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We invent stuff and than the world copies us

We have the statement "The term heart failure is sometimes incorrectly used for myocardial infarction (which may cause heart failure, but is not heart failure in itself) or for cardiac arrest (in which blood flow effectively stops altogether)." which was more or less copied word for word here, here, this line of books [1] that is all more or less cobbled from Wikipedia, etc.

It is a fairly innocuous sentence. However unable to verify to a proper source. Should we leave it? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 09:15, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

I have found a couple of more reliable textbooks that at least paraphrase our content enough that it is not a "copy and paste" issue. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 09:33, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
It would be helpful if you would wikilink the relevant articles. However, without looking at the relevant articles, I presume that this is small print stuff that is fairly low down the page. I think that it would not do any harm to completely delete these explanation of the common misunderstandings making sure that the correct explanation of the terms are clear. The wiki can not explain all the misunderstandings that are out there. Snowman (talk) 10:29, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
Article is heart failure but one book borrows from many articles Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:36, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
It does not look right in the introduction. I have never heard of that misunderstanding. Another option could be replace it with something more explanatory, perhaps something like: "Heart failure not the same as an MI (portion of the heart's muscle dies) and a cardiac arrest (heart stops beating). Snowman (talk) 10:51, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
I have heard this misunderstanding, but I agree that rewording would be useful. I'm fond of the formultion that runs something like, "____ is contrasted with Y (which is foo) and Z (which is bar)". WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:54, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
Okay will adjust the wording. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:43, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Important proposals - your 2¢ will save my sanity

Based upon issues raised on Talk:Amphetamine by User:Shudde, I'd like some feedback from the project to establish a consensus regarding a few issues on amphetamine before I renominate it at FAC; without a consensus, these arbitrary non-policy, personal preference issues will continue to be a pain in my ass that I waste my editing time to address. So, as this is a medical article, I'm going to seek a consensus here and link to this discussion once I reopen the amphetamine FAC.

I would really appreciate any position statement (support/oppose) regarding these issues, so that I no longer have to deal with these things each time a new reviewer with a different preference shows up at the FAC.

Thanks in advance, Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 12:17, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Wow -- that's quite some attack. These discussions should be on the talk-page of the article in question, not a project talkpage, if you wanted to let a wider audience know about any discussion you could have linked to the discussion from here, not the other way around. This sucks for people that want to know why a particular convention has been adopted in that article, because when they click on the talkpage the information won't be there! I would encourage editors to read my comments at the talkpage and last FAC if they want more details on what/why I have made certain comments/suggestions. The problems I have with the article have not been adequately summarised or described here by Seppi. Like I said above, see the talkpage and FAC before deciding whether my comments are valid or not. -- Shudde talk 08:54, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
@Shudde: Don't flatter yourself. This has nothing to do with you in particular so much as FAC reviewers like you. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 14:57, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Proposed removal of sentence-by-sentence citation standard

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Nearly unanimous support for retaining the current citation standard used in the article
  • Shudde wants to change the current sentence-by-sentence citation standard in the body of amphetamine because he believes it's WP:citation overkill (note that the page is a user essay - the citation standard is determined by consensus). I think the current sentence-by-sentence citation standard makes it perfectly clear if something is sourced or not. I view the removal of references from independent clauses as reducing accessibility and creating ambiguity for doing WP:V checks, even by IPs that don't check the source (i.e., is this sentence unreferenced, or is it covered by that one ref five sentences down?).
So, is there support for my retaining my current sentence-by-sentence standard in a potential medical FA, or should I spend my time editing wikipedia to regroup citations? Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 12:17, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Discussion: sentence-by-sentence citations

Please discuss here.

  • Support Experience editing both medical and non-medical topics has convinced me that close citation assumes a different sort of relevance in medical articles (with respect, say, to lives of people where it may be reasonably clear that a single reference to a major biography can cover the sourcing for an entire narrative paragraph). In topics subject to MEDRS, detailed close sourcing can be essential. Fwiw, I've just look back at a "Signs and symptoms" section where I tried to collate reliable information (including frequency, duration etc), and to present it in a way that was as readable, transparent and easy to consult as possible for both (per WP:AUDIENCE) medics and the general public. I notice now that only once did I feel it unnecessary to reference a sentence. 2c, 86.181.67.132 (talk) 13:06, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
  • I'm OK with footnote markers ([24]) after every sentence, but when it's the same supporting source for two or more consecutive sentences (or for an entire paragraph), I just put the footnote marker at the end of the last sentence. The latter is neater but not absolutely clear to the reader that everything before the footnote marker and after the previous footnote marker is supported by the citation.

    I'd prefer when the mouse pointer hovers over a footnote marker that all the text supported by that source is highlighted. I don't suppose there's a citation template that offers that option is there? 175.38.169.182 (talk) 13:36, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

There is not but that functionality is already coded exactly as you describe, for example in Template:Fact. I am not a supporter of any particular method for making citations clear, but however it happens, I want citations to be clear. What you are proposing is one option worth considering for the future. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:10, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
  • WP:CITELEAD gives some guidance on the matter. If there is potentially controversial information or material that could plausibly be challenged, it would better to include inline citations in the lead section. With this article, I think that some readers might plausibly challenge the information. Therefore it is better to include inline citations. The presence of inline citations does not harm readability. If in doubt, citations should be included. Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:56, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
  • All sentences in health articles should have a citation The standard on Wikipedia is that the source verifying every sentence on Wikipedia should be clear. My personal practice is that I put a citation at the end of every sentence. In health especially I encourage others to do the same. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:08, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Do what you want. Don't impose your preferred style on articles where the other style is being used, regardless of whether your preferred style is sentence-by-sentence or whole paragraphs. Sometimes sentence-by-sentence looks silly. Sometimes it improves clarity. Do what you think is best for that particular situation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:51, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Support this makes editing and verification much easier. I would regard it as overlinking if you have multiple citations per sentence. For posterity's sake I agree with WAID that this ultimately should be at the user's discretion. --LT910001 (talk) 22:01, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Support keeping cites for every sentence Unless they are there the source is hard to follow and people will tag the article in question with cn tags. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:05, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
  • My point here (see the talkpage and FAC2) is that the article is already pretty inaccessible to the lay-person. Having citations in every single sentence just makes readability worse. If there are contentious statements that need citations then fine, but otherwise if there is a citation supporting two consecutive sentences, put it at the end of the second sentence rather than the end of both. This is the convention use in other high quality articles, and I really see no reason why this article is so contentious that it should be different. -- Shudde talk 09:29, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
You mean in other high-quality health-related articles subject to MEDRS (and with more stringent sourcing expectations than elsewhere on Wikipedia)? While I'm highly sympathetic with the objective of making articles like this genuinely more accessible to lay readers, sentence-by-sentence citation seems to me to be a red herring here. 86.181.67.132 (talk) 17:20, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Support close in-line referencing. Perhaps, opinions could have been sought earlier, so that the style could have been determined earlier. In my opinion is is not difficult to add a <ref=name/> tag and this shows a small number in the text, which is not distracting or obtrusive. In the main body of an article, I think that the gold standard here is to put an in-line ref after each sentence or after each referenced fact (could be after a comma or semicolon or between words) where more than one ref is used for one sentence. I think that it is sometimes acceptable to use one ref after a paragraph when the whole paragraph is supported by only one source, so this is an exception. Sometimes, hidden text is used to say something like "this ref sources the previous two sentences", but this can be messed up be re-editing and is not seen without viewing the wiki markup code, so I would generally not support this style. In-line referencing is not generally needed in the introduction, but it can be included to support something. Snowman (talk) 09:53, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Support close in-line referencing. There isn't literally one per sentence - eg there are 4 sentences before the current cite #139. The article suffers somewhat from the preferences here for citation styles that prevent combining citations, so there are a lot of double or triple cites, but I don't think there's an easy solution for that. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 11:08, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Support for the sake of clarity. --ITasteLikePaint (talk) 17:21, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
No clear consensus

Proposed "very US-centric" component removal

  • Shudde believes the current article is too "US-centric". I assume this is solely† because the text asserts that the USFDA supports certain statements, most of which are medical and completely unrelated to the US (e.g., the whole contraindications section). I've also used this approach with the Cochrane Collaboration's medical statements.
†United States Adopted Name (USAN) is also used as a header in the pharmaceutical wikitable; however, changing this would be asinine and deviate from the convention used in the article, as the article name itself uses the USAN (amphetamine), and not the INN (amfetamine), of the compound.
That said, is there support for the current language in the article (particularly in relation to mentioning the USFDA) or is there opposition to retaining the text that mentions the United States on the grounds that it makes the article too "US-centric"? Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 12:17, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Discussion: US-centric content

Please discuss here.

  • I think your best approach is going to involve getting that person to quote every single sentence that is too US-centric. Without that, you won't know if the problem is the presence of the US FDA or the absence of something else.
    In general, it is appropriate to mention the US FDA in an article about drugs, just like it is generally appropriate to mention the US PSTF in articles about vaccines and cancer screening. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:58, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
    I would say that as a general rule of thumb, "prove it to me" and "give me a big list of examples" is abdicating from ones own responsibility to check the article objectively and use ones own initiative. If the consensus is not clear, then asking for more opinions could be helpful. Snowman (talk) 11:41, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
    Well, I fully agree with you that some FAC reviewers refuse to use their own initiative to WP:BOLDly fix problems that they find, but I doubt that is a problem that can be solved here, or even at all. When a problem is not well-explained initially, no amount of Seppi's initiative is capable of reliably determining what someone else's real objection is: is it too much of X, too little of Y, or something else? The most another person can do is come up with a logical guess about what the complainer's objection probably is. To find it out with more certainty, you'll have to ask. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:47, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Agree. As a user from a country that isn't the US, the statement "it is typically prescribed as Adderall" isn't correct in my country, and the article refers to the US FDA quite prominently ("Side effects", "Contraindications"). You also have the "United States Adopted Name Table". Still a wonderful article though. And, as WAID, it is a broad statement that may need to be clarified by the reviewer in question to be addressed. --LT910001 (talk) 22:14, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Your assumption is wrong. My concerns regarding US-centric is not just because of this, it's because the article focuses on the drug's status and use within the US, and either doesn't discuss, or brushes over it's status and use elsewhere. It's a general weakness of the article (see my comments on the article talkpage and at FAC2). The contraindications section uses USFDA every sentence or two (and reads poorly). The reason for this is given that we don't give medical advice, but instead reads like a re-statement of FDA advice -- how is this encyclopaedic? -- Shudde talk 09:29, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
  • I think that is would be better to discuss this on the articles talk page (or in the FAC review). The discussion could be signposted on the relevant Wiki Projects for discussion of each point in detail. I would think that it would not be hard to co-opt a few editors to comment on localization. Snowman (talk) 10:24, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Agree, I think To add to LT910001 above, I believe that Adderall isn't even licensed for medical use in the UK, though Dexedrine/Dextroamphetamine is. The statement in the lead appears far too local, and misleading. The coverage of this issue near the bottom is a bit odd - the US comes under "history", everywhere else under "legal status". And so on. Shudde says a number of instances were given in the FAC, which I haven't checked. Digging your heels in and demanding full lists of examples is not often a successful tactic at FAC. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 11:00, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Proposed change to the lead citation standard

  • Shudde has suggested that the lead referencing needs to be changed in his statement on Talk:Amphetamine:

    At the moment there are four notes, and a large number of references. This really should not be necessary if the lead is written well, and if it doesn't cover any material not covered in the main text of the article.

    Per WP:LEADCITE, citations in the lead should be based upon consensus. I've already changed the sentence-by-sentence standard to a less clear bundled reference at the end of each paragraph for one reviewer at FAC, which I did of my own volition. I oppose deleting the lead citations and frankly do not feel like changing the lead citation standard this again for the personal preference of another reviewer.
information Note:I actually deleted ALL the references in the lead on the methamphetamine page after this issue came up by a different reviewer in the first FAC just as a test. Its lead was completely cited in the body of the article. Unfortunately, people started complaining, both on the article talkpage and my talkpage, about the significant/serious medical claims being made which were "entirely without citation." I ended up section linking as a temporary fix to address this (e.g., adding pseudo "citations" like this), which apparently solved the problem. Take that as you will.

So, after viewing the lead, do you support or oppose changing the introduction's citation style (again)? Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 12:17, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Discussion: Lead citations

Please discuss here.

  • I don't like sources in the lead. I think you need them here. If they're not there, you're just going to end up with fact tags all over the lead. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:00, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Agree. I feel the lead should act as a summary, with citations provided in the body, and like the "Abstract" of a journal article, which do not typically have citations. The exception is contentious statements, which may need to be cited. --LT910001 (talk) 22:16, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
  • If you are not going to have refs in the lead simply hide them but do not remove them entirely. This will keep the cn tags at bay. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:24, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Citations in the lead should be retained for contentious material only. This is hardly a new complaint regarding this article, the first comment at the first FAC said "Why are there so many citations in the lead? This isn't necessary and makes the text cluttered and more difficult to read."[2]. -- Shudde talk 09:29, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
  • All of the factual content of the introduction should be found in the main body of text, so in-line citations in the introduction are not usually needed. Citations in the introduction can inhibit writing style. Use of in-line citations in special circumstances in the introduction would be assessed on a case by case basis, so I would think that it would be better to discuss this on the articles talk page and signpost the discussion on relevant Wiki Project talk pages. Snowman (talk) 10:13, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
  • The function of a lead is covered pretty clearly in WP:LEAD, and it is not the same as an abstract - in particular the definition of the topic is given more space than in an abstract, and we don't draw any conclusions. To avoid repetition we should try to have as few citations in the lead as possible, but obviously you need citations for quotations, which may well be appropriate in some leads (if we are trying to get away from the medical textbook feel). Personally I think they should be there for statistics, which should often be in the lead. This sort of question often crops up in the areas I more usually edit, and there isn't too much difficulty in keeping some citations in the lead but removing any tags placed on stuff cited lower down. Plenty of FAs have "part-cited" leads. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 10:39, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
If you remove them the lead will get filled full of [citation needed] tags. I thus usually leave them in to cut down on maintenance. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:59, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Greeting new users

I've been editing Wikipedia for over 10 years, and I definitely think that the WP:MED editors are one of the "toughest crowds" to deal with as an editor, for better or worse. Students editing medical articles definitely need a fair bit of warning and instruction on what to expect. I also think WP:MED could benefit from trying to be a bit more welcoming to outside editors and take some lessons from the Teahouse. Even Adrianne Wadewitz was once a clueless newbie that needed guidance and encouragement, not just someone to tell her how she wasn't adhering to our policies. That said, I think WP:MED does a great job of protecting and improving the quality of Wikikipedia articles, and I appreciate their commitment to high standards of accuracy and verifiability. Kaldari (talk) 06:03, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

I am sad to see that WP:MED editors are one of the toughest crowds. When I see a new editor put unreferenced or inappropriate information on a page, I do try to provide gentle guidance. Unfortunately I have seen one or two of our editors act rather more heavy-handed though. Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:50, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
I'd like to see a range of templates offering "gentle guidance" for the most commonly reverted types of well-intentioned and referenced medical edits - single primary study, source not good enough etc. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 13:40, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
WP:WARN lists templates for "warning" editors. I consider them somewhat impersonal, and I always edit them to be a bit more personalized. Here is such a message. I include the name of the article and a diff of the edit in question to help other readers. I usually remove the bit that says "if you think I made a mistake". This is a similar message.
Here is a message where I tried to soften the blow from another editor.
This is a message for a well-meaning new IP editor (I assume good faith).
Here is a message that I gave to a new editor who introduced himself on this talk page.
I'm not sure that these would translate easily into templates. Axl ¤ [Talk] 14:07, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
I know the WP:WARN ones, but they are very general. The first one certainly would, and would be very often appropriate, and could be expanded to be more helpful. Other ones might point to various types of things we don't want in an article, however sourced. Of course they can always be added to with a customised message as well. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 16:20, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
What's often most needed isn't "warnings", but someone to take the time to build on the contribution in a collaborative way instead of reverting it. The most useful message would be "Thanks for your contribution. Have a look at how I improved it here [by substituting a better source, removing excessive detail, moving it to a more relevant article, or whatever]." WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:24, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
Especially in medical articles, there's a lot that should and does just get removed. In fact as the 'pedia slowly improves, that's increasingly the case all over. Then of course, there's the time.... Wiki CRUK John (talk) 16:20, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
Having recently gone through the edits of more than 60 plus students and not expecting any response from most of them I know that I sometimes leave messages that are a little short. Thanks for expanding on them Axl. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:33, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Have added a subsection heading. I could not help but laugh when I saw this: User_talk:Sjones008#Refs. We need templates. There's no reason these will have to be used, and so customised greetings could be used instead, but I think it will be useful if we have them. We need two sets, I think: Please add sources, and please use reliable sources, with two grades (introduction and warning). If nobody else takes up this task, I'll be happy to myself. --LT910001 (talk) 22:42, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

A customized greeting that points to WP:MEDRS and MOS would be most helpful in explaining to new editors how best to contribute. It would link them to something they could use immediately without having to first sort the links on the standard greeting. Direct links would likely reduce frustration all around. SW3 5DL (talk) 00:51, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
One such template is {{subst:WPMED welcome}}, one of many listed here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine#User-related --LT910001 (talk) 02:04, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
@LT910001: Ah, well done, you. Can you add it to Twinkle so it's one of the welcome choices? I don't think it is now at the moment. SW3 5DL (talk) 02:43, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
There's been one there for a couple of years. Switch to the "WikiProject" tab under WP:Twinkle's Welcome. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:11, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
Got it, thanks. SW3 5DL (talk) 02:46, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
Reminds me of my first interaction with WP:MED - I'm sure Jmh649, Scray, and Hildabast remember that, hehe.. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 18:21, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Cancer biomarkers and Tumor marker redundant

Is there a good reason Cancer biomarkers and Tumor marker exist as separate articles? NickCT (talk) 16:34, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Hate it when that happens. Needs merging it appears. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:36, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
@Jmh649: - Ok. That's what I thought. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something obvious. Merging will be sorta challenging. When I have some time I'll give it a whirl. NickCT (talk) 16:51, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Hey, since you're going to be merging anyway, would you please read Wikipedia:Merging#How to merge and Help:Merging#Performing the merger and post (to their talk pages) about whether the instructions are understandable and helpful? I suspect them of being somewhat less than clear on a few points, but maybe it's just me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:00, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: - I glanced at it. I think I'd characterize it as "somewhat understandable". Do you have a specific question about it? We might want to take this discussion to the relevant talk page.... NickCT (talk) 19:02, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
No, my question is due only looking it over a while ago and wondering if it would feel so complicated or confusing that it scared people off. I don't have any specific issues. If I knew how to improve, it would already be better.  ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:24, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

The definitions of cancer and carcinoma

There is a discussion on the definitions of cancer and carcinoma at Talk:Lung_cancer#Cancer and what difference this makes to the article with the title "Lung cancer". Please comment over there. Snowman (talk) 13:16, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

There is no dispute over the definitions of "cancer" or "carcinoma". The dispute is over the definition of "lung cancer". Axl ¤ [Talk] 17:33, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Dorinne S. Davis

Dear medical experts: Yet one more old draft that may be about a notable topic. What say you? Keep or let go? —Anne Delong (talk) 04:31, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Slimming?

