Talk:Peter Breggin

message: Marie588 (talk) 13:00, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Never started psychiatric drugs 

message: The size of the Bibliography section is ballooning, it needs paring down to what illustrates Breggin's career and views. Wikipedia is not a place to store the CV or list of publications of someone.... --Crusio (talk) 19:51, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree. Any dissenters? Nmg20 (talk) 10:46, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that it suffices to cut this down to 3-5 representative publications. For those interested, all his publications can be found on his home page. --Crusio (talk) 12:38, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Size of Bibliography 

message: The article should be carefully checked. Just today, I found two claims that were really overstated. The first was that Breggin "was selected by the National Institute of Health (NIH) to be the expert on brain injury caused by ECT at the 1985 NIH Consensus Development Conference on ECT" (emphasis added). Turns out (see ref in article) that he was just one of many speakers at a session organized by the consensus panel and that he was not even a member of this panel (and the latter apparently mostly ignored Breggin in its conclusions). The second was that "Breggin is a life member of the American Psychiatric Association". Sounds really impressive, until one looks up the APA website and finds that "Any member who has reached the age of 65 and has belonged to the APA for a total of 25 years, may choose to begin a dues-reduction schedule, culminating in Life Member status and exemption from APA dues."
An anonymous IP has been making numerous edits today. Many edits just added superfluous info that only seems to be geared to make things look impressive (for instance, adding that his latest book is published by "the Springer Publishing Company", something that is already said in the way-too-long bibliography). Another addition is that "EHSS is received and archived at the National Library of Medicine (pubmed: 101231408[NlmId])". If EHSS would not be indexed by NLM, that would be more remarkable. As it is, this is not interesting and, in any case, whether indexed or not this info does not belong here but in the article on the journal.
A further issue is the addition of a long citation to Hirsch on h-index values. The original edit cited Hirsch quite selectively (see history if you want to see what I mean). Again, this info does not belong here and is already presented in the article on the h-index. Additionally, as it stands now, I think this statement is rather denigrating to Breggin: it basically says that after a long career, he has reached a point where he could be considered for tenure as a mere associate professor. What a lifetime total of 382 citations in the scientific literature means is that his works have been largely ignored by the scientific community. That is an NPOV statement, it does not imply anything about whether his views are right or wrong, it just says something about how they were received by his peers. Another editor, Nmg20, changed this text to "These relatively low numbers indicate that his work is not considered useful and/or influential by the scientific community." This is not correct either, it is a conclusion that this editor draws from the data (and hence original research). Low citation counts means being ignored, that is not an OR conclusion and not a POV. The anonymous IP has reverted me when I put the old text back and I am not in the mood to start an edit war over this. I just would like to note that the way things are currently formulated probably constitutes a violation of WP:BLP. --Crusio (talk) 23:53, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Once again, Crusio, your opinion that inclusion in the National Library of Medicine means nothing does not cause the fact of inclusion to be omittable. The NLM does not except any medical journal. Journals must meet objective criteria outlined here. But of course acknowledging the the fact of the meta-peer-review acceptance of his journal isn't favorable to the Breggin Black-Eye Committee commandeering this entry. 96.241.126.252 (talk) 05:55, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, the desperate POV-cry... The publication status of the journal is not relevant to an article about Breggin himself. Find me one other article on wikipedia in which the founder of a journal has that journal's inclusion in the NLM mentioned, please? And the fact here is that both his journals are essentially vanity-pieces with non-existent impact factors - as I posted here previously. Nmg20 (talk) 06:54, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Dear anonymous. Thanks for reminding me that I still have to pay this year's dues to the Breggin Black Eye Committee, I almost forgot! :-D As for the NLM inclusion, I am rather involved with academic publishing and therefore quite familiar with these guidelines. NLM archives literally thousands of medical journals, even some rather obscure ones. In this sense, inclusion in Medline is not really that notable. As Nmg20 remarks, this is not something that is ever mentioned in articles about persons that founded or edit scientific hournals. In articles about journals, this is not really mentioned prominently either. Most of the time, there is just a sentence saying "the journal is listed in...." with ... standing for a list of databases containing the journal. More important actually is the fact that Breggin's journal has no impact factor. Scientists look at 2 things when deciding in which journal to publish: is it listed in PubMed ad what is its IF. Whatever the case may be, these are factoids that might be mentioned in an article about this journal, not in an article about its founder and I will remove this again. Oh, and by the way, why don't you read WP:AGM when you have a minute? --Crusio (talk) 17:48, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

