Talk:Effective microorganism

message: EM - or other synonyms are irrelevant. Microbes started life on this planet and continues to provide the glue which enables our natural systems to function. Not to beat a dead horse please visit this attached site and lets go from here.
With all due respect. Gerald 
http://soils.usda.gov/sqi/concepts/soil_biology/biology.html 
* This comment appears to miss the point.  EM uses specific combinations of bacteria and yeast that have several desirable properties.  EM formulations are both long lasting and dramatic in effect.  The existing technology that they most closely resemble is compost tea.  This is interesting because compost tea has been used for a very long time both in biodynamic agriculture and in traditional Chinese agriculture, yet scientific understanding, proof of effectiveness, and metrics do not exist.  Why should a new variant of something that has never been fully explained await a full explanation before its formulation and use are documented? -- M0llusk (talk) 00:17, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Relevence questioned

message: My first article from scratch, and had two automatic interwiki links that I didn't have to bring up myself! Darned computer logged me off when I saved so I couldn't see my name in the history log. Oh well, always next time...Now for fine-tuning.
     Schlüggell | Talk 23:22, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments of original author

message: If the neutrality is disputed give me some ideas of how this is not a nutral article. All I've done is relate the info of proprietary products from sources of various languages.
This sounds more like an advertisement than a neutral data-driven article.  Too bad.  If I had been able to access a diversity of information on EM I might have actually bought some.  
Oh well.
1>Many companies use this term, it is not even necessarily meant to be trademarked as it is worded in the article. Until recently many companies weren't offering the number of products.
And some of the other companies products are inferior at any rate.
2>Other companies that sell these types of products are even more proprietary, EMRO discloses how the product is made AND from what sources - and underwrites many volunteer efforts. And none of it is patented from a test tube culture {like some companies}.
We have been manufacturing and propagating EM in India for the last 5 years and thought we should try and give our inputs in order to get some clarity on the subject.
The facts according to us are as follows. Rest of the issues in terms of citations to prove authenticity and neutrality as an article could be built around it.
1. The word EM is not a generic term, but a brand created by Dr. Higa to give recognition to his original invention. This is clearly stated in his letter to us as well.
2. One could think of this as an advertisement, but the facts are for everyone to see. The technology has been bringing huge benefits to millions of people all over the globe.
3. I guess one has to take a stand to promote a technology at the cost of giving it an ad label, if it can bring so many benefits to the society at large.
4. All except EMRO do not have what we all know as EM. They only possess a close acronym, which has been cleverly made to leverage the popularity of the original EM.
5. Others do not have the blessings of Dr. Higa or EMRO. However, in all their publications and websites etc, they have again used the connection with EMRO and Dr. Higa to give their product line recognition and respect. True that Mr. Mathew Wood (SCD) did his studies under Dr. Higa and was helped a lot by his benevolence. There was no other connection to him or EMRO thereafter. 
6. All this does not mean that their products are inferior in comparison to the original EM. 
7. My issues are that why mislead the public by drawing connections when none exist and using the brand in an attempt to get market share? 
8. If others are so confident about their quality, performance and delivery systems, then why not call their products something different than EM and follow it up with aggressive marketing. 9. Let the better product prove itself on its own merit. 
In conclusion, let us focus on the original EM and present it in its original form and not confuse with similarly sounding words!!
Regards,
Sanjay
=== Biosa is derived from Dr. Higa's work too. Why delete links? ===
It is all good that the world knows and uses this product.
Let people decide which company to purchase from.
Cheers,
UW
=== neutrality/advertising ===
I notice a link to "700" research papers was added. I may be missing something - but these papers dont appear to be in international peer-reviewed journals. I this article appears to be advertising or at the very least is very non NPOV. MidgleyDJ 02:18, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Only AUTHENTIC EM has the EM logo. EM and "Effective Microorganisms" are trademarked in the United States. Beware of other products claiming to be EM. If the bottle you buy does not say "Effective Microorganisms", such as "Efficient Microbes", then it is NOT authentic EM. 
I agree with all the reasons people are nominating the article for deletion, but I like a challenge so I'd like to see if it this shameless piece of spam can be re-written as an encylopedia article, complete with thorough and appropriate references, before it goes on the slush pile. To that end, I've replaced words like pioneered, realized and discovered with claimed. In the absence of research published in a reputuable scientific journal it will be much easier to provide sources to confirm that the alleged innovator of this process claims these things are true than it would be to demonstrate that they actually are. The latter, as several people have pointed out, is beyond the scope of Wikipedia anyway.
I know nothing about the subject but I'm prepared to learn about it and work with those who do in an effort to save it. In the meantime, it urgently needs references and plenty of information about EM's competitors. If the original poster wrote the article in good faith, as he claims, I am sure he will be happy to start work on this immediately. Gruffle Gaw 11:33, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree with that, though the disambiguation info had to be added to stop the article from being deleted cause other users were thinking the article was a "product placement". 15:15, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think there is enough background information for this article not to be deleted. Expansion of the science by experts in this will be interesting.--Alex 15:26, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussions on this article possibly being advertising

