Talk:National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health

First remarks

I don't think that section headings like "Who we are" and "What we do" are good to include in an encyclopedia article. I generally think of an article as needing to be written from the 3rd person rather than the 1st person. I've been looking a little for recommendations around this in the Wikipedia Help section but haven't come across something specific yet. Courtland 23:52, 2005 Mar 22 (UTC)

I agree. I assume it was cut and pasted from somewhere else. How about paraphrasing it so it is encyclopedic and not a copyvio? alteripse 01:51, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's not a copyvio (since the source is a public domain document) but neither is it encyclopaedic, so for that I put a {{cleanup-tone}}. -- Paddu 18:44, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Criticism

I created a section for Criticism and moved a paragraph from the opening to there. The paragraph's placement veered a wee bit close to the WP:NPOV cliff and seems better contextualized as criticism. Gobonobo 06:02, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Plagiarism

This page seems to be mostly plagiarized, and it consequently reads like a brochure. I'm new to Wikipedia, but I can't imagine that a page can be largely unattributed copy and pasting, even if it is not a direct copyright violation. It seems this issue was raised two years ago; is anyone working on this page? 938 MeV (talk) 18:25, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Budget and charter

Seems to me that information about the budget and charter belong under organization, not criticism. Fyslee seems to have a problem with this, not sure why. hgilbert (talk) 08:06, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

You misunderstood or are misrepresenting. He had inserted a quote from an AAAS policy review paper published in Science. It outlined the problems with NCCAM and belonged in the criticism section. I am assuming you didnt bother to read or understand that, because when you revised the article you destroyed the sense and continuity and separated part of the account of this paper from the rest. I assume this was accidental, but please be more careful. alteripse (talk) 12:14, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Those were indeed my concerns. Unfortunately a duplicate ended up being created (mention of budget and charter). Another duplicate (Atwood's quote) wasn't ever touched and I have just fixed that one. This is a sensitive section and we just need to discuss changes to it here first. BTW, I don't think I inserted that quote. I just noticed that Hgilbert was significantly changing the section, and based on his track record as an editor on "the other side of the fringe fence", I just jumped to the conclusion that he was vandalizing the section. "Vandalizing" was too strong a word to use and I have apologized on my talk page. Parts of his edits did destroy some of the thought flow, as expressed by Alteripse, so let's be careful and discuss any changes here first. -- Fyslee (talk) 15:41, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

The section is still badly written:

• It's still not clear to me why a bare statement of the organization's budget is a criticism; if it's simply because it's cited to the same reference, there can be multiple citations to the source.
• The quote indeed criticizes the charter - and I had missed this - but it's not clear that what it refers to is related to the representation of AM practitioners on the board. Can someone look at the original source and either clarify that this is indeed what is critiqued there or, if it is not, move this passage out (linking two things by implication that are not linked in the source would qualify as OR otherwise). hgilbert (talk) 11:36, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I have a pdf of the original source, as well as the rebuttal by the nccam director published shortly afterward. Unfortunately you need to be a member to get it from the AAAS site. The principal criticisms are that quite different and scientifically poorer standards are used for nccam research projects than for other NIH research, and that there are massive conflicts of interest in that most of the oversight scientists are among the principal beneficiaries of nccam money. The authors argue that the resulting poor scientific quality of the research, combined with the general attitude of the public and alternative practitioners that negative nccam results will not change practices, makes the nccam as it currently operates a largely wasteful and useless enterprise. The response from the director is that congressional restrictions mandate the composition of the organization and its research, and that more of the focus of the nccam is being directed toward establishing standards for dietary and herbal medicines, since so many are fraudulent and adulterated and the DSHEA regulations provide little consumer protection. Incidentally, the rebuttal from the nccam director includes the public admission that a large proportion of "alternative" remedies are toxic garbage dangerous to the consumer. As you are no doubt aware, this is not a fact freely admitted by most defenders of quackery. alteripse (talk) 13:10, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Both the framework of the congressional mandate and the director's admission belong in this article, I would think. hgilbert (talk) 14:17, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I included the complete quote from the NCCAM charter concerning council membership because the previous abbreviated quote suggested a far greater level of 'CAM' representation than actually exists. The previous quote suggested 9 members must be experts in the field of C and A medicine. This is quite wrong, as an examination of the board will show. The board is heavily loaded with representatives from the conventional medicine fields. DHawker (talk) 11:59, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Better reference of the criticism section

The role of rigorous scientific evaluation in the use and practice of complementary and alternative medicine.[1]

I don't have time to work on it right now, maybe later if someone doesn't do it first. Ward20 (talk) 04:57, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Huh.

[2] WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 12:59, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

An interesting article. -- Brangifer (talk) 06:06, 8 April 2010 (UTC)