Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Power abuse disorder


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Consensus is that notability is not established. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:09, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Power abuse disorder

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This article is completely built off, a "comment" published in a biomedical journal in May of this year, that proposes this is as a medical condition. It is not one yet. This page is an abuse of Wikipedia to promote this idea; very similar to another AfD currently running, Articles for deletion/Culinary coaching, where an academic did the same sort of thing, trying to use Wikipedia to lend gravitas to something they are trying to get recognized as a medical discipline. Wikipedia transmits accepted knowledge; it is not a vehicle to promote anything per WP:SOAPBOX.

More specifically, a search of pubmed yields exactly one hit. And again this hit is not OK per WP:MEDRS. The other sources here are Wikipedia articles (not valid) or primary or other sources brought in purely via WP:SYN. So fails GNG looking at MEDRS sources, and is PROMO and SYN. Jytdog (talk) 16:52, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. Jytdog (talk) 16:58, 3 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete as per Jytdog. The references don't appear to discuss the topic of the article; many are incorrectly-formatted hyperlinks to Wikipedia articles Power~enwiki (talk) 20:31, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete Half the refs are to Wikipedia? The ref to WHO and DSM do not support the content in question. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 11:31, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete as already mentioned at de:Wikipedia:Löschkandidaten/3._September_2017, this is not an established definition and/or disorder, this is only a proposal for a definition. Might be relevant if eventualy established, but not now.--Fano (talk) 16:07, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for bringing notice of the page at de-WP here. That is very industrious of the creator; a multi-national promotional campaign. Jytdog (talk) 09:02, 6 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep This article is highly relevant because a lot of people on Wikipedia suffer from Power abuse disorder. Roberttherambler (talk) 10:50, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Behavioural science-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 19:34, 5 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Note - in these diffs I cleaned up the duplicated references and the sources that didn't support anything (links to the mainpage of the WHO, used twice), or citations that supported content that is not about this proposed condition (e.g. the Cochrane source about other uses of aripiprazole; the Cochrane source doesn't mention this proposed condition). There is one source left -- the only source that discusses the proposed condition. Jytdog (talk) 23:22, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

1) I have now backed up every single argument by a secondary source.

2) With respect to WP:NOTABILITY, please let me point out what I know from the authors of the review/commentary that I cited on the page: The review/commentary already represents the CONSENSUS of TWO different labs/groups/researcher with partly overlapping and partly very different methologic approaches and had successfully passed anonymous peer review (resulting in the implementation of suggestions/demands of 2 anonymous reviewers). Considering that the editor also suggested/demanded changes in the original Ms, we now have a total of 5 (FIVE) groups/labs/resarchers already having arrived at a consensus on what is written on 'power abuse disorder' in that secondary source.

3) With respect to WP:NOTABILITY, please let me add that suffering from power abuse (ie, abusive behavior by a superior in a one-on-one social interaction in a hierarchy) is a common experience. As a psychotherapist, I generated the page to help wiki readers who have suffered from such an experience realize that may be NOT that "It's me who is dumb/incompetent/a loser/crybaby/confused/too stupid to understand" but that the originator of all these harmful emotions and cognitions may be someone else who, for her/his own reasons, needs to put a subordinate down. Finding mentioned in wiki that such a power abuse disorder exists most likely is of great relief for victims of PADed individuals. Because of that alone, I think PAD is worth being mentioned in wiki. I could present you with a lot of anecdotal evidence from my psychotherapy practice, I checked my conclusions with other health professionals in the field, including psychiatrists prescribing aripiprazole in cases of 'burnout'. I know that the authors of the cited review/commentary explicitly refrained from discussing even historic persons who may have been power abuse disordered, let alone living persons.

Considering the pace of advancement in the scientific field (grant application, getting money to do the research (with success rates around 5-10%), getting ethics committee approval, doing the research, getting it published, amassing enough data and original articles to base ANOTHER review on takes time, I would estimate 1-3 years for the original research to come out and a further year or so for reviews to be published. I think that, especially considering the current political culture, wiki readers would profit from being alerted to 'power abuse disorder' NOW.

4)With respect to WP:NOTABILITY, please note that CONSENSUS is very hard to achieve on mental disorder diagnoses (therefore I like the DESCRIPTIVE approach of the review/commentary cited on the page). For example, "burnout" still has not made it into the diagnostic compendium DSMV of the American Psychiatric Association. I know that one of the reasons for the publication of the review/commentary was that in the addiction field, there already is a counterproductive separation of dependence on SUBSTANCES (eg, alcohol, cocaine, fentanyl) vs NON-drug stimuli (eg patholgical gambling). By taking the WHO's ICD10 criteria for substance dependence and applying them to 'power wielding', the authors wanted to draw attention to the fact that all addictive disorders share a common neurobiologic basis (to emphasize, ANY motivated behavior can become addictive) and help end an arbitrary and counterproductive separation.

