Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 158

"Fixing refs"
User:Adam Harangozó (NIHR WiR) is "fixing refs"; there are too many errors for me to review and revert. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  17:15, 28 January 2022 (UTC)


 * In that diff, he changed:
 * "CBT and treatment resistant schizophrenia". discover.dc.nihr.ac.uk. 20 November 2018. doi:10.3310/signal-000678. S2CID 239813849. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
 * to
 * "CBT and treatment resistant schizophrenia". NIHR Evidence. 20 November 2018. doi:10.3310/signal-000678. S2CID 239813849. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
 * and removed a pointless URL (it now automatically uses the doi, which won't break the next time they rearrange their website). What errors were introduced? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:41, 29 January 2022 (UTC)


 * @SandyGeorgia: In most of the edits I was changing URLs that pointed to Pubmed to the DOI as that leads to the NIHR Journals article which has more content including a plain-English summary. WP:MEDMOS states: "If and only if the article's full text is freely available online, supply a uniform resource locator (URL) to this text by hyperlinking the article title in the citation. If the full text is freely available on the journal's website and on PubMed Central, prefer to link the former as PubMed central's copy is often a pre-publication draft." In your example the original site I removed (discover.dc.nihr.ac.uk) does not exist anymore. --Adam Harangozó (NIHR WiR) (talk) 12:05, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi, User:Adam Harangozó (NIHR WiR). I posted one brief sample yesterday while I was iPad editing from a hotspot (too long explanation of my editing limitations here) on the assumption that other editors would take a deeper look beyond that one sample.  Unfortunately, that did not happen, or has not yet happened, and since your good-faith edits warrant a fuller explanation, it looks like it will fall to me anyway. I will work on typing that up as soon as I have a free moment from a real computer rather than iPad (later today).  Stay tuned, Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  16:22, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Back now, on real computer, for a fuller explanation. My apologies for the brevity in my initial post, as I was hoping others would take a thorough look and fill in the blanks. Because you are probably setting up to do more editing of this nature, I was hoping you would find more helpful guidance here. Your edits are introducing some helpful and necessary improvements, along with some that could be better. As I indicated on your talk, you will encounter many (most? unsure) medical articles with an established WP:CITEVAR style using this tool, which you may find helpful. Further samples follow.

At Schizophrenia, you made this edit. The poorly cited text pre-dated your edit, but the edit was not an improvement. Before your edit, we have:
 * Schizophrenia
 * In the UK it is recommended as an add-on therapy in the treatment of schizophrenia, but is not supported for use in treatment resistant schizophrenia.

The citations were to 1) a Cochrane review that, as far as I can tell, never mentions current UK guidelines or recommendations (if it does, please point it out; I couldn't find it), and 2) an already incorrectly written citation you were attempting to correct, which should not be used to support this content anyway. It is unclear to me how to best format this source, as it does not appear to be a journal, rather the NIHR website, that is discussing a primary study, apparently done by them (?), but that I cannot find published elsewhere. If the current UK recommendation is a) add-on therapy, that b) is not supported for treatment resistance schizophrenia, the correct citation for this text would be the NICE guidelines (rather than a review that covers the topic generally, and a primary study published on a website). Because schizophrenia (pretends to be, but needs review) a Featured article, it should use best sources. Headbomb has worked on improving the citation as you changed it, but I don't believe we have yet correctly cited the text; here were the problems with your edit: I'm not sure what to make of this, but Headbomb switched it to a cite document (but that allows no access-date), and I moved it back to a cite web (to be able to provide an access date); we need to figure out what it is, but the bigger concern is neither of those sources should be used there anyway; the statement about what current UK recommendations are should be cited to NICE, I believe.
 * 1) Your edit left the source at cite journal, but with an access date; access dates are required on websites, but not journals, and it doesn't appear (?) to be a journal, rather a website.
 * 2) But your edit left a blank website parameter in the template, along with an access date?
 * 3) And added a URL to a DOI, when the DOI is access free.

Examining this edit:
 * Causes and origins of Tourette syndrome


 * 1) It removes the free full text URL at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK338526/pdf/Bookshelf_NBK338526.pdf
 * 2) It removes spaces in the cite template that were intentionally put there to aid editors with poor eyesight (me).   as promised on that less then a few days ago. Please don’t do that; it's not any sort of breach of any guideline, but please realize that they don't need to be removed, and in many cases (like this one), may have been put their intentionally. (If you are using an automated tool that removes them, it would be helpful to know which one that is.)

Examining quickly several other edits, I found more of same, where DOIs were being used in the URL field, replacing free full text links to PMCs; samples:   On most of those kinds of edits, preserving a citation style is less crucial than on featured articles, which must maintain a consistent style, but it may be helpful for you to watch in your regular editing for whether you are editing an FA or GA. FAs have in the upper right corner, and GAs have ; in those cases, one has to be aware to preserve citation style. I hope this is a helpful start, and apologize for yesterday's brevity. Regards, Sandy Georgia (Talk)  19:50, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Continuing


 * There's a few weird things here. First the NIHR is the research arm of the NHS. If they can't be trusted to be accurate wrt to what UK research policy is, no source will ever qualify. Second, the Cochrane review writes "CBT is now recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as an add‐on treatment for people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia." Not sure how that's also not a good enough source.
 * Second is that access date aren't required for any sources that have published dates, not just journals. If a thesis is hosted online, its content won't subsequently change.
 * Whether NIHR Evidence is a website or journal is also rather immaterial, given that its rendered exactly the same way on the page.
 * The removal or addition of whitespace might be annoying, but it's also not an error. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:59, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Adam was using the visual editor, which formats all templates (citation or otherwise) according to the format specified in the template's documentation page. We should consider a site-wide RFC to see whether people would mind changing these template's default formatting. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:32, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Ah, ha; the visual editor again. That has come up wrt other problems on other articles. Headbomb, yes, I indicated that the removal of spaces was not an error; I added it to this discussion as just a few days ago I was asked for a sample, so we could figure out where that was coming from.  On the UK recommendations, thanks for pointing out the actual text; my mistake was to search the text for "UK" and "United Kingdom" rather than "NICE".  It still sounds like we need to split the sentence then, as Jones supports the first half, but not the second. The NIHR page says "NICE 2014 guidelines recommend offering CBT to all people with schizophrenia. This includes people who have persistent psychotic symptoms, those who are withdrawn and also people in remission. The aim is to promote recovery. It is recommended that CBT consist of at least 16 planned sessions." How do we get from Cochrane saying NICE recommends it generally, to a primary study excluding a NICE recommendation for treatment resistant?   Websites need access dates because they can change; is this a published journal study or is it not?  I can't find one. The edits left me unclear on what exactly this source was, and I still am. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  22:05, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Anything with a published date has the published date. If a dated web page article gets updated, so is the date (or with a date addendum in other cases). Access-date can be nice to have, but it's not required. No difference between a journal (with erratas etc...) and a website with post publication updates. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:36, 30 January 2022 (UTC)


 * @SandyGeorgia: I'm still a bit confused if these are errors. 1. At the Scizophrenia example I did not read the source to judge if it fits (it was already there), I've replaced the defunct URL with a DOI. 2. Tourette: I've replaced a pdf with a link to the full text in the official journal. 3. The other DOIs I inserted point to the official journal texts, per the guideline favoring that versus PMC (see above). 4. For errors or differences in style by the visual editor, I'm not the person to turn to. I think access dates are added by the visual editor as well, though I would agree it's not needed for DOIs. 5. I will write an introductory post soon here about my work at the NIHR and I'll explain what the NIHR Evidence website is. 6. I can't help to think that the length of this discussion is a bit disproportionate to the nature of errors in my edits (most of which are not errors). If I would be a beginner editor I would be surely put off by this. Adam Harangozó (NIHR WiR) (talk) 10:10, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, the schizophrenia text was in bad shape before you touched it, so I'm sorry I chose to put that example up here, since that complicated the discussion. I recognize you were only trying to reformat what was already there (which I now know was faulty), but when I first looked, I saw a website mentioning a primary study but formatted as a journal. It was asking for someone to take a deeper look, and my hope was that would happen here, as I was traveling and on an iPad.  My apologies to you for the unnecessary complication. In this series of edits, I have cleaned up some of the issues in that section; please scroll to the bottom to see how I have left it, but I am as yet uncertain if Headbomb and WAID agree with me as to how that source should be presented.  We seem to have a primary study, hosted on the NIHR website (but unpublished in hard print elsewhere?), which disagrees with part of the rest of the sentence regarding NICE guidelines.  So I've added a source for the parts that can be sourced correctly, while separating and tagging the NIHR piece as primary; I've used cite web, as I can't find a journal article, and added an accessdate, as websites aren't enduring. That was messy and not all your fault.   On Tourette's, the link was to a NCBI book; I believe that is an enduring source that is likely to outlive any other source, so does not need to be replaced. If I am mistaken, someone will let me know, but it looks to me as a matter of personal preference rather than error. Yes, many of the other issues seem to be related to the visual editor, unfortunately; another problem complicating that is that most of the how-to pages encourage new editors to use the visual editor, and never mention that most medical content (and almost all FAs) uses citations generated from the Diberri/BogHog tool, and FAs must maintain a consistent citation style.  Yes, this discussion was disproportionate.  The next time I am in a hurry and want others to look in, rather than posting here for help, I will wait until I have time to dialogue directly with the editor; my sincere apologies to you for getting you into several issues that aren't related directly to your edits.  On the other hand, if this is the worst thing that happens to you as a new editor, this is light years ahead of the things that happened to me when I was new, so hopefully things are improving :)  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  12:44, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
 * FAs must maintain a consistent citation style, but I'm not sure that your changes had any effect on the citation style. Readers saw a citation beginning with a linked title and some id numbers before your changes, and they saw a citation beginning with a linked title and some id numbers after your changes.
 * Also, I don't think that Diberri's tool is used as much as it was 10 years ago. Both the 2010 and VisualEditor have built-in tools for expanding PMIDs. (VE can also handle ISBNs, DOIs, PubMedCentral ids, Wikidata's Q ids [if for some reason you just happen to know the Wikidata number for the source you're citing], and plain-text searching for book titles, but people mostly use it for URLs.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:32, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Most FAs use Diberri. Visual editor introduces a lot of gobbledeegook. The question of citation style is informational only, for the benefit of a good-faith new user (I may be repeating myself?). The changes were because of other problems in the same edit.  Whether we have a website-only primary source is unanswered. Have you looked at schizophrenia and do you think it's cited correctly now?  I'd like to not keep exposing a good-faith new editor to the rest of this discussion, so that discussion can continue there, as I clearly erred in bringing it here, and just fixed it myself (I think).  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  18:12, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I think some might also use Citoid. I certainly do. Filling out the citation templates is the most annoying part of Wikipedia article writing by far. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 18:37, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't know that tool (and it probably falls under "old dog, new tricks" for me), but Diberri is a breeze to use, with the added benefit that it returns much cleaner citations than some other tools (by using vancouver-style authors, there is much less gobbledeegook to edit around). I have encountered (I believe because of the visual editor, but I could be wrong) up to 80 parameters of author names (40 authors with first and last), along with outrageous ref names that can add a full line to have to get around while copyediting!  So we can end up with ten times the number of lines in edit mode for the citation than for the text ... that'll encourage new editors to want to dig in. Bst, Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  18:43, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Citoid is in the visual editor. In my experience, outrageously long ref names are usually Diberri.  The visual editor adds extremely short, incomprehensible ones like   or  ; technically, the citoid servce doesn't touch that part of the ref at all.  The RefToolBar autofiller (under the "Cite" tab of the still-popular 2010 wikitext editor) only permits manually created ref names.
 * If you give Diberri a URL to a PubMed item, here's what you get back:
 * If you give the same URL to a PubMed item to the citoid service (in the visual editor), here's what it gives you:
 * If you give the same URL to the PubMed item to the RefToolBar autofiller, here's what you get:
 * The difference in templates is because Diberri always uses cite web if you give it a URL. The citoid service recognizes PubMed's URLs and corrects the template automagically.  The RefToolBar filler makes you choose which of the four you want in advance. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:51, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Nope; diberri lets you name your own ref; I have never had it return a ref like that, and I don't know what settings you are using to get that. You should be typing in a PMID to get a clean cite journal template. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  19:57, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
 * If it needs anything more than an URL it's not good for me. Citoid output has to be rewritten so that it works with sfn, a tool that auto-creates the sfn templates would be cool. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 20:18, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Diberri's tool only handles URLs if you set the dropdown menu to "URL" (the default is PubMedID). If you want to put in the PMID number alone, then you'll get a ref name like , which is also not what most of us want (PMID example, URL example for the same source)  WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:57, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
 * These are the Diberri/Boghog Options:
 * Fill vertically
 * Show extended fields
 * Pad parameter names and values
 * Add ref tag
 * Don't use et al. for author list
 * Omit URL field if DOI field is populated (journals only)
 * Don't strip trailing period from article title
 * Use full journal title
 * Link journal title
 * Add URL (if available)
 * Add access date (if relevant)
 * The default is not to "Add ref tag", which I don't, as I don't want meaningless gobbledeegook cluttering around text I have to edit. I use a standard ref name of AuthorYear (which makes editing much easier, but that's because I know all of my sources and authors quite well). Point being, you can choose a ref tag you understand and like! Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  01:09, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Problem is that the tool picks cite web even for journal articles when I tried with an Elsevier article. Citoid has better judgment. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:37, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Yep; this tool was designed by a physician-editor and works best in medical articles, which rely heavily on PMIDs and med identifiers -- not applicable so much in your area of editing. Bst, Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  16:52, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The default is not to "Add ref tag", which I don't, as I don't want meaningless gobbledeegook cluttering around text I have to edit. I use a standard ref name of AuthorYear (which makes editing much easier, but that's because I know all of my sources and authors quite well). Point being, you can choose a ref tag you understand and like! Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  01:09, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Problem is that the tool picks cite web even for journal articles when I tried with an Elsevier article. Citoid has better judgment. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:37, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Yep; this tool was designed by a physician-editor and works best in medical articles, which rely heavily on PMIDs and med identifiers -- not applicable so much in your area of editing. Bst, Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  16:52, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