The current redirect to weight loss (not quite the same thing!) seems to me less than ideal; see Talk:Weight loss#Unintentional vs Intentional. Uncharacteristically, a simple Google search for "slimming" doesn't seem to return Wikipedia among any of the top results. That's undesirable I think, given that (irrespective of WP:NOTHOW), many ordinary people are likely to look for reliable information on this medically relevant and sensitive topic. Thoughts? 86.181.67.132 (talk) 12:38, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Sorry to be a bit of a bore... But to illustrate the wider issue the top google result today for "slimming" is an organization called Slimming World, and I see the corresponding Wikipedia page is now coming up among the top results. Remarkably, the Slimming World Wikipedia page at present doesn't even explicitly link to Slimming itself, except via the "weight loss" product entry in the infobox. All this, I suspect, means that the casual general googler who enters the common name of "slimming" as a search term is somewhat unlikely to find what Wikipedia has to say on this important topic, and may even think there's nothing there... Which isn't entirely true.
86.181.67.132 (talk) 13:28, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Obesity statistics might need updating

The latest figure ({{Cite doi/10.1016.2FS0140-6736.2814.2960460-8}}, p. 5) is that there were 2.1 bn overweight (≥ 25 kg⋅m−2) people in 2013. Articles that report older statistics might need updating. It Is Me Here t / c 15:33, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Okay good for overweight. Will read the paper to see if they speak about obesity aswell. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:03, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Copy and paste

This user has been copy and pasting User:Deass. I have blocked them. Help cleaning up the rest of their edits appreciated. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:44, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Maternal and child health

My wife was at a maternal and child health conference in Toronto this week and created some contacts with some experts that would be interested in editing articles related to the topic. Do we have anybody that works in this space I could connect them with? Ian Furst (talk) 23:08, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Ummm, tell 'em to post here or at one of our talk pages I guess...? Happy to help. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:57, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
User:Hildabast Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:21, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
I'm happy for them to contact me. They can contact me via the email address at my blog. Hildabast (talk) 13:27, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
Perfect, I'll follow-up and make introductions. Thanks. Ian Furst (talk) 14:37, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Talk:Obesity

Need more help in a discussion about the causes of obesity. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:39, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

James Rutka

This article needs heavy watchlisting - there is at least one editor with a clear conflict of interest and at least one non-logged-in editor from an affiliated institution's IP address range who are adding highly-promotional material. Please add this to your watchlist. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 21:26, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I have semi'ed it indefinitely. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 21:54, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
I've added to my watchlist. I've worked with him, and he's a major player (worldwide) in paediatric neurosurgery (also a nice guy). I agree the changes turn it into little more than a promo piece or CV, but if we can transition that into help from the dept of neursurgery at Sick Kids it would be amazing. I'll leave a note on the talk page. Ian Furst (talk) 22:53, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
"if we can transition that into help from the dept of neursurgery at Sick Kids" is a high risk of WP:COI and WP:NOTPROMO, tread carefully. By the way, I was the one who initially accepted the article out of WP:Articles for creation. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 23:32, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
davidwr say the word David, and I'll back off. I was just trying to help because of the request you posted above. Obviously there's a COI, but maybe it will lead to some expert help. I have no intention of helping a marketing department, but I doubt that's what this is. E.g., they start by trying to promote the department but realize the greater benefit is improving articles. Ian Furst (talk) 23:56, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
I didn't realize you'd blocked the user. Obviously not welcome, so I've removed the welcome message from the user page. Sorry about that. Ian Furst (talk) 23:59, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
I didn't block the user. I am not an administrator. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 00:01, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
User:Gandydancer has worked on some related subjects, but I don't know if she has time to deal with anything else right now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:56, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Final draft of new medical editor video

Welcome to Wikipedia and Wikiproject Medicine

I think I've gotten as far as I can on this video. Cleaned up the sound and transitions. Here is the link for anyone who wishes to use it.

  • [[File:New medical editor.ogv|thumb|thumbtime=2:59|right|320px|Welcome to Wikipedia and [[WP:MED|Wikiproject Medicine]]]]

Ian Furst (talk) 12:02, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

This video is awesome. In a week there will be a Wikipedia conference in New York. I will show this video to the crowd in the Health Science Panel as a demonstration of how we greet new health editors and to introduce the work of the panel. I think it would be appropriate to show this in a conference setting because we will have a mixed audience and right now this is the best and most thoughtful resource we have to explain Wikipedia's health content in 3 minutes. Pending feedback from this board and the conference, for next steps I think I would like to integrate this into a special welcome template for new health editors and then present that template to the Teahouse, the education program, the articles for creation community, and to the people who manage WP:Twinkle to request that a health welcome be among the automated welcome options. Thoughts from others? I feel that this is one of the most high-impact interventions ever to be demo'd anywhere on Wikipedia for users with a specific editing interest. I would expect that this will set a precedent for what ideal outreach is from a WikiProject and be a model for others in all languages. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:37, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Agree excellent idea :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:56, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
That sounds like a great idea. Thanks again to Ian Furst for the time and effort put into this. --LT910001 (talk) 22:46, 24 May 2014 (UTC)
I have integrated the video into this template: {{WPMED welcome}}, and also provided a link to the video on the main page. --LT910001 (talk) 22:50, 24 May 2014 (UTC)
This is seriously amazing. Terrific work Ian Furst. JFW | T@lk 09:21, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
I have already sent this to others. One peice of feedback was the request for sub titles. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:18, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
NP, I'll add in the subtitiles using the feature in Wikicommons. I've never used it before, so if I mess it up please let me know. Alternatively, I can add it to the video itself but that would make it even worse if taken to another language. As an aside, I made a similiar video for Impacted wisdom teeth to summarize the lead paragraph. My thought being that many reader only check out the lead anyway, so a short video on a stable article might be easier to digest. Ian Furst (talk) 23:38, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
Jmh649 Bluerasberry subtitles added. You would think that given a 3min script and a microphone, I could follow it. Unfortunately, I don't speak like I write so I've modified the captioning to the actual words - please excuse some of the grammer. I've never done that before, but using the histogram from the audio track, it was not too bad. Let me know if it's OK. Thanks. Ian Furst (talk) 00:59, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
Weird, subtitles show on the video above but not on other pages (e.g. welcome template). Not sure if it's a server sync thing or I've done something wrong. Ian Furst (talk) 13:01, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
Ditto for the high praise above, and in the previous "Rough draft" thread. I've added the video to c:Category:Instructional videos on using Wikipedia. I see you've found Wikipedia:WikiProject Wiki Makes Video, but you might also be interested in Wikipedia:WikiProject Screencast (to both find information, or improve what currently exists). HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 20:23, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Society and Medicine Categorization

HasteurBot has finished a run through tagging WikiProject Medicine talk pages with the "Society and Medicine task force" sub parameter. The bot does not make judgments on importance. Please review Category:Unknown-importance society and medicine articles to assign an appropriate society task force importance parameter. Thank you. Hasteur (talk) 21:10, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission - 01/06

Draft:Syndesmosis Procedure. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 20:04, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Psychiatric Times and MEDRS

I've read a number of interesting articles in the Psychiatric Times which include material that would be useful to Wikipedia, but I'm not sure as to whether it really follows the guidelines on WP:MEDRS. The articles are well-sourced and referenced, and are also written by professionals in the field, but are not research papers. They clearly pass WP:RS. Can they be used for medical claims or only for RS material? Thoughts and comments grealy appreciated.
-- CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 16:39, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, the Psychiatric Times passes WP:MEDRS; it passes along with New Scientist and Scientific American, WebMD, UpToDate, Mayo Clinic, and eMedicine under MEDRS's Popular press and Other sources sections. And it's often a better source than one or more of those sources. Flyer22 (talk) 22:53, 1 June 2014 (UTC)
I would say that some of these sources are of borderline quality. We should stick with formal review articles as much as possible for medical content. Mayo Clinic and eMedicine are often not very good. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:53, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
Whether they're good (enough) sources depends entirely on the information that you want to support. They'll be good enough for the equivalent of "The common cold is caused by viruses, not bacteria". They probably aren't strong enough to support heavier claims like, "Corticosteroids given before birth increase survival of babies born more than six weeks before the due date by improving lung maturation". WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:15, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
Yes agree. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:34, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Percutaneous hydrotomy

The user who created this is adding it to dozens of pages. Thoughts? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:17, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Well 6 other pages anyway, so far. Needs to be reduced or removed. Does the treatment have any serious support? Ok, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Percutaneous hydrotomy. If it goes, as seems likely, the others need to be removed, see Special:Contributions/Steve_michael_x. Johnbod (talk) 18:36, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
I saw this the morning on Arthritis and thought, it was some sort of extension of Arthrocentesis but then I got down to the "indications". To pick a couple of choice ones, "Geriatrics: Hydration and nutrition for the elderly", "compression neuropathy", and my personal favourite, "Post operative symptoms control". My opinion is there is just cause for immediate deletion and removal of all the links. Ian Furst (talk) 20:15, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
Generally speaking, if we see someone adding links to a newly created article, this is a good thing. We need to WP:Build the web, and creators of new articles are frequently told that they need to de-WP:Orphan them. Seeing someone do this is a sign that the new editor is a potentially valuable contributor who reads and follows directions, even if the article they're doing for it might not be exactly notable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:27, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission - 03/06

Draft:Anti-MuSK myasthenia gravis. Also, kindly read this. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 20:45, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Well written and referenced - just needs to have the references moved inline imo. Do we do that or the author? Ian Furst (talk) 00:00, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Anyone can. WP:Be bold applies to drafts, too. However, you should technically have a discussion about changing the citation style to a more robust variation first. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:48, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

The Pulse (WP:MED newsletter) June 2014

The first edition of The Pulse has been released. The Pulse will be a regular newsletter documenting the goings-on at WPMED, including ongoing collaborations, discussions, articles, and each edition will have a special focus. That newsletter is here.

The newsletter has been sent to the talk pages of WP:MED members bearing the {{User WPMed}} template. To opt-out, please leave a message here or simply remove your name from the mailing list. Because this is the first issue, we are still finding out feet. Things like the layout and content may change in subsequent editions. Please let us know what you think, and if you have any ideas for the future, by leaving a message here. --LT910001 (talk) 04:14, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Wikimania Project Leaflet (contd.)

We aim for a future in which all health information on Wikipedia is accurate in every language version and backed by authoritative sources. Globally, Wikipedia is already one of the most-used sources of freely available health information. Professional medical advice cannot be replaced, but everyone has a right to learn enough to make their own informed health choices and ask their advisers questions. Participants from all backgrounds are invited to join us by writing, translating, reviewing and joining our discussions.

— current live version of the WikiProject Medicine pamphlet to be printed - please edit this box!

Previously:

Fair enough, & I've softened the claim re WP reach, so now:

"We aim for a future in which all health information on Wikipedia is accurate in every language version and backed by authoritative sources. Participants from all backgrounds are invited to join us in developing this general health reference. Globally, it is already one of the most-used sources of freely available health information. Professional medical advice cannot be replaced, but everyone has a right to learn enough to make their own informed health choices and ask their advisors questions." Wiki CRUK John (talk) 13:17, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

PS: With no further comments before archiving, I've changed the text to the last above. Johnbod (talk) 12:56, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Okay, but imagine this if you were a non-wikipedian. How can they get involved? What are some examples of things they can do? There's no good call to action here - be more direct. Rather than "We aim for a future in which all health information on wikipedia is accurate in every language", say "Help translate articles!"

Link to your leaflet, for convenience: http://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Project_Leaflets#WikiProject_Medicine

EdSaperia (talk) 11:49, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

OK How about: "We aim for a future in which all health information on Wikipedia is accurate in every language version and backed by authoritative sources. Globally, it is already one of the most-used sources of freely available health information. Professional medical advice cannot be replaced, but everyone has a right to learn enough to make their own informed health choices and ask their advisors questions. Participants from all backgrounds are invited to join us by writing, translating reviewing and joining our discussions. "

- or even more emphasis on translating? These leaflets are a bit odd imo, because they all seem to come from the English-language WikiProjects only (except for the Welsh and Catalonian WPs) which may raise some eyebrows at Wikimania. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 11:59, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

I have previously stated my objection to the use of the word "right". Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:02, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
"should be able to..."? Wiki CRUK John (talk) 15:12, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
I also object to the word 'right.' It makes it sound like Wikipedia is saying doctors are attempting to suppress that right and monopolize all medical information. Professional medical advice cannot be replaced, but everyone has a right to learn enough to make their own informed health choices and ask their advisors questions. This sounds a bit adversarial which is the opposite of WP's goal. WP wants to partner with health care professionals in providing information. Also, it suggests that patients must self-teach because teaching from their doctor is either non-existent or not a priority, when in fact in the clinical setting patient teaching materials and protocols for discharge teaching are a part of the standard of care. WP should be seen as assisting in increasing the patient's knowledge base and from that the patient is able to make an informed choice. Also, it really would be helpful if it stated that, Information on Wikipedia is not meant to replace your physician's advice and instructions. Because WP isn't a medical clinic. SW3 5DL (talk) 19:46, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
Someone said the other day that some of our best medical editors were lay people whose children or loved ones had a disease. I don't think we want to partner only with professionals. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:12, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
Professional medical advice cannot be replaced
Sure it can. People in developing countries do this all the time, out of necessity. Most people are capable of self-diagnosing the common cold in themselves. You may get better advice on the mechanics of feeding a baby from grandmother who raised a large family than from a newly minted pediatrician, whose training probably never involved feeding any babies, but who is expected to somehow teach parents how to hold a bottle.
I don't see this as relevant. It sounds like we're preëmptively begging territorial-minded doctors not to feel threatened by our existence. If we want to say something along these lines, then the relevant fact is that we provide medical information, not medical advice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:11, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
Couldn't agree more, WhatamIdoing. One small mention, though. The readers should understand that medical advice is individual (everywhere in the world). It's also about a general (medical) education that most people simply don't have (not even from developed countries). --Wintereu (talk) 09:58, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
Ok, redrafts please, not just carping. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 10:21, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia can be edited by everyone and as such content in an article can change at any time. While Wikipedia policy requires that editors strive to present verifiable information, that information is not meant to replace your physician's advice and instructions. SW3 5DL (talk) 14:13, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

This is for a flyer at Wikimania, presumably essentially intended for editor recruitment from among existing Wikipedians, not an article discaimer. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 14:49, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

But the one being used now appears to be an attempt at a disclaimer, that is why I offered that suggestion. In that case, We aim for a future in which all health information on Wikipedia is accurate in every language version and backed by authoritative sources. Globally, it is already one of the most-used sources of freely available health information. Participants from all backgrounds are invited to join us by writing, translating reviewing and joining our discussions. The bit about professional advice seems editorial and defensive. I'd leave it off as the Wiki policies will guide the new editors on what is and is not appropriate for an article. You might add in something to that effect. SW3 5DL (talk) 15:26, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

There's a missing comma in the last sentence between "translating" and "reviewing", but other than that, this looks okay to me.
I confess that I don't understand the objections to saying that access to health-related information is a human right; access to information (and not only health information) has certainly been declared to be a human right by various relevant human rights charters and organizations, and a lack of access to information is part of the definition of absolute poverty. But I don't think it's hugely important to include, since we'll be providing health information even to people who believe that it is a luxury or something that could be reasonably taken away from people anyway. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:47, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
I'm fine with this, thanks Wiki CRUK John (talk) 12:39, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Sources

"we'll be providing health information" ... from what sources?
A couple of months ago, I had a small dispute with a fellow physician (also active on Wikipedia) regarding book citations versus web citations. I stated that online medical sources (including online books) are far much easier to verify and that those books that are not available online should only sustain them and give extra information that is not found online. The other user insisted that online sources are not trusty and simply cannot compensate accurate medical information. I strongly believe that most of the information found within a medical article should be able to be verified even by people that don't have medical manuals and treaties at home.
If this issue has already been discussed, do accept my excuses. Thank you. --Wintereu (talk) 19:58, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
Generally I think we should give the best sources available (to the writer) but ideally also keep an eye on the needs of those with access only to open internet sources. The use of citation templates & the house style of medical articles doesn't make this easy - in my humanities articles I typically reference up to 3 sources for basic material in the same note, when they all say the same thing, to give a range of options for those who want to check or explore further. Often one is a detailed book, one a JSTOR article and one a less detailed web source. This would be discouraged for medical articles. See Help_talk:Footnotes#Multiple_references_in_a_single_footnote.3F for a current discussion related to this. Back to the main question: the emphasis of WP:V is very much on what can be verified, by someone with full access to resources, not what the average reader can access. But now that I'm working in the area of medical research, I'm rather surprized by how little they use (or have around) printed reference sources, which are regarded as being almost immediately out of date in such a fast-moving area. But obviously there's much that doesn't date so quickly in many clinical areas. PubMed etc do give increasing good access to the best sources for those with only normal web access. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 13:17, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

This is my rule of thumb:

  • All sources, without exception, must be strong enough to support the claim being made. A lightweight claim (e.g., "The common cold is caused by viruses, not bacteria") can be supported by a weak source, like a reasonably reputable website (e.g., Mayo Clinic). A heavy claim (e.g., the exact chemical reactions involved in metabolizing a drug) needs a strong source, like a medical-school textbook or a review article.
  • Every well-developed article should contain at least one source that is freely available online. Because we have a serious FUTON bias (partly due to a lot of editors having no special access), this isn't hard to meet.
  • Every well-developed article should contain at least one source that an average teenager could understand. (This is usually also a free-online source.) I do this because lightweight claims really don't need impressive sources to back them up (unless your goal is showing off to professionals that this is a "serious" scholarly endeavor; that's not my goal), and because Wikipedia tells students not to cite Wikipedia for their homework, but to go read the article's sources, and cite them. That's very nice advice, but it's useless to the student if the article cites only papers that require significant university work to understand. I think we should have pity on the poor 14 year old who's trying to do his homework about the common cold, and use at least one source that he's got a chance of being able to understand. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:23, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
Broadly agree, though the External links section has a role here too. I'm not sure this reflects the typical sourcing used for heavily edited medical articles at present though. Johnbod (talk) 18:45, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

health choices

RE ...everyone has a right to learn enough to make their own informed health choices. Hmm..., "learn enough to make" reads to me like a big claim. Imo, it could be overegging the cake on a slippery slope to a can of worms (eek!). Yes, of course having free access to reliable medical information is an important part of patient participation. And it does help "people make their own informed health choices." But I think we should stop short of appearing to suggest we can give them everything they need to make their choices. We're certainly not in the business of outlining patient choices as such. 86.181.64.67 (talk) 12:51, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Suggest using the word "understand". Maybe something like "understand their health choices and ask their advisors questions"? 86.181.64.67 (talk) 14:28, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Soon to be printed on paper!

