Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Red light therapy

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 Low-level laser therapy. MelanieN (talk) 15:53, 3 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Red light therapy[edit]

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No MEDRS used. Not prodded because of project ARS. Roxy, the PROD. . wooF 21:04, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 21:11, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Um could you provide some links to those terms so I can see what they mean? I don't speak acronym all that well. Thanks. A loose necktie (talk) 21:13, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
WP:MEDRS: "all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge."

WP:PROD = proposed deletion.

ARS = Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron --RexxS (talk) 23:47, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment the topic has gained some notice in sources, but not much. There certainly doesn't seem to any MEDRS-compliant evidence of efficacy, so I've trimmed the article's content to what can be acceptably sourced from the references provided. --RexxS (talk) 23:47, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep It's a notable subject even if there isn't excellent scientific evidence about it (yet). The existence of scientific evidence is not what makes something notable. Note that there are multiple different things that involve red light. This is not Photodynamic therapy ("red laser activates pharmaceutical drug") or Low-level laser therapy ("red laser sometimes improves wound healing"). This is the "wellness trend" involving mostly red LEDs.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] If you keep in mind that this is a consumer product (one with excellent potential as a Halloween costume), rather than a scientific subject, it's obvious that Wikipedia should mention it. The only unsettled questions are how to present it in Light therapy (a broad survey article that contains a mishmash of conventional medical treatments, outright quackery, and wellness products), and whether it ought to be all about red light, or converted to a larger article about modern products that shine different colors of lights on people. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:20, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- For biomedical claims, PMID 30853864 is a review, but the research is all in rats, and PMID 30850041 is a review that declares it to be promising for acne in humans, but there is insufficient evidence to recommend it yet. This review has some specific advice about how to differentiate the related articles. A merge to LLLT (which would then need to be renamed) is not entirely unreasonable, according to them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:34, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Reliable sources needed[edit]

The current article does not cite reliable sources. If the article author(s) reviewed relevant guidelines and policies regarding article creation and asked for help, perhaps they could craft an article with sufficient reliable sources. Suggestions:

Google Scholar search for "red light therapy".
Pubmed search for "red light treatment"[Title/Abstract] AND (Humans[Mesh]) AND (Humans[Mesh])
RSS for the Pubmed search. - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 21:34, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Whether a source is reliable depends upon the WP:RSCONTEXT. Despite this recent trend to declare some sources "reliable" and others "unreliable", the fact remains that no source can be judged to be (un)reliable until you know what sentence it's supposed to be supporting. I agree that there are very few sources that could support claims about Wikipedia:Biomedical information in relation to this subject. (The same can be said about every single drug candidate in pharmaceutical industry's pipeline, by the way.) However, there exist many reliable sources for describing this as an electronic consumer product, which is what it actually is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:25, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - Thank you for your very helpful explanations WhatamIdoing. What you wrote here and above makes good sense and I have learned a lot reading your responses. Much appreciated! - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 07:35, 21 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 03:36, 26 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as a non-notable bit of pseudoscience, now much reduced without the glowing woo. If one day proper controlled trials are carried out, then we might be able to cover it, but without reliable sources this fails WP:N and indeed WP:GNG. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:47, 26 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
~~Undecided~~ Keep - I'm wondering if it might be good to keep the article so that people might land on the page and learn objective information. ~~What do others think?~~ EDIT (27 Mar 2020 @ 12:43 UTC) - Thank you Spinningspark :0) - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 19:34, 26 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per WhatamIdoing. There is confusion in this discussion between notability and proven effectiveness. Notability does not require that clinical trials have taken place. It does not even require that there are WP:MEDRS present in the article. A subject can still meet notability through WP:GNG without that, and the fact that a reputable publisher (Simon & Schuster) has published a book on the subject is enough to cross that hurdle imo. Of course, we should not be presenting the claims about the treatment as facts without MEDRS to back up those claims. But we can still discuss those claims and we are doing our readers a service by having the article and highlighting the lack of medical evidence. SpinningSpark 00:21, 27 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
~~Keep~~ Merge with Low-level laser therapy? As discussed. It seems to be WP:Fringe, but that doesn't mean it's not notable. There seems to be sufficient coverage. Here's another article that appears to be reliable. Thoughts on this one?Jlevi (talk) 19:03, 29 March 2020(UTC)

According to the linked CNET article, it looks like red light therapy has many names, one of which is Low-level laser therapy. That article looks much more developed, so a merge might be better. Jlevi (talk) 19:11, 29 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I am not opposed to a merge, so long as "red light therapy" is added to the list of alternate names on the article page. I am not at all opposed to the inclusion of references that discredit the application of this type of therapy, and I don't personally believe it is particularly effective for the treatment of almost any condition— I encountered the concept on an Internet health and wellness page, wanted more info, came to Wikipedia, found none, and so did some research and put together an article. If it really is the same thing as low level laser therapy, then by all means, merge it (I read over that article and still wasn't entirely sure myself). A loose necktie (talk) 15:16, 30 March 2020 (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.