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Does this article rely too heavily on SBM?

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I fully understand that the blog Science-Based Medicine is considered generally reliable, though not peer-reviewed.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]
Meaning that people who pretend that diet heals diabetes are felons. tgeorgescu (talk) 03:19, 27 February 2024 (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]
@Animalparty @Xitomatl I agree that the article should be more neutral and represent different perspectives on functional medicine. This can be done in proportion to the mainstream view according to WP:DUE. This article also presents opinions as facts. In addition to the existing references, I would add the following sources.
•Beidelschies, M., Alejandro-Rodriguez, M., Guo, N., Postan, A., Jones, T., Bradley, E., Hyman, M., & Rothberg, M. B. (2021). Patient outcomes and costs associated with functional medicine-based care in a shared versus individual setting for patients with chronic conditions: a retrospective cohort study. BMJ Open, 11(4), e048294. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-048294
•Beidelschies, M., Alejandro-Rodriguez, M., Ji, X., Lapin, B., Hanaway, P., & Rothberg, M. B. (2019). Association of the Functional Medicine Model of Care With Patient-Reported Health-Related Quality-of-Life Outcomes. JAMA network open, 2(10), e1914017. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.14017
•Beidelschies, M., Cella, D., Katzan, I., & D'Adamo, C. R. (2022). Patient-Reported Outcomes and the Patient-Reported Outcome Measurement Information System of Functional Medicine Care and Research. Physical medicine and rehabilitation clinics of North America, 33(3), 679–697. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmr.2022.04.008
•Bland J. (2017). Defining Function in the Functional Medicine Model. Integrative medicine (Encinitas, Calif.), 16(1), 22–25. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5312741/
•Bland J. S. (2022). Functional Medicine Past, Present, and Future. Integrative medicine, 21(2), 22–26. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9173848/
•Bland J. S. (2018). The Natural Roots of Functional Medicine. Integrative medicine, 17(1), 12–17. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6380987/
•Bland J. S. (2019). What is Evidence-Based Functional Medicine in the 21st Century?. Integrative Medicine, 18(3), 14–18. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7217393/
•Droz, N., Hanaway, P., Hyman, M., Jin, Y., Beidelschies, M., & Husni, M. E. (2020). The impact of functional medicine on patient-reported outcomes in inflammatory arthritis: A retrospective study. PloS one, 15(10), e0240416. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240416
•Hanaway P. (2016). Form Follows Function: A Functional Medicine Overview. The Permanente journal, 20(4), 16–109. https://doi.org/10.7812/TPP/16-109
•Hickner J. (2022). Keeping an open mind about functional medicine. The Journal of Family Practice, 71(1), 6–7. https://doi.org/10.12788/jfp.0343
•Hyman, M., & Bradley, E. (2022). Food, Medicine, and Function: Food Is Medicine Part 1. Physical medicine and rehabilitation clinics of North America, 33(3), 553–570. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmr.2022.04.001
•Hyman, M., & Bradley, E. (2022). Food, Medicine, and Function: Food is Medicine Part 2. Physical medicine and rehabilitation clinics of North America, 33(3), 571–586. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmr.2022.04.002
•Orlando, F. A., Chang, K. L., & Estores, I. M. (2021). Functional medicine: Focusing on imbalances in core metabolic processes. The Journal of Family Practice, 70(10), 482–498. https://doi.org/10.12788/jfp.0307
•Simkin, D. R., & Arnold, L. E. (2023). Complementary and Integrative Medicine/Functional Medicine in Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Disorders: Should It Be Taken Seriously?. Child and adolescent psychiatric clinics of North America, 32(2), xiii–xxiv. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chc.2022.09.001
•Strobel, T. M., Nguyen, C., Riggs, T., Horst, S. N., Motley, A., Upadhyaya, S., Campbell, S., Spring, E., Dalal, R. L., Scoville, E., Pabla, B., Schwartz, D. A., & Beaulieu, D. B. (2022). 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), otac032. https://doi.org/10.1093/crocol/otac032 4whirledpeas (talk) 01:55, 27 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@4whirledpeas: I don't want to give you false hope. In order to learn how the ball is played, please read WP:LUNATICS. tgeorgescu (talk) 02:15, 27 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's a good start but:
Levivich (talk) 02:20, 27 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid "holistic approach" is empty verbiage, it is described at not even wrong. If you're seeking to define "holistic approach" scientifically (as in medical science): don't bother, it has no meaning at all. tgeorgescu (talk) 03:15, 27 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I also think that this article is too reliant on sources that have a bias against functional medicine. The books by functional medicine doctors that I have read are full of references citing clinical trials for nutritional approaches that they often take in their strategies of preventative medicine. It seems to me that Functional Medicine is evidence-based, unlike the field of "Integrated Medicine". 2600:1009:B11A:1DF0:2987:1DCC:E1DB:7031 (talk) 14:17, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:RS having anti-quackery bias are not only allowed, but even preferred, according to WP:PARITY.
