Narconon @ Wikipedia (a heads-up)

Are ongoing court cases allowed to be cited in wikipedia?
This one has its next scheduled hearing on 13th March 2012:

People make the darnedest claims in court. Are the Elliotts' claims notable?

See that bolded part about the efficacy claims. That'd be the same claims currently disputed in the article.

I think those are better treated in the articles that was posted.

Those what in what articles?

These:

Yes, but until the court actually makes a ruling on the claims or delivers a verdict, they're just claims, i.e. opinion. The Elliotts aren't experts, aren't otherwise notable (in the Wikipedia sense), so why is their opinion important?

(I'm being purposely harsh here.)

Fred's a good guy, but his sites look like 90s crap. Some guy's web page, with a copy of a Usenet post with an unofficial translation of what some professor in Sweden is supposed to have written... That won't pass the first review by even a neutral editor.

I had a hard time understanding the rules about 1st, 2nd, 3rd party. TL;DR. One wikipedian told the dumb me that it's like literature review. Court house news is basically news. It's 3rd party reporting on the case, truthfully and neutrally. The interpretation of facts and interpretation on the news article can be rewritten on wikipedia if that's related to the title of the wiki article. Referencing the court dox is allowed, but your own interpretation is not.

"The Elliotts say they were drawn to Narconon by a website advertising Narconon, which gave "a glowing report about the efficacy of the treatment program"

This can be proven just by going to the website and seeing the "glowing report about the efficacy" can't it? Surely while the clams still expect that efficacy study to remain on the wikipedia article, they'll continue to mention it on their site?

An observation about this ^

A lot of people would go to the wikipedia article on Narconon after seeing it mentioned along with the study that tries to make Narconon seem legit on a clam-operated site...
Right now they see wikipedia citing the exact same study and conclude that it must be legit!

^ That wasn't the end of the observation. The part that affects us is that Scilons rely on the above happening, so there will be a metric fuckton of resistance by them to it being removed from the article.

An untranslated direct quote of the professor could be put at http://se.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narconon then let the wikipedians themselves do the translation for us on the english article

The College is finished with this physician now, so his name can now be posted.

What the College has stated about the physician, is what they investigated and decided concerning Narconon.

http://www.xenu-directory.net/mirrors/www.whyaretheydead.net/others/Jocelyne_Dorfmann_34.html

Which in turn cites the French parliament report and gives court case references.

Best regards

Jens

I just spent a few hours with the Human Rights Commission concerning my "Success Stories". It seems their defence
may be playing heavy on these, but in fact, have turned around and bit them "HARD" on the ass.

I wish I could post more about this ^^^^^, but can't right now - - but eventually will ALL come to light

.

When I was the Graduate Officer at NN TR, with 720 Patient Files in front of me, I could easily have calculated these ^^^^^ above
same results. It depends on how and which numbers you use. If I had abided by their harassment to use the patient numbers that I
could not reach; putting those numbers in the "doing well" column, the success rate would probably have matched their advertised 76%.

"They" play word games for some of their Stats. (and four reported using drugs) - - does not mean ONLY FOUR used, it means
ONLY four REPORTED using drugs. I had several patients deny using drugs, but later recanted, admitting they started drinking,
then relapsed back into drugs.

"Dr. Root viewed this report as possible evidence that excreting residual drugs and their metabolites, stored in body fat, aids recovery" -
We know this ^^^^^ is absolute rubbish, as investigated in 2011 by the Quebec College of Physicians and determined by their
EXPERT medical professional, as well as many previous scientists and physicians.

"They" have absolutely NO controled study to verify ANY of their results.

Of the 720 NN patient files that I used to calculate the Success Rate, and NOT using any patients I could not reach,
only 46% "CLAIMED" they were not using. At the time I was calculating these numbers, there were about 8-12 ex-patients
who were on staff at NN TR. Do you think they admitted they were using? Not on your life, but in fact the majority were using
and later returned to NN TR or the Calgary NN for "Repair."

When calculating these ^^^^^ and other numbers that came in after I left NN TR, their success rate dropped to below 20%.

I have the actual dox on all of this^^^^^.

.

^^ Basically primary sources, and non-Verifiable because it seems to be unpublished confidential correspondence. Can't use it. If they now publish something on a publicly accessible site, that would be different, but still a primary source.

There's a special think you have to do when editing Wikipedia articles. Forget about what you darn well know. You have to stick to what published Reliable Source secondary sources say about it, and then wrap that up with neutral language.

