== Listing # of PubMed Publications == 

 I have a number of problems with the two tables that list the number of "Research papers on PubMed through 2007".  I would like to remove this material, and rework the article to remove the weight that this is given in the listing and discussion, on these grounds: 

 * Pubmed is a citation index and it is designed to help people locate articles and it is maintained for this purpose, it is not designed or intended to be used to assess the degree to which a subject has been studied.  It may be a very coarse measure of this, but, I do not think it qualifies as a reliable source for assessing the degree to which something has been studied. 

 * Merely citing the number of articles says very little because it doesn't take into account the quality or conclusions of the articles.  For example, certain herbs may have fewer studies but the studies conclude stronger effects, or there could be many studies but they could be conflicting. 

 * This article is on adaptogens...and yet no distinction is being made to weed out which articles are studying the herbs as adaptogens vs. for studying them for other medical purposes. 

 I would recommend removing the table, and instead writing prose based on meta-analyses or summaries of the scientific literature.  I think the presence of, and conclusions of such meta-analyses would be a better way to judge which things to include in the articleand then we can describe the conclusions of these studies.  Herbs without enough research to have such summaries probably don't have enough to say that much is known about their effects scientificallyalthough I think it would be appropriate to thoroughly describe their use in various types of traditional medicine...so long as this is sourceable.  Thoughts?