If you had your own encyclopedia, you could choose your own balance between quackery and sources exposing quackery. Meanwhile you are here, so you have to obey our own WP:RULES, or you're out. tgeorgescu (talk) 20:40, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Disturbingly biased

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Came to this article for a definition and basic overview and was surprised by its unacademic and antagonistic tone. I have no prior knowledge or opinions about functional medicine. I’d like to see a neutral and informative article. I don’t feel I can trust this information because of its poor presentation. 102.214.137.55 (talk) 09:58, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello IP, if, like you said, you had "no prior knowledge or opinions about functional medicine", I'm not sure how you can tell if this article is neutral or not. If you have specific proposal to change the article, you can make them here (please always include sources to backup any proposal.) --McSly (talk) 12:11, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I also came to this article looking for an explanation/definition of what functional medicine is and didn't find it. I had to dig into the article history to find an answer, which most readers won't bother doing. I propose restoring content from the "Description" section of this old version. It's entirely appropriate and neutral to explain how this field sees itself and what it does in addition to listing criticisms. Right now, the lead sentence is "Functional medicine (FM) encompasses a number of unproven and disproven methods and treatments" without saying what these methods and treatments are; that is, the lead sentence doesn't actually define the topic. The article as currently constituted is incomplete and unencyclopedic. --Albany NY (talk) 01:12, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The WP:CLUE is that "functional medicine" is a marketing trick rather than evidence-based medicine. So, it's hard to say what functional medicine is, because it got purposefully vaguely defined by its proponents.
And, no, "holism" has no scientific meaning (in medical science). It's just a word used by woo peddlers.
E.g. "What practices and rituals connect us with something larger than ourselves? How can we connect with the divine, with nature, with ancestors, and with other sources of deep purpose and meaning beyond oneself?" [1]—what in God's name has that anything to do with medical science? tgeorgescu (talk) 03:25, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That may be true, but for this to be an NPOV article that fully covers the topic, it needs to quote how proponents -- not just critics -- describe functional medicine, even if that's vague. Also, presumably functional medicine uses some treatments (aside from talking), so these should be listed. --Albany NY (talk) 01:03, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've read the description in the old version you pointed to several times, and I find it so vague as to be useless. If you can find us a better description (preferably one in an independent reliable source), feel free to propose it here. MrOllie (talk) 01:08, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Zefr, I'm puzzled by your reversion of my edits. I'm not an advocate for FM and take no position on whether it has scientific validity (I simply came to this page hoping to learn what it is, which this article still fails to explain). But, let's pretend we agreed that FM is pseudoscience. Even then, for this to be a proper, encyclopedic, NPOV article, it would need to explain what FM proponents believe in addition to debunking them. Right now this article is akin to if the article on flat Earth simply said "Flat Earth is an archaic and scientifically disproven theory" and never actually stated that flat Earthers believe that the earth is flat. --Albany NY (talk) 00:53, 22 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The edit you wrote for the lede defines components in the conventional practice of medicine. The article's definition of functional medicine seems clear enough to me.