You wrote "If it needs anything more than an URL it's not good for me" but the PubMed ID (PMID) is already in the URL and the ID can be used to generate a journal citation. For example, for the URL used above, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32628263/, the PubMed ID (PMID) is 32628263. The PMID is also on the PubMed page. Using the PMID with Diberri

--Whywhenwhohow (talk) 04:04, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

RFC about Vision therapy - is it legitimate medicine or quackery?
Another discussion about the issue has been opened at Talk:Vision therapy/Archive 1. The article is not tagged for this project, which I think is rather odd. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:13, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Mostly quackery, except for the convergence insufficiency stuff. The fraud usually focuses on worried parents and the lure is that their child's learning problems can be magically resolved by buying some or other whacky eye exercise. This is all covered in the article, which gets frequent drive-bys from vision therapist proponents upset with this knowledge being published. Alexbrn (talk) 09:37, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Pilates?
Why is Pilates in WikiProject Medicine (according to a banner at the top of Talk:Pilates)?—Finell 06:31, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Seems okay to me, but you could have a read here which might be of help. CV9933 (talk) 15:34, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Help on Tinea versicolor


Hi, I have Tinea versicolor on my watchlist, and an IP address is trying to add links to an Ayurvedic medicine website. Is there a good explanation of medical reliable sources I could link to on their talk page? Red Fiona (talk) 23:42, 7 February 2022 (UTC)


 * @Redfiona99, thanks for watching that page. This seems to be added as a type of External links, so you could share a link to that page.  You can also ask to have the page semi-protected for a few days. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:42, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Low back pain


Hi, sorry about the repeat post. There is a spinal manipulation and chriopractic care edit suggestion on the talk page of Low back pain that could benefit from a few more sets of eyes.JenOttawa (talk) 18:01, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * If anyone has time feedback still required on the talk page.JenOttawa (talk) 20:44, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I had a look. Overall, I suspect that we are trying to write the lead before writing the body. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:08, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Suggestion
To whoever designed and now maintains the bots that create standard forms of citations in the biomedical and associated articles (and so can alter them):

You should consider a change to the bot that adds a space after the pipes for each field. Absent a change of that sort, multi-author papers present those and subsequent fields as a run-on mass. This makes the markup appear unnecessarily extended by lines of white space, with breaks that only appear where spaces advantitiously appear in the markup or fields. It can look repeatedly like this: {{cite journal|last1=Smith|first1=AB|last2=Jones|first2=CD|last3=Brown|first3=EF... This is not a matter of annoyance with the tech. The extending of the citation parts of the text (with long blocks of white space) means, when editing articles that have lots of sources, each with lots of authors, the text being edited that appears in the viewing field is reduced, so that more scrolling is required to move through the text being edited. (This is like a minor variation on what we have to deal with in articles that use vertical rather than horizontal {{cite... templates.)

Adding a space after each pipe would allow them to wrap more consistently on the screen (ensure that there are no breaks in the citations as they appear in markup), and so allow more text to be visible on screen while editing.

Thank you in advance, for anyone that can make this small change to the programming of the bots that generate these otherwise very nice citations. 98.253.16.20 (talk) 20:44, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * This is a good idea that is unfortunately extremely hard to code for, and runs into various social hurdles. See WP:COSMETICBOT and both WP:BOTDICT and WP:BOTDICT in particular. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:54, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you for these links. The last of them, WP:BOTDICT, makes my case as well, more succinctly, and in better WP-speak. (And it extends it to cover another issue, one I share, that of presenting {{cite template fields in orders that are non-intuitive, which makes filling and checking them for completeness all the harder.) And I understand the WP:COSMETICBOT statement regarding controversy, and would make two points. First, a change to the bot doing the citations now would improve all future citations appearing as a result of its work, and this should not be controversial. Second, creation of a cosmetic bot that adds the space to old bot-generated citations, while potentially controversial, would (assuming proper, thorough testing), be something that could be run a page at a time until it was clear it would not be disruptive (or give unexpected issues). After that, running it broadly would improve the "edit-ability" of all articles with bot-generated citations, for the reasons clearly expressed by WP:BOTDICT. Challenges acknowledged, I think that would be a valuable contribution, and hope it happens despite the potential for the controversy WP:COSMETICBOT describes. [And I can appreciate that it might be hard to write another bot to improve appearances from the past work of citation bots—that there are various challenges in trying to script a thorough, once-through replacement of all {{cite-only pipes with a pipe-and-space (only when the pipe is followed by a non-space character), from prior scripting and scrum management experience.] I hope someone can take on both challenges—changing the current bot, and doing something to improve already existing citations. All the best. 98.253.16.20 (talk) 21:25, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Single spaces are not that difficult to code for. In fact, the code exists.  Just change the settings in Template:Cite journal and the visual editor will "fix" the spacing whenever new citations are added plus whenever any existing ref gets "touched" during an edit (but it won't mass-change all of them on the page, just the ones you engage with).
 * The problem is primarily on the social side. People complain when the diffs are harder to read.
 * TemplateData is a one-size-fits-all system. This change would require a community-wide consensus. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:21, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * The oddest thing about this is that there are bots that go around removing the spaces that some of us intentionally use for eyesight issues. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  03:36, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Gonna put a big fat {{cn}} on that claim. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 07:00, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Because you know the chances of me going back through my gazillion contribs to find the examples, or because you think I'm imagining how many times it happened to me, or because I put up a fuss and (maybe? I dunno) got it stopped when it started so you are no longer aware of it happening? Sandy Georgia (Talk)  07:29, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Because if a bot is doing that, it's malfunctioning, and likely needs to be blocked, or at the very least its operator needs to update the bot's logic. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:21, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * PS, also, it could be a script, rather than a bot ... same effect. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  07:31, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Editors here have basically programmed the visual editor to remove spaces from citation templates, so it would be surprising if we never saw this happening. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:21, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I will ping both of you when I next see it, but there is no chance of me being able to locate it in my contribs; I know I have lodged complaints, since I intentionally enter spaces in citation templates per my eyesight. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  18:44, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I have asked about changing the settings for the visual editor at Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 82. Realistically, I don't expect anyone to mind. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:14, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Discussion about autism-related page moves
Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Autism WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:05, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

CfD about psych diagnostic tests
Hey, there's a discussion at CfD that needs some attention. It's about renaming the categories for psych diagnostic tests. --Xurizuri (talk) 14:35, 9 February 2022 (UTC)


 * give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 03:39, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Valproate as a performance-enhancing drug
Absolute pitch contains, in the lede, some apparently dodgily-sourced claims about valproate and sound- and language-learning skills, as does the drug article and quite possibly some other articles on-wiki. There may be better sources on the topic (this one is the best I found, with a broader view of plasticity), but this is obviously likely to be a popular subject and will likely require some keeping an eye upon until there's much better data. HLHJ (talk) 18:31, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Good point. I edited the sentence you mentioned (diff). Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 00:27, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

More eyes needed at Zero-COVID article
If anyone is interested we are looking for more input. Talk:Zero-COVID..... simply looking for more experience editors to take part and try to understand what's the POV problem if any.-- Moxy - 16:51, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Medical-related Biography of Living Person
I am one of only a few editors actively working on the BLP of Martin Kulldorff, one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. Because Kulldorff is a controversial figure, involved with a controversial topic, in a politicized pandemic, it is difficult to wade through all of the wiki rules involved (BLP, MEDRS, etc...) and maintain a neutral article that is fair to the subject (Kulldorff) and the mainstream views of some of his ideas.

Sourcing is one of the key areas of contention between the current group of editors. Most recently we have been discussing a statement placed in the lead of the biography:

"In 2020, Kulldorff was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated lifting COVID-19 restrictions on lower-risk groups with the impossible aim of keeping vulnerable people safe from the virus."

I contend that the clause "impossible aim of keeping vulnerable people safe from the virus" is WP:BMI because the statement is;

"...information that relates to (or could reasonably be perceived as relating to) human health" and specifically, it qualifies as "Population data and epidemiology."

Is that a correct interpretation of BMI in this context?

This is also my first BLP to edit and the first time I've waded into articles pertaining to medicine—so thank you in advance for your comments and patience!

