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I fully understand that the blog Science-Based Medicine is considered generally reliable, though not peer-reviewed. However currently 8 out of the 13 references (62%) (9 if you count External links) are from SBM, as are 14 of 22 inline citations (64%). I realize the FUTON bias makes it easy to immediately view and cite whatever diatribe du jour an esteemed researcher has decided to gripe about. My concerns are whether views of the SBM writers are granted disproportionate weight. SBM blogger David Gorksi is the only named attributed author in this article (named twice), which makes this resemble "Functional medicine from the view of Gorski". Considering WP:WEIGHT and WP:NPOV, out of everything ever written about functional medicine by reliable sources, does SBM and Gorski really comprise the majority views? Or to put it another way: is this article a neutral encyclopedic summary of Functional medicine, or a vehicle selectively broadcasting the views of SBM authors? I think a broader diversity of sources are needed. --Animalparty! (talk) 00:34, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And for those readying to beat me with a WP:PROFRINGE cudgel, let me point out that I would have similar questions with an article about rocks with >60% of citations being from the New York Times or the same geology magazine. I recognize the standing of this topic in broader medical consensus. I'm neither pro- nor anti-functional medicine, but critical examination of how heavily we cite and present a source is healthy. Here are some potential additional sources. --Animalparty! (talk) 03:05, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Luke, Jesse W. (July 2017). "Functional medicine: New name, old ideas". Australasian Science. doi:10.3316/informit.268531139808641.
• Khan, Wajid I. (2020). "The current evidence behind functional medicine" (PDF). University of British Columbia Medical Journal. 12 (1): 35–36.
• Khayal, Inas S.; Farid, Amro M. (January 2017). "The Need for Systems Tools in the Practice of Clinical Medicine". Systems Engineering. 20 (1): 3–20. doi:10.1002/sys.21374.

Agreed, almost this entire post is referenced on David Gorski and Science Based Medicine. This is not a "consensus viewpoint" on the subject. The page says that Functional Medicine doctors treat and diagnose a number of disease entities found not to exist. OK, some of the conditioned purportedly identified and treated do not have mainstream acceptance, but the vast majority of what functional medicine doctors are diagnosing and treating are well known, established conditions like diabetes, obesity, depression, etc, and they are often being treated with healthy lifestyle interventions for which there is good data, but none of this is mentioned because nearly all sources cited having nothing but vitriol for functional medicine. Xitomatl (talk) 15:39, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, physical exercise and a healthy diet are good for health. But we did not need functional medicine to tell us that, that was already known and broadly accepted. Of course, that isn't quackery. Its quackery lies in what distinguishes it from mainstream medicine. Also, while dieting helps patients with diabetes, it can never heal them, so expecting to be healed from diabetes through dieting is vain hope, and even a scam, i.e. a felony. Also, while running or walking helps with depression, it isn't a silver bullet. Dieting helps those suffering from obesity, but according to prof. dr. Martijn B. Katan, one of the most cited scientists in the field of nutrition, long-term weight loss through dieting is less probable than long-term recovery from heroin addiction. So, yes, diet helps those with obesity, but in 80%-90% of the cases weight loss is only temporary, and then the subject comes back to their obesity weight. tgeorgescu (talk) 12:15, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Expecting to be healed from diabetes through dieting is...a felony" is a pretty bizarre linguistic construction. 2603:7081:1603:A300:E091:E8CF:A13:50E7 (talk) 08:48, 29 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, @Animalpartyalmost every source comes from basically one organization. Gorski is an editor/writer at Science Based Medicine and so is Harriet Hall who wrote via skeptic.com, which is also referenced on this Functional Medicine page. Gorski even pops up in The Atlantic here: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/06/whats-eating-the-small-loud-band-of-alt-med-critics/240860/

Here are some of the other voices that could be referenced:

Dr. Mark Hyman, the leading proponent of functional medicine field, is covered in the New York Times because he advises the Clintons: Source: ​​https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/fashion/dr-mark-hyman-clintons-health.html

The Cleveland Clinic has a functional medicine practice.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/departments/functional-medicine