There is no mainstream scientific agreement - and no consensus on this talk page - that functional medicine provides anything unique or effective. As for dealing with NPOV and what FM proponents believe, see the conclusion of WP:QUACKS and WP:PSCI. Zefr (talk) 02:10, 22 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please make this page less biased

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I'm not a Wikipedia editor and don't know how to edit Wikipedia, but the level of bias on this page is really concerning. To be clear, I think it's important to mention potential downsides and drawbacks of any approach to medicine, but this article as it stands is biased to the point of being complete misinformation, and definitely shouldn't be considered in keeping with Wikipedia's neutrality standards. This website has a very helpful description of exactly what functional medicine is: https://www.balancedwellbeinghealthcare.com/whats-the-difference-between-functional-integrative-medicine/ Here are some empirical, peer-reviewed articles showing benefits of functional medicine: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2753520 https://academic.oup.com/crohnscolitis360/article/4/3/otac032/6694181 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7544031/ Here is a case study showing in detail how functional medicine works in practice: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5101099/ 74.96.227.10 (talk) 21:12, 23 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See https://politicalsciencenow.com/how-conflicts-and-population-loss-led-to-the-rise-of-english-wikipedias-credibility/ tgeorgescu (talk) 22:39, 23 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So, as a point of comparison, that article mentions that the Wikipedia page for homeopathy reads "Homeopathy is a pseudoscience." This is good, because that is true: homeopathy IS a pseudoscience. It offers an alternative set of beliefs about health and disease that differ from evidence-based science. The conversation about functional medicine is not comparable to the conversation about homeopathy. Functional medicine is not an alternative to science; it's a framework for managing chronic illness that uses the same evidence-based science as all medicine. Here's a quote from one of the articles above, which you clearly didn't bother to read: "The presence of multiple long-standing medical problems in a given patient despite intensive medical effort suggests that addressing systemic core imbalances could complement more narrowly focused approaches."
I encourage you to actually read the sources I provided in my last post rather than dismissing them from a place of misinformed bias. 74.96.227.10 (talk) 19:17, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Again, FM is hard to disprove, mainly because it is very unclear what FM is supposed to mean, positivistically speaking. tgeorgescu (talk) 19:40, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It looks at the metabolic processes underlying homeostasis to see if there are any ways to support this functioning to improve quality of life in people with chronic physical and/or mental health problems. Again, these are things you could have figured out if you actually read the sources I suggested.
I do think it would be very helpful to get an editor with knowledge of the molecular biochemistry of metabolism to help write this article. My own background in this area is insufficient to be much help.
I would compare talking about functional medicine to talking about psychiatry. Psychiatry has employed a lot of techniques and ideas over the years that have been completely disproven, but the basic idea that you can improve the symptoms of mental illness through physical and chemical intervention is still sound. Just because insulin shock therapy doesn't work and lobotomies were bad doesn't mean all of psychiatry is quackery. The same goes for functional medicine: trying to improve quality of life in patients with chronic illnesses by improving metabolic homeostasis is not, at its core, quackery, even if some practitioners have used dubious methods to do so. The idea is supported by work like Robert Naviaux's (See: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567724919302922?via%3Dihub) that shows a relationship between chronic illness, including mental health conditions, and mitochondrial functioning. At this point, this Wikipedia article about functional medicine reads the way the psychiatry article would read if Tom Cruise wrote it. 74.96.227.10 (talk) 21:52, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Again, the Church of Scientology has its own policies, we have WP:PSCI, WP:GEVAL, WP:ECREE, WP:PARITY and especially WP:MEDRS.
That is, if you don't have WP:MEDRS-compliant sources, you've got nothing, and therefore you cannot write anything inside our article. That also applies to any expert, pretended or real, in matters of metabolic homeostasis. They have to abide by WP:MEDRS, just as the rest of us. See WP:CITIZENDIUM.
FM is so vaguely defined because FM-proponents want to eat their cake and still have it. E.g. "holism" is meaningless in evidence-based medicine. It is a scientifically meaningless concept, as far as we speak about medical science. It is not even wrong.
That is, the balancedwellbeinghealthcare.com post is just advertising, so no, it does not come even close to a medical study. The rest of the papers you mention are WP:PRIMARY studies (except for Naviaux, but that isn't a systematic review, either), so they are knee-jerk disregarded. We don't even have to evaluate their quality, or their strengths and weaknesses, they are just discarded by default.
