Talk:Orthomolecular medicine/Archive 3

message: From the Wikipedia FAQ:
===== Pseudoscience =====
:How are we to write articles about pseudoscientific topics, about which majority scientific opinion is that the pseudoscientific opinion is not credible and doesn't even really deserve serious mention?
:If we're going to represent the sum total of human knowledge, then we must concede that we will be describing views repugnant to us without asserting that they are false. Things are not, however, as bad as that sounds. The task before us is not to describe disputes  as though, for example, pseudoscience were on a par with science; rather, the task is to represent the majority (scientific) view as the majority view and the minority (sometimes pseudoscientific) view as the minority view; and, moreover, to explain how scientists have received pseudoscientific theories. This is all in the purview of the task of describing a dispute fairly.
:Pseudoscience can be seen as a social phenomenon and therefore significant.  However, pseudoscience should not obfuscate the description of the main views, and any mention should be proportional to the rest of the article.
The article as it currently stands fails to comply with NPOV.  This is why I've added the tag, and why it should remain until the problem is fixed. -- Cri du canard 18:51, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You simply don't get it, do you?  OM was removed from the pseudoscience list because it isn't pseudoscience.  OM is a minority viewpoint and as such it should be described without having your POV pushed all over it.  It already has plenty of NPOV references to the medical mainstream in it.  --Michael C. Price talk 19:00, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Holy cow.  You removed OM from the pseudoscience list.  That's why it was removed. -- Cri du canard 19:27, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: While we are on fact checking, I (69.178) performed the first removal of OM, at least on that week. & --69.178.41.55 21:15, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Bullshit. It was removed by Linas and locked to protect from vandals like you.  Thanks for that.  :-)  --Michael C. Price talk 20:13, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I object to your violation of WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF, since including well-sourced text that was improperly deleted is not "vandalism."  I also object to your attempting to mislead people. Here is MichaelCPrice removing OM from the pseudoscience article, even though its inclusion was documented by multiple sources.  He falsely labeled the reversion as "restore vandalized text."  Mediators: see the problem I have to deal with here?  -- Cri du canard 20:17, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Ever heard of the "whole truth"?  That would also include Linas' statement that he removed it and the list was subsequently protected (by the powers that be) to prevent its non-consensual reinsertion.  --Michael C. Price talk 20:25, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

text: The whole truth would also involve pointing out that you used the same edit summary text that you found so objectionable when I used it.  Some people would call that hypocrisy. --Michael C. Price talk 20:35, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I have tried to create initiatives for discussing & including any notable, proportionate parts in Orthomed psych & Multivitamin.  I highly recommend that Cri du canard read my edits and talk discussions carefully, and consider his responses for editorial balance carefully. The "pseudoscience" part has been shown to be unaccepted with the most minimal effort, since it doesn't have a leg to stand on.  So far, I have avoided hammering it which is a patience item where such unfounded disparagement is a naked provocation. Even the casual readers without much effort have clearly agreed, OM is NOT p*s*. Time to move forward.--69.178.41.55 19:19, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: BTW 69.178.41.55, I need to discuss strategy with you.  Please create a user account and a talk page.... --Michael C. Price talk 20:17, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

text: 69 repeatedly refuses to acknowledge the multiple sources calling OM pseudoscience.  Not much I can do about that.  He doesn't get to monopolize this article through persistently deleting legitimate points of view that identify OM as pseudoscience. Rather than adopt 69 and MCP's edit-war tactics, I'll wait for the mediation cabal to get to this in a couple of weeks.  -- Cri du canard 19:27, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have hung back on instant deletion of your edits trying to allow growth & sculpt. Wikipedia is an attempt to present encyclopedic, scholarly material.  At some points in these articles, facts collide with opinions, and sometimes scurrilous bilge.  Now I've tolerated your tirade about pseudoscience to give you a chance to readjust to the light (the prime attack-on-orthomed examples usually center around Pauling and vitamin C, where science ca 2005-2006 is beginning to home to roost...for Pauling, which obsoletes most of your references), QW's "niacin for schizo" attack has its problems but is far less "rapid" in recovery, it is a slow climb back from being pilloried by economic competitors.  As far as your sweeping "pseudo-" epitets they are meant as disparaging distraction rather than accurate stmts about a subject.  You are simply billboarding ignorant negative 'tudes in a destructive manner rather than any kind of scholarly or respectful treatment.  Again I'm extending an approach (especially at orthomolecular psych) to try to properly develop your point, but you need to watch the omnipotent feeling when your references are so thin (dated, inaccurate POV pushing of groups with economic conflicts of interest).--69.178.41.55 21:15, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes.  Your opinion is that OM has any basis in reality.  I disagree with this POV, but I acknowledge that NPOV requires that your minority viewpoint be included in the article.  However, as your preceding paragraph demonstrates, you have no intention of permitting the article to adhere to NPOV.  I will thus wait for the mediators to help resolve this problem, as I see several people before me have attempted to reason with you about NPOV and have failed to get you to compromise. -- Cri du canard 22:44, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have tackled the worst of the error contained in that massive, unlabeled broadside with extensive notes to explain each part.  I have repeatedly tried to point out that much of your material pertains to Orthomolecular psychiatry.  The effect of what you are doing is overburdening the article and reader with largely argumentative detail that should go to more specific articles.--TheNautilus 03:20, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Now I am going to take a breather on that broadside and let others comment on the ad hominen aspects of "cult" in that old AAP quote (what do they say now?).--TheNautilus 03:28, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Hmmmm, I see I made an error on the "repetitious" edit note where material was moved from Intro to History, as a new section, so I apologize about that and ask for comments/suggestions about this change in format.  Anyone else?--TheNautilus 03:42, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Violation of [[WP:NPOV]] 

message: :How are we to write articles about pseudoscientific topics, about which majority scientific opinion is that the pseudoscientific opinion is not credible and doesn't even really deserve serious mention?
:If we're going to represent the sum total of human knowledge, then we must concede that we will be describing views repugnant to us without asserting that they are false. Things are not, however, as bad as that sounds. The task before us is not to describe disputes  as though, for example, pseudoscience were on a par with science; rather, the task is to represent the majority (scientific) view as the majority view and the minority (sometimes pseudoscientific) view as the minority view; and, moreover, to explain how scientists have received pseudoscientific theories. This is all in the purview of the task of describing a dispute fairly.
:Pseudoscience can be seen as a social phenomenon and therefore significant.  However, pseudoscience should not obfuscate the description of the main views, and any mention should be proportional to the rest of the article.
The article as it currently stands fails to comply with NPOV.  This is why I've added the tag, and why it should remain until the problem is fixed. -- Cri du canard 18:51, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You simply don't get it, do you?  OM was removed from the pseudoscience list because it isn't pseudoscience.  OM is a minority viewpoint and as such it should be described without having your POV pushed all over it.  It already has plenty of NPOV references to the medical mainstream in it.  --Michael C. Price talk 19:00, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Holy cow.  You removed OM from the pseudoscience list.  That's why it was removed. -- Cri du canard 19:27, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: While we are on fact checking, I (69.178) performed the first removal of OM, at least on that week. & --69.178.41.55 21:15, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Bullshit. It was removed by Linas and locked to protect from vandals like you.  Thanks for that.  :-)  --Michael C. Price talk 20:13, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I object to your violation of WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF, since including well-sourced text that was improperly deleted is not "vandalism."  I also object to your attempting to mislead people. Here is MichaelCPrice removing OM from the pseudoscience article, even though its inclusion was documented by multiple sources.  He falsely labeled the reversion as "restore vandalized text."  Mediators: see the problem I have to deal with here?  -- Cri du canard 20:17, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Ever heard of the "whole truth"?  That would also include Linas' statement that he removed it and the list was subsequently protected (by the powers that be) to prevent its non-consensual reinsertion.  --Michael C. Price talk 20:25, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

text: The whole truth would also involve pointing out that you used the same edit summary text that you found so objectionable when I used it.  Some people would call that hypocrisy. --Michael C. Price talk 20:35, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I have tried to create initiatives for discussing & including any notable, proportionate parts in Orthomed psych & Multivitamin.  I highly recommend that Cri du canard read my edits and talk discussions carefully, and consider his responses for editorial balance carefully. The "pseudoscience" part has been shown to be unaccepted with the most minimal effort, since it doesn't have a leg to stand on.  So far, I have avoided hammering it which is a patience item where such unfounded disparagement is a naked provocation. Even the casual readers without much effort have clearly agreed, OM is NOT p*s*. Time to move forward.--69.178.41.55 19:19, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: BTW 69.178.41.55, I need to discuss strategy with you.  Please create a user account and a talk page.... --Michael C. Price talk 20:17, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