Hello! I updated wm2014:Project_Leaflets#WikiProject_Medicine the text on the leaflet page to reflect what is currently in the box at the top of this discussion thread. This can be updated and discussed further, but if anyone has serious concerns to address, now is the time to start resolving them because making changes on paper is harder than on wiki! Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:35, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

It looks like the leaflet has not been changed to reflect the discussion. Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:07, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Bluerasberry copied the text from the top of the section, except that almost none of the changes discussed were made in that box. I've removed the disputed sentence about "Professional advice cannot be replaced" from the official version. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:23, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Glad to see that sentence go really... There's also the broader consideration that not everyone wants to make their own choices; some people just wish to delegate. I think we need to be wary of inadvertently giving the perception that Wikipedia encourages people to assume health responsibilities with which they may not feel comfortable. 86.181.64.67 (talk) 08:01, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
The leaflet will be changed to match whatever text goes in the leaflet page, and I will copy to the leaflet page whatever is in the box at the top of this discussion. I have not been moderating discussion here or executing consensus, and as WhatamIdoing said, I just copied text. There is no stated deadline for this and other groups are even less ready, but still, I wish to raise awareness that an end date will come. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:40, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

More globalization

In the light of the Dutch kerfuffle], which just cropped up on a list I subscribe to, I wonder if the leaflet should be globalized ion some way, within the very tight space constraints. Eg the link is to the English language project only. I've said this somewhere before, but I'm a little surprized that most of the leaflets only relate to one language WP version. Obviously there will be loads of Euro Wikipedians in particular this year. Johnbod (talk) 22:00, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Great idea. Maybe link to meta. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:09, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Linking to Meta means linking to the page about Wiki Project Med Foundation, which is not a Wikipedia WikiProject. It's a completely separate organization that only some editors belong to. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:49, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
This would be the link. Seems very appropriate (would need a shortcut to be set up). Johnbod (talk) 23:11, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Drs. Walter (late) and Jane Somerville

I've started two individual pages for these renowned British heart surgeons and founders of heart charities. since I'm not myself medically qualified, I would love it if any medical Wikipedians would like to help with edits. Picknick99 (talk) 18:42, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

I suppose you mean these pages:

-- CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 19:05, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Disease statistics

This book by the US government has some great content and great graphs http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus13.pdf

Does anyone now an automated way to pull these images out and onto commons? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 08:04, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

After looking at the project's main page, I noticed that WP Anatomy was a related WikiProject and not a task force of WP Medicine. I note that the thyroid article has a long "Clinical significance" section; see Talk:Thyroid. This being the case, would the article on the thyroid be expected to be part of both WP Anatomy and WP Medicine and hence have WP banners of both WikiProjects on the talk page? Snowman (talk) 13:21, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, tag it with both. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:16, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
Thank you. I think there is likely to be quite a lot of pages that need tagging with both banners, so I will wait for additional confirmation from other users, before updating dozens of talk page with WP banners. Snowman (talk) 15:53, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
When you think that you've got a good handle on the goal, then please feel free to update WP:MED? to say whatever you would have found helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:30, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
I need to be sure, before using AWB on lots of pages, so more opinions will be welcome. WP:MED? says; "Human anatomy: Tag with {{WikiProject Anatomy}}. Other tags may also be appropriate.". This could mean only use the WP Anatomy tag. The use of the WP Medicine banner is not consistent on WP Anatomy talk pages. In the case of the "Thyroid" article the WP Medicine banner was removed in Dec 2011 (see this edit) and for the Cervix article the WPMed banner was removed from the Cervix article in July 2013 (see this edit) and neither have been replaced. It looks like the "Oesophagus" article has never had a WP Medicine banner. Snowman (talk) 18:06, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

We definitely want the diseases as part of WPMED but I usually leave anatomy articles out. Same thing with heavy metals. While lead has some discussion related to medicine we only include lead toxicity in WPMED. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:06, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Agree we have discussed this several times before. Articles under or not under out scope does not influence how WP:MEDRS applies. Major organs could be co-tagged but this does not really change oversight or increase editing. The only thing it does is given WP:MED a huge scope which limits its ability to do targeted things such as stub or start improvement drives.--LT910001 (talk) 21:15, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
If memory serves, the result of previous discussions is to tag anatomy articles that have significant sections on clinical relevance, but not most of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:41, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
This is also my understanding. --LT910001 (talk) 02:24, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
Targeting particular types of topics can be done through the category system, so management of a broader scope of articles with clinical content need not be more complex. Snowman (talk) 08:07, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
  • To reduce confusion the main page may need changing to "Additionally, tag with {{WikiProject Medicine}} only for anatomy articles with prominent clinical content.". Any comments? Snowman (talk) 10:15, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
Update: I have amended WP:MED? for anatomy articles and physiology articles. Snowman (talk) 23:25, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
In my eyes those changes are satisfactory. It remains a question of judgement, but I don't think we can get away from that. CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 07:41, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I have put "prominent clinical content", which could be a moot point. Could the wording be improved? If there is any disagreement over inclusion of an article into WP Med, then what harm would there be in including an extra article in WP Med? Snowman (talk) 08:07, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for making the change. I particularly like this part: "only for anatomy articles...", as it makes it clear MED is not for every article. I agree with your sentiment that an extra few articles wouldn't hurt. --LT910001 (talk) 09:05, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Cervix

Re Talk:Cervix/GA2; there is quite a lot of clinical content in the cervix article, and the second GA review has some discussion on the clinical aspects of the cervix including cytology and histopatholgy. Does anyone have any big books on these topics? Is anyone interested in contributing over there? Snowman (talk) 14:36, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

My comments on the use of old sources for the clinical parts of the "Cervix" article appear to have fallen on deaf ears. For example the contraception section has four different references and three of these are older than five years. I presume that WP:MEDMOS applies for a potential GA. Opinions welcome at Talk:Cervix/GA2. Snowman (talk) 08:48, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

It has fallen on deaf ears because your demands are unrealistic. I am very distressed by your ongoing stalking and harassment. Please stop following me from GAN to GAN. I have presented a list of issues with your reviewing style here: Talk:Cervix/GA2#Stop and opened a case at AN/I with regard to your wiki-stalking here: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#User_stalking_and_harassment_by_Snowmanradio. Being followed and constantly criticized is very distressing and I really wish you would stop. --LT910001 (talk) 05:42, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
As a point of fact, WP:MEDMOS does not apply to GAs. MEDMOS is not listed in the GA criteria, and GAs are measured solely against the GA criteria, not against the GA criteria and whichever other Manual of Style pages you feel like adding. WP:MEDRS does apply (for biomedical information only, not for other information in an article that happens to be mostly about biomedical information); however, as that section of MEDRS says, older sources are often acceptable. (What that section doesn't tell you is that "older" usually means up to about 10 years old.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:01, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
Snowman, if you think a source is too old to be used as a reference (though WAID is correct and just because it has passed the five year mark does not automatically invalidate it), you should look for a newer secondary source and replace it on your own instead of pointing out every instance of it. There's no need to be passive on Wikipedia. If you think something is wrong or could be improved, then improve it. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 16:10, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
This isn't very helpful. He could "look for a newer secondary source and replace it on your own" but in no way is he obliged to, especially in a GA review context, where pointing out what are perceived as problems is expected, and in effect what the nominator asked for. I'm making no comment on this particular question. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 09:45, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
Well, actually, Snowman can't, because he's been blocked for 48 hours "for personal attacks or harassment". Snowman isn't the official reviewer for the GA discussion, and even GA reviewers are permitted to make some changes, or (if they don't feel comfortable editing directly) to suggest better sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:20, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Froment's maneuver

Dear medical experts: Here's another old abandoned AfC submission. Is this a notable topic that should be kept and improved? —Anne Delong (talk) 19:46, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it looks fine. I have added a reference. Axl ¤ [Talk] 20:13, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Respiratory image error

Can someone with image skills fix a problem please? This image on Wikimedia Commons has three errors that another editor and I highlighted on the talk page. These errors still persist after several years on this "featured picture". Thanks. Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:29, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

What specifically do you want changed?
  • The cricoid cartilage isn't visible in the image, but the arrow is to the right location. Remove the label?
  • The lingula is correctly placed, although the lingular division of bronchus is incorrectly placed. Do you suggest I move this down to the area of the lingula or omit it?
  • The intermediate bronchus is labeled on the wrong side (left and not right as it should be) and I can move that at once.
Neither of these issues is major and would only take a minute, but just checking before I go through with the edits.
-- CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 13:57, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
If needed, I can make the changes to. Just let me know CFCF. Can you also change the shape of the soft palate - currently it has a tumour. Ian Furst (talk) 14:49, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
  • You can make requests of this sort at Commons:Commons:Graphic Lab. User V4711, a gentleman named Victor in Boston and active participant in graphics lab, has in the past expressed interest in helping people improve health graphics and said that if people provided him translated text then he could update some graphics for use in various languages. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:00, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
CFCF, the posterior part of the cricoid cartilage is visible adjacent to the upper part of the trachea, on the same level as the lower part of the thyroid cartilage. The anterior part of the cricoid cartilage is not shown. The "lingular division bronchus" should be pointing to the brighter blue bronchus on the left lung (right side of the picture) as it leaves the left main bronchus. Also, the colour of the lingula should be similar to that of the left upper lobe proper, not similar to the colour of the left lower lobe. The intermediate bronchus should be pointing to the right lung (left side of the picture) between the upper lobe (green) and lower lobe (yellow). [Damn, this is difficult to explain in words.] Axl ¤ [Talk] 17:51, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

I understand precisely what you are getting at but unfortunately I'm not able to implement any of the real changes (I did changed the soft palate and I feel it looks better). But I'm not versed enough in editing vector images, and it ended up looking very odd when I changed the captions, so maybe the best idea is to ask for help from V4711? CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 20:07, 6 June 2014 (UTC) This is what I ended up with when I tried to edit, you can tell me if the arrows are in the right location maybe?

  • Suggested changes
    Suggested changes
  • Original
    Original

-- CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 20:13, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

The cricoid cartilage and intermediate bronchus are correctly labelled. The lingular bronchus should ideally be more proximal, towards the start of the bright blue branches. Axl ¤ [Talk] 21:24, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Sidenote:

The german version has different captions and has omitted some such as cricoid cartilage, and doesn't speak of the lingual bronchus or intermediate bronchus, but on the other hand it misslabels the lingula. CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 20:16, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, CFCF & Lane. I have asked V4711 for help. Axl ¤ [Talk] 20:21, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Draft at AFC needs help

Please review WT:Articles for creation/Synergistic Solutions for Health and Healing for sourcing, notability, etc. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:29, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Little of the draft is actually relevant to the title. Promotional. Non-notable subject. Please delete it. Axl ¤ [Talk] 22:35, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Paper

There is still press occurring and the first error has finally been spelled out [3] and [4]

Our article on hypertension says three measurement for diagnosis which is supported by the most recent NICE review "Ask patients with a single raised blood pressure reading of more than 140/90 mmHg* to return for a minimum of two subsequent clinics where their blood pressure can be measured using the best conditions available. " page 7 [5]

So not really an error. But some if I remember correctly only recommend two measurements. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:01, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Says three here aswell [6] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:13, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
Well, we all know that Hasty is wrong. It's ironic that the lay press trusts Hasty over our featured articles—which have been reviewed by medical doctors as well as knowledgeable editors. Axl ¤ [Talk] 22:04, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
Yes just goes to show how inaccurate the popular press is. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:46, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
AHA supports three measurements aswell [7]. It would be nice if everyone used citations like us so we could check their work. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:12, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

It is during at least two separate visits. So there is a two needed in their. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:43, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

And the Telegraph. Hasty is peddling his bullshit again. Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:28, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
Can someone please refresh my memory and remind me why this study is useless and must be removed from any article to which it is added? Let's ignore the "hypertension" thing for a moment. If I recall correctly, one issue Doc James identified with it was that it only looked at 10 articles, which weren't supposed to be among the best Wikipedia has to offer (that would be GAs and FAs, of course). So, perhaps a conclusion that should be drawn from this isn't the one Hasty drew or the one all the pro-Wikipedia cheerleaders are drawing. Perhaps we should just use this to remind ourselves why it's so important to improve our important articles--so we don't get embarrassed like this again. (Also, the main reason I am posting this is that it has completely usurped all the other stories on my "Wikipedia" Google News Feed. Jinkinson talk to me 02:09, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
This issue with this paper is that its data does not support its conclusions. Hasty first invented a new way to test the medical literature. And then he applied it to just Wikipedia without using a control (like also applying it to a medical textbook, emedicine, or medline plus). So we have a single data point which is meaningless. With this method we would likely find that a high percentage of textbooks, emedicine and medline plus are also "wrong". He has already more or less come out saying NICE is wrong as are a number of other recent review articles.
The conclusions is really that the peer reviewed literature does not agree with itself. Obvious to anyone who has read much of it. The other big issue is the quality of his "researchers". Medical students and residents are far from experts in research methods and distinguishing high quality from low quality sources. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:13, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Medical articles in the news

A recent study of Wikipedia articles on medical subjects has just hit the news media:

"Trust your doctor, not Wikipedia, say scientists". BBC News. 27 May 2014.

The original journal article is here:

Hasty, R.; Garvalosa, R.; Barbato, V.; Valdes, P.; Powers, D.; Hernandez, E.; John, J.; Suciu, G.; Qureshi, F.; Popa-Radu, M.; San Jose, S.; Drexler, N.; Patankar, R.; Paz, J.; King, C.; Gerber, H.; Valladares, M.; Somji, A. (2014). "Wikipedia vs Peer-Reviewed Medical Literature for Information About the 10 Most Costly Medical Conditions". The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association. 114 (5): 368–73. doi:10.7556/jaoa.2014.035. PMID 24778001.

-- Impsswoon (talk) 12:23, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Exact same issues as last time - old conversation hyperlink. I'm just going to repeat what I said before (with wikilinks to the relevant concepts this time around):

You can't just take some arbitrary convenience sample like they did and expect it to have any semblance of generalizability. Because of that, I have no clue what the asymptotic distribution of their sample might look like, but i can guarantee that it's NOT normally distributed and probably not consistent (the distribution estimators, I mean); or in English, that study is a brown paper bag containing a pile of shit which happens to be on fire.

Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 12:55, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
See archived discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine/Archive_48#Poor_paper_.5B4.5D_on_Wikipedia. (Why couldn't the article I cited get in the news? I guess "Wikipedia sux" is a better headline than "Wikipedia rocks".) Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 12:55, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
More Wikipedian comments here. Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:45, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

What they have proved is that not all peer reviewed sources agree with each other. Nothing further. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:25, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

I read the paper. Residents and interns are the judges. I am surprised a bit that the BBC picked it up. Is anyone going to write the BBC -- tell 'em the paper is seriously flawed?
The paper is about "assertions" in Wikipedia. Ironic is that the paper itself is nothing but an assertion; the data is not presented. Nephron  T|C 00:49, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Any the author refuses to provide the data for independent analysis. Agree we need to write the papers. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:53, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Additionally why not a control group? How does Wikipedia articles compare to Uptodate articles using this method? You invent a new non standard method of quality assessment and then just study one set of content. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:00, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
yep, and no comparison to other medical references, either text books or reference. a comparison to WebMD or pubmed, would be interesting. "inconsistent with peer-reviewed sources. Because our standard was the peer-reviewed published literature, it can be argued that these assertions on Wikipedia represent factual errors." = this is a familiar academic argument. "the article on concussions did not. This finding may have occurred because Wikipedia has a number of different contributors to each article and the contributors to this particular article were more expert." = the concussions editor gets a barnstar. (or it may have occurred from random chance or assessment error.) "physicians and medical students who currently use Wikipedia as a medical reference should be discouraged from doing so because of the potential for errors." = the conclusion in search of an argument. Duckduckstop (talk) 12:40, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
They certainly need to explain the validity of selecting Uptodate as the reference standard in the study. (And, from a purely journalistic perspective, the BBC needs to explain why they have given so much scientific weight to a study published in an osteopathy journal.) 86.181.67.132 (talk) 14:18, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

do not let wp stop your ethics

There is a home page BBC article showing that 90% of medical articles have errors and that 70% of doctors unwittingly use WP. This is because wp hates experts. Some have even been banned for no good reason. I am not talking about disruption.

Another reason is because wp tried to defraud people by resisting disclaimers. All past proposals for a disclaimer that is easy to see have been rejected because we like to fool people. The only disclaimer is small and hard to see.

