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Please consider reading the information at Use of Quackwatch as a source before asking related questions or starting new RfCs.

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Arbitration Ruling on the Treatment of Pseudoscience

In December of 2006 the Arbitration Committee ruled on guidelines for the presentation of topics as pseudoscience in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience. The final decision was as follows:

Neutral point of view as applied to science: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, a fundamental policy, requires fair representation of significant alternatives to scientific orthodoxy. Significant alternatives, in this case, refers to legitimate scientific disagreement, as opposed to pseudoscience.
Serious encyclopedias: Serious and respected encyclopedias and reference works are generally expected to provide overviews of scientific topics that are in line with respected scientific thought. Wikipedia aspires to be such a respected work.
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Generally considered pseudoscience: Theories which have a following, such as astrology, but which are generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community may properly contain that information and may be categorized as pseudoscience.
Questionable science: Theories which have a substantial following, such as psychoanalysis, but which some critics allege to be pseudoscience, may contain information to that effect, but generally should not be so characterized.
Alternative theoretical formulations: Alternative theoretical formulations which have a following within the scientific community are not pseudoscience, but part of the scientific process.

"Received criticism for perceived bias in its coverage"

Re:[1] @Bilby:, could you please demonstrate this summary is accurate and due by identifying the sources and quoting from each? --Ronz (talk) 17:26, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In the current "site reviews" section we list 11 reviews. Of those, six either suggest or state that bias is present:

Nguyen-Khoa: "the presence of so many articles written by Barrett gave one the impression of a lack of fair balance"
Ladd: "relies heavily on negative research in which alternative therapies are shown to not work"
Okasha: "fails to provide a balanced view of alternative cancer treatments"
Cuzzell: "had concerns about the appearance of bias in the selection of the material"
Brazin: "found it to be biased"
Vankevitch: "employing 'denigrating terminology', categorizing all complementary and alternative medicine as a species of medical hucksterism, failing to condemn shortcomings within conventional biomedicine, and for promoting an exclusionary model of medical scientism and health that serves hegemonic interests and does not fully address patient needs"

I found others which expressed concerns about bias but they haven't been added to the article.

"He has his supporters and de-tractors and there is no getting around the fact that Dr. Barrett is a zealotand zealotry has its problems. Several medical librarians, with whom this librarian has discussed Quackwatch, have refused to endorse it be-cause of the bias they claim exists.", although the author is overall very positive about Quackwatch (Michael J. Schott & Shelda Martin (2005) The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,Journal of Hospital Librarianship, 5:3, 43-54, DOI: 10.1300/J186v05n03_04)
"Addressing critics who accuse him of unbalanced reporting, Dr. Barrett writes ...",positive discussion, but acknowledges accusations of bias (Ohry, A; Tsafrir, J. Progress in Health Sciences; Bialystok Vol. 2, Iss. 1, (2012): 171-174).
"To get balanced coverage, you probably will need to seek comments from practitioners on the other side of the argument." (Bowen, Charles. Editor & Publisher; New York Vol. 131, Iss. 22, (May 30, 1998): 29. )

Bilby (talk) 20:55, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Which critiques, positive/negative/other, go into any detail or are written by someone with clear expertise? I'm trying to figure out how the weighting was decided. For example, Cuzzell has almost no detail at all, so why mention it at all, let alone try to compare it (OR) to other sources? --Ronz (talk) 17:34, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm just going by what we say in the article - if the majority of reviews we reference in the article state that it is biased, then shouldn't that mean it is worth referencing (in brief) in the lead when we mention reviews? - Bilby (talk) 22:08, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Context matters. Quality of sourcing matters. --Ronz (talk) 22:23, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The lede summarises the article. If the majority of the reviews being summarised in the article state that Quackwatch is biased, shouldn't an accurate summary of that section also mention that Quackwatch is biased? - Bilby (talk) 22:39, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not, for example, if the references were cherry-picked to support such a summary. Of if the summary violated OR by ignoring context. Or if some of the sources were of questionable value.

I'm sure we can come up with many more examples why it's important to look closely at the quality of the sources and the context they give. --Ronz (talk) 22:46, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That's more of a case for not using the sources, rather than a case for not accurately summarising them. But no, they weren't cherry picked. I went to database of journals, specified only peer-reviewed journals, and then did a search for "Quackwatch" with no qualifiers. Then discounted any clearly biased journals (skeptic journals and psudeoscience journals), and just read each mention in turn without selecting them with any other criteria. There weren;t a huge number of sources, but I was surprised to find that most of the reviews in peer-reviewed journals said somthing similar - good resource, be careful of bias. However, in regard to sources, "The Consultant Pharmacist" was already here, but is the publication of the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists. The Village Voice was also already here, but you know that one - not peer reviewed, but respected. The Lancet, Dermatology Nursing and Journal of Consumer Health on the Internet are all peer-review journals. Plural medicine, tradition and modernity is published by Routledge; and of the three I mentioned that I didn't add, Journal of Hospital Librarianship and Progress in Health Sciences are both peer reviewed journals, while Editor & Publisher is a monthly magazine but I assume is not peer reviewed. Of those which we use that don't make mention of bias or indicate concerns, we normally like the Forbes.com "best of" lists but it wasn't be peer reviewed; Annals of Oncology is peer reviewed and a very good source; the Good Web Guide probably wasn't and doesn't seem particulrly notable. - Bilby (talk) 23:01, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

RfC on whether Quackwatch is a self-published source

There is a request for comment on whether Quackwatch is a self-published source. This RfC also concerns the application of WP:BLP § Avoid self-published sources (WP:BLPSPS) to content from Quackwatch. If you are interested, please participate at WP:RSN § RfC: Quackwatch. — Newslinger talk 00:04, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portuguese site

The Portuguese language version of Quackwatch, linked in the article to [2] appears to have last been updated in 2004. With no updates in over 10 years, it is reasonable to assume that the Portuguese site is defunct. This article should clarify that the Portuguese site is not updated.Dialectric (talk) 16:05, 12 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

FV tag

This edit by Bilby added a failed verification tag, in spite of the edit summary in my restoration of the deleted content immediately before the edit. I don't know why the tag was added.

