Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Subjective medical conditions

:{{la|Subjective medical conditions}} – (View AfD)(View log)

While most of the points in this article are valid, it is a complete innovation to group them together in this fashion. It is also clinically shortsighted to include common symptoms such as headache without a qualification that these may be secondary to other conditions. Delete please. JFW | T@lk 14:17, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. (Sorry, Jfdwolff.) While the article right now isn't the greatest, I think it's an interesting way to group things like this together. As for headache, that's something that can easily be adjusted in the article to mention how there may be objective causes for the headache in some cases. Ksheka 19:30, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

• The subject matter is mostly valid but there are at least two problems with this article. First, the title represents a relatively extreme POV and is somewhat pejorative (especially in the lumping of factitious illness into this category of conditions!)-- this guy is not a doctor most of would expect to be very successful at dealing with these patients. Second, the matter overlaps about 90% with somatoform disorder and somatization disorder, and the three articles should be combined with a better explanation of the multiple perspectives and POVs with which they can be legitimately considered-- basically the same challenge posed by a good chronic fatigue syndrome article. alteripse 03:10, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• Keep, but this article needs work. Quite a few (if not most) medical diagnoses are initially based on subjective symptoms, and often the subjective symptoms lead to objective findings. Some conditions are diagnoses of exclusion after other causes are ruled out; this is a good article to aggregate diagnoses of exclusion for subjective conditions. Dlodge 14:24, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. No relevant Ghits for the phrase "Subjective medical condition" so it's OR or a neologism. Certainly not notable. andy 15:26, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

:Disagree Lack of Google hits doesn't mean it's original research. More likely a neologism the author coined to describe the aggregation of the conditions into a Wikipedia page. Perhaps "Medical conditions without objective findings" is more appropriate. Dlodge 18:26, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

• Delete It's obviously original research. Mangoe 17:13, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

:Disagree I don't see any original research here, just a lack of references. Everything I see here could be easily referenced if someone took the time to do it. However, grouping the conditions together is probably an innovation as Jfdwolff pointed out in the nomination. Dlodge 18:26, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

::Adding references doesn't make it non-original. I'm seeing this sort of comment all over the place, but the fact is that real research papers are full of references. I'ts what they do with the references that makes the difference. This article is trying to synthesize certain ideas about the commonality of certain symptoms to propose a new notion in medicine. The citations it would need would citations about that idea, not about the various symptoms. Right now that seems totally lacking, and the tenuous coherence of the ideas suggests that they do not come from some outside source. Mangoe 18:44, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

:::Agreed. The lack of Ghits - especially on Google Scholar - is compelling. There's no such thing as a notable academic idea that isn't referred to by anyone. It's how scholars keep their jobs. If no-one else refers to this topic then no-one else has ever heard of it! So it is about as non-notable as you can get. If this was the name of a person rather than the name of an idea there would be nothing to discuss. andy 20:29, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

• Delete but I do not really trust using ghits on GS as a test when one is searching on a particular phrase. The subject may be notable, and referred to many times, but the wording of the article title may be wrong. Not that I would keep this trivial attempt at diagnostic medicine.

• Keep. This article should exist, but it needs to be clarified, expanded, and properly referenced. There are too many new "disorders" in medicine that lack an objective scientific basis. Don't even get me started on ADD/ADHD and "restless leg syndrome". MoodyGroove 14:07, 3 May 2007 (UTC)MoodyGroove
• It's worth noting that after spending a few minutes entering this article seven months ago the author hasn't done any further work on it and neither - apart from a bit of tidying and a lot of tagging - has anyone else despite its obvious faults. Could this because it's not worth bothering with, for the reasons Mangoe pointed out? andy 16:51, 3 May 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.