What we need is to debunk this study. Have the College of Physicians published a report where this study have been evaluated?

The problem is that unless these numbers are published somewhere, they represent original research and can't be used per Wikipedia guidelines. Please, publish them in some reputable journal if you get a chance!

While we are at it, do you know of any material (Narconons own published material would do) describing the use of the TR8 (shouting at the ashtray thingy) as part of the Narconon "cure"?[/quote]

Aren't primary sources a good thing? (I'm not a wikipedian).

If we got it verified - e.g. by having it released directly by the College des Medicins - then would it be allowed?

Or does the CdM publish some kind of public report or summary on a case like this?

Primary sources are discouraged. The reason is that science procede on an uneven front. If you are writing about economics for instance, and you want to "proove" that the Kaynesian approach do not work, then you can always find some doctoral thesis or an article from a scientific magazine claiming that Kayes failed and will never work. We do however know that the real picture is a bit more complicated, thus Wikipedia prefer textbooks as the preferred sources. Whatever ends up in the textbooks may not be entirely correct, but it does normally reflect consensus in the scientific field. The textbook is a 2ndrary source. It is not raw science, rather is a synthesis of of raw science, made by someone who presumably know the stuff well and has a good overview of the field.

In a number of cases a textbook level of sources can not be found. Naorconon is a good examples, it is simply not important enough to enter textbooks. Thus the editors are left with trying to decide what is the "most secondary" of the sources, a fickle process indeed. The summary articles, evaluating the "research" and the claims of Narconon are the best resources, as they at least are summary articles, if not directly secondary. If the College des Medicins publishes it's finding, it could count as a summary article. Self published sources from the cult can actually be used, but only as sources for the the method used, not for efficiency. Tertiary sources (i.e. media reports) can also be used when no other sources are found.

OK, that actually makes far more sense than I was expecting.

Thank you.

And thanks to Ackerman too; you guys are doing a great job in getting the rest of us acclimatised to the strange and foreign mores and folk-ways of Wikipedia.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/nov/15/ukcrime.prisonsandprobation

Nice.

moar...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/10/02/BAGN292LAC1.DTL

update:

here's Steve Hellig's letter on behalf of the San Francisco Medical Society
http://www.stop-narconon.org/SFUSD/scans/heilig-letter-2004-09-30.pdf
as quoted in the article above.

moar update: verification from the San Francisco Medical Society website:

http://www.sfms.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home&template=/CM/HTMLDisplay.cfm&ContentID=1637

http://articles.latimes.com/2004/jun/24/local/me-narconon24

http://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/he/at/narcononevaluation.asp

Norwigian Link is broken - correct link is:

Summary:
http://www.kunnskapssenteret.no/Pub...ention intervention.3650.cms?language=english

Full publication (PDF):
http://www.kunnskapssenteret.no/Publikasjoner/_attachment/4311?_ts=11d719f7891&download=true

Verifiability on Wikipedia means that someone else could look at the reference, and go find the same information. It doesn't mean that hunting it down has to be easy or that a link is required. If it means traveling to a major library and spending time in the basement working old equipment to get at it, well... tough!

The problem with something like those confidential letters from the College is that the only place someone else could go to get a direct copy would be David. A link to a copy on the Internet might work for a while, but someone is surely going to point out that it's not really Verifiable and that it's self-published.

What Random Guy said about primary sources. Also, you have to stick to what's in the primary source. You can't draw any conclusions or use to support your own opinion ("original research", which is bad).

BTW, watch out for the old "textbook ploy" used by pro-cult editors like JN466. The ploy goes like this:

• Wikipedia, in general, prefers textbooks. (True.)
• In the field of New Religious Movements there are books published by scholars. (Those would be the books published by apologists, frequently funded by the cultic groups themselves, sometimes self-published. And sometimes their qualifications are a bit vague.)
• Those books are listed reading material in courses on New Religious Movements in many universities. (I don't think that automatically makes them a textbook. Perhaps they're being used as bad examples?)
• Because textbooks are preferred, the article should be rebalanced to concentrate on academic sources and less on material from tabloid newspapers.

I've seen that ploy used in a (failed) attempt to rebalance an article based on Gordon Melton's gawdawful book over lesser sources like Time Magazine's award-winning, court-tested, Cult of Greed and Power. Now that Hugh Urban's book is out, the book fight isn't so one-sided, but it's still a ridiculous argument in a small, narrow and academically divided field like cultic studies.