message: I notice a link to "700" research papers was added. I may be missing something - but these papers dont appear to be in international peer-reviewed journals. I this article appears to be advertising or at the very least is very non NPOV. MidgleyDJ 02:18, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  neutrality/advertising 

message: This kind of thing in the intro (which I have now edited out) is what people mean when they say it is advertising:
:Only AUTHENTIC EM has the EM logo. EM and "Effective Microorganisms" are trademarked in the United States. Beware of other products claiming to be EM. If the bottle you buy does not say "Effective Microorganisms", such as "Efficient Microbes", then it is NOT authentic EM. 
I agree with all the reasons people are nominating the article for deletion, but I like a challenge so I'd like to see if it this shameless piece of spam can be re-written as an encylopedia article, complete with thorough and appropriate references, before it goes on the slush pile. To that end, I've replaced words like pioneered, realized and discovered with claimed. In the absence of research published in a reputuable scientific journal it will be much easier to provide sources to confirm that the alleged innovator of this process claims these things are true than it would be to demonstrate that they actually are. The latter, as several people have pointed out, is beyond the scope of Wikipedia anyway.
I know nothing about the subject but I'm prepared to learn about it and work with those who do in an effort to save it. In the meantime, it urgently needs references and plenty of information about EM's competitors. If the original poster wrote the article in good faith, as he claims, I am sure he will be happy to start work on this immediately. Gruffle Gaw 11:33, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some ideas on how the article is non-neutral advertising 

message: I have made some alterations to this article to help it from looking like such a marketing piece. I suggest it needs a lot more focus on the technology and how it works as opposed to the companies behind the creation of products. The article adds to wikipedia through the science and technology, a lot less so through the disambiguation of trademark issues.--Alex 14:13, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with that, though the disambiguation info had to be added to stop the article from being deleted cause other users were thinking the article was a "product placement". 15:15, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think there is enough background information for this article not to be deleted. Expansion of the science by experts in this will be interesting.--Alex 15:26, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Restructuring

message: === 600 published articles? ===
It would be worth posting some to verify the material in this article. MidgleyDJ 01:55, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Supporting articles

message: It would be worth posting some to verify the material in this article. MidgleyDJ 01:55, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  600 published articles? 

message: there you go...Urbanwild 02:15, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Link to EM Technology database: over 700 papers published 

message: If, as the anonymous user above suggests, effective microorganisms is a generic term rather than (or as well as) a trademark, it should not be capitalised in this article. I have Googled the term and found this seems to be the case, so I am changing this in the article. Gruffle Gaw 14:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capitalisation of term

message: EM technology is a pseudoscience. Web sites promoting EM are either from companies selling EM products, or from the new age community. A particularly blatant example is a "scientific" report from a pakistani research team posted on the emamerica website, claiming to have achieved miraculous improvements in the immune status of breast cancer patients with an EM rice beverage. Another sure sign for quack science are the "EM ceramics", a ceramic material that has imprinted the "resonance" or "energies" of the microorganisms.
Reply: what is real quack is people writing about products, in this case, ceramics, which they have never touched, seen, or used. The bacteria simply survive the process because they can stand heat up to 600 degrees Celsius. I've been using the ceramics for years and they really help keeping water fresh.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ichnaton (talk • contribs) 17:10, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neutrality disputed 

message: Because this article addresses existing methods that have limited, but global adoption the content including citations and criticism should be about what people are doing, what words they are using, and what results they claim.  Whether or not there is valid scientific support is another question entirely.  There are many other subjects like this.  For example, Witchcraft, Falun Gong, Prayer, and Ghost all have articles on Wikipedia, yet there is only a moderated amount of discussion in these articles and their talk pages about proof or related science.  It doesn't make sense for this article to have big warnings at the top and long arguments on the talk page after this many years. -- M0llusk (talk) 03:15, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Witchcraft and Prayer aren't commercial products. That makes this one an advert, and companies don't automatically get to write articles for their products on Wikipedia, regardless of what a few people say or do. It would thus help in this case to have proof that the products actually work. This one is much more akin to, say, homeopathy than to those examples you mention. 196.210.255.208 (talk) 10:50, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

