User talk:Drcoop

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Source(s) please
Your statement here should be sourced, in my opinion. These cancer experts should be named and cited to their publications where they disagree. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) 17:24, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Tough day at prostate cancer
Hey there Drcoop, regarding this edit... We have a pretty strong medical guideline WP:MEDRS which indicates that we should be basing medical content on recent review articles or meta-analyses and not individual primary studies. Should not replace a secondary source with a primary study. Can you source the edit you're making to a recent national medical guideline or review article? 19:32, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

your editing at Prostate cancer
I reverted your most recent edit at this page. Even though it did include a secondary source, it also removed a reference to a different secondary source in favor of your primary one. I also felt like the specialty societies' disputes over screening would have a better home in the screening section of the article, or perhaps at the Prostate cancer screening page. Further, the language you use ("multiple other expert reviews") seems to skirt the line of WP:NPOV, particularly in light of some of your other edits. At minimum, these are unnecessary peacock words more in line with PR than with the encyclopedic tone we strive for here. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask, either me directly, or the community of medical article editors over at the Wikiproject Medicine Talk page -- [ UseTheCommandLine  ~/ talk  ] # _  23:08, 4 April 2013 (UTC)


 * You might also take a look at the essay WP:VNT. Your behavior, particularly your assertions of censorship, is frankly a bit troubling. Several other editors, including myself, have attempted to engage you in good faith, and to have that responded to with these kinds of allegations can be upsetting.
 * If your claims that the USPSTF studies are "deeply flawed" are as true as you claim, then it should be a simple matter to provide many independent, secondary sources that say this. I acknowledge that you have brought together some sources that take issue with the USPSTF guidelines, but I have not yet had time to read them to see whether they assert that they are "deeply flawed." -- [ UseTheCommandLine  ~/ talk  ] # _  00:00, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, I guess I owe you an apology for the term, and I understand why it would touch a nerve. It was a reaction to the appearance that only the government panel's opinion can evidently be voiced here. I'm (obviously) frustrated - my plan had been to add some additional citations and references, but the changes I made were being undone literally in minutes, whether I added primary or secondary citations, yet I was the one being accused of "edit wars". This happens to be a topic I spend a good deal of my professional life on, and I have a deep knowledge of the literature on both sides of the debate. If you want me to send you references (primary or secondary--reviews, editorials, guidelines, whatever you want), or post them here on on some other talk page I'm happy to do that too. Again, if you're really seeking to present a fair (or encyclopedic) position (never mind a 'true' one--I did read the VNT article), you need to find some way to allow both sides to be presented. Sorry again, my intent really is not to be inflammatory. Drcoop (talk) 00:20, 5 April 2013 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) Oh, and WP:BRD is also quite relevant. I understand you feel you were making a correction of a statement of fact, but it seems to me like it is not such an acute need (as with, say, potentially libelous statements) that it can circumvent what is the normal or typical editing cycle. My "edit war" comment was perhaps needlessly aggressive, and for that I apologize; I was more trying to avoid such a situation rather than telling you you were engaging it, and more than one change of the same type and material often signals the beginning of an edit war. -- [ UseTheCommandLine  ~/ talk  ] # _  00:24, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

The fact remains there is a distinct bias to the coverage of the topic. I notice you're the one that also deleted my edits to the USPSTF page. I really don't see how my comments about the USPSTF and prostate cancer are any different than those that are on the page currently re: breast cancer. The site includes: "The Vitter amendment to pending legislation in the U.S. Senate instructs insurers to disregard the task force's recommendation against frequent routine mammograms in asymptomatic younger women, and requires them to provide free annual mammograms, even for low-risk women, based on the outdated 2002 report.[15] This proposal is not yet law and may change. The efforts by politicians to reject the committee's scientific findings have been condemned as an example of unwarranted political interference in scientific research.[14]"\ The latter statement clearly smacks of editorializing (merely in the other direction), and the former is no less a "newspaper"-type comment than the proposals in Congress to force changes at the USPSTF. You definitely seem to have your own opinions on this topic... the fact that every change I make is simply deleted is not consistent with my prior experiences on Wikipedia, nor with my understanding of what this project is supposed to be about. I guess I have to ask what you would consider acceptable? Drcoop (talk) 00:30, 5 April 2013 (UTC)


 * (again with the edit conflicts, so this is responding to your previous comment upthread) I very much appreciate your willingness to retract that statement. I understand that this is a contentious issue, and certainly everyone has their own biases. I did make a suggestion on the article talk page, perhaps all this back-and-forth is distracting from that. I can say that from my own interactions with the other editors who also reverted your material it is hard for me to imagine that they are doing anything but what they think is best for this article and for WP in general, rather than having axes to grind. As noted on the article talk page, it is sometimes a lot easier for us to hit "revert" and provide an edit summary, and trust that an editor like yourself will take the input constructively, rather than to get involved inhashing things out more actively. (And there are certainly parallels to the practice of medicine itself there.) Not much to be done about that but try and recruit more active editors, i guess. -- [ UseTheCommandLine  ~/ talk  ] # _  00:34, 5 April 2013 (UTC)


 * In regard to your USPSTF comments, the bill you linked to was again, a primary source, though I did make an assumption that the intent of the bill to specifically address these guidelines was not included there, my experience is that it is not common practice for proposed legislation to call out such things specifically. Probably more to say about that in a minute. -- [ UseTheCommandLine  ~/ talk  ] # _  00:38, 5 April 2013 (UTC)


 * So I see no mention of "prostate" anywhere in the bill. Unless you can cite other, secondary reliable sources that this was the intent, it would be inappropriate to connect this bill to the USPSTF in the "prostate cancer screening" section. Note that the Vitter language cites news and scholarly sources rather than legislation directly about the intent of the bill. -- [ UseTheCommandLine  ~/ talk  ] # _  00:41, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Fine, I put the text / refs (without the editorializing) in the intro section -- flows smoothly from the line w/ the missing reference Drcoop (talk) 00:45, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I guess I'll take another stab at the larger problem of the unbalanced presentation of the problem at a later date... I'm not left a great deal of optimism, frankly, after today, but I know that patients come to wikipedia for fair and objective information, and I feel very strongly that they should have access to it. Drcoop (talk) 00:49, 5 April 2013 (UTC)