Talk:The China Study

Denise Minger
Why is the site of Denise Minger not mentioned? It contains a lot of information why the China Study should not be valid https://deniseminger.com/the-china-study/ --Rcsmit (talk) 09:04, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Blogs are not considered reliable sources. And this is a blog by someone with no relevant expertise and a professed strong interest in subjects like astrology and the paranormal. RockMagnetist(talk) 21:45, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

This is an article about a book
There seems to be some confusion about the subject of this article. It is not about the China–Cornell–Oxford Project, which has its own Wikipedia page and in any case only occupies one chapter of the book. It is also not about whole food or therapies for cancer. It is about a book. As such, it should provide background to the book (not the project), a summary of its contents, as well as any analysis, information on publication, and reception (see WikiProject Books). For information on the book's contents, the book itself is the primary source, and it is sufficient as long as interpretation is not added (thus, tags requesting a non-primary source are misguided). I am going to do the following: RockMagnetist(talk) 21:25, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Move much of the lead into a section called Contents.
 * Remove the non-primary tags.
 * Move the background on the project to the page about the project.

I have also removed the Medref and fringe theories tags because those are not relevant to an article about a book. RockMagnetist(talk) 19:46, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Unreliable sources
I just reverted a bunch of unreliable quackery sources, Reddit, Mary Dan Eades, Weston A. Price Foundation etc and chunks of text that verge on copyvio. Psychologist Guy (talk) 13:41, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

"Contents" section
Wikipedia articles need to be based on secondary sources, so a huge section with Wikipedia editors' interpretation of the source is not acceptable, especially when it is making fringe claims in the SCI/MED space. Alexbrn (talk) 17:44, 20 May 2021 (UTC)
 * This is not an article about the science. It is an article about the book, and the material that you have removed is a summary of the book's contents, for which the book itself is the best source. See this discussion and this one from WikiProject Books. I have done my best to summarize the contents without adding interpretation. If you disagree, please give specific examples. RockMagnetist(talk) 18:22, 20 May 2021 (UTC)
 * It is making medical claims, sourced to an unreliable source (the book), and is completely undue. Wikipedia should not contain editor's own digests of popular science books, but articles must instead be based on secondary sources. It is a particular concern since this book contains fringe/pseudoscientific material. I have raised a concern at WP:FT/N. Alexbrn (talk) 19:26, 20 May 2021 (UTC)
 * The book is full of citations of high-quality peer-reviewed scientific literature, so I think you're too quick to claim it's fringe. In any case, we're still discussing an article about a book. I have notified WP:WikiProject Books. RockMagnetist(talk) 19:39, 20 May 2021 (UTC)


 * This is not an article about the science. It is an article about the book I agree, and as it is about the book, it should not be repeating claims of science from the book, but rather summarizing the contents and directing readers to relevant articles to learn more about the topics the book covers. A 3700 word explication of each chapter in the book is far beyond WP:UNDUE, and becomes a serious NPOV problem when it presents uncritically the numerous claims in this book, many of which are flatly contradicted by the very sources they cite. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants   Tell me all about it.  20:13, 20 May 2021 (UTC)
 * It's not clear to me how UNDUE applies in this case. Is there more than one point viewpoint about what the book says? And what are the contents, if not scientific claims? Or are you saying that UNDUE somehow applies to the length of an article? The article is definitely summarizing the contents of the book, and in my judgement I could not have done it clearly with fewer words. RockMagnetist(talk) 20:44, 20 May 2021 (UTC)
 * In an article about a book, it strikes me as absolutely WP:UNDUE for the synopsis section (which is generally quite brief) to be the longest part of an article. "An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject, but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject." Articles about a book rarely summarize it in much detail. Secondary coverage instead tends to emphasize things like its composition and publication history, influences, and reception. As a point of comparison, WP:NOVELPLOT suggests only 400 to 700 words for the synopsis. Roughly 1-2 sentences per chapter strikes me as sufficient here. You might compare to a non-fiction book article I wrote, Daughters of the Samurai. ~ oulfis 🌸 (talk) 00:59, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
 * That makes sense. I can try to do that, although I suspect that Daughters of the Samurai didn't have as many concepts that needed explaining. I must admit, though, I was finding it very time consuming to write such detailed summaries, and I never managed to finish the synopsis. RockMagnetist(talk) 01:14, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Some other useful comparison points might be some Good Articles like Madonna: An Intimate Biography, The Road to Total Freedom or especially relevant The 100-Mile Diet. In general, I'd say any specific examples are out of place in a synopsis, and if there is a background concept that needs explaining, that concept probably ought to be explained on its own article which is then linked. For example, I did not try to explain the Iwakura Mission, or in fact anything about Meiji-era Japan, in the Daughters of the Samurai article. So there might be places where your detailed writing would not go to waste. ~ oulfis 🌸 (talk) 01:22, 21 May 2021 (UTC)