text: 69 repeatedly refuses to acknowledge the multiple sources calling OM pseudoscience.  Not much I can do about that.  He doesn't get to monopolize this article through persistently deleting legitimate points of view that identify OM as pseudoscience. Rather than adopt 69 and MCP's edit-war tactics, I'll wait for the mediation cabal to get to this in a couple of weeks.  -- Cri du canard 19:27, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have hung back on instant deletion of your edits trying to allow growth & sculpt. Wikipedia is an attempt to present encyclopedic, scholarly material.  At some points in these articles, facts collide with opinions, and sometimes scurrilous bilge.  Now I've tolerated your tirade about pseudoscience to give you a chance to readjust to the light (the prime attack-on-orthomed examples usually center around Pauling and vitamin C, where science ca 2005-2006 is beginning to home to roost...for Pauling, which obsoletes most of your references), QW's "niacin for schizo" attack has its problems but is far less "rapid" in recovery, it is a slow climb back from being pilloried by economic competitors.  As far as your sweeping "pseudo-" epitets they are meant as disparaging distraction rather than accurate stmts about a subject.  You are simply billboarding ignorant negative 'tudes in a destructive manner rather than any kind of scholarly or respectful treatment.  Again I'm extending an approach (especially at orthomolecular psych) to try to properly develop your point, but you need to watch the omnipotent feeling when your references are so thin (dated, inaccurate POV pushing of groups with economic conflicts of interest).--69.178.41.55 21:15, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes.  Your opinion is that OM has any basis in reality.  I disagree with this POV, but I acknowledge that NPOV requires that your minority viewpoint be included in the article.  However, as your preceding paragraph demonstrates, you have no intention of permitting the article to adhere to NPOV.  I will thus wait for the mediators to help resolve this problem, as I see several people before me have attempted to reason with you about NPOV and have failed to get you to compromise. -- Cri du canard 22:44, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have tackled the worst of the error contained in that massive, unlabeled broadside with extensive notes to explain each part.  I have repeatedly tried to point out that much of your material pertains to Orthomolecular psychiatry.  The effect of what you are doing is overburdening the article and reader with largely argumentative detail that should go to more specific articles.--TheNautilus 03:20, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Now I am going to take a breather on that broadside and let others comment on the ad hominen aspects of "cult" in that old AAP quote (what do they say now?).--TheNautilus 03:28, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Hmmmm, I see I made an error on the "repetitious" edit note where material was moved from Intro to History, as a new section, so I apologize about that and ask for comments/suggestions about this change in format.  Anyone else?--TheNautilus 03:42, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pseudoscience 

message: Here's a quack claiming an orthomolecular cure for autism, notwithstanding Nautilis's claim that OM doesn't make these claims because of FDA regulations.  I'm restoring the text. -- Cri du canard 05:23, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hey, read the article. He says "...As a homeopathic physician...". So he has co-opted some orthomed protocols, good - maybe he perceives that his practice needs some orthomed reinforcement but that is somewhat different than a pure orthomed.  You are just itching to slather vitriol and abuse on these poor pages.--TheNautilus 05:40, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Can you try to discuss your changes first? You are dumping POV, casting blame where there is *plenty* to share conventionally and misattributing positions at warp speed and, frankly, trashing the page.  Oh, I guess that's the point.--TheNautilus 06:01, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I did discuss my changes.  As the talk page shows, discussing changes hasn't stopped you from unilaterally removing POV tags or reverting edits.  Your repeated violations of WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF mean that I do not wish to discuss this further without a mediator. -- Cri du canard 12:26, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Your double-standard is exhibited by the fact that TheNautilus is the one who deleted the Linus Pauling discussion (without discussing it on the talk page), and then MichaelCPrice reverted several editors' edits (including new information and cites) without discussing it on the talk page.  -- Cri du canard 12:30, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have a lot of relevant discussions on the Talk page.  You are apparently not reading or understanding them.  Your edits & actions are perceived as hopeless, counterfactual POV and tiresome vandalism.--TheNautilus 17:54, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, this is a content dispute about how best to achieve a NPOV. Describing other editors as hopeless or vandals isn't very constructive. Addhoc 18:00, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I disagree that my edits are counterfactual, but it's pointless to have a debate about whose view of OM is accurate because the standard for Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth.  The WP:NPOV rules permit you to include a variety of propositions in the article that I view as counterfactual.  They do not permit you to persistently delete verifiable NPOV information that you disagree with, nor do they permit you to section-fork the mainstream-medical viewpoint into a side section (see WP:LEAD and WP:NPOVFAQ; see also WP:V).  -- Cri du canard 18:42, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This gets back to the SPOV priority issues which I have discussed a little at your talk page.  Other editors, MD & DO, have been more amenable to reason and current science basis to order or even (how to or not) mention various obsolete positions in the articles if they are no longer current facts rather than media drilled opinions (literally for decades). Lawyering over the edits has usually been avoided by informed, scientifically literate editors surfacing issues and resolving them in a fairminded way as an informal SPOV in the spirit of building an encyclopedia with better information content. You are busy chopping out the references to information that verifies the introductory description of orthomed - chopping out definitional self-statements of orthomed, and I don't see conventional medical literature that accurately describes orthomed. In fact the strawman ploy has worked on vitamin C to various degrees for 70 years (Jungeblut 1935, 1937  - 400mg/kg C is interesting for polio treatment, Sabin (wannabe vaccine hero) - 100 mg/kg with even more virulent innoculation methods - C doesn't work, therefore vitamin C doesn't work ever. (uhhhhh, wait isn't there something missing?) And Dr Klenner is quack because he reports his IM / IV use, 1000 - 2400 mg/kg vit C per day, for 60 cases is successful but will never be officially tested, ever, despite trying for two decades)  You still need to improve your edits here, the article has made slight progress on a few sentences but is going  seriously retrograde in paragraphs. There are cites where needed unless you already chopped them out. You still fail to recognize the priority and POV issues where your "authority" is a persecutorial, economically competing if not domineering POV, with in a number cases, demonstrably anti-scientific (deliberately ignoring pertinent evidence and false or misrepresented tests).--TheNautilus 02:02, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orthomolecular "cure" for autism 

message: Since orthomolecular medicine was summarily removed from "Pseudo..." and *not* allowed to return there, courtesy of multiple editors, the orthomolecular medicine related pages (e.g. Megavitamin therapy too) have been under determined attack by individuals bent on  poisoning the orthomed article, removing scientific current & accurate treatment of issues and injecting them with the seriously dated & unbalanced POV of a notorious & scurrilous series of sites that appeal to the prejudices of certain groups & individuals that also involve documented conflicts of interest. Some issues & history that are specific to orthomolecular psychiatry are being debated here and should be there, but are being dumped in as long one sided POV to a more general article.  The refusal to examine current scientific evidence is literally unscientific and is a form of trying to avoid verification.  Other longtime Wiki editors, uninvolved here or in orthomed or even alt med, have referred to these "new" individuals' actions as "crankiness". I respectfully request those individuals to temper their edits.--TheNautilus 17:51, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please read WP:AGF and abide by it.  All I want is for the page to conform to WP:NPOV.  I recognize that you find a neutral view of orthomolecular medicine problematic, but that's because the majority of doctors disagree with your claims. Your persistent attacks on Quackwatch are ironic, given the fact that Quackwatch is relying on the statements and publications of major medical societies, and the main source for your version of the article is the far-from-credible or neutral or unbiased "orthomed.org".  -- Cri du canard 18:37, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  A number of editors, including non-orthomeds, don't exactly agree with your view of WP:NPOV.  Pls see also our conversation at  about POV and reference priority. You POV contains a subset of "allopathic" POV that has other strident anti-anything elements in it.  As long as you keep trotting that "ps" abuse & other confuted or scurrilous labels out when you have had the science part & background explained, as well as you've encountered a similar consensus elsewhere, AGF becomes delicate situation by demonstration. I don't feel you have treated the orthomed supporters with AGF.  Nor do you honor the fairness or sensationalism parts in NPOV either.  Orthomed is a relevant source that describes itself and does contain a large number of direct, appropriate scientific references. In other places, I have hammered "alt med" misused scientific sources hard, so pls re-examine WP:AGF yourself, too. Let me be clear, some of the edits I am unhappy with are likely to be considered disruptive or disparaging upon any careful retrospective review.  Your use of the rules is pretty impressive for a newcomer, about good enough to rise to wikilawyering.  Me? I aim for a quality, encyclopedic article.--TheNautilus 22:00, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You have yet to identify anything I've said or did that contradicts the official NPOV policy, so I fail to see why it matters whether others agree with my "view of NPOV."  The record will reflect that your edits consistently violated NPOV, and that you've repeatedly attempted to prevent others from evaluating the POV of the page by deleting the POV tag when the identified POV problems with this page have not been resolved. -- Cri du canard 22:11, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: counterfactual POV, article trashing

message: Rather, there's a big overlap between them. Alternative medicine is where, by definition, when  something is proven scientifically, it gets coopted by orthodox medicine and is no longer alternative. That's not necessarily true for orthomolecular medicine. As for example treatment of scurvy with oranges and treatment of pernicious anemia with raw liver juice and treatment of pelegra with niacin and so on. It would extend to treatment of hypertriglyceridemia with pharmacological doses of nicotinic acid, even.
It seems to me that by definition, orthomolecular medicine is bound to contain many overlapping claims with orthodox medicine, particular claims relating to optimal nutrition and its impact on disease. In this sense, there's a great deal of overlap between OM and naturopathy, which isn't entirely an "alternative medicine". Some disciplines, like (say) homeopathy ARE entirely alternative, with no overlap between them and orthodox medicine (unless you count the placebo effect). But for both naturopathy and orthomolecular medicine, this is not the case, so we should be careful.
When I look at the ICU studies of critically ill patients, I see them supplemented with commerical formulas containing fish and borage oil, extra arginine, extra glutamate, lots of antioxidant vitamins at way over RDA/RDI, and all of it is supported by randomized studies of mortality and survival. All of this was alternative medicine 20 years go. Today it's orthodox medicine. But it continues to be now, and was when it started, orthomolecular medicine and naturopathy. See the difference? SBHarris 15:59, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, Steve, for that injection of sanity.  From the resounding silence that followed I think we can presume that many of the critics of OM were confusing (and no doubt will continue to confuse) OM with alternative medicine in general -- which does contain many pseudoscientific subcategories.  See the list of pseudosciences for more details.  --Michael C. Price talk 18:50, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I like the list! It is indeed a list of garbage. However, when it comes to orthomolecular and naturopathic hypotheses (which are generally not on here, I'm happy to see), there is nothing unphysical about them, a great deal that makes sense about them and which we DO accept in our normal lives (do we not put Miracle-Gro on our gardens??), and many of them which I've seen in my lifetime pass from alternative to mainstream, with further study. I mentioned fish-eating, and blueberries and so forth are close behind. So I look at naturopathy and orthomolecular as not garbage, but kind of a garage sale of junk hypotheses combined with undiscovered gems ala Antique Roadshow. It all deserves MUCH more respect from orthodoxy than the Energy Field quacks and the homeopaths and so on and so on. <g> Of course my own views are conditioned by years of feeding rodents different diets and watching them age at different rates. (Try doing THAT with an existent pharmaceutical). So I got a strong sense from that of how much there was we don't know, and the direction in which it probably lies. SBHarris 19:37, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Woah! Orthomolecular medicine is not the same as alternative medicine

