Homeopathy edit war

Welcome to the research project about the Homeopathy edit war at Wikipedia. Edit waring at other wikis that is related to homeopathy is also relevant to this research project.

Homeopathy is a type of medical treatment performed by giving the patient an extremely diluted medicine. Homeopaths believe that these homeopathic medicines are efficacious even if they do not contain any molecules of medicinal substances. A homeopathic medicine in made by starting with a plant or mineral substance, but during preparation of the medicine any original plant or mineral molecules are diluted below a level that would allow for a conventional chemical effect on the patient. Homeopathy is controversial because conventional science cannot explain how such diluted homeopathic medicine might be of medicinal value.

The Wikipedia article about homeopathy is about the 6,000th most visited article at Wikipedia. Large numbers of people use homeopathic medicine. The Wikipedia article about homeopathy was started in 2001, the year that Wikipedia was founded. The "proper" content of this article immediately became a matter of dispute with some editors trying to describe the practice of homeopathy and other editors trying to label homeopathy as a pseudoscientific scam. The conflict between editors with these two different points of view has never ended. Edit waring at the Wikipedia homeopathy page has resulted in editing sanctions (blocks and bans) being imposed on many editors.

This research project is an historical analysis of the homeopathy edit war. Can we learn how to avoid such edit wars and limit the damage that they do?

Origin of the Wikipedia article about homeopathy

Is there an error in the database for this version of the article? It says "December 12" and is shown before the version for "December 2".

First known edit

Was this the origin of the article? (21:54, 2 December 2001 by 192.146.136.xxx)

This contributor cited the Homeopathic Medical Association. 192.146.136.xxx was probably someone at the University of Warwick.

Second editor mentions NPOV

20:23, 11 December 2001 by Sodium (self-identified medical student in England)

Creates link to the article about "faith healing".

Third editor labels a pseudoscience

Labeled as pseudoscience by Eloquence, whose earliest visible edit at Wikipedia was to Junk science

"It is now up to the homeopathy folks to present an actual reasonable argument for homeopathy"

Talk page

When did "talk page" discussions start for the homeopathy article?

• 17:14, 12 December 2001 - this version includes a post that says Dec. 11
• (21:27, 19 February 2002) - reached by using the "Previous revision" link from the 12 December version...database error?

"I added the link to faith healing because both treatments rely substantially on belief (though not necessarily religious belief) in order for the treatments to work, as well as the rejection of modern medical techniques. Is this not relevant?" (see) was probably the first talk page comment after Sodium's mention of "faith healing" in the article was removed by an editor at 128.32.172.xxx, probably someone at the University of California, Berkeley.

Question: was Zundark the person from England who started the article?

Partisanship

"Please don't fight, boys. I also strongly disbelieve in homeopathy, possibly as strongly as LDC disbelieves in creationism. Yet the best way to show homeopathy up for the crock it is, is to give it the most sympathetic explanation possible; then, follow up with a concise paragraph explaining its unscientific basis." (see) - Ed Poor

• Where are they now? Ed Poor

"I became less active a couple of years ago, a group of tag team editors discovered they could pin a false accusation of POV pushing and "undue weight" on me and got me banned from the Intelligent Design article. Ironically, the result is that the article condemns ID instead of being neutral. Note: I don't want the article to endorse ID - to be neutral on a controversial topic, a Wikipedia article should neither endorse nor condemn any viewpoint." (see)

"I am not a proponent of homeopathy, so I can't really give a fair treatment to this article, but it seems that this will not be an NPOV article, but instead critics of homeopathy will always get the last word in any discussion of the issues involved. I was attempting to make a feeble last gasp effort at introducing some balance to this article, but it is clearly a failed effort since Wikipedia is not a project committed to balance or NPOV." Was this comment from Egern?

Later, Egern raises the issue of how scientific homeopathy is. "If it is really true that homeopathy resists any investigation into new ways to apply, alter, or improve upon its method, then I would agree that it is unscientific."

Is Homeopathy a Science?-Continuity and Clash of Concepts of Science within Holistic Medicine

"Sides"

Traditionally, an edit war has two "sides", two groups of editors who are in conflict. How many "sides" have there been at Wikipedia editing the article about homeopathy?

1) editors who want a balanced article that explains what homeopathy is

2) editors who want an article that condemns homeopathy as a pseudoscience scam

3) editors who object to having the homeopathy article turned into an article about objections to homeopathy

Those in category #2 often know little about homeopathy except that it needs to be condemned. Example: "At least in the US, homeopathy is tolerated as an "alternative" medicine without any oversight only because their preparations are known to be harmless (because they don't contain anything). If homeopaths started producing products that had actual effects and measurable amounts of active ingredients, those preparations would be considered normal medicine and would fall under regulation by the FDA, and homepaths wouldn't be allowed to dispense them." (see) - Lee Daniel Crocker. However, see "the U.S. Congress passed a law in 1938 declaring that homeopathic remedies are to be regulated by the FDA".

Generally the editors who know the most about homeopathy tend to fall into category #3 (above) and they are charged with unwanted advocacy of their point of view if they speak openly of their support for homeopathy. In contrast, opponents of homeopathy have always been free to express their point of view and advocate the condemnation of homeopathy, even when they do not know much about it.

Claim of authorship

Talk page revision as of 08:19, 11 January 2002 - Enter the Dragon: "I put in the original entry"

How can all of this user's contributions be gone? see