We ethical people in WP and especially you doctors should rise up and insist on a prominent disclaimer that WP is not peer reviewed and any quack or patient can write.

There should be a special standard for medical articles or a prominent disclaimer, not a hidden one. Stephanie Bowman (talk) 15:25, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

What User Stephanie Bowman says sounds important. I agree with some of her comment. An external link to the BBC webpage would be handy. Snowman (talk) 16:16, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
  • I think that WP Medicine should not user the existing system of GA classification, partly because anyone can review an article and anyone can nominate an article. Any comments? Snowman (talk) 16:06, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
  • See two sections up; this is the same old Hasty study we discussed a while back. It was picked by the Daily Mail yesterday, I presume because of this piece apparently writing up an interview with prof Hasty, and then on to the Beeb & Torygraph. If doctors use WP it is not "unwittingly". I'm doing a blogpost on this & my role, which the BBC mention. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 16:55, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

You can attack the BBC article. It is not the figure, 90%. What we should agree is that WP is not peer reviewed. WP editing is like crowd sourcing or gang mentality. Sometimes the result is good but sometimes bad. With medicine, there is a higher standard, but not in WP. So attack the BBC, but, really, let's get WP to be more professional. I see better and prominent disclaimers as the solution because WP is sure as hell not going to become peer reviewed or have full disclosures or real names in place of usernames. Please, let's do this!!

Stephanie Bowman (talk) 17:53, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

To be fair, this is not the BBC's or the Telegraph's fault. Hasty has subverted the medical journal process for the purpose of publishing crap, and he found a journal with so-called peer reviewers who are incompetent at their job. Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:05, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
I have found a number of GA articles that were passed as a GA at the time they contained very noticeable errors about basic science including physics and medicine. Perhaps, WP Medicine could have its own process for identifying a GA, to avoid the badge of a Good Article being given to an article written by editors that do not know much about a topic and reviewed by a reviewer who also does not know much about the topic. Snowman (talk) 21:51, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
It's at least a little the BBC's and the Telegraph's fault. They only bear no responsibility if we grant that the role of the media is to act as an unfiltered conduit that exercises no critical editorial judgement. Sure, they were duped, but they were duped because the intelligent follow-up question is a dying art. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:15, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
Okay, that's fair comment. Axl ¤ [Talk] 22:44, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Okay of our top editors most (>85% have more than a BSc and 50% are health care providers). Our editors are mostly experts and this "hates experts" things is unfounded. Wikipedia is sort of peer reviewed. And additionally we also support most of our statements with references. This much cannot be said for the Hasty paper. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:30, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

By the way I spoke with Hasty today. He declined to release to us details of the so called "errors" they found. Says he might want to use the data again and wishes to protect the researchers. Thus no opportunity to determine if any real errors were found or to improve Wikipedia if there were. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:40, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
No surprise there. Does he know what we think of him and his study? Axl ¤ [Talk] 00:59, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Might (big might) be worth a letter to the editor. Ian Furst (talk) 01:13, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
User: Stephanie Bowman, please excuse the lengthy response but I have to say that I bristled when you called into question my ethics for … ?not vigorously campaigning for a more prominent disclaimer. In my mind (and many others), being moral means that my thoughts and actions improve the well-being of others. Having reviewed manuscripts for years, I can tell you that politics and copy-edit can often play as great a role in publication as content. Wikipedia, while flawed, is highly democratic, strongly promotes the quality of the content over prose and gives wide, free access to relatively unbiased information. I believe Wikipedia’s moral compass is far greater than many peer-reviewed publications I’ve known, and Wikiproject Medicine in particular is constantly reaching for a higher moral plateau. There is no reason not to reach higher, but I don’t believe WP “stops the ethics” of its editors. Rather, it facilitates them.Ian Furst (talk) 01:38, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
I would be curious to know what Stephanie Bowman has to say about the ethics of Dr. Hasty, who believes he has identified a large number of errors in a widely-used resource, but declines to share them with anyone to facilitate their evaluation and possible correction. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 04:55, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks! Another, better, story in The Independent today. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 16:17, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
At least the comments by people are reasonable even if the journalism is lacking. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:35, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Try the comments on the Daily Mail's story! They can be called many things but I don't think "reasonable" is one of them. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 16:43, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
That should surprise no one. Reader comment sections are notorious even on the finest news sites, let alone the tabloids. LeadSongDog come howl! 17:00, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
So if we are talking ethics, it really would not be the end of the world if a few of these people died from using wikipedia for health care information. 188.28.129.18 (talk) 18:21, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
you'll excuse me if i sounded dismissive. we need clear standards of quality for medical education and information. perfection is an impossible standard. all information sources involve risk. all agree that peer review journals are the proper source material for an article for a general audience, but it is a moving target. it's unclear what is proven by randomly picking students to look at a small sample size, without a blind comparison. it's unclear that people would actually go to a GP, if you took away their WP, or that you can actually ban interns from reading WP. there are some semi-peer review processes here at WikiProject Medicine. it is quite a stretch to go from "inconsistent with peer-reviewed sources" to "errors" to "people died". more likely, "read WP" to "more pointed discussion with GP" better WP than drug advertising. Duckduckstop (talk) 19:03, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
The headline of the Daily Mail article shouts "Do NOT try to diagnose yourself on Wikipedia! 90% of its medical entries are inaccurate, say experts" A complete non-sequitur... Responsible medics simply don't recommend trying "to diagnose yourself" [sic] anyway, irrespective of the availability or otherwise of accurate information. Wikipedia certainly doesn't, and it's perfectly reasonable the authors of the study to reinforce that message, regardless of their findings. There are all sorts of self-diagnosis opportunities available other than Wikipedia: whether through word of mouth, books of various kinds, or elsewhere on the internet. Wikipedia's objective is indeed to provide reliable information that's freely available to everyone. At the same time, Wikipedia also freely recognizes its inherent limitations (though the claim that "90% of its medical entries are inaccurate" is extraordinarily vague and open to dispute). 86.181.67.132 (talk) 19:41, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Agreeing with the last two commenters:
*"read WP" to "more pointed discussion with GP" better WP than drug advertising.
*There are all sorts of self-diagnosis opportunities available other than Wikipedia...
In general, thank goodness for the internet. More specifically, thank goodness for Wikipedia. Neither GPs nor specialists (can) know about all the obscure conditions (circadian rhythm disorders, for example!) Wikipedia usually does, and usually presents info so that the layman can understand it. Then the doctor who isn't too arrogant to listen can do further research and explain why the "self-diagnosis" fits or doesn't. Everyone wins. --Hordaland (talk) 21:19, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
  • For those of you with some degree of competence regarding this subject (that excludes me), I wonder what you all might think of getting together a more or less popular response to these recent reports for the Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost? Some sort of response to what might be some of the more sensationalist comments might be called for, some description of how you individuals with qualifications try to deal with the uncontrollable situation here, and maybe some proposals to improve the content relating to medicine overall, if anyone has any? John Carter (talk) 22:22, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
The NHS paper repeats the error that all these "researchers" were junior doctors. When in fact some were not doctors at all but medical students. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:42, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Did I hear video :-)? How about one on how to use a paper on a diagnostic test (which this study essentially is) and why this paper falls short. Ian Furst (talk) 23:43, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for entering "like a fly in the milk" (a Romanian expression). Among many other things, Wikipedia is about getting all the puzzles together, meaning information from several sources in one place, easy to read, easy to understand. This is the theory. In practice, many articles were written based on unreliable sources or no sources at all for some of the text (or even fake sources) and personal opinions. In particular, on ro.wikipedia, I noticed medical translations from English Wikipedia of low quality, inaccurate and incomplete. Another important issue is this. Different countries have different ways of seeing things in medicine. Just think of a person that read an English medical article and then the Romanian or French similar article and realizes they are not entirely the same regarding the treatment used, the definition, and so on. Who should that person believe, the English article or his/her native language article? Regards, Wintereu (talk) 01:27, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

There are many high quality sources that contradict each other. Some sources for example say SSRIs are not very useful for most people, others sources say they are. When you use Wikipedia you should check the sources and consult an expert. Best cancer screening is another example. We of course should be reporting all major positions. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:16, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
It's certainly an issue when dealing with treatment & screening in different countries, and especially when translating into languages mainly used in the developing world, one sadly can't assume that the readership has access to 1st world medicine. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 15:03, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
Producing "brains" and producing money are 2 different things. Ideally, you have both. --Wintereu (talk) 23:33, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
@Wiki CRUK John: given you've done a blog post, Hasty has let slip one example which I've noted here. I've emailed Hasty to ask about MDD. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 14:43, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
Nice one! I note that Hasty is actually somewhat more emollient towards WP in his video and interview comments (link to that in my blog), having got his headlines. When the dust settles we should maybe collect a bundle of links & write up the issues somewhere, for future reference. Is anyone going to write to the journal? Wiki CRUK John (talk) 15:11, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
Looie did Hasty's researchers specifically use secondary sources or did they just use any peer reviewed source? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:17, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
Here's what the Methods section says: "Reviewers were asked to identify every assertion (ie, implication or statement of fact) in the Wikipedia article and to fact-check each assertion against a peer-reviewed source that was published or updated within the past 5 years. ... The authors instructed the reviewers to use UpToDate (http://www.uptodate.com/) as the initial means by which to search for peer-reviewed sources. If UpToDate did not produce adequate results, then each reviewer was instructed to use PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed), Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com/), or a search engine of their choice." There is nothing about secondary sources. Looie496 (talk) 13:43, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
In your blog you state "For each assertion, the reviewer was then supposed to do a database search of recent review articles on the topic" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:00, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
That was an error on my part; I've now fixed it. Thanks for pointing it out. (I've never used UpToDate, so I don't know what sort of articles it yields.) Looie496 (talk) 15:17, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

The BBC has updated their article a bit [8] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:17, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

There are several points that occur to me.

First, I am not sure how any well-meaning patient could find specific treatment or management information on any published site. The result is almost always to widen the possibilities rather than narrow them and consequently, difficult to follow. My patients talk to me about this often so I don't think that we are unintentionally placing them at harm - personal viewpoint. Second, there was an interesting evidence-based study several years ago that asked the editors of prestigious journals to list the evidence-based criteria that they used to select articles for publication. The journals were then scrutinized to estimate how often the editors followed their own selection criteria. In some cases, it was as low as 10%. Editors have deadlines to meet too, seemingly. Fourth, I think the major responsibility is to avoid hidden agendas, hidden sponsorship, and hidden bias. This is such a problem, particularly sponsorship, that one would be hard put presently to make dogmatic statements on blood pressure control, diabetes control, Aspirin and Caffeine - and that's just the easy stuff! Speaking entirely personally again, I have found the "real time" nature of contributors comments, criticisms and suggestions has made me more cautious and more critical of any citation before listing it. Finally, it's really good to see everyone as passionate about this as they seem to be. Mdscottis (talk) 20:33, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Looie, just FYI, you used the terms osteopaths and Doctor of Osteopathy incorrectly on that blog page and in its title. The correct terms are osteopathic physician and Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine, respectively. Osteopathy and Osteopathic Medicine are also not the same thing. Again, just FYI. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 07:51, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

A rebuttal

Planning on sending the following out as a rebuttal. What are peoples thoughts?

Is Wikipedia’s Medical Content Really 90% Wrong?

The journal article by Hasty et al published on May 1st 2014 basically took ten Wikipedia articles and ten “researchers” (either medical students or residents). Each Wikipedia article was then assessed by two of these researchers to try to determine how many statements of fact they contained. The first issue was that the number of statements of fact each reviewer found sometimes differed by nearly 100%. They then took these individual facts and the “researchers” compared them with the peer-reviewed literature as found on PubMed or the medical website Uptodate. They did not check to see if the sources Wikipedia was using were high quality or were accurately reflected. Additionally medical students and residents are hardly experts in medical research.

No errors in Wikipedia are mentioned directly in the original journal article. When I spoke with the lead author he declined to release the underlying data for us at Wikipedia so that we could correct the “errors” they had found, stating that he may 1) wish to publish more on the topic and 2) wished to protect the researchers. So much for independent verifiability in science. Hasty did make some claims to the popular press about errors on Wikipedia. Some of the facts he mentioned, however, accurately reflected some of the best available peer-reviewed sources. For example he claimed that blood pressure should only be checked twice to make the diagnosis of hypertension and that when we state three times we are wrong. However look at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (previous known as the National Institute of Clinical Health / NICE) on page 7 in this document http://www.nice.org.uk/nicemedia/pdf/CG18background.pdf It is thus a little ironic that the Telegraph, a UK paper, repeated this incorrect statement and the BBC covered the story so uncritically.

Wikipedia has strong recommendations for what counts as a suitable source. We recommend the use of secondary sources published in well-respected journals from the last 3-5 years, position statements of national or internationally recognized medical bodies or major textbooks. Is Wikipedia a perfect source? No, but it is just as good as many and better than most other sources out there. Or else why would the world be using it? Hasty's work did not have a comparison group. Basically he invented a new method to test the quality of medical content and then only applied this new method to one source, Wikipedia. Without a comparator this single data point is meaningless. I am curious what he would have found if he would have applied this to a NICE guideline or emedicine?

We recently surveyed our top contributors and asked about their backgrounds. What we found was that 52% have either a masters, PhD, or MD. Another 33% have a BSc. About half are health care providers. 82% are male, 9% are female and 9% classified themselves as other or would rather not say. This is very similar to results published by Nusa Faric in her master's thesis. Additionally we are working with a number of organizations including the National Institute of Health, the Cochrane Collaboration, and the UCSF School of Medicine among others to improve Wikipedia’s health care content.

What Hasty did show was 1) the peer-reviewed literature does not agree with itself (i.e., different peer reviewed sources come to different conclusions which is no surprise to anyone that has read much of it) 2) the peer-review process is sometimes flawed as he was able to publish a "peer-reviewed" article whose data does not support its conclusions. As someone who has read a lot of the peer-reviewed literature, this is also not surprising. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:56, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Excellent rebuttal. I find it incredible that the authors are not willing to release the underlying data. If they "wish to publish more on the topic", they can always retrieve prior versions of the articles. In addition, they have already "protect[ed] the researchers" by keeping the identify of the reviewers confidential. Finally the unwillingness to share the data violates the journal's own guidelines:

As a general guideline, the methods should be written with enough detail that another researcher can replicate the study.
— JAOA Information for Authors

A fundamental tenant of the scientific method is reproducibility. If the data is not shared, reproducibility cannot be tested. Boghog (talk) 20:37, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Good rebuttal and good comments. Since you (James H.) are planning to send this out, please fix the first sentence. It is incomplete or, perhaps, the word "took" should be something else. Otherwise, I made minor corrections: spelling, capitalization, punctuation (which you may, of course, revert if you wish). --Hordaland (talk) 22:03, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Great idea James. I found the first paragraph (and 1st sentence of the second sentence) a little weak too academic as an intro. 2nd, 3rd and 4th paragraph are awesome. I would ditch the 5th paragraph, and use the 3rd as your conclusion. I've typed 2 paragraphs as alternates for ideas only.
I’m writing in response to Dr. Hasty’s article published on May 1, 2014 which states that Wikipedia’s medical content is wrong 90% of the time. Wikipedia has no shortage of medical experts (as you’ll read below), and we had them review Dr. Hasty’s article, hoping to improve our own standards.
Instead what we found was that Dr. Hasty’s article has so many flaws in it, that we don't trust the results. For example, he used students and interns, to compare only 10 articles on Wikipedia to whatever they could find online. Although his results are only published in summary form, there appears to be deep disagreement between his own students on what “correct” is. We are unable to determine how Dr. Hasty’s observers could possibly make a conclusion of “right” or “wrong” with respect to Wikipedia’s information, if they can’t even agree among themselves. It is our conclusion, that a consensus of scientists and health care experts (which is largely who edits medical articles on Wikipedia) is far more likely to provide accurate health information than Dr. Hasty’s students and interns. We were so sure of it after reading the article, we asked Dr. Hasty for the raw data results so we could replicate the study (a common request in most publicly published articles), but he’s refused. Ian Furst (talk) 22:19, 1 June 2014 (UTC)
That's a nice rebuttal, James & Ian. I would like to see a more detailed analysis of the statistics, perhaps along the lines of testtestar's comment here. It's also worth mentioning that the paper was already two years out of date by the time that it was printed. Axl ¤ [Talk] 22:47, 1 June 2014 (UTC)
I agree with Axl's suggestion to incorporate testtestar's considerations. I've tried to pen a few lines that might fit in somehow:

