Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cassandra phenomenon

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.

The result was no consensus. WjBscribe 00:52, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cassandra phenomenon

Cassandra phenomenon (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

The term does not seem to be officially acknowledged let alone notable, and only seems to exist at all in relation to a single website and Yahoo group of Australian Origin Zeraeph 02:51, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

• Strong keep. There is absolutely no question that this phenomenon exists and has been noted both in medical journals and in more mainstream media outlets. The only issue is what the name should be: "Cassandra Syndrome", "Cassandra phenomenon" and "Cassandra Affective Disorder" (CAD) have all been used, so the other two names should be redirects. YechielMan 03:40, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep It exists and is well documented. Agree on the redirects per YechielMan.--Paloma Walker 04:00, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

• CommentCould somebody please point me to where this is "well documented" stuff, particularly in "in medical journals and in more mainstream media outlets" is, because an exhaustive search honestly failed to yield anything of the kind see Talk:Cassandra phenomenon. Just one woman with a Bsc in psych creating a "Cassandra affective disorder" she is honestly not qualified to create, for which the only verifications anyone can find come from her own homepage which is certainly not "peer reviewed" in any sense and, as such is original research. (The only references to "Cassandra syndrome" we could find anywhere are actually misnomers related to this issue that often defined it quite differently!) There is a single reference made by Tony Attwood MD to "Cassandra phenomenon" which defines it totally differently to Maxine Aston's "Cassandra affective disorder". The only other references come from Judy Singer who runs a yahoo group and self publishes papers on the strength of her BA see Talk:Asperger syndrome and a* lawyer called Sheila Jennings Linehan who surely isn't a WP:RS for psychology at all, even if she didn't somewhat misrepresent all the other sources. I just do not see how such a muddle of "conditions" that contradict and misquote each other, created by people who are not qualified to create "conditions" in the first place, based on entirely anecdotal evidence, with no formal research, could be considered notable? --Zeraeph 08:03, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

• • Comment - I can't point you to any medical journals offhand, but I can say that the term "Cassandra Syndrome" was mentioned prominently in the film 12 Monkeys. However, the term I remember has the more general definition of (paraphrasing) "knowing the truth but being unable to convince anyone of it." In the film it was applied to people who predicted terrible disasters, whose warnings were ignored. At the very least, the term "Cassandra Syndrome" and the related "Cassandra phenomenon" are real terms, though the current article does not accurately reflect the meaning. -- Y|yukichigai (_ramble argue ^check) 08:59, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep and Rewrite - I can't dig up any medical journals that contain the term, but I'm fairly certain that the current article incorrectly defines the meaning of the term. "Cassandra Syndrome" was featured prominently in 12 Monkeys (see my above comment) and the term can also be found in a number of texts on mythology, philosophy, and psychology. Unfortunately the only ones I know of are college textbooks, thus making it impossible for me to provide any handy web citations to prove it. -- Y|yukichigai (_ramble argue ^check) 08:59, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
  • CommentThe use of the term in one work of fiction really is not enough to make it notable. But if you know of other sources, failing web citations, just tell us what the textbooks you know of are, which can easily be checked and is far more persuasive than citing nothing at all, as at present. --Zeraeph 09:54, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Then provide book citations. Uncle G 11:33, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Reply - Unfortunately I took those courses a while ago, and I've since sold the books. I might have some in storage elsewhere, but I don't care about this topic enough to waste most of the day digging through boxes to find two or three ISBNs. :P -- Y|yukichigai (_ramble argue ^check) 18:31, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete The term appears in some fictions, but that does not make it notable. Unless medical citations, or more than the one book, can be found, this cannot be notable. Callix
• Delete We did some rather exhaustive research on this term with regards to Asperger's, and made direct contact the sources to whom the term is referenced. Dr. Tony Attwood who is the only credible source (in fact the only one with a graduate degree and whose work is not self published) and he stated the term is not meant to be signify a clinical disorder, but was simply being used in workshops to 'validate people's feelings'.