Michael.C.Wright (talk) 23:18, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The "Great Barrington Declaration" (GBD) Is a WP:FRINGE eugenics-adjacent political text which has been roundly condemned by scientists. Of course it relates to human health so by a strict reading of BMI (which is not a WP:PAG but intended to help) none of the concepts in the GBD could even be mentioned in Wikipedia without a MEDRS source. There is a desire to mention the GBD at the Martin Kulldorff article and in particular its WP:FRINGE goal of "protecting the vulnerable" while letting COVID-19 rip through the rest of the population. As Robert Lechler wrote, this very idea is "unethical and simply not possible".
 * To present the GBD as some kind of valid respectable scientific alternative would be to fall afoul of WP:GEVAL and WP:PSCI (both parts of NPOV, which is core policy). Therefore, if its precepts are mentioned they must be called out, and for this purpose a source of WP:PARITY may be used, since the GBD is obviously not MEDRS itself. It doesn't really matter which source is used for calling-out purposes, but yes Science-Based Medicine is a viable choice. Another option is not to mention the idea behind the GBD at all in Kulldorff's article, because then they wouldn't need to be qualified.
 * The situation is analogous to many other types of fringe medicine where there is a nonsense concept (drinking diluted bleach to cure cancer) not commented on in MEDRS sources. In such cases WP:PARITY of sourcing allows Wikipedia to find some knowledge to reflect. Alexbrn (talk) 02:33, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I did not post here to rehash or revisit the discussion already ongoing on the appropriate talk page and I don't think it is constructive to do so (we need to keep that discussion centralized).
 * Rather, I am seeking an answer to the question above, which is simply; Is the statement BMI or not. I believe hope this is an appropriate forum to discuss that.
 * Michael.C.Wright (talk) 02:59, 9 February 2022 (UTC); edited 03:11, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
 * @Michael.C.Wright, that's a complex sentence. The first clause, "In 2020, Kulldorff was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration", is definitely not biomedical information.  The second (that the document advocated for something) is probably not biomedical information.  If it were, then you couldn't write sentences like "He believed the cancer was caused by a lack of sleep" without first proving that there was scientific evidence that his belief was correct.
 * I assume you think that this description is unfair, i.e., that it would somehow be possible to remove public health restrictions from low-risk people without any of those low-risk people spreading the virus to the high-risk people in their households, at their workplaces, in the store, etc. Since we haven't been able to do this even with various restrictions (such as banning infected people from attending events, going to the store, etc.), I'm not sure why any rational person would think that it would be possible with no restrictions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:25, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
 * , thank you for the reply.
 * I agree that the first clause is not BMI. I am not, however, claiming unfairness of the second statement, nor am I arguing anything related to my personal opinion of how to control the virus.
 * My contention is with Gorski's statement that is used to support the clause in question:
 * I contend that Gorski's statement—and by extension the clause inserted in the BLP—is BMI regardless of my feelings for it, for the GB Declaration, or Kulldorff himself. It is a statement regarding epidemiology and that qualifies it as WP:BMI. As BMI, it must comply with WP:MEDRS, which requires "third-party published secondary sources" such as "academic and professional books written by experts in the relevant fields." Gorski does not cite any sources for the statement and he is not an expert in the relevant field of epidemiology.
 * David Gorski is an oncologist specializing in breast cancer surgery. He is not an expert in epidemiology. Therefore his statement should not be used as supporting evidence for this clause in the wiki article.
 * I contend that if there is a WP:MEDRS-compliant source to support the clause "...with the impossible aim of keeping vulnerable people safe from the virus" then it should be used instead of the SBM article or the clause should be removed immediately as contentious material per WP:BLP: "Contentious material about living persons (or, in some cases, recently deceased) that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion."
 * To illustrate that I am not editing with a specific POV, I'll tell you that I recently proposed this statement in the talk page as a way to avoid the use of BMI:
 * "In 2020, Kulldorff was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated lifting COVID-19 restrictions on lower-risk groups while adopting measures to protect the most vulnerable. The Great Barrington Declaration has been characterized as "fringe epidemiology" and not mainstream science."
 * And again, my goal here is simply to determine if there is consensus that the clause is BMI. It should not matter what my opinion is on its fairness nor should it matter what others believe my motives to be. Gorski's statement can be evaluated on its own, in the context of the applicable wiki policies.
 * Michael.C.Wright (talk) 04:08, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
 * By your ingeniously strict reading of BMI you'd need a MEDRS source to invoke the concept of "measures to protect the most vulnerable" - and this is the nub of it, since this concept is like the famed "no-pee lane in a swimming pool". It's logical nonsense, multiple scientists have said so, and Wikipedia needs to reflect that. If however you can find a stronger source that Gorski or Lechler that would be fine too. What we cannot do is air bogus ideas in article space as though they were legitimate because of WP:NPOV, which is core policy and non-negotiable . Alexbrn (talk) 04:50, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I'd be careful with the assertion that it is logical nonsense rather than empirically nonsense, particularly as we move from a pandemic phase to an endemic phase. If you look at the long-standing policy for chicken pox in the UK, for example, this is precisely one of allowing spread amongst the young - with the intention of building immunity - while shielding the vulnerable (with vaccinations for them and their family). Chicken pox is not COVID: it is endemic, immunity is potentially more "sterilizing", and we have the opportunity to have people acquire immunity in their childhood, but argument of the logical impossibility of immunity would have to distinguish this policy or assert that the decision making for a good 30 years in the UK was not just wrong but logically absurd. Endemicity and sterlizing immunity and the existence of a vaccine, seem like good distinctions, but COVID appears to be reaching endemicity and vaccines now exist. Similar arguments apply to how flu vaccines are used, though I am less convinced that the policy of herd immunity through infection is as deliberate in this case. We should not allow accurate biases from the beginning of the pandemic to prevent us from accurately following the literature towards its end. Talpedia (talk) 13:14, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
 * About 20 kids in the UK die every year from chickenpox, and hundreds end up in the hospital, some with lifelong disability as a result. Widespread vaccination would prevent about 90% of those deaths, plus about 90% of the hospitalizations for complications.  Maintaining a policy that results in ~18 unnecessary pediatric deaths every year is not what I would call "shielding the vulnerable".
 * There are complexities: chickenpox vaccines probably do result in a small-to-medium-size increase in shingles risk among older adults.  Flu vaccines in kids prevent primarily their grandparents' deaths rather than their own.  Those preventable deaths might turn out to be the right choice (although I tend to doubt it).  What I object to is adopting a policy that is known to result in more severe illness and more deaths among vulnerable people while pretending that the policy is protecting them.  If the correct tradeoff is an extra 18 little graves each year, then the policy maker needs to own those costs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:28, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
 * WhatamIdoing, I think your figures are a little high. This paper (which isn't very recent) shows around 20 deaths but only a few of those were children. The risk of increased shingles cases can be offset somewhat by a shingles vaccination program (UK already offers this age 70+ but that could be extended) and will only last for as long as there are people alive who caught chickenpox. There is another risk, though, which is to shift the age at which one gets chickenpox from infancy to adulthood. Then it is a much more serious disease and potential hazard for a baby if the mother catches it while pregnant. This paper seems to offer an up-to-date review. It says "if vaccination coverage is maintained between 30% and 70% for a long time, the shift in the age of infection can lead to an increase in morbidity and mortality in high-income countries" and later "in countries where varicella represents a major public health problem, WHO recommends taking into consideration the introduction in pediatric immunization programs, provided that at least an 80% coverage rate is achieved." So the challenge then is to get it combined with other vaccines and accepted as part of the routine program with very high take-up. If one only got a 60% take-up, say, then that's a lot of people catching chickenpox as adults, and that's no fun at all. -- Colin°Talk 20:16, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I took that number from a news source, which says "hundreds of children are badly affected every year in the UK, with around 20 deaths". This matches other recent lay sources, e.g., "We know that up to 20 - often previously healthy - children every year die from chickenpox in the UK," explains Professor Judy Breuer, professor of virology and head of Division of Infection and Immunity at UCL. "In addition, a significant number will get really severe secondary skin infections like streptococcus which, in rare cases, can cause the flesh-eating necrotising fasciitis."  However, it does not match this recent source, which is limited to England and Wales (so missing ~11% of the UK's population, I think?). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:21, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
 * That first quote could be read ambiguously: are the 20 deaths in children? I wonder if there's been an assumption that chickenpox is a childhood disease, and the overall death figure has been assumed to be for children. But then, your other quote is from a professor of virology and I'm just a random person on the internet, so a bit rude of me to suggest they are wrong. The ONS figures go by the ICD code on death certificate. Possibly this is missing cases where chickenpox is a complicating factor in a death? It would be more comforting if the vaccine wasn't a live virus with a very small risk of reactivating as shingles. While that does seem to be mainly a problem for children with leukaemia, it is yet another factor that could discourage vaccination. I wonder if the "I prefer to get my immunity naturally" meme that has taken hold during Covid is a problem for any chickenpox vaccination programme? -- Colin°Talk 15:20, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * When the chickenpox vaccine was new in the US, I heard third-hand about mothers (it always seemed to be mothers, not fathers) wondering whether natural immunity was better. I have not heard that for maybe 20 years now.  I think it might take a couple of years for people to adjust their expectations.  Pre-vaccine, I think parents expected to spend a week or two dealing with a miserable, scabby, itchy, feverish child (and then for the other kids in the house to fall sick just about the time the first one is recovering).  It was just inevitable.  After the vaccine became normal (it's been mandated here, for any child over the age of 1, in childcare or school for so long that the first toddlers vaccinated under the mandate are old enough to have their own children now), I think parents expect to not experience chickenpox.  There were just a couple of years in between, during the transition, when I heard people talking about it.  The uptake is very high now.  In California, about 98% of five year olds met the vaccination requirements for chickenpox (that figure is pre-pandemic and includes medically documented evidence of immunity), which was the highest rate of any vaccine. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:25, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Is it MMRV? Combined with MMR? If so, that's impressive figures for all those diseases. Our MMR stats are just below the 95% target. We don't generally do vaccine mandates in the UK (the Covid one for NHS staff looks like it is about to be repealed, but too late for the care workers who already lost their jobs). -- Colin°Talk 20:44, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * MMRV seems to be a popular choice, but I believe it's possible to get each thing separately. The measles vaccination rate is almost as high.
 * The mandate seems to work: either your child is vaccinated, or your child doesn't go to school (or daycare).  If you have a sufficiently good reason (e.g., leukemia), then your child can go to school, but you have to get a doctor to sign off on that reason.  Merely requiring the parents to schedule a doctor's appointment and get a signed form seems to have substantially reduced the number of claimed exemptions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:41, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
 * "It's impossible to stop the virus" is probably biomedical information. "This declaration said it would do the impossible" is primarily a statement about the document's contents, not about whether this is actually impossible.  But if you are that concerned about it, then there is a simple solution.  The same source quotes an epidemiologist who calls it "ridiculous" instead.  Maybe slightly re-write it?  "They advocated lifting COVID-19 restrictions on lower-risk groups, with the ridiculous belief that it would then be possible to keep vulnerable people safe from the virus."
 * The bottom line is that there is no way to make this sound sensible while accurately describing it. They proposed an approach that was guaranteed to result in the preventable deaths of vulnerable people.  It's one thing to say "My individual right to spread germs is more important than anything else, and anyway, I'm not my brother's keeper, so I don't care who dies as long as nobody's bossing me around".  Or they could have pointed out that there are formulas for comparing different types of harms, and that they guessed that the balance was in the wrong direction, so someone should do the research and figure out if it was time to worry more about things like the mental health of teenagers and young adults than about the ability of their elders to stay alive.  But that's not what they did.  Instead, they tried to pretend that people could spread even more germs than they already were, and that some unspecified program or power would somehow keep the virus from killing vulnerable people.  This is ridiculous, and impossible, and stupid.  Or perhaps it's absolutely brilliant, if you're assessing it purely in PR terms instead of looking at whether it's a rational and self-consistent proposal.  Tell people what they want to hear, and don't worry about whether it's true. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:27, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Well said, — Paleo Neonate  – 08:28, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
 * yep--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:45, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
 * yep--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:45, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Any other comments?
, thank you again for your additional comments.

I think we are getting closer to a consensus here that the statement is probably BMI and given that it's for a BLP we should be extra cautious and get it right.

It would be extremely helpful to get additional comments on this question, especially from more editors with strong experience in medical BLPs as well as editors with expertise in medical matters, especially COVID-19, as I am new to editing BLPs and medicine-related pages and the politics of the issue are making things difficult.

