Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of human diseases associated with infectious pathogens (2nd nomination)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

List of human diseases associated with infectious pathogens

The result was Userfy, per request. I find it reasonable that BFP be given more time to work on this in their userspace, and find that to be a reasonable reading of consensus as arrived at here' — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kevin Gorman (talk • contribs) 23:23, 22 July 2015‎

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I discovered this article during a discussion about how to organize topics related to infectious causes of cancer. You might think from the title that it's about actual infectious diseases, but it's not; that's in list of infectious diseases. This one is a list of diseases with possible (but unconfirmed) infectious etiologies. Almost none of the sources in here are anywhere near WP:MEDRS-compliant - which would be one thing if it were an article on the current state of scientific research on the topic, but it's not that either; it's just a very long list of purported associations, each of which is cited to sources that are some combination of primary, dated, and fringe. Only a small number of the entries are anything close to robust, reproducible observations. Furthermore, the article creator and primary author invested much of the rest of their wiki-time in POV-pushing about Morgellons, a WP:FRINGE topic. The previous AfD closed as no consensus and appears to be responsible for the long, defensively worded introduction that fairly screams "fringe".

I started to dig through this with the intention of trimming it and have given up. This needs WP:TNT. Opabinia regalis (talk) 04:03, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

violation of topic ban. Jytdog (talk) 20:33, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

As the original creating author and major contributor of this page that is being considered for deletion, I would like to take part in this discussion. However, I am currently under a ban for the medical area of Wikipedia, and am not sure whether this ban prevents me from contributing to this discussion. The ban was put in place in July 2013, and I presume is still in force. (The ban resulted from a over-heated discussion on the Morgellons Disease talk page, where myself and others tried to get the pseudoscience extricated from that page, but the major editors there were intent on keeping the pseudoscience).

Would anyone here know whether a medical ban excludes me from taking part in this AfD discussion?

In any case, I understand that a ban may be lifted, and I will try to find out the most expedient way of appealing against a ban, in order to take part in this discussion.

Drgao (talk) 05:06, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Drgao: I am fairly sure your topic ban does not apply to Articles for Deletion. In this case we're only talking about whether or not the article is notable enough to stay. Your participating in the discussion would not involve you editing any medicine-related pages. —Мандичка^YO 😜 08:42, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - but is it possible to rename the article to something like, List of diseases possibly induced by infectious pathogens (or something better than "possibly"), so it's clear these are suspected, but not yet proven? I'm not an expert but I looked down the list and it seems legit, as I know in some cases with mysterious diseases, exposure to pathogens is theorized as a cause, and it says so in their respective articles. For example, Chronic fatigue syndrome#Pathophysiology states "infection by viruses and pathogenic bacteria" is a possible risk factor. I don't believe this to be WP:FRINGE since there is significant research into what causes these diseases, and new discoveries are being found. Additionally many editors have contributed to this article and it is heavily sourced. —Мандичка^YO 😜 09:10, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This article is superficially well-sourced - in that there are a large number of footnotes to legitimate scientific papers - but by the standards of medical content, it is not well-sourced at all. Many of those publications are out of date or appear in journals that are not very selective about what they publish. Even the good ones are frequently primary sources, which in this context means the paper reports a single set of observations that may not yet have been reproduced. I don't mean to belabor the point but several of the keep votes in the prior AfD come from experienced contributors who voted based on a good-faith misunderstanding of how the scientific literature works in this topic area. Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:24, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. This is a bunch of primary sources from borderline publications, basically a coatrack of fringieness. Dbrodbeck (talk) 12:12, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
delete --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:36, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - for example For an infectious pathogenic microbe that has been noted to frequently accompany a disease, there are several logical possibilities that can explain this observed association: The pathogen is an "innocent bystander" that plays no causal role in the etiology of the disease, but for some reason is more prevalent in patients with the disease (perhaps because the disease compromises the immune response, for example). Germ theory denialism? In the 21st Century? The reality-based content of this is at List of infectious diseases, this title is redundant per the reality-based list, since the mechanism of infection is pathogens pretty much by definition. Guy (Help!) 17:05, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that's trying to deny the germ theory of disease. It seems more to me like a statement that "correlation is not necessarily causation". For example, there are some kinds of bacteria that appear in much greater numbers in dead people than in living people, but that doesn't mean the bacteria killed them. Mr Potto (talk) 17:34, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Mr Potto is right; this is just a somewhat clumsily written attempt to acknowledge that associations may not be causal. Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:24, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

violation of topic ban Jytdog (talk) 03:01, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Originally I never included these labored explanations of the technical terms "association" and "causation", but if you read the talk history of this page, you will see that some editors thought that the article would be misunderstood unless these things were very clearly explained. So that is why I put them in, for the benefit of the less scientifically literate. Judging by Jytdog's response below, he is an example of someone who does not appear to know what "association" means, so perhaps these labored explanations are useful for some people. Drgao (talk) 21:24, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:07, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:07, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - ~~This article was created by a very respected editor Iztwoz, one of doctors who spends his time improving the encyclopedia.~~ Some of us have been trying to correct statements that are poorly sourced and removing material that is not supported by the reference. If it can't be salvaged, I would like to request instead that it be tagged that the references are outdated. I can probably pare it down to a stub ~~and then work with Iztwoz to insert appropriate references that meet MEDRs.~~

