Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Traditional western medicine


 * 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: Redirect page created to a dab page by author before this AfD's close. Can some editor kindly clean up the dab page? Right now, simply closing this AfD as no action required.  Wifione    .......  Leave a message  00:21, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Traditional western medicine

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Article as it stands is currently original research and synthesis. It has two sources, but neither of them refer to the concept of "traditonal western medicine." I can see some potential avenues this article could take, but all of them are problematic. Using the article to describe historical western medicine would duplicate the existing article at History of Medicine. Using the article to describe current pseudoscientific practices might fall afoul of WP:FRINGE and would still fail to fix the underlying synthesis problem of this article, as there are no sources describing a unified concept of "traditional western medicine." Therefore I am nominating this article for deletion. Sailsbystars (talk) 23:20, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions.  —Sailsbystars (talk) 23:32, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * KEEP - It is not original research, but does need RS. I don't have an overwhelming care in keeping this article I created, but I will point out that it is not original research.  Google sholar turns up about a thousand results.  A google serach of "traditional western medicine" turns up a half million resultss.  So the expression is by no means a product of original research.  A problem is that the expression is mostly used by alternative medicine practitioners to refer to modern medicine, while only esoterically used by historians to refer to pre-scientific method occultist European medicine (bleeding, humors, etc.).  The usage by alternative medicine people is used to imply that what they are doing is medicine, but non-traditional, in that they don't use the scientific method, or whatever is in their heads.  (I am a science-based, or evidence-based medicine person.)  The article needs RS, but should stay so people can understand the different uses. It is not original research.  HkFnsNGA (talk) 23:44, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * comment What we have here is a collection of random, sourced bits of historical medicine, but nothing to tie them together. Give me one source that describes the scope of "traditional western medicine" different from simply historical western medicine. The absence of such a source is why I nominated this article for deletion.  Most of the sources you cite are primary sources, and tying together primary sources is the definition of original research.  I'm not saying the subject is inherently non-notable, but the article needs a secondary source that ties together its various sections and differentiates it from History of medicine.  Sailsbystars (talk) 05:15, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I started the article because of shifting use of the expression by alternative medicine practicioners. First they say that they are an alternative to traditional western medicine and are measuring helth by a different standard, referring to modern science-based medicine, then they bash TWM by using the expression to refer to historical European pseudoscientific occult-based medicine.  I am not going to call any alternative medicine site an RS, but others may.  Google Scholar search is probably the best place to find RS, not just a Google search, which turns up mostly alternative medicine sites.  Again, I have no strong feelings about trying to keep.  (I do feel strongly to keep material in other articles, e.g. bad faith.) HkFnsNGA (talk) 05:30, 26 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete and redirect to History of medicine, I think would be best. I see that HkFnsNGA is continuing to work on the article, and will check back in a few days. The sources I find refer to Western medicine using that traditional science thing on the one hand, and a grabbag of humors, blood-letting, and heroic medicine on the other. The first usage is more a coincidence of terms than something we could base an article on. The second might have some legs, but I am unconvinced that this could be done without duplicating the scope of History of medicine. - 2/0 (cont.) 08:19, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The new dab page works for me - keep. - 2/0 (cont.) 07:03, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll go with a redirect, followed by an addition to that article with the expression "TWM" and maybe a mention of the use of the expression by alt med folks as a "pejoritive". They frequently use the expression to mean "close minded", as if they have a majical new kind of standard of evidence or methodology that TWM is ignorant of. Maybe they do and I am being close minded.  Now I need some coffee because I am out of "energy". HkFnsNGA (talk) 13:49, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Merge or redirect. not notable alone Someone65 (talk) 17:59, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I created the page and did most of the edits. I redirected Traditional western medicine to a disambiguation page, which directs to articles for the two different uses. I am marking this page resolved. HkFnsNGA (talk) 04:46, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * This debate does not meet the criteria at Non-admin closure (but mostly-good idea, and kudos for showing initiative). - 2/0 (cont.) 07:03, 29 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment Redirected before close in violation of WP:GAFD Anarchangel (talk) 02:32, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * While in many cases redirecting during an AfD can be highly disruptive, in this case both articles were created and primarily edited by the same editor, and it does not appear to be an attempt to evade community process. I believe that we should take the creation of the dab page as a good faith attempt to take on board the concerns raised here (disclosure: some of those concerns are mine, obviously). As the edit histories are sequential without overlap, it might be worthwhile to do a history merge, putting the new page at the unmodified title; per WP:DAB, foo (disambiguation) should go at foo when there is no primary topic article to occupy the pagename. - 2/0 (cont.) 16:02, 1 February 2011 (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.