Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Controversies in autism

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 of the debate was keep. Kilo-Lima|^(talk) 13:35, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Controversies in autism

POV fork. Contains lots of redundant information part of more neutral articles. Merge relevant information into other articles and redirect Rdos 08:05, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

• Weak keep: While it's a poor quality article that seems to mix autism in medicine and autism in pop culture, the various autism articles need someone really knowledgeable to sort them out. Peter Grey 08:21, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
• Strong keep. Yet another attempt by POV pushers to hide information that is important for anyone affected by this condition. Absolutely no basis for the assertion that it's a POV fork. --Leifern 10:29, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Note that Leifern put all the redundant information back into the article that I selectively moved were it belonged. In the process he also reinserted all the speculations about vaccines that Wikipedia has been flooded with. --Rdos 11:00, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

• Delete . Merge the verifiable non-duplicated information in it into the existing articles dealing will with those aspects. Failing that, if it were rewritten shorter, tighter, and about the controversies, rather than another copy of the usual article as they all tend toward, it would be reasonably useful. Midgley 10:41, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
• Comment: articles cannot be merged and then deleted. The history of the article must be kept to preserve attribution. After merging, the article is redirected to the article that received the content. -- Kjkolb 12:29, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

It is hardly possible to do a simple redirect, as this article contains a lot of information that should be spread to many articles. --Rdos 12:32, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I would guess that in such a case you would simply redirect to the article that received the most content. If it is about equal, then redirect to the most notable article or just pick one. All of the pages that receive content should be mentioned in the edit summary. -- Kjkolb 12:42, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, point taken. I've changed my request. --Rdos 12:44, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Comment: NO, Kjkolb IS INCORRECT. Articles certainly can be merged and deleted, preserving histories. The process is straightforward and described here. The only reason why "merge and delete" votes are strongly discouraged is that the process is very laborious for the closing sysop. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:27, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

• keep: There are numerous noteworthy controversies stemming from the iatrogenic epidemic of autistic spectrum diagnoses. This AfD is unlike the usual offensive attempts to silence dissenting medical opinions, as it seems likely to be a protest to make a point, triggered by the odd decision to delete Neanderthal theory of autism. The real reason this article needs to be kept is that big pharma has as much as admitted its culpability for the autism epidemic by launching an expensive, preemptive lobbying and propaganda assault aimed at securing immunity from the industry's enormous vaccine injury liabibilities (e.g. BioShield Two and PREPA). The assault also shows that the industry is unwilling to defend itself in the judicial system, which itself has been undermined to suit corporate special interests, rather than the mere carbon based life forms that courts were originally designed to serve. At least ten bills were in the works as of the end of last year to shield vaccine makers from any form of responsibility for these atrocities. Liabilities are projected by some observers far in excess of tens of billions of dollars. The controversies will only escalate as health care rationing decisions are made about the best/most cost effective treatments for this huge, emerging population. The controversies may be ignored deliberately by the mass media, as advocates like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. have found out, but there is no doubt that the increasingly unstable and inefficient medical system will be put under considerably more stress in the near term. Ombudsman 19:31, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

You are correct in that the deletion of the Neanderthal theory of autism sets a preference for me (and should for others too). However, in this case I'm not arguing only this point, but for the bad idea to have similar information at many locations. If you and Leifern prefer to have the vaccine argument in this article that is fine with me, but then you will need to delete it from the other articles (like Causes of autism). --Rdos 05:47, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with redundancy, per se; the purpose of this article is to summarize the various controversies in one place and then provide links to the in-depth article on each one. I always wanted this article to be succinct, providing readers with the means to study each matter more deeply, but with the right context. The term "controversies" is carefully chosen to avoid bias. Although I think the Neanderthal theory is specious, I think it should be kept and would have voted to keep it. I want all the controversies here. --Leifern 14:10, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

The causes of autism themselves are all controvesial. However merging causes and controversies pages would make the article too long. I believe that all causes information should be kept with causes, with a link from controversies Alister Namarra 02:09, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

• Weak keep, per Peter Grey. I believe it needs a more clinical approach, starting with individual assertations having direct citations, and not a blanket "references" for the whole article - as is it seems to serve to disguise the POV nature of the topic. -Dawson 22:32, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
• merge & redirect as per nom. Pete.Hurd 19:20, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

• Strong keep It is very much needed, I often see links to it on autism sites. I have also made a note on the discussion page for the article. AmyNelson 19:20, 16 April 2006 (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.