5) Please let me also emphasize that the term 'power abuse disorder' only refers to the social interaction itself, ie presents a DESCRIPTION of behavior in a very well defined situation that is amenable to study at the clinical and basic science level. In that sense, I think the definition of PAD allows to study it better than subsuming PAD under 'narcissistic personality disorder' or other, more general-hypothesis-driven disease concepts. Therefore, making the concept 'power abuse disorder' available to the wide readership of wiki (which includes many scientists as I know) would be advantageous for the advancement of the study of this societally important maladaptive behavior. Stoopormundi (talk) 08:20, 6 September 2017 (UTC)


 * 1) I just deleted a whole bunch of unreferenced content, 2) two labs don't make a medical condition, 3) people don't read encyclopedias for anecdotes, 4) should be addressed in the addiction article 5) Wikipedia isn't a place for promoting new concepts to scientists, that's what conferences and papers are for. --Pontificalibus  (talk) 09:04, 6 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete based entirely on one paper that is entitled "Making the case for..". If the case is eventually made, and others have written about it, perhaps it will then be time to have an article.--Pontificalibus (talk) 08:50, 6 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete The claims in the article depend upon a single academic paper where the two authors from the field of experimental psychiatry propose that a disorder could be described, making use of some existing ICD-10 descriptions. The article used as a source is published as a comment piece in a journal on drug research (which has an Impact Factor of 1.442). Notability has not been established. Drchriswilliams (talk) 08:51, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

I have found and entered a second secondary source on the changes in the dopaminergic system during changes in hierarchic position. This reference was published in 2002 and lists 2 new coauthors. So the total consensus tally is now 7. Since Pontificalibus has brought the impact factor of the underlying source into play, please be advised that the 2002 article - a report on and a discussion of the data presented at a scientific meeting - was published in TRENDS IN PHARMACOLOGICAL SCIENCES (TiPS), a peer reviewed scientific journal containing mostly reviews. TiPS had an impact factor of 10.372 in 2002; the same journal now has an impact factor of 12.797: In my opinion an excellent journal with a high standard of quality aimed at showcasing topics of interest for the scientific community. Apparently, some have observed the phenomenon described on this wiki page for quite a while, ie at least from 2002 to now.Stoopormundi (talk) 12:18, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Looking at the source just added, these claims are not credible. I note the 2002 TRENDS in Pharmacological Sciences article requires a subscription to access. That journal article is a report from a conference on modelling addiction. While it was mentioned (on page 400) that a researcher was using functional MRI on monkeys, this section was barely more than 100 words long and made no reference to "Power abuse disorder". Drchriswilliams (talk) 13:37, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

To Drchriswilliams: Thank you for checking the 2002 reference. 1) RE your subscription argument: The scientific journal "Trends in Pharmacological Sciences" (TiPS), in 2002, required a subscription AS, TO MY UNDERSTANDING, ALL THE SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS DID AT THAT TIME. This was before 'open access'. I bet any medical school in your vicinity will carry TiPS in its library. 2) RE your argument "barely more than 100 words long": Length is NOT a criterion for quality in science. 3) RE your argument "no reference to power abuse disorder": In the article, readers can find a paragraph titled "The ecstasy of power: neuroimaging and behavioral research" that summarizes AND INTERPRETS the finding of the Nader lab (Morgan being the first author of the Nature Neuroscience paper reviewed in the article), findings that are also presented and discussed in the review/commentary in 2017. In the 2002 report, the seminal findings of the Morgan paper from the Nader group were also reviewed by showing the increase in D2 dopamine receptor density in the nucleus accumbens (fig1 of the 2002 review/meeting report). In the 2002 review/meeting report, the paragraph on the Nader group findings concluded with "Accordingly, cocaine served as a reinforcer in intravenous self-administration experiments only in subordinate monkeys but not in dominant monkeys. Being the boss apparently is ecstasy enough." That is one of the main arguments for 'power abuse disorder'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stoopormundi (talk • contribs) 05:29, 7 September 2017 (UTC) The above response was by me, I forgot to sign. Please excuse this oversight.Stoopormundi (talk) 05:33, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The core problem is, that there are no WP:MEDRS sources about this proposed condition. Any other discussion is really pointless. Jytdog (talk) 05:38, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:20, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
 * This edit is incorrect; the content+source violates WP:SYN, but there is no point making drama as this is going to be deleted. Jytdog (talk) 03:47, 8 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete - Wikipedia is not the place for original research; this, based on one journal article arguing about the possibility of a chemical basis for abusive behavior, becomes essentially that. Carrite (talk) 14:28, 10 September 2017 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.