Wikipedia:Peer review/List of ineffective cancer treatments/archive1

List of ineffective cancer treatments

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review to get feedback from experienced editors on ideas for improvement, with a view to making this article a featured list. All and any type of comment are welcome, but in particular:

• Is the coverage good (I believe we are listing anything that is notable enough to feature elsewhere in Wikipedia)
• Is the MO of having one-or-two sentences per list-item suitable?i
• More pictures? fewer?
• The very best sources are used, but this leads to a certain sameness of sourcing. Is this an issue?
• Would it be appropriate to head each section with a short introductory paragraph giving general commentary on the type of treatment in the sub-list that follows; or does that take us too far away from being a list article?

Thanks, 08:10, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I am not a very experienced editor and this is my first peer review, but some comments from Ochiwar:

• General

• The one or two sentence MO is suitable IMO since most list entries are sufficiently linked to articles that give further information.
• The article is not overloaded with pictures. A few more good, relevant images will do no harm.
• IMO an introductory paragraph in the sub-list is not needed because (again) most list entries are sufficiently linked to articles that give further information.
• Coverage is quite good for such a young article. As more readers and editors bring up further suggestions, the coverage will probably improve with time. I will leave some suggestions to missing content and possibly useful references on the article talk page.

• Lead

• A caveat that the list is not all inclusive may be needed to avoid suggesting to a possibly naive reader that all other therapies not included on the list are automatically sanctioned.

Ochiwar (talk) 08:30, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

• "but which lack medical evidence of effectiveness": it may be pertinent to point out in some way that the lack of evidence of effectiveness in cases on the list has been established after independent scientific testing or review. This is to make the distinction between items on this list and any other purported cancer remedies which may exist but are not included on this list simply because they have not been tested and no second and third party published data exists yet.Ochiwar (talk) 08:18, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

• Yes, thanks for this (and for your other helpful points above which I am working to address). I think an issue here is that some of the entries on the list are so "far out" that they're not subject to much/any in-depth scientific scrutiny. But I think your proposed wording of "testing or review" covers that nicely. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 08:25, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Hello, to provide my two cents, I thought this article gave good coverage and had an adequate amount of well-placed pictures. I think adding introductory paragraphs would deviate from the list nature of the article and that the titles are sufficient to explain the nature of each grouping. I do think the sources are a bit samey, but if something's verifiable then it's verifiable, no need for variation just for the sake of it. As an aside, you may be interested in including several Cochrane metaanalyses on the effects of intercessionary prayer in cancer. LT90001 (talk) 12:35, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Comments

• Lead starts out with "This is a list..." FL no longer uses that format.
• Comprehensiveness how do we know the list is comprehensive? Can it ever be comprehensive? What is the difference between this page and Alternative cancer treatments?
• I have not researched any of these things myself. Are you certain that all of these things are proven to be ineffective, not just lacking in evidence of effectiveness? And this is supported by the sources? My concern here is the title of the article may have NPOV issue, specifically use of the word "ineffective." Rejectwater (talk) 14:01, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, taking these in order:

• Aha - what is the preferred wording for FLs at the moment?
• The list is not comprehensive (nor can it ever be) as there is a simply enormous numbers of things in the real world which have been touted as cancer treatments; hence the list description says these "some of" the proposed treatments. The MO for deciding whether something is included is to ask whether is has coverage elsewhere on Wikipedia (so: each entry links to some other article). Is there some way to mention this in the opening without it seeming too much like a self-referential editorial strategising?
• The Alternative cancer treatments article is a narrative article giving a general description of that topic, and including some embedded lists with examples of alternative cancer treatments (some of which correspond to items here).
• The nature of the evidence-based medicine is such that none of these treatments can be (formally) proven ineffective, since the assessment is always ultimately a statistical one made using evidence and probability. The supposition is that the null hypothesis (i.e. no effect) pertains, and this is overturned only when evidence of effectiveness is found: this is unpacked in the opening words of the article which sets out the inclusion criteria normatively (and which the sources used need to support). I think "ineffective" is probably the most accurate/NPOV compromise word we could use in the title without it expanding into something very wordy. However, it might also be worth mentioning evidence-based medicine in the lede by way of further explanation? There are different views here: Vickers argues[1] that for cancer treatments the word "disproven" should be used even when something is "unproven" or "shown to be ineffective"; on the other hand "unvalidated" and "unproven" might falsely imply these are conditions whose time is yet-to-come. "Under-evidenced" is technically correct in some cases, but unhelpfully so. Maybe it's worth getting some views from the WT:MED and WP:FT/N noticeboard on how policy applies here ... ?

• Some pictures are missing alt text. See WP:ALT. Also, some of the alt texts that are there read like captions.
• For the lead, a good example may be List of states and territories of the United States. The lead there briefly explains what the United States is, then goes on to explain how it is divided into states. The list you are working on would probably start out with a sentence or two about cancer, then move into the realm of alternative treatments.
• Comprehensiveness: see Wikipedia:Featured list criteria. I am getting the impression you will have a very hard time with this list at FLC due to 3a and 3b. You have already stated it is impossible for the list to be comprehensive, therefore the list fails 3a. Also, I can't help but feel this is a fork of Alternative cancer treatments, as previously discussed. Any list that is a fork fails 3b. I know you disagree, but there is just way too much overlap. Basically List of ineffective cancer treatments is a list format version of Alternative cancer treatments. You mentioned that Alternative cancer treatments is a narrative article; all Featured Lists on Wikipedia are narrative articles to whatever extent necessary to cover the topic. See, for instance, List of goaltenders who have scored a goal in an NHL game.
• The title won't matter without settling the possibility of a fork situation. Regards, Rejectwater (talk) 13:24, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks agaiin for the feedback. So it seems a priority is to talk to the folks at alternative cancer treatments and see if we can start getting consensus on how the content might be disposed across these articles (or combined into one) ... Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 16:31, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

You are welcome for the feedback. It was my pleasure. Take a look as well at Wikipedia:Summary style for a discussion of splits vs. forks. Also remember that this is, of course, my interpretation and opinion and others may disagree. Regards, Rejectwater (talk) 17:02, 6 October 2013 (UTC)