Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gary Craig (0th nomination)

Gary Craig

Vanity/nonsense about the latest Guy With The Answers and his trademarked technique. Note the disparity between the article's description of "trained Stanford engineer" and "NLP master" and the disclaimer on Craig's website: "Gary Craig is not a licensed health professional and offers EFT as an ordained minister and as a personal performance coach." -- Antaeus Feldspar 21:45, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Delete both this and emotional freedom techniques, which I guess needs its own listing. Either advertising or promotion by one of the faithful, a new user with no other contributions. No evidence it's encyclopedic. Andrewa 00:08, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • Comment: Now unsure (removal of vote). See talk:Gary Craig. Andrewa 11:51, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
    • I would suggest that the presented evidence may argue for the keeping of emotional freedom techniques, but as long as that remains Craig's trademarked brand of practice and he's not independently notable, there's no reason to have a separate article about him. -- Antaeus Feldspar 16:36, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Delete both: I really regard these as the same article posted twice. Advertising and personal medicine. Geogre 04:53, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Delete. Advertising. Gamaliel 04:56, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Delete. Self-promotion. jni 08:32, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Comment. I had already typed "delete," but was then rather surprised to get 30,500 Google hits, most apparently relevant, on "emotional freedom technique" in quotes. And apparently used by, and the subject of seminars presented by, many people other than Gary Craig. Withholding judgement until I find out more. It's used to treat horses as well as humans, by the way... Some disagreement on who developed it; some sites say "TFT was originally developed by psychologist, Dr Roger Callahan" etc. but Craig apparently was Callahan's student and played a role in hyping developing and popularizing it. I had wondered whether he a non-notable practitioner of the technique, but apparently not, he's a major mover behind EFT. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 20:01, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Delete: advert. Wile E. Heresiarch 21:30, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Delete. Concur with Anthaeus --Improv 21:56, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Comment on Anthaeus first post: NLP-Masters and stanford engineers are both by profession not licenced health professionals. So where is the disparity? -- Geraldstiehler 11:41, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • Well, to be totally frank, Gerald, the first impression that the articles and the website together present meets many of the hallmarks of the classic "quack doctor": a technique semmingly described by putting plausible buzzwords together ("psychological acupressure"); a long laundry list of seemingly unrelated disorders for which the new breakthrough is claimed to be the solution, "the missing piece to the healing puzzle"; a stress on the authority the originator possesses in fields other than the field where their authority is to be trusted (i.e., trained by Stanford University, but in engineering, not anything health-related; a "master" of neuro-linguistic programming, a field of medicine that is still lacking clinical peer review itself, and where no formal body exists to define who has and who has not achieved "mastery"); and finally, finally... while all the other symptoms just tend to indicate someone well-meaning who thinks they've found The Answer, the warning bells really go off on someone who offers their purported medical breakthrough as "an ordained minister". Everything else is a classic symptom of the well-intentioned but perhaps self-misled individual, but cloaking a supposedly scientific technique as religion in order to avoid charges of practicing medicine without a license? That is a warning sign of a different and darker kind of individual. If he's willing to be dishonest about whether it's medicine or religion, purely in order to keep operating, what else is he willing to be dishonest about? Have all of those success stories actually happened? Did that endorsement actually come from that source, not taken out of context? That is why I am urging a great deal of caution in this case. -- Antaeus Feldspar 18:46, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • Thank you for your honest answer Antaeus. Yes, I understand completely, that this homepage may support such warning bells. To be honest myself, I had some warning lights myself, when visiting the first seminar on this topic. And hadn't it be an old an experienced teacher of mine in well aproved psychotherapy, I wouldn't even have attended the seminar. But the results are better than anything I learned in long years of psychotherapy. And ... there are health professionals with proper academic training working with these techniques. And