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References

Court documents

• The judge's order states, "This cause of action is hereby dismissed without prejudice and with leave to reinstate if settlement is not effectuated."
  • The Lancaster Foundation, Inc., The American Association for Ayur-Vedic Medicine, Inc. vs. Andrew A. Skolnick, George D. Lundberg, M.D.; United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, No. 82 C 4175; Judge Kocoras

I reverted the addition of this material from this article and from Andrew A. Skolnick. Picking quotes from lower court documents is not accepted on Misplaced Pages, particularly in reference to living people. Let's not even get into the question of why a Misplaced Pages editor has a copy of this document, which does not appear online.   Will Beback  talk  23:05, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

This is the judge's order. It's not cherry picking. It's the final word. This is the full text regarding the resolution of the case. Skolnick is cherry picking and making it sound like there was a judgement. This helps make it clear that there wasn't. TimidGuy (talk) 09:59, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Be that as it may, it's still an unpublished primary source, undoubtedly one of many court document filed in the case. If the quotation is significant it will have been reported in secondary sources. Since you're insisting on including this obscure source would you care to explain why you have a copy of the judge's order?   Will Beback  talk  10:19, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

It's not one of many documents filed in the case. It's the judge's statement about the resolution. Some experienced Misplaced Pages editors view a judge's order as a secondary source, and more reliable than media reporting of a case. (I've solicited the opinion of Jonathanwallace.) Any court document is publicly available to anyone who asks for it. If you feel that a court document not available online shouldn't be used in Misplaced Pages, then we should remove all reference to the lower court judgement in the Hendel civil suit. Or for that matter, if we follow your reasoning that a lower court judgment is a primary source, why are we using the Hendel lower court judgment in a civil suit unrelated to religion to say that TM and the TM-Sidhi program are a religion, whereas the appellate court document makes zero mention of religion? TimidGuy (talk) 11:07, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Did you personally obtain this one sentence legal document from the courthouse? Or is yours a second-hand copy?

I don't see any articles quoting the judge in Hendel, but that's a separate issue so let's not get distracted.   Will Beback  talk  11:43, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

So your position is that a judgment or judge's order can be used but not quoted? Is that the issue? TimidGuy (talk) 10:47, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

• Talk:Transcendental Meditation/Archive 11#Settled out of Court? February 2007
• Talk:Transcendental Meditation/Archive 12#JAMA controversy March 2007
• Talk:Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health/Archive 1#Dismiss without prejudice October 2009
• Talk:Deepak Chopra#Settlement October 2009
• Talk:Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health#Deletion of sourced material March 2011

Have I missed any?   Will Beback  talk  11:25, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Also relevant: TimidGuy's very first edit to this article, over four years ago, was to add this same assertion: 12:56, March 2, 2007.   Will Beback  talk  01:20, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Why is this so important? Didn't we argue about this whole "dismiss without prejudice" issue before? How many times has this been brought up? I don't see the need to include such a minor detail. The Skolnick biography doesn't even mention the reason for the lawsuit, a key issue in his career, so this would be an out-of-proportion detail. Your repeated efforts to include it and your possession of this obscure court document leaves one concerned about POV pushing. The libel suit seems to be of interest mostly to the involved parties. It's sufficient to say that it was dropped before reaching trial.   Will Beback  talk  11:09, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Why would we include a lawsuit without saying specifically what the result was? Odd that you would consider that a minor detail. The lawsuit wasn't dropped. There was a settlement agreement. The judge's order helps clarify this. TimidGuy (talk) 11:00, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

You haven't answered the question of why this is so important that you've been pushing it for four years. If it was settled instead of dropped then we can say that. It doesn't require any more detail than that.   Will Beback  talk  11:20, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Will. I'll email you the judge's order. We don't actually know that it was settled, because we don't have any way of knowing whether the settlement was ever effectuated. We have sources saying that it was dismissed (Implying there was a judgment), which the judge's order shows isn't factual. And we have sources saying it was settled, which the judge's order shows isn't factual. That's why I quoted the judge's order. But I suppose quoting the judge's order doesn't really help, since it's in legalese. My very first edit to this article was, I thought, a helpful rephrasing in plain English of what the judge's order says: "Pursuant to a settlement agreement, in 1993 the suit was dimissed by the judge at the request of the plaintiffs, with the option of reinstating pending completion of a settlement." Maybe let's wait and see if Jonathanwallace responds. He seems to know this stuff really well, in addition to being well versed in Misplaced Pages policy. The representation of the outcome of the lawsuit is misleading in the Skolnick article, but frankly, I'm afraid to touch that. (And by the way, another reason I recently added the text from the judge's order is that I now understand, per recent discussions at RSN and BLPN, that a judge's order is considered a reliable source.) TimidGuy (talk) 10:57, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I still don't understand why this is so important, to you or to the reader. But it's been discussed and rejected at least a couple of times before over the years. I'm not aware of any change in policy regarding using court documents concerning living people. Could you please point me to these recent noticeboard discussions?   Will Beback  talk  11:11, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