message: The opening sentence of the article has been changed in the last few days to state that:
: Optimum nutrition and, most broadly, orthomolecular medicine is the term used by proponents to describe the controversial proposition that nutrition should be the primary means of prevention and treatment of diseases. (ref) Orthomed.org Kunin Principles That Identify Orthormolecular Medicine: A Unique Medical Specialty - Richard A. Kunin, M.D. Accessed June 2006. 
However, the reference given fails to support this claim of "primary means of prevention and treatment of diseases". I just could find no such claim, or even anything resembling it, in that reference. In fact, everything I've read so far about this topic has made no such claim. Indeed, if such a claim was made, I, too, would agree it was controversial, and I would dismiss this field of medicine as crackpottery and pseudoscience. However, I do not beleive this sentence is an accurate depiction of what orthomolecular medicine is about. linas 23:56, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, another piece of misinformation being spread around, especially the word "primary".  I'll updating the article shortly.  See the definition I've posted above. --Michael C. Price talk 00:06, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I am disturbed that the guy who is trying to paint the theory as pseudoscience later edits this article to make is sound like a nutty theory, and then claims, "ah ha, its a nutty theory". I don't think its rude or incivil to say that such an edit is a subtle form of vandalism.linas 00:34, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the detective work.  I've placed a vandalism warning on his talk page.  Let's hope he mends his ways.  --Michael C. Price talk 01:47, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Cri du canard is making a basic category error.  The existence of orthomolecular quacks does not make orthomolecular medicine quackery.  Any more than the existence of quack medics (and there are plentry of course) makes mainstream medicine quackery.  This has all been explained before, of course.  A content dispute becomes vandalism when someone repeats again and again the same "mistakes" after being corrected and warned, again and again. --Michael C. Price talk 06:33, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You're changing the subject and not addressing anything I said rebutting your accusation against me.  Which I'll take to be a concession that your claim that I committed "vandalism" because I used the word "primary" instead of "first" was utterly unwarranted. -- Cri du canard 07:24, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I assumed that you accept Kunin as an "orthomolecular quack".  Now go back and reread what I wrote and you'll see that I have addressed your repeated claims that the presence of orthomolecular quack medics implies that orthomolecular medicine is all pseudoscience.  It isn't for the reasons I stated.  --Michael C. Price talk 08:37, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You and Linas claimed that I misrepresented Kunin.  I accurately quoted Kunin.  I was not the person who added the Kunin cite to the page; I think it was Nautilus, but, in any event, it comes from your favorite website, orthomed.org.  The point remains that you continue to falsely accuse me of vandalism when it's not even the case that my edits are inaccurate. Whether Kunin's explicit rejection of science means that OM is pseudoscientific is irrelevant to whether your accusation of vandalism has any basis in reality. -- Cri du canard 07:15, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, you repeatedly and consistently mis-quoted and mis-represented Kunin. You have done this on multiple occsaions. At times, I wondered if you had actually read what Kunin wrote, or whether you just skimmed it.  You certaily did cherry-pick a few remarks that sound negative when taken out of context. Please take the time to read what Kunin says, and really, please do take the time to think about each and every sentence that he writes. Compare what you read to your collection of complaints about OM. I hope that you will come to see that you are mis-interpreting what Kunin has written. linas 01:21, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There seems to be a coordinated effort to bully and discredit legitimate edits by false accusations of vandalism and, here, false accusations of misquoting.  Instead of making a generalized claim that I've misquoted, perhaps you can identify one misquote I've made?  Or even one instance of vandalism?  I don't think you can.  -- Cri du canard 01:43, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: (Two days later.)  I didn't think so. -- Cri du canard 08:11, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intro sentence appears to be false and incorrect. 

message: Here is a SHORT excerpt from a long analysis:
http://www.scientificexploration.org/jse/bookreviews/pdf/v16n2_websitereview.pdf
WEBSITE REVIEW
ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE
Watching the Watchdogs at Quackwatch
The founder and manager of www.Quackwatch.com, Stephen Barrett,
M.D., gave a talk at our local skeptics group early this year in
which he explained how helpful he has been to victims of quacks,
including recovering their money. He recommended his website for
general medical information. He has been a consultant for
Consumers' Union. He has been Co-chairman of the Alternative
Treatments Review Board for CSICOP since 7/80, and has written for
their magazine The Skeptical Inquirer. 
The website is available in 4 languages other than English, and is
said to have had 2,300,000 visitors. At first glance it seems very
complete and useful, with sections on Links to Other Web Sites,
Consumer Strategy: Disease Management, Consumer Strategy: Tips for
Provider Selection, Consumer Protection, Non-recommended Sources
of Health Advice, Questionable Products, Services, and Theories,
Publications for Sale, About Quackwatch, and others. It does have
a Search function. The Quackwatch Mission Statement on the website
contains the following primary activities:
-- Investigating questionable claims
-- Distributing reliable publications
-- Improving the quality of health information on the Internet
-- Attacking misleading advertising on the Internet
A number of webpages (8) were selected arbitrarily because their
topics were familiar to this reviewer, and these were examined
minutely. The findings are used to make generalizations about the
website. The section titles below are from www.Quackwatch.com, as
accessed on 31 Oct 01, each one followed by Comments based on the
most reliable evidence I have found.
[...BIG snip...] [...full text is at the URL...]
All 8 pages from www.Quackwatch.com that were examined closely
for this review, which were chosen simply because their topics
were familiar to this reviewer, were found to be contaminated
with incomplete data, obsolete data, technical errors,
unsupported opinions, and/or innuendo; no other pages were
examined. Hostility to all alternatives was expected and observed
from the website, but not repetition of groundless dogma from
mainstream medicine, examples of which were exposed. As a close
friend and colleague reminded me, the operators of this site and I
may have the same motivation -- to expose fraud. It remains a
mystery how they and I have interpreted the same body of medical
science and reached such divergent conclusions. While Dr. Barrett
may (or may not) have helped many victims of quacks to recover
funds and seek more effective treatment, and while some of the
information on pages of the website not examined in this review
may be accurate and useful, this review has shown that it is very
probable that many of the 2,300,000 visitors to the website have
been misled by the trappings of scientific objectivity.
At least 3 of the activities in the Mission Statement:
-- Distributing reliable publications
-- Improving the quality of health information on the Internet
-- Attacking misleading advertising on the Internet
...have been shown to be flawed as actually executed, at least on
the 8 webpages that were examined. Medical practitioners such as
Robert Atkins, Elmer Cranton and Stanislaw Burzynski, whom I
demonstrated are not quacks, were attacked with the energy one
would hope to be focused on real quacks. The use of this website
is not recommended. It could be deleterious to your health.
Acknowledgment. Expert online searches and editorial aid were
provided by Leslie Ann Bowman. Additional aid from other faculty
at The University of the Sciences in Philadelphia was obtained
from Gina Kaiser, Robert C. Woodley and Sylvia Tarzanin. Ted
Pollard made valuable contributions.
Joel M. Kauffman
Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry
University of the Sciences in Philadelphia
600 South 43rd St., Philadelphia, PA 19104
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by  216.86.90.44 (talk • contribs) 20:09, 28 August 2006   (UTC)
-------------
Excellent contributions, AEL(216.86.90.44)--TheNautilus 22:55, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: REGARDING THE ALLEGED RELIABILITY OF QUACKWATCH:

message: The fictional pseudoscience of fromagalogy argues that the moon is made of cheese, and states that their theory predicts that there will be lots of craters on the moon through analogy to the pock-marks on Muenster cheese or holes in Swiss cheese.  Samantha Scurvy, a prominent mainstream astronomer, publishes a paper observing the heights and depths of numerous moon craters.  Can we say that Professor Scurvy's paper provides support for fromagalogy because it acknowledges the existence of moon craters?  (Just asking.)  -- Cri du canard 11:37, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Bad analogy.  --Michael C. Price talk 11:47, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why? It's the same logic as yours. --Hob Gadling 11:40, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Thought experiment

message: I'm glad see that a  tag has been used instead of a mindless revert.  Perhaps we can start making progress.  --Michael C. Price talk 12:28, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please help me! Probably it is my fault, but after reading the whole article, fixing some references, I can't see why the neutrality is disputed so much. Nearly every statement is referenced. NCurse  work 15:49, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly, but some editors think they're on a crusade to cleanse Wikipedia of all things orthomolecular and that the ends justify the means.  --Michael C. Price talk 16:49, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi NCurse, the lead paragraph was disputed and has recently been significantly altered. Presently, I am not sure whether the current version is going to be an acceptable compromise, so I wasn't planning to remove the tag just yet. Addhoc 17:16, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Addhoc is correct.  I added the tag to this version of the page, which failed to note the full extent of mainstream opposition to orthomolecular medicine.  The page is considerably better now than it was a week ago, but because it's still in flux, we're keeping the tag to highlight to other editors that there is a dispute.  I frankly worry that there will be reversions if I leave the page alone for a week; Nautilus has repeatedly restored POV bias and removed the POV tag when he thought no one was watching. -- Cri du canard 22:10, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

