Is there something we can do about Google search hits on PFS?

[Wintermoon]

When anyone does a simple google search on “Post Finasteride Syndrome”, the top three links that appear are as follows:

Post-Finasteride Syndrome: An Induced Delusional Disorder …

www.karger.com › Article › Fulltext
](https://www.karger.com/Article/Fulltext/497362)

22 Mar 2019 — Post - finasteride syndrome (PFS) has been claimed to occur in men who have taken oral finasteride to treat either hair loss or benign prostatic hyperplasia, independent of age, dosage, or indication.

by RM Trüeb · ‎2019 · ‎Cited by 5 · ‎Related articles

A Comment on the Post-Finasteride Syndrome - NCBI - NIH

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › pmc › articles › PMC6369643
](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6369643/)

The post - Finasteride syndrome (PFS) has been claimed to occur in men who have taken oral finasteride to treat either hair loss or benign prostatic hyperplasia.

by HD Rezende · ‎2018 · ‎Cited by 7 · ‎Related articles

The Post-Finasteride Syndrome Foundation: Home - Welcome …

www.pfsfoundation.org
](https://www.pfsfoundation.org/)

The Post - Finasteride Syndrome Foundation’s primary mission is to facilitate research on the characterization, underlying biologic mechanisms and treatments of …

Why is the one article that dismisses us all as mentally ill liars the top find?
Why is an article dedicated to emphasize the perceived ambiguity of our condition the second?
Why can’t the PFS foundation be the very first link? Why can’t the medical articles that support and confirm our situation and potential biomarkers be the top finds?

In my opinion, the narratives of the first two articles damage the sincerity of patients’ call for help, and the credibility of the patients by default, as a generalization.

I don’t know exactly how the algorithm of Google Search works, but is there anything we can do to change which websites Google prioritizes as top finds over others? Surely we can do something to replace the unscientific and accusational and sensational article by Trueb with something more grounded on actual research data and the empirical reality of patients, despite the lack of an established etiology?

[anon74895881]

Why is no one talking about this? And where’s a wikipedia page for PFS? This is really important.

[Wintermoon]

I think one could try to post a PFS wikipedia page, but Wikipedia pages require sources for every claim or statement made.
In the case of PFS it obviously doesn’t help that we really have no clue what is really going on.
The key to writing a PFS article would be to write it in an open-ended way without any speculation and which states clearly that no established etiology exists. But at that point you could ask yourself what the point of the article would be.

[Northern_Star]

A PFS Wikipedia page has been tried before. There is a German one. But the English page received quite some backlash from Wikipedia “watchdogs”. To be fair, PFS is still not widely accepted and primary research is scarce. I don’t recommend people to set up a Wikipedia page, unless they know the rules very well and know how to navigate the politics of Wikipedia.

A staff member and another use did exactly that last year and introduced a short paragraph about persistent side effects to the main page about Finasteride.

[anon74895881]

Sir we have hundereds of sources. So many artcles have been written regarding pfs, many warnings have been given by some top doctors, even i found one article from my country and we have paper’s of @awor on androgenic receptors. Just a small page is enough. We can mention the ongoing baylor studies as well.

And there must be some algorithm where searching Post Finasteride Syndrome shows PFS foundation or the propeciahelp forum first instead of those articles written by merck shills.

[Wintermoon]

I’m obviously not trying to talk you out of it and I really don’t mean to be pessimistic but you’re being too lenient what counts as a reliable source and established information in regards of a wikipedia article on PFS.

Empirical accounts have little value in medical articles on Wikipedia, even if the account is given by a practicing doctor. So, warnings given by “top” doctors sadly mean nothing, especially if they are social media posts.

There is no point in mentioning an ongoing study, because it is still ongoing. We don’t know what the conclusions of Baylor are, so they can’t be used.

There are obviously a bunch of medical articles dedicated to establishing the fact that many people have chronic adverse effects from finasteride and such, that only shows that people have these adverse effects and still doesn’t say much about what PFS is.

The papers by awor you mention, while well-sourced, are still theoretical propositions. They are papers with an investigative nature, not conclusive ones. A theoretical proposition is essentially speculation, even if it’s well sourced.

Do you see how quickly this gets complicated? I mean, go ahead and try by all means, I’m certainly willing to help out and delve into wikipedia politics and see how far we can push things, but chances are that it’s just going to get taken down like Northen_Star said because we simply don’t have enough to go on.

[NomisB]

The only alone standing articles are in Portuguese and German language. Why not occupying more and more smaller languages until the pressure builds up to accept an English version?

[PeppermintPadthai]

The Wikipedia “watchdogs” kept changing the criteria. First they said in order to get its own Wikipeida page, Post Finasteride Syndrome had to be described in a credible peer-review journal. After it was, they changed the criteria and said it didn’t deserve its own page, just a section on the Finasteride page.

[NewYorker]

On a positive note, a new search engine, competing with Google, is out and it’s called www.You.com.

It seems to have more appropriate results on Post Finasteride Syndrome than Google does and I’m going to be using it when researching PFS related items, in hopes to find different information than we’ve been getting.

I can only hope this new search engine gets traction, gives our movement more traction and keeps people away from the poison pill.