The "pubslished" part here is difficult. The public reports like that of the California dep. of education should be usable. Newspaper articles reporting on them can be used too. The Norwegian paper is quite good, as it directly evaluate earlier research.

But if the CMQ were to provide the info on the doctor's restriction then that would be 'verifiable', right?

http://www.cmq.org/en/RepertoireMembres/MembreDetails.aspx?id=5012842

"Blown for Good" ref Narconon fiddled success stats
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...arconon&pg=PA375#v=onepage&q=narconon&f=false

"Scientology and the state: Narconon's influence in the prison system"
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...X&ei=icoFT_XePM6X8gOCvanKAQ&ved=0CFAQ6AEwBTgK

Published by BFG Books Inc. i.e. self-published "vanity press", and likely to be objected to. That's a problem with the otherwise excellent recent books by ex-members.

Actual book publishers are presumed to employ fact-checkers and legal advisers as they can be held liable for the content in court cases.

University of Southern California, perfect.

I don't actually know what it says, apart from the summary at google Books, so we might want to be a little careful with that one.

update:

Here it is:
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q="scientology and the state" narconon&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCoQFjAA&url=http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/assetserver/controller/item/etd-Tewksbury-20080505.pdf&ei=Qs8FT8l6idnxA_v7vK4B&usg=AFQjCNFss7MEXFUR45u-xeKJZalSwaQvxA&cad=rja

Turns out it's an MA thesis not thesis exactly so much as sample article for journalism degree.

All that says is that Pierre Labonté has a restriction on his practice. You could possibly show that he was connected with Narconon, but tying it all together and concluding that his practice was restricted due to his connection with Narconon would be original research or investigative reporting.

What's needed is something as detailed as this one on the Assistant Director of the New York Rescue Workers' Detoxification Project:
http://w3.nyhealth.gov/opmc/faction...6852572ad004e133f/$FILE/ATTPC2K0/lc208330.pdf

I'm saying, if we contact the CMQ and ask them to send us the details of the restriction on his practice (as the web page suggests), then is that allowed? They're a (presumably) government-appointed regulator of the medical profession....

Hmm. If anyone could request the detailed information from the CMQ (definitely a government-appointed regulator of the medical profession), then it's verifiable and the objections over a web copy should be answered.

Request in progress.

They'll still whine.

"How do we know that self-published web copy is real and accurate?"
"Get off your butt and request a copy. I did. Here's the address..."

I <3 u bastards

DeathHamster, RandomGuy, you both make excellent points about Wikipedia's editing guidelines and what can be used. The point that there is hardly any textbook literature about the efficacy of Narconon is well taken. Wikipedia has no choice BUT to accept primary sources in this case, like the one study that is cited so heavily right now. However, putting the yard-stick for sources to the current article, the use of literature in this Wikipedia article as it stands now, does not measure up to the criteria you just defined.

The research papers that have been given in http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Narconon/papers.htm are all written by pro-Narconon shills. The purpose of the page is to dissect these studies for their methodological errors. As this does not happen by an official scientific institute, or doesn't have a reputable name attached to it, I'm afraid this page is not usable for our purposes.

However, I'm going to cite the sources that I do think can be used. Most of all, it is my understanding that court decisions and media reports about important events of the past, like Narconons that have been closed due to catastrophic hygiene, criminality, etc can definitely be added to the article (however, not under the lemma 'efficacy') to make clear that Narconon is not as undisputed as the current page suggests. These events happened to past Narconon institutions and are definitely worthy of being included in the Narconon article.

I'm now collecting all links and sources that have been posted to the thread, that in my opinion, are usable for the "Efficacy" section in the WP article:

• http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045653507008648 (link obtained from http://www.xenu-directory.net/documents/corporate/990s-iads-analysis.html)
• http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2007/954/188/2007-954188814-04877c2f-9.pdf to prove that the study the WP article currently cites from is NOT independent
• http://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/he/at/narcononevaluation.asp (link obtained from http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Stop-Narconon/Documents/), has a Ph.D. to its name
• A brief summary and evaluation of the evidence base for Narconon as drug prevention intervention Rigmor C Berg Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services ISBN 978-82-8121-214-5

The last two links in my opinion are secondary literature, if I understand it correctly, and EXACTLY what we need to give this article a more balanced outlook. I would not remove the study by the Chicchiani woman, but we can make it clear, that this study has been deemed as flawed by two independent sources.
The Norwegian Centre even has an ISBN number, so really, I think we have all that we need for independent WP admins to conclude our changes will be sound.