Narconon @ Wikipedia (a heads-up)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narconon#Efficacy

Thanks anon. Good post.

The "American Academy of Environmental Medicine" that Root's paper was presented at is hardly a reputable organization.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/environmental-medicine/

The sources needs checking:

Lennox, Richard D.; Cecchini, Marie A. (2008). "The NARCONON™ drug education curriculum for high school students: A non-randomized, controlled prevention trial". Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy 3 (8). doi:10.1186/1747-597X-3-8. Retrieved 2011-06-27. Summary in The Cochrane Library.

Klotter, Julie (2007). "Hubbard's Drug Rehabilitation Program". Townsend Letter: The Examiner of Alternative Medicine. Retrieved 2011-06-27.

The latter ones seem questionable on the face of it.

Aww, teh little Scilons are playing at Real Science, conducting studies and everything! That's so cute.

Here's what comes up when you search the Journal of Substance Abuse, Treatment, Prevention and Policy.
http://www.substanceabusepolicy.com/content/3/1/8

http://www.substanceabusepolicy.com/content/3/1/8

http://www.xenu-directory.net/documents/corporate/person.php?person_id=30

http://www.xenu-directory.net/documents/corporate/990s-iads-analysis.html

Authors:

http://xenudirectory.wordpress.com/...ulent-claims-from-scientology-front-narconon/

http://www.narconon DOT org/drug-treatment/hubbard-sauna-detox-with-rescue-workers.pdf

http://www.substanceabusepolicy.com/content/3/1/8/comments

Sidenote:

Medicial director of Downtown Medical detox guilty of distributing controlled substances and money laundering

I love you, Ada Fucking Lovelace.

Every time a quack is outed by name and Google searchable aliases, an angel gets its wings.

I love you too, darling.



but I haven't the time or energy to go to Wikipedia and bicker the bogus study off the Narconon page, so if anyone else has the time to do that then it would be much appreciated.

Don't look at me, unless the ARBCOM has been swallowed into a vast sinkhole of phlegm. (Oh wait, they are a vast sinkhole of phlegm.)

Does Narconon work?
Research Papers

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Narconon/papers.htm

The document
http://www.substanceabusepolicy.com/content/3/1/8

The members of the WP Arbcom seem to have a grossly inflated view of their opinions. After they topic-banned a large number of editors, they also effectively made it easier for OSAbots to game the system because OSA has the resources to give one of their bots a non-scn IP address and a "hat pack" of how to manipulate the edits using WP policy and guidelines. The critical editors did not have an organised crime operation behind them.

Narconon is a scientology front group with the sole purpose of recruiting vulnerable people into the scientology cult.

Scientology is an extremist organisation that radicalises people who undergo it's training programmes. Narconon is one of these such programmes.

10 Internets to the one that gets this image into the article and have it stick.

A volunteer is needed to edit these bogus studies out of the Narconon page at Wikipedia, and keep monitoring the page to make sure they stay out.

I will do it.

I lack the time to do this according WP policy without help. Some of you seem to have made some research already, about how the sources quoted are not reputable. This is the only basis, on which I can remove the references.
Also, I would probably have to delete a whole paragraph, which generally is dangerous. In the end, this will certainly turn out to be an edit war, and someone from higher up will step in and lock the article in a certain form. If this happens, I need good arguments WHY I was right with deleting these references.
A better alternative would be to cite other studies that conclude that narconon has no better efficacy at all, and point out the studies currently quoted are heavily biased due to study directors having personal ties to the entity being studied. Can someone deliver pls?

Once we have found an agreeable form, I have the account to edit and will monitor the page.

Hooray!

+9,000 internets to you, sir.

yep, that works for me.

take a look upthread for evidence.

one of the key pieces of evidence is this, to which the study's authors had no reply:
http://www.substanceabusepolicy.com/content/3/1/8/comments

tl;dr

The numerical data collected in the study shows that Narconon is not effective.

The text of the study (i.e. the English-language summary of the data) misreports this by swapping some of the numbers around.

Phrases in the above letter such as "Could I ask the authors to account for this seeming contradiction?" should be read as an academically-understated way of saying "The authors are lying liars, and their own data shows this".

The problem is, that this is no "evidence" in wikipedia's book. This is a discussion on some online forum. They don't want that. They want some study with a clear-cut conclusion (which this false narconon study delivered, even if it is completely bogus), or you can quote a person of notability, with a good reputation in this field of "science".
If we're going to base the edits on this simple fact that someone wrote "this study swapped numbers around and it is bogus" on some online forum, our endeavour is going to fail.

I understand your point, but in this case, the evidence is not just a discussion on an online forum.

(I'm assuming we're talking about this
http://www.substanceabusepolicy.com/content/3/1/8/comments
)

"Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention and Policy" is the journal in which the dodgy study was published.

As part of the normal process of publishing in an academic journal, readers can write in to highlight any problems with the study. The authors are expected to respond to that.

The web page linked above (cite as "Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy 2008, 3:8 doi:10.1186/1747-597X-3-8") shows an exchange of letters (in the academic journal) between one of the study's authors (a former director of Narconon) and one of the journal's readers, who has queries about the study.

The reader succeeds in taking the study to pieces.

It's part of the academic process.

e.g.

so we can ourselves contrast the data at Table 9, item D22 (more non-Narconon students feel they can resist the pressure to take drugs) with the write-up in the study (which says the opposite).