text: It also focussed on the blantly false but apparently sourced statement "Scientific research has found no benefit from orthomolecular therapy for any disease."  --Michael C. Price talk 18:52, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes, I think skeptics would prefer to define OM as the pseudoscientific belief that food nutrients have the capability to cure all disease. While proponents want to present OM as partially in the mainstream, linking to research showing that vitamin levels above minimum amounts can have some beneficial effects for example. Addhoc 19:01, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Progress 

message: The sentence It is this broader use of the term orthomolecular, as originally defined, that defines its usage by mainstream researchers such as Bruce Ames is not supported by the cited reference, which does not use the term orthomolecular at all.  -- Cri du canard 21:53, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Bruce Ames claim

message: I show my opinion with these statements:
* Orthomolecular medicine is a minority view held by under one percent of medical practitioners. The citation doesn't show any statistics for example, it is about OM only. Even if it is true, it's more than brave to write something like that in an encyclopedia. Like that (in case of any citation) it will never be neutral.
* The majority are often dismissive: "Scientific research has found no benefit from orthomolecular therapy for any disease." [3][4][2]   I think there is no problem. This is not the article that says this statement, this is the majority (an other uncitable word) and there are plenty of references.
* Sometimes proponents claim partisan politics, pharmaceutical industry influence, and competitive considerations to be significant factors; on the other hand, prominent orthomolecular proponents sell lines of orthomolecular products, orthomolecular practitioners sell expensive tests of questionable benefit such as hair analysis, It says proponents and the citation shows a Quackwatch article written by only one doctor. There is no pubmed research paper, publication... And Weasel :sometimes... 
Anyway what is the reason for Criticism and relation to mainstream medicine not being neutral? Sorry for not giving specific solutions, I'm thinking. NCurse  work 07:55, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OM proponents, in an effort to keep the main page from being POV-tagged, kept moving the tag to the criticism section, reflecting a misunderstanding of what the tag means.  (One editor told me that, because he didn't think the page had a POV problem, he was entitled to unilaterally remove the POV-tag.)  The old page did have a problem in that the "criticism" section was really a polemic against the critics, but the page as a whole is balanced now. -- Cri du canard 21:25, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  My opinion: 

message: The lead paragraphs were overstuffed with too much information.  Per WP:NPOV, they should be a short summary highlighting what the article is about, and noting the major controversies.  I have done that.  No substantive information from the previous version has been deleted. Rather, the detailed material (both pro and con) has been moved to the appropriate sections within the article.  I think we're approaching something NPOV now.  -- Cri du canard 13:52, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Lead paragraphs

message: I don't think the fish-oil studies are "clearly" orthomolecular.  Again, this is a fromagalogy problem, where orthomolecular medicine tries to claim legitimate nutritional science as their own, and then leverage the unproven orthomolecular-specific claims on the backs of legitimate medicine.Cri du canard 13:52, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, what YOU believe about what orthomolecular people believe, is irrelevant. The most narcissisitic thing in the world is to try to define other people's beliefs for them. If you want to find out what scientologists consider scientology, ask THEM, not their critics. The same for Mormons, Roman Catholics, and whatever. Do not tell the AMA what it believes. Do not tell the AHA what it believes. To find out what orthomolecular practitioners believe, read their publications. Here's an orthomolecular archive which contains many reviews of omega-3 therapy , which is certainly consistant with the definitions of orthomolecular medicine given in the Wiki. These long chain w-3 are naturally found in the body.SBHarris 20:26, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Again it's irrelevant whether or not the studies supporting an orthomolecular POV call themselves orthomolecular or not. Mass fortification of flour with folate to prevent birth defect is an orthomolecular solution to a problem, even if nobody wants to say the word. <P> Don't be a wikilawyer regarding WP:NOR, or you won't have any article left, or any Wikipedia left, either. Putting two sentences with referenced statements together constitute OR, since a point of view is thereby advanced. Alas, it's also inescapable, since if you separate conflicting facts so the contradiction is not noticed, this also advances a POV and is OR. In writing where there are multiple POV, we do POV summation. In a field with multiple POVs to summarize, it's impossible to avoid NOR on a small scale, if you want to summarize larger works. Thus, we break NOR in doing original summaries (which is what encylopedia writing is all about), in order to uphold NPOV globally. You can keep Cassileth's statement, and I'll just copy it and quote him later, alongside the research showing he's wrong, and the reader can draw their own conclusions. One problem is you quote Cassileth, but you don't know what HE means when he says "orthomolecular." So he might not EVEN be wrong, but just beating a straw man.SBHarris 20:26, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Fish-oil

message: This bit of not very original thinking (extremely common among believers in sCAM) is a gem:
:"Much of the criticism stemes from two reasons : (1) much of it has a factual basis but has not been thoroughly and scientifically researched, (2) Many physicians are not familiar with it." 
How can one really be certain that something is a fact without the research? One can certainly experience "something" and believe in that anecdotal moment, but when it comes to medicine, treatment methods for others, and the selling of products, the bar is set much higher. Without good evidence the claims may end up amounting to quackery.
Evidence-based CAM?
All this begs the question - is there such a thing as "evidence-based CAM?"
You see, to me and other skeptics, the idea that there is such a thing as evidence-based CAM is an oxymoron.
Following are some of the thoughts and quotes that reveal and influence my thinking.  I'll start with something from here at Wikipedia:
:Alternative Definition
:The terms "alternative medicine", "complementary medicine" and "CAM" are generally understood in terms of their relationship to mainstream Western medicine, as described above.[4] Richard Dawkins, Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, argues for a different definition of alternative medicine, based not on sphere of usage but on evidence: "alternative medicine is defined as that set of practices which cannot be tested, refuse to be tested, or consistently fail tests. If a healing technique is demonstrated to have curative properties in properly controlled double-blind trials, it ceases to be alternative. It simply...becomes medicine." He also states that "There is no alternative medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't work."[5]
:Well-known proponents of evidence-based medicine who study CAM, such as the Cochrane Collaboration and Edzard Ernst, Professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter, have retained CAM's generally-accepted definition and do not define CAM as Dawkins does. In their view, there can be "good CAM" or "bad CAM" based on evidentiary support. [6][7][8] 
This touches on what I call a "dividing line" and definitional problem as to what we should label as CAM (indeed a problematic term!), and what we should label as EBM. Strictly speaking, from the skeptic viewpoint, "evidence-based CAM" is an oxymoron.....
According to skeptics and physicians like Dawkins, Sagan, Randi, Angell, Fontanarosa, Lundberg, and Barrett, the concept of "alternative" is often being misused in a misleading form of marketing, implying something that is far from the case. Barrett puts it this way:
:"Alternative has two possible meanings. Correctly employed, it refers to methods that have equal value for a particular purpose. (An example would be two antibiotics capable of killing a particular organism.) When applied to unproven methods, however, the term can be misleading because methods that are unsafe or ineffective are not reasonable alternatives to proven treatment. To emphasize this fact, we place the word "alternative" in quotation marks throughout this book whenever it is applied to methods that are not based on established scientific knowledge." - Stephen Barrett, MD 
Although NCCAM funds research, I don't see it proclaiming any "alternative" method as disproven. This situation needs to stop. How many years should a nonsensical method divert funds into wasteful and pointless research, after multiple quality experiments have shown no promise, and proven that the emperor has no clothes? At what point does one proclaim that (for example) homeopathy is dead?
Some relevant quotes:
*"There cannot be two kinds of medicine - conventional and alternative. There is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not, medicine that works and medicine that may or may not work. Once a treatment has been tested rigorously, it no longer matters whether it was considered alternative at the outset. If it is found to be reasonably safe and effective, it will be accepted." -  Angell M, Kassirer JP, "Alternative medicine--the risks of untested and unregulated remedies." N Engl J Med 1998;339:839. 
*"There is no alternative medicine. There is only scientifically proven, evidence-based medicine supported by solid data or unproven medicine, for which scientific evidence is lacking. Whether a therapeutic practice is 'Eastern' or 'Western,' is unconventional or mainstream, or involves mind-body techniques or molecular genetics is largely irrelevant except for historical purposes and cultural interest. As believers in science and evidence, we must focus on fundamental issues-namely, the patient, the target disease or condition, the proposed or practiced treatment, and the need for convincing data on safety and therapeutic efficacy." -  Fontanarosa P.B., and Lundberg G.D. "Alternative medicine meets science" JAMA. 1998; 280: 1618-1619.
*"The "alternative" folks have had their way with the language. Treatments are "alternative" and "complementary" and "integrative" but the fact is that they're not a legitimate alternative if they don't do anything, they're not "complementary" if they don't add to anything but expense and they don't need to be "integrated" if they're just a waste of time and money." - David Ramey, DVM
I see it as problematic that while the established health care system is actively trying to weed out ineffective methods, the CAM system is searching through the garbage heap of discarded and disproven methods, in an attempt to revive and invent methods for which proof is not only lacking, but for which there is often adequate proof of lack of effect.
Here are a few of my articles that directly address these issues:
* Is CAM a UFO?
* A Consumer Advocate's Dilemma: Should CAM be Researched?
* Freedom of Informed Choice
From "Is CAM a UFO?":
:Evidence-based methods are effective, and effective methods should be evidence-based. If a method appears to be effective, then it should be possible to prove it. If the research has not been done yet, it should be. We must remember that "Absence of proof is not the same as the absence of fact; it simply demonstrates the lack of adequate research. - Robert Sydenham. "Lack of evidence in the literature is not evidence of lack of effectiveness." 
:This is often misunderstood, since it contains two poorly understood elements. The first is that effectiveness exists, in and of itself, regardless of proof, or rather, "before" proof is provided by proper research. The second is that lack of proof doesn't justify the marketing of methods based solely on claims of effectiveness, which are hoped to be proven in the future. 
:It is one thing to say: "I believe it's effective, but have no proof as yet." It's quite another to say: "I believe it's effective, and my experience with it is enough proof for me and my customers." 
I don't know if you are familiar with this book (I am not), but the book review title deserves a comment:
> Is Evidence-Based Medicine Evidence Based?
> http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/24/2/562
It's a straw man argument, because it's asking the wrong question. I assume it means something like this:
:"Is Modern Medicine Evidence Based?"
Well, I'd say it's on its way....;-)  The EBM "movement" or paradigm is an attempt to take what the medical system has developed through experimentation, what it has gained from experience, and what it has inherited from its pretty much quackery-filled past, and sort through it to weed out the junk. The idea is quality control, and the job is far from finished. It's a battle fought on several fronts, and not always very well:
#Weeding out the junk that is in what we have inherited;
#Constantly reevaluating earlier findings in light of newer findings;
#Seeking to measure the difference between real effects and the placebo illusion;
#Attempting to ensure that laboratory results are relevant to clinical practice;
#Preventing junk from sneaking in the back door. (NCCAM is doing a great job - to sneak it in.)
#other points?
Shouldn't scientists and Wikipedia editors attempt to alert the public to the problem regarding the misuse of the term "alternative" medicine, and shouldn't they openly adopt Dawkins' (and other skeptics') interpretation regarding the decisive difference between alt med and EBM - evidence of effect? If it's proven to be effective, then it ceases to be alternative medicine, and becomes EBM. Thus, based on the evidence, it is possible for a method to change categories in either direction, based on increased knowledge of its effectiveness or lack thereof.
Just a few thoughts to ponder....IMHO. -- Fyslee 17:37, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree in principle, but it's a semantic and political battle that has already been lost.  "Alternative" is a misnomer, but it's also the standard term.  The place for that discussion is in the alternative medicine article to the extent the cited sources meet WP:RS.  -- Cri du canard 21:35, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "Evidence-based CAM"? 

