under our relevant policies. You are forwarding a WP:POVFORK argument of your own (and that's actually what I was referring to in my previous post): specifically you have suggested that "snake oil" as a subject is really nothing more than an idiomatic synonym for Quackery. But with respect, that's clearly not true: the content of this article is currently about 80% constituted by the information in the "History" and "From cure-all to quackery" sections. That well-sourced content discusses what is clearly a historical and encyclopedic subject of substantial notability. Yes, it's a subject that certainly falls under the larger umbrella terms of quackery and patent cures, but it's also a historical phenomena in its own right that clearly and abundantly passes our notability standards as an independent subject justifying a separate article. And that subject matter (hucksteristic tonics derived from/marketed as derived from snake tissues, and the story of how they came to be regarded as emblematic of the issues general to purported miracle cures), is without question what the WP:WEIGHT of the sources establishes as the WP:PRIMARY TOPIC that ought to be covered by the article located at the primary namespace for "Snake oil".
So, to summarize, I think your options here, if you want to boost the profile of the notion of legitimate medical uses for oils extracted from snakes, I think your choices are to 1) slightly augment the small amount of language we have on that subject in the article already, 2) create a subsection in the article to discuss such matters, or 3) draft your Snake oil (traditional medicine) article and attempt to garner support for it. I'll be honest again, any of those approaches might face some degree of stiff opposition over concerns that you are pushing a fringe view relating to the quintessential example of non-empirical medicine, but if you come armed with enough secondary sourcing covering actual science on the pharmacology of snake oil, any of those three outcomes is possible. But what I feel I can virtually guarantee you will not happen is that we cover that topic to the exclusion of those covered in the current article at this namespace--I just can't see the possibility of an outcome where this article gets blanked and redirected to Quackery, while your new article discussing speculation of possible legitimate therapeutic values of snake oils becomes the only independent article discussing the value of snake oils. That's just not where the sources discussing the topic of "snake oil" broadly are focused, or where they are ever likely to be focused in the future. Snow let's rap 07:11, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
On a side note that I hope will be of help to you if you do decide to propose an auxiliary article, consider attempting to build said article through consensus at AfC, as developing potentially contentious articles is best accomplished through maximum possible collaboration from the outset, since this helps to increase support and take stock of how controversial aspects should be balanced in the prose earlier in the process. It's no guarantee of success (the viability of such an article is going to hinge on what you can find with regard to sourcing), but I do think it would give you the best prospects. Snow let's rap 07:34, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your response. There are a few errors in what you wrote. I didn't say that "'snake oil' as a subject is really nothing more than an idiomatic synonym for quackery"; I said that "snake oil" as a term is a synonym for quackery. Obviously, for any term, you can talk about its etymology and so forth, so every term is unique in that way. But Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and the whole history of the term "snake oil" could easily go in the quackery article. (Actually, it's already there, though very briefly.)
You're also wrong that I "want to boost the profile of the notion of legitimate medical uses for oils extracted from snakes". I have no idea what the medical benefits of true snake oil are, and I don't really care, other than in the context of improving this article. As for POV, right now there is a pretty big POV violation, but it's entirely on the other side: the article sort of implies that the term "snake oil" came about in part due to the ineffectiveness of literal snake oil, but if you read the article all the way through, you see that the term came about almost entirely due to people selling fake snake oil, generally mineral oil. (And that, on the rare occasion when actual snake oil was sold, it was apparently the wrong kind of snake: rattlesnake instead of water snake.) Whatever the benefits, or lack thereof, of true snake oil, they have nothing to do with the term "snake oil".
This implication is so strong that even you and others here seem to believe it, even though you've all presumably read through the article. You wrote, "literal oils derived from actual snakes... have historically fallen mostly into the category of the same kind of bogus miracle cures as those oils marketed as snake oil". That may be true, but it's not stated anywhere in the article; to the contrary, the article states that true snake oil's "efficacy is unknown". Korny O'Near (talk) 13:03, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You're also wrong that I "want to boost the profile of the notion of legitimate medical uses for oils extracted from snakes". I have no idea what the medical benefits of true snake oil are, and I don't really care, other than in the context of improving this article.
Ok, I think we're talking past eachother here by virtue of semantics/pedantics, so let's try to tie this directly to policy and I'll see if I can't explain why I think that your approach is not the appropriate one, and thus why it is facing absolute opposition from responding editors so far.
Obviously, for any term, you can talk about its etymology and so forth, so every term is unique in that way. But Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and the whole history of the term "snake oil" could easily go in the quackery article.