Michael.C.Wright (talk) 08:49, 10 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Do you really believe that the discussion is trending towards a consensus that this description of the document is probably BMI?
 * I see four editors (including you) in that discussion. One of them is Alex, who doesn't think it's BMI.  Another is Alexander Davronov, who writes under a subsection heading ===Not BMI=== that it "doesn't require WP:MEDRS".  The third is @Llll5032, who wants to make the sentence clearer "without changing the content/balance significantly".  The only person in the discussion who is openly advocating for treating the description of the document as biomedical information is you.  In fact, it looks to me like pretty united opposition to your proposal.  Which comment in the discussion makes you think anyone else is agreeing with you on that point?   WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:24, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm not referring to the description of the document.
 * The discussion at the talk page lost the plot and that's why I came here; in hopes that this group could disconnect the politics of "but muh rights" vs "the pandemic of the sullied" and we could evaluate the statement made on SBM. That was the original post here and that was the original post at Kulldorff's talk page. In no way did I conceal, obscure, or misrepresent the full context of the discussion being had there.
 * In both discussions (the talk page and here), people have retreated to their camps, signaled to their teams and have taken an ideological stance by assuming editors' intent before evaluating the quality of a source, as if to say 'before I decide if this is BMI, how are you going to use that decision?'
 * The heading "Not BMI" was placed there by me to organize the discussion. Below that heading you can see that I was seeking to understand why AXONOV thinks it is not BMI. They have since clarified their position and said the clause likely needs to conform to WP:MEDRS or should be clearly attributed to Gorski using "alleged." I have no problem with either of those solutions.
 * I said "I think we are getting closer to a consensus here that the statement is probably BMI..." The word "here" meant in this discussion, in which you have said:
 * If the opinion " ...it’s impossible to protect the vulnerable from a virus that’s rapidly spreading among the entire population..." is shared by many scientists, as User:Alexbrn asserts, it should be easy to get a solid, third-party published secondary source that quotes an expert in the relevant field making the claim. Doing that will solve this problem.
 * And to restate the problem; an Oncologist who specializes in breast cancer is not an expert in the relevant field of epidemiology and therefore to conform with WP:MEDRS the source should not be used as it currently is.
 * Michael.C.Wright (talk) 23:37, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Well Gorski specializes in quackery, grift and pseudomedicine so is perfect to comment on the GBD. Your mistake is to think this is some kind of legitimate epidemiology which requires a weighty rebuttal. No. This is the whole point of WP:PARITY for fringe material. Alexbrn (talk) 06:46, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I think there's also a problem with assuming that "the document proposes something impossible" is the same as writing "it's impossible". What's in the article is an accurate description of the document's contents, rather than a description of COVID. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:09, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
 * There are two important points we should be focusing on to determine the right course of action:
 * 1. Writing with neutrality and an impartial tone mean wiki contributors don't make judgements on what is accurate. Rather, we describe a dispute.
 * 2. Gorski is clearly writing "it's impossible." That is a direct quote, which is a statement about epidemiology that he is attributing to unnamed "epidemiologists and public health scientists."
 * I am disputing the "source-ability" of Gorski's statement, not the accuracy of his statement. Because he made a statement that likely amounts to BMI, it carries different sourcing requirements by Wiki policy. One way to avoid that is to state the fact that Gorski said it. To paraphrase an example; 'Kulldorff co-authored the GBD and Gorski says its goals are impossible.' That form is neutral and impartial and not something I would dispute.
 * I sound like a broken record at this point but I am not disputing that the GBD represents a fringe and controversial position. I am also not disputing that if contributors mention the GBD they should not give it undue weight, as it is a fringe and controversial position.
 * I am not an epidemiologist. Therefore I can not judge the accuracy of a claim about epidemiology. I can judge the accuracy of whether Gorski made the claim or not. That subtle difference is what writing with neutrality is all about.
 * Michael.C.Wright (talk) 23:56, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
 * "We describe a dispute" But it's not even a legitimate scientific dispute (WP:GEVAL matters). — Paleo  Neonate  – 07:04, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Our reliable sources are not required to have reliable sources to back up their contents. See Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/FAQ.   WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:53, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Michael.C.Wright (talk) 23:56, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
 * "We describe a dispute" But it's not even a legitimate scientific dispute (WP:GEVAL matters). — Paleo  Neonate  – 07:04, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Our reliable sources are not required to have reliable sources to back up their contents. See Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/FAQ.   WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:53, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Unrelated to potential BMI

 * A key problem here is that your arguments are based on the idea that there is a "dispute" about the GBD. The principal aim of the GBD (as with climate denial) was to create the fake narrative that there is such a dispute, that there are "two camps" of scientists when in reality there are not. As with climate denial this then gives those with certain interests a talking point for their campaigns. By taking the line you're taking you are acting as a champion of the GBD, because there is no dispute. The GBD is based on a vague false promise that has been dismissed by scientists. We don't need a super-strong source to refute such nonsense but as it happens (and you keep ignoring this point) Science-Based Medicine is an excellent source for fringe medicine, grift and pseudoscience of which the GBD is a quintessential example. I have no objection if you want to add more sourcing, but what we are not going to do is mention the GBD without pointing out that it's bullshit (whatever source is used), because that is core policy. Alexbrn (talk) 03:28, 12 February 2022 (UTC)


 * In the interest of staying focused on this specific discussion (regarding potential BMI), I think it would be better if you move your comment above (dated 03:28, 12 February 2022 (UTC)) to the Kulldorff talk page, as it does not address the question of BMI at all. That way we can remain focused on the topic here and not further devolve into even greater confusion as to what is the question we're trying to answer.


 * Once you do so, I'll clean up (remove) this new section.


 * Michael.C.Wright (talk) 05:26, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * No, because it is relevant. A problem is that you don't see that. The GBD's "goals" are not biomedical information so their rebuttal isn't either, it's just an application of Hitchen's razor to nonsense. This whole discussion about BMI is a canard, especially when we have core policy that cannot be wikilawyered away. Alexbrn (talk) 06:52, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * For clarity, I will re-state what I understand you to be saying.
 * You are asserting that because the GBD is fringe, contributors need not abide by the core policy of neutrality when describing fringe antithesis or the mainstream thesis. And anything used to counter fringe is also not governed by any wiki policies because...fringe.
 * Is that a fair assessment of your position?
 * And to make sure you are aware, this invitation will remain open unless you explicitly decline.
 * Michael.C.Wright (talk) 08:00, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't think I needed to "assert" the GBD is WP:FRINGE, because that is surely a given which nobody will dispute (unless you do?). It's not an "antithesis/thesis" situation because that would be a classic violation of WP:GEVAL. Scientifically, the GBD presents no "thesis": it is just political nonsense which has been dismissed/condemned by all sane scientific sources (there's a reason why it was done as a PR stunt and not published in the scientific literature). It precisely because of this that we must apply NPOV and make sure it is prominently described as the BS it is. Alexbrn (talk) 08:09, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * About "because the GBD is fringe, contributors need not abide by the core policy of neutrality when describing fringe": No.  Whenever a subject (GBD in this case, but anything) is fringe-y, contributors must abide by the core policy of neutrality, which requires articles to describe nonsense as being nonsense.
 * One of the common misunderstandings of NPOV is thinking that "neutral" means the Wikipedia article shouldn't take sides. That is, people think that the Wikipedia article must sound like it has no opinion.  This is wrong.  Instead, the NPOV policy defines a neutral article as one that accurately represents the views of reliable sources.  If reliable sources are using words like "impossible" and "ridiculous" to describe something, then a neutral Wikipedia article also uses words like "impossible" and "ridiculous" to describe it.  This is true regardless of subject matter.  We write about "ridiculous" children's stories and "impossible" optical illusions, just as much as we write about  "ridiculous and impossible" assertions.  It looks like 1300 existing Wikipedia articles use both of those words. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:49, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The policy of neutrality requires due weight and for editors to describe the dispute, not engage in the dispute. Specifically:
 * "An explanation of how scientists have reacted to pseudoscientific theories should be prominently included." [emphasis added]
 * The example provided in Wikipedia's established pseudoscience guidelines is Stanley Meyer's water fuel cell
 * The key statement that makes the above neutral is "Meyer's claims about his "Water Fuel Cell" and the car that it powered were found to be fraudulent by an Ohio court in 1996."
 * A biased version would be similar to this:
 * "The water fuel cell is a technical design of a "perpetual motion machine" created by American Stanley Allen Meyer (August 24, 1940 – March 20, 1998). Meyer claimed that an automobile retrofitted with the device could use water as fuel instead of gasoline. Anyone selling a water fuel cell is a fraud."
 * The change in the last sentence is what makes the second version biased and the first version neutral.
 * Michael.C.Wright (talk) 22:59, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
 * There is no scientific dispute on this point. Therefore, there is no dispute to describe.
 * There is a scientific and a philosophical dispute about whether to value the lives of vulnerable people more than the non-fatal harms of other people. There is no actual scientific dispute about whether highly contagious diseases will spread from the "healthy" people to their "vulnerable" household members. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:09, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * To write neutrally on Wiki, contributors describe the dispute rather than to engage in it. For me, understanding that point clicked when I read part of the WP:NPOV/FAQ; the section titled Writing for the opponent, specifically this:
 * "The great thing about NPOV is that you aren't claiming anything, except to say, "So-and-so argues that ____________, and therefore, ___________." This can be done with a straight face, with no moral compunctions, because you are attributing the claim to someone else. Even in the most contentious debates, when scholars are trying to prove a point, they include counter-arguments, at the least so that they can explain why the counter-arguments fail."
 * "The great thing about NPOV is that you aren't claiming anything, except to say, "So-and-so argues that ____________, and therefore, ___________." This can be done with a straight face, with no moral compunctions, because you are attributing the claim to someone else. Even in the most contentious debates, when scholars are trying to prove a point, they include counter-arguments, at the least so that they can explain why the counter-arguments fail."


 * When one writes with NPOV, they don't have to defend either position. But defending positions is what is going on largely in these debates we're having in the talk pages; one side thinks the GBD is so bunk that it requires very little to debunk and the other side thinks there is a serious debate worth having and it should happen on Wiki.
 * When in fact neither side is absolutely correct. Both sides should be documenting the dispute that is happening outside of wiki. In the case of Kulldorff, editors should be describing the dispute between his fringe/alt opinions and the mainstream opinions. Whether he is right or wrong is not for wiki editors to decide.
 * When a wiki editor writes "it is impossible to protect the vulnerable" they are writing it as a statement of fact and are then forced to support it with citations that prove "it is impossible to protect the vulnerable." That is much harder to do than to prove that "Gorski said "it is impossible to protect the vulnerable.""
 * Michael.C.Wright (talk) 22:59, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

←

Reframing the discussion
I think et al. miss certain features of the debate in the summaries above. What is called into question is whether it is possible in societies (either high or middle/low income, or democracies with legal certainty - or not/without) to implement strong enough measures that they are effective in hindering spread to such a degree that it will lead to fewer deaths in the longer term. The declaration writers assert that it is not, which as a statement can certainly be called into question. We should however remember that the declaration was published before the WHO or any country (apart from China and Russia) had authorized vaccines - and presented a question for which there was/is no answer.

We may assert that the declaration is viewed as marginal by the broader community, but that does not mean that all criticism goes - as some critics are also quite marginal, including for instance some that espouse zero Covid. It seems to me wholly inappropriate to reference self-published site Science-Based Medicine as prominently as is suggested above, not only as there is an issue with application of WP:MEDRS/WP:BMI - but also as per WP:WEIGHT. There is far more reliable criticism, and GBD is not unequivocally considered fringe in all medical literature (even in literature that criticizes it, e.g. PMC8266426), as some of the other phenomena that Gorski often criticizes are. This goes also for what suggests, when he cites an opinion piece (well-published enough in the BMJ) from Gorski as absolute evidence that there "is no dispute". It is still an opinion piece and does not account for a full refutation - and is nothing near as strong as those sources used to define or refute climate change denialism.