TG was kind enough to send me a scan of a "Minute Order" docket entry form, which indeed has a typewritten section with the text TG has quoted. However he was incorrect when he said it was the complete text. The second sentence says "All pending motions are hereby moot." It gives no indication of what the case was about, which motions were pending, when it was filed, who the attorneys or secondary parties were, or why the case was dismissed. It doesn't tell us if settlement was ever effectuated. Like many primary documents, it creates more questions than it answers. If we were writing an entire article on the case then this type of detail might be appropriate and acceptable. But for a biography and for this article on health technologies, it's neither informative nor sufficiently reliable.   Will Beback  talk  11:21, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

See BLPN and RSN (though the latter thread will likely be archived shortly, and the URL will change). There have been other similar discussions at RSN. The consensus is that judgments and judge's orders are reliable sources. What could be more reliable than a judge's order regarding the outcome of a case? It's clear from this document that there was no judgment, so the sources that say that the suit was dismissed are wrong. It's clear that the settlement hadn't yet been effectuated, so the sources that say that it was settled are wrong. It's clear that the plaintiff has asked for dismissal and has retained the right to reopen the case if conditions aren't met. If we're going to mention this case, we need to say what the result was. The judge's order is the definitive source for that. TimidGuy (talk) 11:25, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

This isn't a signed legal opinion by a judge. It's a docket form, perhaps written by a clerk. It's a minor, primary source of with limited scope.

One of the reasons we discourage the use of primary sources is that there are so many of them. Once we begin using them it's hard to know when to stop, and which to include. The files at Wikileaks are primary sources too, for example. Was the plaintiff's lawyer Bill Goldstein? He's living in Fairfield, right? I bet he has a bunch of primary sources we could use. Maybe Skolnick does too. It's better to stick to secondary sources and avoid all that thicket. Unless you really want to go there.

I suggest we say the case ended before going to trial. We really don't know much more than that.   Will Beback  talk  11:46, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

  Will Beback  talk  11:19, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

It's not a minor primary source: it's the final document in a prominent court case indicating the resolution. In addition, it's not self-evident that this is a primary source. Some very experienced Misplaced Pages editors say that a judge's order or opinion is a secondary source. And the strong consensus at RSN has been that judge's orders and opinion's are reliable sources and can be used in Misplaced Pages. And this was also the consensus at BLPN. Even if it were a primary source, keep in mind that primary sources aren't proscribed. All I did was quote from it. If you think it's not an acceptable source, why did you delete it here but not in the Skolnick article? Also, are you thinking that there's some other document, a signed opinion or something, that closes this case? I can request a docket entry list to check. But why would there be a signed opinion, since there wasn't any judgment? It's doubtful that there's any other closing document other than this. TimidGuy (talk) 11:38, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

With all due respect, you're grasping at straws. If this isn't a primary source then nothing is. There's no consensus at BLPN to allow sources like this docket form. Let's just stick to using the best available sources instead of digging up obscure and ambiguous primary sources.   Will Beback  talk  12:01, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm curious why you deleted both the citation and quote from this article, but only deleted the quote in the Skolnick article, leaving the citation intact. TimidGuy (talk) 10:38, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I can't recall. This isn't the most important part of the article. Let's stop beating this dead horse.   Will Beback  talk  11:39, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

And I'm curious why you deleted the quote from the court order in the Skolnick article but left intact the citation to Skolnick's personal website, which we had already concluded didn't meet RS. I assume good faith: that you want to meet the standards set by RS. Yet your editing is very inconsistent, and confusing. In this article you didn't say anything when Skolnick deleted an academic book as a source and added his personal website. Yet you deleted the quote from the court order and the citation. In the Skolnick article you left intact the citations to the court case and to Skolnick's personal website but deleted the quote from the court order. Are you saying that if some portion of an article isn't important, then it's ok to have citations to sources that don't meet RS? TimidGuy (talk) 09:44, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