Determine which "studies" are basically self-published. Point that out on the Talk page.

Alright. If what you say is true, this can be used at most for adding a sentence to the degree:

"However, readers of the study have expressed several concerns with the conclusions of the study at the site, as the conclusions do not seem to match the actual numbers published by the study."

If we can demonstrate this to be the case beyond any doubt (the self publishing aspect), this would be the best solution. Until then, we can only point out that the study is untrustworthy.

The article "Hubbard's Drug Rehabilitation Program" is not published in a scientific magazine. The Townsend Letter: The Examiner of Alternative Medicine is written by an assortment of "researchers" and patients. The review process appear to be dodgy. Anecdotal evidence is not only allowed, it is encouraged. This is what the Townsend Letter has to say about their own policy (http://www.townsendletter.com/whoarewe.htm):

Disclaimer: Townsend Letter, the Examiner of Alternative Medicine, publishes information about alternative medicine written by researchers, health practitioners and patients. As a forum for the entire alternative medicine community, we present information discussing all alternative medicine practices. While articles, letters and editorials seek to be scientific and show pros and cons, some information will be biased from the viewpoint of the author, be it physician or patient. We encourage reports which frequently are not data-based but are anecdotal. Hence, information presented may not be proven or factually correct. All authors are required to submit their reports to other professionals for review, but this process does not ensure the validity of medical advice. The editors of the Townsend Letter recommend that all patients (and physicians) review further reports provided in the article's references and investigate the practitioner's techniques before undertaking an alternative diagnosis, examination or treatment. Please discuss such treatments and examinations with a reputable health practitioner in your community. If you do use an alternative treatment discussed in the Townsend Letter, we would appreciate your report of the outcome, any side effects and costs. Townsend Letter does not give medical advice or doctor referrals.

This text alone should be enough to have this reference thrown out.

Does WP (institutionally) recognize online discussions in the journals, as equivalent to the traditional snailmail letter-exchange?

You are correct, that academics would consider published remarks on the journal's website to be
near or of equal weight to printed remarks in their official publication, but it's not a trivial distinction.

Where CoS-related edits are concerned, it's best to know what Wikipedia policies are (if any) rather than guess.

They certainly should - I realise this doesn't mean that they necessarily do.

But we don't really need to cite the letters at all - we can just make the same points ourselves.

What the numerical data in the study shows is that the students who did not do the Narconon course felt themselves more able to resist the pressure to take drugs than those students who did take the Narconon course.

The fact that the study's write-up says the opposite to what the numerical data actually shows can certainly be used to question the credibility of the study's authors - can't it?

(Incidentally, Cecchini is more than the Narconon ex-employee she makes herself out to be in the paper's declaration of interests - she's been president / director / treasurer of the organisation for 7 years - see post #8 above).

Look at where the reference is being used. You cannot throw that one out. This is what Narconon is based on, so in an article about Narconon I would like to have that reference.
I think this is an example for why we shouldn't make rash decisions about throwing out this or that content. It's going to bite us in the ass if we don't go about this in a well thought-out manner.

^ a b c d Lennox, Richard D.; Cecchini, Marie A. (2008). "The NARCONON™ drug education curriculum for high school students: A non-randomized, controlled prevention trial". Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy 3 (8). doi:10.1186/1747-597X-3-8. Retrieved 2011-06-27. Summary in The Cochrane Library.

Rather incestuous.

^ Narconon The Origins of the Narconon Program (accessed June 4, 2006)
^ a b Narconon "L. Ron Hubbard and the Narconon program" (accessed June 4, 2006)

From Narconon's own site.

^ Crouch, Edmund A. C.; Laura C. Green (October 2007). "Comment on "Persistent organic pollutants in 9/11 world trade center rescue workers: Reduction following detoxification" by James Dahlgren, Marie Cecchini, Harpreet Takhar, and Olaf Paepke [Chemosphere 69/8 (2007) 1320–1325]". Chemosphere 69 (8): 1330–1332. doi:10.1016/j.chemosphere.2007.05.098. PMID 17692360.

Probably doesn't say what it claims.

^ Brow, Ellen (2001-06-21). "Healing Joint Pain Naturally: Safe and Effective Ways to Treat Arthritis, Fibromyalgia, and Other Joint Diseases". Broadway. Retrieved 2011-06-27

WTF? I'm not sure what it proves that Ellen Hodgson Brown cites it in her book. Is she some kind of qualified doctor? No.

"Town Welcomes, Then Questions a Drug Project". New York Times (The New York Times Company): p. A13. 1989-07-17.

Here's the missing link:
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/17/u...ons-a-drug-project.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

http://www.substanceabusepolicy.com/content/3/1/8

Seems to be down atm. Inb4 OSAOSAOSA

Dr. David Root co-wrote the introduction to Clear Body, Clear Mind, and is on the boards of a number of Scientology's detox circle jerk organizations.

alternative link via pubmed
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18348735

I have started a discussion on the discussion page. While we are doing the fact-finding, others on Wikipedia can feel free to voice their opinions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Narconon#Poor_references_on_this_page

It's ironic, that the argument that was used to remove anti-narconon writings from the page also applies in our case here.
Oh and yeah, I copypastad from your posts to make my point if that is okay with you.