Talk:Dance therapy/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: J Milburn (talk · contribs) 21:32, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

I am taking on this review. My comments will follow soon. J Milburn (talk) 21:32, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Ok, I'm afraid to say that this article is not ready for GA status; there are two significant problems with the article at this time that I want to draw your attention to. The first is one of poor sourcing, and the second is one of neutrality. First of all, I will talk about sourcing.

Medical articles in particular require very careful sourcing, the guidelines of which are laid out here. Ideally, the bulk of the article should be sourced to "general or systematic reviews published in reputable medical journals, academic and professional books written by experts in the relevant field and from a respected publisher, and medical guidelines or position statements from nationally or internationally recognised expert bodies." In this article, we see references to:

• References to what are, as far as I can tell, fringe medical groups. At the very least, even if they are not fringe, they are somewhat partisan; there seem to be legitimate questions about the value of this therapy, and so sourcing material freely to the "American Dance Therapy Association", "The American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance" and "Naturalworldhealing.com" is, at best, questionable. Material from reputable medical organisations is certainly allowed, but these are hardly the NHS, the NIH or the WHO.
• References to peer-reviewed journals are thin on the ground. I'm willing to accept that Alternative Therapies is probably a legitimate academic journal, but it's hardly the best in its field, and the very name suggests that the kind of therapies it covers are not in the mainstream. It's the kind of source that would have to be used sparingly and critically in a medical article. Nursing Standard, apparently, is a professional magazine, rather than a peer-reviewed journal. That doesn't mean it's unreliable, but it makes it less ideal.
• The large number of requests for citations in the specialised treatment section should be setting off alarm bells.
• By the look of things, the Dance Movement Therapy book is exactly the sort of work you should be referencing. However, as it's an edited collection, you should be citing the individual articles, rather than the book as a whole. {{Cite book}} allows for this. There are a few other books in the further reading section which look more like the kind of thing you should be basing the article upon.

On that note, there are some formatting issues with the references; while these can be overlooked for the most part at GAC, there are some problems that are best dealt with. Three quick points;

• Multiple references to the same work should be combined. If you're citing different pages in the same work, they needn't be combined, but spelling out the entire source each time can be a pain. Consider using a separate "Bibliography" section.
• Academic Search Complete should not be cited. Offer the full citation to the publication itself.
• Bare urls should not be used. {{cite web}}, {{cite journal}} and {{cite book}} are your friends.

And now onto my second issue; neutrality. Wikipedia articles need to be written from the neutral point of view. This is very different from the sympathetic point of view, and entails not offering undue weight to fringe views. Now, I'm not going to commit to calling dance therapy a fringe point of view; I am not qualified to do something like that. However, this article does seem very sympathetic to the movement, and in places does not read anything like a neutral encyclopedia article. Some choice quotes:

• "The purpose of DMT is to find a healthy balance and sense of wholeness." Snake oil much?
• "Dance has been used therapeutically for thousands of years. Traditionally, dance was linked to healing and was used to influence fertility, birth, sickness, or death. Dance has been used as a healing ritual since earliest human history, but the establishment of dance therapy as a profession occurred in the 1950s." Useless, vague statements that could have been taken straight from a website about the medical benefits of eating rocks.
• "It wasn’t until the 1970s and 1980s that the second wave of DMT came around and sparked much interest from American therapists." This does not read like a professional encyclopedia article.
• "The creative process"?!
• "In conclusion, dance therapy has been seen to also, increase quality of life (QOL), support the process of dealing with a chronic disease, and improve well-being and self-esteem." This isn't an essay
• "Currently in DMT research they are focusing on mental disorders" Who's "they"?
• Buried deep in the article is a "criticism" section which basically admits that the whole thing is of seriously questionable benefit. This is exactly what I mean by mainstream views being ignored and undue weight being offered to fringe views.
• The "education" section is extremely one-sided; it seems to exist only to show how many qualifications dance therapists have.

To make clear, I personally have no opinion on the merits of dance therapy; I do not have a medical background, and would not be qualified to comment. I am, however, trying to play devil's advocate to point out problems with this article.

I hope I have made clear why I do not feel that this article is close to good status. If you have any questions, please post them here. If you are looking for help with the article, people over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine may be able to help. They also have a psychiatry task force. J Milburn (talk) 22:11, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Question about sources- you listed WHO, NIH, ect. but Wikipedia say to use secondary sources, would these kinds of sources, like NIH, be primary sources and AMerican Dance therapy Assoc. be secondary? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 3faith.hope.love (talk • contribs) 05:57, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

There are at least two different guidelines to consider here, and I think there may be some confusion between the two. One is the favouring of secondary sources, meaning sources unaffiliated with the article subject. For instance, it would not be OK to cite the American Dance Therapy Association to source the claim that the American Dance Therapy Association has made significant advances in dance therapy research; for that, you would need a source that is not associated with the ADTA. The other is that review articles ("secondary") should be favoured over the findings of individual studies ("primary"). While I do mention the likes of the WHO and NIH, ideally, we should be looking for references in reputable journals and books, and the article wouldn't be primarily based on publications from these organisations anyway. Does this answer your question? J Milburn (talk) 12:46, 26 March 2013 (UTC)