message: Here it is: -- Cri du canard 23:40, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "About 50 human genetic dis-eases due to defective enzymes can be remedied or ameliorated by the administration of high doses of the vitamin component of the corresponding coenzyme, which at least partially restores enzymatic activity." 
A search of his website fails to show a single use of the term "orthomolecular." Google search of Bruce Ames website for orthomolecular Bruce Ames on the Idea Channel yet he has, based on his research, developed a supplement for human useZey.com.
=====RFC Discussion on Bruce Ames text=====
Price simply readded the text without discussion.  I continue to believe that "Over 40% of the population is hetro- or homo-zygous with the thermolabile variant of 5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase" has no place in a Wikipedia article just as a matter of style.  I further believe that it has no place in an "orthomolecular medicine" article (much less "development of OM" section) when the cited study makes no reference to orthomolecular medicine.  What are other editors' views? -- Cri du canard 18:35, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Your stylistic point has no basis in WP policy.  As for its relevance, the statement is needed to prevent the reinsertion of the claim that OM is of no benefit to "normal" people.  The statement demonstrates that -- given the number of different genetic conditions we are all subject to -- that there is probably not a single person alive who doesn't suffer from some sort of coenzyme binding deficiency that would not benefit from micronutrient supplementation.  --Michael C. Price talk 23:05, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No one ever inserted that claim, so your "need" for the statement doesn't exist.  Moreover, since the article makes no mention of orthomolecular medicine, and the author himself does not claim to support orthomolecular medicine, such detail is inappropriate for an article about orthomolecular medicine.  -- Cri du canard 00:21, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ames evidently thinks such details are important, and recommends daily multivitamins for all on the basis of such details.  --Michael C. Price talk 00:46, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe that's a misstatement of Ames's reasoning, but I'm willing to be corrected.  Please show me a quote showing Ames recommending daily multivitamins because of "the thermolabile variant of 5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase."  But everything I've seen shows Ames recommending daily multivitamins (of the USRDA, not of orthomolecular megavitamin dosing) because people don't eat enough fruits and vegetables ("If people don't eat their veggies then they are in trouble") on merely the recommendation of a balanced diet ("only 10 percent of the population are eating two fruits and three vegetables a day"), and it's a low-cost second-best way of improving health.  That has nothing to do with orthomolecular medicine, it has to do with public policy.  If recommendations for balanced diets caused people to eat sufficient vegetables, Ames wouldn't see the need for vitamin supplements. Ames actually contradicts OM in many ways: "I just think all this business of organic food is nonsense basically. We should be eating more fruits and vegetables, so the main way to do that is to make them cheaper [by permitting more pesticide use]. Anything that makes fruits and vegetables more expensive may increase cancer." -- Cri du canard 02:00, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I see you continue to deny the existence of an overlap between conventional and orthomolecular medicine. --Michael C. Price talk 07:19, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No he doesn't, and he never did. This is your fromagology logic again. If you claim there is experimental evidence for OM, you can't give as an example evidence of those parts of OM that agree with standard medicine anyway. --Hob Gadling 12:02, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  (Preserving old version of now-deleted Bruce Ames section in case further discussion needed) 

message: Price simply readded the text without discussion.  I continue to believe that "Over 40% of the population is hetro- or homo-zygous with the thermolabile variant of 5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase" has no place in a Wikipedia article just as a matter of style.  I further believe that it has no place in an "orthomolecular medicine" article (much less "development of OM" section) when the cited study makes no reference to orthomolecular medicine.  What are other editors' views? -- Cri du canard 18:35, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Your stylistic point has no basis in WP policy.  As for its relevance, the statement is needed to prevent the reinsertion of the claim that OM is of no benefit to "normal" people.  The statement demonstrates that -- given the number of different genetic conditions we are all subject to -- that there is probably not a single person alive who doesn't suffer from some sort of coenzyme binding deficiency that would not benefit from micronutrient supplementation.  --Michael C. Price talk 23:05, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No one ever inserted that claim, so your "need" for the statement doesn't exist.  Moreover, since the article makes no mention of orthomolecular medicine, and the author himself does not claim to support orthomolecular medicine, such detail is inappropriate for an article about orthomolecular medicine.  -- Cri du canard 00:21, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ames evidently thinks such details are important, and recommends daily multivitamins for all on the basis of such details.  --Michael C. Price talk 00:46, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe that's a misstatement of Ames's reasoning, but I'm willing to be corrected.  Please show me a quote showing Ames recommending daily multivitamins because of "the thermolabile variant of 5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase."  But everything I've seen shows Ames recommending daily multivitamins (of the USRDA, not of orthomolecular megavitamin dosing) because people don't eat enough fruits and vegetables ("If people don't eat their veggies then they are in trouble") on merely the recommendation of a balanced diet ("only 10 percent of the population are eating two fruits and three vegetables a day"), and it's a low-cost second-best way of improving health.  That has nothing to do with orthomolecular medicine, it has to do with public policy.  If recommendations for balanced diets caused people to eat sufficient vegetables, Ames wouldn't see the need for vitamin supplements. Ames actually contradicts OM in many ways: "I just think all this business of organic food is nonsense basically. We should be eating more fruits and vegetables, so the main way to do that is to make them cheaper [by permitting more pesticide use]. Anything that makes fruits and vegetables more expensive may increase cancer." -- Cri du canard 02:00, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I see you continue to deny the existence of an overlap between conventional and orthomolecular medicine. --Michael C. Price talk 07:19, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No he doesn't, and he never did. This is your fromagology logic again. If you claim there is experimental evidence for OM, you can't give as an example evidence of those parts of OM that agree with standard medicine anyway. --Hob Gadling 12:02, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: RFC Discussion on Bruce Ames text

message: I added some additional information reflecting the consensus, at least in the medical community, about the lack of benefit of vitamin E supplementation for preventing coronary heart disease.  Andrew73 04:03, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you. It's a lot more time-consuming to debunk than to parrot pro-OM webpages already compiled by supplement-pushers. -- Cri du canard 12:58, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Orthomed considers alpha tocopheryl acetate, especially all racemic, to be missing important natural isomers (e.g. RRR-gamma-tocopherol etc) and that the unesterified forms (tocopherol) are important in some debilitated groups. An orthomed would also probably criticize the results on lack of information (and supplementation) on vitamins C & K<SUB>2</sub>, coQ10, selenium if not the while lot, A-Z. Your test cites pretty much miss the boat, your unfamiliarity gaping. See the prior discussion with SBH especially the bottom half.--User:TheNautilus 10:59, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vitamin E 