text: It is entirely appropriate for theories, products, processes, etc. which purport to have a scientific basis to be challenged on that basis. The examples you give do not claim to be based on science and in fact claim to be supernatural so a scientific analysis is inappropriate. Jojalozzo 16:38, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  most of this criticism is not directly relevant 

message: To the people watching this page: Myself and a few others are planning, over the course of the coming days/weeks, to add more content of how EM has been applied in sanitation, what the science is and whether there is any real benefit to using in EM for pit latrines, septic tanks, wastewater treatment plants etc. (so far, the scientific evidence is not there that it would be of benefit, but nevertheless it is quite widely used). If that section gets quite extensive we might later split it off into a separate article.EvM-Susana (talk) 08:35, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: This planned additional content has now been added. EvM-Susana (talk) 07:56, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  New content on application of EM in sanitation 

message: The section on "Validation attempts" needs more work, perhaps a different title would actually be more fitting, or a sub-structure is needed. I don't find this section clear. If I am not mistaken, then the sources cited are only primary sources but not review articles, so they need to be treated with care (when it comes to medical content at least).
EvM-Susana (talk) 07:56, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I generally agree that these sources are fairly weak and can imagine that our medical colleagues will be here shortly to complain about the primary sources.  The problem is that there are no good secondary sources to use on this - maybe we should take the medical claims out altogether?JMWt (talk) 11:48, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  I was thinking along the same lines. Let's see if anyone else reacts during the next week or so and if not, then I would say we should delete it. Unless EM is somehow a "hot topic" in medicine right now that we are not aware of, but I doubt it. EvM-Susana (talk) 12:38, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Section on "Validation attempts" needs more work 

message: Hi User:n00q: I disagree with your recent edits to the article. And by the way please put new comments always at the end of the talk page, not somewhere in the middle. EM are used in septic tanks and wastewater treatment (with dubious results), so no need to delete those statements about septic tanks. You are making all sorts of changes to the article without providing one single reputable reference for your statements. The research that is quoted from South Africa and Netherlands is sound research. Provide some sound, reliable sources for your statements (not primary research, not adversiting websites of manufacturers), then we can discuss further. As long as you don't supply reliable sources, your statements need to be deleted, I think. If you want to structure the article differently, please propose something. EM is used in sanitation systems, that's why the sections about sanitation are written the way they are and I would say they are well referenced. If you want to add sections on other applications (with good, reliable sources), go ahead. Wikipedia is all about WP:VERIFY. EvMsmile (talk) 00:43, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  I disagree on recent edits by n00q (Oct. 2015) 