even then it works. There is a vast growing field on "energy psychology". Not only Gary Craigs EFT, but Callahans TFT, and lots of other related techniques as well. Nevertheless. If the mayority of wikipedians don't want this article to be here. I'll agree to that and we'll wait another five to ten years or so. And see again. Geraldstiehler 07:16, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• By the way, some guy wrote about having found just a few book on "emotional freedom techniques" at amazon.com search. He/she might include the often used acronym of "EFT" in the search and get more hits. Same aplies to other languages. Geraldstiehler 07:16, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• To have good results with EFT is very simple right from the beginning. AND there are some advanced skills. Please just try it. We can talk back and forward for ages. EFT hurts believe systems, yes. If you doubt so much, Antaeus, and everybody else, why don't you just give it a try? Penicillin was a breakthrough, so Energy Psychology will be. Please stay curious. In my daily work (I am working with EFT since three years) I see how much people are finding relief about so many different issues and have new options. I am from Germany and let me tell you, we hate that kind of 'helps when nothing else will help' or 85% success-rate and all that kind of stuff. When I first went to a talk about EFT, I just did a favour to a friend. She didn't have a car to go there. I was not only sceptical. I just didn't want to know anything about it. During that talk the speaker gave us one little experience how EFT works and I did feel it in my body. It was amazing. A very old grief and anger about sth that happened in school years ago just faded away and I not only felt peace about it, there was also a shift in thinking, a deeper wiseness that emerged. I signed in the next EFT-Workshop and did learn about it. I'm still studying the News about it and still I am amazed about EFT. I write this because I really want people to know about that opportunity. UlrikeTuzar 05:41 pm, 26 Nov 2004
  • Well, as I've said before, the problem is that most of the arguments that have been voiced for keeping these articles are "the article's subject is a Good Thing." Please note that I have expressed doubt (and, I hope, adequately explained the reasons for my doubt) about whether EFT is really as much of a Good Thing as is being claimed, but that doubt is not the reason for my vote on the VfD. If person A comes up and says "EFT is really an awesomely great thing that everyone ought to know about", and person B comes up and says "Good God, EFT is the biggest hoax to hit modern medicine and it's getting so much more attention than it deserves", person B is actually making a better argument for why the article should be kept. (Of course, person A may not necessarily be pleased by the article that gets kept...) It's not about whether the thing is good or bad, it's whether it's notable enough that Wikipedia should be reflecting knowledge about it. This is why in fact I am changing my vote on the EFT article; the Skeptical Inquirer article on TFT describes it as "a treatment approach on the rise that threatens to overtake EMDR as the premiere power therapy for the twenty-first century", and even though the context makes it clear that they think very little of any 'power therapy', they are describing it as prominent enough that I think notability has been established. On Gary Craig, I still maintain that his notability is part and parcel of EFT's, and thus an article just about him is not merited. (I'd also like to note that EMDR, the technique the SI article takes jabs at early on, saying it "has been described as a prototypical case of pseudoscience within mental health", is something which I have been helped tremendously by myself. So, I am entertaining vague hopes that it might be recognized this time that my "delete" vote is not because I am prejudiced against non-mainstream medicine, nor is convincing me "it really works!" what will change my vote to "keep".)
  • OK, now I understand better. Well of course, I think EFT 'emotional freedom techniques" are notable (and a lot of google hits may emphasize this), but if you have different levels on when a topic is notable. Then so be it. Geraldstiehler 11:48, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Delete. Cribcage 19:36, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Delete Conflicts with the tacit Wiki policy prohibiting articles about muffinhead quacks. Wyss 83.115.141.10 20:52, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Just to rate "notability" of emotional freedom techniques and Gary Craig. Here's some latest news: (Quote) Wow, that's rediculous, www.emofree.com is in the top ten visited health sites on the net.I saw this on mercolas site, emofree is rated number nine out of all the natural health related sites it was 48,880 out of all possible natural health sites out there. The list goes up to just under 100,000 sites, but i'm guessing there are a good amount more then that. MSN (jorge.mojica@comcast.net) (Quote end) Geraldstiehler 07:16, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)