Talk:Daniel Amen

References

Plastering a whole article with negative references from beginning to end (in one case where it had absolutely nothing to do with the content in an obvious effort to raise its apparent significance) is unquestionably a violation of Wikipedia's neutrality policy. I have confined the negative references to the "Criticism" section which is compliant with the rules. Mike Hayes (talk) 19:23, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Blatent advertising should be flagged

Amen has some great ideas but this page must show the other opinions or be flagged as a blatant advertisement.

I second that. A simple Google search gives a few sites that claim he is overstepping what can be concluded from his technique; links to these must be shown. I don't have the time or inclination to do this, but this indeed comes on as a blatant advertisement, touting his more respectable contributions but failing to disclose how his SPECT treatments are publicized in mainstream media, rather than peer-reviewed journals. Even the APA claims he is going too far. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.212.143.153 (talk) 19:00, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

BULL. WHAT advertising? A list of publications is an ADVERT!? Get a grip.

Amen has a significant track-record of good research and good results with his patients. The above two comments indicate laziness on the part of the writers. If nay-sayers wish to post counter-arguments, let them. But if you have no personal experience of the man's work, and haven't bothered to do your own research, keep your fingers off your keyboard and stop your cheap attacks.

My wife is a research doctor, and one of Amen's patients. I am a neurofeedback researcher since 1982. I have reviewed Amen's methods and sat in on review sessions. Both my wife and I are tremendously, positively, impressed by the competence of the Amen clinic staff, and of the processes, procedures, and the science supporting Amen's clinical work. Amen's approach to dealing with the brain steps away from the typical US medical-system dart-board and ouija board method of treatment selection.

OUR research into Amen's approach suggests that he's the victim of sour-grape complainers who are simply jealous of his creativity and business-savvy. Maclir2001 (talk) 04:47, 3 January 2009 (UTC)maclir2001

It does read like advertising. It needs work/WP:RS. BBiiis08 (talk) 23:19, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Maclir2001, your own page says you're a "glider and power pilot, by inclination and education a geographer and forester, and work in disaster preparedness and response planning." You don't sound at all qualified to make the claims you're making. Claims which don't matter at any rate because you need to cite them with legitimate external support. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.79.21.225 (talk) 17:57, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Original research aside, there are some concrete reasons that the article fails the "smell test", and they're mostly pertinent negatives. There's no source on what the Marie H Eldredge award is or what it's for - the editor's assertion that it's "for the best research work" can't be narrowed down to something more specific than best at proofreading research papers, much less substantiated (it's on a list of awards that can be for teaching, research, administrative psychiatry, maybe other things). Second, there's no discussion of how the various bits and pieces of resume fodder relate to the work he does currently - validating the "expertise" and "credentials" of an "expert" by discussing work they did other than what they're selling is a hallmark of pseudoscience marketing. Even if he's the guy we've all been waiting for who deserves all the glowing claims of pseudoscience marketing, that doesn't make it encyclopedic. Third, there's no discussion of the techniques and technologies that make his work sound impressively technical in terms of when he's using them the way everyone else does and when he's being "innovative"; is he the only one using SPECT the way he does, and if so, why? If not, why not put that into context? Leaving those questions unanswered for people to fill in the blanks with their own narrative (that he doesn't have to answer for) is a great advertising technique, but not a good way to generate reference material. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.106.234.144 (talk) 18:14, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Dr. Amen's credentials

I don't think he is currently on the faculty of UC-Irvine. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.13.57.18 (talk) 00:37, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

As of 2009 JAN 02, Doctor Amen is listed at the UC Irvine Campus Directory () as "UCInetID: damen Name: Daniel Gregory Amen Title: Asst. Clinical Professor Department: Psychiatry & Human Behavior E-mail: damen@uci.edu Delivery Point: damen@hs.uci.edu Phone: (949) 266-3700"

I consider derogatory, unsigned "contributions" to be highly offensive, and suggest that they should be deleted. In the above case, confirming Amen's UCI association took me less than ONE minute. The anonymous poster could have taken the same effort, if they were actually neutral.

Still, the guy's an unpaid volunteer, probably just so he can have the affiliation. Anyone can walk into a psychiatry department and volunteer. The fact that he is an unpaid volunteer is important and should be noted.

76.103.2.176 (talk) 01:57, 3 January 2009 (UTC)maclir2001

I think his UCI affiliation is dubious. The salon.com article referenced under "external links" says: "He is a board-certified psychiatrist and assistant clinical professor at University of California at Irvine School of Medicine, as his current Web site claims. But as U.C. Irvine assistant director of health sciences communications Tom Vasich explains, the title "assistant clinical professor" is the name for an untenured volunteer faculty member, of which the U.C. Irvine School of Medicine has more than 1,000. Amen is not affiliated with the university's Brain Imaging Center; all of his studies on SPECT scanning have been privately performed at his proprietary Amen Clinics."

If you google the phone number given in his directory listing, it gives his private clinic, not a university office. I don't suppose that this is sufficient evidence to change the article, but I do think we need to be a bit more critical in evaluating his university affiliation.

