Fibromyalgia Wikipedia Article and Reference Fraud

[DigitalDrifter]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibromyalgia#cite_note-Goldenberg1999-41

I was browsing the Fibromyalgia Wikipedia article when I came across this:

Psychological factors
There is strong evidence that major depression is associated with fibromyalgia as with other chronic pain conditions (1999),[41]

The reference is:
Goldenberg DL (April 1999). "Fibromyalgia syndrome a decade later: what have we learned?". Archives of Internal Medicine. 159 (8): 777–85. doi:10.1001/archinte.159.8.777. PMID 10219923.

So I decided to look it up. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/485015

Current major depression, however, was found in only 18% to 36% of patients with FM. Ahles et al38 and Yunus and colleagues39 did not find a greater prevalence of major depression in patients with FM than in those with rheumatoid arthritis and in healthy controls. Therefore, even in tertiary referral clinics, most patients with FM do not have a current psychiatric illness.

The evidence clearly does not support the implied claim. This makes me wonder how many other references are misrepresented.

 

[shak8]

Tons.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

The evidence clearly does not support the implied claim. This makes me wonder how many other references are misrepresented.

The whole article looks to be misleading make-believe to me. It just throws in a mass of conflicting pseudo facts without any indication, until maybe the end, that a lot of doctors don't really see what FM is supposed to mean.

 

[Snow Leopard]

Misquoting references on Wikipedia is fine if it suits the narrative views of the dominant editors.

I managed to correct one of the misleading edits by James Heilman (who is basically the chief medical admin of Wikipedia) on the CFS page after a long discussion/mediation process. The worst part was after several years, he tried the same thing again with the same reference, hoping that no one would remember what happened several years earlier.

Fact is, if James Heilman does it, then it hardly bodes well for the rest of the Wikipedia editors.

 

[Hoopoe]

If someone asked me what fibromyalgia is, I would say it's an illness with widespread constant pain, possibly resulting from injury to the nervous system. With a high proportion having small fiber neuropathy.

How accurate is this? And what one impression does a reader get from reading wikipedia?

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

How accurate is this? And what one impression does a reader get from reading wikipedia?

Difficult to know what it would mean for it to be accurate or inaccurate since nobody knows and nobody agrees.
I very much doubt that most people diagnosed with fibromyalgia have any neuropathy.
A high proportion of doctors who use the term use it mean that they don't think there is much wrong.

 

[DigitalDrifter]

A high proportion of doctors who use the term use it mean that they don't think there is much wrong.

Are we talking about Fibromyalgia here or neuropathy? In my experience Fibromyalgia is a term often used by doctors to label a patient as hysterical, a hypochondriac, or "crazy", certainly nothing consequential.