message: The lemma 'effective microorganism' is weak, why? Because :
1) the referred to micro organisms species are named and classified already (see subsection: Possible constituents and hyperlinked WP articles) 
2) There is no solid reference for made up statement in LEAD
3) the statement : "An effective microorganism (EM) refers to any of the predominantly anaerobic organisms" is not true and lacks any reference and any sense. Nowhere in Microbiology is a class of 'effective something'. 
4) The adjective 'effective' in the cited 1st statement of the former LEAD is only a selling-argument of the company not a suitable description of the made up lemma 'effective microorganism (EM)'  
5) recent reverts are rather vandalism, because they come with costs of deletion of additional references and sensefull slight adjustments of LEAD section, borrowed from the article of the trademarked product Coca Cola. --77.179.224.17 (talk) 23:34, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: You are changing the focus of this article, which is about a class of ineffective products, to a specific company's product. You are also making this article worse, by switching instances of the name to an unnecessary acronym, adding unsourced opinions such as 'vaguely states', switching out encyclopedic tone for informal english ('was made up by'), adding back flat out incorrect grammar ('in a four years organic farming field'), and restoring a statement that has been tagged as needing a source since 2009. You are welcome to improve the article, but these are the opposite of improvements. - MrOllie (talk) 02:04, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  thank you for your contributions to WP! Your points can be addressed easily. Please consider that I do know of microbiology, biology etc.pp. professionally. Please, consider that english is not my first language. Please, fix any language issues in my edits. Please, see the German article on EM which I did start to shape to it's recent form, including category:pseudoscience, which I also did ad to this english article, first. The German article is way better than this article, and I do like to push up this one to the standard of the German one. I do like our co-operation, though! 
Addressing your critiques:
#"focus of this article, which is about a class of ineffective products" -- please give references for this 'class of ineffective products' that this article was about. Is there any "effective microorgansism" product or EM outside EMRO's trademarks and its licensees? If so, I would like to know the references and place them into this article to support the "focus of this article", which is not referenced at the moment in violation of WP:LEAD 
#"switching instances of the name to an unnecessary acronym" -- do not get you here. In fact, the 1st statement in the lead section which narrows the lemma effective microorganism with EMRO's trademark (EM) is wrong.
#"adding un-sourced opinions such as 'vaguely states'" -- the cited statement in this context simply is vague, from a scientific point of view (taking into account that the autor of the cited statement is a science professor). But you could fix this statement easily?
#"switching out encyclopedic tone for informal english ('was made up by')" -- o.k. but this pseudoscience really was made up. How not to give this pseudoscience false reputation by an encyclopedic tone -- I am not a native english speaker, would you fix this problem, pls.?
#"restoring a statement that has been tagged as needing a source since 2009" -- pls. write out what you mean, do not get you here.
My critiques:
# As a start, would you please give a source for the 1st statement in the lead section: "An effective microorganism (EM) refers to any of the predominantly anaerobic organisms .." as I requested many times, since you seem to protect this false statement.
## This unreferenced statement seems to be rather sales dep. speach. of EMRO  
## Term "Effective Microorganisms" was invented by founder of EMRO. 
## Term "Effective Microorganisms" refers to a product of EMRO or its founder since its invention. 
# The "(EM)" in the first statement in the lead section refers to a trademark by EMRO (EM and EM-1 are!) not to an acronym of article's lemma 'effective microorganism'  - the boundaries of EMRO's product line and universally framing the lemma go down hill by this false narrowing. 
# There is no new class of 'effective m.' in Microbiology! Otherwise give refernces please.
# Named Microorganisms come in masses and(!) these masses of a class/species do not all have exact same characteristics (e.g. DNA, which varies even amongst a species) rather fulfil majority of qualifying points of a list of characteristics (per definition) - there is no such list for your proctected lemma "effective microorganism" in the 1st statement
# There is no good tradition for a very broad definition of a term/lemma "[xyz] microorganism refers to any of (..) anaerobic organisms" in a mixture! The EM (up to 80?) constituents are not specified - no source for that, nowhere! So, if 1st statement of this article was true, any micro-organism in a mixture of micro-organisms containing anaerobic or facultative anaerobic microbes could be referred to as "An effective microorganism (EM)", which is nonsensical.
You are welcome to protect and conserve the article, but the article has multiple issues, violates WP:LEAD and your protectionisms are the opposite of improvements. Thank you, --77.179.8.93 (talk) 10:10, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lemma "effective microorganism" 

message: Two trademarks are, currently, as far as I may understand: ´Effective Microorganisms EM´, and ´EFFECTIVE MICROORGANISMS´. Following products ´EM1´ or ´EM-1´, I don´t remind. (There will be more products names branded.) 
The last named, EM-1 or EM1, is with molasses the so called ´Activated EM´. Which is to multiply per doubling with water once a week, up to 30 times. 
The EMs is the base, the primary product. Which is possible to multiply: ´end-less´; but no must also. (Which ´seems´ is not liked to be revelated too open.) 
At least from one german own recipe EM-product producer I know he was taken to court, because of using the ´trademark´ name EM, which is NOT a trademark. Therefrom they did win at court. No such judge-call was won. But this is just not the intention. 
Sources of this are to find ´easy´ in the internet. I sadnessly did not save or document the links the sources. Sorry. And these have been ´just´ german sources, maybe some in english also. 
By the way: the product´s name should be written ´Effective Microorganisms´, my opinion. 
* Indigenous microorganisms: 
Korean natural farming, Indigenous microorganisms  
In nature with rich soil can be extracted ´easily´ the indigenous microorganisms (IMOs) from there. This I did not see written there. But is to find in the internet, too, and instructions. Sorry, I cannot just do this efforts currently. Just saying, please. Thanks. 
By the way: Worm compost is liked to be told as the best compost. Worms do have about 80 gut bacterias. Reminds to the 80 kinds of lactic acid bacterias in EMs. But I cannot really say, whether there is a connection. But if having such compost, the instruction to extract IMOs can be used to for from this soil, too, just saying once. 
Visionhelp (talk) 16:09, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some of my links, infos, knowledge, until now: Trademarks, IMOs 

message: The probable biased treatment of the subject is a concern, regarding the few possibilities and the lack of waste management culture that applies in most of the world. 213.44.154.175 (talk) 10:22, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is the wiki biased? Is it lacking material on the short-term benefits, the household uses and the scalability of the bokashi method?