Talk:Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine

Untitled
Reading like brochure ware at the moment. No references. Trimming back and starting to look for good secondary sources that talk about the RLHIM. SimonTroote (talk) 10:40, 17 September 2010 (UTC)


 * This article was only half finished, I intended to add in the citations last night but was then unable to. That should have been patently obvious from the fact that the article was only started yesterday. The article does not read like a 'brochure' but simply states FACTS (not POV, as your edits did - you clearly have an agenda and are clearly trying to promote it here - Wikipedia is NOT a place for the promotion of personal views on topics, it is an encyclopedia, and this is not an article on alternative medicine per se, but on a specific hospital).Rangoon11 (talk) 12:31, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

And nor is a place for bochureware - theonly references you have so far. The opening of the hospital was reported on by a major London paper with a significant point of view. It is worth including that in the context of this developing article.SimonTroote (talk) 13:00, 17 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I have no view either way on the benefits of alternative medicines - I don't personally use it and have no professional connection with it - and this article as I have written it is completely neutral on that issue, as it should be. The web site of UCLH is an acceptable place to cite details such as facts about the list of services provided at the hospital, its chronology and size. I have not made any comments about the quality of services at the hospital, its reputation or the benefits or otherwise of alternative medicine.

You clearly have an agenda, which is patently clear from your edits here and your edit histoty. Wikipedia is NOT a place for the promotion of personal views. Your edits to this article are nakedly POV and unencyclopedic. You have no interest in the creation of a concise, high quality factual article. You have simply taken the opportunity presented by my having taken the time to start this article to use it as a mouthpiece for your views on alternative medicice.Rangoon11 (talk) 13:11, 17 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I thought a core principle of wikipedia was to assume good faith? Surely, if the newspapers are reporting controversy on the day the hospital opens, then that is worthy of a mention in the article? To ignore this would indeed introduce a blindsided point of view to the article.
 * And Rangoon11. You appear to create lots of aricles about UCL health services? Would you like to declare any COI before we continue? SimonTroote (talk) 13:42, 17 September 2010 (UTC)


 * It's patently clear from both your edits to this article and your edit history that you are not editing in 'good faith' but are motivated by an agenda on alternative medicine. You may be quite right, it may be 'quack medicine', but this article it not the place for the promotion of those views. At the very least you should focus on the many Wikipedia pages which deal with types of alternative medicines (and which I have attempted to link to from this page when possible).


 * Yes one very brief article was written in the Evening Standard quoting some critics of the name change. Fine, but in the context of the histroy of a 200 year old hospital, is that appropriate for mention? In my opinion, certainly not. Please refer to this page: What Wikipedia is not, particularly WP:SOAP, WP:FORUM and Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information.


 * The important of the newspaper article hinges on the purpose of the article. If it is to cover the RLHIM, then bad press on day one is indeed notable. If, on the other hand, you wish to write an overarching article which assumes that we can treat the RLHH and the RLHIM as one entity then we have many more problems. I would suggest that an seperate article on the history of the RLHH would indeed be quite a good article and stand on its own. But to assume that we can treat the RLHIM and the RLHH as one continuous entity causes a few issues, I would suggest. SimonTroote (talk) 14:36, 17 September 2010 (UTC)


 * It wasn't a criticism on day one, the hospital was established in 1849, this was merely a change of name. There is no justification for separate articles pre- and post- September 16th, this is the same hospital at the same location and the with same organisational structure and management, it is merely a renaming. If you want to create a separate, factual, balanced, neutral and high quality article on the whole history of the hospital, with detail on the whole period from 1849 to the present day, then your reference to the criticism of the name change may find an appropriate home. However your edits to this article are a clear breach of What Wikipedia is not and will now be deleted.Rangoon11 (talk) 15:50, 17 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Re my own interests, yes I have been active on UCL health pages recently, but on many other UCL related pages as well, I have generally been attempting to improve UCL coverage on Wikipedia (and health is now a very big part of UCL). I did study at UCL in the past but I strongly doubt that that is in any way a conflict of interest. I certainly have no financial or professional connections with UCL now. If you look at my history you will see that I have also edited many pages which are completely unrelated to UCL and health.Rangoon11 (talk) 14:09, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Scope of Article
Rangoon11 You appear to be contradicting yourself. You say that the article is about 'the hospital that was estalished in 1849' but suggest a separate article is created for the history of that hospital.

The article is clearly about the entity RLHIM which only came into existence this week. It may have inherited building space and staff from a former institution, but now has a very different remit that the founding homeopathic london hospital. The fact is that the RLHH did not really come into existence in 1848 but after a charter grant in 1947/8(?). The original london homeopathic hospital was on a different site. After you have replace so many handles and heads, can you really be speaking about the same hammer?

I too suggest that separate article is created for the RLHH and this one sticks to its titular subject. Then we can agree on sources. Currently, your approach is to only coopt sources from the institution itself and thus you can never claim to produce a neutrl article based on good secondary sources. Refusing critical elements on the basis of spurious historical arguments won't wash.