But this is clearly not a case of WP:NOTDICTIONARY, because we have more than abundant enough WP:RS to meet the burdens of WP:GNG here and discuss the encyclopedic topic of snake oil products as a specific historical phenomena--that is to say, a particular variety of patent medicine with it's own independent evolution and associated historical and legal facts. These details are infinitely more likely to the ones a reader is attempting to get further context about if they do a search for "snake oil". I think you really need to do a deep read of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, because you seem to be trying to associate some idiosyncratic sense of what you think the "core" or "underlying" topic here is, and that's just not how we decide what subject resides at what article namespace in this encyclopedia: sometimes the primary topic of a namespace clashes quite a bit with what we intuitively perceive it should be, according to some internal schema or metric of our own. It comes down more to where the WP:WEIGHT of the reliable sources place their emphasis, and what is more likely to assist the reader in arriving at the subject they were looking for: and in both cases here, it's clear the primary topic for an article about "snake oil" is the variety of patent medicine, not oils extracted from wastersnakes, which may or may not have legitimate therapeutic uses. It's doubtful there is even enough sourcing support an independent article about just the latter topic, while the former sails over that burden easily.
(Actually, it's already there, though very briefly.)
Sure, nothing surprising there, insofar as "snake oil" has become a colloquialism for quackery, because "snake oil" the product was such a famous example of medicinal fraud that it helped define and frame our historical and contemporary outlook on the whole subject. So of course it is mentioned there, but in briefer form than is appropriate here at this article, which (quite correctly and unsurprisingly) explores that topic in a bit more detail.
You're also wrong that I "want to boost the profile of the notion of legitimate medical uses for oils extracted from snakes". I have no idea what the medical benefits of true snake oil are, and I don't really care, other than in the context of improving this article.
Fair enough, I certainly take you at face value about that. But I wasn't trying to impute in impure motive to you in any event. I was just pointing out (correctly, I think, if I am reading you correctly) that you want to replace this article's current topic, which is well attested and has enough meat in terms of subject matter discussed in reliable sources, with a different one, which does not meet that bar (and wouldn't belong as the main topic in this namespace even if it did), because you are reasoning by analogy that if oils genuinely derived from fish (and the legitimate products produced from them) are found at fish oil, then actual oils derived from snakes surely ought to be found at snake oil. But again, that's just not consistent with how our policies operate in such instances and a review of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC will explain why.
As for POV, right now there is a pretty big POV violation, but it's entirely on the other side: the article sort of implies that the term "snake oil" came about in part due to the ineffectiveness of literal snake oil, but if you read the article all the way through, you see that the term came about almost entirely due to people selling fake snake oil, generally mineral oil. (And that, on the rare occasion when actual snake oil was sold, it was apparently the wrong kind of snake: rattlesnake instead of water snake.)
We're just going to have to agree to disagree on that point: I think the article does an entirely adequate and appropriate job of distinguishing the two subjects, conceptually disentangling them before going on to explain how the modern idiomatic terminology evolved. I'm not sure what more you would want on that topic, but if you have RS to bolster the content in that respect, I think you would probably be able to secure consensus for adding it. It's just that replacing essentially the entire current article with discussion of just "legitimate snake oil products" is clearly not going to happen.
This implication is so strong that even you and others here seem to believe it, even though you've all presumably read through the article.
No, I think you might be mistaking what we are saying here. We all understand that if a huckster was trading in a charlatan's tonic, they probably didn't bother (particularly given the era) to even use genuine snakes in the production (or used species more native to their location, rather than those that were likely to have been used in traditional Chinese medicine). More to the point for our uses on this project, we understand that this is the implication of the sources. And that's not a difficult concept, nor anything other than what you would expect of the parties involved in that context. We're just saying that the mere fact that quacks appropriated the term from an earlier tradition of products that were perhaps more likely to use actual snakes (and certainly likely to use different species of snake when they did procure the oil from a snake) does not really change the fact of what the appropriate primary topic for this article is.