message: 1.
"Orthomolecular medicine and optimum nutrition is the theory that mental diseases or abnormalities result from various chemical imbalances or deficiencies and can be cured by restoring proper levels of chemical substances, such as vitamins and minerals, in the body.[1]Orthomolecular medicine and optimum nutrition is the theory that mental diseases or abnormalities result from various chemical imbalances or deficiencies and can be cured by restoring proper levels of chemical substances, such as vitamins and minerals, in the body.[1]"
This confuses and attacks orthomolecular psychiatry as the entire subject of orthomolecular medicine.  Psychiatry is an especially controversial subject in its own right, going through more recent era of Freud, electroshock & lobotomies. It is now missing basic supplement categories (vitamins, minerals,...) in the introduction. A good example of erroneous, radical skeptism hijacking the first sentence, poisoning the well.--TheNautilus 11:42, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: fixed  --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 12:40, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You know, I thought there would be no NPOV controversy by using a dictionary definition of orthomolecular, but I now see that dictionaries are part of the conspiracy, too, part of the ongoing problem with the refusal by some editors to accept WP:V and WP:RS as a standard.  I'm okay with the Hroðulf version.  -- Cri du canard 12:54, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: LOL.  How did you manage to recruit the dictionary, by the way?  I told it not to go to the bad part of town after dark. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 13:55, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Different facts for different folks Stedmans Online. Search / Search in Definition: "Sorry, but the Stedman's Online Medical Dictionary doesn't recognize this term."  Orthomolecular alone :"orthomolecular(,) orthomolecular psychiatry(,) orthomolecular therapy"  Thanks, Hroðulf, but I was not amused at all.  This going to be a really long haul to answer all the ugly "referenced" innuendo, blatant mischaracterizations and "radical skepticism" by long time, POV warring, often anti-scientific, commercially compliant parties, including many of those in Canard's polemic references, even if "official" or "authoritative".  The seismic lines and commercial POV run that deep.--TheNautilus 15:57, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Nautilus isn't being especially coherent in his response, but he seems to be implying that I made up the Stedmans definition.  Here it is online, word for word as I quoted it, though experience has taught me that Nautilus doesn't ever apologize for making hotheaded accusations. -- Cri du canard 18:00, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Profound errors and misrepresentations

message: Although the Pauling definition which merely notes that orthomolecular treatment consists of optimally adjusting substances naturally found in the body (thus encompassing everything from diet therapy to megavitamin therapy), in practice we should probably note that there exist both weak and strong versions of the orthomolecular belief statement.The weak one is controversial enough: "Medicine should pay attention to optimal nutrient levels in the treatment of every disease, lest medicine find itself actually treating subclincal malnutrition, when it thought it was treating pathology." Years ago I read an article pointing out the very high prevalence of untreated malnutrition in acute patients (it said essentially that the skeleton in the hospital closet, was too often the patient). But the "orthodox" idea of what constitutes "good nutrition" has changed a lot over those years. It's not just the RDA for ill people anymore. I've mentioned the extremely fortified enteral feedings which are becoming routine in ICU's--- they probably deserve a "bullet" in the orthomolecular claim section, and I'll get around to it eventually. Those canned feedings with with all those mono additives didn't exist just ten years ago, and anybody trying to implement them would have accused of orthomolecular quackery. Arginine?! Hmmm. And EPA used to be synonymous with snake oil. If fact, EPA is actually a large fraction of cold water snake oil, so there you go. The very idea of using it for rheumatism! Lock up those snake oil salesmen. We want Vioxx. So what do we learn from our double blind trials? The GISSI study found no effect from vitamin E in 11,000 people with heart disease. Aha, that proves the orthomolecular quacks are wrong about vitamin E. Okay. But the same study found a drop of 30% in cardiac mortality and 20% in overall mortality, from omega-3 supplementation. This is a larger effect than any statin trial has yet found. And what does that show? Well, for too many people it shows that omega-3 supplementation can't be an orthomolecular therapy. Since it works. ;)  But not to worry: when it comes to actual physician practice, fish oil is still TREATED as though it was orthomolecular (since most cardiac patients are on a statin and a minority on fish oil supplements, rather than the other way around). So I suppose it works out in the end. Fish oil will need to be made a lot more expensive and drug-ified before it's used very much. Powerful medicine needs to be expensive-- we all know that instinctively, do we not. And they're working on that. I mentioned OMECOR.  The strong version of the orthomolecular belief is the idea that most diseases have their origins in malnutrition, or at least can be managed by diet and nutritional therapy alone, if the patient cooperates (especially true for chronic conditions). These heretical ideas have their origin in studies of disease incidences in populations eating various diets, such as the China Study. And in shorter term tests of things like the DASH diet and the Mediterranean diet. In short, believers in the strong version of orthomolecular medicine are guilty of feeling about diet and nutrition, much the same way as orthodox medical people feel about their drugs. The cads. So what are we going to do about them?  My suggestion is that we just remember that everybody tends to overrate the tools they're most familar with. I personally can't convince myself that there's more bad thinking on one side than the other. Too many times I've seen a grossly obese patient with 4 obesity-related diseases, 11 pill bottles, 3 polypharmacy-related problems, 1 drug reaction, and a partridge in a pear tree. And if you've done much internal medicine, so have you. In such a world, one wonders if orthomolecular thinking is really contributing the harm which its critics suggest. So what do we do, here?  If we let the orthomolecular people coopt the Mediterranean diet and fish therapy, is it not just a slippery slope from there to 50 grams of vitamin C IV?  How are are we going to stop it? I dunno.  How did we stop orthodox medicine from running away with itself with expensive and dangerous treatments which didn't do much good? :)  I suggest we just apply those brakes to orthomolecular therapy, so that it becomes the moderate and wise practice that we all know and love in standard medical practice. Not so hard, is it? SBHarris 17:23, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Definitions

message: "Proponents argue that these claims come from clinical observation often from physicians with a lifetime of general practise."  The cited sources don't seem to be talking about the specific claims, given that they were written before the Princeton Brain Bio Center existed; "these claims" is inappropriate, then.  Can someone either rewrite this sentence for accuracy, or find a real supporting cite, or delete the sentence?  -- Cri du canard 17:52, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disputed 

message: I was the one who re-added the POV tag a week ago.  While the article is far from perfect, and there continue to be problems with POV-pushing edits, I don't have problems with the current NPOV status, and I'm pleased to see that OM proponents have, for the most part, been more willing to compromise on edits in the last week than in previous hard-line incarnations.  I hope that that continues after I stop watchdogging the article daily.  Does anyone believe there are still POV problems?  If not, I'll remove the tag once the article stops being changed hourly. -- Cri du canard 18:30, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV tag 

message: In medicine, the word "shown" is a fairly powerful one, and is properly reserved only for the tightest conclusions based on the multiple studies of the sort that produce the best evidence (meta analysis of level 1 studies-- see evidence based medicine). Authors rarely use the word "shown" with regards to their own work. Conclusions are generally presented more modestly as "suggested." Other people referring to the authors' own conclusions from single studies generally use the neutral words "found" or "finding." As in Author A et al. "found" in study X that Y was true. Or the "findings" of study Y do not agree with the "findings" of similar study X. 
Generally it's a symptom of severe bias to write that studies which conclude things you don't agree with, "suggest" so-and-so (a less confident and robust conclusion), while at the same time writing that studies of the same quality which find the opposite, actually "show" the opposite so-and-so conclusion. It's also not a good idea to use the phrase "not shown" to describe causation for a finding with a certain nonsigificant p value, if you wouldn't have been equally prepared to use the word "shown" if the study p value had instead made significance. This also is bias-- less well recognized, but just as real.    
The article on orthomolecular medicine actually does show this type of bias, with the word "show" being used only in connection with negative studies, and the word "suggest" being reserved for positive studies which tend to support orthomolecular or pro-nutrient-therapy ideas. I have tried to fix this, but have been accused of WP:POINT, which is a Wikispeak for somebody who tries to illustrate a problem by showing somebody else what it would be like to be on the receiving end of the sort of bias that they are generating. Generally such direct illustrations are frowned upon, but on the other hand, something must be done for people who don't seem to get it, even with such direct and heavyhanded illustration. I therefore suggest that somebody else take this matter in hand, and carefully read the article and edit it to conform to a neutral statement of the conclusions of various studies. As noted, I generally like to use the word "finding" to refer to study conclusions, since it's rather neutral, like the use of the world "statement" or "conclusion," rather than the often hackle-raising term "claim." SBHarris 21:42, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The history of orthomed related results is replete with conclusory examples of execrable "negative proofs" that still heavily bias medicine today, starting with Jungeblut's observations of survival with 400mg IM ascorbate for a milder polio innoculation, followed by Sabin's test of 100mg/day IM ascorbate for a more severe polio innoculation, Sabin's failure (try to) to confirm Jungeblut's results, and the unsupported (datawise) disparagement of therapeutic vitamin C from the 1930s onwards to this day. The monkeys were 2-3 kg. (Klenner:"...The accuracy of Rivers’ evaluation of these works relating these observations seems questionable when he states (1941) that Sabin (1939) definitely demonstrated that Jungeblut’s (1937) claim that Vitamin C deficiency increases the susceptibility of the experimental animals to infantile paralysis is not valid.")  An objective assessment might consider the failure of Sabin's test design to replicate (and the experimenter) rather than blame the molecule. Again & again.  Note: 133-200 mg/kg/day is still below later Klenner's recommended use of IV ascorbate for polio in humans.  After almost 70 yrs of these hijinks, a number of people naturally question the extent of "mainstream" bias on the subject of megavitamins, and collaterally, orthomed. Klenner repeatedly emphasizes the necessity of large threshold amounts for efficacy throughout his career, unheeded & untested.  The critics may be "mainstream" something, perhaps medicine, but it is sure isn't science, they have grossly failed for decades to cough up *any* relevant data.--TheNautilus 12:54, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conclusions "shown" vs. "found" vs. "suggested" 