text: Looks quite horrible now, so perhaps this will be effective in getting this thing cleaned up :-) Thanks for the suggestion. --Crusio (talk) 08:28, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Appreciate your edits. I ran Breggin through the Scopus tool to check the h-index he'd been given (I'd dispute that what I wrote was WP:OR, but the subsequent associate professor reference is far better than my text which was open to accusations of being POV) and it gave him an h-index of 7, not 14, so I have updated the text to reflect that. I've also listed the Ethical Human etc. journal for deletion, as the page was really just a copy of one paragraph from this article. Nmg20 (talk) 10:50, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. Regarding WoS, you're mistaken. First of all, "Breggin P*" does pop up if you use the author finder. Second, both using "cited reference search" and "search" will give you plenty of hits. As Breggin published a lot before most people's access limits (mine is limited to 1975), the cited reference search is more complete. In addition, it will contain citation scores for books and articles in journals that are not indexed. I calculated the h index by hand from those citation counts. Just repeated the whole thing and I still get 10 (not 14, but even that would be rather dismal for someone whose first article was published in 1964...). Scopus probably gives a lower score because it does not cover literature before 1996 very well. Finally, it looks like your Scopus link does not work for others than yourself, I get "This bookmarked page cannot be displayed" when I click the link.... I'll revert to the WoS scores. I agree with your prod of "Ethical", it's not included in the ISIS JCR either. I'll add a prod2 tag there. --Crusio (talk) 12:12, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

text: In fact the Breggin-hating editor Nmg20 removed that link just hours before you then post it here as your 'discovery' of a fact that was allegedly being hidden from wiki readers to confuse them. Your ignorance of there being two scientific publishers "Springer Publishing Company" and "Springer Verlag" is evidence neither of bias for Peter nor of any intention of "making things seem more than they are." The fact that the explicit name and link to it the publisher was posted (but deleted by Nmg20) in fact falsifies your accusation. Yet another example of your difficulty in disentangling your limited POV from how the external world actually is. 96.241.126.252 (talk) 02:58, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Personal attacks, such as accusing me of being "Breggin-hating", are frowned upon here. Indulge in them again and I'll raise your problem formally by way of dispute. I don't hate Breggin - I think he's ridiculous, and every time anonymous editors come on here fawning over "Peter" and making wild claims about the reasons for my deletions from the article (as above, this is an article about Breggin not his journals) and about other editors (your "diagnosis" of Crusio is ridiculous and qualifies for a further warning about personal attacks), it makes clear just how ridiculous. Nmg20 (talk) 06:57, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Dear anonymous, I am afraid that you didn't interpret correctly what I was saying (WP:AGM might perhaps help here). I did not imply that the publisher was being hidden, the link may have been gone, but the text was there for all to see. It was just that almost everybody knows "Springer" (meaning Springer Verlag), a very reputable scientific publisher. Hardly anybody knows the "other" Springer where Breggin's journal is published. As with the NLM stuff above, where the journal is published is not really very important in the article about Breggin, it would be something to mention in an article about the journal. Mention "Springer Publishing company" prominently here may lead readers to think of the well-known big Springer Verlag, a much more prestigious publisher than the small SPC. That's all. I will ask my shrink to address my difficulties with viewing the external world, thanks for this helpful suggestion. Perhaps my medication should be tweaked a bit. Anyway, shall we now stop accusing people of bias and try to make a readable encyclopedic article out of this? --Crusio (talk) 18:02, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overstated claims, citations, and POV 

message: ::While I agree that there are problems with the article I think the eight tags are a little overdone. Some tags speak to the same issue. Perhaps the editor who put them in can reflect if some of the tags can be eliminated...especially if the problems have been rectified.--scuro (talk) 22:58, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: good start...wondering if one of the fansite and "contributor with a conflict of interest" tags can be eliminated. Either there is an editor with a conflict, which should be spelt out on talk, or some POV pusher(s) have fluffed it up. The "misleading" tag wouldn't really be needed if the fan tag was there.--scuro (talk) 01:18, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Done, good suggestion, thanks. --Crusio (talk) 18:08, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: tags