 * As for the claims that this book is fringe/pseudoscience or that its claims are "flatly contradicted by the very sources they cite": If you have reliable sources that establish your claims, I welcome their addition to the article. So far, the only sources anyone has found that are critical of this book are blogs written by people with dubious credentials. RockMagnetist(talk) 21:00, 20 May 2021 (UTC)
 * (ec) The plot summary of The Lord of the Rings is only 2800 words, and that trilogy of novels contains over 1100 pages. This book has 417 pages, and you wrote 3700 words about it.
 * As for the factual accuracy of the book: Science Based Medicine - The China Study. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants   Tell me all about it.  21:04, 20 May 2021 (UTC)
 * That article does raise some plausible concerns, and the author does have some medical credentials (although not, apparently, research experience) but it's still a blog. And I have to wonder about her judgement when she quotes Denise Minger (someone with no research credentials and a passion for astrology) on the scientific validity of the China Study proper. By contrast, Campbell has published hundreds of articles in top-tier peer-reviewed journals. So it seems like pretty thin justification for dismissing his work out of hand. RockMagnetist(talk) 22:36, 20 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I strongly suggest you go to WP:RSN and search for "Science Based Medicine", check the link count to get an idea of how often the site is used, and read Science-Based Medicine before you dismiss it with "but it's still a blog." It is, in fact, not a blog, but an online-only magazine with an editorial board and strict fact-checking, which evolved from the editor-in-chief's blog. You might also note that their entire editorial board consists of well-known, highly-respected physicians. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants   Tell me all about it.  13:41, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
 * O.k., fair enough. And this article would certainly benefit from a more in-depth discussion of the content from third parties. RockMagnetist(talk) 22:10, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
 * The summary is way too long for an article of its length. It cites zero independent sources and is therefore totally undue. Hemiauchenia (talk) 02:48, 21 May 2021 (UTC)


 * There are some overly aggressive and rude edits to this page. The more thoughtful arguments above interpret UNDUE as calling for a trimming of the synopsis, not a complete removal. But it seems that we have some wikilawyers here who would rather nuke the article than improve it. That said, I'm fine with 's removal of a paragraph from the lead. RockMagnetist(talk) 04:27, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I can't find any rudeness in this entire discussion. Note that unsupported accusations of bad behavior are, themselves, considered bad behavior. And, somewhat ironically, are quite rude. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants   Tell me all about it.  16:24, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I said the edits were rude, not the discussion. Blanking extensive work by someone when a more constructive approach would be to summarize the summary, so to speak. Trimming it is something that I'd be willing to do, but why would I bother starting from scratch to make a shorter summary if I think that someone might just blank that too? RockMagnetist(talk) 22:07, 21 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Any summary of points in the book needs framing by secondary sources to establish due weight, with particular attention to a need to avoid airing fringe notions per WP:GEVAL. Science-Based Medicine is a fine WP:RS for fringe science content per WP:PARITY. The edit-warring and personalization of comments is concerning. Alexbrn (talk) 05:24, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I have no opinions about the scientific or medical content in this article, but I made a few edits which have the article looking appropriate from the bookish point of view. I'd like to see a "composition" section, especially since the book comes such a long time after the studies. I also assume there is probably more to be said in the reception section about the book's controversy, and about its financial success. But my research interests lie more in the realm of eighteenth century sonnets, so I don't plan to edit further here. As the article is edited I would warn that it is important to avoid WP:OR in the form of citing scientific/medical studies: unless those studies mention this book, they are not relevant to this book's article. Citing scientific studies is a sign you are creating a WP:COATRACK. Presumably the debate about medical/scientific content belongs on that China-Cornell-Oxford article. ~ oulfis 🌸 (talk) 07:51, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Some time ago, I tried to find information about the composition of the book, but didn't succeed. Any suggestions for ways to research that? RockMagnetist(talk) 22:16, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
 * For contemporary works, I've had the best luck locating composition information in author interviews conducted around the time of the first publication. In this case I would be interested in questions like, when they first decided to write the book, how long from then to submission of the manuscript to a publisher, whether there was any discussion/changes in plan in terms of the choice of publisher, and especially any details related to the joint composition (when and why they co-authored, how the labour was divided, etc.) Once you find a few of these details, arrange them chronologically in the article. This is often tricky information to track down but, I think, the hallmark of a good book-related article, which provides the whole history of the book as an object. ~ oulfis 🌸 (talk) 23:34, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh, actually, I'm not sure that the further reading and external links sections are OK. My instinct is that scientific sources are not suitable here, only sources that would be about the book itself. But I am not confident enough to delete. ~ oulfis 🌸 (talk) 07:57, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
 * The best detailed review of The China Study can be found online at the redpenreviews website . The book was reviewed by Stephan J Guyenet and was peer-reviewed by Travis Masterson. I think we should use this source to expand the article. Psychologist Guy (talk) 16:18, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree. Between that and the SBM review, there are quite a few facts about this book that don't appear in this article at present. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants   Tell me all about it.  16:24, 21 May 2021 (UTC)