There are quite a few personal views and some off-topic discussion above, which probably doesn't belong - as the question at hand is how we should summarize the debate, not what we personally consider moral about deaths from chicken-pox or other infectious disease.

What is important to remember is that while the declaration may be politically marginal, the sources necessary to refute scientific statements or assertions made in it are not the same as those which express political views of it. Semmelweis was considered fringe by his contemporaries - and a thought experiment would be to consider how we would have summarized the scientific literature upon his assertions. Would there "be no dispute", or would we be better off by stating that the scientific consensus does not support his assertions?

There is also the entire topic of the Swedish, Japanese, and Korean voluntary and no-general-lockdown responses, and the Ugandan total societal closure with curfews and closed schooled for 2 years, versus the Tanzanian "Covid doesn't exist"-approaches that place on either extreme of the scale. At least the former three should under no circumstances be considered "solely fringe" or "non-debatable". A broader perspective may be useful if we are to target neutrality and not just a narrow summary of the situation in high-income anglocentric nations. Distrait cognizance (talk) 08:30, 12 February 2022 (UTC)


 * The above is more typical uncertainty narrative, something we call "false balance" on Wikipedia (WP:GEVAL). The following includes more mainstream news that are not WP:MEDRS but are generally reliable secondary sources that can be used per WP:PARITY to confirm that the declaration is not considered a serious proposal.  These were very easy to find, among first Google search results.  Its concept of herd immunity is considered unrealistic and was long recognized to only potentially be possible in some areas after massive vaccination.  Another issue is that while youth is generally less vulnerable to severe disease, they easily transmit it back home to parents.  To not transmit it to the elderly would mean keeping them in isolation, including from the family.  Lastly, some measures are required when the health system is overloaded and in general practice, these are relaxed as soon as possible.
 * https://www.alberta.ca/herd-immunity-and-the-great-barrington-declaration.aspx "the inaccurate assertion that if we segregate the old and the young, and let the young live 'normally', potentially getting infected along the way but not passing the virus to older people, herd immunity could be achieved with few costs in health related to COVID."
 * https://www.thelancet.com/article/S2213-2600%2820%2930555-5/fulltext Rather early 2020, but: "restrictions to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2 as 'essential to reduce mortality, prevent health-care services from being overwhelmed, and buy time to set up pandemic response systems to suppress transmission'.", "No-one is suggesting that lockdowns should be the default position. They are a last resort. But if we just let the virus run free without mitigation strategies, such as masking, our hospitals will overflow and that would mean we would no longer be able to take care of the population's health across the board"
 * https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/latest-call-for-herd-immunity-draws-scorn-from-public-health-experts-1.5137679 "It has been estimated that achieving herd immunity in the United States would mean two million deaths from COVID-19.", "The World Health Organization and most major nations' public health leaders have said that a combination of individual prevention, widespread testing and contact tracing, and harsher lockdown-like measures when and where community spread is rampant make for a better approach to combating COVID-19 than letting the virus run rampant in an attempt to build up mass immunity.", "Opposition has come primarily from scientists and public health experts. Gregg Gonsalves, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Public Health, described the declaration as 'wrong in so many ways' in a tweet thread, arguing that it would essentially kick the elderly, the immunocompromised and those living with disabilities out of society.", "'There are countries who are managing the pandemic relatively well, including South Korea and New Zealand, and their strategies do not include simply letting the virus run wild whilst hoping that the asthmatic community and the elderly can find somewhere to hide for 12 months,' he said. 'Ultimately, the Barrington Declaration is based on principles that are dangerous to national and global public health.'"
 * — Paleo Neonate  – 13:11, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * - That is anti-scientific drivel. To dismiss discussion as an "uncertainty narrative" is to dismiss even discussion as fringe of the policies of multiple high-income democratic nations (Japan, Korea, Sweden, now also Denmark and Norway, and the UK). With your mock-schooling on false equivalencies you return to what is not at debate, (no one is calling into question that the declaration was and remains politically marginal).
 * The science of how effective severe restrictions (especially lockdowns) are - is extremely uncertain, and that is not a narrative - and is not refuted by mainstream-media googled sources or Gorski's opinion pieces.
 * That said, I'm not suggesting we refer to the horrible Krieger School/Johns Hopkins pseudo-metaanalysis (which has also been all over the mainstream media).
 * What I'm saying is that for the sake of neutrality - we need to keep track of what the scientific questions are, and be clear about where uncertainties lie. To dismiss uncertainty as false equivalence is a typical prosecutor's fallacy. Distrait cognizance (talk) 16:15, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * There's no need to ping me. You're mistaken, epidemiologists have more and more statistics and have improved their models since the beginning of the pandemic, nothing recent has indicated that this discredited idea would suddenly become a legitimate public health strategy.  Waves have come back, measures have demonstrated their effect on them, world statistics have shown the difference between cities in the world in relation to their approach, etc.  Science is not an opinion poll...  As for WP:GEVAL it's just Wikipedia policy of not claiming there's an equivalence when it's not the case, like: "some scientists say [...], others say [...] the idea received mixed reactions [...]".  — Paleo  Neonate  – 16:54, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I want to be very clear PaleoNeonate, who I am responding to, as I am hoping it is possible to drop attempts at derailing the discussion.
 * I am afraid that you are the one who is mistaken. Without reference to any authority on my side, what you state about accumulating more statistics and improved modelling in support of strict restrictions - is false.
 * The reason the Krieger/JH paper was picked up by so many news-outlets was not that the paper was especially good - but that those scientific articles you refer to in support of strict restrictions - don't even exist. Why would otherwise such as poor quality study even be mentioned? (It doesn't however unfortunatly fullfill MEDRS-criteria).
 * The fact is that very little in the form of scientific literature gives support for severe restrictions. It's quite telling, for all your reference to "accumulated data" - you aren't actually referring to any specific scientific articles or reports.
 * To name just some modelling that entirely opposes what you state - there is the Danish Authority's 28/1 '22 modelling and risk assessment, and the Norwegian 09/02 '22 risk assessment, both of which specifically refer to the strategy of targeted interventions for high risk or vulnerable groups - in line with the declaration's recommendations.
 * This is not about false equivalences - this is about how to express a known uncertainty about the underlying science and epidemiology in a neutral manner. The political division on the matter is muddying the waters, but doesn't mean that we can totally discredit Martin Kulldorff, who was an authority in the field prior to the pandemic.
 * Frankly the published defence by Kulldorff against Gorski is just as suitable a reference, or possibly more so than Gorski's BMJ opinion piece. Both, in turn, are lesser to the comments from the WHO or scientific articles on the topic. However, I do suggest you read Kulldorff's defence: it could be quite illuminating.
 * Also, to clarify what I meant about the prosecutor's fallacy - it is that the mere existence of false equivalencies - does not imply that any mention of a scientific dispute here is a false equivalence. There is no consensus of the efficacy of severe restrictions, and I will repeat once again: the fact that multiple democratic nations with rule of law and due process, including in informing decision makers on pros and cons of severe restrictions - have chosen not to implement them - is indicative that there is a debate . To assert that "there is no debate" is anglocentric anti-scientific codswallop. Distrait cognizance (talk) 19:52, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * P.S. With regards to what you, PaleoNeonate reference from the popular press - it isn't even relevant. (I felt at first that this didn't bear mentioning, but I now feel it needs to be touched upon, as it might be what is confusing you.)
 * No one has suggested that individuals should be entirely without restrictions, or that they should live without any behavioral changes - but rather that some types of restrictions are both damaging and ineffective, especially in the long term - and should be avoided.
 * So not only is the science being misconstrued here - but so it the policy interpretation and political base for the declaration's arguments. The declaration is still marginal, but the interpretation that it suggests no adaptations at all (when it specifically has a list of measures) is possibly even more marginal. Distrait cognizance (talk) 20:11, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Distrait, the assertion that there is a real debate about whether laissez-faire viral spread among the less-vulnerable can be combined with protecting the more-vulnerable is, itself, a false story. There is no credible group of scientists advocating for this.  The only people pushing this are politicians and people who can't bring themselves to face the ugly facts.  There is no credible evidence that this idea works.  There is credible evidence, especially as seen in Sweden, that it does not work.
 * The BLP in question is Swedish, and you mention Sweden. In addition to having one of the best and highest-capacity healthcare systems in the world and a social services sector that was willing and able to provide remarkably high support services, Sweden also had a remarkably high death rate among vulnerable people before the vaccines became available.  They also did not have anything like the young "living normally"; the main difference was that most people closed their businesses and stayed home voluntarily, rather than most people closing their businesses and staying home because the government required them to do so.  This distinction between voluntary choice and government orders will certainly matter to anyone with oppositional defiant disorder, but that distinction has no effect on whether the preventive measures resulted in less viral spread. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:04, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Please, when you reference "credible evidence" from Sweden, do point out your sources. The official Swedish position is that death rates during the first wave were unremarkable in relation to initial seeding through travel during the sports vacation during week 9 2020.
 * The infection fatality rate of COVID-19 in Stockholm – Technical report Public Health Agency of Sweden
 * (See page 6 "Many families from Stockholm travelled to the Alps for skiing when the schools had their winter holiday week from 24 February to 1 March. This coincided with the outbreak in the region Lombardy in northern Italy, which reported its first case on 21 February and the first death on the 22th, indicating that the infection was already widespread at that point. Many Swedes, and persons from Stockholm in particular, were infected in Italy, Austria and to some extent in Iran, where an outbreak started around the same period. Stockholm was thus seeded by many returning travellers in the beginning of March, and the pandemic took off rather quickly")
 * Summary in English Swedish Corona Commission Interrim report 2
 * Page 3 "2. The virus probably spread to Sweden as a result of people travelling, chiefly from Italy and Austria, during week 9. "
 * Impact of winter holiday and government responses on mortality in Europe during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic European Journal of Public Health
 * With regards to the voluntary behavioral adaptation, that is certainly true, but also slightly beside the point.
 * Where the scientific debate lies, is not of whether any behavioral adaptation is effective - but whether the strict restrictions are always more effective than e.g. voluntary or targeted interventions. Distrait cognizance (talk) 20:32, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * It's not about "always"; it's about "COVID specifically". There is simply no scientific debate about the impossibility of letting teenagers get infected with COVID ("living their normal lives" and "promoting natural herd immunity") while simultaneously keeping his high-risk family family members safe from COVID infection.  It can't be done. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:44, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
 * There is plenty of scientific debate about it and that is what Distrait cognizance has demonstrated. Gorski's blog post has neither definitively determined nor adequately demonstrated that "it’s impossible to protect the vulnerable from a virus that’s rapidly spreading among the entire population."
 * On the face of it, if Gorski's statement was true, why bother with vaccinations?
 * Vaccinations help protect the vulnerable. Therefore it is not "impossible to protect the vulnerable." Therefore the statement is factually false because it lacks nuance. It is poorly written, un-sourced WP:BMI and Gorski is not an expert in the relevant field. Therefore, using Gorski's statement as supporting evidence for the 'impossibility' statement does not conform to Reliable Sources (medicine) guidelines. Because the Kulldorff article is a biography, poorly-sourced, contentious material violates core policy and should be immediately removed, without discussion.
 * There are Discretionary Sanctions (DS) in effect for both BLP and COVID-19 content and Kulldorff's page falls under both. We've all likely had the DS banners placed on our talk pages. Both banners state the following:
 * No one here has argued that we shouldn't neutrally point out the mainstream view of the GBD when mentioning the GBD. However, we must strictly follow policy when doing so and the current statement does not.
 * Michael.C.Wright (talk) 22:35, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
 * "Why bother with vaccination" this is ridiculous. Because it's the only way to attempt eventual herd immunity at lesser risk.  Because it helps prevent infection.  Because when infection still occurs, its severity is reduced.  Because vaccination is a usually harmless way to provide some degree of immunity, versus the danger of an inital infection without prior immunity.  It doesn't only protect a few people when it is massively given.  Because a vaccination campaign doesn't fill hospitals, too.  — Paleo  Neonate  – 01:39, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * As you have just articulated, the vaccines protect the vulnerable, right?
 * Michael.C.Wright (talk) 01:59, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Gorski's comment was (obviously) about the GBD, not vaccination. So that line of argument seems dishonest. You keep mentioning discretionary sanctions; if you think any editor has not observed them you need to make a request at WP:ARE. I note that so far the only editor in this discussion who's needed admin intervention is you. I also note the Kulldorff article has now been to six noticeboards in recent weeks. Alexbrn (talk) 05:29, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The point about vaccines was to illustrate one of the problems with Gorski's statement; it is factually incorrect on its face. Vaccines protect the vulnerable. As PaleoNeonate pointed out, when delivered en masse, they can even extend protection by easing pressure on medical facilities. Gorski even contradicted the 'impossible' statement himself, later in the same paragraph.
 * The point about discretionary sanctions (mentioned only once here) is to illustrate that content in Kulldorff's biography must strictly follow policy and it currently does not. PaleoNeonate was kind enough to let me know about the sanctions by placing a banner on my talk page. I thought it was a good idea for others here to know as well. As the template documentation recommends, its use here is as a 'neutral courtesy.'
 * "[T]he Kulldorff article has now been to six noticeboards in recent weeks"...sounds like somebody is doing the hard work to improve an article.
 * Lastly, when one resorts ad hominem, it usually means they have nothing substantive to offer.
 * Michael.C.Wright (talk) 06:35, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * It's only "incorrect" by an illiterate reading, because the context of commentary is not about vaccines but specifically about "focused protection". You're wrong about BLP. If it really were the case that editors were violating BLP that would be serious and worthy of reporting to WP:ARE. But it's not happening, so this is just a WP:CRYBLP tactic, of the kind we see all the time on pseudoscience articles. Alexbrn (talk) 06:41, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * It's only "incorrect" by an illiterate reading, because the context of commentary is not about vaccines but specifically about "focused protection". You're wrong about BLP. If it really were the case that editors were violating BLP that would be serious and worthy of reporting to WP:ARE. But it's not happening, so this is just a WP:CRYBLP tactic, of the kind we see all the time on pseudoscience articles. Alexbrn (talk) 06:41, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