While the general objectives of the study are relevant, its methods are fatally flawed. The evaluation of "accuracy" appears to be based on the assumption that "discordances" can be interpreted as likely "errors" on Wikipedia [when, as James says, taken as a whole the peer-review literature is notoriously discordant]. While this may sometimes be the case, the study does not tell us how much or how often, even within the small sample of highly relevant pages under review. An unvalidated method was used to "fact-check each assertion against a peer-reviewed source that was published or updated within the past 5 years". The study design implicitly assumes that uptodate.com (a clinical information website serving physicians) is a suitable reference standard for reliable clinical information. The real possibility that carefully sourced statements in Wikipedia articles may be at least as reliable as alternative statements contained in articles cited by uptodate.com is not adequately considered (the authors' claim is merely that "it can be argued that these assertions on Wikipedia represent factual errors"). It is unclear how "concordance or discordance" of statements was determined, and a particular concern is that when the individual reviewers (who were either medical students or residents) were unable to "fact check" statements on uptodate.com, they appear to have been instructed to dip in to the literature using PubMed, Google Scholar, or "a search engine of their choice"—scarcely appropriate criteria to identify the most reliable information available. Since the authors do not detail the content of the discrepancies and discordances that were identified (and Hasty has so far declined requests to release this essential information) there is no way their validity and potential clinical significance can be reviewed. Additionally, the statistical methods reported in the paper are inappropriate and uninformative. So the present study really does not provide useful information on the "accuracy" of medical statements in Wikipedia. Of course, this does not mean that Wikipedia is blind to its inherent limitations. It does welcome studies that shed light on the quality of its very varied content. 86.181.67.132 (talk) 09:32, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Amplifying what others have said immediately and further above, to say "the “researchers” compared them with the peer reviewed literature as found on PubMed or the medical website Uptodate" is not really right - they were asked to compare them to a single piece of the peer reviewed literature, of their own choice. It seems from the account in the paper that each researcher made their own choice of piece, which makes the different figures for "discordances" less surprizing. How likely is it, in fact, that every "assertion" in any given fairly long WP medical article will ever be found in a single piece of p-r literature? Not very, I would suggest. We don't know what these articles were (I presume - it might be worth asking that), and their purpose may have been very different from that of an encyclopedic article. This is another key weakness in the study's method, which hasn't been mentioned much yet, and imo needs more emphasis, at the least by mention in the sentence I quoted at the start. Generally, I think it is good as a statement, but could usefully be accompanied by a longer analysis with more detail. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 10:13, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
Agree those discrepancies are unsurprising. A major sticking point is that Hasty is not providing key information to allow post-publication (or even appropriate pre-publication!) peer review of the study without the need for speculation. In the paragraph above I just tried to summarize some of the key methodological issues in a way that might be appropriate for a concise letter to the editor. Given the fundamental character of the issues, I personally feel it's better to go straight to the heart of the question without getting caught up in too much detail (though obviously we could briefly explain things like why the statistical analysis is meaningless). [Adding: I can't see anywhere in the article where it says that the evaluators were required to verify all the assertions from one page in a single peer-review article. My understanding is that they were expected to verify each statement separately.] 86.181.67.132 (talk) 11:13, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
John, the paper's reviewers were told to first check in UpToDate. If that was inadequate, the reviewers could then choose to check either PubMed, Google Scholar, or a "search engine of their choice". The implication is that if the reviewer did not find verification in UpToDate or their choice of search engine, the assertion was labelled as "discordant"—i.e. the assertion is "unverified". Axl ¤ [Talk] 12:00, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
No, that's not right. From the study:(Method section) "The authors instructed the reviewers to use UpToDate (http://www.uptodate.com/) as the initial means by which to search for peer-reviewed sources. If UpToDate did not produce adequate results, then each reviewer was instructed to use PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed), Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com/), or a search engine of their choice. Each reviewer then reported concordance or discordance between Wikipedia and the peer-reviewed sources." From the conclusion, as a limitation: "Third, we used any peer-reviewed reference as a standard that included an initial search through a subscription-only service (UpToDate)." They are not using UpToDate (not I think peer-reviewed in the normal sense) as the "peer-reviewed source" at all - perhaps it would have been better if they had been, though they would have had to use lots of its articles. The second quote (whose meaning becomes very misty when you look at it carefully - what meaning does "included" have? etc) led me to think a single source was used per reviewer per article, but I'm now not so sure about that. How many sources were used, or what they were, is not said - a rather crucial point. Footnote re the second quote here: It really is very unclear. Did they mean to say: "Third, we used any peer-reviewed reference as a standard that included had been found through an initial search through a subscription-only service (UpToDate)."? Wiki CRUK John (talk) 12:32, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
RE "...we used any peer-reviewed reference as a standard that included an initial search through a subscription-only service (UpToDate)." This is simply an acknowledgement that their reference standard wasn't everything it should have been. They mitigate the final identification of "any peer-reviewed reference" with the use of UpToDate as an initial quality filter. 86.181.64.67 (talk) 12:49, 2 June 2014 (UTC) [previously 86.181.67.132]
John, you are right. Thank you for pointing out my mistake. I agree with you. Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:21, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
Sorry, I'm not sure I follow... My reading of "standard" is as a methodological term (as in "gold standard") to refer to the term of comparison they used to assess each assertion on Wikipedia. As I understand it (though I may be wrongly interpreting their Methods/Results sections), this so-called "standard" was generated by a process that involved taking each single Wikipedia statement separately and identifying a recent peer-review article containing specific content that either agrees with or departs from that statement. When identifying a pertinent article with which to verify a particular assertion the evaluators were told first to look via UpToDate and, if that was insufficient, via another search engine. Am I missing something here? (For example, the example they give in their definition of "discordance" here is somewhat unclear: "Reviewer did not [my emphasis] find that “diabetes is a chronic condition” in a peer-reviewed reference.") 86.181.64.67 (talk) 14:58, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
You may well be right, but I think we agree it is not at all clear. I note that on this reading the study included 1549 different operations, each of looking at UpToDate or another 'source-finder', and then checking the actual p-r source - 1549 being the total of the totals column in Table 3 (a figure not given in study or table, which I had to add up myself). No doubt many sources covered several assertions, but that is a deal of work. But they seem, according to the method described, not to have been allowed to use any p-r sources already referenced in the WP article. All very odd. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 15:47, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
Though to be honest, pretty much par for the course. Detailing novel methods in a clear, concise and complete way is by no means an intuitive task. That's one reason why I feel we need to focus on key methodological issues. Like: Do the methods address the research question [though actually there wasn't one] appropriately? (No) Was the statistical analysis appropriate? (No). 86.181.64.67 (talk) 16:45, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
The journal article by Hasty et al published on May 1st 2014 basically took ten Wikipedia articles and ten “researchers” – I understand why you've written it this way, but to me, the scare quotes around "researchers" make it sound like we're denigrating these people. As Wikipedians commenting on a party that has critiqued us negatively, I think we need to take special care to get the tone right, and not sound condescending or combative. Sorry I can't suggest an alternative.
Agree about the scare quotes. How about 'evaluators'? 86.181.64.67 (talk) 14:02, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 14:16, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
Or you could shorten it by saying "ten medical students and residents", and thus eliminate the need to say that separately later. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:37, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
Also, in addition to critiquing this (sadly well-publicised) study, would it make sense to draw attention or comparison to one of the (less well-publicised) peer-reviewed studies that found Wikipedia's medical content highly accurate? Eg see this comment I made earlier. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 13:52, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
Agree with comment about using quotes around researchers. It comes off as snobbish. I thought about using observers in my version, but the casual reader may not understand what that means in a scientific sense. I thought it best to identify them as students and interns. It will make sense to almost anyone reading it and makes for a good comparison to those who edit here. Ian Furst (talk) 14:04, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
A few other thoughts:
  • "differed by nearly 100%" – suggest changing to "differed by nearly two-fold", which is more intuitive to me (at first pass, the existing text makes it sound like one reviewer found almost zero assertions)
  • "Wikipedia has strong recommendations for what counts as a suitable source." – suggest clarifying the scope of this comment, eg change "source" to "medical source".
  • "correct the “errors” they had found" – suggest removing the scare quotes and changing to "alleged errors" or "claimed errors" or whatever, per my comment on tone above
  • "Or else why would the world be using it?" – not sure if this adds anything. To me it invites the obvious retort, "because the world is lazy". This might be a good spot to point to more favourable research.
  • "I am curious what he would have found if he would have applied this to a NICE guideline or emedicine?" – this is not a question, so no question mark
  • "82% are male, 9% are female and 9% classified themselves as other or would rather not say." – not sure what this has to do with anything.
Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 14:16, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
I don't object to denigrating them. Although it wasn't really their fault—they were given a job for which they lacked the training and skills, and they were given poor guidance. Axl ¤ [Talk] 14:18, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
"National Institute for Health and Care Excellence" - should be said this is for the UK, or more accurately England and Wales only. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 15:54, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
  • There is an undeclared conflict of interest between the researchers' (and indeed also the journal's) likely intellectual beliefs [9] about osteopathy and the critical stance (based on Wikipedia's "neutral point of view" policy) taken by the subject of the study.

    Like many other of the smaller peer-review publications, The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association does not openly embraces ICMJE guidelines, and (although their own indications regarding potential conflicts of interest [10][11] would not explicitly have encouraged the authors to make such a declaration). Nevertheless, I feel it's right that attention be brought to this evident intellectual COI (cf. some of WAID's observations below). 86.181.64.67 (talk) 07:41, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

    That situation might be better described as "bias" than "conflict of interest". WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:44, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
Technically, I think it could be described as a possible intellectual conflict of interest that may be perceived as a potential source of bias (ugh... now how long winded can I get??) 86.181.64.67 (talk) 15:54, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Okay we have a publication venue. Am working on this further here User:Jmh649/Rebut. Have taken into account many peoples comments. Thanks Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:36, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

The Guardian has published a sensible report about the matter. Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:09, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
Yes, a nice example of responsible journalism. Thanks. 86.181.64.67 (talk) 12:47, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Replicability

Several comments above are directed towards replicability. This study is replicable at some level. Here are the steps:

  1. Pick ten people who know more than average, but are certainly not true subject-matter experts. Make sure, through years of interaction with them during their training, that they know what you think of Wikipedia.
  2. Pick ten articles that are sort of related to the subjects you claim to be evaluating, but not exactly. For example, don't pick Cancer; pick Lung cancer. Make sure that you never explain why you picked the specific articles.
  3. Skip the control group; just claim that "the peer-reviewed literature" is your control group. Participants might get confused if they need to do the same thing for Wikipedia and for their own textbooks.
  4. Assign each person exactly two articles. This ensures that no one's work can be declared to be a statistical outlier. Ideally, make sure that no pair of people is working on the same article. If Alice works on cancer and diabetes, then Bob needs to work on cancer and hypertension. This will prevent any pesky complaints that Bob's results are always significantly higher or lower than Alice's.
  5. Don't blind the participants to the source of the material. (If you do, then you've wasted all those years of telling them what you think about the source.) This is made easier by skipping the control group, since the participants won't have to wonder where a given statement came from.
  6. Ask each of your participants to make a list of all the statements of fact in two articles. Don't worry if they come up with wildly different lists; you're not going to use proper statistical methods anyway, so that won't matter. Be vague about whether they should include the non-medical information in the articles in their lists.
  7. Tell the participants to look up each fact in "the peer-reviewed literature". Don't worry about which source they pick, because they're all equally good, right? Discourage them from checking the cited sources. Assume that they're all experts in differentiating "published in a journal" from "actually a peer-reviewed article", because who cares if they check the statement against a letter to the editor or something in Medical Hypotheses?
  8. Don't double-check their work. If one of them can't find a statement that "diabetes is a chronic condition" in the literature, then you definitely don't want to point out the existence of statements like "chronic diseases such as diabetes" and "type 1 diabetes mellitus, a devastating chronic disease" in review articles published shortly before they searched.
  9. Assume that if your participant finds a difference with any (probably) peer-reviewed paper, or can't find a statement about the fact, then Wikipedia is wrong.

You won't get exactly the same numbers, but you will get the same basic results. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:22, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Very well put. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:12, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Review of Wikipedia quality

This is a great review of all studies looking at the quality of Wikipedia

...though the authors would have well advised to avoid the "systematic" claim. 86.181.64.67 (talk) 17:57, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
Why is that? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:06, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
Well, the paper appears to be a traditional (non-systematic) review of the literature, which generally makes much better reading but lacks the stringent methodological characteristics of a systematic review of the literature (see Box 1 - Terminology here). In the absence of any Methods or Results section (and with little discussion of study limitations) it's somewhat difficult to know quite what the researchers did. They certainly do seem to have conducted a systematic search of bibliographic databases (a requirement nowadays even for non-systematic reviews among major medical journals). They also do seem to present a representative survey of the results of available studies that have certain characteristics. However, I cannot see any systematic assessment of risk of bias in the studies that they deemed eligible to enter the review. Nor does there appear to have been a systematic synthesis of the quality of the individual studies. So, useful as the paper undoubtedly is, I don't think it could reasonably be classified as a "systematic review", at least in our field (social science journals are known to be less demanding). In plain English, the paper provides an extensive survey of available studies and digests their results in a way that could indeed be rather useful, but it does not really provide any reliable information about the quality of the methods used in those studies. So ultimately it can't really address questions about what we really know from the research. The paper also does seem to be presented rather from a Wikipedian perspective. 86.181.64.67 (talk) 09:49, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
They say they've used the Okoli and Schabram (2012) systematic review protocol but step 5 of that protocol says "Quality appraisal: Also known as screening for exclusion, the reviewer needs to explicitly spell out the criteria for judging which articles are of insufficient quality to be included in the review synthesis. All included articles need be scored for their quality, depending on the research methodologies employed by the articles." They seem to have excluded quite a number of articles addressing the quality of Wikipedia's medical content, if you compare what they have reported with what's available, but haven't explained their exclusion criteria or graded the included studies. Without knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the individual reported studies, we can't know how much credence to give to their claims. (Basically, what 86. said.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:45, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

I think I've extracted all their assertions about our health/medical content and listed them with their sources here:

Extended content
  • Altmann U (2005). "Representation of medical informatics in the wikipedia and its perspectives". Stud Health Technol Inform. 116: 755–60. PMID 16160349.

    In 2005, an early examination of Wikipedia’s content coverage reported insufficient representation of medical informatics on Wikipedia, with many important topics missing.

  • Mercer J (2007). "Wikipedia and "open source" mental health information". Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice. 5 (1): 88–92.

    Mercer (2007) reviewed some key mental health topics in Wikipedia and found them generally lacking in quality, mainly because of what he perceived to be the influence of contributors lacking genuine professional expertise on the subjects. However, he recognized Wikipedia’s importance and potential and recommended a number of measures that could hopefully improve the quality of articles. Unfortunately, most of these recommendations involved contributors revealing their real-world identities, which conflicts with Wikipedia’s strong policy of permitting anonymous participation and emphasizing quality of content over the qualifications of contributors.

  • Devgan L, Powe N, Blakey B, & Makary M (September 2007). "Wiki-Surgery? Internal validity of Wikipedia as a medical and surgical reference". J. Am. Coll. Surg. 205 (3, supplement): S76–S77. doi:10.1016/j.jamcollsurg.2007.06.190.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

    Devgan et al. (2007) surveyed medical doctors concerning 39 common surgical procedures. They could find 35 corresponding Wikipedia articles, with all of them judged to be without overt errors. The researchers could recommend 30 of the articles for patients (22 without reservation), but also found that 13 articles omitted risks associated with the surgical procedure.

  • Pender MP, Lasserre K, Kruesi L, Del Mar C, Anuradha S (2008). "Putting Wikipedia to the Test: A Case Study". Conference Abstract.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

    Pender et al. (2008) compared Wikipedia with UpToDate and eMedicine; they found roughly the same level of factual errors in these three sources. However, another source they compared, AccessMedicine, contained no factual errors in the three articles examined.

  • Clauson KA, Polen HH, Boulos MN, Dzenowagis JH (December 2008). "Scope, completeness, and accuracy of drug information in Wikipedia". Ann Pharmacother. 42 (12): 1814–21. doi:10.1345/aph.1L474. PMID 19017825. S2CID 2072846.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

    In 2008, Clauson et al. (2008) compared medical drug information on Wikipedia and Medscape Drug Reference (MDR), a free online traditionally edited database. They found that Wikipedia could answer fewer drug information questions, e.g., about dosage, contraindications and administration. In the evaluated sample, Wikipedia had no factual errors but a higher rate of omissions compared to MDR. The authors could also find a marked improvement in the entries of Wikipedia over a just 90 days period. The study went on to mainstream media with headlines such as "Wikipedia often omits important drug information" (Harding, 2008) and even "Why Wikipedia Is Wrong When It Comes To Prescription Medicine” (CityNews.ca, 2008). However, as noted by some Wikipedians, the study neglected the fact that one of the Wikipedia manuals of style explicitly requests: "Do not include dose and titration information except when they are notable or necessary for the discussion in the article." Thus, in one of the eight examined question categories in Clauson et al.’s study, the omissions were quite possibly intentional.

Clauson et al. (2008) found four factual errors in Medscape among 80 articles examined. Two of these occurred due to lack of timely updates. In contrast, they found no factual errors in Wikipedia.

Clauson et al. (2008) compared Wikipedia and Medscape Drug Reference (MDR), a free online “traditionally edited” database, for medical drug information. They found that Wikipedia could answer fewer drug information questions, e.g., about dosage, contraindications and administration. In the evaluated sample, Wikipedia had no factual errors but had a higher rate of omissions compared to MDR. Moreover, Clauson et al. found a marked improvement in the entries of Wikipedia over a just 90 days period.

  • Laurent MR, Vickers TJ (2009). "Seeking health information online: does Wikipedia matter?". J Am Med Inform Assoc. 16 (4): 471–9. doi:10.1197/jamia.M3059. PMC 2705249. PMID 19390105.

    Using search engine optimization techniques, Laurent and Vickers (2009) investigated the Google ranking of the English Wikipedia for health topics. The queries were 1726 keywords from an index of the American MedlinePlus, 966 keywords from a NHS Direct Online index and 1173 keywords from an American index of rare diseases (U.S. National Organization of Rare Diseases). They compared Wikipedia to .gov domains, MedlinePlus, Medscape, NHS Direct Online and a number of other domains. They found the English Wikipedia ranked among the first ten results in 71–85% of search engines and keywords tested, concluding that the English Wikipedia is an outstanding source in comparison to the other sources providing online health information.

Laurent and Vickers (2009) demonstrated that Wikipedia topics on health information were getting updated expeditiously by new events and findings announced in news.

Kim et al. (2010) recognized currency as the strongest aspect of Wikipedia articles, with an average of 112 revisions per article over one year in a sample of pathology informatics topics. They concluded that the more the article was of general interest to the Wikipedia community, the higher the number of edits and revisions was.

Kim et al. (2010) assessed the pathology informatics topics on Wikipedia in terms of comprehensiveness, quality, and currency. They found that the examined articles are of good quality with few errors; they judged that the articles can be used in a course curriculum for teaching to beginner and advanced learners.

  • Leithner A, Maurer-Ertl W, Glehr M, Friesenbichler J, Leithner K, Windhager R (2010). "Wikipedia and osteosarcoma: a trustworthy patients' information?". J Am Med Inform Assoc. 17 (4): 373–4. doi:10.1136/jamia.2010.004507. PMC 2995655. PMID 20595302.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

    Leithner et al. (2010) investigated the quality of Wikipedia information on osteosarcoma, a type of cancer, in three aspects of scope, completeness and accuracy. Three independent observers scored the answers to twenty questions. They judged that the information provided on English Wikipedia is good in terms of quality, but still inferior in comparison to that provided by professional health websites like the US National Cancer Institute (NCI). Thus, they suggested maintaining a high quality for Wikipedia articles by inserting external links to these professional sources.

