Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/EarCareCenter/Archive

Report date February 2 2009, 21:42 (UTC)

 * Suspected sockpuppets


 * Evidence submitted by Eubulides (talk)

Auditory integration training was inactive for months. Starting on 2009-01-23 it has been edited by several accounts, all of which have edited just this article. Each edit adds strong advocacy in favor of AIT. In the past few days the pace has stepped up. Here are the edits of the past few days, in order of the time they were made (I have coalesced adjacent edits by the same user):


 * Edit by EarCareCenter introducing unsourced claims that AIT is a good treatment for ADD, dyslexia, learning disabilities, etc.
 * Edit by 24.23.145.65 deleting reference list of reliable sources and replacing them with unsourced advocacy like "It also should be noted that FDA’s intervention was due to overreaching of some practitioner's claims."
 * Edit by EarCareCenter reintroducing unsourced claims about ADD, dyslexia, etc. This one also emphasizes a single 1995 preliminary study which is now way out of date. And it adds some external links that appear to promote AIT-related enterprises.
 * Edit by Gerard4156 that again reintroduces the unsourced claims about ADD etc., reintroduces the external links that promote the AIT-related enterprises, and removes well-sourced critical material citing reliable sources that include the American Academy of Pediatrics, the New York Dept. of Health, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, and the FDA.
 * Edit by EarCareCenter again reintroduces the unsourced claims about ADD etc., introduces duplicate dated material about positive reports in the 1970s, and this time introduces a new citation, to an advertisement for an AIT product. It also added a label "Old theory" for section discussing the recent evidence (a paper published in 2006), and a new section called "efficacy" which talks about work done in the 1990s.

There is one earlier edit, dated 2009-01-23, that may or may not be part of the same pattern:


 * Edit by Midiqen introducing unsourced advocacy for AIT, e.g., "Time and time again AIT is the only intervention used. What more positive proof is medical science looking for?"

The general pattern is that an editor pops up, makes edits that introduce strong and typically unsourced advocacy into the article and/or removes well-sourced material, and then vanishes without discussing the changes. Midiqen is separated from the other entries by time and content and may be different, but the other contributions are all clearly from the same source.

Eubulides (talk) 16:56, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Comments by accused parties    See Defending yourself against claims.

Note: IP is located in Moraga, California (might be useful in the future). Even if these accounts aren't socks, which is unlikely, they are clearly SPAs trying to advance a POV that is not compatible with Wikipedia's aims. Blocks all round may be warrented. Foxy Loxy Pounce! 10:40, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Comments by other users


 * Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments
 * Blocked master and Gerard4156 indef, please tag them and close the case. I cannot block the IP address as I don't think it is static. No opinion on Midiqen, if that account edits according to the same pattern again create a new case. ——  nix eagle email me 19:38, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Tagged. Tiptoety  talk 06:15, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Conclusions