What is illiterate is to interpret " protect " as synonymous with " shield from all harm ". The declaration never suggests that focused protection or targeted interventions will bring about 100% safety to those most vulnerable. But neither do lockdowns or and strict measures, unless they are severe enough to stop all disease spread as per zero Covid, which once spread got going was a pipe-dream. It certainly did not work in the UK, the US, or anywhere in Europe, only working in those countries that had strict border closures for years, with even New Zealand dropping it as of recently. The debate, which is certainly not pseudoscientific, but underlies the totality of all pre-Covid research and policy on pandemic preparedness, is most certainly alive and kicking. It is a straw man to shoot down the analogy of vaccines as irrelevant - it is simply using an extreme example prove a point. There are many other reasonably effective interventions as well. Real examples of focused protection that have been used include cohort care, financial support for risk groups to stay at home, as well as food deliveries to risk groups. That is just off the top of my head from what I've seen in my community. - you are being extremely disingenuous, as the declaration was followed, just a few weeks later in November 2020 by the following on focused protection : "e.g., frequent on-site testing and limiting staff rotations in nursing homes, free home delivery of groceries for the home-bound vulnerable, providing disability job accommodations for older vulnerable workers, and temporary accommodations for older people living in multi-generational homes. The prospect of effective and safe COVID-19 vaccines offer an additional avenue for improved focused protection of high-risk individuals, both directly and by vaccinating caregivers. Still, better protection of the elderly cannot and should not wait until a vaccine is widely available. Focused Protection: The Middle Ground between Lockdowns and “Let it Rip.” Jay Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta, Martin Kulldorff November 25, 2020"

Many arguments here are just going around in circles, and don't even attempt to discuss the issue at hand, which I find encapsulated quite well with his analogy. It almost seems like no one has read the declaration, with most making up their minds based off of lay press summaries. Distrait cognizance (talk) 08:19, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * It doesn't matter if a random Wikipedia editor think the GBD somehow isn't pseudoscience; what matters is that relevant scientists think it is. Guess which view Wikipedia follows? This is all fairly basic stuff, we are here to summarize decent sources, not push POVs and attempt to WP:RGW. Alexbrn (talk) 08:24, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * This is exactly the crux of it. It seems random Wikipedia editors are labeling something as pseudoscience, that while certainly contentious, has not in the scientific literature been deemed pseudoscience - apart from in one single opinion piece by Gorski et al.
 * Each and every facet of the declaration is debated in the scientific literature, and none of it is pseudoscience, but rather basic pre-2020 pandemic preparedness as defined by the World Health Organization, and other prominent organizations such as the CDC, ECDC, etc.
 * That doesn't mean it isn't wrong, or isn't politically marginal - but the words "impossible" and "pseudoscience" do not belong. That, and the science is certainly not settled as there "very much is a debate" and it's alive and kicking. Distrait cognizance (talk) 08:42, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't believe Gorski has called it "pseudoscience", but Michael Osterholm has. You obviously have your own beliefs, but they don't count here and yes that is indeed the crux of it. Wikipedia follows reputable mainstream sources and puts fringe stuff in its proper context according to those sources. Alexbrn (talk) 08:56, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I equated calling it "impossible" with saying it was "pseudoscience" - but I see now that you refer to an additional poor quality source that has been added to the article on Martin Kulldorff, which is a quote in the lay press The Hill.
 * As for my beliefs, those are entirely irrelevant and not something I have expressed here - nor anywhere else. The fact that you reference such a obvious statement as that I have beliefs, is telling of a lack of WP:AGF. The goal is a neutral summary, not to have one's positions forwarded. I am not in favor of the declaration, but things in life are not so black and white as that I can state that it is pseudoscience, just because I do not agree with it.
 * The underlying science can't be disregarded with lay press sources and bite-sized quotes, especially when the scientific literature is far from as definitive. The arguments set against this are not in the spirit of Wikipedia and WP:RS. Distrait cognizance (talk) 09:52, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * There you are again about what you agree with, and what is or is not "black and white" in your personal world view. To repeat, this is irrelevant. The sources rebutting the GBD are fine. You're not going to find peer-reviewed science bothering to rebut the GBD because it's not peer-reviewed science, but a political document launched as a PR stunt by a political think-tank. That is why we have WP:PARITY of sourcing on such occasions; it's the same with most types of grift, quackery and pseudoscience. Luckily we have many appropriate sources and wise scientists saying that the GBD is nonsense, and reflect it accordingly. Alexbrn (talk) 11:56, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Editors should not perform detailed academic peer review. It doesn't matter if you are convinced.  We have to accept what the sources say.  The sources say that successful "focused protection" is impossible.  Even some GBD supporters agree that it's impossible.  (They just value improving things economically and socially for healthier people over minimizing total deaths.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:27, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Wiki editors must critically read and consider every source they cite.
 * "In many cases, if something appears in a reliable source, it may be used and attributed where needed, but reliable sources are not infallible. There are examples where material should not be reported in Wikipedia's voice, because what is verifiable is that the source expresses a view, not that the view is necessarily accurate. [emphasis added]"
 * The way I remember it is:
 * Generally verifiable ≠ bulletproof
 * Michael.C.Wright (talk) 23:07, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * P.S. Assessing sources is an important skill for the folks in the Wikiproject Medicine: WP:MEDASSESS
 * "When writing about any health effect, assessing evidence quality helps distinguish between minor and major views, determine due weight, and identify accepted evidence-based information."


 * Michael.C.Wright (talk) 23:15, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * These are just personal attacks from and . I stated that my view is irrelevant - whereupon I was met by a total disregard for this and a refusal to discuss the underlying science, or even papers or studies that did go into the science.
 * What makes this especially egregious is that such accusations are in the face of their own personal views prominently at display in the prior section on childhood vaccination against chickenpox. I would hope that such blatant bigotry lead to at the very least an apology.
 * This isn't about convincing me at all, especially seeing as it is rather those who suggest that GBD is pseudoscience that seem convinced of this despite the fact remaining that the science is not being refuted in that manner anywhere apart from a few errant lay press quotes and an opinion piece, whereas it has frequently been considered in the professional press.
 * Nonetheless, this is not about saying that either the GBD or Kulldorff weren't wrong, or aren't controversial or that the proposal was not set aside after review of pros and cons.
 * What this is, is about not calling it pseudoscience, impossible, debunked, not seriously considered or whatever.. because those statements are not only false, but do not have the Wikipedia-sanctioned WP:RS or WP:MEDRS to back them up.
 * The fact remains that it has been considered a serious proposal, discussed at length in the scientific literature. The underlying tenets are all scientific and hold for scrutiny - whereas the choice to forego it is often based off the determination that mortality would be too high or that implementation is to hard or costly (not impossible).
 * Just some examples of the scientific literature taking the proposal seriously (albeit some rejecting it after consideration):
 * COVID-19: Rethinking the Lockdown Groupthink
 * Precision shielding for COVID-19: metrics of assessment and feasibility of deployment
 * An exploration of the political, social, economic and cultural factors affecting how different global regions initially reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic
 * The COVID-19 wicked problem in public health ethics: conflicting evidence, or incommensurable values?
 * Model-based analysis on social acceptability and feasibility of a focused protection strategy against the COVID-19 pandemic
 * SARS-CoV-2 transmission across age groups in France and implications for control
 * Citation impact and social media visibility of Great Barrington and John Snow signatories for COVID-19 strategy
 * Modelling the impact of age-stratified public health measures on SARS-CoV-2 transmission in Canada
 * Physicians’ Role in the COVID-19 Infodemic: A Reflection
 * Effect of Non-lockdown Social Distancing and Testing-Contact Tracing During a COVID-19 Outbreak in Daegu, South Korea, February to April 2020: A Modeling Study
 * Distrait cognizance (talk) 06:14, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I looked at the first three. If you think "taking it seriously" equates to invoking in the context of "fallacy ad populum", not mentioning it at all, and pointing out that it never explains how "focussed protection" is meant to be achieved, then the mind boggles. Your argument here is exactly the same as those producing reams of journal articles about homeopathy and saying "Look, they don't mention pseudoscience, so it isn't". This is why WP:PARITY exists - none of these journal articles have the depth of analysis and synthesis of a good skeptical debunk by an expert on pseudomedicine. Some of these sources may, however, be useful for further information about the GBD, for which, thanks! Alexbrn (talk) 06:59, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I see "Lockdown Groupthink" and know that this source's argument is not about science. The BMJ one seems better, but is not about the declaration.  Enough for me to see that this is not a very constructive use of my time to improve Wikipedia...  — Paleo  Neonate  – 22:01, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * You're moving the goal-posts, as this was a response to you,, who suggested that the scientific literature was not bothering to address the declaration - as it was bunk from the get-go.
 * The list serves to provide precisely scientific articles taking the time to address the declaration.
 * I am all for clearly stating that a large number of articles (even the majority) calls into question the feasibility of focused protection as suggested in the declaration. This is however not the same as calling it "impossible" or "pseudoscience".
 * Many of the suggestions and principles detailed in Great Barrington Declaration - Focused Protection are actively implemented, including vaccination (and vaccine-prioritization).
 * It is entirely ridiculous to suggest that there is parity of sources between the declaration, which was written by three academics (professors) from respectable institutions, and who are considered leading in the field of infectious disease epidemiology - with an opinion piece from an expert on alternative medicine. There is precisely not WP:PARITY of sources here. This is especially evident when you take into account that the declaration was signed by hundreds, if not thousands of well-respected and published experts (professors and academics) in epidemiology, virology, and public health.
 * Gorski's opinion piece, and an errant quote from The Hill - are not examples of WP:PARITY of sources.
 * You hit the nail on its head in identifying the relevant Wikipedia-policy, but make the wrong call as to what that means.
 * Distrait cognizance (talk) 11:11, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * It's a political tract drafted under the aegis of a science-denying think tank. There are useful idiot scientists in most disciplines, but an argument from authority doesn't dignify any claims. Pretty much any sane source would do to debunk nonsense like this, as it would with an antivax, new earth creationist, homeopathy, chemtrail, etc. document. Basically your play is the same as we see with every defense of pseudoscience. Let the expert sources like SBM decide on fringe medicine, rather than trying to push your personal WP:PROFRINGE beliefs. Wikipedia reflects such reliable, on-point sources. Alexbrn (talk) 11:21, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * It is certainly a political tract, but that does not de facto invalidate the underlying scientific principles, which is what is necessary in order for something to be pseudoscience. This is also not about whether Gorski called it that, but about whether we should place such a statement in the lead of a BLP, whether such a source has parity, and whether such a source has weight, when multiple scientific articles treat the declaration as a valid proposition (even if only to refute it).
 * I have not appealed to authority in anything apart from to suggest that the number and rank of the signatories matter per WP:PARITY.
 * It is ironic therefor that you do appeal to the authority of the blog Science-Based-Medicine an expert resource in all of science, including epidemiology, and that it may therefore be relied upon as sole arbiter and definitive jury. That is not only wrong, but ignorant and anti-science. It also is most certainly in violation of WP:MEDRS.
 * I implore you to stop bringing my person into this. This is not about me or my views. I have made this point repeatedly, and the sole reason for bringing my views into anything was to repeatedly state that I do not endorse the Great Barrington Declaration. If you do not refrain from casting aspersions in this manner, there are venues to turn to, as you are not engaging in good faith. I have not once made any statement that would suggest I am not going at this with anything other than the intent to clearly state that the declaration is marginal and that the literature is not in favor of it. That is however not the same as using a blog-post source to, in the lede of a BLP, state that the fundamentals of the declaration, including targeted protection, is pseudoscience.
 * Distrait cognizance (talk) 15:42, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * You matter because your personal views evidently underpin your battle against reliable sources, in particular your belief in the "underlying scientific principles" of the GBD. Science-Based Medicine is not an authority on "all medicine", but it is a go-to source for pseudomedicine, of which GBD is a example. As to the rank of the signatories, again it's your belief they somehow count (or are even genuine). I give you - Dr Johnny Bananas. Anyway, I've had enough of this. You are entitled to think the GBD is TDB, but have not convinced anybody else. Please do not take my lack of further responses to indicate any agreement with your position. Alexbrn (talk) 15:53, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I will say that I echo Distrait's concern that there is too much focus on editors in an ad hominem fashion and not enough focus on content (WP:FOC).
 * "Focus on article content during discussions, not on editor conduct; comment on content, not the contributor."