Leithner et al. (2010) investigated the scope, completeness, and accuracy of information for osteosarcoma on English Wikipedia in April 2009, compared with patient and professional sites of the US National Cancer Institute (NCI). Although they found Wikipedia’s information to be generally good, it scored lower compared to the two NCI versions (though this was statistically significant only for the professional version). Thus, they suggested adding external links to these websites on Wikipedia articles.

Rajagopalan MS, Khanna VK, Leiter Y; et al. (September 2011). "Patient-oriented cancer information on the internet: a comparison of wikipedia and a professionally maintained database". J Oncol Pract. 7 (5): 319–23. doi:10.1200/JOP.2010.000209. PMC 3170066. PMID 22211130. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Rajagopalan et al., (2010, 2011) examined Wikipedia’s cancer information in August 2009 against that in the US National Cancer Institute’s Physician Data Query (PDQ). They found that Wikipedia had similar accuracy and depth compared to the professionally-edited resource.

  • Lavsa SM, Corman SL, Culley CM, Pummer TL (April 2011). "Reliability of Wikipedia as a medication information source for pharmacy students". Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and Learning. 3 (2): 154–158. doi:10.1016/j.cptl.2011.01.007.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

    Lavsa et al. (2011) compared the drug information for twenty of the most frequently prescribed drugs in the United States with the drug package information and certain authoritative databases. They found that the Wikipedia articles were all incomplete in providing full drug information, often missed important details, and were often inaccurate. They recommended against its use by pharmacology students for drug information. As mentioned earlier, part of the missing information in health-related articles could be quite intentional, as Wikipedia policy advises not to include drug dosage information in articles.

If I've missed something or got something wrong, please feel free to add or correct. Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:23, 4 June 2014 (UTC)Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Research publications

Anthony, many thanks indeed for compiling this summary. It should be added to Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Research publications somewhere. Has anybody cross-checked between that page and Okoli et al.'s papers? And their website database at http://wikilit.referata.com (articles published up to July 2011 only)? I think it is highly important when summarizing Wikipedia research to list where possible the date or period when the WP data was obtained, eg, from above: "Leithner et al. (2010) investigated the scope, completeness, and accuracy of information for osteosarcoma on English Wikipedia in April 2009,...." . The oldest item here was published in 2005 so very probably researched in 2004, so is only of interest to historians of what the abstract rather charmingly calls "the Wikipedia". The Okoli website is I think useful here. Wikipedia changes even faster than medicine, and most papers published before (?) 2011 are likely to be seriously outdated. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 11:30, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Deepak Chopra: RfC: Move criticism up lede?

Talk:Deepak_Chopra#RfC: Move criticism up lede?

Should we move criticism of Dr Chopra up the lede? Right now it's in the second half of the final para.

Balaenoptera musculus (talk) 12:30, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

BMJ offering free accounts to Wikipedia medical editors!

Neat news: As with Cochrane, BMJ is offering 25 free, full-access accounts to their prestigious medical journal through The Wikipedia Library and Wiki Project Med Foundation. Please Signup this week: Wikipedia:BMJ --Ocaasi t | c 14:00, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Nice! JFW | T@lk 20:05, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Dehydration cleanup

I have cleaned and rewritten dehydration (massive diff), but some errors likely remain. Could someone peruse the new version to make sure we are not saying anything particularly stupid, please? FiveColourMap (talk) 23:35, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Finally managed to get an image from my work

I finally managed to get an image from my work. After jumping through a ton of hoops and getting approval from a ton of people, but nothing in writing, I finally managed to get this one released because they wanted it on our website as well.

Sadly, I have no idea what this is a picture of (Vasculature of porcine skin under fluorescence - smooth muscle actin with AlexaFluor 488 means nothing to me) and whether or not it would be useful in any articles. Does anyone have any ideas? Zell Faze (talk) 15:59, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

@Zellfaze: Yes, this is a fluorescent antibody technique stain of actin (one of the proteins that makes up muscle) in smooth muscle tissue, which is one of the three major kinds of muscle. This image specifically shows the actin in the smooth muscle that makes up the walls of the arterioles and venules in the skin of the pig and contribute to thermoregulation. I've put the image in fluorescent antibody technique and dermis#Stratum reticulare. (Obviously anyone can remove/move it...SOFIXIT and all that.) Thank you for the image! Keilana|Parlez ici 16:40, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
Thank you Zell! That's great. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:41, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

cervix at Peer Review

Look, I think the article on cervix is looking pretty good and kudos to all who've gotten involved to date - I'm listing it at Peer Review - Wikipedia:Peer review/Cervix/archive1 - to try and help give it a shove to FAC. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:14, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Proposal of retaining and fixing eMedicine template under Infobox disease

Introduction: eMedicine has been a quite popular portal relating to health and related issues with articles on wide range of important topics. The articles are primarily intended for physicians are are well referenced. Template:EMedicine and Template:EMedicine2 had been a part of Template:Infobox disease and have been acting individually or in conjunction to each other, as important external resources to many health related articles under WP:MED.

Issue: eMedicine articles could have url in two formats {{EMedicine2|article|806890}} or {{EMedicine2|emerg|43}} where 'emerg', 'med', 'radio' or 'ped' referred to the subject under which the article was classified. Both the formats were simultaneously active but a short while back eMedicine removed the subject based classification of its articles and the links to those redirected to the homepage instead. As a result, the Wikipedia templates with structures like {{EMedicine2|emerg|43}} were no longer working but ones with {{EMedicine2|article|806890}} are functional till date and are likely to remain so. Unfortunately, in apprehension that the template no longer works, it has already been removed from Template:Infobox disease. While there may be debates to whether resources like patient.co.uk are better sources as they are intended toward more neutral audience, the fact remains that before the technical issue with the links, eMedicine has remained as a valued resource and removal of this template would mean loss of useful resouces from medical articles. If a better source can be identified, it can surely be added thereafter.

Proposed solution: I suggest that the template be retained. The eMedicine templates bearing subject names may easily be tagged so that intervention may be made. A simple Google search with the Wikipedia article name on the page of which the non-functional link exists, will most often provide the link to the relevant eMedicine article and the requisite substitution with 'article|12345' can be done easily to get the links working again.

I am opening an opinion poll to on suggestion of Jmh649 (talk · contribs). Please support , oppose or discuss the proposal here so that appropriate intervention may be made. DiptanshuTalk 07:22, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Support retaining eMedicine template

  1. Support DiptanshuTalk 07:22, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Support moving eMedicine from template to EL

  1. Support - I would support keeping the eMedicine links, but at the same time move them to the external links section and treat them just like any other external link. I think we should not systematically include them, but there is no reason to systematically remove all of them all the sudden either. In many cases the emedicine articles provide a lot of useful information way beyond what is in the corresponding wikipedia article. On a cas-by-case basis it can then be decided if there are better sites to link to. --WS (talk) 20:45, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
I do not have a concern with them being in the EL link along with the others. This discussion is only about the infobox Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:15, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
I feel retaining the eMedicine links in the External links section would be just fine. I would just like to echo Wouterstomp's view expressed here. DiptanshuTalk 12:50, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
I've moved this to its own subsection for clarity, please correct me if I have misidentified your statement of support. --LT910001 (talk) 09:05, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
  1. Support I would support this, as it is a solution that preserves the links whilst removing the prominence accorded to eMedicine above other commercial and non-commercial sources. --LT910001 (talk) 09:05, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Oppose retaining eMedicine template

  • Oppose. Thanks for proposing this, Diptanshu.D, this is a useful discussion to have and I would like to hear what others think. I personally have never liked eMedicine. I have three reasons:
    1. Firstly, it's a for-profit organisation and so I disagree that we should be sending users in that way. I would agree if the websites were particularly good, but they're not.
    2. Secondly, the website has prominent advertisements and is written haphazardly in a way that is not very accessible to lay people and not easily verifiable. (I am looking at [12] and [13], two samples.)
    3. I would also not refer it to lay people for those reasons, and I would not refer it to practitioners or students because it is quite variable in style, only partially verifiable, an 'expert opinion' that is not backed by an expert or national body and does not seem to base its statements off any particular guideline, or at least does not state this (I could also be wrong here). I think that eMedicine shouldn't be included, and that any discussion about including something else should be a separate one. --LT910001 (talk) 09:56, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose I used to be more supportive of this site however its quality / utility has significantly decrease over time.
    1. They used to provide greater information on a single page. Now I presume in an effort to increase the number of pages people click on they have spread the content over many pages This issue has been fixed
    2. They are commercial and sell the eyeballs of the viewers to industry.
    3. The NYTs has raised concern that they alter their article text to please advertisers [14]
    4. They require log-in to view conten
    5. Thus I am of the opinion that linking it in the infobox is too much prominence. Emedicine is usually links on DMOZ to which we link. I think we should put patient.co.uk in the infobox as it is better and they are happy to have us link to them. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:23, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
Fallacies of the logic discussed in the discuss section. DiptanshuTalk 03:28, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
The argument is that we have two sites that are similar emedicine and patient.co.uk. I do not see a reason to link to both. I consider the latter to be better than the former. Thus I propose linking to the latter in the infobox rather than the former. Linking both IMO is too much clutter. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:44, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I have always been averse to the use of external links, especially the blanket placement of links to a chosen website. From WP:ELNO, "one should generally avoid providing external links to... any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a featured article." This is Medscape's page for non-small cell lung carcinoma. I am not convinced that this has information that shouldn't reasonably be included in Wikipedia's analogous page.
Some pages such as treatment include extensive discussion of primary sources (controlled trials). Our guideline discourages such discussions. However our "Treatment" sections should typically include review papers or textbooks that give an overview of these primary sources. Interested readers can follow the sources provided. In any case, if a reader is really seeking such an overview, they would be better served doing their own PubMed search.
Pages such as this one give details of drug regimens. I do not think that Wikipedia's readers are interested in this sort of information. Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:21, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
"they would be better served doing their own PubMed search" and usually paying $40 each to be able to see the articles, which 90% of our readers are unable to understand anyway.
"I do not think that Wikipedia's readers are interested in" details of chemotherapy regimens, unless they're actually cancer patients or have a loved one with cancer. If you really believe that, then I'm betting that you haven't spent any time hanging around internet forums for (especially) breast cancer.
I'm not very sympathetic to systematically linking either of these websites, but I believe that some readers are benefiting from them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:44, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
I am sure that you are familiar with using PubMed. The vast majority of abstracts are free to read, including the large number of primary sources such as controlled trial reports. The summary on eMedicine provides rather less information than the typical primary source abstract. For the review papers, there are usually some free to read with the majority requiring a fee. As for the fee itself, that is the current model that many journals use. Perhaps you should write to them and complain.
Frankly, if a reader wants to read details of individual clinical trials but is unable to use a search engine or journal database, I don't think that spoonfeeding them a specific website is going to help their understanding of the disease.
The internet forum crowd are a self-selected group—hardly representative of the average Wikipedia reader. Such individuals aren't going to be satisfied with spoonfeeding from Wikipedia either. They will be doing their own searches. Axl ¤ [Talk] 22:17, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Propose replacing eMedicine with patient.co.uk in the infobox

As a comparison here is the link of gout on patient.co.uk [15]. It has a button that will read the article.

Fallacies of the logic discussed in the discuss section. DiptanshuTalk 03:28, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Support A more useful, mainly non-commercial resource for our readers that doesn't duplicate Wikipedia; it's one that presents frequently-updated evidence-based information and advice in a way that's geared for both patients and professionals. 86.181.64.67 (talk) 08:45, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
I've rethought this, based on some of the comments elsewhere. While I think this site is preferable, I think I have reservations about automatically linking (and thus effectively endorsing) any particular site. Also, patient.co.uk, almost by definition, represents a British viewpoint, whereas we should be striving for a worldwide perspective. (However, I can't see any particular preclusion to using the site as an optional external link.) 86.181.64.67 (talk) 09:29, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
Are you suggesting we should strive for a worldwide perspective by continuing our usual practice of almost entirely using US sites for links? Wiki CRUK John (talk) 12:54, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
No, certainly not. I've just been distancing myself from the idea of using blanket links to any particular site, although I think patient.co.uk is actually a rather good one. (The question of how best to provide a worldwide view raises particular challenges in medicine, imo. For example, treatment affordability varies widely.) 86.181.64.67 (talk) 20:59, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
That is certainly the case, but a rather different question. I imagine if there were a good broad coverage general medical site addressing developing world realities we would have found it by now, and used it to improve our coverage in this respect. In general I don't see too much difference in approach or information between the best sites in large Anglophone countries, though there are differences on things like screening. Economic & affordability issues are mostly ignored by both US and UK sites despite the differences in the national health systems. I do think we should link to other high quality sites, but there are actually rather a lot. I wouldn't mind some sort of standard box with short links to a few general ones, and some specialist ones as appropriate.Wiki CRUK John (Johnbod (talk)) 21:29, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose. This is the website's page for "Lung cancer". It is a patient information leaflet. Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia. It is not supposed to be a linking service to patient information leaflets. The website fails WP:ELNO. Also, I do not want to see Wikipedia's medical articles become a tacit endorsement for one particular website's patient information leaflets. In my opinion, patient.co.uk is an even worse choice than eMedicine/Medscape. Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:34, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
I was thinking this one [16] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:18, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
Ah, okay. Thank you for pointing that out. The page does seem to contain some information that isn't in Wikipedia's featured article, although the majority is duplication. The website also seems to be UK-centric. Overall, it would be an improvement over eMedicine, but I still don't think that it should be linked from Wikipedia's infoboxes. Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:14, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
We already have one US centric source in the infobox "MedlinePlus" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 08:12, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
I would like to see MedlinePlus links removed from the infoboxes too. Axl ¤ [Talk] 08:23, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose I don't think we should have patient.co.uk, emedicine or any other such link in the info-boxes, and I don't think they should be in External Links unless they've first been checked for errors.
The one thing I know enough about to check out is Circadian Rhythm Sleep Disorders, so I've read the articles about these on emedicine and patient.co.uk. The former is missing one whole disorder (in sighted patients, the most debilitating one) that should be there. The latter has an important error in a definition. I wouldn't choose to link to either until it's been corrected. (I have now written to both explaining what they've got wrong and offering an excellent article on NORD (click 'View Full Report') as a source. --Hordaland (talk) 11:43, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Discuss

If eMedicine is a bad source, then why does WP:MEDRS currently allow it? Like I recently pointed out in this discussion, WP:MEDRS has it as one of the "usually acceptable sources in themselves, and can be useful guides about the relevant medical literature and how much weight to give different sources; however, as much as possible Wikipedia articles should cite the more established literature directly." If we are going to generally scrutinize this source, and I'm not saying that we should, then we should remove it from WP:MEDRS as an acceptable source...for consistency. Flyer22 (talk) 10:06, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

A good point if there's consensus that it's a poor source. My meaning is not that it is a bad source faactually, but just that it's not a helpful one to readers. And is it a for-profit corporation, rather than a not-for-profit, which I think we should be favouring if we're going to be providing links in the infoboxes to them. --LT910001 (talk) 10:17, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
Considering the average condition of medicine related articles on Wikipedia, most of the corresponding articles on eMedicine are categorically better, as I have observed. Moreover, most of the eMedicine articles have good inline references or at least a good bibliography, which I find valuable. Simply speaking, eMedicine can act as a good source for improving and rewriting Wikipedia articles. DiptanshuTalk 10:41, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
Please consider going through the following journal article:
Volsky, PG; Baldassari, CM; Mushti, S; Derkay, CS (2012 Sep). "Quality of Internet information in pediatric otolaryngology: a comparison of three most referenced websites". International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology. 76 (9): 1312–6. doi:10.1016/j.ijporl.2012.05.026. PMID 22770592. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
If one of the most referenced sources of health-related information on internet is to be considered as a poor source, its an irony indeed. Interestingly indeed, for content accuracy eMedicine scores over Wikipedia and yet Wikipedian editors consider it to be a poor source. Moreover, the whole issue sparked off only after due to a certain reason, certain links from the site became non-functional. Why in the first place did the issue not reach a settlement earlier? DiptanshuTalk 11:03, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
I am currently in the process of updating the emedicine links within the infoboxes by substituting subject with article and the appropriate numeral. I have already done it for around 30 articles. This is a simple task and can be completed. In case the links are functional, I hope it would perhaps be less opposable in reverting to the previous state where eMedicine links were a part of the infoboxes. DiptanshuTalk 15:43, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
According to my estimates, there are about 4200 articles requiring the substitution (med 2095, ped 509, derm 346[17], radio 283[18], sports 243[19], neuro 277[20], emerg 392[21], rehab 18[22]). I admit that it is a bit of work but indeed doable if it preserves the resources of Wikipedia. Requesting inputs. DiptanshuTalk 16:01, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
Flyer, there's no agreement that eMedicine is a "bad source". It's not the best source, but it's perfectly acceptable to cite it for moderate-level claims. For example, I would normally accept it as a source in a ==Treatment== section to support a claim that X, Y, and Z are commonly used treatments, or that X is the first-line treatment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:53, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, I was making the point of "Is it actually bad or poor if our medical guideline calls it usually acceptable?" Flyer22 (talk) 19:00, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
It is boarderline. There are better sources. Another issue with using it as a source is that it changes with time. And now seems to be a good time to replace emedicine with something less commercial. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:26, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
I agree we should be replacing it with something less commercial. Jmh649 and other users, as well as patient.co.uk, what are the other widely-used medical sites that we might consider here?--LT910001 (talk) 22:12, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
There are many informative sites that sell eyeballs of visitors. Probably that is better than selling products as the latter carries more scope of bias. eMedicine, of Medscape is not a non-profit organisation like Wikipedia. It is beyond discussion as to whether that is a merit or demerit as it enables eMedicine to maintaining a particular standard of its articles (be it good or bad); Wikipedia articles vary from Stub to FA class with most of the articles grouped in the Stub and Start class. Unless the quality of virtually all articles on medical topics are raised to at least C class, criticising the quality of articles on eMedicine. The purpose should be to provide accesible good medical information which both Wikipedia and eMedicine does. Both are primarily accessed by users after landing there from a Google search (or any other search engine for the purpose). Since both of these are usually in the first page of the result, if we cannot provide adequate contents, users would automatically go elsewhere, eMedicine being the most prominent other destination due to its expanse and popularily. It is meaningless to debate on this issue till then. If anyone observes any particular bias or wrong information on the corresponding article on eMedicine, it would be worthwhile to discretely point it out on the Wikipedia talk page of the article. Let us see a substantial amount of such points before we dump eMedicine as a bad source which it is not. If there can be better sources, why are we not striving towards making ours the best source (if that is possible) with users needing to go anywhere else. Till then I would plea not to strip at least 4200 Wikipedia from mentioning a good source (where people would go anyway based on search results provided we cannot offer adequate information). Replacement with better sources is not equivalent to deletion of useful resources simply because they have a scope of fallacy. DiptanshuTalk 03:07, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

@Jmh649: Logic of such ridden quality is not expected from the Preseident of Wikipedia Medical Foundation, who also happens to be the topmost contributor of medical articles of 2013[23].

