Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Medical Scientism


 * Medical Scientism - pure polemic from Mr Natural Health. A respectable article about the Scientific method in medicine could of course be written, but not by this user and not with this title, which is inherently POV. Adam 05:11, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Scientism and merge anything that's not just another rant from Natty Aitch -- never mind, there's nothing that isn't just MNH rant. Make it a redirect, don't bother with the merge. &mdash No One Jones (talk) 05:23, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * Cleanse it with fire. silsor 05:15, Jan 16, 2004 (UTC)
 * SAVE, of course!!! This is a brand new article.  It is far too soon to vote to have it deleted. Adam needs to learn how to exercise better judgement.  He should also stop putting profanity in to these Wikipedia articles. -- Mr-Natural-Health 07:05, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * That would be a fair point to make if you were User:X and you were writing about Frogs of the upper Orinoco. But we all know that you are a crank whose only interest in Wikipedia is as a place to air your crank POV. Adam 07:24, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * More of 'the one way' or the highway? -- Mr-Natural-Health 04:13, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * You do go on. silsor 07:26, Jan 16, 2004 (UTC)
 * Dear sweet merciful Glod. . . Medical scientism has been discussed in reputable journals (albeit using a definition rather different from that preferred by Kool Natty H), so there is reason for a discussion of the phenomenon. However, the logical place for that is in the article on scientism, since "medical scientism" is a term of recent coinage which has not been analyzed in any real depth, except perhaps by Cranko the Magnificent here. Lengthy spittle-flecked rants against the scientific community and pharmaceutical companies, unsupported by any real research, simply don't make good articles. &mdash No One Jones (talk) 07:58, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * Apparantly deliberate misrepresentation and falsification. Delete with prejudice.ping 08:14, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. It obviously needs extensive NPOVing, but it seems to be sufficiently distinct from scientism to merit its own topic. Rasmus Faber 08:49, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * Precisely! Why is Adam voting more than once?  Ergo, I am making a second comment. -- Mr-Natural-Health 18:02, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. POV essay by single-issue activist who has yet to contribute anything NPOV. Andrewa 08:35, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep but rewrite. I've made a very stubby start. The fact that an article is POV is not sufficient cause to list it on this page. Bmills 09:32, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC) As the author seems intent on retaining the POV rant, I change my vote to delete.Bmills 14:25, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * The title is inherently POV, so it can't be made NPOV. It was created for the sole purpose of POV-promotion. Different philosophical approaches to medical knowledge is a perfectly legitimate topic, but the expression "Medical scientism" pre-judges the issue, just as "Goddist superstitionism" pre-judges an article about religion. Adam 09:55, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * BMills has kind of persuaded me that since the expression "medical scientism" exists it is legitimate to have an article that acknowledges that fact. If I though the article could be confined to the form it is now in, I would withdraw my deletion nomination. But of course Mr Fruitcake will come back and reload all his junk as soon as he sees what we have done. Suggestions? Adam 10:23, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep an eye on it, revert to sensible as appropriate until Mr-Natural-Health tires. I'm having a look to see if I can NPOV some of the previous material. - David Gerard 11:41, Jan 16, 2004 (UTC)
 * Some of the old material in the article may be quite good, when NPOVed, for use in other articles - there's a good article in there - check this version and the refs in this version. Just not under this name. I've removed the deletion notice, and suggest moving this content to the article's talk page. - David Gerard 11:50, Jan 16, 2004 (UTC)
 * And I have put the notice back. It should stay until the article has gone through due process here, especially since thare are votes to delete. Bmills 12:02, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * Sorry about that. I've put a lot of the stuff I liked from old versions of the article as a 'Criticisms' section of Evidence-based medicine, which appears to be the right place for it. - David Gerard 12:35, Jan 16, 2004 (UTC)
 * The statement: "Its implication is presumably that a non-science-based form of medical knowledge is both possible and preferable" is 100% POV that is being enabled by Kosebamse. Medical Scientism is making the argument that Medical Scientism is not scientific because it stiffles true science. -- Mr-Natural-Health 19:14, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * I have protected the page because of an edit war between MrNaturalHealth and several other users. Some initial discussion seems to go on at the talk page, so hopefully the protection will not be necessary for too long. Kosebamse 19:34, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * The current version is not a polemic by our lovable crank anymore. The original POV rant was unacceptable.  Crank:  Come on.  You know this is the wrong thing to do.  Tempshill 22:54, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete - UtherSRG 23:06, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * The one way, or the highway, definition of 'scientism' is in the dictionary!  There is actually one real dictionary that uses the correct definition.  I use this dictionary definition on my web site because it particularly applies to the anti-science phenomena of medical scientism.  The actual definition is as follows.


 * scientism: "the belief that there is one and only one method of science and that it alone confers legitimacy upon the conduct of research."


 * I shall repeat. My definition of scientism is actually in the dictionary.  While I am sure that it is valid in other areas of science, it is particularly valid in the area of medicine.  Hence, my usage of the perfectly valid phrase:  medical scientism.


 * You cannot develop an article with an actual dictionary definition, when you cannot edit the article. -- Mr-Natural-Health


 * This is an amusing thread. Clearly, modern medicine does not fit the definition of scientism.  Modern medical knowledge benefits from studies using multiple scientific disciplines, ranging across the multitude of basic sciences to clinical work that ranges from case reports to case series to controlled trials.  There is a nice article on scientism in http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000AA74F-FF5F-1CDB-B4A8809EC588EEDF  If there is an article on scientism it ought to be filled with examples of how adhering to medical dogma blinds medical sciences to advances, with attention paid to the paradigm shifts when someone figures out how to demostrate what was once not known.  In my field, gastroenterology, the discovery of the infectious nature of peptic ulcer disease offers a modern example.  Stephne Holland, M.D. Kd4ttc 15:12, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * There is another interesting paper at:
 * Susan Haack.
 * Science, Scientism, and Anti-Science in the Age of Preposterism.
 * Skeptical Inquirer magazine, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1997.
 * -- Mr-Natural-Health 19:19, 25 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * I did find an article which described just such an instance, regarding the first discovery of dietary treatments for coeliac disease and the ways in which the discovery was rejected: Absolutism's Hidden Message for Medical Scientism (Ronald Hoggan; published in Interchange, vol. 28/2 and 3, 183-189, 1997). It's worth a read, though it's more about educational theory than medical philosophy. &#8212; No-One Jones (talk) 12:06, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)