Davost (talk) 13:20, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

UC San Francisco Medical School has a similar volunteer clinical faculty status in contrast to tenured paid academic faculty - "Clinical faculty members volunteer their time to teach students and residents, either in their office or on campus." http://www.medschool.ucsf.edu/acf/admin/about.aspx. Assistant Clinical Professor is the 2nd rank above Instructor requiring a minimum of 2 years, a high degree of clinical competence and a minimum of 50-75 hours of teaching per year (full time academic professors teach more hours). http://www.medschool.ucsf.edu/acf/promotions/ Most physicians work with 1 or 2 students or residents a few hours per week during a school term or year round as a way to share their experiences by teaching. In addition to being able to use the clinical professor title, benefits include attending Medical School CME courses for free or at a discount, access to medical library clinical resources, and some alumni benefits. Petersam (talk) 06:51, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Wiki his clinical title to Academic_rank#Academic_ranks_22 Petersam (talk) 07:25, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Made a minor correction to term "Professor-VOLUNTEER" the loud and childish capitalization is poor grammar. bad etiquette, emotional and quite frankly childish (emotionally immature). I changed it to "Professor-Volunteer" which maintains the information the writer wishes to convey while being grammatically and stylishly more consistent.24.200.55.244 (talk) 16:26, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

For the record, "Professor-VOLUNTEER" is exactly the way he's listed on the UCI website. UCI probably isn't being childish or immature in listing him that way, they probably do it because it's a very important distinction to make. I'd suggest going back to the way UCI did it.

Reads like a Resume

The article reads like a resume, listing every paper he's ever published (w/ abstracts), every book he's written and everything he's ever done (member of a forensics team is NOT an award/honor!). It's quite clear that there are a number of editors (Maclir2001 esp.) who are quite enamored w/ Dr. Amen, but that's no excuse for the incredibly poor quality of the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.79.21.225 (talk) 17:55, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Another point: Shouldn't something be added about Oral Roberts University Medical School. I'm far from sure but I don't think it was in operation long and had very few graduates. It is difficult to find information about it. What is Oral Roberts University Medical School? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.193.254.242 (talk) 17:55, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Criticism

The criticisms against Amen are all valid (that none of his claims have been validated), yet Amen keeps deleting them. Isn't there some way to keep this guy from updating his resume by deleting criticism about himself? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.102.216.106 (talk) 16:15, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Changes do not reflect the body of work of Dr. Amen

The persistent negative slant is unfair and inaccurate to Dr. Amen. Wikipedia is not supposed to be a slam on professionals. All of the information in my edit is accurate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ispect (talk • contribs) 15:29, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Please be more specific about what you mean by the "persistent negative slant" and how it is "unfair and inaccurate". Wikipedia is supposed to present a balanced neutral view of a topic based on what has been published in reliable sources, which I (and I guess other editors) feel the article achieves reasonably well at the moment. Your edit may be accurate but it is by no means neutral. For example, you do not cite a source for the fact that Amen is "lead researcher on the world’s largest brain imaging/brain rehabilitation study on professional football players" or "His clinics have the world's largest database of brain SPECT scans related to behavior, now reportedly totaling over 70,000 scans." etc. etc. If you have reliable, third party references to back up what you are adding, then we can discuss the changes here, but the community will not allow the article to be written in a way that is promotional of Amen. SmartSE (talk) 16:40, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Despite Dr. Amen's very large body of work, including over 40 professional articles and 28 books, this page devotes most of its space to criticism from an organization (quackwatch) that has itself been crticized all over the web. Dr. Amen IS the lead researcher and author on the largest brain imaging/rehabilitation study on professional football players and the published references were provided. Do you work for Wikipedia? Do you have the final say on what goes on this page? Is this the place to ask permission for changes ahead of time? Just need to know how to proceed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ispect (talk • contribs) 02:10, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

As I said before, the article should summarise what has been written by Amen. If no independent sources have discussed how Amen has published so many articles, or that he is the leading researcher on brain imaging/rehabilitation studies of professional football players, then we shouldn't mention it. If there are sources that discuss these, then please provide references. The quackwatch article is written by Harriet A. Hall and constitutes a reliable source. What's more, quackwatch is not the only place where Amen's techniques have questioned ( doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.2010.10020157 ) as well as the book review in the American Journal of Psychiatry already included. I don't work for Wikipedia - all editors are volunteers - but yes, this is the place to suggest changes to the article, particularly if you have a conflict of interest in regards to how Amen is presented on Wikipedia. Let me know if you have any other questions. SmartSE (talk) 09:30, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Today I added multiple independently referenced additions to "Career and Work." In addition, I took out the word "unpaid" volunteer, in his clinical appointment. Volunteer means unpaid. In addition, I have listed his 28 books that are written and listed on Amazon. ispect — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ispect (talk • contribs) 02:25, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Changes that were described above were reverted without explanation by another user. SmartSE what can be done about this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.178.132.146 (talk) 17:58, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Most of your additions were not suitable - adding lists of books etc. appears promotional, especially when they are referenced using amazon links. Adding Dr. everywhere is unnecessary and non-neutral, as if trying to reinforce on the reader that Amen is to be trusted. Regarding papers he has written, it's a tricky one, but I don't think it should be included unless another source has written about them, I consider it original research (which is forbidden) to do otherwise, and if someone is interested then google scholar is a better place to look. The part you added to the criticism section is also dodgy as the in the case of the first paper, it is talking about diagnosing dementia, not predicting alzheimers years in advance which is clearly different. I can't say anymore without repeating my earlier points. SmartSE (talk) 19:44, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments and clarification. There has been publications written about Dr. Amen that may be candidates for publishing, I will consult with your opinion before doing so. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.178.132.146 (talk) 21:18, 28 October 2011 (UTC)