Talk:Efficacy

Lutheranism
This part of the article is extremely biased in religious views and should be removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.76.29.92 (talk) 18:46, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Lead
The explanation in the lead is not accurate for the lighting or electronics usages. Is it accurate for the medical ones? If so, we should move it to a section for them; if not, we should delete it.Ccrrccrr (talk) 00:38, 2 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Hearing no support I rewrote it.Ccrrccrr (talk) 03:08, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Efficacy of a source vs. radiation
I just reverted a change to the section that begins "in lighting design." What is there not correctly describes the way the term is used in lighting design. The change was to make it correctly describe the way the term is used in optics. If you want to add a new section or paragraph that says "In optics,..." that's fine. But don't put in the false statement that that's what it means in lighting design.

See also the talk page for luminous efficacy.Ccrrccrr (talk) 23:41, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Efficacy vs. Effectiveness
A note on their difference in the medical field should probably be included see: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9855432 209.6.92.237 (talk) 15:45, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

'Critical Thinking' section seems not to make sense
The 'critical thinking' section seems not to make sense. It now says this: "In critical thinking, efficacy denotes soundness and validity working together to reach a balance between the two."

But, in logic, 'soundness' is defined in such a way that no argument can be sound unless it is also valid. It is not clear, therefore, what one could mean by 'a balance between the two.' I note that the wikipedia article on 'soundness' says this:

An argument is sound if and only if 1. The argument is valid. 2. All of its premises are true.

Moreover, I also note that the section cites no sources. And the wikipedia article on critical thinking makes no mention of 'efficacy.'

For these reasons, I think someone should delete the section, or re-write it with appropriate citations, and with some attempt to explain the basis for the use of terms like 'valid' and 'sound' in seemingly non-standard ways.

66.203.188.244 (talk) 05:45, 1 February 2013 (UTC)SteveD

I agree with the above comment that the 'critical thinking' section does not make sense. The section as it stands sits awkwardly with standard views regarding soundness and validity in logic. I am going to delete this section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Peripattikos (talk • contribs) 00:36, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Misuse of 'efficacy' when applied to a lamp
Efficiency is performing a task relative to the amount of energy expended.

Efficacy is the degree to which a task achieves a desired result.

Efficiency is often assumed to be strictly unitless. Input units must equal output units (e.g. W/W) and efficacy is used when units are involved (e.g. lm/W). This is an incorrect assumption and a misuse of efficacy.

Efficacy is how effective a task is in accomplishing its intended purpose without regard to energy spent. An antibiotic exhibits 100% efficacy if it eliminates the entire population of microbes it was intended to eradicate. Energy spent in eliminating the microbes is irrelevant.

Efficiency, on the other hand, need not be unitless. Automobile fuel efficiency is expressed as miles/gallon. Miles traveled is the task and gallons of gasoline is a measure of energy spent.

Some argue that to avoid confusing electrical efficiency with luminous efficiency, efficacy should be used signify luminous efficiency. This is still a misuse of efficacy! And it conflicts with the true meaning of efficacy when applied to a lamp: the adequacy of a lamp’s light output for a particular task. To avoid confusion, the appropriate terminology is simple: refer to electrical efficiency as “electrical efficiency” and refer to luminous efficiency as “luminous efficiency”. Simple. Straightforward. No confusion. No misuse of terms.

Oxford English dictionary definitions “fluorescent lamps are efficient at converting electricity into light” “there is little information on the efficacy of this treatment”
 * Efficiency:	(refers to definition of ‘efficient’.)
 * Efficient:	(especially of a system or machine) achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense:
 * Efficacy:	the ability to produce a desired or intended result:

Note the pertinent example usage of ‘efficient’. Also note the lack of reference to energy in the definition of efficacy.

MaxEbb (talk) 17:27, 9 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Agreed, but you'll never get the rest of the world to go along. Kendall-K1 (talk) 02:47, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Will be asking an admin to initiate splitting this article
…at least into biomedical versus other disambiguations. Please, comment regarding your view of this. (As it stands, from my perspective, this is a near useless article, certainly from the perspective of the included science.) Le Prof  Leprof 7272 (talk) 06:15, 28 May 2014 (UTC)


 * It is not a valid topic. If there is any notable content it should be merged with other articles. Bhny (talk) 19:34, 7 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I focussed the topic on medicine and pharmacology. Bhny (talk) 19:40, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Opinion statement moved to Talk
The following statement, appearing as a part of Footnote [1], is moved here. If it is expressed in the cited source, it can be returned, with page number. If it is not in the cited source, another source stating this has to appear. If it cannot be sourced, it should be discarded, or modified to a source:"There is some confusion caused by the fact that the FDA has a mandate to insure that drugs are "safe and effective," but in reality the FDA will approve drugs that have been proven to have clinical efficacy, without any of the required proof of "clinical effectiveness" by this definition."