They used to provide greater information on a single page. Now I presume in an effort to increase the number of pages people click on they have spread the content over many pages

Please specify when exactly was their content on a single page. Multiple page layout of eMedicine is not new.

They are commercial and sell the eyeballs of the viewers to industry. The NYTs has raised concern that they alter their article text to please advertisers [12]

They are not selling some products directly and hence the articles cannot be biased toward the particular product or advertiser especially because of the fact that Google chooses which ads to display, not eMedicine primarily. It can be argued that similarly biased editors can be there too on Wikipedia.
Furthermore, the view of one Virginia Heffernan expressed in The New York Times in 2011 cannot be regarded as the view of NYT. Based on this logic, I am now thinking of adding contents to Wikipedia with the reference as I think so. Surely, Jmh649 will consider it valid.
Jmh649 Can you please specify that what exactly is the source of the informatin in the Virginia Heffernan article that Her father is a retired professor of English literature. Please argue that somebody is not promoting somebody here on Wikipedia. Sources to such articles are like [24] which boast 1.7k followers. Are you sure that nobody here is pulling up the web-ranking of some random blog? DiptanshuTalk 03:36, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

They require log-in to view conten

In general eMedicine does not require login for reading articles. I have been reading both Wikipedia and eMedicine articles but do not remember having logged onto eMedicine for centuries and yet I had no trouble reading through their articles.

..I think we should put patient.co.uk in the infobox as it is better and they are happy to have us link to them.

This is not mutually exclusive to eMedicine.

Sorry for having to be so rude but I feel that beurocrats on Wikipedia too have a scope of biasing contents on it. So do we dump Wikipedia too? After all, there is documented fact (stated earlier) that Wikipedia articles are the ones containing most omissions and errors too? DiptanshuTalk 03:28, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

  1. One can see the changes in structure to emedicine over time via the waybackmachine. Indeed back in 2008 they had more info on a page [25] They became much worse and are now a bit better. In fact they now have a "show all" button [26] which links to all the info on a single page.
  2. Yes good point this is not the position of the NYTs but an article in the NYTs and yes that article is from 2011.
  3. You look around their website and this will come up [27]
  4. There is only so much stuff we should put in the info box. If we have patient.co.uk we do not need also emedicine as they are similar and the former is better than the latter IMO. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:44, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
In response to You look around there website and this will put up [28] by Jmh649,I would like to point out that one that directly visit the same page [29] without logging in. Look who is trying to mislead the discussion! In any case, the strongest point he has is that there is not adequate space in the infobox for both patient.co.uk and eMedicine. Ironically enough, patient.co.uk does not seem to have an article page on the mentioned topic altogether [30] other than a forum page [31]. So what are we fighting? I would like to ask another question. Is everyone sure that anybody here (name unmentioned) does not have any personal interest in patient.co.uk? I fear that the discussion is not going to go anywhere unless there are other participants. I prefer to become a bit aloof as it might soon seem that there is a personal conflict going on here. DiptanshuTalk 05:16, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
We're not fighting. You asked for the opinions of other users, which have been provided. It's clear what us three think, let's wait and see what other users think. --LT910001 (talk) 05:24, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
As LT910001 says, this is a relevant question. Ok, it may have been triggered by a technical glitch, but doubts about the suitability of linking emedicine pages in the infobox have been raised on this page before, eliciting some strong opinions (eg here). So the underlying question is not new (and it's not personal). 86.181.64.67 (talk) 11:23, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
Per " Is everyone sure that anybody here (name unmentioned) does not have any personal interest in patient.co.uk?" it appears that you are saying that I have some "personal interest" in the site patient.co.uk? Implying that I am receiving financial gain or something else nefarious. While the answer is no. I accept no monies for what I do on Wikipedia. Seriously what is wrong with this place? As soon as someone holds an opinion contrary to that of anyone else they immediately are accused of having a conflict of interest. I have been accused of being in the pay of pharma, I have been accused of being anti pharma, I have been accused of profiting from cognitive behavior therapy [32]. It is not just newcomers who are bitten.
Patient.co.uk does have a page for gout and it is here [33]. It also has a page for pseudogout here [34]. Yup sorry no page for "gout and pseudogout" combined. We here at Wikipedia do not have one either. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:36, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
I was also pretty taken aback to read the above comments. Arguments can get pretty heated here, but I do not feel there is any need to make personal attacks ("Logic of such ridden quality is not expected from the Preseident of Wikipedia Medical Foundation...") or accuse users of COI. This promotes an unhealthy atmosphere and is unnecessarily polarising. If we do or do not include this link, it will not be the end of the world.--LT910001 (talk) 22:31, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
Dear James and LT910001, I clearly know that James noway has any personal interests in patient.co.uk and I know that his efforts are sincere. But I wanted to point out a fallacy of logic. I have done a similar thing when I mentioned about the article on Virginia Heffernan. I never think that anybody is promoting her father, neither do I think that the provided information is wrong. I just think that it is a first hand information that is beyond referencing. While such things are always going to be there on Wikipedia and cannot be fool-proofed, issues can be there with other things too. Things that eMedicine says might seem commercially biased but that need not always be the case as is not the case of James promoting the inclusion of patient.co.uk. But even there the possible scope can indeed give a scope of consfusion, the analogy of which I have created by questioning James's neutrality which I am anyway sure of. DiptanshuTalk 12:21, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

There are lots of sites on the internet that offer the patient/general reader biomedical information. (I've started a comparison project here.) If our article is inadequate and there is an adequate one out there, shouldn't we just link to it or them in our infobox while the Wikipedia article is developing? Shouldn't the decision about which sites to link to be up to the given article's writers and editors? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 08:09, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Through the entire discussion here, I wanted to simply echo Anthonyhcole's words If our article is inadequate and there is an adequate one out there, shouldn't we just link to it or them in our infobox while the Wikipedia article is developing? I think that the corresponding eMedicine articles are often better than ours and that was the rationale of including the links. DiptanshuTalk 12:21, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
Also, I think it's worth bearing in mind that some of these sites do things for our users that Wikipedia doesn't and can't do (per WP:NOTHOW), like give evidence-based advice. Obviously, we want to get our choices right. 86.181.64.67 (talk) 08:58, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
I've been sitting quietly reading all of this, and until now didn't really care one way or another. I'm now strongly on the side of removing the links. Not because of their quality or Wikipedia's, but because it's a commercial website. I never gave the links a second thought (prior to this discussion), but now I don't think Wikipedia should be in the business of systematically linking to commercial interests. Leave that to the commercial search engines. Like it or not, Wikipedia is probably the first choice for medical information worldwide and who we link to is important. For me, there are 3 important criteria that the medicine project should consider in links 1) are we creating a systematic link 2) is it to a for profit entity 3) does it have a declared or undeclared bias. And, if the implication was that James is somehow on the 'take', I think he's owed an apology. Ian Furst (talk) 13:59, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
WP:EL treats for-profit and non-profit websites alike. We don't care if they make some money, so long as the content is suitable for our purposes. Most non-profits are trying to make money off their websites, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:33, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
Yes we should link to the best site available. The ones with less advertising is easier to read and thus IMO better. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:19, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
An interesting discussion. I fear that our position on ELs to advert-supported sites may not have properly considered reader privacy. To my thinking there should as a bare minimum be an advisory to readers that the link is taking them to an external site which WMF cannot control. This is medical content, after all. The potential for the DoubleClicks of the world to exploit readers' attention to a specific condition is very real and should not be enabled by a wp:EASTEREGG link. LeadSongDog come howl! 13:43, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Draft:Chronic Wound Pain

Here's a medical-related draft that's up for review at AfC. —Anne Delong (talk) 18:31, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Draft:Eunice Rivers Laurie

... and here's another medicine related topic up for review at AfC. —Anne Delong (talk) 19:51, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Replacing cite doi instances

At this recent discussion there was broad consensus on converting instances of {{cite doi}} and of {{cite pmid}} to {{cite journal}}. That apparently fell off the rails when the discussion was archived. There is currently a related discussion at Wikipedia:Bot_owners'_noticeboard#User:Citation_bot_-_mass_creation_of_sub-templates. LeadSongDog come howl! 21:19, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Assistance needed in Academic Dispute

I was recommended by a third opinion mediator (Stfg) to bring to your attention and reach resolution of a dispute between two editors. Your expert medical opinion is sought. I hope I'm doing this correctly; if not, I apologize. The problem began when I was not allow to add additional information and sources (all the edits I made were deleted) in two separate entries. This was done unilaterally by a Wiki contributor or editor, Staug73. First, the journal I cited was denigrated. Subsequently the journal Surgical Neurology International was approved as a notable entry in Wikipedia, and the object of criticism became elaborated, so that I was still unable to edit those entries Psychosurgery and History of psychosurgery, which I felt needed work. Staug73 then began to denounce the author of one of the articles that I felt needed inclusion, both as to information and as well as reference source. (As to the additions needed in those articles, incidentally an administrator agree with me that some additions would be helpful. May additions even corrected false information in one of the articles). Some of the additions were made, but when I again attempted to edit the entries to add more information and references sources, Staug73, made very serious, but in may opinion, baseless, capricious, and even malicious accusations against one of the main author (and article) I was trying to cite. Staug73 accused the neuroscientist of "copying" from two articles, articles which were in fact cited by the author, as well as additional references I was able to insert after some struggle.

In short I agree with Stfg that: "... expert knowledge is required to opine on the use of the Faria reference. I recommend asking a question at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine." The dispute is available from Talk:History of psychosurgery, particularly Talk:History of psychosurgery#Faria reference. Additional information is available from User_talk:Randykitty#Assistance Required and User_talk:Randykitty#Do you remember this edit? LeBassRobespierre (talk) 20:52, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Your edits are still here [35] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:22, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
Not on the history article. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 10:56, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
An uninvolved comment, purely regarding Wikipedia's editorial guidelines, without entering into any questions of actual content: The abstract of the paper in question states "A history of these developments up to the 21st century will be related in this three-part essay-editorial, exclusively researched and written for the readers of Surgical Neurology International (SNI)." So from the standpoint of Wikipedia's guidelines on identifying reliable medical sources (WP:MEDRS), which are rather more stringent than the general sourcing guidelines (WP:RS), this would certainly have to count as a primary source. Even though MEDRS guidelines may be waived when writing on the history of medicine topics, we are reminded that primary sources must always be handled with care anywhere on Wikipedia (per WP:PRIMARY). In the presence of a content dispute such as this, use of reliable secondary (or tertiary) sources is obviously preferable. 86.181.64.67 (talk) 09:41, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
I don't see this a primary source issue, given that most of the argument seems to be about the 19th century, and one of StAug's complaints is that the article relies heavily on other sources. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 10:56, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
While, as John underlines, this historical topic would not technically be subject to MEDRS, I thought it might be useful anyway to consider potential reliable medical sources that aren't currently cited on the page. A quick look at PubMed brought up:
- Lapidus et al. History of psychosurgery: a psychiatrist's perspective. World Neurosurg 2013 PMID 23419707
- also, perhaps: Herbert Jasper. A historical perspective. The rise and fall of prefrontal lobotomy. Adv Neurol 1995 PMID 7771315
Either might be worth considering (though unfortunately they're not open access). 86.181.64.67 (talk) 12:11, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
- And a few more historical articles that may be pertinent: Patel et al 2013 PMID 23159652; El-Hai 2008 PMID 19248679; Feldman 2001 PMID 11270556. 86.181.64.67 (talk) 13:04, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
To clarify, I didn't mean to imply that they necessarily have to be cited. Rather, that they could prove to be potentially useful NPOV sources; unlike Faria's articles which, personally, I think should be used only to reference that particular POV. 86.181.64.67 (talk) 18:10, 11 June 2014 (UTC)


It's not a primary source. Remember that secondary is not a fancy way to spell 'good source'.

I've looked briefly at the article history. Here's one of the disputed edits[36]:

Psychosurgery developed as a result of this growing problem. In fact, some of the first psychosurgeons or promoters of psychosurgery were psychiatrists.[1]

  1. ^ Faria, Miguel A (2013;4:49). "Violence, mental illness, and the brain - A brief history of psychosurgery: Part 1 - From trephination to lobotomy". Surg Neurol Int. Retrieved 30 May 2014. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

("This growing problem" appears to refer to "Treatment of insanity has evaded practitioners", which was separately deleted.)

User:Staug73's edit summary is, "Not a good source, anyway sentence is meaningless - who would you expect to be involved in psychosurgery?" I understand this to mean that Staug agrees that the sentence is factually accurate, but doesn't want to have it present anyway (perhaps it's supposed to be insulting to modern psychiatrists?).

I don't see any good reason to omit this. The source appears to meet plain-vanilla WP:RS (which is all that is required for non-biomedical information like this), Staug appears to admit to its verifiability and accuracy in a back-handed way, and it is not unreasonable or UNDUE to say that this technique was promoted by the experts of the day, rather than by quacks or random physicians who didn't know much about the subject. So I'd include this. Perhaps Staug can tell us more about the objections. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:40, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for contributions so far. This was I think the edit in question the text that I removed: “Treatment in insanity has evaded practitioners from ancient times to the 20th century, as a result the mentally ill have been treated harshly, and in the 18th and 19th centuries mostly committed to crowded hospitals and asylums”. The source given is a chapter in HW Haggard’s The Doctor in History. I don’t think the source supports the statement and I asked on the Talk page for a more specific page reference but got no answer. That left “Psychosurgery developed as a result of this growing problem” making even less sense. As for “In fact, some of the first psychosurgeons or promoters of psychosurgery were psychiatrists” – you would expect psychiatrists to be involved with psychosurgery at some stage because it is a treatment for psychiatric disorders. The first promoters of psychosurgery however were actually neurologists (Moniz and Freeman). Psychiatrists on the other hand were among notable early critics of the procedure (Sobral Cid for example). The contributions of psychiatrists, neurologists and neurosurgeons (as supporters or critics) is an interesting topic but can’t be summed up in a sentence like this. Likewise the question of what psychosurgery developed from is a complex topic and there are debates in the literature which perhaps deserve a mention. Again it cannot be summed up in a couple of sentences and the sentences here (as well as not being supported by the source) don’t altogether make sense. Before the 20th century doctors did have treatments for insanity and harsh treatment isn’t a problem that only occurs in past eras.
This isn’t about an academic dispute. It is about an editor setting up an account to promote the work of one person. I looked through the edits made by LeBassRobespierre, including 2 IP addresses that I think are the same editor, and I couldn’t find an edit (other than perhaps one or two minor ones) that isn’t in some way linked to Miguel Faria. In addition most of the edits are cut-and-paste. Staug73 (talk) 16:24, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
I have however added a bit about role of psychiatrists in promotion of psychosurgery. A major problem with Miguel Faria's article is that he relies almost exclusively on one article (Robison et al) to cover a large part of psychosurgery history. In places he closely paraphrases. LeBassRobespierre thinks that is okay as long as there is a footnote. I am not so sure. I think there comes a point where you should either quote, or at least have an in-text attribution. And, in the spirit of credit where credit is due, if there are two articles of the same type published not too far apart and saying the same thing, I would rather give credit to the authors who said it first. And in some places the Robison et al article is carelessly paraphrased, leading to errors. Staug73 (talk) 18:28, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
Staug73, do you have any ideas about how you could build on what LeBassRobespierre is doing? Perhaps expanding it while leaving in Faria would be appropriate. The thing about Faria's bibliography is that reliable sources aren't required to cite their sources at all, and they commonly don't cite all of their sources (just giving one example is often enough), so the fact that you don't approve of the fact that only one source is cited is kind of irrelevant. (We also don't care about citing the first person; we need it to be verifiable to something that's (at least) good enough, so we don't reject verifiable and appropriate information because the source is good enough but not necessarily the best.)
If there's a dispute about the nature of "some of" its early proponents, then I think that is a good thing to explain. But I'm not sure that Sobral Cid is proof that psychiatrists were opposed to psychosurgery in its early-modern days; if I've got the dates right, Cid was just fourteen years old when the psychiatrist Gottlieb Burckhardt published the results of psychosurgery, as described in the article. (How is it that we don't have an article on José Sobral Cid (see w:pt:José Sobral Cid) yet?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:44, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Staug73 various accusation are false, and invariably assume bad faith on my part for my persistent editing of the two entries he has taken for his own. He has also attacked one of the authors of the articles I cited. I invite you all to visit the two entries Psychosurgery and History of psychosurgery and note that he has taken possession of the two entries, as his private satraps, and will not let anyone else edit. The "cut and paste" he claims, are false; they were cited passages or rewrites; and even if they were true, he could have edited them to everyone's satisfaction and the useful references kept. He cites the same authors over and over and had kept the two entries stale until I began editing. He even perpetuated false claims such as that all of the operations performed by Gottlieb Burckhardt — incidentally a psychiatrist and the first psychosurgeon — were topectomies of the frontal lobes, when in fact, portions of the parietal and temporal lobes were also excised. As far as "the first promoters of psychosurgery," it would have been easy enough to add "and neurologists" to the sentence without a complete deletion, as well as deletion of the reference source. I was trying to link the conditions of mental illness, inadequate care, and unsatisfactory medical ethics as to the development of psychosurgery. It did not develop in a vacuum. I think Faria's 3 part article is essential in this regard and in integrating all of these historic developments to a comprehensive whole. I also attempted to add other sources all of which were deleted. Regarding Staug73's claim "The source given is a chapter in HW Haggard’s The Doctor in History. I don’t think the source supports the statement." Well it does, and if he had been as conscientious as he claims to be about those entries he would have found that Chapter 27 in Haggard's book is about the terrible conditions in which mental patients were treated and the subsequent beneficial reforms of Philippe Pinel in the 18th century, pages, 355-370. This Haggard and Burckardt errors are only two of many examples where Staug73 accuses falsely without checking. As to the alleged mysterious IP adress, I have no need to use any such subterfuge as I'm a signed and committed Wikipedian. Let him show what he think he has! Again, he accuses and attributes "bad faith" without cause. I do sincerely thank you all for your input. LeBassRobespierre (talk) 18:21, 9 June 2014 (UTC)