As for its use in a more general sense (outside asperger's), we don't have anything referenceable, so it looks like we Delete, and future Contributors are free to provide a new article w/ references.

The term cassandra is likely to find disfavor with professionals as it has a) sexist overtones (cassandra is a woman who prophesizes doom), b) is commonly used sarcastically (nobody has the gift of prophesy) and c) the common greek translation is "helper of men" tho a minority of scholars claim it translates to "one who ensnares men."CeilingCrash 13:35, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

• Delete Those who believe it to be a medical term seem unable to provide much by way of sources, whilst CeilingCrash has spoken to the osurce of the one reference and he says it's not a medical term at all. StuartDouglas 14:40, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. None of the folks asserting it is a well-known medical term seem to be able to find anything to back up that assertion. In spite of the very well-meaning comments that one has "heard" a term used before, unfortunately Wikipedian's memories do not qualify as reliable sources - I know mine certainly does not! Anyway, article must be deleted as it fails WP:ATT and may be entirely fictional. Arkyan • ^(talk) 15:25, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep: However, the first paragraph makes no sense to me (so the article might need some clean up), but the quote of Tony Attwood is very clear to me. Q0 17:30, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete unless additional reliable sources can be found; no evidence that this term is used anywhere outside the workshop cited. Krimpet (talk/review) 18:12, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete It seems to be mostly a disorder invented by unqualified people. It is not used in the literature. RogueNinja 21:19, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep and rewrite per Yukichigai. Perhaps move to Cassandra syndrome as well. The terms "Cassandra syndrome" and "Cassandra phenomenon" are commonly used with the meaning Yukichigai describes. The current content of the article, trimmed down, could serve as one example or application of the term. This snippet I found through Google Books hints at the kind of sources that are out there: "Sontag identifies the Cassandra phenomenon as a frequent convention of the disaster genre and one of the standard hallmarks of the heroes in sci-fi disaster films of the 1950s and 1960s - 'the hero tries to warn the local authorities without effect; nobody believes anything is amiss' (1966:211)." Michael Carden, in Sodomy: The History of a Christian Biblical Myth, from Equinox Publishing (2004). See also R.J. Johnston's Dictionary of Human Geography: "If the author is seeking changes to avoid a dystopian scenario, the work may produce the ‘Cassandra effect' or the ‘self-refuting prophecy'" (Blackwell Publishing, 2000). PubliusFL 20:08, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

  Comment - it looks to me like the reference Carden is talking about in the snippet I quoted above is Susan Sontag's essay "The Imagination of Disaster," which would include page 211 of her 1966 collection Against Interpretation. If anyone has access to that book or essay, it could provide a valuable source for this article. But I ain't gonna cite it without knowing what it actually says. PubliusFL 00:28, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

• Keep but rewrite and clarify --TheFEARgod (Ч) 23:52, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
• Weak delete. Something I would have liked to come to this article to find out was the connection between science and fiction: was the subplot of Twelve Monkeys in which Dr. Katherine Railly presents a scientific talk on the subject influenced by existing scientific theories of a Cassandra syndrome? Have scientists been influenced by the syndrome described in that movie? Was it a case of parallel evolution? Sadly, all such frivolity has been expunged from the article, leaving only an insufficiently-sourced and specialized article. My weak delete !vote is not so much based on my disappointment at what the article isn't, but instead reflects the fact that at this late point in the debate the primary source is still only the web site of a single non-academic workshopper. —David Eppstein 01:54, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. I agree with David Eppstein. The appearance in fiction does not count for an article that pretends to be based on science (that would be "References to Asperger Syndrom in popular culture" or such). Pavel Vozenilek 11:22, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment It seems incredulousness is inherent to human nature, especially when it upsets social structure.

"It’s hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” ~ Upton Sinclair

This seems too diffuse to ever to be a medical disorder, tho i wonder if it appears in literary theory? (Chicken little syndrome? :)CeilingCrash 15:12, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Re: use of the term in literary theory and criticism, see the references I discuss above. PubliusFL 15:51, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

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.