message: Please see and regard this edit by Michael [].
Disregarding his highly incivil block threats that he made after I tried to correct him, I think this sould be discussed, rather than resorting to revert warring like Michael.
By including this quote we are trying to imply that a leading critic of OM has actually verified part of it, which is blatently absurd and POV. The claims make no claim of OM, and appear to be fairly uncontroversial nutrion claim. This is in fact quote mining and an attempt to confuse the reader. Jefffire 10:45, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The overlap of OM with other fields is being discussed elsewhere (i.e. directly above) on this talk page.  --Michael C. Price talk 10:52, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What is discussed on this page is OR. Unless you can verify that the claim is OM, your inclusion is specious, non-neutral, and an exercise in decieving the reader. Jefffire 11:04, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would also suggest that issueing a 3rr warning to an editor after they make one revert, when you have made three, is hypocrisy and immensely incivil. Jefffire 11:08, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Restoring lost sourced quotes is not uncivil.  I suggest that repeatedly deleting them is.  --Michael C. Price talk 11:13, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This quote was obviously misplaced and misattributed. The sentence about mainstream science was properly referenced, the "balancing quote" does not address the issue of the general view of current mainstream science and as included implied wrongly that the original source was equivocal in its assessment - it wasn't Gleng 11:28, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: MichaelCPrice, you have misused the 3RR warning again, this time by placing it on my talk page. I have made only ONE revert. Stop misusing warnings. As to your argument about being "from the same website," that was not my summary, nor anyone elses, as far as I can see. You are concocting a straw man argument. -- Fyslee 11:37, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So explain how the deletion of a counter-balancing sourced quote from the same website is justified?  --Michael C. Price talk 11:46, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original research connection 

message: As far as any overlapping between accepted nutritional science and the work of orthomedical practitioners, it is rather irrelevant to the issue of pseudoscience, but still should be dealt with here in its own section. This might resolve some of the disputes here.
Of course there is overlapping, and this applies to nearly all areas of pseudoscience and dubious claims. It can't be any other way. Of course the believers also believe in some sensible things. Duh! That doesn't make them any less guilty for believing in their pseudoscientific ideas or making their dubious claims. On the contrary, they misuse the sensible aspects to trick people into believing their nonsense is also sensible.
To ensure that the areas of overlap are not misused here by believers in OM, they should be pointed out and clearly labeled as sensible science, while continuing to point out the errors of OM. It is these areas of contention and dubious claims that prevent sensible nutritionists from accepting OM with open arms. -- Fyslee 12:37, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is that the line between "dubious claims" and "sensible science" keeps shifting from year to year. They keep moving the little sucker. And nutritionists are generally to be found on the reactionary side of it, whereever it is, and orthomolecular people on the future side (mainly because they favor supplements of everything). I am old enough to remember when nutritionists advised figuring out ways to drink the water you boiled your stringbeans in, to get your folate, and certainly not to take a folate PILL. Those things were dangerous, since they could mask pernicious anemia, you know. It was actually illegal to make a megadose folate pill, and still is. After a while, when it became apparent that neural tube birth defects weren't going to be stopped by people drinking the string bean water, the nutritionists okayed supplements for the high-risk population (premenopausal women) who refused string bean water. But not for anybody else, particularly not senior citizens, because that would be wholesale population vitamin supplementation, and we're all against that. Then there was a giant catfight between the FDA and the USDA about adding folate to the food supply. The nutritionists generally sided against the idea, citing all that dementia which would be hidden by people with B12 deficiency, taking folate. (All this time, B12 level blood tests are the most common nutritional test orthodox doctors actually do--  the irony). Then the USDA won, and added folate is now in your flour. And then the nutritionists suddenly, and magically, SHUT UP. Even made little noises of approval after a time. For now, mass population supplementation had been turned into good old garden-variety food-fortification (yawn), like thiamin and iodine, and it's no longer even an issue. And it certainly was never orthomolecular, no, no, no.  A nearly identical battle happened over the idea of fortifying infant milk-replacement formulas with DHA. This was a crank idea right up until the moment the government decided it wasn't. With the US government deciding it wasn't nutty, long after some other governments had decided oppositely. You see the difficulty? Somebody has to take the progressive side on these issues, and (looking at history) I don't see it being the nutritionists (though I wish it was, because I generally like nutritionists). So who, then? SBHarris 16:59, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Overlap between nutritional science and OM

message: I propose deleting the following bold text, to remove weasel words:
*Some orthomolecular proponents claim vindication because the American Heart Association dietary guidelines recommend two servings of fish per week for the general population, and to "consider" fish-oil supplements for patients with coronary disease who cannot obtain one gram of fish-derived omega-3 by dietary means. 
*Proponents of orthomolecular medicine argue that its claims are asserted on the basis of clinical observation, often from physicians with a lifetime of general practise. 
Addhoc 16:13, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with the second removal.  Removing the six words in the first one, by themselves, however, changes the meaning of the sentence to falsely imply that the AHA guidelines have anything to do with OM. -- Cri du canard 21:47, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Would you prefer the removal of the whole AHA paragraph? Addhoc 09:49, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

text: If it turns out the statement can't be verified, then, yeah, the whole AHA section should be removed.  But it shouldn't be that hard to verify; we've seen OM proponents on this page take retroactive credit for curing scurvy. I'd keep it with the tag for a week before deleting all that rebuttal research. At a minimum, the paragraph should be archived on the talk page so that we don't have a problem if the paragraph is deleted, and some OM proponent does reinsert the claim with verification. -- Cri du canard 08:18, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Other statements here qualify for the old weasel word microscope: "Many mainstream medical physicians regard most orthomolecular therapies as insufficiently proven for clinical use,[5]"  What are their names?  How many is "many"? "In turn, mainstream medicine is often dismissive of orthomolecular medicine" followed by a quote from one guy who refuses to use the correct definition for what he claims never (ever) works, plus several cites who quote THIS guy's opinion.  "Mainstream medicine disputes the validity of most orthomolecular therapies based on the lack of authoritative studies and the poor results from the studies that have been done." No names. No surveys, and particularly no surveys that establish that the people surveyed have any idea of just what it is that they're dismissing. "Many physicians express concern that megavitamin and orthomolecular therapies used solely as alternative treatments can create dangerous delays in obtaining their conventional treatments, such as radiation and chemotherapy for cancer.[69]" How many is "many"? Is the number given in the reference? If so, here's the place to stick it in. 503? 11,438?  4 out of 5? It can't take up that much space. Again, we're getting a real double standard on this WEASEL thing, because it cuts both ways. So, how about we tone it all down, before we all get cut with same saw?  SBHarris 18:49, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe OM proponents added the weasel word to the first phrase above.  I agree it shouldn't have been added and I have fixed.  NB that your complaint isn't quite analogous, because there is a cite.  -- Cri du canard 03:09, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weasel Words 

message: I have a problem with this article; I've looked on PubMed for "orthomolecular medicine" and this raises only 29 articles in all, including just 5 reviews. Of these, only one is in a properly authoritative source, and that is a review titled "Unproven methods in cancer treatment." Searching for just orthomolecular still gives only 218 items in all, but catches 24 reviews (including the 5 above). Of these 34, 6 are not in English and 2 have no authors listed; most appear to make at most passing reference to orthomolecular, only 3 have it in the title, many of the others are reviews of risks associated with large vitamin intake or reviews of "fads". Of the three reviews with orthomolecular in the title, one is from Pauling and two from the same group in Puerto 
Rico are follow ups of Pauling's review, and are specifically focussed on ascorbic acid. So there is a shortage of any V RS for this subject. I started searching because the definition of OM as given didn't make much sense to me and much of the dispute here might be attributed to a fundamental lack of clarity in what this is all about. The notion that insufficiency of essential nutrients in a diet can lead to disease is not controversial, is trivially and obviously true, and is part of mainstream science. The knowledge that some rare genetic diseases mean that affected individuals are unable to metabolise nutrients is also not controversial and is mainstream. The knowledge for instance that ascorbic acid is an antioxidant and that an excess of reactive oxygen species are linked to cell damage is also not controversial. So what about this whole area is noteworthy, as even the term appears essentially unused (for comparison, the term "molecular medicine" , although not exactly a conventional term appears in 4046 articles). 
It does appear to me that the notion of orthomolecular medicine (insofar as there is any peer reviewed science to inform the article) is inseparable from megavitamin therapy, i.e. the notion that there are health benefits for normal individuals in consuming certain vitamins at levels substantially higher than those conventionally regarded as adequate. I therefore suggest merging the articles, and restricting the focus to this single central issue.Gleng 14:56, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps a somewhat less derogatory, less inflammatory google trends search would be this one: http://www.google.com/trends?q=orthomolecular%2C+molecular+medicine together with the observation that as of right now, we have no article at all on molecular medicine. Another keen obserevation might be: http://www.google.com/trends?q=orthomolecular%2C+megavitamin+therapy which indicates that no one is searching for the term "megavitamin therapy", and that there have been zero press articles using the terms "orthomolecular" or "megavitamin therapy". Rah, bah, sis-boom-bah. linas 00:40, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I think Gleng's comments are illustrative of the general confusion caused by the removal of the previous descriptive orthomed text in the introduction.--TheNautilus 11:20, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge Proposal 