LeBassRobespierre on your user page your say you have edited extensively the Paul Bucy article. But in the history there is only one (minor) edit by LeBassRobespierre. So I assumed you were Special:Contributions/173.187.98.34. Otherwise what extensive editing did you do on the Paul Bucy page? And this address Special:Contributions/71.30.182.50 added a tag to Psychosurgery, and a long cut and paste about Miguel Faria into Neuroethics with your usual edit summary “Added essential information with references, book and journals”. Not you? If not, apologies. As for cut and paste: You added three sentences to Deep brain stimulation. I have put the text from Miguel Faria's article in brackets after the text from the edits.
DBS of the septal areas of patients with schizophrenia have resulted in enhanced alertness, cooperation, and euphoria. Patients with narcolepsy and psychomotor seizures have also reportedly experienced euphoria and sexual thoughts with self-elicited DBS of the septal areas (Faria: DBS of the septal areas of schizophrenics have resulted in enhanced alertness, cooperation, and pleasurable sensations, even euphoria. Patients with narcolepsy and psychomotor seizures have also reportedly experienced euphoria and sexual thoughts with self-elicited DBS of the septal areas.)
In fact, beneficial results have been documented in the neurosurgical literature, including a few instances in which deeply depressed patients were provided with portable stimulators for self-treatment. (Faria: The beneficial results of DBS in major depression have also been documented in a few instances in which patients were provided with portable stimulators for self-treatment.)
And again you say have extensively edited this article.
Yes Haggard tells the story of Philippe Pinel, and Dorothea Lynde Dix, and Florence Nightingale and Henri Dunant, in this chapter – but what has it got to do with psychosurgery? Staug73 (talk) 19:15, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
PS Perhaps you forgot to log in on occasion? If an editor forgets to log in then the edits will come up as an IP address. Staug73 (talk) 20:04, 9 June 2014 (UTC)


  • You finally got two things correct. Yes I'm 173.187.98.34, and I must have forgotten to log in at those times. No big deal, those are entries I listed in my user page in non-contested entries. And for the first time you also imply good faith! So, as you can see those unsigned edits by me were innocent unsigned posts in uncontested territory. But you did try to lump me with some other IP user who had performed some vandalism, and you are still trying to link me now with some other unknown users, but those other IPs are not me. I did not make those other edits! As far as the chapter in HW Haggard’s The Doctor in History reference, it supports what I wrote: “Treatment in insanity has evaded practitioners from ancient times to the 20th century, as a result the mentally ill have been treated harshly, and in the 18th and 19th centuries mostly committed to crowded hospitals and asylums.” This has already been alluded to as been useful by WhatamIdoing, who correctly writes: "I don't see any good reason to omit this. The source appears to meet plain-vanilla WP:RS (which is all that is required for non-biomedical information like this), Staug appears to admit to its verifiability and accuracy in a back-handed way, and it is not unreasonable or UNDUE to say that this technique was promoted by the experts of the day, rather than by quacks or random physicians who didn't know much about the subject. So I'd include this." You have also gone over an administrator, who suggested that my additions were appropriate. Randykitty wrote, "Much depends on whether you accept Faria's article as a valid source for WP. If it is, then there is nothing wrong with adding it to the articles that you list." As far as the Deep brain stimulation, it still needs work, just as Electrical brain stimulation, which only had one reference when I got to it also needs work. My edits significantly improved those entries as anyone here can witness if they visit. The Faria and other references were essential to improve those articles. Other references are still needed, as the tags in both entries testify. And if my good faith additions needed polish, it could have been very easy for you to make minor edits. We should be here to help Wikipedia, not to start deletion fights. That was the reason I quit editing, after having done quite a bit of useful work in the two months I have been a contributor. LeBassRobespierre (talk) 21:05, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

I see that in the last addition, Staug73 is beginning to backpedal, but not enough. Let him again post completely the alleged sections, which he has been calling "copying," not just a brief phrase but the whole alleged paragraph to the ends, as to include the attributions of the "paraphrased authors," and the numbered references, which are invariably cited (but he purposely omits). I was the source of both the Robison et al and Faria's references, not Staug73. Although the Robison et al and Faria articles cover similar grounds, initially, as histories of psychosurgery, the articles quickly diverge in very different directions. Robison goes on to describe the various stereotactic surgical procedures and technical equpment, whereas Faria covers the basic sciences, specific neuroanatomical lesions, neurophysiology, the limbic system, all of the psychosurgical procedures (effects and results), the problem of violence and mental illness in society (past and present) and ethics, which Robison et al barely covers. It is for that reason only that Faria's articles need citation, in addition to Robison et al, HW Haggard, Mark and Ervin, Jose Delgado, Stephen P. Salloway (The Neuropsychiatry of Limbic and Subcortical Disorders) and a miriad others still not used and cited. Yet I have not been able to add info and edit solely on the opposition of one person!LeBassRobespierre (talk) 18:58, 9 June 2014 (UTC)


Has anyone here (except for LeBassRobespierre) actually read the article by Faria? I wonder if I could ask someone to just read the conclusions here [37] if you scroll down to conclusion. It is only about 700 words so it won't take long. It sums up what the whole article is really about - the author's views on criminals. All else being equal, and there is nothing in the article about psychosurgery that can't be found elsewhere, I think the better source for a Wikipedia medical article - even a history one - is the less political source. There is no particular connection between psychosurgery and violence. There were a few experiments on prisoners in the US in the 1970s but they were abandoned and, as far as I know, there is no-one else advocating their return. It is a very particular interest of this one retired neurosurgeon. Staug73 (talk) 07:48, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
Editorially, I think this series of papers could perhaps be characterized as a set of 'viewpoint articles'. Certainly, in WP terms, they do advance an individual POV. (I believe Wikipedia tries to take account of the different POVs on a topic that are deemed significant, based on policies and guidelines.) 86.181.64.67 (talk) 08:27, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Small question: How can "treatment in insanity" "evade practitioners"? What is "treatment in insanity"? Do you mean "treatment of insanity"? How can "treatment" "evade" someone? It's not an animate (or even inanimate) being or object, and therefore is incapable of evasive manuevers. Do you mean "elude"? Softlavender (talk) 22:51, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, personally, I'd put it in straightforward terms rather than these poetic and metaphoric passive-voice terms. Plus it's not even factual -- we do have, and have had, treatments for insanity. So I'd say what you actually mean, or state the concrete actual facts, rather than striving for some vague poetic wording that no one is really going to fully understand even if it's worded a little better. Softlavender (talk) 23:21, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Non-islet cell tumor induced hypoglycemia

Dear medical experts: This article is up for review at AfC if anyone would like to take a look. —Anne Delong (talk) 19:36, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Although this syndrome is caused by a disparate group of tumours, there does seem to be a single unifying pathogenesis. A literature search does show suitable references. I have added a reference.
Several references already in the draft are primary sources and therefore inappropriate. The draft requires clean-up. However it is a notable topic. Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:55, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for taking time to look at it. I have added a comment on the submission pointing here. —Anne Delong (talk) 18:38, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
Timtrent declined the draft. I asked him about it here. Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:20, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Categorizing BLPs

The proposed expansion of WP:EGRS that has been discussed at Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality#Adding another group of people to this guideline for the last couple of weeks might interest some people here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:47, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I posted before but note again - all these talks are related to a wave of pressure coming from Wikidata to standardize all kinds of classification, perhaps through the new Wikidata games. The games have proven to be a popular way to get people to do mass amounts of sorting and article checking. Discussions like this one are becoming a lot more relevant because suddenly they have tremendous immediate impact through these games. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:46, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Oil pulling

Can someone with medical expertise please have a look at recent additions to the article Oil pulling? Although the additions are referenced, they look dubious to me and seem to rely on sources that are not compliant with WP:MEDRS. Thank you. Deli nk (talk) 16:53, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

WPMED flyer again

Current version?

There appears to be a draft of the free flyer for Wikimania 2014 here. I like the overall look. However, if you click through to read it, the text does not match what was posted. User:EdSaperia might be able to tell us more about the text that he was given for this version. It's gone back to saying that learning is a "right", which a few people objected to, and that "Personal physicians will always be invaluable", which was disliked on multiple grounds. (Nurse practitioners, clinical officers, physician assistants, surgeons, dentists, optometrists, and midwives aren't valuable? And nobody's ever encountered an ineffective physician?)

How can we be sure that the non-discriminatory text that we want is what will actually end up on the flyer? Do we need to write a couple of extra sentences to fill up the space? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:59, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Leaving some space in a publication is generally considered healthy (unless you have in the absence of horror vacui). 86.181.64.67 (talk) 18:34, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
It would be nice to see the text actually reflect the discussion and consensus about it. Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:11, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
Aside from what's being said there (on the back page of the leaflet), the text needs some copyediting. The first sentence seems to be missing a word. The second is too long and contains the word "which" twice. There will probably be participants at Wikimania who are not totally comfortable using/reading the English language, no? --Hordaland (talk) 21:31, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
86.181, I don't mind negative space, but if a designer feels that a piece needs a certain amount of text for visual reasons, I don't mind copyfitting (in either direction). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:10, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
I suspect if the text on the page isn't in sync with what's on the flyer, it's because the text was improved after the graphics were designed. It'll be updated before they go to print. EdSaperia (talk) 14:18, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Category:Toxic metal poisoning

FYI Category:Toxic metal poisoning (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been proposed to be renamed -- 65.94.171.126 (talk) 06:11, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes poisoning is sufficient. One does not need toxic. If it wasn't than it wouldn't be a poisoning. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:20, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Well... it depends on what the cat is supposed to contain. Iron isn't usually considered "a toxic metal", but people (especially children) certainly do get poisoned by eating too much of it. So the correct title depends on whether it's supposed to contain information about poisoning by "toxic metals" (e.g., the six non-radioactive metals listed at Metal toxicity#Toxic metals), or "toxic poisonings" by any metals (e.g., silver). WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:53, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Proposal: Rare disease resources and Template:Infobox disease

Proposal

As there is considerable discussion above I would like to give light to the issue of rarer diseases and the infoboxes. A number of rare diseases lack any links to additional readable material, although there are sources out there with the goal of providing high quality reviewed information.

Two such are:

Operated by the Swedish Socialstyrelse, and is a database of rare diseases with in-depth articles on each entry. This database is well-researched and available in English. Created by a government agency.
(Some of the patient group information is Sweden-centered, but otherwise the information is not nation-specific.)

A European organization with the goal

Orphanet is the reference portal for information on rare diseases and orphan drugs, for all audiences. Orphanet’s aim is to help improve the diagnosis, care and treatment of patients with rare diseases.

Both these resources are non-profits, and both have valuable information that could be used on Wikipedia.
I suggest adding their entries into the Template:Infobox disease

Here is an example article: Aicardi syndrome

Equivalent links:

Thoughts?

-- CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 22:56, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes would be supportive of the idea. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:52, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
I've already "voted" against putting any links in indiscriminately, either in the Info-box or into External Links. But I agree that rare diseases need, as External Links, such resources as you suggest above.
You mention one entitled "Rare disease database". There is another! National Organization for Rare Diseases, NORD, a non-profit organization, also has a
Their abstracts are free and one can see two full reports per day for free. Recommended! --Hordaland (talk) 15:18, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
WP:External links says that you can put external links into an infobox. Sometimes, doing that means that you can get rid of the ==External links== section entirely, which reduces the amount of spam that an article is likely to attract. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:21, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
That's fine with me as long as one can actively choose which link(s) to put there. --Hordaland (talk) 15:49, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
I would be against adding any site that gives limited access to reports in the default template. Adding them as external links is another thing though, and I would be for adding such a section to the infobox. The reason I bring up these sources is because I think they would do well to have linked to by default.
Maybe the infobox links could be split into categorization ELs for pages link ICD & DSM & Orpha.net under one header, and additional information under another for pages like http://www.socialstyrelsen.se/rarediseases/ , www.rarediseases.org and patient.co.uk. ? -- CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 09:19, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Additionally the links could also be split into patient info and professional info links. ? -- CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 15:40, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

What about putting DMOZ in the infobox and getting ride of the EL section most of the time? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:34, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

How about putting DMOZ on the list of banned sites that Wikipedia shouldn't link to? Sorry but this is a cop out: replacing a small set of links that is supposed to be carefully curated according to our WP:EL policy with link to a larger flabby set of links that are out-of-date or link to all sorts of unreliable places. We would do far better by our readers by simply saying "If you want to read more about this topic, Google is your friend" -- and of course, we don't need to say that. We've discussed our infobox external links repeatedly and imo they are the worst example of a Wikiproject forgetting our readers, with all their mysterious numbered hyperlinks and obscure category websites that contain no additional readable information. They encourage unthinking additions of links to pages that fail our WP:EL policy which must be determined per-article and is not determined by any Wikiproject. -- Colin°Talk 07:34, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
I know of some Wikipedians who are looking at creating a DMOZ like sister project. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 07:37, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Until just a couple of days ago, DMOZ was given as a positive example in WP:EL. It will be impossible to get it on the WP:BLACKLIST. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:44, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Another draft that needs some help

Please take a look at Draft:Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Origin (CKDu) it looks to me like it is a notable topic but the draft is not written in an encyclopedic style. Someone familiar with MEDMOS should be able to help the author get it into shape. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:56, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

I agree the topic is notable, and many recent popular press articles necessitate the existence of comprehensive and balanced coverage (there are social controversies which may require non-MED:RS sources). A similar article on Central American CKDu, which did not have a WP:Med banner until yesterday and can benefit from expert review, is Mesoamerican nephropathy. --Animalparty-- (talk) 20:45, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Infobox should have topic titles

While we are talking about the topic of infoboxes, I'd like to ask what the feeling would be about separating content into categories in the 'infobox disease'. This is done in lots of infoboxes, see for example {{Infobox ship begin}} and {{Infobox station}}

We seem to have two types of links in the infoboxes - identifiers, like ICD 9 / 10, which are formal systems that categorise the disease, and further reading, which represent links to other sources. I think categorising them would be useful to readers, as it would give some indication as to what the strange numbers and acronyms mean here (For an example of a completely incomprehensible infobox, see Pseudohypoparathyroidism). Thoughts? --LT910001 (talk) 07:08, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

The question is: Should we add subtopics to the disease infobox?

A collapsible subbox could be used for the identifiers subsection (for an example of an infobox with collapsible subsections, see Testis determining factor) --LT910001 (talk) 08:24, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Support

Oppose

This may improve readability by allowing us to make the 'identifiers' subsection collapsible. --LT910001 (talk) 08:24, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

Currently we have a bunch of identifiers and one "further reading". If we had a second "further reading" item I would be supportive. Maybe we could have a hierarchy of what we link to as a second item?

We already have one really simple item "MedlinePlus". It would be good to have one slightly more complicated item. This could be NCI PDQ if it exist (for colon cancer)[40], patient.co.uk if it does, and emedicine if neither the previous two exist.

We do this for medication related articles. A bot made all the changes a couple of years ago. We could also have the bot move the emedicine links not used in the infobox to the EL section. User:Diptanshu.D would that address your concerns? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 08:09, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Yep. If DD could redirect discussion to the thread above to prevent WP:MULTI I'd be grateful, I was just wondering if we could make some subsections and/or collapse the 'identifiers' section, for readability. --LT910001 (talk) 08:24, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
I would like to see all "further reading" links removed from the infoboxes. Axl ¤ [Talk] 08:27, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Two thoughts:

  • Let us not use the complex and extremely odd {{infobox ship begin}} as a model for anything. It doesn't even work unless you wrap the series of templates inside a wikitext table.
  • Would someone please add a new parameter, |field= or |specialty=, so that I can add actual content to them, namely that Whatever cancer belongs to the medical specialty of oncology? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:23, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
I do not like hidden content. Happy to see the specialty parameter added. One thing to keep in mind is a lot of disease belong to many specialties. Usually not more than two though. Have we put our articles into categories by profession yet? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:48, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
By "hidden", I assume that you mean MOS:COLLAPSEd content. It's generally a bad idea for WP:ACCESS reasons.
We have put some of them into cats by profession. Except for dermatology, probably not most of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:17, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
I have added a modified version of this proposal lower down on this page. Would be glad if you take the discussion ahead from there. DiptanshuTalk 07:47, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Please evaluate a draft at AFC

Draft:Toxicity of preservatives seems to me to contain some rather dodgy claims. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:57, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Delete it please. While the topic is potentially notable, the draft itself is a blatant soapbox. The "references" used are shockingly biased. (There are also a couple of primary studies that are inappropriate.) Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:54, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
Unfortunately there is no suitable Speedy deletion rationale, a MFD nomination is the only way to get rid of it, I don't have the expertise (or time) to argue such a case so it's up to an interested and competent editor here to do so. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:38, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Do we really need the revision history to be deleted? If not, then a bold merge-and-redirect to Preservative#Health issues associated with preservatives (which itself needs some attention) might be useful and efficient. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:47, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
I don't think that there is any salvageable material in the draft. I agree that it would be reasonable to have an "Adverse health effects" section in "Preservative". Axl ¤ [Talk] 09:26, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Vaginal weightlifting article

The Vaginal weightlifting article came to my attention after seeing this edit by Ahriman2014 (talk · contribs) at the Kegel exercise article. Ahriman2014 created the Vaginal weightlifting article, and that article needs attention from WP:MED. Flyer22 (talk) 13:23, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

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