Bfpage |leave a message 20:24, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

delete or WP:TNT - no idea why Bfpage claims that I created the page. The only edit I made was to add missing word 'viruses' to a section! --Iztwoz (talk) 21:25, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Iztwoz, I am so sorry. I had two browsers open and was reading the wrong edit history. Bfpage |leave a message 02:53, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - I have begun working on this article and so far have made at least 35 53 82 edits in response to the concerns so far described in this discussion. I would ask for more time to edit, and to provide appropriate sourcing.

Bfpage |leave a message 10:30, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Bfpage, you've put a lot of work into this, but I really think your energies are better spent elsewhere. The content you're writing in the intro appears to be a general history of infectious disease medicine, which is interesting but not a topic that belongs in this particular article. Taking the contents of the list and adding sources where better ones can be found is progress, but the items in the list were cherry-picked according to poorly defined criteria by a user with known-bad judgment about medical content. Each item can be impeccably sourced and the article could still be wrong: a hallmark of irrecoverable WP:SYNTH issues. Opabinia regalis (talk) 04:45, 22 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: There is only a small (incomplete) section on the history of infectious disease and it is not part of the intro. The cherry-picking is being addressed in the editing. My goal in rescuing this article is to provide an encyclopedic article about some of the most common infectious pathogens and their sequelae.

Bfpage |leave a message 23:02, 22 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

strong delete this is an WP:INDISCRIMINATE piece of garbage. I cannot emphasize that enough. garbage The problem is the loosey-goosey scope of "associated with", which could mean anything from lunatic charlatan claims to mildly FRINGE claims (like ALS has an infectious disease etiology) to things with decent but not certain evidence to things that are dead certain like the causal link between HPV and cervical cancer or HIV and AIDS. But this article is WP at its absolute worst. Please put this sick animal down, already. Jytdog (talk) 20:30, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

violation of topic ban; takes more than a "few editors'" opinions to lift a topic ban Jytdog (talk) 21:14, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Several editors said that I should be able to participate in this discussion, so I am going to do so:

Jytdog, the phrase "associated with" has a very precise scientific meaning. I suggest you acquaint yourself with that scientific meaning before you go any further. It is a crucial point, and the fact that you don't understand it makes your vote and opinion look very uniformed. Drgao (talk) 21:05, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There is no violation of a topic ban if these editors are correct in saying that the ban does not apply to the AfD. Unless you can show me a document that indicates it does, I would ask you not to tamper with my edits.

To repeat what I said earlier:

Jytdog, the phrase "associated with" has a very precise scientific meaning. I suggest you acquaint yourself with that scientific meaning before you go any further. It is a crucial point, and the fact that you don't understand it makes your vote and opinion look very uniformed. Drgao (talk) 21:19, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Provisional Keep to give time for Bfpage to work on it and see how it turns out. Mr Potto (talk) 10:54, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. The "associated with" catch-all is just too vague and slippery to ever make for a useful list; instead, this article will continue to be a magnet for collecting dubious fringe and conspiracy theories. Where there is credible evidence (or even widely-recognized and -discussed speculation, for diseases of unknown etiology) then infectious theories of origin should be handled in the articles about those diseases. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:24, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - then this discussion can be applied to the article, List of infectious diseases. Same idea, less text, no references, just wikilinks.

Bfpage |leave a message 22:35, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete This is a bunch of sources of varying reliability that make various strength claims of association being compiled into a topic. Unless this can be based off of reliable third party source discussing the topic itself then this article is nothing but original research through synthesis. Chillum 14:33, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
~~Userfy~~This article needs substantial work. The list needs to be more than just a single primary source claiming an association. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:44, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I've been removing primary sources where I find them, replacing them with sources that meet the guidelines of MEDRs.

Bfpage |leave a message 22:35, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete and userfy to Bfpage Agree that this article causes confusion. Some of these are directly cause and well accepted to be cause by an infection. Others are believed to be triggered by an infection but not to be directly due to one. Others are just loss associations that are not accepted by the mainstream medicine. Mixing all three just causes confusion. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:16, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I respectfully request that I be allowed to continue to work on this article by the closing administrator by placing this article in my draft space. I believe that there is a need for an article on this topic. The contentiousness between the two topic-banned editors has 'muddied' the waters and has possibly affected the discussion. I appreciate all the time, opinions, concerns and comments provided by those participating in this discussion. I have nothing but respect for those of you who have made significant contributions to the encyclopedia regarding medical content. Best Regards,

Bfpage |leave a message 23:02, 22 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There are two topic banned editors? I thought there was only 1. Dbrodbeck (talk) 23:13, 22 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.