The ACCME provides accreditation for functional medicine:

https://www.accme.org/find-cme-provider/institute-for-functional-medicine

This Stanford MD

https://multiplesclerosisnewstoday.com/expert-voices/2022/09/14/expert-voices-functional-medicine-ms/

You can also do a Google search for functional medicine in any major city and you will probably find dozens of MDs who spent time and money to get additional training in this field. 96.241.32.156 (talk) 02:51, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Daniel Santos: People who endorse detox quackery are absolutely unworthy of being called "scientists". Yup, one can be a brilliant mathematician, yet speak batshit crazy stuff about medical sciences. tgeorgescu (talk) 23:00, 8 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello @Tgeorgescu! Look, I really don't care about your opinion of who is worthy or not of some title, I care about facts. Just because there is quackery in some area doesn't give license to abandon objective reality and FACTS. The FACT is that some (maybe "most", or "almost all") scientists think it's BS. It's my opinion that most of it *is* BS. But this is an encyclopedia so lets be accurate. Science doesn't know everything and fringe medicine will inevitably stumble into things that work prior to there being reasonable studies to discover that they got something right. One example is guanfacine + N-acetylcysteine though it has no citations yet and needs follow up studies with larger sample, etc.

So maybe quackery is a trigger for you and sets you off. We all have to deal with them. But one of *my* triggers is the propagation of cognitive distortions and logic fallacies. I feel it's more helpful to tear down something stupid in an accurate fashion. This invariably reveals any nuggets of truth within them -- whose existence is NOT a rationalization for the husk of BS that surrounded it. So please calm down and let's tear down BS constructively. <3 Daniel Santos (talk) 01:41, 13 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Daniel Santos: I have never understood WP:PROFRINGE people who think they are more logical than rational skeptics and than debunkers of pseudoscience. You should know that WP:AE is just around the corner. tgeorgescu (talk) 02:05, 13 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Tgeorgescu Yes, we should definitely initiate arbitration. My original edit was just to mitigate the problem. The sentence needs to be re-written and probably based on something other than a news article that, it's self, doesn't include any names or references.

And in the interest of devil's advocacy, medical science has clearly identified detox methods that work, such as desisting exposure to the toxin.

I think that there are also many areas of the functional medicine "ecosystem" that deserve to be examined. I learned (through verbal communication with a practitioner) that the supplement companies (e.g., Apex Energetics) only sell through these distributors like Fullscript (parent company HGGC?), who themselves will only show you prices for supplements once a practitioner has recommended one. The reason for this is that when the practitioner creates their account, they tell the distributor how large of a kickback they want -- which dictates the price you see! If we can find WP:RS on this, I think it needs a section! Daniel Santos (talk) 22:19, 13 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

At the absolute bare minimum, an article on a given subject should define said subject as it is typically understood. This article does not do either, plunging immediately into criticism and only briefly surfacing to list, but not define, a few terms supposedly associated with functional medicine.

This isn't to say readers shouldn't be presented with the scientific consensus on a pseudoscientific practice in the lead. By all means, tell readers that functional medicine is bad. But not before telling them what it is. That's just lazy.

Someone will likely argue that this isn't possible. I think that's tantamount to saying the topic isn't notable. If it's so poorly defined that we can't discuss it, does it really exist? 2603:7081:1603:A300:E091:E8CF:A13:50E7 (talk) 09:40, 29 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Functional medicine" is a marketing brand rather than a coherent and science-based approach to medicine. tgeorgescu (talk) 10:56, 29 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have reliable sources that define it "as it is typically understood", as opposed to "a form of alternative medicine that encompasses a number of unproven and disproven methods and treatments" that "focuses on the 'root causes' of diseases based on interactions between the environment and the gastrointestinal, endocrine, and immune systems to develop 'individualized treatment plans.'", as the article seems to define it? --tronvillain (talk) 21:44, 30 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I concur that article is completely inadequate and does not describe what functional medicine actually is, and any effort that has been made so far to help define what functional medicine has NOT been admitted into this article.