 * That doesn't mean that problematic conduct can't be mentioned or discussed, but it should not be the entire focus and it should not be used as a form of attack, defamation, or ad hominem.
 * As I've said previously, I think many in this group are making a lot of assumptions of what "the other side" intends. This is a politicized, polarized, contentious topic and it is very easy to get heated (and I'm talking to myself as much as anyone else).
 * We should all work hard on collaborating to make a neutral article that neither side can read and then complain of bias. That means honoring due weight of fringe/alt (WP:FRINGE/ALT) topics while respecting that fringe/alt does not ipso facto equate to either bunk or pseudoscience. Calling it "bullshit, bunk, crazy, woo, etc" is used intentionally (and transparently) to enflame the discussion and avoid engaging in a meaningful discussion about content.
 * "Alternative theoretical formulations from within the scientific community are not pseudoscience, but part of the scientific process."


 * I agree that the GBD is textbook WP:FRINGE/ALT and by definition that means it is not pseudoscience in wiki parlance. The problem I see in this current disagreement is that Osterholm called it "pseudoscience" and the article can state as fact that he said that while giving attribution. That does comply with neutrality policy. Osterholm was not talking in wiki parlance but he is an expert in the relevant field. His comments were also dismissive, political theater meant to demean and denigrate the GBD. We could get into a discussion about the fact that simply including such inflammatory rhetoric in a wiki article engages in the dispute, but that is scope-creep from the original post and possibly not welcomed by other project members on this noticeboard (though I would willingly participate in such a discussion in an appropriate setting). Maybe that discussion is better had on Talk:Martin Kulldorff (or I could be wrong and this location is equally acceptable).
 * Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Edits) 23:29, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree for the most part. It is not inappropriate to mention that Osterholm called it pseudoscience, but to have that statement plastered in the lede of a BLP, especially as attributed to the diffuse collective "Scientists have said" is not neutral.
 * I am less inclined however to state that this is textbook fringe, as the signatories and supporters of the declaration are far enough removed from the crowd that normally supports fringe theories. I have no issue calling it marginal or "widely rejected".
 * A potential reason to keep discussion here is that it related to multiple pages, not just Martin Kulldorff. Distrait cognizance (talk) 15:25, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree that in the lede is becomes undue weight, especially for an article about Kulldorff, not the Declaration.
 * When I call it "fringe/alt," I am referring to the wiki classification, which includes this in the definition:
 * I feel that accurately describes the Declaration and coming to a mutual understanding of how to classify the GBD within wikipedia's spectrum of fringe theories will help us, as a group, reach consensus about wider topics related to its lack of mainstream acceptance.
 * That is a good point with which I would also agree.
 * Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Edits) 01:29, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I think we are entirely in agreement as to this . I wonder if the best way to proceed is to summarize the places where there is inappropriate language or sourcing. There is first and foremost the lede of the BLP Martin Kulldorff, where low-quality and non-parity sources are used to suggest that the declaration is pseudoscience or that focused protection is impossible. The neutrality of even mentioning those statements from Gorski and Osterholm is questionable, and certainly WP:UNDUE for the lede of a BLP. Distrait cognizance (talk) 17:03, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
 * That is a good point with which I would also agree.
 * Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Edits) 01:29, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I think we are entirely in agreement as to this . I wonder if the best way to proceed is to summarize the places where there is inappropriate language or sourcing. There is first and foremost the lede of the BLP Martin Kulldorff, where low-quality and non-parity sources are used to suggest that the declaration is pseudoscience or that focused protection is impossible. The neutrality of even mentioning those statements from Gorski and Osterholm is questionable, and certainly WP:UNDUE for the lede of a BLP. Distrait cognizance (talk) 17:03, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I think we are entirely in agreement as to this . I wonder if the best way to proceed is to summarize the places where there is inappropriate language or sourcing. There is first and foremost the lede of the BLP Martin Kulldorff, where low-quality and non-parity sources are used to suggest that the declaration is pseudoscience or that focused protection is impossible. The neutrality of even mentioning those statements from Gorski and Osterholm is questionable, and certainly WP:UNDUE for the lede of a BLP. Distrait cognizance (talk) 17:03, 19 February 2022 (UTC)


 * After slogging through this lengthy discussion and FWIW, I concur with the arguments put forth by Alexbrn, WhatamIdoing, and PaleoNeonate. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 07:17, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Took me a while to get through it all, but I concur as well. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 00:16, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * It is a shame that you will not make us privy to the arguments that were convincing for you - as without them these statements only amount to WP:VOTEs. Distrait cognizance (talk) 06:19, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The arguments were spelled out at great length above; I don't see how repeating them again would be helpful. Concurring is not voting. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 07:34, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I concur. ;^) Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 02:35, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

How is strabismus one of the causes that lead to anisometropia, and how is it treated or reduced? with the source please
anisometropia & strabismus Son of zeayj (talk) 09:20, 19 February 2022 (UTC)


 * @Son of zeayj, why are you asking this? If this is part of your homework, then the Reference desk might be able to help you.  If you know someone with one of these conditions, then I'd suggest asking a qualified healthcare professional, rather than some stranger on the internet. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:54, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

COVID-19 medical cases charts
I think that it is already time to stop editing all of the templates that are listed here. Most of those templates are COVID-19 medical cases charts and they are already useless nowadays. Can they simply be marked as historical or do they need to undergo the usual deletion process? LSGH (talk) (contributions) 09:26, 20 February 2022 (UTC)


 * I believe that @Mxn knows about those. The data is store on Commons, not here.  If you just think they shouldn't be in any articles, then you only need to remove the template from the article, rather than marking the template in any way. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:53, 20 February 2022 (UTC)


 * No, the medical cases charts are still updated manually even if case numbers have already lost their significance. I think that the templates can still remain in the relevant articles, but most of them are already outdated and the others do not need to be updated anymore. LSGH (talk) (contributions) 04:10, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Req for WP:3O at CFS
Before I inadvertently get embroiled in an edit war; can someone check this reverted undo over at the Chronic fatigue syndrome article? The changes don't seem to be supported by the referenced MEDRS. I initially undid the edits as they were made after a string of edits removed by ClueBOT NG. All were marked as WP:minor – some of them were not. To me the "clarifications" seem to fail verification – though I did not tag my reversion as such. (If edits are fine; then the malformed " epigenetic " wikilink will need changing to " epigenetic ".) Little pob (talk) 15:49, 22 February 2022 (UTC)


 * @Little pob, that change is not okay. By changing "mechanisms" to "metabolic mechanisms", the new editor is saying that non-metabolic mechanisms either don't exist or that they actually are fully understood, and the only thing left for researchers to understand is the metabolic mechanisms.  This is probably unintentional, and it's factually wrong even if it is intentional.  (Also, I suspect that the new editor meant "physiological" or even "non-psychological", rather than "metabolic".)
 * In the case of the epi/genetics change, the new sentence inadvertently suggests that nobody has ever claimed that the DNA sequence could matter, which is false. It might be worth adding epigenetics to the phrase ("proposed mechanisms include biological, genetic, epigentic, infectious, and physical or psychological stress"), but genetics should not be removed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:25, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I've left a note on the new editor's talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:31, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks, WAID. I'll add in epigenetics as a separate item in the prose list. Little pob (talk) 12:46, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Ectodermal dysplasia


