Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-08-09 Orthomolecular medicine and related pages

Mediation Case: 2006-08-09 Orthomolecular medicine and related pages
Please observe Etiquette and Talk Page Etiquette in disputes. If you submit complaints or insults your edits are likely to be removed by the mediator, any other refactoring of the mediation case by anybody but the mediator is likely to be reverted. If you are not satisfied with the mediation procedure please submit your complaints to Wikipedia talk:Mediation Cabal.

Request Information

 * Request made by: Cri du canard 16:59, 9 August 2006 (UTC), updated 05:38, 12 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Where is the issue taking place?
 * Orthomolecular medicine, Megavitamin therapy, List of pseudoscientific theories and related pages...


 * Who's involved?
 * Supporters of orthomolecular medicine
 * User:69.178.41.55/User:TheNautilus, User:MichaelCPrice, User:Lumos3,
 * Skeptics and sceptics of orthomolecular medicine
 * User:Fyslee, User:Ackoz, User:CaptainManacles, User:Cri du canard (formerly User:70.232.110.230)
 * Other (not necessarily neutral)
 * User:Linas (objects to criticism of orthomolecular medicine, even from conventional sources)
 * User:Jefffire (has attempted to find compromise edits to fulfill NPOV)
 * User:Nunh-huh (restored cite to Canadian government criticism deleted by MichaelCPrice)
 * User:Duncharris  and User:Smithfarm  (two other editors who agreed with cited mention of OM in pseudoscience article)
 * User:DocJohnny (previously tried to resolve POV problems with article in January 2006, but was shouted down by 69.178...)


 * What's going on?

User:Cri du canard claims:
 * Any attempt to fix the POV-bias of these pages is reverted (e.g., ).  Any attempt to register protest by adding a POV-tag is deleted (e.g., ).  Editors pushing a particular POV have banded together to do this, including agreeing to try to provoke an edit war.  There are further problems because some editors refuse to assume good faith. (see also Linas's comment below)  The RFC process has not solved the problem.  User:Linas has threatened me with "bans and blocks" because of this content dispute.

User:Linas claims:
 * The above are false accusations. Cri du Canard has been asked to provide support for his claims, and has not. From what I can tell, there is no merit to the POV and pseudoscience accusations. Having been a WP user for a  week or two, he is now wiki-lawyering, in somewhat poor faith, given that he has not made the attempts (as far as I can see) to resolve the issue before it became an issue. linas 14:03, 10 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what Linas is talking about. I've provided support for my claims.  I made multiple RFCs (e.g., ), and the edits that resulted from the RFC were reverted by Linas and others.  Every edit I've made has conformed to WP:CITE; see, for example, cite to American Cancer Society and this text that Linas deleted without discussion.  I've discussed problems on talk pages.  My opponents have specifically stated that they do not wish to discuss the matter and that a POV tag can be removed without consensus.  I further note that Linas is attempting to defeat my efforts to reach consensus through Wikipedia procedures by telling people to ignore the mediators. -- Cri du canard 14:18, 10 August 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, someone removed me from the listing as "neutral third party" and listed me as supporter. That is raw vandalism. I then note that several skeptics are listed below as neutral parties. This is escalating out of control. linas 14:40, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
 * You've taken sides in this. You're not neutral. -- Cri du canard 14:46, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

