Talk:Alternative medicine (theories)

Source?

This article copied a fair amount of information from the (commercial) web site of Kathleen Karlsen, MA, who writes about her own source of knowledge:

In addition to my lifelong love of art, I have been a student of metaphysics since about the age of fifteen. I love stories about the extraordinary--people, experiences, miraculous circumstances and amazing events. I also enjoy organizing information to share the things I find with others.

Kathleen Karlsen, MA, does not refer to (as far as I could see) other sources for her wisdom. Do we really want to copy some of the things she found to CZ?

Furthermore, Kathleen Karlsen, MA, writes:

Article Use Policy: All content on this web site is protected by international copyright laws for intellectual property and may not be reproduced, used, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior permission.

Does CZ have this permission? --Paul Wormer 15:43, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Paul's concerns need to be followed up on. Martin, try contacting Kathleen and see what she says. Otherwise, it's looking good, particularly the use of prose. If we can get some more eyes on this to fact check and clarify or clean-up, we can approve this one and move on. D. Matt Innis 02:33, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I really am somewhat puzzled about the emphasis on Kathleen Karlsen. The web publications I see [1] and [2], as well as her entry on LinkedIn, describe her primarily as an artist. She does, indeed, have commentary on alternative medicine through Bach flower therapy, visualization, and other fields. Chris, or someone with the access to an appropriate citation tool -- how widely is her work in alternative medicine cited in other research?

The question is why she is apparently being considered an authoritative source. She may be, but I don't have information one way or the other. For what it's worth, she is not cited in MEDLINE. Howard C. Berkowitz 04:20, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Fair use provisions

(The text quoted appears at the front of books too.)

As I understand it, International copyright laws allow a certain amount of direct quotation and accredited paraphrasing, (indeed non-accredited quoting and paraphrasing too), and the accredited kind is all that we have here. Any finding that this article breaches copyright would be very worrying, in that it would seem to destroy the basis of reference works such as CZ which rely on such fundamental academic tools. Someone, indeed many do, can write 'no one may quote me' on their internet page, but that does not make it so. One might well ask KK for her' sources - can she copuright views she has assuredly borrowed from others - in a legitimate knowledge gathering exercise. Martin Cohen 22:41, 22 December 2008 (UTC)