I can't recall. This isn't the most important part of the article. Let's stop beating this dead horse.  Will Beback  talk  10:41, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Pseudoscience infobox

The feedback from uninvolved editors at WP:FTN is pretty clear: the pseudoscience infobox shouldn't be used:

I recall at one time, infoboxes were being widely employed as a workaround to NPOV by fringe proponents. Supposed "creatures" and "phenomenon" were lent an air of academic credibility through the use of scientific-sounding classifications within the boxes ("primary data", "first sighting", "habitat", "status", "sub-grouping", etc.) I believe that one science-minded editor, now vanished, began adding "pseudoscience infoboxes" to fringe articles as a sort of retaliation. In my opinion, neither kind of infoboxes are useful or appropriate since they skirt requirements for attribution, quality of sources, NPOV, undue weight, etc. - LuckyLouie (talk) 15:22, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

FYI There's another of these at the top of Remote Viewing. I agree with LuckyLouie...such an eye-catching "all you need to know" format should either play it straight or go. Untaggably burning a payload word like "pseudoscientific" into a high visibility template caption is basically poisoning the well, which isn't ideal practice for an encyclopedia. K2709 (talk) 21:32, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to delete it again. TimidGuy (talk) 10:15, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Two people commented. There was no discussion on this page before hand. Thus I am returning again. That is not consensus. I have requested further input here . Would you be so kind to link to the WP:FTN discussion. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:05, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Here are two further comments in support of removal:

As I've said elsewhere, I'm against use of the infoboxes. However if you have a topic for which extraordinary WP:REDFLAG claims are made and you have reliable sources that criticize it as pseudoscience, then that critique should be prominently summarized in the lead. - LuckyLouie (talk) 11:35, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

My take on the wider discussion....do away with info boxes. especially ones that use loaded terms, or misleading descriptions. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 19:27, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

We now have four comments from three different uninvolved editors, with the latter two comments being specifically in response to your adding it in this article. Here is the thread. TimidGuy (talk) 09:30, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

It looks like of them have changed their mind "Maharishi claims people can fly using Quantum electrodynamics? You're making me wonder if that pseudoscience infobox was badly needed at these articles.LuckyLouie - 11:23, 30 June 2011 (UTC)" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:22, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

TimidGuy, where is the thread you're referring to? I don't see discussion about infoboxes in that link. An alternative medicine info box would be more appropriately neutral. Octopet (talk) 15:00, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Theoretical basis

Does anyone have the book referred to in this section? It appears there is a typo in the sentence which reads "...nonmaterial intelligence and consciousness who modes of vibration manifest as the material universe." Can we safely assume it should read "whose"? Octopet (talk) 15:22, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

TimidGuy added that.   Will Beback  talk  22:28, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Have corrected. Octopet, here's the thread that you asked about above. TimidGuy (talk) 16:02, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

This section is pseudoscientific as it stands. Since it makes scientific claims it should have mainstream scientific responses. IRWolfie- (talk) 16:52, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

WP:Fringe views should be presented using the neutral point of view, not necessarily a skeptical POV. IOW, we should present the concept in the terms used by proponents. However it should also include the mainstream view. This article does cover some of that in the "Reception" section, and also in the "Controversies" sections. This book has three chapters devoted to MVAH:

• Wujastyk, Dagmar; Smith, Frederick M. (2008), Modern and global Ayurveda: Pluralism and Paradigms, Albany: State University of New York Press, ISBN 978-0-7914-7489-1 {{citation}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

It's already cited extensively, but I'm not sure that all of the views in the book are included.   Will Beback  talk  00:01, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV

I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:

This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:

1. There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
2. It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
3. In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 14:16, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Aug 10 edits

@IRWolfie: you have deleted content here that is supported by impeccable MEDRS sources: a book by Micozzi included in the MEDRS-suggested Brandon/Hill list, and a review paper by Mashour et al from the AMA's Archives of Internal Medicine. Also, shortly after, in the same set of edits , you have deleted content supported by a 2nd ref to Micozzi and a review by Nobili et al from Pharmacological Research. Would you like to restore these? EMP (talk

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