In other words, none of the sources which you have presented has any bearing upon this article. tgeorgescu (talk) 23:45, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Like I said above, I'm not a Wikipedia editor and I honestly have no interest in reading all that fine print. My goal was to offer some sources to help actual editors understand what functional medicine is so that you can properly research it and write an article that will actually provide an accurate description of functional medicine. Finding the sources Wikipedia will accept is your job, not mine.
That said, I strongly suspect you are twisting the intent of some Wikipedia rule, because peer-reviewed empirical evidence is the gold standard of scientific evidence in medicine. If you told any actual academic or clinician that you "knee-jerk disregard" any published study in a medical journal, you'd probably be laughed at, or at the very least be met with an extremely awkward, judgmental silence.
I have not used the word "holism" anywhere in this conversation because I agree that it's generally a pretty meaningless term. However, if I had to make a guess, the reason to use it in the context of functional medicine would be that it follows the biopsychosocial model (colloquially termed the "whole person" model) rather than the biomedical model, which acknowledges that psychological factors (such as traumatic stress) and social factors (such as poverty) can affect physical health. While the biopsychosocial model has its detractors, it's not a fringe theory, and is not a reason to discount medical fields that adhere to it.
"Looking at underlying metabolic processes to help improve quality of life for people with chronic illnesses" is NOT vague; it is extremely specific.
Here's some background that puts that definition in context: The term "functional" in functional medicine comes from the term "functional somatic syndrome" which is a term for chronic illnesses that have no clear organic cause, the classic example being fibromyalgia. Many in the medical field assumed they weren't "real" in that they were entirely psychosomatic, which we now know is not true, and even those who DID believe sufferers couldn't do much. Functional medicine originated as a model to treat functional somatic syndromes, really by going back to basics, like nutrition and lifestyle, eliminating environmental toxins (lots of people had lead poisoning in the 80s and 90s, hence chelation being extremely common in functional medicine for a while), correcting hormonal imbalances, and correcting nutrient deficiencies, because without any other treatment, these were the only things that brought chronic illness sufferers any relief. At the time we didn't know why it worked. Thanks to people like Robert Naviaux (who has an h-index of 53, by the way--he's not a "pretended" expert; he's extremely well respected), we understand now that the reason it worked is because these healthcare basics were supporting the basic metabolic processes that allow for homeostasis across bodily systems, AND because these functional somatic syndromes frequently turn out to be linked to underlying metabolic dysfunction. (Research into long COVID has been really illuminating on this as well.)
Functional medicine uses various testing, depending on symptoms, including genetic testing, bloodwork, urine analysis, stool analysis, etc., and makes recommendations based on those findings, which include changes in diet and exercise, the addition of supplements, prescription or OTC medications, psychotherapy, etc. It's interdisciplinary, and incorporates aspects of endocrinology, immunology, dietetics, psychiatry, etc. Most importantly, it's intended to be used in addition to standard-of-care treatments, not instead of them.
You seem to have been soundly misinformed about functional medicine, and I'm guessing it's because you're relying on sources that fail to distinguish between functional medicine and integrative medicine. Writing an article relying almost entirely on slanted opinion articles by one guy while rejecting empirical sources cannot possibly be what Wikipedia had in mind when it made all those guidelines.
