User talk:I'clast/article improvement A&R-QW

Article improvement drive on Analysis and review of Quackwatch

I would appreciate comments on the merits of this version as a tough but honest, unafraid summary of the Kauffman paper. I think that by using the idented, italicized monoblock quote, that there are, to me, unexpected improvements (perhaps I was too dense to appreciate some previous suggestions) even though only a few crucial phrases are removed from the quotes & added summary detail in the earlier contended versions.

To me, the apparent difference is that the new view seems to shift from too pointed & harsh to a tough but fair summary better abstracting & presenting the Kauffman paper's points. Perhaps that my previous preferences over-distilled & cherry picked phrases that the result was "too much" in one composite chunk & became too densely negative.

Analysis and review of Quackwatch

A review article Watching the Watchdogs at Quackwatch by Joel M. Kauffman, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, was published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration (JSE). Kauffman is also author of Malignant Medical Myths: Why Medical Treatment Causes 200,000 Deaths in the USA each Year and How to Protect Yourself. His article in JSE examines eight Quackwatch articles for factuality, fairness and scientific currency and concludes that:

"All 8 pages from www.Quackwatch.com that were examined closely for this review, which were chosen simply because their topics were familiar to this reviewer, were found to be contaminated with incomplete data, obsolete data, technical errors, unsupported opinions, and/or innuendo; no other pages were examined. Hostility to all alternatives was expected and observed from the website, but not repetition of groundless dogma from mainstream medicine, examples of which were exposed. As a close friend and colleague reminded me, the operators of this site and I may have the same motivation -- to expose fraud. It remains a mystery how they and I have interpreted the same body of medical science and reached such divergent conclusions.....It is very probable that many of the 2,300,000 vistors to the website have been misled by the trappings of scientific objectivity".

---

vs (an "optimized" composite of the previous approach, deleted parts in bold)

Independent analysis and review of Quackwatch

A peer-reviewed critical analysis, "Watching the Watchdogs at Quackwatch," by an independent skeptic, Joel M. Kauffman, Ph.D.(MIT) of the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, has been published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration. His article in JSE closely examines eight Quackwatch articles for factuality, fairness and scientific currency. "With 80 papers on chemical and medical topics, and 11 patents, including 2 on antituberculosis drugs, Dr. Kauffman has turned his attention to exposing fraud in medicine" and is also author of Malignant Medical Myths: Why Medical Treatment Causes 200,000 Deaths in the USA each Year and How to Protect Yourself. He states that all eight articles were "contaminated with incomplete data, obsolete data, technical errors, unsupported opinions, and/or innuendo," and gives numerous examples with extensive, peer reviewed references. After stating that "Hostility to all alternatives was expected and observed from the website, but not repetition of groundless dogma from mainstream medicine" and that "it is very probable that many of the 2,300,000 visitors to the website have been misled by the trappings of scientific objectivity," Kauffman concludes, "Medical practitioners such as Robert Atkins, Elmer Cranton and Stanislaw Burzynski, whom I demonstrated are not quacks, were attacked with the energy one would hope to be focused on real quacks. The use of this website is not recommended. It could be deleterious to your health."

---

Pls add your comments:

• I'clast. I think that in order to maintain this item in it's own section ( which I feel is important in this article ) we should keep it totally neutral. The latest edit by David are still within the envelope of neutrality while conveying that there is an issue with how the information is analysed in QW. I feel that if we add more, there are editors who will feel it should be placed in the Critics section. I would leave it as is. Readers can download it, read it and decide for themselves. Howver I do appreciate your suggestions and would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your constructive contributions :-) NATTO 22:12, 30 September 2006 (UTC)