message: The repeated insertion by Crusio of his personal POV about the meaning of the h-index and Crusio's repeated deletion of the objective citation to its meaning by its originator (Hirsh) is prima facie vandalism. Furthermore, the point being made is that an h-index has to be interpreted in context. So saying Breggin has a low h-index relative to academics and scientists is comparing an individual to success criteria in other professions. Applying NPOV criteria requires comparing an individual's success to his career peers. And as we all know, Breggin is a private-practice psychiatrist. 
Given that, a good example of a peer to Breggin is Stephan Barrett as both are psychiatrists, and Barrett happens to be a critic of Breggin's whose expertise Crusio is on record admiring in contrast to Breggin. However, in a review at isiknowledge.com it seems that Barrett's h-index is all of 1, one tenth of Breggin's "lowly" h-index! Now, there are a number of "Barret, S" authors who are not this Barrett. But I only pull up 4 pages of them from which this Barrett is easily disambiguated. And it seems that he has all of 1 genuine peer-reviewed paper at isi (apart from those debunking his paper), unlike 37 papers for Breggin listed at isi. So doing a citation report on Barrett's only isi-listed paper suffices to cover the whole of Barrett's citation report. If there is disagreement, please make this clear. Let's actually try to establish an accurate NPOV peer context for interpreting Breggin's h-index.
This demonstrates that if in an objective NPOV context Breggin's h-index is compared to his career peers, not to those on other career paths, it stands out as uniquely high. What would be particularly relevant would be to find an average h-index for private-practice psychiatrists. I'd bet it's around 1. 136.160.224.142 (talk) 16:58, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Barrett's h-index is probably higher than 1. This site lists 13 Barrett papers that are pubmed archived. But it would be good to try to build some context of the average or relative h-index of private-practice psychiatrists, if the h-index is to be applied with any objective fairness to such a practitioner. 96.241.126.252 (talk) 23:25, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you two are missing my point. Perhaps you can suggest how we can edit the text to get this point over correctly. I am NOT trying to say (as one of you has done), that Breggin's citation record would be barely enough to get him an appointment as a mere Associate Professor. I only want to say that the scientific community is not paying attention to Breggin's message. Breggin has been publishing for over 30 years and about 10 or 12 citations per year (some of those probably from himself, as is the case with literally everyone publishing in the scientific literature) is really not a sign that scientists are paying any attention to what he is saying. I do not see why this statement is POV. Most of the article discusses Breggin's battle with the scientific "establishment". Saying that other scientists ignore Breggin does NOT imply that he is wrong or anything like that. It only means what it says: other scientists are ignoring him. Perhaps that is because they think Breggin is wrong. Perhaps it is because they are stupid and don't see how brilliant he is, perhaps it is because Breggin's truths are so uncomfortable to them that they don't want to hear about it. I don't know and have no sources for this, so that is why I do not write anything about their possible reasons, just the simple fact that they are not paying attention. As for anybody else's h-index, that info does not belong in this article at all. I know that many people view high numbers of citations as generally indicating that a scientist is doing important stuff, I actually do so, too. However, the reverse is not necessarily true: low citation counts do NOT mean that a scientist is not doing good work: it may not be cited because it is mediocre or it may not be cited because people don't (yet) realize its importance. --Crusio (talk) 18:20, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Crusio, you completely ignore the point being made. The h-index is a measure of the success of research scientists. The factual data you keep replacing with your derogatory opinion states as much. And as you also know, Breggin is a private-practice psychiatrist. Your opinion that Breggin's h-index means he's ignored ignores context, which in considering we must ask: Is he ignored more or less than the average private-practice psychiatrist? I don't think we can answer that yet, and you seem uninterested in establishing any such fair context. Instead you're consistently misrepresenting him as a research scientist, and then applying a success criterion of research scientists to him. But the meaning of being relatively 'ignored' or 'not-ignored' wrt the h-index properly applies only those whose career paths are properly measured by the h-index. 96.241.126.252 (talk) 02:17, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sorry, but I think you still misunderstand my point. The citation data are NOT presented here to evaluate Breggin's career and that is therefore not what I write. They are presented to illustrate that although Breggin has published widely on important topics that are of interest to many research scientists; despite that these research scientists are not citing his works. Mentioning the citation data and adding text that implies this would not even equal associate professor status for a starting scientist is insulting, as far as I can see. --Crusio (talk) 08:04, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  h-index, career context, and NPOV 

message: Please be careful to follow MOS. No spaces between multiple refs; no spacing between punctuation and ref; no punctuation after a ref, etc.. I just did a major cleanup. Let's keep it that way. Thanks. -- Fyslee (talk) 02:45, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Good job, I've removed the cleanup tag. Xasodfuih (talk) 13:28, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Punctuation around refs 

message: I have filed a report at AN/I. I suggest that Mihai cartoaje and other editors take a look. -- Fyslee (talk) 06:28, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:Mihai cartoaje]] reported at AN/I 

message: I find it a little hard to believe that Breggin had significant role in FDA's black box labeling of SSRIs. The way the that section is written it leads the reader to think that his role must have been so. No third party sources are cited saying that. Xasodfuih (talk) 15:03, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Synthesis in the SSRI section 

message: I was going to write what Peter Jensen the psychiatrist said about Breggin on PBS, as it's fairly substantive , but of course he's a nobody on the wiki. Xasodfuih (talk) 19:11, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Peter Jensen (psychiatrist)]] 