I can't see how any improvements to this page can be made, if in the end, the only content that is permitted through by the Wikipedia gatekeepers is what is considered kosher in the name reductionism and scientism.

"You can't get the right answers if you ask the wrong questions."

The whole point of functional medicine is that it typically asks different questions about the root causes of dysfunction (we have germs; they make us up; what do they do for us?) than what Western allopathic medicine has traditionally asked (what causes disease? microbes!! kill the germs!! ALL OF THEM!!). Medicine is evolving, in paradigm, in its scientific approach, and its practice. Guess where all that is happening? Yes, you got that right, at the fringes, and with fringe ideas. There can be quackery, but, by focussing myopically on quackery, you're throwing the baby out of the bathwater, every time.

As the article currently stands, it baffles me how the opinions of an institution like American Academy of Family Physicians or one oncologist (David Gorski) should be considered valid and authoritative (well, I suspect it is precisely because they are anti-alternative medicine figures), while the large strategic investment decision made by the Cleveland Clinic Foundation is brushed off in a single sentence by a statement made by an arbitrarily chosen university (as 'unfortunate', 'quackery').

I can see this problem also in the page about Alternative Medicine. Gorski is given airtime, front and centre. For no particular reason that I can see, either.

This makes no sense. Completely divorced from reality.

Welcome to Wikipedia on medicine. Wokspoon (talk) 12:00, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, the SCAM industry is Completely divorced from reality. Not every new scientific idea is WP:FRINGE, and the proof is in the puding, i.e. in evidence-based medicine. tgeorgescu (talk) 12:40, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I recently found this article and made some edits, including after reviewing the article talk page, and had thought I had helped sharpen the article according to WP:FRINGE and WP:NPOV, but all of the edits were reverted [1]. Anyway, I had also thought there is more that could be done to enhance the article according to WP:FRINGE, e.g. state that Bland has a PhD, remove or incorporate what may be a promotional-seeming EL despite its source, and expand on the lack of scientific evidence based on some preliminary research I started yesterday [2] (the phrase "a first-of-its-kind study" in the press release stood out to me as an opportunity to find and add WP:MEDRS). But I think there are more productive places to focus my attention.

As a side note, there may be some potential WP:CLOP/WP:COPYVIO issues in need review, e.g. added in 2019 [3] (which appeared to have a possible origin at [4] - the phrase 'root causes' does not appear in source cited when I viewed and worked on the article, but on closer examination, the appearance of possible CLOP/COPYVIO may be related to the amount of back-and-forth editing this article has undergone and a source getting lost in the midst of that); and text added in 2015 [5], which could be compared to the source. Thank you, Beccaynr (talk) 16:09, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There was an issue with attributing WP:SBM, which made many knowledgeable statement appear to be 'just' an opinion, which is problematic per WP:YESPOV. But yes, eradicating any copyvio-ish content would useful & necessary. Bon courage (talk) 16:18, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

From my view, I was thinking about readers, and how the tone and presentation of e.g. the SBM Quackademia update source (cited twice in one sentence in the lead) seems to undermine its credibility (such as the frequency of exclamation points, as well as references to Nazism, New Coke, etc). So from my view, as a basic way to strengthen this source, attribution and blue-linking the author seemed helpful. Also from my view, just because a source is green-lit at WP:RSP, this does not mean we should use what seems to be classic weasel wording through vague attribution for its descriptive secondary evaluation, e.g. "quackery." My intention with the attribution was more to help readers recognize that despite the presentation of the website, the author is notable, and to provide more direct access to their Wikipedia article, which I think helps strengthen the source - we're familiar with WP:RSP, but our readers likely are not. Beccaynr (talk) 00:01, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think it weakens things. Per WP:PSCI we are required to be upfront about pseudoscience and make sure it's prominent and clear when something is pseudoscientific. If you want to call FM quackery directly rather than indirectly, go ahead, but I find editors resist that formulation as having an odd tone for wikivoice. Bon courage (talk) 01:42, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think the editorial difference in perspective may be well-addressed by adding further sourcing - for example, peer-reviewed studies from reliable journals could help directly demonstrate the pseudoscience. I haven't taken a look at GScholar or the Wikipedia Library, but if I find sources I'll add them to the talk page. Beccaynr (talk) 02:49, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Really this is just a brand for the usual altmed scamming. There's something in