So, then. Can we agree on scope and sources before moving on? 82.25.238.91 (talk) 17:13, 17 September 2010 (UTC)


 * No contradiction at all, many institutions with Wikipedia pages have both a main article for the institution, which may have a paragraph or so on the history of the institution, and then a separate full article on the history of the institution. I do not actually feel that such a separate article is justified in this case, since the institution is not, in my view, sufficiently notable, and there are not sufficient sources of information to create such a page. The point that I was making was simply that only in the context of a very lengthy history of the hospital could your references to the article in the Evening Standard be in any way justifiable (and not a clear breach of WP:RECENT).


 * There is absolutely no doubt that the hospital is the same institution pre- and post- the recent change of name - employment contracts, location, management, organisation and services are all the same. If you want to argue that the hospital was founded in 1948 then you may have a slightly better argument, but I would argue that the mere granting of Royal status did not create a new hospital, it merely changed its status. If you look at the Wikipedia pages of far older hospitals, such as St Bartholomew's Hospital, you will find that they generally only have one main article, and not articles for each of their many different organisational structures. To create separate articles would generally be counter-intuative, duplicative and confusing to readers.


 * Re sources, it very much depends on the type of information being sourced and the subject of the article. For an articles about an individual it would clearly be inappropriate to use a web site created by that individual as the primary source for the article. For an article about a British public hospital, where the organisation is heavily regulated by the British state, to use that hospital's own web site as the source for entirely non-contentious facts such as the types of services provided at the hospital is entirely appropriate. Rangoon11 (talk) 18:51, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, I am not so sure it is clear cut that the ontological problem of what is the 'Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine' can be swept aside so easily. To identify it as being synonymous with the RLHH has many problems. The RLHIM shares its building space with other functions, so the building itself does not define what it is. The practice of homeopathy cannot do so either since that is no longer a central and defining feature of the entity. Is the mere continuation of staff over change sufficient to define a continuous entity? If a company merged or changed its name then the legal status of the original company may cease to exist. Can we show a continuous legal entity perhaps?

But the elephant in the room here, and the issue I have most problem with your approach is that, the notability of the RLHIM (and the RLHH) could be defined by the controversial nature of what it practices. The RLHH has never been uncontroversial and the last years of its existence has seen it constantly under threat. The RLHIM was born into controversy - as testified by my newspaper reference, which you saw fit to remove. If this article is not to be a brochure for their services, then how would you propose tackling the issue of the notoriety of the RLHIM (whether or not you wish to extends its existence back through other hospitals?)82.25.238.91 (talk) 19:24, 17 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't doubt that 'alternative medicine' is highly controversial. I did not create this article because I believe in the efficacy of alternative medicine, but simply because I belived that the hospital was sufficiently notable to warrant an article because of its size, profile, age etc. I tried to make the article both as concise and as neutral as possible, it is entirely factual and makes no value judgements either way on the quality or efficacy of care provided by the hospital. I strongly believe that any arguments about the benefits or otherwise of the various therapies used by the hospital per se should be made on the Wikipedia pages for those particular therapies, which I have linked to as much as possible.


 * I must confess that I don't know much about controversies to do with the hospital being a part of the NHS or UCLH. I do firmly believe that the article should be neutral and encylopedic however. Inevitably if refences are made to controversies, countering references will in time be made by those connected with the hospital about how good the quality of care is at the hospital etc, and the article will degenerate, will become unnecessarily long, unencylopedic and messy. Many Wikipedia articles suffer from this, and become battlegrounds to the benefit of neither reader nor editors. As it stands the article is purely factual and neutral. I ask you to remember that this is not an article in a newspaper but an encyclopedia. Rangoon11 (talk) 19:48, 17 September 2010 (UTC)


 * And that is why the scope of this article is so important. If it is to cover the RLHIM as a body that came into existence this week, then the controversery cannot really be ignored. If is to assume that the RLHIM is just minor part of a broader history of the London Homeopathic Hospital then, yes, a broader view on the controversy is required. Either way, it must play an important part as otherwise the article will ignore significant POV on the subject and so not be neutral. Ignoring such issues does not make the article more encyclopaedic. I can put this week's controversy in a broader historical perspective if the article is to encompass the more general subject of London Homeopathic hospitals. My preference would be still to limit to its current incarnation. SimonTroote (talk) 22:18, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Orwellian - not Wikipedian?
I am disturbed by the line that reads: "The hospital was renamed the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine in September 2010 to better reflect its activities".

This seems to me to be a very Orwellian explanation for what actually prompted the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital to change its name. The change had far more to do with the absence of any scientific evidence in favour of homeopathy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy ) and yet this element is completely ignored by a line that looks as if it came out of a press release by the hospital's marketing company.

I do not have the in-depth knowledge of the subject to venture an edit, but believe that someone with a more appropriate background should change this to reflect the standards of impartiality more worthy of the aims of Wikipedia. This reference contains more background information on the subject matter: http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2010/09/an-obituary-royal-london-homeopathic-hospital-1849-2010.html --621PWC (talk) 16:14, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Homeopathy
I note that homeopathy is now very visibly missing from the list of treatments given by the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine. Does anyone known when this transition happened, and what the backstory was behind it? Was it concurrent with the renaming? -- The Anome (talk) 14:47, 14 November 2015 (UTC)