message: If we're going to have an NPOV discussion of Breggin's previous views on this topic, and if there are sufficient sources to do it, that would be fine. But it's ridiculous to include "criticism" of something which the body of the article never describes. Even the sources cited never criticize the view per se, other than by way of an insinuation that it's obviously contrary to common sense. But WP:NOR forbids putting words in their mouths. Using the child sexuality issue as way to attack Breggin's unrelated views on psychiatric medication is not journalism. This material isn't up to WP:BLP standards. Alessandra Napolitano (talk) 02:09, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent removal of child sexuality related criticism 

message: Time has noted that other mental health professionals worry that "Breggin reinforces the myth that mental illness is not real, that you wouldn't be ill if you'd pull yourself up by the bootstraps...his views stop people from getting treatment. They could cost a life."[5] However, despite this concern, an emphasis on a purely biological explanation of mental illness has actually been associated with an increase in stigma instead of a decrease by at least two studies.[58][59]
:You can't add something unrelated by simply putting "however, despite this concern" in front of it. The stigma attached to mental illness wasn't the topic. Ssscienccce  (talk) 21:24, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  I have gone ahead and removed this. Tameamseo (talk) 12:44, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  WP:SYNTH 

message: I removed this paragraph because it incorrectly implies that Breggin pioneered the ideas that antidepressants are tied to suicide and violence in 1991, and that these ideas became mainstream many years later.  
Suggestions that antidepressants are associated with suicidiality were around as early as 1964. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1817583/  Other articles discussing this connection were published in 1984 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3097733), in 1986 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3538914), in 1987 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3110852), in 1988 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3183073), and was discussed in literally dozens of papers published by other authors in 1990.  Pubmed has no Breggin publications on this subject prior to 1992, a year after his 1991 book.  He appears to have been riding on the coattails of others on this particular issue. 
Some of the papers above also note connections with violent behavior, though this putative connection does not seem to have become mainstream.  Treatment guidelines by major medical groups do not note violence as a side effect of SSRI therapy, and the package insert merely notes that spontaneous reports of unestablished causation exist.  Two barriers to presenting Breggin as a pioneer of an idea that was only much later appreciated by others in this context are that 1) others suggested a connection before he did, and 2) We have no MEDRS compliant references stating that this idea has ever become widely accepted. Formerly 98 (talk) 18:17, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suicide and violence 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Peter Breggin. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.breggin.com/Joemccarthylives.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20080908120214/http://www.icspp.org/Board-of-Directors/ to http://www.icspp.org/Board-of-Directors/
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 11:31, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I removed a couple of poorly sourced contentious claims . Among other problems, a wikipedian should not interpret interviews by the subject. The interviews should be interpreted in a reliable 3rd party secondary RS. My very best wishes (talk) 15:34, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: WP:BLP

message: I've been trying to clarify about his politics/religion/upbringing, does anyone happen to know the best (open) sources? He apparently grew up in New York state and started undergrad American History and volunteering at a local mental health facility. I've found bits suggesting he's a libertarian but "I started out with a very strong streak of libertarianism, I said lets not have government regulation, lets regulate through the market, through malpractice and product liability suits and so on. But it's clear that the companies by and large, from my experience, do only what they are absolutely forced to do". He seems to have something in common with Szasz but to disagree on other things. He mentions God influencing his life from age 16/17 (wasn't able to continue with running competitions) but I saw a mention that he's not a Christian? Does he believe in souls, what's his philosophy of mind/brain? He seems to have been entirely separate from, and critical of the internal practices and legal threats of, Scientology, since having some links with them in the early 70s (sources in the article and ), marrying Ginger in 1984 after meeting her in the early 70s when she (unlike him) was a member but had left Scientology 'unauthorized' and has made complaints against it? This WP article says he clarified that he agrees with some of CCHR (Scientology) views, but in the source he says they seem to share a number of his views - but suggests the media are too afraid to criticize them because of their legal threats - what am I missing, is there some evidence or rumor he's more linked to or supportive of them than he lets on, or is it just the historical links? He says "My wife was a Scientologist, and is now so strongly anti-Scientology, that if I even took a phone call from a Scientologist, she'd be on my back. ... I don't want to take on the Scientologists. I've got enough trouble taking on psychiatry". Neurohz (talk) 14:56, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Personal bio facts? 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on Peter Breggin. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://www.webcitation.org/66N8Cc0oj?url=http://www.breggin.com/ritalinbkexcerpt.html to http://www.breggin.com/ritalinbkexcerpt.html
*Added archive https://www.webcitation.org/66N8Dcs2i?url=http://www.breggin.com/classactionmore.html to http://www.breggin.com/classactionmore.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 06:19, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I had a cursory look at 'COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We are the Prey', Breggin's new book, and it references several well-known and repeatedly debunked claims, such as the COVID-19 vaccine being untested and possibly dangerous. I think it would be a good idea to note that in this article. 155.43.78.54 (talk) 17:43, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conspiracy Theories/Anti-vaxx opinions in latest book