Please actually put some effort into learning what functional medicine actually is, and write a real article for it, rather than using this page to promote your pre-existing view of it. 74.96.227.10 (talk) 01:32, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I typed "functional medicine" into Google Scholar, set it to review articles, and whaddayaknow: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11892-018-1052-y.pdf
https://www.journal-cot.com/article/S0976-5662(18)30512-5/fulltext
https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/article/78/12/1046/5820101
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3120938/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378512216300160
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B978032354856400016X (Full text is available online through institutional access)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/nutrition-research-reviews/article/nutritional-considerations-in-major-depressive-disorder-current-evidence-and-functional-testing-for-clinical-practice/6AE2CD3DB228B6315FC8207FADEEB633
If you know what types of sources you need, GO FIND THEM. This was not hard. At this point you've tried nothing and you're out of ideas. 74.96.227.10 (talk) 08:00, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Like I said above, I'm not a Wikipedia editor and I honestly have no interest in reading all that fine print". Pure ignorance. An experienced user has tried to help you but you have ignored their advice. You are ignoring WP:MEDRS and WP:OR. Your sources either fail our medical guidelines or they are original research. For example, 4 of those papers you cited only mention the term "functional medicine" once or twice, for example [2]. That's laughable. We are not going to cite an off-topic source that hardly mentions the topic. Stop wasting our time. You have no reliable sources. You are criticizing other users here but have put absolutely no effort in yourself. Sitting on Google scholar and spamming in the first few results you can find is not the way this website works. You haven't even read the sources you are citing. Your first link is a paper on diabetes treatment on the elderly. Despite having functional medicine in the title, the paper hardly mentions it. How would that source improve the Wikipedia article? It wouldn't. Again you haven't read any of those studies. Nobody wants to read your spam. If you are going to suggest sources they should be legitimate and on-topic. Psychologist Guy (talk) 10:47, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have very deliberately not claimed any expertise about editing Wikipedia. There's a reason I didn't try to just do it myself, which would have been my preference--because I know I don't know what I'm doing. I have not pretended otherwise. Expecting someone from outside your community to know everything you know, and shaming them for not knowing it, is extremely rude and uncalled for. Your disrespect is not appreciated.
Calling someone's suggested sources spam is also incredibly rude. You are clearly engaging in bad faith here and I don't appreciate it.
That Khiroya et al article that you called "laughable" is literally about how to use functional medicine to pinpoint and treat the underlying causes of depression, and why the evidence supports its use. It says it very plainly right in the abstract: "This review aims to highlight the role that nutritional factors play in the aetiology of depression. Secondly, we discuss the biomedical and functional pathology tests which measure these factors, and the current evidence supporting their use."
"Functional medicine" deals with "functional pathology". An article examining functional pathology is an article about functional medicine. Someone who's actually familiar with this field should know that.
Let's also keep in mind that just because an article doesn't mention the name of the field its about doesn't always mean it's not about that field. This article is also about depression; more specifically, it's about antidepressants and their effect on serotonin levels. It doesn't mention the word "psychiatry" once, but it's clearly about psychiatry, just as the Khiroya article is clearly about functional medicine, even though they're both about the same illness.
Domnul Georgescu stated that he was unwilling to look for sources meeting Wikipedia's reliable source standards that support the use of functional medicine because he was certain they did not exist, but I looked and found them quite easily. Unless I'm misunderstanding your MEDRS, they are all secondary sources from third party publications and therefore acceptable, most of them are systematic reviews, all of them are from medical journals except the one that's a chapter from a "professional book written by experts". Except for the first one, they literally all deal exclusively with functional medicine: determining the underlying causes of chronic illness, and using the functional medicine model to test for and treat them. I did not just "spam" you with the first results; I read through them and picked relevant articles. One of them literally responds specifically to David Gorski's criticism and suggests possible future methods to more effectively study FM's effectiveness.
And to answer your question about the first article...first of all, it doesn't "barely mention" functional medicine: roughly a quarter of the article is devoted to the discussion of functional medicine. It breaks down functional medicine into the systems domains of "immune dysregulation, xenobiotics exposure, nutrient deficiency, and gut microbiome", and it reviews literature about whether interventions in these domains, of the type used by functional medicine practitioners, have been effective at treating diabetes.
How does it help the Wikipedia article? For one thing, it's a secondary source that states that the evidence supports the use of functional medicine in treating diabetes, which generally contradicts David Gorski's opinion that functional medicine is not evidence based, and more specifically supports the testing for nutrient deficiencies, environmental contaminants, and gut microbiome functioning that this article quotes Gorski as calling "unnecessary".
Copy pasting from the MEDRS: "Wikipedia policies on the neutral point of view and not publishing original research demand that we present prevailing medical or scientific consensus". Your current article on functional medicine implies that it is scientific consensus that functional medicine is quackery, but that very much is not the case. I strongly urge you to research from a place of truth-seeking rather than from a place of confirmation bias in order to improve this article. 74.96.227.10 (talk) 19:33, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, this isn't a place of truth-seeking, meaning we don't engage in original research. We simply report what WP:BESTSOURCES say, being biased for WP:RULES such as WP:PSCI and WP:PARITY.
