Talk:William Hammesfahr

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[edit] Excerpt

Here's a brief excerpt from the transcript of the March 21, 2005 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes:

HANNITY: Doctor, wait a minute. I've got to get this straight here. You were nominated to get a Nobel Peace Prize in this very work. Are you saying that this woman could be rehabilitated?
HAMMESFAHR: Absolutely.

Note the name of the award here.

[edit] Deletions

Would the anon who twice deleted large sections of this please say what the problem was with it? If there are inaccuracies in here, or anything that's unfair, we want to know about it. Cheers, SlimVirgin (talk) 07:04, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Medical school distancing self from Hammesfahr

Dr. Hammesfahr graduated from the 6-year combined BS/MD program at Northwestern University. The chairman of the department of neurology has indicated that he considers Dr. Hammesfahr's website, advertising (in papers such as the National Enquirer) and overall scientific status to be questionable and "a disgrace" to Northwestern, and indicates that Northwestern has considered issuing a statement distancing themselves from his methods. As of December 2005, no formal statement has been issued.

[edit] The intro

I think that the Intro can just deal with the most notable stuff: his involvement in the Terri Schiavo story and his credibility issues. To move those into a section would be unfair: he was ultimately cleared after some difficulties. -- Pinktulip 20:38, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Nobel Prize controversy" section

The changes that I have made to the Nobel Prize section are a matter of factual accuracy. If you look at the letter at the link in the article [1]—the only source on this particular matter that has been cited so far—you'll see that Bilirakis only "presented" Hammesfahr to the Committee, apparently as a recommendation, and that Bilirakis never specifically purported that he was able to officially nominate Hammesfahr. The edits I made (which were reverted by SlimVirgin) were intended to reflect this accurately.

The old version reads, "He [Hammesfahr] testified in 2002 that U.S. Representative Michael Bilirakis (R-FL) had nominated him. While this was true, Bilirakis was not in fact eligible to nominate Hammesfahr, according to Nobel rules." The "While this was true..." implies that Bilirakis himself assumed and/or claimed, at some point, that his letter constituted an official nomination (rather than just a recommendation or an unofficial "nomination"), which—in the absence of any new, cited sources that confirm it—is unproven and potentially libelous. I feel that the edits I made avoid such an insinuation. (I would not, however, be opposed to additional clarification being inserted into the article, especially in the form of verifiable expert commentary: the letter really is quite vague about its own intended purpose.)

As for the change I made to the header, "Nobel Prize controversy" is grammatically correct. (There is no reason to spell it "Nobel-prize".) If there are links pointing to "William Hammesfahr#Nobel-prize controversy", then they need to be changed accordingly.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. If you disagree with me, discussion is certainly welcome. However, before reverting my edits, please try to be certain that you are not introducing a factual inaccuracy to the article by doing so.

Sommers (Talk) 02:08, 21 February 2006 (UTC)