• Nunan D, Blane DN, McCartney M (May 2021). "Exemplary medical care or Trojan horse? An analysis of the 'lifestyle medicine' movement". Br J Gen Pract. 71 (706): 229–232. doi:10.3399/bjgp21X715721. PMC 8087320. PMID 33926883.

which makes the point this is just another name for something familiar. Bon courage (talk) 03:12, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to see this article expanded to follow the first line of the lead, e.g. perhaps with a section for unproven methods and a section for disproven methods. I think this article has the capacity to be a more specific educational resource than it currently is, and when I refer to 'editorial difference in perspective,' I am thinking about how to most effectively present content to readers. More emphasis on red-flag aspects might be helpful (e.g. as noted in the source above, "The affiliation between lifestyle medicine and non-evidence-based, fringe, and alternative tests, diagnoses, and interventions in many areas risks disrepute, conflict, and confusion for patients") and adding broader commentary, such as from the above source about public health and economic disparities, might also be worthwhile to include. Beccaynr (talk) 12:13, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure 'disproven' features much in medicine, as a very tiny number of things are amenable to disproof. The problem here is that FM is a vaguely-define brand (intentionally so), so will resist efforts to explain just what it is. It's really just another name for Integrative medicine with a couple of extra gimmicks (the matrix thing e.g.). It may, yes, be worth adding something on how this adversely affects its customers though. Bon courage (talk) 12:22, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The lead currently says 'disproven,' and I was thinking about content currently in the article, such as adrenal fatigue, but this seems amenable to a slight rephrasing. Also, I started reviewing studies and I figure there are sources available to help explain how limiting various limitations can be, e.g. in "Functional Medicine Approach to Patient Care Improves Sleep, Fatigue, and Quality of Life in Patients With Inflammatory Bowel Disease" Crohn's & Colitis 360, 4 (3) July 2022, https://doi.org/10.1093/crocol/otac032 such as a lack of a placebo control, the existence of sampling bias, etc. Beccaynr (talk) 14:13, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• A few notes about potential sources: I think this is both a useful EL addition and suggestive of opportunities for further research to demonstrate the pseudoscience: Cracked Science 31: Functional Medicine McGill Office for Science and Society, 29 Apr 2019; this also seems potentially helpful: 5 Red Flags Your Non-Conventional Medical Provider Is Doing Harm (US News & World Report, 2018); I am less sure about this recent Guardian feature because FM is mentioned in passing: ‘We’re sedating women with self-care’: how we became obsessed with wellness, but it seems to raise a few similar issues discussed in the 2021 Br J Gen Pract commentary noted above. On the other hand, a source like this: Functional medicine: what it is and whether it’s right for you (AJC, 2021) reads like an advertorial to me, based on its exclusive reliance on what proponents say about the practice. Beccaynr (talk) 17:53, 1 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Five pillars

I understand that someone who is editing this takes great issue with functional medicine, but this is an inappropriate use of Wikipedia. I attempted to edit the article to contain neutral and factual information.

Wikiwriter43103840 (talk) 20:21, 13 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Wikiwriter43103840, I suggest that you read what WP:NPOV actually says instead of pontificating about what it might say. WP:NPOV does include WP:PSCI, WP:GEVAL, WP:REDFLAG, and actually entails WP:FRINGE and WP:MEDRS. tgeorgescu (talk) 22:31, 13 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, I’m unclear about why you are taking this abrasive tone with me. We’re all trying to improve Wikipedia. I stand by what I said. Wikiwriter43103840 (talk) 04:24, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Wikiwriter43103840: I'm not seeking to be rude, but saying Article was in violation of principle of "Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view." means that you have understood nothing from the real WP:NPOV. tgeorgescu (talk) 04:40, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]