And I'm afraid that the words functional pathology do not appear in Institute for Functional Medicine (2010-11-01). Textbook of Functional Medicine 2010. ISBN 978-0-9773713-7-2. tgeorgescu (talk) 20:03, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Functional medicine has not been shown to treat diabetes, the paper you cited was making suggestions. There is no clinical evidence for your claims. If you had any clinical evidence you would have cited it by now. Functional medicine is indeed quackery. No dietetic or medical organization advocates functional medicine. In reality, there is no such thing as "functional medicine" there is just medicine which is evidence-based. You are not going to overturn the scientific consensus by copying and pasting some papers from Google scholar. If functional medicine was any good at treating disease we would have known this by now. The scientific evidence is non-existent and all based on anecdotes from the likes of Mark Hyman et al. Psychologist Guy (talk) 20:59, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's functional medicine as Mark Hyman (who is indeed a quack and a eugenicist one at that) promotes it, and then there's valid functional medicine that examines the functioning of a body's systems in order to improve quality of life for people with chronic illness. A loose analogy would be the difference between osteopathy and osteopathic medicine. 74.96.227.10 (talk) 19:03, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Institute of Functional Medicine is an American organization. The term "functional pathology" is more commonly seen in Australia, where the authors of that paper are from. For example: https://www.befunctional.com.au/what-is-functional-pathology, https://remede.com.au/comprehensive-testing/functional-pathology/
You would never use functional medicine to treat diabetes. That is a ridiculous suggestion. Treating diabetes is what endocrinologists are for. You clearly aren't paying any attention to anything I've been saying. If you decide you want to engage in good faith, go back and read what I've already written. Until then, I'm done. 74.96.227.10 (talk) 18:53, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
AFAIK, FM is a marketing term meaning MDs are allowed to perform costly medical investigations without a proper reason, and in the end they will tell you, based upon such investigations, that you have to eat lots of fruits and vegetables, and do some sort of sport. tgeorgescu (talk) 00:05, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
From the point of view of someone who has just heard of functional medicine and is looking it up for the first time (i.e., myself), the article as it stands is totally useless. The tone is obviously, transparently biased and the content is too meager to allow the reader to judge for themselves whether or not it's quackery. It's like an article on the United States starting with "The United States has been called the Great Satan." Absolutely true. The strategic choice of which undeniably true statements to include and which to omit is called "spin."
A simple Google search is more informative than thus article. Khematto (talk) 03:21, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the definition of FM is clear to anyone. That's their spin. tgeorgescu (talk) 04:32, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So are mainstream doctors required to define mainstream medicine? Is there a universally accepted definition of mainstream medicine? Are mainstream doctors engaged in a conspiracy to avoid defining mainstream medicine?
It is not the job of functional medicine practicioners to define what they do. Their purpose is to help people get well, especially people for whom mainstream medicine has proved ineffective (which doesnt mean mainstream medicine is quackery). It is your job, as someone claiming the authority to write a wikipedia article, to describe (not define) the topic of the article in an unbiased and informative way. Or let someone else do it if you can't put your biases aside. Khematto (talk) 08:20, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You are prone to believe Larry Sanger's view of WP:NPOV. Learn that through enshrining WP:GEVAL and WP:PSCI into WP:PAGs, the Sangerite POV has been ousted from Wikipedia. tgeorgescu (talk) 09:42, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just plain wrong

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This article calls functional medicine a pseudoscience yet it has been adopted by The Cleveland Clinic. This article should be substantially revised as it stands it is narrative quackery 72.215.0.38 (talk) 21:43, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WP:RGW. NHS hospitals in UK offered a well-paid job to a Reiki therapist. Not because Reiki is effective, but because it is an easy way to soothe nervous patients. See https://www.nature.com/articles/526295a tgeorgescu (talk) 21:53, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Major new source

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Could usefully be used to freshen this article:

Bon courage (talk) 03:29, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's also some discussion about functional medicine in a new book that's accessible from the Wikipedia library, Mind the Science: Saving Your Mental Health from the Wellness Industry. ScienceFlyer (talk) 15:22, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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