User:TheNautilus claims:
 * 'Canard has been on a frightful tirade with the other "skeptics" that utilizes the total ignorance of the public, a multidecade problem on this technical subject that isn't even allowed to be explained w/o loud disparagement on its own page despite highly credentialed scientists and doctors careful research. (Many issues are complex for most to understand without bio-/chem- degrees, as witnessed by the nomenclature deficit on tocopherol isomers, the natural alcohol form and the commercially inactivated esters, all called "vitamin E". Publishing doctors frequently err here too or fail to specify *which* molecule(s) and rabid institutional medical POV is a fundamental problem. ) As with many of "Canard's "facts" - "User:DocJohnny (previously tried to resolve POV problems with article in January 2006, but was shouted down by 69.178...)", I did not drive DocJohnny off as alleged.  Actually I invited DocJohnny's opinion from the Naturopathy article: "question on orthomolecular med POV"EditSummary - "So what is DocJohnny's take on orthomolecular medicine?", although I got more than requested!  DocJohnny addressed me point by point on issues in a highly skptical, persistant but polite, rational manner when directly challenged - *urging me to continue editing* "Please continue to edit so we can achieve a consensus on NPOV. Despite our differences in opinion, I feel that is possible "..., a distant fond memory here.  I have taken great pains to explain the material but science is irrelevant to these "skeptics".


 * No real consensus was reached in August, CdC was busy threatening everyone after starting with the malicious stmts over pseudosci classification. I was absent on other things and decided to see how POV "skeptics" would go here anyway before attempting to achieve an encyclopedic article again with expanded material. CdC seems to have successfully driven off Linas, an new independent view & studiously ignored the suggestions of Dr Harris, a real MD. CdC's twisted legalistic threats & manuevers seem primarily to waste everybody's time from the start.  Although I did not have much time to dissect his tirades against me and others after the highly disparaging "pseudosci" label campaign was initiated, his edits show little familiarity with the primary sources & rationale of orthomed. Rather he parrots & recycles the QW attack sites material which is provably highly biased, e.g. QW "disproving" daily "high doses" of vitamin C for colds with laughably small daily amounts of vitamin C / ascorbic acid for colds e.g. 0.25 to 3 grams/d vs 40-100 even 150 grams/day at less than 2 hour intervals and very dated material that dates to the 1970s on current events.  His edits are incredibly unfair, ill informing and unbalanced.  (Independent skeptic, long time wikipedian) Linas' comment : "Orthomolecular medicine. Outright misrepresentation and lying. User:Cri du canard, User:Jefffire and User:Fyslee. The most vicious debate of all"--TheNautilus 22:47, 8 September 2006 (UTC)


 * ''What would you like to change about that?
 * I would like the pages to conform to WP:NPOV and WP:LEAD. To wit, WP:NPOVFAQ already describes the standard for pages like these:


 * How are we to write articles about pseudoscientific topics, about which majority scientific opinion is that the pseudoscientific opinion is not credible and doesn't even really deserve serious mention?


 * If we're going to represent the sum total of human knowledge, then we must concede that we will be describing views repugnant to us without asserting that they are false. Things are not, however, as bad as that sounds. The task before us is not to describe disputes as though, for example, pseudoscience were on a par with science; rather, the task is to represent the majority (scientific) view as the majority view and the minority (sometimes pseudoscientific) view as the minority view; and, moreover, to explain how scientists have received pseudoscientific theories. This is all in the purview of the task of describing a dispute fairly.


 * Pseudoscience can be seen as a social phenomenon and therefore significant. However, pseudoscience should not obfuscate the description of the main views, and any mention should be proportional to the rest of the article.


 * The pages as they currently stand fail to describe the majority view fairly or give it the proper emphasis. The minority view is also given POV descriptions that sanitize it.


 * Would you prefer we work discreetly? If so, how can we reach you?
 * My user talk page, User talk:Cri du canard, is fine.

Mediator response
The dispute here seems to be somewhat active, however, I'm not comfortable enough to take this one knowing that it's moved to several pages and has quite a few people involved. I'll leave this case on the docket for now - but someone probably needs to pick this one up soon. CQJ 17:31, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

And from a second glance, our friend Addhoc is working here, so I'm concerned, but not that concerned since he's generally an off-the-radar Cabalist (and has inquired about the Cabal in the past). I'll set the cat tag to open and make the proper notation.

Hi and thanks for the comment, however if there is any credit to be had, then Jefffire should be the recipient for reaching a compromise regarding the introduction. Addhoc 19:21, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Compromise offers
This section is for listing and discussing compromise offers.