message: Instead of searching for "megavitamin," you might try "megadose vitamin": 40,000 hits. There's also a huge amount of stuff under merely "vitamin therapy" which large doses are often used even in conventional medicine under various circumstances, but are defined as not being "megadose" by virtue of the virtue of the person doing the administering. ;). Orthodox doctors, you see, do not use megadose vitamins. Never. No matter how big the dose is, it's impossible for it to be megadose, because megadose means the wrong dose, and orthodoxy never uses the wrong dose. You see how easy this is?  This is related to definitions, you know. Pauling defined orthomolecular originally as the right dose, or getting the right molecules in the right concentration for health . This would include withdrawing some phenylalanine from the diets from PKU suffers, and providing insulin to diabetics. However, Pauling's critics didn't and wouldn't hear him. What they HEARD was "megadose vitamin therapy" and they knew they were against that. Cassileth: "In 1968, the Nobel-prize-winning scientist Linus Pauling coined the term "orthomolecular" to describe the treatment of disease with large quantities of nutrients." 
Well, no, that wasn't what Pauling said. But nobody wanted to repeat or say what Pauling said, because part of what Pauling said was inarguable. So a straw man was set up, and 4 out of 5 medical societies came out against it. (The 5th one was composed entirely of dentists who recommend Sugar Frosted Flakes, and nobody paid any attention to them). 
We have the same problem with this article. We can put down Pauling's definitions but we'll turn blue before we find any orthodox medical society who is really willing to debate the issue on Pauling's grounds. Instead, the issue gets redefined to "Megavitamin Therapy" yawn, and everybody's against it. And so am I, for the record. I personally only use just-the-right-dose vitamin therapy, whenever I give vitamins. How about you-all? SBHarris 02:16, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think Gleng's comments are illustrative of the general confusion caused by the removal of the previous descriptive orthomed text in the introduction.--TheNautilus 11:20, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: DEFINITIONS again

message: Key pull-quote: "Where did the emotion come from? Why did
academic medicine deploy the language of denunciation against
proponents of vitamin supplements?"
Why, indeed! What were they afraid of? Why have the supposed guardians
of "scientific medicine" reacted like religious fanatics whose faith
has been challenged?  Is it perhaps because they ARE religious fanatics
whose faith has been challenged?  Questions, questions.
These are brief snippets only. Full text for scholarly purposes
is available on individual request to aelewis AT provide DOT net
SNIPPETS:
http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/158/20/2187
Archives of Internal Medicine  Vol. 158 No. 20, November 9, 1998
Battling Quackery
Attitudes About Micronutrient Supplements in American Academic
Medicine
By James S. Goodwin, MD and Michael R. Tangum, MD
INTRODUCTION
"THROUGHOUT THE 20th century American academic medicine has
resisted the concept that supplementation with micronutrients
might have health benefits. This resistance is evident in several
ways: (1) by the uncritical acceptance of news of toxicity, such
as the belief that vitamin C supplements cause kidney stones; (2)
by the angry, scornful tone used in discussions of micronutrient
supplementation in the leading textbooks of medicine; and (3) by
ignoring evidence for possible efficacy of a micronutrient
supplement, such as the use of vitamin E for intermittent
claudication."
[...snip...]
"[L]et us review some of the words [used to describe vitamins and
vitamin therapy in standard medical textbooks]: 'massive,
carelessness, useless, indiscriminate, false, indefensible,
wasteful, insidious, unnecessary, deplored, and poor medical
practice.' Over the last several decades there have been many
areas of medical practice about which uncertainty and controversy
exist, and these are well covered in the various editions of these
2 textbooks; they include the drug treatment of hyperlipidemia and
hyperglycemia, surgical vs medical treatment of angina, and
indications for tonsillectomy or hysterectomy. But in none of
these discussions does one encounter the contemptuous descriptions
found in the discussions of multiple vitamins."
[...snip...]
"Negative attitudes about micronutrients did not evolve recently;
they have deep roots. The resistance of the medical community to
the concept that scurvy, beri-beri, and rickets were caused by
vitamin deficiencies has been well documented.[47-51].... The
pathologists who dominated academic medicine in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries lacked the vocabulary to integrate the public
health observations of vitamin deficiency into a pathophysiology
dominated by the germ theory.[49,50] A popular term used to
describe vitamin deficiency disease, negative causality, evidenced
the pathologists' awkwardness in grappling with the
idea.[47,49,50]"
[...snip...]
"There are many factors that influence the adoption of new medical
treatments other than strict consideration of efficacy, toxic
effects, and cost.[5,6,54-57] For example, the financial
incentives conferred by patent protection that stimulate the
aggressive marketing of new pharmaceuticals were lacking in the
case of micronutrients.[55] However, these factors do not explain
the anger and scorn illustrated in the quotations from medical
textbooks given earlier. Where did the emotion come from? Why did
academic medicine deploy the language of denunciation against
proponents of vitamin supplements?"
"For answers we return to the idea with which we introduced this
discussion. Galileo is one of the heroes of present day science.
We see him as a role model, the man of science battling the forces
of unreason. It is therefore extremely ironic, and not a little
unsettling, to consider the possibility that, in the fight between
academic medicine and the various proponents of micronutrient
supplements, the role of academic medicine was more analogous to
the 17th-century curia than it was to Galileo. But one senses some
of the same vehemence, the same anger directed against
"popularizers" of the benefits of micronutrients that must have
greeted Galileo. He was not persecuted by an ignorant mob of
religious zealots; his enemies were the intellectual and scholarly
elite, whom he had bypassed, usurped, and rendered irrelevant."
"Of course, this was precisely the course followed by many of the
proponents of the benefits of micronutrients, the most famous of
whom was Linus Pauling, the chemist who intruded into clinical
matters. It is instructive to reread the review articles and
editorials published in the 1970s ridiculing and condemning the
ideas of Pauling. He was treated as a dangerous enemy, although a
few years before his death, like Galileo, he was rehabilitated to
the status of a genius with controversial ideas."
[...snip...]
END SNIPPETS
-----------------------
NOTE ON COPYRIGHT:
I sincerely believe that my offering of this material is in accord with the Fair Use
doctrine, three of the four key factors being, to wit:
1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial
nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; [clearly this use is NOT of a commercial
nature and it is entirely for educational purposes]
2. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work
as a whole; [the quoted text is about 500 words, out of the total of approximately 3500
words of the whole article, not including references (with references, over 5000 words)]
3. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. 
[clearly, this use will have no effect on either, except perhaps a positive one]
::Hi, in my opinion, this shouldn't be included in the main article without trimming and rewording. Although it is very useful and interesting. Addhoc 18:42, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ahem. You missed some history. The general population was told not to take folate in vitamins, but women of childbearing age were told they could take folate pills, but only if they weren't getting their 5 servings of fruits and vegetables daily. This state of affairs lasted about 3 years. Finally, in 1998, folate was added on a mass scale to flour in the US, resulting in a drop in neural tube defects of about a third.  As of 2004, Europe is still resisting doing the same. SBHarris 01:00, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  When it is integrated, it won't be called "orthomolecular."  If you've noticed, they don't even called megavitamin therapy "megavitamin therapy" when it's standard medical procedure. Nobody ever called high dose nicotinic acid "megavitamin therapy." And in fact, nobody ever calls the standard treatment for B12 malaborption (which is 1000 mcg B12 once a month by injection or every day by pill), "megavitamin therapy." Even though this is about 500 times the RDA(RDI) at a dose, so it's megavitamin therapy if the term has any meaning. There's a serious matter of linguistic double standards here which seems likely to continue. Orthomolecular people are damned for advocating "megavitamin therapy" even in cases where they don't, and orthodox doctors are never admitted to be using megavitamin therapy, even in cases where they do.  Soon enough one can see that the issue isn't vitamins at all. Well, what is the issue? Critics say the issue of use of "science." But mass supplementation of the entire population with a nutrient, in hopes of catching a few people who may be short of it (as we do with iodine, folate, fluoride, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, etc, with more to come), is a very statistical kind of medical treatment. That kind of random supplementation, in hopes of perhaps doing some undernourished soul some good, in other venues would run a high risk of being called "quackery." It is certainly hard to find the nubin of the philosophy which separates public policy from vitamin store overenthusiasm. In many cases, the only difference I can see is that the policy hasn't seriously been proposed, or else it's financially or aesthetically difficult.  For example, is there any reason not to fortify the food supply so that every single person on Earth gets 1000 mcg of B12? None, so far as I can tell! The only drawback would be pink food. And if your Naturopath did that and charged you a lot of money, the only result would be a slightly depleted bank account, and perhaps some good for many an elderly person with low B12 levels. Is it the money wasted, which makes it quackery? For the price of all the B12 tests Medicare and insurance underwrite, we might actually be able to fortify the food supply with enough B12 to make a difference. Hmmm. SBHarris 01:00, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Thanks for your input, AEL, I think much of your material should go in the article, to provide some much needed sourced balance.  --Michael C. Price talk 11:53, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Assuming it can be verified. Currently all we have is OR accusations. Jefffire 12:26, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It was sourced:  Archives of Internal Medicine Vol. 158 No. 20, November 9, 1998   --Michael C. Price talk 12:34, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was of course refering to accusations of prejidice and quackery in the above rants. It's very strange that a supposedly scientific topic is soliciting such personal attacks from supporters. Jefffire 12:52, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I did think that a discussion about science might avoid Godwin's law. Now, you have provided some references and these will be useful. But this is not the place to change centuries of medical practice, it's an encyclopedia. As such it will always side with the most authoritative sources, rightly or wrongly. Now it is odd that someone would found an entire new branch of medicine to avocate what ought to have been viewed as changes to traditional nutrition, but the motives of OM's founders are not important. What matters are verifiable views and opinions that we can report on. Medical journal are the place to debate effectiveness or otherwise, because doing so on Wikipedia is a waste of time and betrays an unscientific approach. Jefffire 12:24, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, this page is purely for discussing how we can improve the article and isn't an open ended debating forum. Addhoc 12:28, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archives of Internal Medicine: 'Tudes & the Anti-Quackery Quacks