Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Transcendental Meditation research

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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 merge to Transcendental Meditation. v/r - TP 21:36, 15 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Transcendental Meditation research[edit]

Transcendental Meditation research (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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While TM itself is a notable subject, the meta-topic of research about TM is not notable. This article is just serving as a POV fork, attempting to ignore WP:MEDRS and WP:SCIRS by listing every study done on the topic (most of which were done by proponents of TM) Gaijin42 (talk) 00:49, 27 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Merge notable material to Research on meditation. This would put relevant information in one place. (I'm assuming that TM is generally recognized as a type of meditation.) It would also have the effect of distancing this material from the controversy about the TM movement itself. BayShrimp (talk) 02:20, 27 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am not sure why Gaijin42 thinks this is not a notable subject. It is well sourced from a number of different sources. I also fail to see how this article is attempting to ignore WP:MEDRS and WP:SCIRS. As far as I know most of the sources that are used to describe the research are secondary sources. Gaijin42 how does this article attempt to list every study done on the topic (most of which were done by proponents of TM) as you describe?--Uncreated (talk) 02:39, 27 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:55, 27 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:55, 27 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:55, 27 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 19:45, 4 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge/redirect: There's clearly an issue with excessive content forking in the Transcendental Meditation topic area, not to mention a walled garden problem. We somehow manage to cover all of the research on broad topics like hypertension or acute myeloid leukemia without a spinoff article, so I'm not sure we need one here, where there's very little high-quality research to speak of. Parts of the article should be merged to Transcendental Meditation (or Transcendental Meditation technique? or Transcendental Meditation movement? Again, way too much content forking). MastCell Talk 04:41, 27 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect: I agree with MastCell; there is a problem with pov-forking in this area, leading to lots of extra articles, usually quite lengthy, and the walled garden is carefully gardened & pruned to reflect one point of view only. Diligently "merging" all this content whilst also bringing it in line with our norms would take a great deal of editor time, for little benefit; better to simply redirect to a different article and then focus on improving that if necessary. bobrayner (talk) 09:40, 27 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Regarding notability... the search term [“transcendental meditation” research] generated the following results:
    • Google News: 27 matches for the month of Oct. 2013 alone. [1]
    • The New York Times archive: 161 matches [2]
    • Google Scholar: 12,500 matches [3]
    • Google (general): 465,00 matches [4]
  • And editors not familiar with the topic should note that the fork was created as a result of an agreement between Will Beback, BWB and Littleolive oil in this talk page discussion.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 15:33, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think the most relevant portion of that discussion was " Is all of the TM research with out merit as the lead now suggests". As WP:MEDRS and WP:SCIRS both mention, popular media/news stories are not to be trusted in science/medical articles, and WP:PRIMARY studies, conducted by proponents of the activity in question are doubly not acceptable (particularly when the WP:SECONDARY studies point out major flaws and issues, and non-reproducability). At a minimum the article must be trimmed down to what is acceptable under WP:MEDRS and WP:SCIRS. What would be left (imo) would be mostly the Transcendental_Meditation_research#Research_quality section, which can quite easily fit into the main article, so there is no reason for a fork. Gaijin42 (talk) 16:01, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You may want to take a closer look at the sources being used in the article, including the ones deleted a few days ago by Bobrayner. All sources are MEDRS-compliant research reviews that include studies on TM. In that regard, it's not clear why Bobrayner deleted such sources as this statement from the American Heart Association that appeared in the core medical journal Hypertension, or the review by the NIH Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, or this review that appeared in the top journal Pediatrics.

There are no news reports being used as sources in the article. Spicemix (talk) 20:51, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep - Notability seems clear per my comment above and after looking at the sources I find a distinct lack of primary sources and news reports and instead I see highly compliant research reviews being used per WP:MEDRS.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 16:01, 1 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Your argument about Google hits is irrelevant to the question of whether we should have a standalone article on this topic. We don't base that decision on search-engine results—hence we have no standalone article on hypertension research (despite 29 million Google hits) nor on leukemia research (despite 37 million Google hits). MastCell Talk 22:08, 1 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Your argument about Google hits is irrelevant to my statement that the "notability seems clear". As for the forking, the article was created in Dec 2010 via unanimous consensus by Will Beback, Littleolive oil and BwB, three editors who often disagreed in this topic area. The new article was created per WP:FORK which says: "editors often create summary-style spin-offs or new, linked article for related material. This is acceptable, and often encouraged, as a way of making articles clearer and easier to manage..... Summary style articles, with sub-articles giving greater detail, are not POV forking" [bold added]. I'm concerned by what appears to be a combined effort to suppress legitimate content supported by, published, peer reviewed research reviews, first by deleting key sections of the article and its sources and then nominating it for deletion under the blatantly false claim that the article is non-notable and based on non-MEDRS compliant sources. A more intelligent approach would be to Delete/Redirect the Transcendental Meditation article per WP:REDUNDANTFORK since it only provides copies of the lead paragraphs of other articles, including this one under AfD discussion. I am in favor of consolidation in this topic area and that's why I have nominated several articles for deletion and/or merger this year. However, this nomination is as unproductive as this TM technique AfD nomination by the same editor.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 19:27, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Better to avoid WP:OTHERSTUFF arguments surely. The proposing statement is incorrect in every particular: I think the editor hasn't read the article or the history of its creation. Spicemix (talk) 09:21, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • KeepIt is a well sourced document that uses primarily secondary sources. The suggestion that it is a POV fork is erroneous as well as the suggestion it does not conform to WP:MEDRS and WP:SCIRS.--Uncreated (talk) 10:08, 3 November 2013 (UTC) — Uncreated (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
  • Delete not a proper subject and essentially only a clearinghouse for Maharishi cultists to display their synthetic original research. Compare to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Reincarnation research (2nd nomination). jps (talk) 15:06, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge/redirect Blatant content forking. There is no reason why this cannot be handled in the main article. Walled garden issues appear to be accurate as well. Yobol (talk) 16:00, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge/Redirect Unnecessary content fork - seems to be padded out with sources talking about meditation in general rather than TM in particular. LuckyLouie (talk) 01:42, 4 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Agree that this is not a proper article subject. Any usable sources can be used elsewhere or stored on someone's userspace subpage. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:52, 4 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge/redirect per Yobol, MastCell, Bobrayner, particularly the "walled garden" issue. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:32, 5 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Relisting comment: We are exactly at 1/3 keeps, so let us discuss one more week.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:09, 7 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ymblanter (talk) 12:09, 7 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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.
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