If the article lacked any discussion of the early practices and you were objecting to that, we would, I think I can say with some confidence, be very much behind you. But it does contain such information, and such information can be bolstered with further sourcing--it could even be spun out into a separate article, with enough sourcing, but the onus would be on you as the party who wants to create it to find the sourcing to pass GNG: and having looked into this issue before responding here, I'd say indications are that there might not be enough sourcing for that. Regardless, even if you found sufficient sourcing to generate enough content to constitute (and gain consensus for) an independent article, it still would not end up replacing the content in this namespace. We would either a) add such information to this article for context, b) create a new article for it, or c) implement some combination of the two. But removing the the entirely WP:DUE information already in this article relating to its clear primary topic, in order to make room for an uncontextualized discussion of the much more niche and more poorly understood/sourced subject of literal snake oils, is clearly not the appropriate call under the relevant policies--which the feedback from your RfC is uniformly telling you. Snow let's rap 20:31, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your response. First, I think it would be better if you referred to your opinions with "I" instead of "we" - it's a little confusing otherwise. (Unless you believe you have some special insight into what everyone is thinking.) You still haven't explained why you wrote that "literal oils derived from actual snakes... have historically fallen mostly into the category of the same kind of bogus miracle cures as those oils marketed as snake oil" - but maybe that was just an offhand comment and not meant to be a serious argument.
Your main argument seems to be this: when people in most English-speaking countries refer to "snake oil", 99.9% of the time they are talking about health-related and other scams, not the actual oil, so WP:PRIMARYTOPIC dictates that the metaphor should get the article. But that's not necessarily the case on Wikipedia when metaphors are concerned - sometimes they don't get an article at all. See the articles scapegoat, whipping boy and thirty pieces of silver, for example - these are all about the original subject of the term, even though the metaphor around the term is more popular in most English-speaking countries. Again, WP:NOTDICTIONARY applies here too.
Finally, again, there's the need to clarify that real snake oil and fake snake oil are quite different, even though both have been sold for medicinal purposes. You say that it's "not a difficult concept" to distinguish between the two, and in a sense it's not, but the distinction seems to have eluded many people. Anyone citing WP:POVFORK, for example, seems to be saying that it would be bad to separate between the two because everyone should know that real snake oil is a scam. Korny O'Near (talk) 13:33, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Korny O'Near, I don't think many people think that 'real' snake oil is necessarily or inherently a scam - it's simply that the amount of sourcable material about it is so small that no article could be written. The standard of sourcing for any health benefit claims, even tentative claims, is WP:MEDRS - as Alexbrn points out below, this simply doesn't exist for snake oil/snake lipids. Pincrete (talk) 14:34, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If no one thinks real oil is a scam, then why are people citing WP:POVFORK? Korny O'Near (talk) 14:45, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Because such a fork would diminish and limit the coverage of the quackery term, making it harder to find, and damaging the wiki. It would separate the term "snake oil" (most coverage) from the actual oil, in a way that preferences a pseudoscientific POV. Not just because the actual oil would get undue coverage, but also because the pseudoscience term would get less coverage. That's why I cite POVFORK, anyway.--Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 14:51, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
None of that holds true if we went with option C (creating a separate article like snake oil (traditional medicine)), and you called that option a POVFORK violation as well. Korny O'Near (talk) 14:55, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The actual oil would get undue coverage, per what Alexbrn said below and what many others have said. There is not enough coverage of the actual oil in peer reviewed sources to justify a separate article.--Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 15:10, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't believe your reasoning has anything to do with WP:POVFORK, which has to do with forks meant "to avoid or highlight negative or positive viewpoints or facts". But if you just cited the wrong guideline, then so be it. Korny O'Near (talk) 15:23, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Looking deeper into this, there is some research on snake oil (search PUBMED for "snake lipids") but nothing that meets WP:MEDRS I can see, and the research is Chinese TCM (=dodgy). There is a piece in Scientific American.[1] We could probably put a sentence or two on this somewhere (the TCM article?) and maybe add a hatnote here? Alexbrn (talk) 16:16, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sources

  1. ^ Graber, Cynthia. "Snake Oil Salesmen Were on to Something". Scientific American. Retrieved 24 June 2021.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Wiki Education assignment: Traditional Chinese Medicine[edit]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 September 2022 and 12 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sim772 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Sim772 (talk) 22:00, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

§ Modern implications: Stem Cell Supplements[edit]

I have come across Youtube ads for products promise to perfectly cure eye vision degradation. These unconventional 'breakthrough' products turned out to be utilizing so-called stem cell enhancing nutrients.

I am not 100% certain, but I suspect this may be a new form of 'snake oil'.


This is the ad I came across:

This is an expert critique of this class of products:

2C0F:FC89:80AD:803B:DC42:89B:832E:97FE (talk) 08:19, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Snake_oil&oldid=1195529681"