User talk:LeadSongDog/Archives/2012/September

The Bugle: Issue LXXVII, August 2012
The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here. If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 01:00, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Reverting vandalism
Thank you for reverting the vandalism to "Lung cancer" this morning. Would it be okay if you warn offenders after you find vandalism, please? Otherwise, the offender may not realise that it has been spotted and fixed. Also, it becomes easier for other editors and the ClueBot to spot a trend of repeat vandalism by checking the talk page.

In this case, I have already warned the offender (with a level 2 warning, because of repeated vandalism). Thank you. Axl ¤  [Talk]  09:51, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reminder, but in this case there wouldn't have been much point: it's a schoolip. I just added that template on the ip's talkpage. LeadSongDog come howl!  03:00, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Military history coordinator election
The Military history WikiProject has started its 2012 project coordinator election process, where we will select a team of coordinators to organize the project over the coming year. If you would like to be considered as a candidate, please submit your nomination by 14 September. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact one of the current coordinators on their talk page. This message was delivered here because you are a member of the Military history WikiProject. – Military history coordinators (about the project • what coordinators do) 09:24, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Parkinson's science learning project in Wikiversity
Hi. I'd like to bring your attention to a new learning project in Wikiversity. As you have been involved with the discussion on the wikipedia Parkinson's disease page I felt you might be interested in looking at the project and perhaps even contributing material to it. Please see my Talk page, http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User_talk:Droflet#The_Science_Behind_Parkinson.27s_learning_project, the subpage, http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User_talk:Droflet/ProjectDescription or the project itself , http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Portal:The_Science_Behind_Parkinson%27s. It would be great if you could bring the project to the attention of others who might be interested in helping us develop it. Thanks.

Jtelford (talk) 17:11, 17 September 2012 (UTC)  (My Wikiversity Username is Droflet)

Placebos
I don't want to get into a long off-topic argument about the placebo effect, but I think you're conflating minor statistical noise with actual clinical effects. I think I could argue all day that those "clinical trials" (cough, gag, puke) that show some effect of acupuncture (I'm assuming you're alluding to that, because you use the word "sham") in pain, but you could be referring to other studies, is just a bunch of lame studies. First of all, pain is so subjective, that to power some sort of statistical difference would require maybe 10's of thousands of patients. Even then, I don't see it.

But, even if I concede some placebo effect for pain, and pain alone, (and I'm so skeptical that I'm rather ill doing that), it's still just a tiny subsection of all clinical outcomes that we could expect from CAM. I mean, if we were to build an article about some random medical treatment modality (evidence based), we would write how it would treat cancer or prevent measles or something. If we were to choose some CAM modality, say acupuncture, which is supposed to do everything, the only thing you could state is that it has a placebo effect for pain. Which means that of the totality of medicine, it treats about 0.00000001% of what it's hypothesized to do. I guess that's what I'm saying about the placebo myth. Maybe we can we say it does one thing, pain relief, but that's about it. In the undue weight world, saying "placebo" makes it sound like these CAM treatments do more than they really do.

They don't do anything more than pain. They can't reduce the length of a viral infection, unless you can show me some plausible route of the brain inducing some improvement in the immune system. I just read some reviews where that has been thoroughly debunked with cancers, so it just can't happen.

I just think we shouldn't give CAM any ground. It's crap. In the world of clinical trials, placebos are failures, so why would we say it's anything more than crap? Anyways, this is just a commentary, which is why I write, and not spend a lot of time editing Wikipedia. :) But I do understand the studies that you referenced. I just reject them for poor quality, as do many other smart people. SkepticalRaptor (talk) 19:40, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I sympathize with your viewpoint, but the history of CAM articles suggest that we'll do better to stick to the WP process, as ugly as it can be. To be clear, I don't for a moment think most of these modalities can cure anything directly (with some exceptions for herbals and variations on physiotherapies). On the other hand, if someone subjectively feels better or is simply distracted from their discomfort, they are more inclined to exercise, take nourishment, move stiff joints, etc. These things do have real effects, even if they are small and indirect. When you say "In the world of clinical trials, placebos are failures" it seems that you've missed the point. The effect of placebos in trials is non-zero, or trials wouldn't need placebo controls, would they? If you doubt that, I'm sure we can track down some multi-arm studies that have separate arms for no intervention vs. placebo (or sham) vs. active treatment and compare the former two arms.
 * The history of homeopathy goes back to the era of heroic medicine, and that still echoes in their doctrine, which has remained remarkably static over time. Sure, the advocates of homeopathy exaggerate iatrogenic problems in "allopathic" medicine, but if we can't treat facts as facts, we'd be as bad as them. LeadSongDog come howl!  01:49, 29 September 2012 (UTC)