Hello, WikiProject Medicine,

This article was brought to my attention because in a biographical article, a subject of a recent WP:COIN discussion is stated to suffer from this condition. It doesn't seem like the article is up to WikiProject Medicine standards, has very light sourcing and looking at the page history, it looks like much of the editing has been done by IP editors instead of editors that I recognize as regular content creators. I'm not one myself, I work in admin areas but I thought I'd bring it to the WikiProject's attention in case anyone wants to take it on as a fix-it project. Thank you. Liz Read! Talk! 03:03, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
 * thank you for post--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:34, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Poor Presentation and Bias on John A. McDougall
FYI, the Dr. John A. McDougall page on Wikipedia exhibits poor presentation, outdated information, and blatant bias. These issues have been discussed for at least the last six years on the Talk page, and none of them have really been fixed, thanks to a group of editors that control that page. Wikipedia should be ashamed of the poor editorial quality of the entry. I have done a step-by-step analysis of the overall presentation of this entry and I will be posting it to YouTube shortly---the link will pretty be provided here as well. The Wikipedia page goes right up to the borderline but doesn't quite cross it of calling this accomplished clinician and researcher a "quack", and then provides questionable or outdated sources to back up the criticism, with no other viewpoint provided in any significance. His work is built on decades of clinical evidence from researchers from institutions such as Duke University, Cornell University, Oregon Health Sciences Center, even Harvard U [e.g., archeology research] and others published in peer-reviewed studies. Don't you think that the reader should decide whether or not his work is questionable? Just stick to the facts, Wikipedia. Thank you, - Jack Byrom Jack B108 (talk) 16:22, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * His diet seems to attract fans from time to time. It's true there has been some research published in the last couple of years that could usefully be included (even if it seems inconclusive). Trying to raise a posse via Youtube is likely to result in the article being locked and your account being blocked which is not a good outcome for anyone. The only way to get an article changed on Wikipedia is through editor consensus, and this is best achieved via Talk pages. Alexbrn (talk) 16:58, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Jack Byrom some users have canvassed off-site before and posted about McDougall's article on Reddit (I am not sure if you were involved with that). It's up to you what you want to do in your spare time but the canvassing thing never works, just leads to more problems. Do you have any reliable sources for McDougall's biography that specifically mention him? I am talking about reliable secondary sources that are independent (not primary sources written by McDougall). You have been asked multiple times but never give any. I know you mean well and want to improve the article but as Alexbrn says use the talk-page and if you know of any reliable sources put them over there. That is how you improve an article. Psychologist Guy (talk) 18:15, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * You guys mangle this page and spend hours practicing theoretical medicine on Wikipedia instead of writing a good article. You malign a living person and physician, and then when somebody makes a real critique of the page with a fresh eye, you threaten them with a self-referential Wikipedia threat. How entirely predictable, yet sad, as if WP was the authority on high. I would just be horrified if I or another professional science editor got banned from Wikipedia because of a review of this article on YouTube. By the way, the worse the Wikipedia article, the more the editors responsible cry out that "there are no reliable secondary sources" [to support an actual comprehensive encyclopedia entry]. There's plenty of reliable secondary sources, and you know it. If you were really trying to be a professional writer or editor here, you would go find them. But that's not really your intent...This is actually an encyclopedia, not a medical journal. I wonder if you know the difference. Jack B108 (talk) 04:41, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
 * RE: "Jack Byrom some users have canvassed off-site before and posted about McDougall's article on Reddit (I am not sure if you were involved with that)..." --Psychologist Guy Huh? I don't ever use that website, but it sounds like you are not real happy about anybody reviewing or giving a fair opinion of your work, which itself tarnishes the reputation of a dedicated professional. If your work here is fair and balanced, you would think that you would be happy for the attention. Jack B108 (talk) 04:51, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The article's not bad. The recent attention has uncovered some new sources and tightened things up, but basically this guy's diet product seems like just another nonsense diet with some highly dubious claims used to promote it, and Wikipedia isn't going to be coy about that reality. Alexbrn (talk) 05:21, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
 * There's probably room to improve it, though. For example, he promotes a low-fat vegan diet.  This is not the "standard balanced diet", but was it ever popular enough to qualify as a fad diet?  A fad diet is one that has a brief flare of popularity, regardless of whether it's scientifically sound.
 * Some critical content was removed recently, and that is being discussed on the talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:19, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Alexbrn, Yes, it is improved over what I saw when I first looked at it about two weeks ago. But it's still got quite a ways to go before it's up to basic encyclopedia editorial standards. I guess every little bit helps. Thanks, Jack B108 (talk) 20:01, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Wikimedian in residence at the NIHR - introduction


Dear All,

Though I've already been mentioned on this page, I finally caught up with my self to post a proper introduction. So I will be the Wikimedian in residence at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) until June. This is a joint project between the NIHR and Wikimedia UK. Our goal is to see how we can incorporate Wikipedia editing into the different aspects of research (dissemination, public and patient involvement, training, funding requirements, etc.). We will also work on including NIHR research evidence (the secondary sources) in Wikipedia articles and plan to organise an edit-a-thon focusing on researchers from underrepresented backgrounds. We also set up a project page where I will share updates about the project.

My first question to you is what do you think about using articles from the NIHR Evidence website as sources? These are not traditional secondary sources but all of the studies are chosen by a professional committee based on their importance, impact and relevance.

And of course feel free to contact me with any questions or ideas here or via adam.harangozo@nihr.ac.uk

Best wishes, Adam Harangozó (NIHR WiR) (talk) 10:24, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Interesting stuff. It definitely feels worthwhile interfacing with people who might be motivated to edit wikipedia. One concern I have would be the tendency of health bodies to view everything not aimed at other health professionals as a tool for "public health" with all that comes along with it (misleading simplications to encourage compliance and provide 'motivation', summaries designed to protect professional interest, claiming certainty where there is no such thing).
 * A nice property of wikipedia for me is that it is not advice written by science communication professionals: it has an WP:Academic bias, every claim is well sourced, it tends to be possible to trace a citation chain all the way down to primary sources if you want to, and there are crowds of people there to remove bias and provide context - which I guess could be summarized as "wikipedia is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit". Looking through a few of the evidence pieces, like there's a bit of a "public health" vibe to the pieces and they aren't really citing their conclusions well. I would very much prefer a systematic review to these sources. Although there is going to be some trade off in terms of up-to-date sources.
 * I wonder if it would be possible to plug wikipedia in slightly "higher up" in the chain of articles being written before all the "science communication" starts seeping in. By analogy, NICE often have guidelines together with evidence for the guideline. The later evidence documents are long and detailed and can be very good sources (see for example: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg178/evidence)
 * As an aside I think the standards for what counts as a secondary source are relatively low. In WP:MEDRS they talk about the hierarchy of sources. I think sources like this could be quite useful when there is not a systematic review to hand. It might be worth looking into some of the things that happened while people were writing about covid and how these less standard secondary sources were used. I wasn't that involved in this - but others may know more.
 * If you look at the archives of this page, there is some discussion about trying to support medics in editing, which might be worth looking at. Again, it's not something I personally have much experience in - but summarizing my limited experience and what other people say: getting medics to appreciate the reasons behind not citing primary sources can be difficult, there can be conflict surrounding "professional status" (I remember some of the guidelines saying things along the lines of "you can your professional knowledge to find good sources"), at times I've interacted with medics with a certain tendency towards censorship and deletionism on the grounds of safety (often with an unfortunate argument that criticism puts patients at risk by decreasing truts in a specialty). There are also the standard thing about being a new editor on wikipedia being difficult - things to learn, admin's having a habit of placing banners on your page, brusque and at times combative communcation style - but I imagine you know about this. It might be worth talking to some people who have joined wikipedia recently, "survived" and are making contributions. seems like someone who might be interesting to talk to on this topic (I hope they don't mind me mentioning them). Talpedia (talk) 03:08, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm happy to talk about my experiences with this - it's not great news, I'm afraid. Basically, I think one of the riskiest things to do at the start is edit anything you're an expert in or otherwise particularly invested in. You want to care just enough to keep editing. Because the Wikipedia "rules of engagement" are really counter-intuitive, people need to be editing in a space where they won't get their hackles up if they get told off, because that will happen. The only times I really got into trouble towards the start was editing where I know a lot about the topic. It's been a bit over a year, and I know of at least a couple people who still don't trust me (and fair enough, I did some incredibly ill-advised editing). If you start out where you won't get defensive about being corrected, then it's easier to actually absorb the reasoning for why someone's just put a banner with a strangely friendly-yet-hostile tone on your talk page or deleted your edit using a bunch of arcane acronyms in their edit summary., on another note, by "underrepresented backgrounds", do you mean underrepresented fields or are you referring to our systemic bias? --Xurizuri (talk) 12:06, 25 February 2022 (UTC) (please ping if you respond)
 * To counter some of Talpedia's points, I would say there can be a problem where articles are written by editors with no experience of the topic (even if medically qualified in some way) who assume literature reviews actually reflect medical practice, vs sometimes the opinion and hopes of the review author. I agree the NICE guidelines are good, partly because they are forced to come to a decision even if the evidence is weak. Cochrane's systematic reviews can sometimes be a bit "so what?" and I think their frequent "low evidence" conclusions need expert consideration to determine what to make of that. For example, in some fields there are clear and obviously effective drugs and you'd need strong evidence to change those from being first choice. In other fields, you might not have any effective treatments, and so a "low evidence" drug might end up being the only recommended choice. Some of the NIHR pages have commentary by experts, which could be useful supplementary information on top of the study or systematic review being discussed. Not all the articles are health information for the public. this alert is about drug choices made by emergency doctors, not in the community or by a GP.
 * I think that Talpedia's concerns about bias could be a problem for some topics, but for most of them it is likely that anyone reading the article could be more likely to come away with a good idea of the state of research knowledge than they might just by doing a PubMed search and picking a review of similar vintage. They also have the advantage of being freely accessible. -- Colin°Talk 14:19, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I definitely think more perspective's are good, as are practitioners perspectives on what actually happens in hospitals, particularly complementing more academic sources (as you say). I think having experts be able to say "this isn't at all true - look at this source" to deal with "unknown unknowns" could be very valuable.
 * My concern is more around the framing things "advice for patients written by experts" versus "accurate summary of all quality research citing literature". Personally when I look at advice written for patients versus that written for doctors or nurses the difference can be striking. Both can be quite easy to understand, summarized and practical - but the advice written for patients if far more likely to lie to me or gloss over very important details. Talpedia (talk) 20:13, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
 * My feeling at the moment (I've looked at a little bit, but not a lot) is that this could be useful in some cases. It helps to poke around the website a bit.  There are three types:
 * Themed reviews
 * Collections, and
 * Alerts.
 * I thought initially that the reviews and collections would be most useful (because they sound like secondary sources), but then I picked one (a "collection" about recent pregnancy research) and thought about how I would use it, and it didn't seem useful in practice. It was mostly vague platitudes ("Pregnant women should always be at the centre of their care").  I also found myself frustrated that it would say things about the conclusions of a particular piece of research, like "Parents and doctors take different approaches to difficult decisions", but not say what those different approaches were.  The linked alert for that bit, on the other hand, provided a list of the four different approaches this primary source found (analytical, absolute, assess/reassess, and delay/avoidance).  The Collection might be considered a secondary source, but this information is still based on a single research study.  The next such study might decide that there were three approaches, or five.
 * The "What's next?" sections in the "Alerts" could be useful for a ==Research directions== section (about what research is underway or recommended for the future).
 * This alert is basically a lay-friendly summary of (a review article).  I don't think I would want to cite the NIHR alert instead of the original review.  I could imagine someone providing that link in addition to the review, but not instead of the review.  I could also imagine someone using the NIHR contents to make sure that they have correctly understood the original source, to find relevant original research sources, and to see whether they are correctly WP:Balancing aspects (part of NPOV) of the article.
 * Finally: a citation to NIHR is probably better than nothing.  It may not be the "MEDRS ideal", but it may be a "good enough" source for simpler and less controversial content. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:42, 19 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi, , ,


 * Thanks so much for the feedback. Giving health advice might be less of a problem with the NIHR as they come from the research end but it’s going to be my job to teach them how to edit Wikipedia and I’ll emphasise this aspect.


 * I think the NIHR Evidence site is useful not only because of the research but the plain language they are using. I really want to focus on using accessible language during my residency because many medical articles on Wikipedia are not easy to read (there are also studies about this).


 * I would also cite the original article but somehow include the matching piece from Evidence as a plain English summary. Another good NIHR source I’m planning to use is the Health Technology Assessment from the NIHR Journals Library, there are many systematic reviews here.


 * Adam Harangozó (NIHR WiR) (talk) 14:48, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Merge proposal: autism and autism spectrum
An editor has requested for Autism to be merged into Autism spectrum. Since you had some involvement with autism or autism spectrum, you might want to participate in the merger discussion (if you have not already done so). Averixus (talk) 00:20, 27 February 2022 (UTC)