Note, primary sources are not what is needed at this article. Sound, respected medical and graduate textbooks (not undergraduate biology), and journal and book chapter review article—good secondary sources—are what are specified in WP:VERIFY. Cheers. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 13:52, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
 * The statement above, which was removed from Footnote [1], is false in my opinion and in my experience. The FDA approval process ensures that drugs are "safe and effective", it does not ensure that drugs are "safe and efficacious". If you look at FDA verbiage, safety is things like toxicology and adverse events, including rare adverse events. Effectiveness is efficacy (ability to have the desired clinical effect) but also other factors that may decrease a drug's effectiveness, such as shelf-life, proper labeling, proper instructions for physicians and patients, and so on. The FDA doesn't just want a safe drug, and they don't just want a drug which displays efficacy in one test tube model or one rat model. They want a drug that is effective in the real world, and that will require extra things (like a good label).Fluoborate (talk) 06:53, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Does this content deserve
…to be such a significant proportion of the overall article?"In pharmacology, effectiveness refers to the ability of a drug to produce a beneficial effect.[citation needed] A distinction is made between 'method' effectiveness, which describes the effect achievable if the drug was taken as prescribed, and 'use' effectiveness, which is the effect obtained under typical use circumstances when adherence is not 100%.[citation needed] The widely used intention to treat method of analysing clinical trials provides estimates of 'use' effectiveness which are typically biased compared with 'method' effectiveness.[citation needed]"

I think we need to further, more effectively explain what the title concept is, rather than develop definitions of what it is not (which belong elsewhere). Cheers. Leprof 7272 (talk) 14:30, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Corrections to the definition of efficacy
I'm afraid that the definition of efficacy on this page was out-of-date and inaccurate. I have made minimal corrections and additions. David Colquhoun (talk) 17:25, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your (particularly!) expert contribution to this page. Regarding your additions (citing your own published work), I'm concerned that you have used a very particular definition of efficacy (E) without letting the readers know of this change; you are defining it as the "equilibrium constant for the shut-open isomerisation". My feeling is that we should stick wit the IUPHAR definition for intrinsic efficacy, perhaps discussing other (arguably better) way of measuring efficacy separately.
 * You chosen definition of E does work for ion channels (although doesn't account for subconduction states) assuming the del Castillo-Katz mechanism, and doesn't work for G-protein couple receptors (to which you allude). I wonder whether you might be able to define this in an accessible way in the text, as without a definition here a read might interpret this E as equivalent to "intrinsic efficacy" (which it is not)? Klbrain (talk) 21:30, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

This page still isn't up to Wikipedia's standards
I have just come back to this page. The pharmacological definition of efficacy is still wrong I fear. The person who coined the concept, RP Stephenson (1956), isn't even mentioned. Neither is the fact that his methods for measuring it were shown, in 1987, to be wrong. A proper account would have to include the historical development of the idea. Sadly the IUPHAR definition for intrinsic efficacy makes little sense either. Incidentally, you say that my definition of efficacy doesn't work for GPCR. I think that it does, but the lack of detailed mechanisms for GPCR, and the slowness of measurements, means that the relevant measurements can't be made. That's discussed in the 1998 reference that I gave.

I think that it makes no sense to include the other definitions on the same page. They should be moved to separate pages, with a disambiguation note. I'd be happy to write an entry on efficacy (pharmacological) as a separate page if you want. David Colquhoun (talk) 13:40, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
 * there is a separate page, at Intrinsic activity, to which Intrinsic efficacy and Efficacy (pharmacology) redirect. It is linked through the main hatnote in the Pharmacology section; perhaps it that article which should be improved. Klbrain (talk) 03:06, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Theology
I reversed your recent edit as it radically changed the scope of the topic from pharmacology/medicine to some. Perhaps your entry could sustain its own page, like Efficacy (theology). There is the also the broader question of whether the medical content should exist here. I'd be tempted to change this page to a disambiguation page, then link to related pages link intrinsic efficacy, linking also the existing hatnotes. Thoughts welcome. Klbrain (talk) 23:28, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

RfC regarding page restructuring
Should this page be converted to a disambiguation page, with the formation of new articles to cover medicine and theology; with pharmacology content merged to intrinsic efficacy? Klbrain (talk) 12:59, 16 February 2019 (UTC)


 * No, I don’t think so. The topic is general, it shouldn’t lock into being limited to the current subsections.  Or at least it doesn’t seem worth the redo rewrites.  Cheers Markbassett (talk) 03:29, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I can't follow your argument there. The current page discusses efficacy in the context of medicine/pharmacology, but misses other meanings of the term. Wikipedia pages aren't dictionaries, so shouldn't be a list of possible meanings of a term, but rather a disambiguation page allows those separate uses to be listed with links to the appropriate pages. That is why we have separate pages for Mercury (element), Mercury (mythology) and Mercury (planet), with a DAB at Mercury. So too should Efficacy be structured. Klbrain (talk) 18:06, 22 February 2019 (UTC)


 * No, it should not be a disambiguation page. The current page covers the different interpretations of the word from several scientific fields, and should still be expanded to other fields (engineering, etc.). JohnThorne (talk) 19:59, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose - I really like the page the way it is, to be honest. I think its well written and worth keeping. If you want to add detail about the Theological definition, you should fee free to do so in a new section, and then tack a summary of that content onto the lead...-- Shibboleth ink (♔ ♕) 18:38, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Following the outcome of the RfC I've reintroduced the Theology section, written by Epiphyllumlover and deleted (pending discussion) by me. Klbrain (talk) 14:47, 20 March 2019 (UTC)