Where is Your Definition Tonight? Dana Ullman on the Virtual War in Wikipedia over Homeopathy
Written by John Weeks
Do You Know Where Your Definition Is Tonight? Dana Ullman on the War over Homeopathy in Wikipedia
Summary: According to this fascinating and eerie account from homeopath and author Dana Ullman, MPH, "anti-homeopathic
fundamentalists have hijacked the Wikipedia information on homeopathy." Ullman asks if anyone else in the complementary and integrative medicine world has encountered similar issues. (Do you know what is being said about your field?) In a time when more of us are relying on quick searches for information, the virtual battleground of Wikipedia is a place where many hearts and minds are being formed, if not won and lost. Take an inside look at Ullman's account of this battle over homeopathy in the Wikipedia world. Do you know who your definition is hanging out with tonight?
Send your comments and information about other virtual conflict zones
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Battleground for hearts & minds
Imagine an international, participatory process for clarifying the appropriate boundaries of a Palestinian nation. Oh, that's right, we have a process, of sorts. Achieving consensus has proved, and is proving, challenging. Now imagine a process, involving all interests in medicine and health care, to clarify the appropriate definitional boundaries for homeopathy. Oh, actually, we have one. It's called Wikipedia. Consensus has proved as elusive.
Homeopath Dana Ullman, MPH - author most recently ofThe Homeopathic Revolution - sent the Integrator the following account of the boundary dispute over homeopathy inside Wikipedia. Invisible to the Wikipedia newcomer with an innocent curiosity about homeopathy is that they are entering a placid, flat face that conceals a war zone. Sign-posts are been knocked down and new ones lifted, daily. To Ullman's account, references are cordoned off or disappear altogether, virtual parallels to the desaparacidos who opposed military governments in South America in the 1970s. Gone. Vanished. Not to be considered.
Asserts Ullman: "Anti-homeopathic
fundamentalists have hijacked the Wikipedia information on homeopathy." He asks if anyone knows of any other such disputes. Is your field turf that someone is seeking to "take" in this virtual war over the future of American health care?
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The Battle over Homeopathy in Wikipedia
- Dana Ullman, MPH
As much as I
love the website, wikipedia.org, there are obvious and significant problems
when there is a participatory body of information on certain controversial
subjects. Such is the problem with Wikipedia's listing on homeopathic
medicine.
It is time for
someone to report on the fact that the quackbusters and anti-homeopathic
fundamentalists have hijacked the information on homeopathy on Wikipedia.
Dana Ullman, MPH
The site on
"homeopathy" at Wikipedia was for a long time held in formal
"dispute" because neither side (pro and con) considered the
information to be accurate. Now, however, the anti-forces has increased
in number and in sophistication, and they immediately change whatever
pro-homeopathy information is provided, often times within moments.
Because wikipedia allows anyone to edit any
article, many people edit the homeopathy article anonymously. No one
knows if these people work for Big Pharma , if they are a conventional
physician who simply hates homeopathy (and who either doesn't read research on
homeopathy or simply doesn't believe it could be true), or if they are simply
20-year-old college students with too much time on their hands and have a
profound antagonism towards certain alternative therapies.
"The
anti-homeopathy bias is so strong that these people do not even allow links to
any national or international not-for-profit homeopathic organizations."
- Dana Ullman, MPH
The
anti-homeopathy bias is so strong that these people do not even allow links to
any national or international homeopathic organizations (the non-profit ones)
nor to any of the professional or academic journals (one of our journals is
published by Elsevier, the same company that publishes the Lancet, and yet, the
anti-homeopathic cabal doesn't allow and will delete any references to this or
any other homeopathic journal). The anti-homeopathic forces claim that
homeopathic organizations are "biased," though these same people
ignore the biases of the many anti-homeopathic organizations that they list and
that they protect from other people deleting their links.
Every other CAM
therapy has links to leading organizations and to professional journals, except
homeopathy.
This type of
censoring of access to information about homeopathy is intellectually
dishonest, and this censoring disables people from accessing resources that may
educate them about a subject.
The above
censoring of links is strong and palpable evidence of an anti-homeopathic bias,
but this bias is also shown in the writing of the article on homeopathy.
In the third paragraph of the explanation for homeopathy are truly outrageous
statements such as, "The ideas of homeopathy are scientifically
implausible." Whenever anyone seeks to change this statement by
referencing articles published in leading physics, chemistry, or basic science
journals that describe plausible theories about how homeopathic medicines may
work, these references are immediately deleted. There has been many arguments
at the "discussion" page on why the words "scientifically
implausible" are totally inaccurate because the term
"plausibility" does not mean that scientists "know" how
homeopathic medicines work; it only refers to the possibility that modern
theories about homeopathy may be accurate. However, the antagonists to
homeopathy are rigid, even fundamentalist, in their attacks on this natural
medicine and its theory, its research, and its practices.
I will be
curious if other people in CAM have had similar experiences at the listings on Wikipedia.
"People should be warned
that quackbusters have
taken control of certain
articles on Wikipedia. The
best solution here is if
people who advocate for
integrative therapies take
a more active
role in correcting
the misinformation."
-Ullman
Please know that
I do not wish to change the participatory nature of Wikipedia, but I do need to
warn people that certain controversial subjects on Wikipedia have strongly
biased information and misinformation.
I don't know
whether to be honored that the quackbusters are so threatened by homeopathy
that they have targeted it with their considerable censoring or if I should
instead be concerned that a 1984-type of censoring information is hijacking
certain sources of information for the public.
In either case,
people should be warned that quackbusters have taken control of certain
articles on Wikipedia, and the best solution here is if a growing number of
people who advocate for some of these integrative therapies take a more active
role in correcting the misinformation. The best treatment for
"homeo-phobia" is knowledge, and efforts to mute this knowledge must
be responded to with vigor.
Comment: One way to read Ullman's article is as a call to engage in a virtual war over hearts and minds that are increasingly shaped by virtual realities such as Wikipedia. Ullman's question is a good one: In what other areas of the complementary and integrative medicine definitional discussion are such battles taking place? Chiropractic? Naturopathic medicine? These are among the lightening rods against which conventional medical fundamentalists rail. (CAM fundamentalists have their own targets.) He raises the question: Do you know where your definition is tonight?
It serves those who working to open Western medicine to new approaches to show vigilance in these emerging, virtual zones. The time needed to parry and counter-parry is of course an issue. Perhaps the best way to be vigilant is to follow a customary practice in war: get the young to fight it for you. You teachers out there - assign your students to stand watch over pieces of this terrain.
Send your comments and information about other virtual conflict zones
to
for inclusion in a future Your Comments Forum.