User talk:Njmcdaniel/sandbox

I have read the first few sections of the article, and the final section. I have made some edits: I apologise if it is not your wish for me to try to improve the article while it is in your user space: you are able to undo all my edits.

I have two concerns. One is that the article may be too detailed for Wikipedia. Certainly there is a wide range of acceptable lengths for an article. But this one has the greatest ratio of length to importance that I have ever seen.

My other concern is that you appear, throughout the article, to be pushing a point of view. A Wikipedia article on a scientific topic should reflect current accepted knowledge. I get the impression (from what you have written; I know almost nothing of the topic myself) that rather than taking a neutral point of view, you are keen to push the importance of rT3 as an inhibitory enzyme. I would be interested to know how widely this view is held by other experts.

Whether or not your view is the same as that of other experts, I strongly advise you to reduce the use of peacock terms. I have deleted some myself. If they are left in the article, they will give other editors the strong impression that your purpose in creating the article is to push your own point of view, rather than to present a neutral account of the role of rT3. Maproom (talk) 15:47, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

I should have preceded the above by praising how well the article is written. The sections I have read were all perfectly clear to me (I have a biology degree, but no particular knowledge of endocrinology). Maproom (talk) 19:38, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Re your request at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine, I read the draft article and agree with Maproom (I don't have a medical background, but am an ex-geophysicist with some background in general scientific abstracting). It is very well-written - not my territory, but nevertheless perfectly accessible. However, it reads like a paper rather than an encyclopedia article (for instance, in the placement of the summary at the end) - and furthermore, what might be called a 'persuasive paper', one assembling primary sources to argue a particular view.
 * Wikipedia in general doesn't permit what it calls original research and synthesis. In brief, if you say (for instance) "view X used to be the case, now view Y is being increasingly accepted", it's not enough to cite a few papers showing view X, and a few newer ones showing view Y - you need an actual source saying that view X is being superseded by view Y (see particularly Synthesis of published material that advances a position).
 * With medical articles in particular, WP:MEDRS is the crucial guideline, and it stresses the use of secondary sources such as review papers. There's no harm in including important primary sources, but they need to be within a framework supported by verifiable secondary analyses. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 02:01, 8 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I have read the whole article, and investigated selected claims that are both "ordinary" and "extraordinary" and find that this does not follow sources closely. For example, the "Thyroid hormones in the blood" section should be fairly straightforward. It isn't. It makes far to many inferences (e.g. "Though this study didn’t measure reverse T3, its tT4 and tT3 results validate the selection of healthy, normal patients by another group, who did:..."). As for the "Function" (formerly "Overview") section, the functional role of rT3 is not supported in the sources. The claim that multiple pathways prove it functional is speculative. The paper cited lists a variety of pathways starting with sulfation and glucuronidation; these are general pathways (phase II) in drug metabolism. Tylenol is metabolized by those two pathways. Inferring function from multiple pathways is extreme original research, especially since the cited source describes "...the inactive metabolites, reverse triiodothyronine (rT3)...". Although this is well written and extensively referenced, this is not an encyclopedic article from the standpoint of Wikipedia. If I had to guess, this has been rejected by one or two journals for being too speculative, even if a reviewer liked it. Any "academically progressive" article is inappropriate for Wikipedia; the goal is to reflect the scientific consensus. Because Wikipedia has tighter requirement for claims matching sources, I am uncertain if any of this is usable at present.Novangelis (talk) 19:36, 9 July 2013 (UTC)