Here are a couple of links to searches of the book showing that both Stephen Barrett and Quackwatch are used in the book:

The tag should be removed.

BTW (a bit of history here), this effort to delete content from the article is contrary to WP:PRESERVE. The reason that content is there is because of many attacks on the article and attempts to get it deleted. Keep in mind that enemies of QW still exist and will return at the first signs of weakness. That's why many editors had to "beef up" the RS content to prove notability. If this effort to delete legitimate and long-standing content continues, we'll end up with these problems again, and the last time someone tried to seriously attack QW, two editors got community banned and one changed their username, stopped their attempts, and stopped editing in the alternative medicine topic area. By flying under the radar and avoiding this minefield, they have succeeded in surviving here. Good for them.

Therefore, I suggest that deletions be very limited and first proposed on this talk page. They are VERY controversial. I AGF and do not think that current deletions are intended for the following purpose (although the effect is the same), but keep the following in mind: While killing this canary in the mine by an AfD, as previously attempted, is indeed dramatic, doing it in little bits, as is happening now, is insidious and contrary to the spirit of Wikipedia. It invites attacks on the article, and we should avoid all the drama that would then ensue. -- BullRangifer (talk) 17:54, 29 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

First, that Barret is a contributer to the book does not mean that Quackwatch is recommended in the book. If anything, that would suggest that the book is not neutral on the topic. Second, the sole mention of Quackwatch is a very short description that does not consitiutute a recommendation as such, and it occurs in the chapter co-written by Barrett. Being used as a source is not a recommendation, nor is being described in the book, especially when the description comes from the site owner. Otherwise, at the moment this reads as highly promotional - mentions of Quackwatch become "recommendations", trivial recommendations become highlighted. If this was happening in another article it would have a severe trim to remove the promotional content. We don't insert promotional content in order to survive an AfD, and there is no way this would be deleted at an AfD even if all this promotional content was removed. - Bilby (talk) 20:51, 29 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Neither in-text mention of a source nor use of a source as a reference is equivalent to a recommendation of that source. A recommendation should be explicitly worded as such, or in an obviously titled section consisting of recommendations.Dialectric (talk) 16:08, 1 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is better if we just remove the reference to the book - based on the links above, it is neither a recommendation nor is it independent, given that as far as I can tell the only references to or mention of Quackwatch is in a chapter authored by Barrett. I'll give it a night to see if I'm missing anything, though. - Bilby (talk) 11:26, 2 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Bilby: The review section of the article used to include a number of quotes from consumer guides to health, all along the lines of "For good information on quack cures, check out Quackwatch".[3]. I decided to move these out of the review section (because they are not full–fledged reviews), call them recommendations instead, and cut the quotes as undue/unremarkable. The line recommending Quackwatch in the book you marked as FV is (apparently) "Detailed information on today's questionable cancer methods is available on the Quackwatch web site".

@BullRangifer: I think that a general problem of this article is that it includes too much information that might be useful to a Wikipedia editor, but isn't to the wider population of readers: e.g., the fact that a public library in Ohio used to include Quackwatch in a list of online health resources[4]. Cheers, gnu 57 15:26, 2 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The biggest problem with that quote is that it is written by Barrett - even if we want to take that as a recommendation, Barrett recommending his own site isn't useful. - Bilby (talk) 20:44, 2 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Bilby. I'm not sure what quote you're talking about. Can you provide a URL or some other help for me? -- BullRangifer (talk) 00:00, 3 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The links are the ones you provided above. In the book, Quackwatch is mentioned three times - twice as a reference and once in the line provided by gnu: "Detailed information on today's questionable cancer methods is available on the Quackwatch web site." The problem is that the line and two references are in the chapter written by Barrett, "Questionable Practices in Foods and Nutrition: Definitions and Descriptions". As they were written by Barrett they aren't independent. - Bilby (talk) 00:11, 3 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Per the above, I've removed it for now. Barrett recommending Barret's site means that the source is not independent. - Bilby (talk) 23:21, 3 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What seems to have happened is that the word "recommended" was used at the end, when the section heading (which defined the inclusion criteria) did not. I have restored the source and changed the inaccurate description at the end. That seems to be a better solution. -- BullRangifer (talk) 15:13, 4 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No, what has happened is that this was used because it mentioned Quackwatch without consideration for the content. Fundamentally, Steven Barrett referencing Steven Barrett is not noteworthy. There is no value in mentioning that Barrett has referenced his own site, and it is misleading to the reader. Furthermore, it does not (as now claimed) even use content from Quackwatch, but instead just uses it as a reference to two brief claims. - Bilby (talk) 20:34, 4 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Listing passing mentions of Quackwatch or instances where other publications have cited articles published through Quackwatch is undue: it doesn't serve the general population of readers. I agree with Bilby that Barrett's mentioning and citing his own site doesn't constitute independent coverage. Cheers, gnu 57 21:35, 4 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]